Rodriguez-Lara

I. BACKGROUND

Under the Jury Selection and Service Act of 1968 (JSSA), 28 U.S.C. § 1861 et seq., each federal judicial district must devise a plan for random selection of grand and petit jurors. This plan must be designed to ensure that litigants have grand and petit juries selected from a fair cross-section of the com- munity in the applicable district or division of the district, and that no prospective jurors are subject to discrimination on any of several enumerated grounds. Id. §§ 1861-63. The statute contemplates that each district or division will use voter regis- tration lists or the lists of actual voters of the political subdivi- sions within that district or division, but the statute also requires that jury selection plans “prescribe some other source or sources of names in addition to voter lists where necessary to foster the policy and protect the rights” of fair cross-section and anti-discrimination. Id. § 1863(b)(2).

The jury plan for the Eastern District of California provides that names of prospective jurors for the master jury wheel are to be drawn randomly from voter registration records for all counties within the relevant division of the district. Amended…