Humble ISD sued over at-large elections
A former Humble ISD Spanish teacher sued the district Thursday, alleging trustees and administrators violated the Voting Rights Act by holding all at-large elections for the school board.
The lawsuit, filed by Brewer Storefront, the advocacy arm of Dallas-based Brewer, Attorneys and Counselors, states that Humble ISD has a 70% minority student population, yet a majority white board. It also claims that the district has a geographically significant Hispanic population that would allow for at least one Hispanic-majority single member district to be drawn for increased representation. While the board does have two black trustees, the board does not have a Hispanic trustee.
The firm called the 48,000-student district’s elections system a “relic of the district’s past.”
“Even though Humble ISD’s population has significantly grown and diversified since 1919, the district’s political leadership has failed to adjust to these demographic or socio-economic changes,” the lawsuit reads. The district, spanning northern Harris and Montgomery counties, is the sixth fastest growing district in Texas and began as a one-room schoolhouse.
The lawsuit comes after Brewer Storefront sent letters to 11 Texas school districts in March as part of a statewide initiative to secure voting rights among Texas’ minority populations. The firm sent letters of warning to Humble ISD, Lufkin ISD and Angleton ISDs, asking that the districts consider at least one single-member district to allow for minority representation.
After the district decided to “‘refuse the opportunity to avoid litigation,’” according to the law firm’s release, the plaintiff decided to propel the cause with legal action.
‘Time is of the essence’
The founder of the firm, William Brewer, said the plaintiff was taking the action in May because “time is of the essence when people are being denied the right to fairly participate in the political process,” he said, adding that the board “indicated no meaningful willingness to bring the electoral system into compliance with the Voting Rights Act.”
Humble ISD officials said the district would respond to the lawsuit through legal process. Board president Robert Scarfo did not respond to requests for comment.
The Humble ISD board voted in January against holding a hearing to discuss a hybrid or single-member district system in a 4-3 split. Those in favor of the discussion said that there wasn’t enough minority or geographic representation on the board. Scarfo opposed continuing discussions at the time, saying that all trustees should care for all students of the district, making a hybrid or single-member district system unnecessary.
But this did not assuage concerns that the district was in compliance with the Voting Rights Act, which mandates that a system of elections may not “(deny) voters of color an equal opportunity to elect candidates of their choice … (including) Hispanics, African Americans, Asians or other minority groups.”
Plaintiff Judith Bautista claimed that the system has worked against her as a woman who lives in the zone for Summer Creek High School, where her daughter attends. The lawsuit alleges that not one trustee lives within the boundaries of her high school on the district’s south side.
Trustee Marques Holmes lives in the Atascocita High School district, but his neighborhood is a “flex zone,” he said, meaning that his child could also choose to attend Summer Creek High School even though he does not live in the Summer Creek boundaries.
Bautista has plans to run for a seat on the board in 2025, according to the filing. She resigned from her post in the district last June after students in the Spanish National Honors Society had their graduation stoles removed before walking onstage, while other students in cultural affinity groups were reportedly allowed to wear theirs.
The administration apologized for the incident last year, calling it a misunderstanding, but Bautista said she felt it symbolized something deeper.
“Humble ISD’s confiscation of preapproved sashes for Hispanic students is emblematic of a much larger problem of discrimination and a lack of support of Hispanic students and faculty,” the lawsuit reads.
Racial performance gap
According to census data, voters of color make up 47% of the district’s citizen voting-age population. Humble High School has a population of 96% students of color, yet no trustee resides within the attendance boundaries for the school, which serves just under 3,000 students.
One potential consequence of this lack of representation is a performance gap for students in the district that Brewer called “disturbing.”
“The majority of Hispanic and Black children are not meeting grade level on the State of Texas Assessments of Academic Readiness (STAAR) exams,” the firm reported. In 2023, 43% of Hispanic students and 34% of Black students met grade level, compared with 66% of white students.
This filing comes in the wake of other lawsuits to increase representation for minority communities brought by Brewer Storefront, such as those in Lewisville and Richardson ISDs, which enacted changes in their election systems. Brewer Storefront also has a pending lawsuit against Pearland ISD, a district where all seven board members are white, despite having enough minority eligible voter populations clustered in certain areas to create coalition minority districts.
The Pearland ISD suit is currently held up in federal court, as is a lawsuit brought by a different party against Spring Branch ISD, a district that also has an at-large system of elections and elected trustees who do not represent the racial diversity of the district.
This lawsuit could prove costly for a district that is already battling more than $800,000 in legal fees for recent Title IX cases stemming from a report that the district’s former athletic director, Troy Kite, fostered a “locker room culture” in the workplace. Kite is married to Humble ISD superintendent Elizabeth Fagen, who is one of five finalists for a superintendent job in Reno, Nev.