by Robin Roenker
School segregation—the separation of students using certain characteristics such as race or ethnicity—has been illegal in public schools in the United States for more than 70 years as a result of the 1954 landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision in Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas.
The Brown decision determined the previous precedent of “separate but equal” facilities for Black students was unconstitutional. The Court’s unanimous opinion stated, “We conclude that in the field of public education the doctrine of ‘separate but equal’ has no place. Separate educational facilities are inherently unequal.”
Today, across the country, more than a third of students—approximately 18.5 million—attend a predominantly same-race or same-ethnicity school, according to a 2022 report published by the U.S. Government Accountability Office. The report also indicated that 14% of U.S. students attend schools where nearly all of the student body is of a single race or ethnicity.
Segregation in New Jersey
A 2017 report titled New Jersey’s Segregated Schools: Trends and Paths Forward, compiled by the Civil Rights Project at the University of California, Los Angeles, determined that New Jersey’s public school system is highly segregated. In fact, the report stated that New Jersey ranked sixth highest among all U.S. states for the segregation of Black students and seventh highest nationally for segregation of Latino students. New Jersey’s school system is among the most segregated in the nation—more so than Southern states like Alabama or Mississippi.
The report noted that like many states, New Jersey assigns students to a school district based on their home address. As a result of these residency laws, neighborhoods that are mostly white or mostly Black or Latino feed into schools that end up having those same racial makeups, unless intentional steps are taken to integrate them.
Lawsuit brought in New Jersey
The Civil Rights Project report prompted a 2018 lawsuit against the state of New Jersey brought by a collection of advocacy groups and parents led by the Latino Action Network and the NAACP. The suit alleges that New Jersey’s public school assignment policies lead to de facto segregation, which is defined as segregation that is caused by fact or practice, rather than by law. Segregation mandated by law and enforced by the government is referred to as de jure segregation, which is the type of segregation that the 1954 Brown ruling outlawed.
The New Jersey case, known as Latino Action Network v. the State of New Jersey, argues that by requiring school attendance based on residential location, New Jersey is denying students access to a desegregated education. The plaintiffs in the lawsuit believe that the state’s school assignment practices violate the New Jersey State Constitution, which expressly prohibits racially segregated schools. The lawsuit suggests remedies to correct the problem, including the creation of magnet schools that draw from multiple towns, and municipal tax incentives to create more diverse schools.
“What the plaintiffs in this case are seeking is essentially declaring the whole state to be in violation of the New Jersey State Constitution’s requirement for a ‘thorough and efficient system of public schools’ and its equal protection clause,” explains David Rubin, a New Jersey lawyer who specializes in education law and works with many school districts in the state. “As a result, they are asking a judge to throw out essentially our entire statewide system of residence-based enrollment.”
The lawsuit cites statistics showing the number of New Jersey public school students attending a school that is 99% nonwhite increased from 93,614 students in the 2010-2011 school year to 107,322 in the 2016-2017 school year. The lawsuit states that New Jersey’s educational policies disproportionately hurt Black and Latino students, but at the same time, they argue the current policies also negatively impact white students by preventing them from accessing diverse classroom interactions.
“The promise of Brown is not being realized in New Jersey,” Christian Estevez, one of the plaintiffs in the case, told The New York Times when the lawsuit was filed. “If you look at a lot of the issues we are having right now in our society, it has a lot to do with the fact that people don’t know each other, and don’t interact with each other, and this creates misunderstanding and animosity. And so, it’s important as a society, we think, that people be together, and that they learn side by side.”
Michael Alves, an educational consultant who helped design integration programs in many school districts, including Maplewood-South Orange and Montclair, told nj.com that the greatest benefit of desegregation is the “social wellbeing of the country.”
“I think the breeding ground for racism and prejudice is first isolation; it’s when people have no exposure to other people,” Alves said. “If the integration of our schools is something that is sustainable, that just becomes the way of life. These kids are able to learn about each other’s cultures and make friends that carry over into adulthood.”
In his book Children of the Dream: Why School Integration Works, Rucker C. Johnson, an economist and professor of public policy at the University of California, Berkeley, presented long-term data that showed “students who attended integrated and well-funded schools were more successful in life than those who did not—this holds true for children of all races.”
Lawsuit’s long road
After five years of litigation, in October 2023, New Jersey Superior Court Judge Robert Lougy released a pre-trial decision in the case. Both sides had asked for summary judgment after opening arguments concluded. A summary judgment is a legal process where a judge resolves a case without conducting a full trial.
