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By Charles Doud

Maria Esther Rey, Jesse Lopez Jr., and Carlos Uranga, plaintiffs in a lawsuit filed against the Madera Unified School District, claim at-large elections discriminate against the minority voters in the district, and are illegal under the California Voting Rights Act of 2001.

Photo by: For The Madera Tribune

A lawsuit was filed Thursday in Madera against the Madera Unified School District and its governing board, a suit that could stop the November school board election and cost the school district thousands of dollars.

Also named as defendants are the Madera County Board of Education and Madera County elections officer Rebecca Martinez, who also is the county clerk-recorder.

The suit seeks to have the scheduled November election for school directors canceled until the school district changes the way it elects its directors, who are elected at large, which means that any voter can vote for any candidate. It also asks for legal fees, which in a similar suit against a school district amounted to more than $100,000.

The lawsuit, filed on behalf of Maderans Maria Esther Rey, Jesse Lopez Jr., and Carlos Uranga, seeks to have directors elected by districts, in which voters could only vote for candidates running within the districts in which the voters are registered to vote.

The plaintiffs claim the at-large elections discriminate against the minority voters in the district, and are illegal under the California Voting Rights Act of 2001.

Also at the press conference, held at the Madera Valley Inn, were Robert Rubin and Charles Forster of the Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights, a San Francisco firm that has helped citizens sue the city of Modesto and the Hanford School District, and is representing the three Madera plaintiffs. In both those cases, the plaintiffs prevailed and the election regulations were changed to facilitate elections by district. Fees also were paid to the attorneys. The Modesto case went to the U.S. Supreme Court and was upheld, Rubin said.

Neither school superintendent John Stafford nor assistant superintendent for business operations Kelly Porterfield would comment on the suit because they hadn't seen it.

"If the courts go in this direction, then I feel it is what the public has to go with," said school board member J. Gary Adams, who is a candidate for re-election.

Two other school board members are running for re-election - Robert Garibay and Ray Seibert. Other candidates include Jack Porter, Rodrigo Mendez, Luis Ceja, and Loretta Edwards.

None of the plaintiffs has filed for seats on the board.

Uranga said he had moved to Madera in 1982, and that his children had attended and graduated from Madera High School.

"The population has doubled since then," he said.

He said he had been active in the schools, but said when he tried to run for the school board he found it daunting.

"Instead of empowering the public, we discriminate," he said.

Uranga said having elections by district instead of at large would make it easier for candidates to run and encourage diversified groups to participate.

"I have seen people wanting to participate in the political process," he said, but implied that having to run citywide was too much of a task for people with few political connections.

"It's a very hard thing to do," Uranga said. "My experience was that I was extremely qualified. I understood a lot of what was going on." But he couldn't get votes on a citywide basis, he said.

Rubin, the legal director of the Lawyer's Committee for Civil Rights, said past elections in the school district have been characterized by what he called blatant discrimination, always choosing candidates favored by non-Hispanic voters.

"The candidate of choice of this majority always won," he said.

He said the Lawyer's Committee had sent letters to 25 school districts encouraging them to voluntarily end their practice of at-large elections or risk litigation.

"A demand letter was sent to the MUSD in late spring, probably around mid-May, and there was no response," said Baldwin Moy, directing attorney for California Rural Legal Assistance of Madera, who had been in touch with the plaintiffs earlier in the year.

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Charles Doud Charles "Chuck" Doud is the Editor and Publisher for the Madera Tribune. You can contact Chuck at 674.8431 or e-mail him (cdoud) at maderatribune.net The Madera Tribune online subscription To subscribe or log on, CLICK HERE. For more information first, CLICK HERE.