Voting Rights Act Lawsuit
Madera Unified's capitulation when faced with a 2008 lawsuit about the manner in which school board trustees were elected, as well as a judge's related ruling on the matter, has reportedly influenced other California school districts and other governmental bodies to change from at-large representation, which dominates the state's school districts, to a by-district system. Four Madera plaintiffs, represented by San Francisco-based Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights, alleged that the at-large voting system resulted in racial polarization that resulted in the city's Latino majority of 82 percent being politically marginalized, which they said violated the state's 2002 Voting Rights Act. That statistic is slightly misleading, however, as only 44 percent of those eligible to vote in an MUSD election were Latinos, according to a press release by Anayma DeFrias of the aforementioned LCCR. The Madera case was one of the first to be filed under the California Voting Rights Act. The school district settled out of court without admitting guilt but agreeing to change how school board trustees were elected, according to The Madera Tribune daily newspaper in 2008.
Read more about this topic: Madera Unified School District
Famous quotes containing the words voting, rights and/or act:
“Common sense should tell us that reading is the ultimate weapon—destroying ignorance, poverty and despair before they can destroy us. A nation that doesn’t read much doesn’t know much. And a nation that doesn’t know much is more likely to make poor choices in the home, the marketplace, the jury box and the voting booth...The challenge, therefore, is to convince future generations of children that carrying a book is more rewarding than carrying guns.”
—Jim Trelease (20th century)
“The rights of citizenship will be taken away from all Jews and other non-Aryans. They are inferior and therefore enemies of the state. It is the duty of all true Aryans to hate and despise them.”
—Charlie Chaplin (1889–1977)
“Even a purely moral act that has no hope of any immediate and visible political effect can gradually and indirectly, over time, gain in political significance.”
—Václav Havel (b. 1936)