A group of Baltimore teachers has filed suit against the Baltimore Teachers Union, seeking to have the May election that decided the union presidency conducted again.

The lawsuit, filed last month in the state Circuit Court for Baltimore, contends that the election was unfair because thousands of teachers were prevented from voting.

Under the leadership of the former president, Sharon Blake, the union tried to extend the voting period from one day to five days to give teachers more opportunity to vote, according to the lawsuit. However, the current president, Marietta English, who beat Blake in May, and several other union members successfully challenged the plan to extend the voting period in U.S. District Court.

A day before the first day of voting, the court issued an opinion saying the election could not be held over several days. The timing of the decision meant, the lawsuit contends, that the union did not have time to inform all 7,000 teachers in the union that they had just one day, not five, to vote.

"There are clear procedures about how elections should be reviewed and whether an election was conducted according to the rules laid out in the BTU constitution," said Jamie Horwitz, a spokesman for the American Federation of Teachers.