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https://www.yakimaherald.com/news/local/government/elections/aclu-takes-steps-to-sue-sunnyside-school-district-over-latino-voting-rights/article_3fdf2f40-fc57-11ee-a8ff-43282035cc15.html
Sunnyside candidates for school board and city council and organizers from ELLA attend a weekly meeting to share information and resources on Oct. 4, 2023.
Jasper Kenzo Sundeen, Yakima Herald-Republic
“My vote doesn’t count.”
“It doesn’t matter.”
“There’s too much discrimination.”
Those are sentiments Maria Fernandez said she heard from Latino voters in Sunnyside while organizing voter engagement and candidate education sessions during 2023 school board elections.
Fernandez is executive director of ELLA (Empowering Latina Leadership and Action), a Yakima-based Latina advocacy and support group. She said that despite “inundating” the overwhelmingly majority-Latino community with education on voting in the 2023 school board elections, only one out of three Latina candidates won a seat.
“There was an overwhelming interest in seeing school board change,” Fernandez said in an interview. “We were surprised when the school board election didn’t pan out like we’d hoped.”
That’s when the organization looked into legal options, and contacted the American Civil Liberties Union.
ELLA and the ACLU of Washington sent notice of their intent to sue the Sunnyside School District over alleged violations of the Washington Voting Rights Act on Tuesday. The district has 90 days to respond.
This map depicts current boundaries of the Sunnyside School District election districts.
(Courtesy ACLU)
The ACLU and ELLA recommend a new boundary map for Sunnyside School District elections, one they say will be fairer to Latino voters. (Courtesy ACLU)
District spokesperson Jessica Morgan confirmed in an email that the district received the documents and is reviewing them.
Though the district is 81% Latino, no Latino has ever beat a white candidate in a school district race, according to supporting documents from the ACLU.
The Sunnyside School District has an at-large election system, and residents vote in every school board race in the primary and general election.
David Ventura Montes, an ACLU staff attorney, said what is happening in the district’s elections is a classic case of vote diluting, a violation of the state’s Voting Rights Act, regardless of intent or voter turnout.
Montes said the ACLU and demographer Bill Cooper found that instances of racially polarized voting in Sunnyside were higher than what was occurring in Yakima before a 2012 voting rights case filed against the city. That case successfully challenged at-large Yakima City Council seats because of concerns about Latino representation.
Yakima County also faced a challenge from Latino voters over its at-large voting districts in 2020. The county agreed to get rid of at-large commissioner districts and create a new Latino-majority district in a settlement agreement.
In short, Montes said that data shows Latino voters generally side with Latino candidates, and white voters with white candidates, but the boundaries of Sunnyside's school board districts, which split up majority-Latino Sunnyside, make it harder for the Latino candidates to win.
Election history
Fernandez said many Sunnyside Latinos have been disillusioned with the election process due to historical disenfranchisement. She hopes that more Latino representation on the board will bring better outcomes for the students and parents of Sunnyside.
Protesters near the Sunnyside School District building on Sixth Street hold up signs on Feb. 13, 2024.
JASPER KENZO SUNDEEN Yakima Herald-Republic
Parents have raised concerns about disparate discipline and racism in the schools, and retaliation, among other issues, ELLA said in a news release. A protest in February highlighted some of the issues.
ELLA helped lead “get out the vote” and candidate education efforts during the 2023 election in Sunnyside.
Three of the candidates who participated in civics and election classes with ELLA ran for school board in Sunnyside, joining three city council candidates as part of a Lower Yakima Valley Latinx Coalition, a slate of six candidates running for office.
That coalition also held listening sessions and tried to connect with Sunnyside Latinos. All three city council candidates won their races.
Two members of the coalition lost their races, which were at-large elections for school board seats. Anna Saenz lost the District 4 seat to Jory Anderson by around 200 votes. Sandra Zesati lost to Stephen Berg by around 400 votes in District 5.
One of the coalition candidates, Dr. Yasmin Barrios, beat incumbent Silvia Ramos by about 200 votes in a race for the District 1 seat. Barrios resigned from her position in February, leaving the five-person school board with no Latino or Latina members.
Sunnyside School District is seeking applicants to fill the position.
Jasper Kenzo Sundeen contributed to this report.
Questen Inghram is a Murrow News Fellow at the Yakima Herald-Republic whose beat focuses on government in Central Washington communities.
This story can be republished by other organizations for free under a Creative Commons license. For more information on this, email news@yakimaherald.com.
Posted April 17, 2024
