Hundreds of thousands of Black and Latino students in New Jersey attend schools where they are racially isolated and surrounded by poverty, despite strong state laws forbidding school segregation. One of the nation’s most segregated states, New Jersey has allowed the problem to fester for decades — now, it must fix it.
That was the argument made in court Thursday by plaintiffs who filed a historic lawsuit nearly four years ago arguing that schools across the entire state are unlawfully segregated — the first lawsuit in New Jersey, and one of few nationally, to attack the issue in such sweeping fashion. If the challenge is successful, it could lead to fundamental changes to New Jersey’s school system and large-scale desegregation efforts not seen in the U.S. for decades.
“I truly feel the burden of history,” said Lawrence Lustberg, attorney for the plaintiffs, at the start of oral arguments. It is time, he later said, “when we in New Jersey finally begin to acknowledge a problem that we have seen so clearly for decades, but really have done so little about.”
Read more from Chalkbeat.
