by Charles Toutant, Law.com
A suit filed in New Jersey state court on Thursday asks the commissioner of education to declare racial segregation in schools unconstitutional and to develop a plan to integrate the state’s classrooms.
Filed on the anniversary of the U.S. Supreme Court’s landmark 1954 school segregation case, Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, the New Jersey suit seeks to stop the assignment of students, including those attending charter schools, solely on the basis of attendance boundaries. The suit seeks 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, one that would end racial segregation.