Dear Midland, Part 4: At-Large Votes and Our Unintended Discrimination
[See the other posts on this topic here.]
A common complaint from opponents of the 2020 renaming of Midland’s Robert E. Lee High School is that the board’s 6-1 vote ignored the will of the people. This frustration surfaced in two lawsuits (both dismissed, with costs assessed to the plaintiffs),1 the online petition started by the then-County Judge to oppose the name change (which was quickly disabled by the petition’s host site for “inappropriate content”),2 and the lingering sentiment among some in the ensuing five years that alumni were “disregarded and disrespected” by the process.3
A recent online poll by the Midland Reporter-Telegram indicates that 75% of the 1,818 respondents were in favor of reverting the name to Midland Lee.4 (The poll’s sample size is about 1.1% of the district’s population.5) The MRT states that one of the primary motives for another renaming is that many of those who favor Lee as the name cite the board’s 2020 decision as being against alumni wishes.
Trustee Josh Guinn has indicated that he has requested the name change to be on the agenda for an August 12 board meeting,6 and on July 28, the board passed revisions to its naming policies.7 The revisions allow the board to assess the community’s opinions through surveys, polls, official ballots, and “other methods.” The revisions also clearly state that the trustees are not bound by the results of any such input processes and that the authority to name is the board’s.
Before those revisions were passed or proposed, trustee Dr. Matt Friez pushed for a public vote, stating, “The fairest and most unifying path forward is to let the people of Midland ISD decide through a ballot vote.” He added, “This is what should have happened the first time, and I, as an elected official stand firm and resolute with the intent to give the people their voice this time! . . . Taking this issue directly to the people helps ensure that the people’s decision would be binding and much less likely to be reversed by a woke, easily influenced or weak school board, as seen in recent history.”8
Dr. Friez’s appeal for a vote resonates with many, but it is contrary to a significant piece of our community’s history of discrimination and ensuing legal battles.
Why MISD No Longer Elects Trustees Through At-Large Voting
In 1985, Midland’s League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC) and the Black Advisory Council sued MISD over its system of at-large election of trustees.9 All seven MISD trustees at the time were white.10 Only three Black or Hispanic trustees had ever previously been elected, and from the time that board elections required a majority vote until the lawsuit, no minority candidate ever won a seat over a white candidate as an MISD trustee.11 The lawsuit claimed that the at-large elections effectively allowed the white majority to decide who held every seat, and that they did so at the expense of fair representation of minorities.
The case (LULAC v Midland ISD) resulted in a major shift after the federal district court ruled that MISD’s at-large elections violated the Constitution and the 1965 Voting Rights Act. MISD appealed, but the ruling was upheld the following year,12 and since then, our board elections have been conducted according to the court’s order that each of our seven trustees is elected from a single-member district.
It is crucial to understand that the court’s ruling was based on the 1982 amendment to the Voting Rights Act, which made it illegal for elections to have discriminatory effects, regardless of whether or not there was evidence of intent to discriminate.13 The amendment recognized that even if a majority does not knowingly discriminate by excluding and drowning out minority voices, majorities often do those things––and the court concluded that the majority in Midland did those things.
This legal history is relevant to the debates in Midland today.
Calls for a public vote on the name of the high school may sound fair and democratic on the surface, and those values may shape the intent of the people calling for a vote. But, as I recently heard a historian say, “How can we know where we want to go if we don’t know where we’ve been?”14 In light of our history, a public vote on the name risks repeating the very problem that the federal courts stepped in to correct.
Our seven current trustees are elected from their respective single-member districts to ensure that the diverse parts of our community––including voices that have historically been marginalized––are fairly represented. The structure through which our trustees are elected is in place specifically to prevent one voting bloc from dominating polarized decisions. This is why, although some who are not aware of this history and see it differently may use other, more colorful adjectives, allowing the seven board members to make this decision in 2020 and again today can best be described as “fair.”
In more recent years, the Supreme Court has significantly weakened similar applications of the Voting Rights Act to current law. The principle of the 1986 ruling, however, is clear, directly applicable, and still relevant to this issue of the school’s name and a potential ballot vote on the issue.
The reason we elect our trustees by districts is to avoid discriminatory decision-making, whether intentional or not. Now we need these trustees to make wise decisions for Midland’s future by fully taking our past into account.
The 1982 amendment and 1986 ruling call for this by identifying a dynamic none of us should forget. Unconstitutional and immoral discrimination can, and often does, exist without the awareness or intent of those responsible for it.
Stewart Doreen, “Judge dismisses Save Lee Rebels’ lawsuit against MISD,” Midland Reporter-Telegram (January 29, 2021), https://www.mrt.com/news/article/Judge-dismisses-Save-Lee-Rebels-lawsuit-15909604.php.
Stewart Doreen, “Johnson’s save Robert E. Lee High School name petition was disabled,” Midland Reporter-Telegram (July 29, 2020), https://www.mrt.com/news/education/article/Johnson-s-petition-to-save-Lee-HS-was-disabled-15444469.php
Trevor Hawes, “MRT survey: Lee supporters note tradition; opponents cite racist past,” Midland Reporter–Telegram (July 28, 2025), https://www.mrt.com/news/education/article/midland-isd-legacy-lee-renaming-20789639.php
Hawes, “MRT Survey.”
Census Reporter, “Midland Independent School District, TX”(2023), https://censusreporter.org/profiles/97000US4830570-midland-independent-school-district-tx/
“League of United Latin v. Midland Ind. Sch. Dist., 648 F. Supp. 596 (W.D. Tex. 1986),“ Justia, https://law.justia.com/cases/federal/district-courts/FSupp/648/596/1431125/.
Ed Todd, “MISD to Use Single-Member System,” Midland Reporter-Telegram (January 18, 1986), 1A-2A.
“League of United Latin v. Midland Ind. Sch. Dist., 648 F. Supp. 596 (W.D. Tex. 1986),“ Justia, https://law.justia.com/cases/federal/district-courts/FSupp/648/596/1431125/.
“League of United Latin American Citizens, Council No. 4386 and the Black Advisory Council, Etc., et al.,plaintiffs-appellees, v. Midland Independent School District, Joseph Golding, Ronaldbritton, Joyce Sherrod, and Joseph Reed, et al.,defendants-appellants, 829 F.2d 546 (5th Cir. 1987),” Justia, https://law.justia.com/cases/federal/appellate-courts/F2/829/546/226978/
Laughlin McDonald, Michael B. Binford, and Ken Johnson, “Georgia,” in Quiet Revolution in the South: The Impact of the Voting Rights Act, 1965–1990, edited by Chandler Davidson and Bernard Grofman (Princeton University Press, 1994), 78.
Ty Seidule, Robert E. Lee and Me: A Southerner’s Reckoning with the Myth of the Lost Cause (St. Martin’s, 2021), 8.
Another well thought out and researched post. Thank you.