Latino Action Network v. State of New Jersey

Amicus brief highlighting the state constitutional implications and systemic harms of New Jersey’s pervasive school segregation problem, as well as the practical and lawful remedies available.

It’s been well documented that students throughout New Jersey attend racially segregated schools and have for decades. In 2018, Plaintiffs filed suit seeking a ruling that the State Defendants’ failure to act to desegregate its schools violates the State Constitution. In 2019, Plaintiffs moved for summary judgment on liability, and the Defendants cross-moved. In 2023, the trial court denied Plaintiffs’ and most of the Defendants’ motions, limiting Plaintiffs’ claims and their ability to prove their case. The ACLU of New Jersey, alongside co-amici Brown’s Promise and the Racial Equity in Education Law and Policy Clinic of Georgetown University Law Center, filed a brief to address flawed conclusions in the trial court’s decision.

First, the trial court held that Plaintiffs had failed to demonstrate unconstitutionality “across all districts, across all regions.” This requirement reflects a misunderstanding of Plaintiffs’ claims and the applicable law. Systemic constitutional violations may turn on proof that certain injuries are representative of structural inadequacies; they need not follow from evidence that every component of the system is independently unconstitutional. Plaintiffs here proved what the law requires: that profound inter-district racial segregation exists among New Jersey schools; that these conditions are pervasive, interconnected, and the foreseeable result of statewide policy choices; and that only state-level actors have the power to remedy them. In demanding proof of segregation in every district, the trial court imposed a standard untethered from precedent and hostile to constitutional enforcement.

The brief also catalogs cases in which state supreme courts have found that racial imbalance in public schools violate state constitutional guarantees of adequate education and equal protection. Finally, the brief charts programs implemented across the country to address segregation in public schools to counter misleading claims that practical solutions and remedies consistent with federal constitutional law are unavailable.