A federal judge has dismissed a lawsuit that argued the Cobb County School Board map was racially discriminatory.
The order from last week said the lawsuit is now a moot point, since lawmakers already approved a new map to guide school board elections in the state’s second-largest district.
There is “nothing to indicate that the Georgia legislature intends to return to the 2022 map,” U.S. District Judge Eleanor Ross wrote in the order, and that has “extinguished the controversy as to the 2022 map.”
Voting rights groups including the Southern Poverty Law Center filed a suit against the Cobb Board of Elections in 2022, alleging the school board and state lawmakers drew a map that unlawfully discriminates against communities of color by “packing” them into a small number of districts to dilute minority voting power.
The Board of Elections opted to settle with the plaintiffs more than a year later, citing its position as a “neutral administrator of elections.” A federal court judge then ordered state lawmakers to draw a new map, but that order was suspended on appeal. Lawmakers went ahead and passed a new map anyway — one very similar to the disputed map — that was used in the 2024 election.
The dismissal is based on procedural grounds, Mike Tafelski, the deputy legal director of the Southern Poverty Law Center, said in an emailed statement.
“We are evaluating our options to determine the best path forward to protect Cobb families and ensure accountability for the harm caused by the gerrymandered map,” he said.
The school district was not originally named as a defendant in the case, but joined the lawsuit to defend the map that the school board helped create. The district paid its lawyers more than $1 million in the first 16 months after the suit was filed, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution previously reported.
“The dismissal concludes, for now, another attempt to take control of Cobb’s schools from Cobb families,” the district wrote in a statement.
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