Appeals Court Decision in 2005

The appeals court decision in 2005, on appeal of the decision in the third filing of the case, reads in part

August 3, 2005

OPINION EN BANC

Boudin, Chief Judge. This case brings before this court the third in a series of law suits by Gregorio Igartúa, a U.S. citizen resident in Puerto Rico, claiming the constitutional right to vote quadrennially for President and Vice President of the United States. Panels of this court have rejected such claims on all three occasions. We now do so again, this time en banc, rejecting as well an adjacent claim: that the failure of the Constitution to grant this vote should be declared a violation of U.S. treaty obligations.

The constitutional claim is readily answered. Voting for President and Vice President of the United States is governed neither by rhetoric nor intuitive values but by a provision of the Constitution. This provision does not confer the franchise on "U.S. citizens" but on "Electors" who are to be "appoint[ed]" by each "State," in "such Manner" as the state legislature may direct, equal to the number of Senators and Representatives to whom the state is entitled. U.S. Const. art. II, § 1, cl. 2; see also id. amend. XII.

Judges Campbell and Lipez concurred in the decision. Judge Torruella dissented, opening his dissent as follows:[5]

In its haste to "put [plaintiffs-appellants'] constitutional claim fully at rest," maj. op. at 6, the majority has chosen to overlook the issues actually before this en banc court as framed by the order of the rehearing panel, see Igartúa de la Rosa v. United States, 404 F.3d 1 (1st Cir. 2005) (order granting panel rehearing), which panel the en banc court suppressed, but whose order was adopted as establishing the parameters of the issues to be decided by the en banc court. See Igartúa de la Rosa v. United States, 407 F.3d 30, 31 (1st Cir. 2005) (converting to en banc review panel rehearing in which "the parties [are] to address two issues: first, the plaintiffs' claim that the United States was in default of its treaty obligations and, second, the availability of declaratory judgment concerning the government's compliance with any such obligations."). It is these issues that the parties were asked to brief. Instead the majority has sidetracked this appeal into a dead end that is no longer before us: Puerto Rico's lack of electoral college representation, see U.S. Const. art. II, § 1, cl. 2, and our lack of authority to order any constitutional change to such status by reason of that constitutional impediment.

In doing so, the majority fails to give any weight to the fundamental nature of the right to vote, and the legal consequences of this cardinal principal. Under the combined guise of alleged political question doctrine, its admitted desire to avoid "embarrassment" to the United States, and its pious lecturing on what it deems to be the nature of the judicial function, the majority seeks to avoid what I believe is its paramount duty over and above these stated goals: to do justice to the civil rights of the four million United States citizens who reside in Puerto Rico. The majority labels this duty with despect as "rhetoric" and "intuitive values." Maj. op. at 3. I beg to differ, and so, I suspect, do a considerable number of those four million U.S. citizens who, lacking any political recourse, look to the courts of the United States for succor because they are without any other avenue of relief. See United States v. Carolene Prods. Co., 304 U.S. 144, 152 n.4 (1938) ("[P]rejudice against discrete and insular minorities may be a special condition, which tends seriously to curtail the operation of those political processes ordinarily to be relied upon to protect minorities and . . . may call for correspondingly more searching judicial inquiry.").