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Court finds NJ has a duty to deal with segregated schools. It doesn't say how.
By
Louis C. Hochman
and
Karen Yi
Published Oct 10, 2023
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Skynesher / Getty Images
By
Louis C. Hochman
and
Karen Yi
Published Oct 10, 2023
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Plaintiffs looking to end de facto segregation in New Jersey public schools said Tuesday they were heartened by parts of a judge’s ruling that say the state is responsible for addressing the problem — even if they’re not sure of the path ahead.
“I think it murkied the waters,” said Javier Robles, president of the Latino Action Network, one of the lead plaintiffs suing New Jersey. “It obviously said the state had some responsibility and they haven’t necessarily done everything they should, but it didn’t say what the state should do.”
Neither side claimed victory after Superior Court Judge Robert T. Lougy handed down his long-awaited opinion on Friday, more than five years after nonprofits including LAN and the state NAACP conference sued the state, contending public schools are unconstitutionally segregated.
While finding New Jersey has a responsibility to address segregation, Lougy’s 99-page ruling did not offer clear guidance on how to proceed. The plaintiffs, Robles said, will meet this week to determine next steps.
Michael Symons, a spokesperson for the state attorney general’s office, said state officials are continuing to review the judgment as well. Gov. Phil Murphy has repeatedly declined to comment on the lawsuit. The sides have 20 days from the ruling to file any appeals.
Lougy agreed with the plaintiffs that the state was showing an “attitude of helplessness in the face of what [is] perceived to be inevitable” and said that the decreasing number of white students in some schools only emphasizes policymakers' obligation to address racial imbalances.
But the judge turned down requests from both sides for summary judgments. He declined to order that the state stop assigning students to public schools based on where they live or to come up with a replacement system within the next few months. He also denied the state’s request that it dismiss the lawsuit entirely because of its argument that “any disproportionality in a small number of school districts cannot and does not establish a statewide constitutional violation.”
Lougy also dismissed arguments that the state must address economic segregation in schools were unconstitutionally segregated economically — saying poverty didn’t entitle students to equal protection, though race and ethnicity could. And he said the plaintiffs fell short of proving charter schools were making segregation worse by luring students away from the public school districts where they reside, reducing diversity in the public systems.
“We would have liked to see a stronger win – or to tell us to go to arbitration. Give us something we can work with,” Robles said.”
Lougy found the plaintiffs hadn’t proved the degree of school segregation in New Jersey is “constitutionally repugnant” on a statewide level. But he found their arguments couldn’t be tossed out simply because they only showed 6% of schools were “racially isolated,” with a single race making up more than 90% of the student body.
“That shortcoming may be a question of scale,” Lougy wrote. And a granular analysis might find that in some districts, students are being denied a constitutional right to education in a diverse environment, he wrote.
The judge wrote New Jersey’s borders between communities aren’t “impermeable in the fight against segregation” and that the state commissioner of education already has the ability to order arrangements that cross district lines. He also noted the state Supreme Court hasn’t established a specific threshold for a racial makeup that would be unconstitutional, even though it’s taken action in the past to direct the commissioner to correct racial imbalances.
“It's almost like the judge was noncommittal on a bunch of issues,” Robles said.
Robles found the state’s residency requirement was “not out of the woods,” and that the tradition of home rule in New Jersey isn’t absolute.
“As the Supreme Court has emphasized on several occasions, home rule and neighborhood schools are not set in stone. They remain viable as long as they serve public policy; to the extent that they protect and prolong racial segregation, they are anathema to public policy,” he wrote.
Lougy issued his decision nearly a year-and-a-half after oral arguments last year.
The lawsuit, first filed in 2018 by several nonprofits including the NAACP New Jersey State Conference, relied in part on data from a 2017 UCLA Civil Rights Project study that found New Jersey was the sixth-most segregated state for Black students in the U.S. and the seventh-most segregated for Latinos.
The report said nearly half the state’s Black and Latino students went to schools that were at least 90% non-white in 2016.
An analysis by NJ Spotlight News this year found the state is growing more diverse overall, which has resulted in fewer districts that are predominantly Black or predominantly white. But the analysis also found the number of districts where 80% or more of students are Hispanic more than tripled in the last two decades.
Additionally, about 4 in 10 schools in New Jersey had some level of segregation, defined as being made up of at least 80% of one race or ethnicity or a combination of nonwhite groups, Spotlight found.
Robles said he’s concerned about the lengthy course the lawsuit has taken — and the possibility of years ahead without a resolution or a robust statewide policy discussion on segregation.
“There's multiple layers to this ruling that we probably haven't processed yet,” he said. “And how long do we have to wait for real change in one of the most diverse states in the nation?”
The State of Segregation: Free event Oct. 26
Join journalists, researchers and Newark community members on Thursday, Oct. 26 at the Newark Public Library for "The State of Segregation," a comprehensive discussion about the pervasiveness of segregation in New Jersey's schools, and how it affects the student experience.
The event is free, but registration is required. Doors open at 5:15 p.m.
Tagged
education
new jersey
Politics
Louis C. Hochman
After about two decades in (mostly) New Jersey-focused commercial print, digital and digital-but-radio-adjacent news, Lou stumbled into member-supported news in early 2021, as the editor and CEO of Montclair Local. There, he (hopes he) expanded enterprise, brought more sophistication to digital storytelling and moved the nonprofit newsroom closer to long-term financial sustainability. He helped lead the Local to its fourth consecutive General Excellence award from the New Jersey Press Association — the NJPA's highest honor with judges noting the paper's work to strip away layers of government opacity, to hold power to account, to make news accessible for more members of the community, to share the stories and concerns of more facets of the community and to tell compelling stories across multiple media. He's excited to continue the same ethic — news as a public service — at NYPR as the New Jersey and suburbs editor, drawing on the extraordinary talents of reporters including Karen Yi and Nancy Solomon. Lou lives in Philly (that commute!) with his partner and their two cats, about whom and about which he speaks incessantly.
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Karen Yi
Karen Yi covers homelessness and poverty. She joined the WNYC and Gothamist newsroom in 2020. Before that, Karen covered Newark for the Star-Ledger and spent almost a decade working for newspapers in New Jersey and Florida. She grew up in Miami and has a dog named Cashew. Got a tip? Email [email protected] or Signal 917-589-1460.
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Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations
Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations
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