In this case, the plaintiffs asked for the judge to rule that New Jersey’s schools are unconstitutionally segregated statewide, with remedies to be dealt with later. The state of New Jersey asked for the suit to be dismissed. Neither side prevailed.
In his 93-page order, Judge Lougy essentially denied both motions. He agreed that persistent racial imbalance exists in many New Jersey schools. However, he also determined that the plaintiffs in the case failed to prove that this imbalance equated to unconstitutional statewide segregation.
“Segregation is abhorrent to New Jersey public policy; de facto segregation is prevalent and persistent across the State,” Judge Lougy wrote in his decision. He also wrote that New Jersey is “obligated and empowered to minimize segregation,” but it has “intentionally failed” in its responsibility “to grant public school students the protection of state laws.” On the other hand, Judge Lougy also wrote that the plaintiffs in the case “fail to prove that the State’s entire educational system is unconstitutionally segregated” and the data they provided “does not demonstrate statewide unconstitutionality, across all districts, across all regions.”
Looking for a solution
The New Jersey court challenge has made national headlines, in part because New Jersey has long been seen as a proactive leader in school desegregation.
“The New Jersey Constitution has provided greater protections than the federal Constitution when it comes to the remedies courts have available for desegregation,” Rubin explains. “New Jersey has a long history, on a case-by-case basis, of stepping in to say that racial composition of a district is so out of balance that it’s depriving kids of a ‘thorough and efficient education,’ which is guaranteed by the state constitution. In those cases, the state has stepped in and ordered remedies to address that on a district level.”
So, why then, are schools in the Garden State more segregated than Alabama and Mississippi?
“One factor is the way the state has been divided into so many different school districts,” Halley Potter, a senior fellow at the Century Foundation, a think tank that studies school integration, told nj.com. “For a relatively small state, New Jersey has more than 600 districts. These small units of school decision-making and funding end up creating lines of segregation that divide students by race and by income, which have profound effects on their opportunities. And it’s very hard for students or dollars to cross those district lines.”
New Jersey’s population is approximately 9.5 million people. By comparison, Virginia has a population of nearly 8.7 million people and 129 school districts.
Where the case stands now
Following Judge Lougy’s decision, representatives for the plaintiffs and the State of New Jersey entered into more than 15 months of confidential negotiations. Both parties hoped, during these discussions, to come to a mutual agreement regarding steps to improve racial balance within New Jersey schools. This move marked the first time in the 70 years since Brown that a state voluntarily explored a statewide remedy to school-based segregation.
Advocates for reform openly called for changes that would allow some students to attend schools outside of their home district. Some proposed the addition of magnet programs with specialized school curricula—like a focus on math or the arts—able to draw students outside of their neighborhood schools, as cities like Minneapolis, Boston, Cincinnati and others have done.
In the past, other cities across the U.S. have also tried to ensure greater racial balance within their school systems by adopting school placement lottery systems, altering attendance zones, adding new schools or busing students from one area to another to achieve a more diverse student mix.
Despite both parties asking for extensions to continue negotiations, in February 2025 the closed-door mediation between the two groups failed, clearing the path for the lawsuit to head back to court.
“A court judgment is now the surest way to achieve a remedy for this unacceptable reality, in which hundreds of thousands of the state’s children attend school in segregated settings,” New Jersey plaintiff representative Lawrence Lustberg said in a statement. “This lawsuit seeks to secure the educational future of New Jersey children. They deserve nothing less.”
In a statement, Tyler Jones, a spokesperson for the Governor’s Office said, “While the parties return to litigation, the state remains steadfast in its efforts to provide the most robust educational opportunities possible for all students and continues to be open to reaching a mutual resolution of the matter.”
Discussion Questions
- How does it make you feel to know that New Jersey schools are more segregated than Alabama and Mississippi? Were you surprised? Why or why not?
- Do you agree or disagree that integrated schools are beneficial to all students no matter what their race is? Explain your answer.
Glossary Words
de facto—Latin phrase meaning “of fact.”
de jure—Latin phrase meaning “of law.”
desegregate — to eliminate racial segregation.
integrate—bring people or groups into equal participation in an institution (like a school).
plaintiff — person or persons bringing a civil lawsuit against another person or entity.
precedent — a legal case that will serve as a model for any future case dealing with the same issues.
This article originally appeared in the spring 2025 issue of Respect.