The Campbell County board of education has until August 1 to redraw the boundaries of the five districts represented by board members, or the United States District Court of the Eastern District of Kentucky will do it for them, Judge David Bunning ordered on Friday.
In his order Friday, Bunning said that district two and four of the Campbell County board of education are in violation of the Constitution’s Fourteenth Amendment equal protection clause, under the “one person, one vote” rule.
He granted a preliminary injunction on behalf of the plaintiffs and said that the board could not use the maps as currently drawn. Though Kentucky state law prohibits the changing of the boundaries of school district lines less than five years after the last change, Bunning determined that that is unconstitutional as applied in the upcoming school board election. Two of the board’s five seats are on the ballot, districts one and four.
If the board does not redraw the lines by the judge’s deadline, the court would redraw them by August 15, Bunning wrote.
The plaintiffs in the case are Charlie Coleman, a former Campbell County commissioner, and Noah Heim, Amy Dowtown, and David Meyer who argued in their motion for an injunction that the county board of education dilutes their votes through the current boundaries as drawn.
The defendants include the five current members of the board of education, including incumbents Janis Winbigler, who serves district one and is chair of the board, and district four representative Peggy Schultz. Winbigler and Schultz are running for reelection this year while the other three seats will be up for election in 2024.
The Campbell County Clerk, Sheriff, and Board of Elections filed a joint order of agreement with the plaintiffs “indicating that those Defendants agree to be bound by any order of the Court, but are not required to participate in the litigation,” Bunning wrote.
The plaintiffs argued that districts two and four are over-populated compared to the other districts, violating the constitutional principle of “one person, one vote.”
According to 2020 U.S. Census figures outlined by Bunning in his order, district two has a population of 10,721 while district four has a population of 11,316. Both are larger than district one (8,491), three (8,769) and five (9,869).
Judge Bunning provided some math in his order to “determine the maximum acceptable deviation percentages” as it relates to the population of the five districts.
The total population of the Campbell County School District is 49,165.
Bunning explains that constitutionally, “the average/ideal population per district, which is calculated by dividing the total population by five (the number of districts), is 9,833. Next, the Court must identify the districts with the largest deviation from the ideal district and measure the difference between these deviations.”
“Based on the average/ideal population size, Districts 2 and 4 are constitutionally
infirm as votes by citizens in those voting districts are diluted,” Bunning wrote.
LINK nky is working to gather more details on what this federal decision means for this year’s school board races in Northern Kentucky and will offer more as soon as it is available.
In November, Winbigler, of Wilder, is set to defend her district one seat against challenger Kailyn Campbell, of Highland Heights, while Schultz faces a pair of challengers in district four from Nicole Broomall and Barbara Weber. All three live in Alexandria.