A suspended DeKalb County school board member who is challenging his pending removal by Gov. Nathan Deal has hired a lawyer with a history of successfully arguing constitutional issues.
Eugene Walker, the former school board chairman and one of six board members Deal suspended in February, has hired Thomas A. Cox to carry the dispute to the Georgia Supreme Court.
The education lawyer with Carlock Copeland & Stair of Atlanta represented the Atlanta and DeKalb County school systems in the lawsuit that in 2011 successfully challenged the constitutionality of the Georgia Charter Commission Act. Voters later amended the constitution to clarify the state’s authority to create charter schools.
Walker was without representation after the lawyer on the DeKalb case stepped aside. Bob Wilson, a former DeKalb district attorney, was hired by the pre-suspension school board to represent the school district and Walker, as chairman, in the spat with Deal.
Wilson sued in federal court, alleging the Georgia General Assembly had given the governor unconstitutional powers to remove elected school board members. The federal judge asked the Georgia Supreme Court to consider the questions, and the high court agreed.
Last month, though, the new 9-member school board comprising mostly Deal appointees voted to remove the district from the lawsuit, leaving only Walker as plaintiff. Wilson stepped aside from the case, and asked Cox to carry it forward. “He thought this was an important case and an important constitutional issue,” Cox said.
Walker’s suspension from the board could become a removal under the 2011 law that he is challenging. If Walker wins his lawsuit, though, he’ll be back on the board, Cox said. The other five suspended members probably would be too, he said.
Walker said DeKalb residents are helping to pay his legal fees. “We just want a just resolution,” he said. “We just believe the governor is overstepping his bounds, and we need to rein him in.”
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