Advocacy groups sue Georgia boards over voting districts

ATLANTA (AP) — Minority voters in a Georgia county can’t elect local candidates of their choice because of unfairly drawn political district lines, advocacy groups say, and they want a federal judge to order changes.

The result, a lawsuit filed Monday argues, is that no minority candidate has ever won a seat on the Gwinnett County Commission or Board of Education. The suit says nearly all districts for both boards are majority white, even though black, Latino and Asian-American residents collectively made up 53.5 percent of the county’s total population in the 2010 U.S. Census.

Black, Latino and Asian-American people account for 42.6 percent of voting-age residents in the county northeast of Atlanta.

The Washington- based Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law is representing seven Gwinnett residents along with the Georgia NAACP and the Georgia Association of Latino Elected Officials in the lawsuit against the county commission and school board.

“This is a case about political power, and the exclusion of racial minorities from those key posts,” said Kristen Clarke, president and executive director of the Lawyers’ Committee. “The Voting Rights Act was passed to ensure everyone has equal access to the political process.”

Representatives for the county commission and board of education didn’t immediately return requests for comment on the suit.

The lawsuit comes amid numerous challenges to laws toughening voter ID requirements in many states and three years after the Supreme Court struck down a portion of the Voting Rights Act requiring jurisdictions with a history of discriminatory voting practices to get federal approval before changing local voting protocol.

Ruling in an Alabama case, the Supreme Court said the preclearance criteria were based on outdated discriminatory practices.

Legal experts said the advocacy groups must convince a judge that the system for electing county and education official violates a portion of the federal Voting Rights Act that says political districts can’t be drawn in a way that dilutes minorities’ ability to elect representatives of their choice. In Georgia, local election district lines are determined by the General Assembly, usually with input from the area’s lawmakers.

Lori Ringhand, a law professor at the University of Georgia, said courts can determine that political lines violate the law even without proof of intent to minimize minority voters’ influence.

“(The law) is an effects test,” said Ringhand, who’s not involved with the Gwinnett suit. “So if a district line is drawn in a way that dilutes minority voting power, it can violate a portion of the law.”

Gwinnett’s population boomed in the 1980s, when it was ranked the fastest growing county of more than 100,000 residents in the United States. Decades later, the county’s minority population increased 135 percent between the 2000 and 2010 U.S. Census, including a triple-digit increase in the county’s Hispanic population.

Catalina Ortiz, one of the seven named plaintiffs, moved to Gwinnett County in 2009 from New York. Born in Columbia, Ortiz has become a naturalized citizen and said she feels minorities’ concerns go unaddressed in Gwinnett.

For instance, Ortiz said she’s seen public schools struggle to find volunteer translators to help during parent-teacher conferences and she believes more diverse elected officials would be more responsive to such concerns. The lawsuit also cites higher rates of discipline, including suspensions, against minority students than students who are white and Gwinnett’s refusal to provide bilingual election ballots.

“I pay taxes, I vote, I’m involved in my community,” Ortiz, 30, said. “I feel it’s unfair ... I see the effects every day.”