Talks between the state and a coalition of advocates and families who sued, arguing that New Jersey is failing to address the state’s segregated public school system, could carry on through at least April after it looked like mediation was nearing its end last month.
The most recent court filing from the plaintiffs’ lead attorney, Lawrence Lustberg, asked for an extension through April 15 to continue mediation. The filing came just a week after Lustberg asked for a one-month extension to Feb. 14, writing, “We believe this will be our last extension request.” If mediation was not done by mid-February, he wrote, the parties would likely return the matter to the court.
Now, mediation is carrying on, with potential for its outcome to bring about significant changes to New Jersey schools, considered among the most racially segregated in the country. Some potential solutions include regionalizing schools and expanding interdistrict and other school-choice models.
The new April deadline means the end of mediation is inching closer to the end of Gov. Phil Murphy’s time as governor. A new governor will take office in January 2026 and could be tasked with signing off on or implementing desegregation efforts in the state’s schools.
The national context
There is also a new presidential administration hostile to diversity and inclusion efforts. President Donald Trump issued an executive order that seeks to eliminate funding for entities that support diversity, equity and inclusion programs and activities. Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Connecticut) said at a confirmation hearing for Trump’s nominee for education secretary on Thursday that this has left schools scrambling because they don’t know if their federal funding will be compromised.
Both sides previously said mediation had the potential to resolve the matter more quickly than litigation, saving the state time and money. The case had already lasted five years before entering mediation.
Linda McMahon, Trump’s nominees for secretary of education, said during her confirmation hearing Thursday that DEI programs have not been successful in promoting inclusion.
“We are getting back to more segregating of our schools instead of having more inclusion in our schools under DEI programs that say Black students need separate graduation ceremonies, or Hispanics need separate ceremonies,” McMahon said. “We are not achieving what we wanted to achieve with inclusion.”
Status reports in the New Jersey segregation case are due to the court on Feb. 18 and March 17 indicating that all parties are participating in talks in good faith and continuing to make progress. If the two sides cannot come to an agreement, the matter will return to the court, which could mean lengthy and expensive litigation.
Where the case began
Lawyers for Murphy’s administration and the plaintiffs in Latino Action Network v. New Jersey entered mediated talks to come up with an agreement to address long-standing segregation in New Jersey schools in November 2023. Both sides previously said mediation had the potential to resolve the matter more quickly than litigation, saving the state time and money. The case had already lasted five years before entering mediation.
The sweeping lawsuit was initiated in 2018 by the Latino Action Network, the NAACP and several students and families. It challenges the tradition of neighborhood schools in New Jersey, arguing that these have exacerbated racial segregation in the state’s nearly 600 school districts.
New Jersey is the seventh-most segregated state for Black and Latino students, according to an analysis by the Civil Rights Project at the University of California, Los Angeles.
State Superior Court Judge Robert Lougy ruled in October 2023 that the state has failed to ensure children’s constitutional rights to an education free of racial segregation. The ruling did not say what the state must do where school segregation exists.
Charles Payne, a Rutgers University-Newark professor who studies school segregation, said the ongoing legal process has potential to bring about positive outcomes for students by shining “an aggressive light on the disparities” in New Jersey schools.
“Forcing people to think about the things we can do, as opposed to the things that are really hard to do and how we can get those things done soon, a court decision could be helpful for that,” he said.
Long-standing issue
School segregation has been a long-standing issue in the state, with many legal challenges to it over the last several decades. New Jersey has some of the most segregated schools in the country, in large part due to the requirement that students attend schools where they live. This has put attention on remedies that would change which schools students attend, such as interdistrict school choice, magnet schools and charter schools.
The state already has an interdistrict public-school-choice program that allows “choice districts” to admit students who don’t reside in the district without cost to their families. The state Department of Education must approve the choice districts; there are 119 choice districts for the 2025-2026 school year. New Jersey also has 85 charter schools and a smaller number of county-run magnet schools.
New Jersey is the seventh-most segregated state for Black and Latino students, according to an analysis by the Civil Rights Project at the University of California, Los Angeles. The state has more school districts than many other states with similar population sizes, which means some of them serve very small communities with minimal socioeconomic and racial diversity.
‘The patterns of segregation in New Jersey tend to concentrate students who have the highest needs….’ — Professor Charles Payne, Rutgers University
Segregated schools tend to produce lower educational outcomes, in turn limiting lifetime opportunities, for students who attend high-poverty, high-minority schools, according to a report on New Jersey from the Civil Rights Project. A growing body of research is showing that desegregated schools are linked to benefits for all children.
In his research, Payne found that racial segregation in New Jersey schools is consistently associated with poor educational environments.
“The patterns of segregation in New Jersey tend to concentrate students who have the highest needs. So in the same buildings where you find the highest numbers of students of color, you also find the highest numbers of low-income students and the highest numbers of students who are language learners,” Payne said.
If the sides come to an agreement, Murphy and the Legislature would need to sign off on the way forward, paths that could include appropriating state funds and passing legislation.
