The Georgia legislature was ordered on Thursday to draw up new electoral maps for the Cobb Board of Education by mid-January.
A federal judge in Atlanta threw out maps lawmakers approved in 2021 that were submitted by Cobb Republican lawmakers and drawn by a law firm hired by the Cobb County School District.
Those maps pushed Post 6, which had included the Walton and Wheeler high school clusters, out of East Cobb and into the Cumberland-Smyrna-Vinings area.
A group of parents and progressive advocacy groups filed a lawsuit, claiming that the new maps were racially gerrymandered and violated the U.S. Voting Rights Act.
In her ruling granting an injunction to the plaintiffs (you can read the ruling here), U.S. District Court Judge Eleanor Ross concluded that it was “substantially likely” that the 2021 maps would be declared unconstitutional.
The lawsuit, spearheaded by the Southern Poverty Law Center, claims that the redrawn posts 2, 3 and 6—all held by the current Democrats on the school board—diluted minority voting strength.
Posts, 1, 4, 5 and 7—occupied by the Republican majority—had their minority voting percentages reduced curing reapportionment, with all four posts having at least 58 percent white constituencies.
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.
In their lawsuit, the plaintiffs said that the 2021 map “bleaches the population of the northern districts,” a charge the Cobb school district has heatedly denied.
Ross gave the legislature until Jan. 10—two days after the 2024 General Assembly session begins—to draw new maps, which are considered temporary for use in the 2024 elections. The Cobb school district intends to appeal to the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, seeking a stay of the judge’s order.
The Cobb school district was denied by Ross to join the lawsuit as a defendant, a decision that also is being appealed.
Ross also gave the plaintiffs and the defendant—the Cobb Board of Elections, which is not defending the current maps—until Jan. 12 to object to the redrawn maps, and Jan. 17 for the parties to respond to the other.
The 2024 Georgia primaries are May 21, with qualifying set for March.
Four of the seven Cobb school board posts are on the ballot in 2024, and three of them currently occupied by Republicans, including David Banks of Post 5 in East Cobb.
He hasn’t said whether he will seek a fifth term next year, but two first-time candidates announced earlier this year: Republican John Cristadoro and Democrat Laura Judge. Both are parents in the Walton cluster.
Post 5 was redrawn in 2021 to include the Walton, Wheeler and Pope clusters, while Post 4 includes the Kell, Sprayberry and Lassiter clusters.
In October, Ben Mathis, the lead attorney for the Cobb school district, accused 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.
That and another related message were posted on the Cobb school district website, including a charge from Mathis that the SPLC was trying “to impose their will over the Legislature, the Governor, and the voters of Cobb County.”
In a statement issued Friday through the SPLC, Sofia Fernandez Gold, associate counsel at the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights under the law, said the order by Ross to redraw the maps “affirms the fundamental right of Black and Latinx voters of Cobb County to fully and fairly participate in the democratic process by having an equal opportunity to elect members of their choice to the Cobb County School Board.”
Related:
- Cobb commissioners approve 2024 transit sales tax referendum
- Former Cupid assistant to run for Cobb Superior Court Clerk
- New Ga. Congressional lines likely to prompt legal challenge
- Legislature passes maps altering East Cobb State Senate lines
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