Crowell & Moring and ACLU Challenge Racially Discriminatory Election System, Making History in Federalsburg

Washington – October 30, 2023: History was made in September as residents in the Town of Federalsburg, Md. elected the Town’s first Black council members—Darlene Hammond and Brady James. Ms. Hammond and Ms. James were officially sworn into office earlier this month. Before then, the Town had experienced all-white rule for its 200-year history. This dramatic change was brought about in substantial part by a lawsuit filed by Crowell & Moring and the American Civil Liberties Union of Maryland.

The lawsuit, which was filed in February 2023, challenged the racially discriminatory and unlawful election system that had consistently kept Black people out of Federalsburg municipal government. Represented by Crowell and the ACLU of Maryland, Black voters of the Town of Federalsburg, the Caroline County Branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, and the Caucus of African American Leaders joined hands to file suit against Federalsburg in federal district court in Baltimore under the landmark Voting Rights Act of 1965.

Although the Town’s Black population has grown steadily over time to account now for fully 47 percent of its overall population, Federalsburg had prior to the September 26 vote been ruled exclusively by white residents for 200 years. The plaintiffs asserted that Federalsburg’s election practices, including its longstanding use of an at-large, staggered term election system, and its various 2023 proposals to modify the system or cancel 2023 elections altogether, violated the Voting Rights Act by interacting “with social and historical conditions to cause an inequality in the opportunities enjoyed by black and white voters to elect their preferred representatives.”

On May 9, 2023, U.S. District Judge Stephanie Gallagher ordered the Town’s all-white government to put in place a new election system that fully addresses longstanding vote dilution -- in time for the municipal elections that took place in September.

The Plaintiffs are represented by Crowell & Moring’s Cori Schreider, Katie Aber, and Daniel Wolff, along with Nicholas Taichi Steiner and Deborah Jeon of the ACLU of Maryland.

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