Majority opinion written by Associate Justice Jaynee LaVecchia says Christie's cuts to education spending have been 'consequential and significant' and must be rolled back
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TRENTON — In a widely anticipated decision, the New Jersey Supreme Court ordered the state to spend an additional $500 million on public education in poor districts next year.
The complex decision does not boost funding statewide, as education advocates had requested, and may avoid creating a gaping hole in a proposed $29.4 billion budget. The 3-2 ruling, however, revealed sharp disagreements among the five justices who heard the case and issued a total of four opinions.
Justices could have ordered up to $1.7 billion in additional statewide education spending. Today's ruling gives Gov. Chris Christie and lawmakers some room to maneuver as they work to balance the state's budget by July 1.
Christie had argued that the state's current fiscal woes made it impossible to spend the full amount required by the funding formula approved by the court in 2009.
Still, the majority opinion written by Associate Justice Jaynee LaVecchia said Christie's cuts to education spending have been "consequential and significant" and must be rolled back. She also wrote that the state, which had promised to fully fund the formula, cannot back away from it when funding poor districts.
"Indeed, our holding in (the 2009 case) was a good-faith demonstration of deference to the political branches’ authority, not an invitation to retreat from the hard-won progress that our state had made toward guaranteeing the children in Abbott districts the promise of educational opportunity," she wrote. "Regrettably, the state did not honor its commitment."
The court's decision stems from a legal battle over whether Christie’s cuts to education spending last year were unconstitutional.
The Newark-based Education Law Center, which brought the lawsuit against the state, argued that the cuts violated the state's constitutional requirement to provide a "thorough and efficient system of free public schools." In response, the Christie administration said the state doesn't have enough money to spend more on schools and argued that the court should not inject itself into the budget-making process. Conservatives including Christie have fiercely criticized the court's actions over the years, saying justices have mistakenly treated more funding as a cure-all for poor districts' education woes.
The court’s decision caps the latest round in the historic and controversial school funding case Abbott v. Burke, which has routed billions of dollars to the state’s neediest students over the past three decades in an effort to equalize spending between New Jersey’s poorest and wealthiest districts.
Because the original lawsuit, filed in 1981, was brought on behalf of only 31 poor school districts, the court narrowed its ruling to affect only the so-called "Abbott districts."
"Although we are sympathetic to the difficulties that the state’s failure to abide by its statutory formula for education funding has caused to children in districts statewide, we are limited in our ability to order relief in this matter," LaVecchia wrote. She added, "The Abbott litigation has proceeded with two distinct adversarial parties: on the one side, New Jersey schoolchildren who attend schools in certain constitutionally deficient districts; and on the other side, the state, who has defended its funding schemes as consistent with the thorough and efficient clause."
The decision released today was apparently influenced by a March report written by Superior Court Judge Peter Doyne, who was appointed by the court as a "special master" to study the issue and issue recommendations.
Doyne concluded that funding cuts disproportionately harmed at-risk students in poor districts, breaking the state's constitutional obligations.
"Despite the state's best efforts, the reductions fell more heavily upon our high-risk districts and the children educated within those districts," Doyne wrote.
In a concurring opinion, Associate Justice Barry Albin, who has been the target of much of Christie's criticism surrounding this case, argued that funding should be increased in 205 school districts attended by 72 percent of the state's at-risk students.
"Those school districts were constitutionally shortchanged in the amount of $972,930,819 for FY 2011 under (the school funding formula)," Albin wrote. "We cannot undo the past for the affected at-risk children; we can remediate their future."
Associate Justice Roberto Rivera-Soto dissented, arguing that there weren't enough affirmative votes to require the state to follow the order. Joined by Associate Justice Helen Hoens, he argued that, as a matter of practice, four affirmative votes are needed to grant a motion.
"Although unwritten, that practice is borne out by the relevant empirical data," Rivera-Soto wrote.
He said the only cases decided by a 3-2 decision were temporary injunctions, not permanent rulings. Because of the gravity of the case, he wrote, "it is simply incomprehensible that any impartial observer would give them equal dignity."
Chief Justice Stuart Rabner and Associate Justice Virginia Long had recused themselves from the case, leaving five justices.
LaVecchia, in the majority decision, rejected the arguments made by Rivera-Soto and Hoens.
"The dissenters’ transparent attempt at nullification of a decision with which they disagree fails on every factual and legal basis," she wrote.
In another dissenting opinion, Hoens argued that the court was outside of its power to force more spending.
"Nothing in this record supports any of those essential findings," she wrote. Hoens was joined by Rivera-Soto in the dissent.
Staff writers Jessica Calefati, Ginger Gibson and Jeanette Rundquist contributed to this report.
Editor's note: An earlier version of this story inaccurately represented Associate Justice Barry Albin's opinion on which districts should receive more state funding.