Federal hearing set in lawsuit over Cobb school board map

A hearing for the lawsuit challenging the Cobb County Board of Education’s new redistricting map has been set for June by a federal judge.

The hearing is a result of a motion filed by an attorney from Cumberland-based Freeman Mathis & Gary, the firm the Cobb County School District hired to represent it in the lawsuit over the map passed by the General Assembly last year.

The lawsuit, first filed in June in the Northern District of Georgia, by a coalition of civil rights and left-leaning groups, alongside several Cobb parents, alleges that the map disenfranchises voters of color. The map redrawing the boundaries of the seven-member board was supported by its Republicans, who hold a 4-3 majority on the school board.

On March 31, Philip Savrin, the firm’s attorney representing CCSD in the suit, filed a motion requesting judgment in the case and criticized the argument that the district could be held responsible for the General Assembly’s actions.

Savrin wrote, “It has no basis whatsoever in law or fact. \For that to be the case the Board of Education would have to have been making decisions for the General Assembly which is an absurd proposition.”

The hearing on the request for judgment is set for June 22, with the U.S. District Court Judge Eleanor Ross to preside over the case in her Atlanta courtroom.

An amended lawsuit filed in August accused the board’s four white, Republican members — David Banks, David Chastain, Randy Scamihorn and Brad Wheeler — of continuing “their pattern and practice of subjecting the Black Board members and their constituents of color to racially disparate policies enacted along racial lines” through the redistricting process. 

The filers of the lawsuit asked the court to declare Districts 2, 3 and 6 — held by the board’s three Democrats — unconstitutional and direct the state to come up with a new map.