The American Civil Liberties Union on Thursday filed a lawsuit challenging a Missouri school district’s board voting policies as part of an effort to increase the representation of black students in a region including Ferguson – the city that this summer became a flashpoint for American race issues.
Simmering racial tensions in the region peaked in August, when unarmed black teenager Michael Brown was fatally shot by white police officer Darren Wilson. The incident sparked international protests that continue across the globe as more broad demonstrations against systemic racism in the US.
The ACLU filed a lawsuit in the eastern district of Missouri against Missouri’s Ferguson-Florissant school district, accusing it of blocking black residents from participating in the school board voting process in violation of the Voting Rights Act. The district covers 11 municipalities including Ferguson.
“One of the things that really struck me was when I learned about the incredible imbalance between the citizens and their elected officials [in Ferugson], is that there is very little representation for African-Americans in the local government,” Dale Ho, director of the ACLU’s voting rights project, told the Guardian. “Nowhere was this more clear to me in Ferguson than in the school board.”
The school has one black school board member, despite the district having a majority of black students. For the 2011 to 2012 school year, 77.1% of the district’s students are identified as African-American. But the voting age population, according to the 2010 census, is 49% white and 47% black.
Ho attributes this discrepancy to the district’s history of racial discrimination and its “at-large” voting system, which the plaintiffs say favors the majority white voting population. The suit seeks to replace the system with a process that allows board members to be elected from individual voting districts and, in turn, produces board members from black communities.
A district spokesperson said they are reviewing the lawsuit and that they are hoping to issue a statement in the near future.
The district extends into multiple municipalities in keeping with a 1975 desegregation order that was put in place to integrate the district, which remained segregated more than 20 years after Brown v Board of Education was passed. “What had been a racially integrated school district has now once again become segregated”, said the lawsuit.
The lawsuit outlines nine factors that show how black voters have fewer opportunities to participate in the voting process, including the district’s history of discrimination, insufficient attentiveness to issues facing black students and political campaigns with a subtle racial bent.
“For instance, in the highly polarized 2014 race, two of the successful white candidates stated that key issues facing the District were ‘discipline’ and the creation of distraction-free learning environments so that students ‘feel safe’,” the lawsuit says. “Those comments, and others, were understood by African Americans as subtle racial appeals.”
Plaintiffs are asking for the court to rule that the at-large voting system violates the Voting Rights Act, to prevent the implementation of the at-large method in the next election in April, and to create, and permanently enact, a voting system that complies with the Voting Rights Act.
“No one is saying that this is a panacea for the education issues out here or the racial tensions out here, surely.” Ho said. “It’s a complex problem that is going to require a complex solution, but we are hoping that giving a voice to the African American community here in their schools can be a part of the solution.”
The case was brought by the ACLU on behalf of the Missouri NAACP, two members of which are plaintiffs in the case, including Florissant resident Redditt Hudson. He is the father of two students in the school district and was a St Louis police officer before joining the NAACP.
“We’ve seen African-Americans excluded from making decisions that affect our children”, said Hudson said in a statement. “We need to be able to advocate for an education that will put our kids first and not political agendas.”
