Wiley Bolden in Mobile

Bolden v. City of Mobile, Alabama was a legal case brought before the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Alabama by Wiley Bolden and other Black Mobile County residents alleging that the city’s at-large system of electing its city commissioners was racially motivated and intended to dilute Black voting power. After a trial, the District Court and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit agreed, but the U.S. Supreme Court ruled for the city and sent the case back to the Court of Appeals and the District Court for retrial. The judges on these courts ultimately ruled that the city’s at-large voting procedures were racially biased and thus unconstitutional. The Bolden case also spurred Congress to amend Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 to reject the Supreme Court’s City of Mobile v. Bolden “intent” test and ban any voting practice that has a discriminatory effect.

At-large methods of election are often discriminatory because, in combination with racially polarized voting, they prevent voters of color from electing candidates of their choice where they are not the majority. Under this system, the votes of minority voters often are diluted by the votes of a majority of White voters, who often do not support the candidates preferred by Black voters. Such was the case with Alabama’s largest cities for most of the twentieth century. In 1911, Mobile instituted a three-member city commission whose members were elected at large.

In 1975, Bolden, an NAACP member and active voting rights advocate, and other Black plaintiffs, representing all Black residents of the city of Mobile, sued Mobile’s city commissioners in their individual and official capacities asserting that Mobile’s at-large system of electing city commissioners abridged the rights of the city's Black citizens under the First, Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments to the U.S. Constitution; the Civil Rights Act of 1871; and the Voting Rights Act of 1965, as amended. The plaintiffs alleged that the at-large elections enabled the city’s White majority to dilute and cancel out the concentrated voting strength of Mobile’s Black residents. The plaintiffs were represented by Mobile’s pioneering civil rights attorneys, partners James Blacksher, Larry Menefee, and Gregory Stein; Edward Still; and the NAACP Legal Defense Fund led by its director-counsel Jack Greenberg, who had succeeded Thurgood Marshall in that position. Charles Arendall and David Bagwell of Hand, Arendall, Bedsole, Greaves and Johnston, Mobile’s largest, and perhaps leading, law firm, represented the city.

The plaintiffs sought to prevail by proving the existence of voter dilution as set forth by the 1973 U.S. Supreme Court decision in White v. Regester and the 1973 Fifth Circuit decision in Zimmer v. McKeithen. The plaintiffs contended that Zimmer adopted specified criteria of the White dilution requirements. In addition,they alleged that the at-large election system was designed and was being used with the motive or purpose of diluting the Black vote. The defendants, on the other hand, contended that the plaintiffs had to prove an intent to discriminate in the election system.

In White v. Regester, a unanimous U.S. Supreme Court agreed with the trial court that, even without evidence of intentional racial discrimination, the reapportionment plan of the state of Texas effectively precluded both the Black community in Dallas County and the Mexican-American community in Bexar County from meaningful and reliable participation in the political process. 

Three months after White v. Regester was decided, the Fifth Circuit (Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Mississippi, Louisiana and Texas) Court of Appeals in Zimmer v. McKeithen provided trial courts with guidelines for analyzing future voter dilution cases. Zimmer involved reapportionment of the school board and police juries in a small rural Louisiana Parish under an at-large election scheme. The Zimmer Court set forth what it deemed two fundamental principles: (1) one person’s vote should equal another’s vote as nearly as practicable; and (2) assuming such equality or near-equality, the scheme must not operate in such a way as to trivialize or eliminate the voting strength of a racially defined segment of the voting population. Thus, a plan that meets population equality requirements still could be considered unconstitutionally racially discriminatory upon proof either of a racially motivated gerrymander or that the plan operates to lessen Black voting strength. The Court did not have to consider whether the reapportionment plan was racially motivated because it operated to dilute Black voter strength, thereby making it unconstitutional. In other words, as the Fifth Circuit interpreted White v. Regester, the Supreme Court found the operation of Texas’s districting plan discriminatory, and so its intent was not relevant.

In light of Zimmer, the District Court concluded that Mobile’s at-large election system substantially diluted the city’s Black vote. The Court rejected the city’s contention that the Supreme Court’s prior decision in Washington v. Davis required the plaintiffs to prove an initial discriminatory purpose. The Court concluded that the city’s at-large election system impermissibly violated the constitutional rights of the plaintiffs by restricting their access to the political process. Having found a constitutional violation, the Court did not address the plaintiff’s statutory claims.  

The Court ordered that the City Commission be replaced by a municipal government consisting of a mayor and a city council, with council members elected from single-member districts. The Court of Appeals affirmed the judgment in its entirety, agreeing that Mobile’s at-large elections operated to discriminate against Blacks in violation of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments and holding that the remedy formulated by the District Court was appropriate.

The Supreme Court, however, disagreed. In City of Mobile v. Bolden (as the Supreme Court titled the case), Justices Potter Stewart, Lewis Powell, and William Rehnquist and Chief Justice Warren Burger sided with the defendants, holding that the plaintiffs had not shown racially discriminatory motivation in Mobile’s election system and that the Fifteenth Amendment does not guarantee any right of Black candidates to be elected. In their view, because Mobile’s Black citizens registered and voted freely, the lower courts erred in finding a Fifteenth Amendment violation. Additionally, they held that there was no Fourteenth Amendment violation because proportional representation is not required by the Equal Protection Clause. Justice Byron White filed a dissenting opinion, asserting that the Court’s decision was inconsistent with White v. Regester. He agreed with the lower courts’ finding that the system was purposely discriminatory based on the facts in the case and noted that the Supreme Court should have deferred to the District Court’s findings because it was better able to understand the local conditions surrounding the case. Also dissenting, Justice Thurgood Marshall wrote that the Supreme Court’s vote dilution precedents did not require proof of discriminatory intent, but merely demonstration of a discriminatory effect on the fundamental right to vote. He argued that the intent standard rendered all meaning out of Black votes. Justice William Brennan agreed with Justice Marshall that proof of discriminatory impact was enough. A majority of the Court remanded the case for examination of the evidence under the discriminatory intent standard.

The District Court held a second hearing, admitting into evidence a letter written by Mobile lawyer and former congressman Frederick G. Bromberg to the Alabama legislature in 1909 in which he advocated the at-large system to prevent Blacks from holding office. The District Court’s April 15, 1982, order held that the plaintiffs met their burden of proof and that the commission form of government was adopted with a racially motivated intent in violation of the Fifteenth Amendment right to vote and the Fourteenth Amendment right to equal protection of the law. The Court then allowed the state of Alabama time to enact a constitutional election plan but stated it would issue an order to create a fair election system if the legislature did not act in time for the 1983 elections. Possibly owing to a 1983 consent order, the Court never issued such an order even though the legislature did not propose a mayor-council form of government until 1985. The mayor would continue to be elected at large, and the proposed seven single-member districts were approved by 72 percent of voters. The three Black candidates elected to the council in the next election were the first to hold city office since Reconstruction. Mobile has subsequently elected a Black mayor.

The Bolden/Mobile case is significant not only for the changes it brought to Mobile politics. It also spurred Congress to amend Section 2 of the 1965 Voting Rights Act in 1982 to reject the Supreme Court’s “intent” test and ban any voting practice that has a discriminatory effect.