Murphy team trying to 'stall' on NJ school segregation resolution, plaintiffs argue

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The Murphy administration is using delay tactics in a seven-year-old school segregation lawsuit and stalling its resolution, a group of plaintiffs allege in their latest court filing — potentially upping the ante in a dispute that so far had not strayed from purely legal arguments.

At the heart of the lawsuit are the state's home rule laws, which have children attend school according to their ZIP code.

Attorneys for the plaintiffs, Latino Action Network and the NAACP, now accuse the state of trying to bide time until a new administration takes over in Trenton. Gov. Phil Murphy is in the final year of his last term, and a new governor will be elected in November 2025.

The plaintiffs accuse the Murphy administration of mischaracterizing the trial court's ruling — that the state's public schools suffer from unofficial segregation — to avoid a politically prickly resolution that will require revisiting the state's neighborhood-based school systems.

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Murphy and the state Attorney General's Office have generally been tight-lipped about the case, sticking to their position of not commenting on ongoing lawsuits.

"Regrettably, the state’s apparent goal in this litigation is to continue to stall its resolution so that the issue becomes the responsibility of the next administration," argues a brief filed by plaintiff's attorneys from the Newark law firm Gibbons P.C.; the Hackensack law firm Pashman Stein Walder Haiden P.C.; and the Education Law Center, a Newark-based advocacy group.

A spokesperson for the Attorney General's Office said it had no comment.

The 2018 lawsuit Latino Action Network v. State of New Jersey, filed by a coalition of advocates, alleges that New Jersey's public schools are segregated, resulting in disproportionate impacts on Black and Latino students in low-income areas that have low Asian and White populations.

At the core of the lawsuit is its challenge to the state's residency statute, which assigns students to schools based on the municipality where they reside.

The plaintiffs want to make it easier for children to attend schools outside their districts and expand their educational options by “relaxing” the residency statute, said attorney Lawrence Lustberg, of Newark-based law firm Gibbons P.C.

Attorneys for the plaintiffs asked an appellate court to issue a ruling in their favor in April, instead of having a long trial. The Murphy administration moved to block the motion.

The state's motion to block a hearing in the appeals court is proof enough that a hearing is needed, attorneys for Latino Action Network and the NAACP said in a response filed June 13, a few months after mediation efforts failed to bring the parties to an agreement.

New Jersey not only was stalling, it also "grossly mischaracterized" the trial court ruling by denying the problem of "racial imbalance" in its schools, which the state, "exclusively, has the obligation and power to remediate," the plaintiffs' June 13 brief said.

The parties have also been wrangling over the courts separating the state's liability from any remedy and how that could play out.

2023 ruling found NJ schools are segregated

A nuanced October 2023 ruling by Superior Court Judge Robert Lougy said New Jersey's schools are indeed segregated but that it did not amount to a statewide constitutional violation. That means the court agreed that segregation is a problem but was not ready to hold the state liable for finding a solution to it.

Potential solutions do not necessarily mean discarding New Jersey's long-standing system of assigning schools by neighborhood, Lustberg told NorthJersey.com. “We have proposed, in our complaint, a series of reforms that could reduce segregation without necessitating the wholesale repeal of the residency statute,” he said.

The goal is to make good school districts more accessible to students who are stuck in towns with failing schools by expanding interdistrict school choice programs and creating magnet schools that attract students based on curricula and special academic offerings.

Lougy did not hold the state liable for segregation because the situation resulted from implementing its home rule statute.

Other plaintiffs in the case are the Latino Coalition, the United Methodist Church of Greater New Jersey, the Urban League of Essex County, two Jersey Shore school districts and individual families. They sued the state Education Department in 2018 on grounds that public schools in New Jersey are unofficially, or de facto, segregated.

School choice programs

Various groups have jumped into the fray and filed amicus briefs as the case has made its way through the courts. The latest to ask the courts for permission to join the lawsuit is New Jersey Policy Institute, a conservative-leaning nonprofit led by Wells Winegar, a former official in the administration of Gov. Chris Christie.

The Murphy administration has filed to block it.

The group has asked the courts for permission to join the case and promote the state's Interdistrict Public School Choice programs as a potential solution. The little-known choice program has 119 participating districts.

Parents can apply for their children, residing anywhere in the state, to attend school in those districts. Winegar asked for additional funding in the state's 2026 fiscal year budget for the choice program in budget testimony in March, citing long waiting lists in some districts.

The appellate courts have yet to make a determination on all these matters — the plaintiffs' request to hear the case on appeal, the New Jersey Policy Institute request to join the lawsuit, and the Murphy administration's move to block them.

The New Jersey Public Charter Schools Association, another key player in the state's K-12 landscape, joined the lawsuit earlier and won its challenge to the claim by Latino Action Network and the NAACP that charter schools cause segregation.

Lougy ruled that charter schools, which enroll large numbers of Black, Hispanic and low-income students from outside district boundaries, contribute to segregation, but do not make it worse.