Settlement talks break down in New Jersey School Desegregation Case //NJ Law Journal

Settlement talks break down in New Jersey School Desegregation Case //NJ Law Journal

by Charles Toutant

Settlement negotiations have come to a halt in litigation seeking to end racial segregation in New Jersey’s public schools.

The case was stayed while the parties held settlement talks, but lawyers for both sides reported to the judge recently that progress has been elusive. The state indicates it’s willing to continue with negotiations, while the plaintiffs told the judge they cannot proceed in talks until they obtain a judgment on liability.

To that end, the plaintiffs asked the judge to vacate the stay and to require the state to file an answer to the complaint. The state asked the judge to hold a conference to determine how the matter should proceed.

The suit, filed in May 2018, asks for a declaration that public school segregation is unconstitutional, and seeks a plan to desegregate the state’s classrooms. The parties have been in settlement negotiations since September.

The plaintiffs include the Latino Action Network, the NAACP New Jersey State Conference, the Latino Coalition, the Urban League of Essex County, the United Methodist Church of Greater New Jersey, and nine school children who attend classes in segregated school districts. The suit seeks to end the assignment of students to schools solely on the basis of attendance boundaries, and to compel the Legislature, the state education commissioner and the Department of Education to come up with a new methodology for assigning students to schools.

After several months of negotiations, the plaintiffs said in a letter to Assignment Judge Mary Jacobson of Mercer County Superior Court Wednesday that “progress toward a solution to New Jersey’s school segregation problem has not been sufficient to justify continued discussions at this time.” Lawrence Lustberg of Gibbons in Newark wrote the letter.

The plaintiffs have concluded that, in order to resolve the case, whether through litigation or settlement, they require a judgment as to liability, Lustberg wrote. To that end, the plaintiffs asked the judge to end the stay, require the state to file an answer to the complaint, and set a status conference to set the course of future proceedings.

The lawyer for the state, Deputy Attorney General Joan Scatton, said in a letter to Jacobson that was docketed Wednesday that initial discussions with the plaintiffs, which started in September, mainly consisted of presentations from plaintiffs’ consultants about potential components of a remedial plan to settle issues in the suit.

At the most recent meeting of the parties, on Jan. 25, discussion focused on the current school funding structure, Scatton said in the letter to Jacobson. At the conclusion of that meeting, plaintiffs’ counsel announced that they would develop a proposed remedial plan that would serve as the basis of future negotiations, Scatton said. The plaintiffs indicated they would present the proposal in late February, and lawyers for the state agreed, Scatton said.

However, on Feb. 22, “plaintiffs’ counsel abruptly changed course. They informed defendants’ counsel, without explanation, that they needed a ‘reset,’ that they were dissatisfied with the progress of the settlement negotiations, and that talks could proceed only if the defendants admitted liability,” Scatton wrote.

“This change in position was both unanticipated and perplexing,” Scatton said in the letter.

Scatton told the judge the state, “despite this unexpected halt in negotiations,” remains committed to engaging in good-faith negotiations in an attempt to resolve the suit. “[T]he issues in this case are remarkably complex and the potential remedies could have far-reaching and unintended impacts and implications to the State’s system of public education,” Scatton wrote to the judge.

Lustberg declined to comment on the status of the case. A spokesman for the Attorney General’s Office declined to comment, saying the letter speaks for itself.

The suit claims the state “has been complicit in the creation and persistence of school segregation” by adopting policies that “deny an alarming number of Black and Latino students the benefits of a thorough and efficient education.” The suit also charges that charter schools in New Jersey are as segregated as “the most intensely segregated urban public schools,” if not more so.

The complaint laid blame for that segregation on the state education commissioner, who, according to the plaintiffs, fails to carry out his statutory duty to ensure that enrollment in charter schools r