Attorney and parent Daniel Lifschitz filed litigation against the district, alleging the board broke its own bylaws. (screenshot courtesy of BHUSD via YouTube)

A court hearing will be held on April 9 to determine whether a lawsuit against the Beverly Hills Unified School District alleging unlawful action by its board members can move forward. The complaint, filed by parent and attorney Daniel Lifschitz, alleges that the Board of Education violated its own bylaws and the will of Beverly Hills voters when the board majority broke with the usual rotation of board vice president in December and installed Sigalie Sabag to the position. The lawsuit, filed on Jan. 26, seeks a court order to mandate the board install Amanda Stern as board vice president in accordance with the previous iteration of board bylaw 9100.

The lawsuit alleges that the board acted unlawfully at a Dec. 16 organizational meeting. At the December meeting, Judy Manouchehri, who served as vice president for the previous year, was installed as board president in accordance with bylaw 9100, which states, “immediately after serving as vice president, the elected member shall serve one year as president of the board.”

According to the same bylaw, “selection of the vice president shall be determined by rotation based on how long each member has served on the board during their current term on the board. If two or more have the same term of service then they shall serve as vice president in descending order of the number of votes received in their most recent election and for this purpose an appointed member shall be treated as having zero votes.”

Stern, Sabag and Russell Stuart each began their current terms at the same time in December 2024 following the November election. Stern, seeking re-election at the time, received the most votes at 7,102, followed by Sabag at 6,681 and Stuart at 6,542.

Stuart, Sabag and Manouchehri voted against installing Stern as vice president after Manouchehri listed several accusations toward Stern, including “misleading the public” and “calling the media and asking them to run certain articles in order to bash other board members,” which Manouchehri said disqualified Stern from the position.

Following the 3-2 vote against certifying Stern as vice president, Sabag was certified as vice president in a 3-2 vote. Stern and Marcus voted against installing Sabag.

The board majority of Sabag, Manouchehri and Stuart on Jan. 27 doubled down on its December action, redoing the election of Manouchehri and Sabag to the roles of president and vice president respectively, by way of accusing Stern of committing a Brown Act violation through communicating with board members before the Dec. 16 meeting.

Before the board reperformed the election of president and vice president on Jan. 27, it voted to re-write bylaw 9100. The new bylaw omits any reference to the rotation of president and vice president being determined by the municipal election of board members by Beverly Hills residents. Instead, the new bylaw places the election of the positions directly in the hands of board members. The new bylaw also eliminates the clause “no board member shall serve more than one consecutive year in the same office.”

The district filed a demurrer, or motion to dismiss the lawsuit, on Feb. 26. The school district has argued that the case should be dismissed for several reasons, including that the board’s actions in electing a president and vice president are discretionary as opposed to ministerial.

“An act is ‘ministerial’ if it involves a function that, as a matter of law, must be performed at a specific time and in a specific manner … Likewise, a duty or act is not ministerial if it involves the exercise of judgment or discretion by the public entity or official,” the district’s notice of demurrer read. “[Lifschitz] claims that the district’s former bylaw 9100 did not allow for the election of board members, but rather required the appointment of the vice president. This argument fails for a number of reasons. First, the language of former bylaw 9100, even when read in the light most favorable to [Lifschitz], cannot be read to impose such a duty on the district. This bylaw specifically calls for the election of board members. By definition, an election is a discretionary act. There is no duty imposed on anyone, on who they vote for.”

However, Lifschitz filed an opposition to the demurrer on March 26 rebutting the district’s arguments. He stated that the word “shall” in the district’s bylaw 9100 indicated a “mandatory or ministerial duty” to elect Stern.

“In sum, the board’s December 2025 organizational meeting was required to be conducted pursuant to former Bylaw 9100, which contained a valid ministerial obligation to elect Dr. Stern as the board’s vice president,” Lifschitz wrote in the opposition. “Defendants’ refusal to do so is correctable by writ of mandamus.”