Cobb school district objects to redistricting suit settlement

The Cobb County School District issued a strongly-worded public statement Tuesday accusing the the Cobb Board of Elections of colluding with plaintiffs who are seeking new electoral maps for the Cobb Board of Education.

The elections board voted last week along partisan lines to begin settling with parties who filed a suit contending that the school board maps passed by the Georgia legislature in 2022 violated federal voting rights laws and diluted minority voting power.

Those claims were dismissed by a federal judge in Atlanta in July, and she released the Cobb school district as a defendant, leaving only the Cobb Elections Board to defend the lawsuit.

The plaintiffs, who are represented by attorneys from the Southern Poverty Law Center, a liberal advocacy group, are attempting to have either the Georgia legislature or a court redraw the maps.

In messages posted to the Cobb school district website (you can read them here and here) and released to the media, Ben Mathis, an attorney for the district, said the district wants to rejoin the lawsuit after a “hasty settlement” with the Cobb elections board “which they worked out in secrecy with their politically allied plaintiffs, [and that] is designed to avoid any legal effort to defend the current map.

“This is not a settlement but a total surrender by the Elections Board,” Mathis said. “This agreement is a complete usurpation of the legislative process.”

The seven-member Cobb school board has a 4-3 Republican majority. The seats of three of those Republicans, including David Banks of Post 5 in East Cobb, will be the 2024 ballot.

Democrats control the Cobb Board of Commissioners and the Cobb legislative delegation, and in his statement, Mathis accused the SPLC of trying “to impose their will over the Legislature, the Governor, and the voters of Cobb County.

“After they discovered they could not change the direction of education in our county at the ballot box, they manufactured this unlawful court case,” Mathis continued.

“To justify what they have done, the Elections Board says it is cheaper to give up than to defend the map against the array of liberal activist groups affiliated with Stacy Abrams and the Democratic Party.”

The Cobb elections board has four Democrats and one Republican, and voted 4-1, with GOP member Debbie Fisher opposed, to begin settlement discussions.

The vote came after a lengthy executive session and there was no discussion by elections board members in open session.

Daniel White, the attorney for the Cobb Elections Board, refuted the collusion claim, and a Cobb government spokesman issued a statement Tuesday from Tori Silas, the board chairwoman, saying her body is “not the proper party to defend the challenged redistricting maps.

“As the only remaining defendant in the case after the School District was given the dismissal it sought, we were left to make the decision that best served the citizens of Cobb County, which is what we did. The settlement allowed our Board to maintain its position of neutrality in this political dispute and was the fiscally responsible thing to do.”

In September federal judge Eleanor Ross issued an oral order precluding the Cobb school district from continuing as an intervenor in the lawsuit.

In a motion filed Tuesday, the district asked for a preliminary injunction to file an amicus brief and introduce rebuttal experts it says are necessary to respond to plaintiffs’ experts on racial discrimination in electoral maps who otherwise would have no opposition in court.

“Plaintiffs must be held to their strict burden of proof, especially when asking the Court to invade the state legislative process,” the Cobb school district lawyers said in their motion Tuesday.

East Cobb News contacted the SPLC, asking why it sued the Cobb Elections Board over a map drawn by the legislature. This is all that we received from its communications department:

“Voting rights are nonpartisan and rooted in the belief that equal opportunities to vote must be available to all people, regardless of their political affiliations, racial, cultural, or religious background. It is fundamental that every voice is heard and that elections are conducted fairly, and that is what Plaintiffs have consistently sought in this case. Plaintiffs look forward to proving their claims to the Court, as the terms of the settlement require before any changes are made to the map.”

The maps were originally drawn by Mathis’ firm, Freeman Mathis and Gary of Cumberland, and were approved by the school board’s Republican majority.

Among the changes in the map was moving Post 6 (formerly the Walton and Wheeler clusters) entirely into the Cumberland-Vinings-Smyrna area, and leaving East Cobb with only two school board seats, Post 4 and Post 5.

The Democratic-led Cobb legislative delegation proposed maps that wouldn’t have shifted the lines as dramatically, but they were never voted on by the Republican-dominated legislature.

The SPLC and other legal groups, including the ACLU of Georgia, filed its lawsuit, Finn v. Cobb County Board of Elections and Registration, last summer.

The plaintiffs include parents and liberal activists and organizations, including the League of Women Voters of Marietta-Cobb.

The lawsuit seeks substantial redrawing of posts 2,3 and 6 in South Cobb, all of which are currently held by Democrats.

White said in response to the Cobb school district’s claims that “the Cobb County School District made a massive blunder in its litigation strategy that cost it the ability to defend the redistricting maps it created. Rather than owning up to its mistake, counsel for the School District has chosen to deflect attention by making outlandish accusations about the Cobb County Board of Elections that it knows to be false.”

White, whose comments were initially published Friday by The Marietta Daily Journal, said the Cobb Elections Board from the outset had sought to dismiss the suit “on jurisdictional grounds” and that his clients could have been held liable if the plaintiffs proved that the Cobb school board “adopted racially gerrymandered maps.

“The Board of Elections agrees that the District should have been allowed to continue its defense of its maps, and moved the Court to let them back in the case. Now that the Court has made it clear the District will not be given that opportunity, the Board of Elections made the decision it felt was in the best interest of the citizens of Cobb County.”

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