Saugus Union School District officials approved a timeline for moving to district-based elections, officials said Wednesday.

Elementary school officials for the mostly Westside district OK’ed payment of $7,000 to Compass Demographics, which will draw up boundaries voters will be aligned within, in the next governing board election for the school district.

The move was made shortly after a lawsuit was filed against the district, alleging a California Voting Rights Act violation.

The lawsuit claimed minority voters’ rights are being disenfranchised by at-large elections, because racially polarized voting — or elections in which patterns show voters of the same race vote along the same lines — deny Hispanic voters the ability to select their candidate of choice.

No CVRA lawsuit has ever been successfully defended, and school officials in the past said the only “safe harbor” from a lawsuit is to move to a district-based electoral system, in which a voter can only select a candidate to represent his or her appointed region within a school district’s boundaries.

The district map is scheduled to be presented to the board in closed session, when there will be discussions July 21 and Aug. 11.

Board members plan to then present map options to voters Sept. 8 and Oct. 13, and then approval is expected in November.