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COPPELL, TX — University of North Texas Professor Pankaj Jain has dropped his lawsuit claiming voting discrimination against the Coppell Independent School District (CISD).
The Indian American educator, who filed the lawsuit in September 2016 claiming the Texas school district violated the Voting Rights Act of 1965, dropped the suit in mid-January.
Federal District Court Judge Sidney A. Fitzwater granted a motion for the dismissal of the case at the request of Jain and his representation at the Brewer Storefront.
Jain filed the suit against Coppell ISD in September claiming that the school district’s at-large voting system denies Asian American voters a fair opportunity to elect school board representatives of their choice
Based on the district’s demographics, there should be at least one Asian American school board member, the lawsuit claimed. As an at-large system, board members are elected based on how the entire city votes, not individual districts.
None of the seven CISD members is Asian American.
School board president Anthony Hill was happy the lawsuit has been dismissed.
According to Brewer Storefront, Asian students account for the largest ethnic or racial group enrolled in the school district, at 41 percent, citing Texas Education Agency data.
What’s more, American Community Survey Census data gathered in 2014 says that about 18 percent of all voting-aged citizens in the district are Asian American, accounting for roughly 4,860 voters.
CISD’s current election system states that school board members are elected at-large, with candidates running for specific places but not representing a specific geographic area.
Jain, the author of the award-winning "Dharma and Ecology of Hindu Communities: Sustenance and Sustainability," moved to Coppell with his wife and two children in 2010.
Prior to becoming a professor at UNT, teaching in the philosophy and religion and anthropology departments, he served as a lecturer at Rutgers University and North Carolina State University.
The India native, who is now a US citizen and registered voter, unsuccessfully ran for the school board in May 2016.