It may yet be that Gov. Nathan Deal and his supporters in the General Assembly won’t get away with the attempted deception of voters concerning the proposed constitutional amendment authorizing the state to take over public schools deemed to be failing.

A group of voters has filed a class action lawsuit asserting the ballot language for Amendment 1 is “misleading, subjectively worded and propagandizes the very issue being decided on the ballot.” The plaintiffs are an Atlanta school parent, the past chairman of Concerned Black Clergy of Metro Atlanta and a Coweta County public school teacher. The defendants are the governor, Lt. Gov. Casey Cagle and Secretary of State Brian Kemp.

The complaint filed in Fulton County Superior Court seeks a stay in the matter to give the defendants “the opportunity to correct the deceptive ballot language and provide voters with accurate and non-deceptive language regarding the state takeover amendment.” An injunction against enforcement of the amendment is requested if it passes.

The defective ballot preamble to the amendment claims that it: “Provides greater flexibility and state accountability to fix failing schools through increasing community involvement.” The ballot question is: “Shall the Constitution of Georgia be amended to allow the state to intervene in chronically failing public schools in order to improve student performance?”

The lawsuit points out that the preamble contains language “never adopted by the General Assembly.” And further: “Defendants have brought in the back door through the preamble false promises and affirmatively misleading claims” of providing “greater flexibility and state accountability to fix failing schools through increasing community involvement.”

The proposed amendment “does the opposite of what it promises,” the lawsuit says. “The ballot language is fatally flawed because the preamble language … when combined with the proposed amendment is affirmatively misleading.” Rather than increase community involvement, the amendment does the opposite. As for schools being fixed, “there is no research, data or evidence that state takeovers of local public schools yields any better outcomes.” And third, while the targeted schools are described as failing, “many of them have made as much or more progress on state school assessments as traditionally high performing schools.”

Thus, the lawsuit says, the ballot language “deprives voters of their due process right to an effective vote in violation of the Georgia Constitution.”

Why doesn’t the ballot language track the wording in Senate Resolution 287? It proposes to amend the Constitution thusly: “… the General Assembly may provide by general law for the creation of an Opportunity School District and authorize the state to assume the supervision, management and operation of public elementary and secondary schools which have been determined to be failing through any governance model allowed by law. Such authorization shall include the power to receive, control and expend state, federal and local funds appropriated for schools under the current or prior supervision, management or operation of the Opportunity School District, all in the manner provided by and in accordance with general law.”

Does that sound anything like the ballot preamble or ballot question? Nor is there any inkling of what the enabling legislation, Senate Bill 133, provides. It would create the OSD, authorize the governor to appoint the superintendent with Senate confirmation to serve at the pleasure of the governor and report directly to the governor who would set the superintendent’s salary. This new appointee would develop guidelines and procedures for operating OSD and could select up to 20 schools to add to the OSD in any school year with a maximum of 100 schools under supervision at any given time.

Although the bill calls for a public hearing for input by parents and the community, “the final selection of which schools are transferred into the OSD shall be in the sole discretion of the OSD superintendent.” The OSD superintendent would be empowered to take over direct management of a school or share governance with the local school board, reconstitute the school as a charter school, or close the school.

Clearly, the class action lawsuit is on target. Now it’s up to the judiciary to save the voters from being deprived of due process — and the truth on a ballot question.