Ruiz

Per Curiam Opinion; Partial Concurrence and Partial Dissent by Judge WALLACE; Partial Concurrence and Partial Dissent by Judge MICHAEL DALY HAWKINS.

Four Hispanic residents and registered voters of the City of Santa Maria challenge the City’s at-large city council election system under Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, as amended, 42 U.S.C. § 1973 . While the case was pending, two Hispanic candidates were elected to the city council. The district court dismissed the complaint as moot and, alternatively, granted summary judgment in favor of the City. We hold that the district court erred in dismissing the ease as moot and applied erroneous legal standards to the Plaintiffs’ vote dilution claim and, therefore, we reverse.

I. FACTS

Santa Maria is a California general law city located in Santa Barbara County. Since its incorporation in 1905, it has employed an at-large system for electing its mayor and city council members. The mayor, who is also a member of the city council, is elected by a citywide plurality vote to serve a two-year term. Council members are elected by a eitywide plurality vote for four-year terms. Their terms are staggered so that two council members…

concurring in part and dissenting in part:

I join the majority opinion except as to parts IV.B. and IV.D., to which I respectfully dissent.

I

In part TV.B., the majority holds that “[t]he defeat of Hispanic-preferred Hispanic candidates ... is more probative of racially polarized voting and is entitled to more evi-dentiary weight” than is the election of Hispanic-preferred non-Hispanic candidates. Maj. Op. at 554. The majority has argued logically for its position — and it is not without weight. On balance, however, I cannot accept the majority’s analysis.

What the majority has done is to dictate to the district court the weight that is to be given to different and perhaps contradictory *560 pieces of evidence. Yet, the weight to be assigned to evidence is strictly within the province of the trier of fact, not the court of appeals. See, e.g., Inwood Laboratories v. Ives Laboratories, 456 U.S. 844, 856-58 , 102 S.Ct. 2182 , 72 L.Ed.2d 606 (1982); Intel Corp. v. Terabyte Int’l, Inc., 6 F.3d 614, 622 (9th Cir.1993).

By usurping this role, the majority forecloses the possibility that the district court, after considering the evidence submitted in the case and the credibility and…

concurring in part and dissenting in part:

I join the majority in all but part IV.A.2 of the Opinion. In a perfect world in which racial discrimination did not exist and its vestiges did not remain, each racial and ethnic community and interest group would need to “pull, haul, and trade to find common *561 political ground.” Johnson v. De Grandy, 512 U.S. 997, 1020 , 114 S.Ct. 2647 , 129 L.Ed.2d 775 (1994). We are not there yet. Instead, we live in a world in which political participation and opportunity are simply not equally available to a member of every race. To eradicate those voting practices with discriminatory results that “perpetuate the effects of past purposeful discrimination,” Congress passed the Voting Rights Act, and federal courts enforce it. See S.Rep. No. 97-417, 97th Cong., 2d Sess. (1982), reprinted in 1982 U.S.C.C.A.N. 117, 218. In fulfilling our duty, we should be less concerned with creating bright-line rules and more dedicated to accomplishing justice for the parties.

The only virtue of the majority’s bright-line rule is simplicity. “Because the resolution of a voting dilution claim requires close analysis of unusually complex factual patterns,” Westwego…