No 1983 Right in Voting Rights Case
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The federal district court for the Northern District of California held that there is no private right of action under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 to enforce the requirement in the Help America Vote Act (HAVA) for voting systems to be accessible for individuals with disabilities. The suit was brought by Paralyzed Veterans of America, the California Council of the Blind, Inc., the American Association of Persons with Disabilities, and several individuals with visual and manual disabilities. Plaintiffs alleged that the voting systems in San Francisco and Marin Counties did not allow voters with disabilities the opportunity to cast their votes or to have their votes counted privately and independently. The court dismissed the claim that these voting systems violated HAVA, but denied the motion to dismiss plaintiffs’ claims under the Fourteenth Amendment. Paralyzed Veterans of America v. McPherson, 2006 WL 3462780 (N.D. Cal. Nov. 28, 2006). The judge, Saundra Brown Armstrong, is a Bush I appointee.
The plaintiffs argued that Gonzaga University v. Doe, 536 U.S. 273 (2002), was not applicable, asserting that Gonzaga applied only to Spending Clause statutes. Gonzaga held that for a statute to confer rights under section 1983, it had to be “phrased in terms of the persons benefitted” and use “explicit rights-creating terms.” 536 U.S. at 284.
The court found that “No case has directly decided whether Gonzaga applies outside the context of Spending Clause legislation.” The court noted that a dissent had opined that Gonzaga was “confined to Spending Clause statutes.” Save Our Valley v. Sound Transit, 335 F.3d 932, 961 n.13 (9th Cir. 2003)(Berzon, J., dissenting). The court also noted that Qwest Corp. v. City of Santa Fe, New Mexico, 380 F.3d 1258, 1265 n.2 (10th Cir. 2004), a Telecom case, assumed without deciding that Gonzaga is not limited to spending clause statutes.
The California court decided that Gonzaga “contains broad language indicating that its analytical framework should apply to non-Spending Clause statutes.” The court stated that plaintiffs had not provided a reason why Gonzaga would be inapplicable to statutes enacted pursuant to Congress’ power to regulate elections and that plaintiffs had not proposed any alternative test. The court rejected plaintiffs’ argument that Gonzaga is inapplicable because HAVA is not a Spending Clause statute.
Applying the Gonzaga framework, the court held that there was no private right of action under section 1983. The court stated that it was a “close, difficult question,” but the court found that the statute was not sufficiently focused on individual rights. The applicable provision states that voting systems in federal elections shall “be accessible for individuals with disabilities, including nonvisual accessibility for the blind and visually impaired, in a manner that provides the same opportunity for access and participation (including privacy and independence) as for other voters.” 42 U.S.C. § 15481(a)(3)(A). The court noted that the provision is “framed in terms of requirements for voting systems, which are chosen by state and county officials.” The court held that even though the statute used the word “individuals,” the provision “is more accurately characterized as referring to the benefitted group in the aggregate.”