No school board election Tuesday for East Ramapo as appeals court rejects district bid

• Voters will still be allowed to vote for or against the district's $247M budget
• The earliest the federal appeals court can hear the district's appeal is August
• The decision noted that the "district has not shown a likelihood of success on the merits of the appeal," the NYCLU said.

A federal appeals court has turned back East Ramapo’s attempt to hold school board elections on Tuesday under an at-large voting system, which a lower court said is unfair to black and Latino voters.

A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit on Thursday rejected East Ramapo’s request to stay U.S. District Court Judge Cathy Seibel’s ruling in a voting rights case. The case was filed by the Spring Valley chapter of the NAACP.

The panel set Aug. 17 as the earliest date for when it could hear arguments in the district’s appeal of Seibel’s May 26 ruling. That means a special election to fill four open seats on the nine-member board would likely not happen until September at the earliest.

The panel did not hold arguments before issuing a ruling, instead relying on court papers submitted by lawyers for the East Ramapo Central School District and the New York Civil Liberties Union, which represents the NAACP together with Latham & Watkins.

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But in a brief decision, it noted the district had failed to meet the standard for a stay “including, most critically, the likelihood of success on the merits and irreparable harm absent a stay.”

District lawyers could not be reached for comment.

Budget vote will count

With in-person voting canceled due to the pandemic, mail-in ballots for Tuesday’s election have already been sent out with the names of school board candidates. While candidate votes won’t be tallied, votes for or against the district’s $247 million budget as well as a library trustee will be counted.

Lawyers for the NAACP argued that if Tuesday’s elections were to go ahead they would be held under a system that a federal judge already said violates the Voting Rights Act by excluding blacks and Latinos from East Ramapo’s political process.

In a statement, NYCLU attorney Perry Grossman said the civil liberties organization was pleased with a decision “which acknowledged that the district has not shown a likelihood of success on the merits of their appeal.”

He added: “We’re confident that the Second Circuit will ultimately affirm the District Court’s thorough and well-reasoned decision. For now, we look forward to continuing unabated the process of implementing an election system that complies with the Voting Rights Act and respects the rights of Black and Latino people."

Seibel ordered the district to create a ward or neighborhood-based system in order to increase the participation of minorities in school board voting.

Under the current at-large setup, each of the district’s 60,000 registered voters can vote for candidates for open seats. With a ward system, voters from a designated district would vote for candidates to represent that district.

Seibel said four districts where minorities represent the majority of eligible voters could be created. Currently, the board is made up of three black women and six white, Orthodox Jewish men.

The NAACP argued that the white majority on the board cemented its dominance for more than a decade with the help of a white voting bloc organized by Orthodox Jewish religious leaders.

As a result, they say, only minority candidates considered by Orthodox leaders to be “safe” or “token” candidates have won seats on the board.

At a trial that spanned several weeks in U.S. District Court in White Plains, the NAACP introduced evidence showing how graduation rates in the district plunged  in recent years while more and more district money was budgeted to bus of white, private school students to yeshivas.

Meanwhile, the board pursued cuts in funding for its public schools, where minorities make up more than 90 percent of the school population. Full-day kindergarten was reduced to a half-day, hundreds of teachers were laid off and honors courses were eliminated at Spring Valley and Ramapo high schools.

Many of those cuts were restored after state monitors were brought in to the oversee the district in 2014. But, the NAACP says, more needs to be done to return the schools to the levels of previous years when the district had some of the highest graduation rates in Rockland County.

Last year’s graduation rate was 65 percent, compared to the statewide average of 83 percent.

District lawyers argued that voting for school board members had nothing to do with race but was a reflection of the wishes of Orthodox Jewish voters who preferred candidates who kept tax levies low.

Costly battle for taxpayers

Should the district lose its appeal, the process could drag on for several years while appeals are pursued.

In Hempstead on Long Island, a challenge to the town’s at-large voting method waged by black voters went to the U.S. Supreme Court and took 12 years to resolve. Similarly, a Justice Department challenge to the method used by the Westchester County town of Port Chester to elects its village trustees took a decade to resolve.

East Ramapo has shown little willingness to back down from the NAACP’s challenge. The district turned down a settlement offer before trial that likely would have saved millions of dollars in legal fees.

And last week, in a vote that fell along racial lines, the board authorized its attorneys to appeal Seibel’s ruling.

In 2018 and 2019, the district spent $6 million in legal fees, with much of that going to its defense of the NAACP case. Next year’s budget calls for nearly $2 million in legal fees.

The board is being represented by the Washington, D.C. law firm of Morgan, Lewis and Bockius.