Cobb school board hires law firm in redistricting lawsuit

The Cobb Board of Education on Thursday approved the hiring of a separate law firm for a federal lawsuit that challenges the reapportionment of Cobb Board of Education seats last year.

After an executive session, the board voted to hire Galleria-based Freeman Mathis and Gary LLP, which filed a motion in late March seeking judgment, and earlier this month subpoenaed plaintiffs seeking documentation and records.

A June 22 hearing has been scheduled in the courtroom of U.S. District Court Judge Eleanor Ross in Atlanta over the district’s motion for judgment.

The district and board have been represented on most legal matters since 2022 by the Atlanta firm of Parker Poe Adams.

The board didn’t discuss the matter during Thursday’s meeting, including the cost for the legal services by Freeman Mathis and Gary. East Cobb News has left a message with the Cobb school district seeking more information.

The Cobb Board of Elections and Registration was sued last summer by several Cobb parents, who are being represented by the Southern Poverty Law Center, the ACLU Foundation of Georgia and other advocacy groups.

They claim that the Georgia legislature adopted Cobb school board maps that violated the U.S. Voting Rights Act and used race as a guiding factor in redrawing the seven posts.

Those actions included Post 2 and 3 in South Cobb and Post 6, which had covered most of the Walton and Wheeler high school attendance zones, and which was moved out of East Cobb, and mostly into the Cumberland-Smyrna-Vinings area.

Until last November’s elections, those three posts were represented by black school board members; the board’s current African-American members represent Post 3 and Post 6.

The plaintiffs filed an amended complaint last August (you can read it here) that alleges that the four-member Republican school board majority undertook a secretive process to have a map drawn that was then introduced by State Rep. Ginny Ehrhart, a West Cobb Republican.

The managing director of Freeman Mathis Decisions, the government relations arm of the law firm representing the Cobb school district, is her husband and predecessor, former State Rep. Earl Ehrhart.

He previously held a similar position at Taylor English Decisions, a lobbying component of Taylor English Duma LLP, a law firm that drew the Cobb school board maps recommended by the board Republicans.

The Ehrhart-sponsored maps were adopted by the legislature last year.

The Democratic-majority Cobb legislative delegation backed another map that would have made few changes to those lines, but it was never voted on in the legislature.

That latter event—ignoring local courtesies—is also at the heart of a separate redistricting lawsuit filed against the Cobb Board of Commissioners, whose Democratic majority voted last October to invoke home rule over reapportionament that drew District 2 commissioner Jerica Richardson out of her seat.

“Ultimately, the Board and General Assembly enacted a redistricting plan that whitewashed the northern, eastern, and western districts by packing Black and Latinx voters into the Challenged Districts, as a last-ditch effort to limit the power of their emerging political coalition,” the Cobb school plaintiffs’ amended lawsuit states.

The Cobb school district responded in March, accusing the plaintiffs of making “scurrilous accusations” about board members in what was a “purely political dispute” based on partisan differences.

They included school board actions over the district’s COVID-19 response as well as racial and equity issues—mentioning the banning of teaching critical race theory and the board majority’s refusal to consider renaming Wheeler High School, named after a Confederate Civil War general.