Hazleton

And there’s this whole population that got to an area called the “Latino Belt,” in places like Allentown or Hazleton with a large Dominican Republic population and Mexican population, and where you see the vote is very divided.

Nearly two-thirds of students in the Hazleton Area School District are Hispanic, but no Hispanic person has ever been elected to its school board, prompting the court challenge claiming non-Hispanic white voters have employed the district’s “at-large” election system to keep things that way.

The district’s 78,000 residents are about 55% white, 40% Hispanic and 5% Black, Asian or multi-racial, according to the lawsuit, with Hispanics concentrated around Hazleton.

Hazleton is among several smaller cities in eastern Pennsylvania where Latino populations have grown large enough to have significant impacts on elections, including this year’s hotly contested races for president and U.S.

The Hazleton board has shown “a significant lack of responsiveness” to the needs of the district’s Hispanic residents, the plaintiffs argued in the lawsuit.