Thaddeus Donald Edmonson v. Leesville Concrete Company, Inc.

GEE, Circuit Judge:

Today we decide whether a private litigant in a federal civil case who challenges a venire member peremptorily can be made to give reasons for his action. Specifically, *219we must determine whether he can be required to do so when his opposing party is a black person and the venireman stricken is black, so as to rebut the inference that he exercised the strike because of the would-be juror’s ethnic group.

The Supreme Court has imposed such a requirement in criminal prosecutions of black defendants, Batson v. Kentucky, 476 U.S. 79, 106 S.Ct. 1712, 90 L.Ed.2d 69 (1986); and in…