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Are NJ schools unconstitutionally segregated? It's back to the courts to decide.
By
Colleen O'Dea
Published Oct 23, 2026 at 10:00 a.m. ET
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By
Colleen O'Dea
Published Oct 23, 2026 at 10:00 a.m. ET
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A coalition of advocates and New Jersey public school students tried to persuade an appellate panel on Thursday that school segregation in New Jersey is pervasive, preventing students from receiving the quality education they are guaranteed under the state constitution, and requires a state solution.
But state Deputy Attorney General Francesco Ferrantelli countered the claims cited by those plaintiffs — that nearly two-thirds of Black and Hispanic students attend schools that are at least 75% non-white — do not by themselves prove segregation. That would have to be proven during further court proceedings, he said.
The hearing before a three-judge panel of the Appellate Division of Superior Court in Trenton was the latest action in a case first brought more than eight years ago by the Latino Action Network, other advocates and five students, some of whom have already graduated. They contend that the racial and ethnic segregation of New Jersey’s public schools is the result of a state law that requires most students attend school in the towns where they live, and violates the state constitution’s guarantee of a “thorough and efficient education” for as many as 400,000 students.
Any remedy to segregation has the potential to upend New Jersey’s public school system, at least in those parts of the state with the greatest racial and ethnic isolation. It could, potentially, involve allowing more students to cross town boundaries to attend classes, or the use of magnet schools.
But the courts won’t consider ordering those or other solutions unless they’ve first established segregation exists and is unconstitutional.
It’s unclear when the appellate judges may rule, but presiding Judge Hany Mawla pledged to issue a decision “as soon as we can.”
Former state Supreme Court Justice Gary Stein was one of the original lawyers for the plaintiffs when the suit was announced in May 2018. He acknowledged the charged nature of the case, but said it already has dragged on too long.
“It’s because this case is sensitive and I think the judges who’ve presided over it have done so with great care and perhaps with too much caution,” Stein, who attended the oral arguments, said outside the courtroom.
In July 2025, the appellate division agreed to hear this appeal of the October 2023 Superior Court ruling that did not favor either side. In his 99-page decision, Mercer County Superior Court Assignment Judge Robert Lougy agreed with the plaintiffs that school segregation exists in New Jersey, but said that they had failed to prove that the entire state education system is unconstitutionally segregated. Following that ruling, both sides had agreed to mediation, which proved unsuccessful.
Attorney Lawrence Lustberg argued for the plaintiffs Thursday that the problem is worst in the state’s largest district, Newark, and 22 others in eight counties throughout the state, from Camden in the south to Passaic in the north. Fully half of the state’s Black students and 45% of Latino students attend schools that are at least 90% non-white.
“It's the pervasiveness of the problem that makes this a statewide thing,” Lustberg said. “The argument that somehow this is not a state problem, the fact that it's even made, is alarming.”
He added that being isolated in schools without the kind of diversity that exists in the state and nation “deprives students in those environments of the type of education that they need to survive, to strive, to function in modern society.”
It’s not just state data that demonstrates New Jersey school segregation. Several national studies, most recently by the nonprofit Brown’s Promise, have found New Jersey’s schools to be among the most racially and economically segregated in the nation.
During the original court case, both sides agreed for a decision of summary judgment of their own arguments, without the processes of discovery and testimony that typically occur during a trial. Another attorney for the plaintiffs, Michael Stein, told the judges that the plaintiffs still think that they have proven segregation exists.
“Our statistics are so clear,” Michael Stein said. “It's been described by some as apartheid conditions. What better evidence do you need than these statistics?”
But Ferrantelli, representing the state, disagreed. He referred to a number of cases dating to the 1960s in which state courts found individual school districts to be segregated and ordered remedies that included school regionalization. In those cases, Ferrantelli said the courts analyzed the current and projected racial composition of the segregated schools compared with others nearby, not in isolation.
“We're saying there should be fact- finding into whether there is segregation,” he said. “Much of plaintiffs' appellants' arguments here are presupposing that segregation has been proven, but we're taking issue with that threshold question.”
Lustberg presented a number of examples of school pairings to contrast them. In Essex County, East Orange, Irvington, Newark and Orange are all overwhelmingly poor with majority non-white students, while Millburn, Livingston and Glen Ridge have predominantly white enrollments and are affluent. In Union County, he contrasted Elizabeth, Hillside, Plainfield and Roselle, which have large minority populations, with wealthier Westfield, Cranford and Mountainside.
Several of the attorneys and Mawla referenced the U.S. Supreme Court’s 1954 ruling in the landmark Brown v. Board of Education that racial segregation in public schools was unconstitutional. At that time, schools in the South were segregated by law. Today, research has shown greater levels of segregation in many northern states, including New York and Pennsylvania.
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new jersey
Colleen O'Dea
NJ Spotlight politics reporter Colleen O’Dea has spent her entire career reporting New Jersey news and won numerous state and national journalism awards and fellowships.
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