After lawsuit dismissal, lawyers say Keller ISD election rules remain unfair
The law firm representing a Keller parent has responded after a federal judge called the plaintiff’s lawsuit against the school board “baseless” and “frivolous.”
In February 2025, Brewer Storefront, the pro bono arm of Brewer, Attorneys and Counselors, filed a legal challenge alleging Keller’s school board election rules were unfair to minority voters. The plaintiff, Claudio Vallejo, is a Hispanic parent of two Keller students.
Brewer’s latest filing includes election data going back to 2017 that shows school board candidates who the majority of Hispanic voters supported typically lost. It also points out that despite Keller’s student population being 26% Hispanic, there are no Hispanic board members. All seven of Keller’s trustees are white.
Attorney William A. Brewer III, partner at Brewer Storefront, told the Star-Telegram last year the remedy was to have Keller move away from the at-large voting system, under which voters select candidates for open seats from across the district, with one vote per seat.
The recommended alternative was a cumulative system, where voters have multiple votes that can be divided across all open seats or consolidated in support of certain candidates.
An analysis published by the University of Chicago said at-large voting was historically a way to dilute minority votes.
In January, U.S. District Judge Reed O’Connor of the Northern District of Texas dismissed Vallego’s lawsuit, arguing, among other things, he did not sufficiently prove voter suppression under the at-large system. In O’Connor’s written analysis, he said the Hispanic electorate constitutes a small percentage of the total Keller electorate.
To satisfy the claim of suppression, O’Connor wrote, it must be proven a minority group could form a majority voting bloc without assistance votes from another racial group.
When he dismissed the case, O’Connor granted a request for Vallejo to pay the Keller board’s attorneys’ fees, and the judge ordered Vallejo and his legal counsel “to show cause why they should not be sanctioned for filing a baseless petition.”
In an affidavit included in the new filing, which was in response to O’Connor’s order, Vallejo wrote that he believed lack of diverse representation on the school board negatively impacted Hispanic and African-American student outcomes. The filing also included an affidavit from Deborah Otis, director of research and policy for FairVote, a voting rights organization.
In her statement in support of Vallejo’s suit, Otis listed more than 40 Texas school districts and municipalities that have been forced to adopt cumulative voting systems following similar legal challenges.
The Brewer firm has initiated the move from at-large voting in the Lewisville, Richardson, Carrollton-Farmers Branch, Irving and Grand Prairie school districts.
Dixie Davis, a Keller parent who ran for school board in 2024, contributed an affidavit as well. According to data included in the filing, Davis was one of the candidates who garnered a majority of Hispanic votes but lost her election.
In her sworn statement, Davis said she heard concerns about equal representation during her campaign from parents on the west side of the district, which is more racially diverse than the eastern portion. Davis added that she believed the at-large voting system gave west side parents limited influence over board policy decisions.
Vallejo lives in Fort Worth on the west side of the Keller district, which would have been detached from the east side under a proposal brought forth last year. That plan was supported by five of the seven board trustees, all of whom lived on the east side, but was called off last March after receiving popular backlash.
Texas Rep. Rafael Anchía (D-Dallas) contributed an additional sworn statement in support of Vallejo’s allegations, as did Guillermo Ramos, a former Carrollton-Farmers Branch trustee.
“Based on my experience with voting-rights reform efforts in Texas, proposing cumulative voting as a potential option in at-large systems where geographic districting IS impracticable is a recognized and reasonable approach to evaluating whether minority participation can be improved,” wrote Anchía.
Ramos was the plaintiff in the 2015 Brewer suit to change the Carrollton-Farmers Branch board election system, and he subsequently served two terms as a trustee. In his affidavit, Ramos asserted the Brewer firm’s efforts led to the election of multiple minority candidates for school board.
Attorney William Brewer previously told the Star-Telegram his firm respects O’Connor but disagrees with his decision. Brewer added that Vallejo plans to appeal the judge’s ruling.
A notice of appeal is due by Feb. 17, according to a Brewer spokesperson.
Star-Telegram staff writer Elizabeth Campbell contributed to this report.
This story was originally published February 9, 2026 at 2:27 PM.