Attorneys for plaintiffs seeking new electoral maps for the Cobb County Board of Education have filed a motion seeking a preliminary injunction.
The motion, filed Monday in U.S. District Court in Atlanta, seeks to prevent the Cobb Board of Elections from setting up 2024 elections with maps passed by the Georgia legislature in 2022 and asks for a ruling by December.
Four of the seven posts on the Cobb school board will be on the 2024 ballot, including Post 5 in East Cobb.
Attorneys from the Southern Poverty Law Center and other organizations claim those maps violate the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, and want them thrown out and redrawn before 2024 primaries in May.
The plaintiffs have claimed in their lawsuit, filed last year, that the three school board posts in South Cobb presently held by Democrats have been racially gerrymandered to dilute black and Hispanic voting strength.
They include Post 6, which previously included the Walton and Wheeler clusters and which are now in Post 5.
Republicans hold a 4-3 majority on the board, and three GOP-held seats will be up for re-election next year.
In their motion (you can read it here), the plaintiffs allege that the maps passed by the legislature placed a majority of black and Hispanic voters in the three southern posts and “bleaches the population of the northern districts,” in which the white populations of three of them were increased.
The motion says that the white population shift was most crucial in Post 7 in West Cobb, where incumbent Republican member Brad Wheeler narrowly won re-election in 2020 over a black Democrat. (see chart below).
The white population in Post 7 at the time was 47.55 percent. The maps passed last year increased the white population to 58.17 percent. Wheeler’s seat is among those set to expire in 2024.
The two posts in East Cobb have the highest percentage of white populations. While Post 5 didn’t change much (going from 66.97 percent to 67.24 percent), the Post 4 difference also was noticeable, rising from 57.24 percent white to 65.56.
David Chastain, one of the four GOP members of the school board, was re-elected to a third term in Post 4 last year.
The plaintiffs’ motion for an injunction comes as the Cobb elections board agreed to begin settlement talks. Ben Mathis, the lead attorney for the Cobb County School District, which had been released from the case, issued a charged statement last week accusing the elections board of “a total surrender” to what he called “leftist political activists” who wanted to usurp the power of the legislature to redraw the Cobb school board maps.
While Democrats control the Cobb Board of Commissioners and the county’s legislative delegation, Republicans currently control only the Cobb school board.
“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 said, referencing the plaintiffs.
Last week, the district’s attorneys filed a motion in federal court seeking 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.
East Cobb News has left a message with the Cobb school district seeking comment on the motion for a preliminary injunction by the plaintiffs.
The school board majority hired Taylor English Decisions, a lobbying component of Cumberland-area law firm, Taylor English Duma LLP, to redraw the maps in 2021.
The Democratic-led Cobb delegation opted for maps that would keep the boundaries relatively unchanged. Republican State Rep. Ginny Ehrhart of West Cobb—whose husband, former legislator Earl Ehrhart, was CEO of Taylor English Decisions at the time—sponsored maps redrawn by the school board’s law firm.
Those maps were approved in the GOP-dominated legislature, while the Cobb delegation’s maps did not receive a vote. Earl Ehrhart is now managing director of Freeman Mathis Decisions, the lobbying arm of Freeman Mathis & Gary, which the board hired this year to fight the redistricting suit.
The plaintiffs’ motion concludes by asking their motion be granted by Dec. 15 “so that an interim remedial map be adopted by January 22, 2024, well in advance of the 2024 elections to avoid hardship to Cobb County’s election administration and to mitigate voter confusion.”
Related:
- Muslim parents criticize Cobb schools over Hamas message
- Cobb school board rejects proposed library book policy
- Cobb school district objects to redistricting lawsuit settlement
- New Cobb Elections director to start in December
- Former Cobb Superior Court Clerk candidate seeking same office
- Cobb commissioner dismissed as plaintiff in redistricting suit
- Conservative group opposes Cobb transit tax referendum
- East Cobb News Politics & Elections page
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You misspelled the word “learn” as well as the word “liberals,” all I can say is I’m glad I got an education and learned more than how to keep a clean house.
Wow, what anger you spew Oscar. Oh, and by the way you spelled communism incorrectly.
All that matters is that the districts are all cut up in the best ways to teach the children how to all be good CHRISTIANS to live good in our CHRISTIAN nation! Teaching them all the ways of the Bible is the most important thing. The boys need to lern how to work hard every day and the Girls all need to know how to keep a clean house and take care of the kids. Anything the librals and leftards want only leads to commonism and only makes them all hate America, Thats all we need to know. Amen!