Central Bucks Voting Regions To Remain Unchanged For 2023 Election

DOYLESTOWN, PA — The current voting regions maps will remain in place in the Central Bucks School District until 2025 after Bucks County’s 18 judges recused themselves from hearing the redistricting case.

The full-bench recusal was announced by Judge Jeffrey Trauger in late January. He followed that up with a Feb. 8 order sent to the school district and to CBSD Fair Votes announcing the cancellation of a scheduled Feb. 9 hearing after attempts to find an outside judge to step in were unsuccessful.

“Due to a full bench recusal of this Court, and the pendency of the appointment of an out-of-county senior judge, the scheduling of any hearings on these matters is continued generally,” reads the order.

With the recusal, the Supreme Court will now be tasked with finding an out of county senior judge to hear the petitions of the school district and CBSD Fair Votes.

Due to the recusal, any changes made to the voting regions won't take effect until the next school board election in 2025, according to the school district’s lawyer Jeffrey Garton.

According to Garton, due to the recusal there's not enough time to secure approvals and to have the new voting regions in place for this year's election. “So the current map will remain in place,” he said.

Patch also reached out to CBSD Fair Votes attorney Brendan Flynn for comment regarding the recusal and postponement of the hearing.

"We look forward to presenting our case in court once a new judge is assigned," Flynn wrote in an email to Patch.

The school district and CBSD Fair Votes were preparing to make their arguments before the court this week when the judges recused themselves.

In late January, CBSD Fair Votes announced that it would be challenging the Central Bucks School District in court over its proposal to update the district’s voting regions.

Standing outside the Bucks County Justice Center, lawyers from Curtin & Heefner joined the residents in putting forward a three region voting plan for the 121,000 resident school district.

The proposed CBSD Fair Votes Voting District plan.

Due to population growth and changes over the past decade the district’s nine regions have become uneven in population and are required by law to be redistricted into more equal regions based on population. In the case of a nine region system that would equate to about 13,344 residents in each region in a nine region plan.

In November, the school board voted 7-2 to approve a redrawn nine region plan to submit to the courts. Democrat Tabitha Dell'Angelo joined the board's six Republicans in approving the motion.

CBSD Fair Votes Attorney Brandon Flynn called the school district’s plan “unconstitutional,” arguing that it fails to create nearly equal regions, disenfranchises more than 6,000 voters and gerrymanders voting districts to favor Republican Party control of the board.

“We have filed a petition to redistrict that is constitutional, it’s fair and it represents the 50-50 division between Republicans and Democrats,” said Flynn.

The board’s plan makes some adjustments, but it does not fix the unconstitutionality of the current regions, said Flynn.

“The deviation between the smaller and larger districts cannot be 10 percent or greater. The board’s proposed plan is 17 percent, so it’s almost twice as high as what is permitted under the constitution,” he argued.

There is another very serious problem with the board’s plan, adds Flynn. It disenfranchises some 6,000 residents living in district five, which includes New Britain Borough and Doylestown Township, he said.

“These individuals last had an opportunity to vote for a school director in 2019,” said Flynn. “Under the current lines they would vote again in 2023. However, the board’s plan makes it so they are not going to vote until 2025. That is a violation of the free and equal protection clause.”

In addition, Flynn said the district’s map does not reflect the partisan makeup of the district.

“The district is just about 50-50. It’s actually slightly higher on the Republican side. However these lines that are proposed would lock in a 7 to 2 Republican advantage on the board for at least the next decade,” he said. “Unfair partisan gerrymandering is a violation of the Pennsylvania Constitution under the Free and Fair Elections Clause.”

Under the law, Central Bucks can have a nine district voting region, a three district region, an at large election or a combination. The district currently has nine voting regions, which the school board’s proposal seeks to continue.

CBSD Fair Votes' plan would split the district into three regions, which Flynn argues would maintain the balance between the Democrats and Republicans and would be competitive. Each district would elect three members to the board.

“This would give Central Bucks the opportunity to vote for at least one director each election cycle starting in 2025,” he said. “It will also ensure that the people of New Britain Borough and Doylestown Township five are not disenfranchised.”

In court documents, the school district argues that the CBSD Fair Votes plan would be “extremely disruptive to the community and the goals of equal representation.

“Under the current nine region plan, a resident of any of the given nine districts is assured that their representative on the School Board will be a resident of their neighborhood or at least a resident of their proximate geographical area,” writes attorney Jeff Garton.

Under the proposed three region plan, it is entirely possible given the large geographic regions proposed, that an individual's representatives on the school board could live in a different community, which may identify with different cultural and community priorities, leaving that resident without any true representation.

“Reverting from a nine-district plan to only three district at large plan places the diversity of backgrounds and opinions among board members in great jeopardy due to the high possibility of the centralization of candidates from the high population areas of those three districts and the elimination of more compact and localized districts,” Garton argues.