Lawsuit over minority voting rights in Gwinnett dismissed

A federal lawsuit claiming the influence of Gwinnett's minority voters is being diluted in local elections has been dismissed — just weeks after the county commission and school board seated their first-ever members of color.

U.S District Court Judge Amy Totenberg this week granted a joint motion to dismiss the lawsuit that was first filed in Aug. 2016 on behalf of the Georgia NAACP, the Georgia Association of Latino Elected Officials and several individual Gwinnett voters.

The suit — which Gwinnett spent more than $1 million fighting — argued that the way the county redrew districts for the commission and school board in 2011 thwarted minority voters' ability to elect "candidates of their choosing."

Gwinnett has been a majority-minority county for nearly a decade but, at the time the suit was originally filed, no non-white candidate had ever been elected to either board.

That changed in November, when a blue electoral wave helped usher two minority candidates (Marlene Fosque and Ben Ku) onto the Board of Commissioners and another (Everton Blair Jr.) onto the Board of Education.

Fosque and Blair are black. Ku is of Chinese descent.

Kristen Clarke is the president and executive director of the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, which represented the plaintiffs in the case.

“We are heartened by the historic election of people of color to the Gwinnett County Board of Commissioners and School Board,” Clarke said in an emailed statement.

“While the plaintiffs would have been justified in continuing the litigation because the 2011 district maps were drawn to dilute the voting strength of the county’s minority electorate, we are now hopeful that the newly elected minority members to these bodies and the communities they represent will have a voice in the democratic process in their community.”

Gwinnett’s commission and school board districts will be redrawn following the 2020 Census. Clarke said she is hopeful that Gwinnett’s new representatives will have a role in creating “fair maps.”

A Gwinnett County spokesman confirmed that the dismissal of the lawsuit was agreed upon by both sides but declined further comment.

A statement issued on behalf of Gwinnett County Public Schools Superintendent J. Alvin Wilbanks, meanwhile, did not mince words.