Court Plans Debate On Affirmative Action Stakes High In Case Of Fired New Jersey Teacher

The Supreme Court ended its term Friday by laying the groundwork for a major debate over affirmative action when its next term begins, in October.

The justices agreed to decide whether a New Jersey school district violated the civil rights of a white high school teacher when it dismissed her in order to preserve the job of a black teacher with equal seniority. The school board appealed a federal appeals court’s ruling that the action violated the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

The case, from Piscataway Township, N.J., has been a lightning rod for criticism of affirmative action for seven years. The Bush administration made the case a cause celebre when it successfully sued the school board on behalf of the dismissed white teacher, Sharon Taxman.

The Clinton administration then changed the federal government’s position, initially taking the side of the school board and the black teacher, Debra Williams, over considerable internal dissent. More recently the administration concentrated its efforts on trying to dissuade the Supreme Court from hearing the case, which could well be a vehicle for the court’s majority to cut back even more sharply on affirmative action than it has in other rulings over the last few years.

Now that the justices have disregarded the administration’s advice to pass this case by as an atypical one whose circumstances are very unlikely to recur, the White House is in an uncomfortable place: It must develop a legal position on a highly polarizing issue in a high-profile case at the same time the president is trying to conduct a peaceful, nonpolarizing national dialogue on race.

The stakes in Piscataway Township Board of Education vs. Taxman, No. 96-679, are extremely high, because the case concerns the application of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, the basic federal law that bars discrimination in employment on the basis of race, sex or religion.

In the brief it filed with the court earlier this month, the administration suggested that the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, in Philadelphia, was in fact correct to conclude that the white teacher’s dismissal, for the sole reason of race, was a violation of Title VII.

But the administration also said the 3rd Circuit’s very broadly worded opinion was incorrect in interpreting Title VII as essentially barring any use of affirmative action that is not intended as a remedy for specific past incidents of discrimination.

A major question for the Supreme Court in this case will be whether creating or maintaining diversity in a work force is ever acceptable under Title VII as a rationale for affirmative action.

The two teachers, who began work on the same day, were the two junior members of the 10-person faculty of a high school business department that was ordered in 1989 to reduce its faculty by one. For the first and only time, the school board invoked its affirmative action policy in a layoff situation, rather than tossing a coin or making another kind of random selection as it had in the past.

Taxman in fact was rehired in 1992, before any courts ruled in the case. At stake for her is the $144,000 in back pay and other monetary relief she won in the lower courts. The broader stakes are much higher.