FOR PUBLICATION UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE NINTH CIRCUIT ARNOLD DAVIS, on behalf of himself No. 17-15719 and all others similarly situated, Plaintiff-Appellee, D.C. No. 1:11-cv-00035 v. GUAM; GUAM ELECTION OPINION COMMISSION; ALICE M. TAIJERON; MARTHA C. RUTH; JOSEPH F. MESA; JOHNNY P. TAITANO; JOSHUA F. RENORIO; DONALD I. WEAKLEY; LEONARDO M. RAPADAS, Defendants-Appellants. Appeal from the United States District Court for the District of Guam Frances Tydingco-Gatewood, Chief District Judge, Presiding Argued and Submitted October 10, 2018 University of Hawaii Manoa Filed July 29, 2019 Before: Kim McLane Wardlaw, Marsha S. Berzon, and Johnnie B. Rawlinson, Circuit Judges. Opinion by Judge Berzon 2 DAVIS V. GUAM SUMMARY * Civil Rights / Fifteenth Amendment The panel affirmed the district court’s summary judgment in favor of plaintiff, a Guam resident, who challenged a provision of Guam’s 2000 Plebiscite Law that restricted voting to “Native Inhabitants of Guam.” Guam’s 2000 Plebiscite Law provided for a “political status plebiscite” to determine the official preference of the “Native Inhabitants of Guam” regarding Guam’s political relationship with the United States. Plaintiff alleged, among other things, that the provision of that law restricting voting to “Native Inhabitants of Guam” constituted an impermissible racial classification in violation of the Fifteenth Amendment, which provides that the right of a United States citizen to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of race, color or previous condition of servitude. The panel first rejected Guam’s contention that the Fifteenth Amendment was inapplicable to the plebiscite because that vote will not decide a public issue but rather requires Guam to transmit the results of the plebiscite to Congress, the President and the United Nations. The panel held that despite its limited immediate impact, the results of the planned plebiscite commit the Guam government to take specified actions and thereby constitute a decision on a public issue for Fifteenth Amendment purposes. * This summary constitutes no part of the opinion of the court. It has been prepared by court staff for the convenience of the reader. DAVIS V. GUAM 3 The panel applied Rice v. Cayetano, 528 U.S. 495 (2000), and Davis v. Commonwealth Election Comm’n, 844 F.3d 1087 (9th Cir. 2016), which respectively invalidated laws in Hawaii and the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands limiting voting in certain elections to descendants of particular indigenous groups because those provisions employed ancestry as a proxy for race in violation of the Fifteenth Amendment. The panel held that Guam’s 2000 Plebiscite Law suffered from the same constitutional flaw. The panel determined that history and context confirmed that the “Native Inhabitants of Guam” voter eligibility restriction so closely paralleled a racial classification as to be a proxy for race. The panel therefore concluded that its use as a voting qualification violated the Fifteenth Amendment as extended by Congress to Guam. COUNSEL Julian Aguon (argued), Special Assistant Attorney General; Kenneth Orcutt, Deputy Attorney General; Office of the Attorney General, Tamuning, Guam; for Defendants- ...
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