20-1668 Clerveaux v. E. Ramapo Cent. Sch. Dist. 1 2 UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS 3 FOR THE SECOND CIRCUIT 4 ____________________ 5 6 August Term, 2020 7 8 (Argued: August 19, 2020 Decided: January 6, 2021) 9 10 Docket No. 20-1668 11 12 ____________________ 13 14 JULIO CLERVEAUX, CHEVON DOS REIS, ERIC GOODWIN, JOSE VITELIO 15 GREGORIO, DOROTHY MILLER, HILLARY MOREAU, NATIONAL 16 ASSOCIATION FOR THE ADVANCEMENT OF COLORED PEOPLE, SPRING 17 VALLEY BRANCH, 18 19 Plaintiffs-Appellees, 20 21 v. 22 23 EAST RAMAPO CENTRAL SCHOOL DISTRICT, 24 25 Defendant-Appellant. 1 26 27 ____________________ 1 The Clerk of Court is directed to amend the caption to the above. 1 Before: POOLER, HALL, and CHIN, Circuit Judges. 2 3 Defendant-Appellant East Ramapo Central School District 4 (“District”) appeals from the May 25, 2020 decision and order of the United 5 States District Court for the Southern District of New York (Seibel, J.), issued 6 after a bench trial, holding that the at-large election system used by the District to 7 elect members to its Board of Education (“Board”) resulted in dilution of black 8 and Latino residents’ votes in violation of Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act of 9 1965, 52 U.S.C. § 10301. On appeal, the District argues that: Section 2 requires a 10 finding that racial motivations caused election results; the district court abused 11 its discretion in admitting and relying on Plaintiffs’ expert’s findings, which used 12 data derived through Bayesian Improved Surname Geocoding (“BISG”) rather 13 than the more traditional Citizen Voting Age Population (“CVAP”) data; and the 14 totality of the circumstances does not support a finding of impermissible vote 15 dilution. 16 We reject these arguments. We hold that Section 2 does not require racial 17 causation, though the existence or absence of such causation is a relevant factor 18 for consideration. We further hold that the district court did not err in 19 concluding that the analysis using BISG is reliable and superior to analysis using 2 1 CVAP. Lastly, we hold that the totality of the circumstances supports the finding 2 of a Section 2 violation given the near-perfect correlation between race and 3 school-type; the scant evidence supporting the District’s claim that policy 4 preferences, not race, caused election results; the Board’s blatant neglect of 5 minority needs; the lack of minority-preferred success in elections; the exclusive, 6 white-dominated slating organization; and evidence suggesting the District acted 7 in bad faith throughout the litigation. 8 AFFIRMED. 9 ____________________ 10 RANDALL M. LEVINE, Morgan, Lewis & Bockius LLP 11 (David J. Butler, William S.D. Cravens, Clara Kollm, 12 David B. Salmons, Bryan Killian, Stephanie Schuster, on 13 the brief), Washington, D.C., for Defendant-Appellant East 14 Ramapo Central School District. 15 16 CHARLES S. DAMERON, Latham & Watkins LLP 17 (Andrew Clubok, Claudia T. Salomon, Corey A. 18 Calabrese, Marc N. Zubick, Russell D. Mangas, on the 19 brief), Washington, D.C., for Plaintiffs-Appellees. 20 21 Arthur N. Eisenberg, Perry M. Grossman, New ...
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