Gwinnett County, its school district and its elections board have filed new motions arguing for the dismissal of a minority voting rights lawsuit filed against them last fall. The federal suit — filed in August on behalf of the Georgia Association of Latino Elected Officials, the Georgia NAACP and several individual plaintiffs — claims that the way Gwinnett’s Board of Commissioners and school board districts are drawn dilutes the ability of minority voters to elect candidates of their choice. Gwinnett is a minority-majority county but has never had a non-white candidate elected to either board.
The lawsuit cleared a major hurdle earlier this month, when U.S. District Judge Amy Totenberg ruled that the plaintiffs would be permitted to use a “coalition” of multiple minority groups to make their case for re-drawing Gwinnett’s districts. Such a coalition, which combines the county’s black, Latino and Asian voters, had been a large part of Gwinnett County’s arguments against the suit.
Those arguments were only partly abandoned in the county’s latest motions to dismiss, which were filed Friday.
Full Article: Gwinnett voting rights suit: County makes new motions to dismiss.