N.J. Supreme Court to Weigh School Funding Cuts Amid Impasse (NJ)
January 5, 2011
The New Jersey Supreme Court, already embroiled in a battle with Governor Chris Christie over its membership, will hear arguments today on whether the governor unlawfully cut $1 billion in school aid during a budget crisis.
The case turns on whether Christie, a Republican, and the Democrat-controlled Legislature violated a 2009 ruling by the Trenton-based court to provide adequate funding to the state’s 31 poorest school districts. Christie and lawmakers imposed the 13 percent cutback to help close a $10.7 billion budget deficit.
While Christie and lawmakers agreed on the cuts, they’re locked in a political standoff over who will serve on the seven- member supreme court. Last year, Christie refused to reappoint Justice John Wallace, the only black member. That prompted the Senate president to block Christie’s nominee. The chief justice then named a temporary replacement for Wallace, leading another justice to refuse to vote when the stand-in member is involved.
“You have all three branches of government in this politicization of the court, and that really is unprecedented,” said Joseph Marbach, a political scientist and the provost at LaSalle University in Philadelphia. “But I don’t suspect it will affect how the court rules on school funding.”
Christie’s refusal to reappoint Wallace, a Democrat, upended a bipartisan tradition in New Jersey that began after the state’s current Constitution was adopted in 1947. Since then, no governor has failed to reappoint a justice or made an appointment that put more than four members of one par ty on the court — even if it meant Democrats appointing Republicans and vice versa.
The court now includes three Democrats, two Republicans, an independent and the temporary judge, Edwin Stern.
School Funding Case
The school funding case involves a law signed in January 2008 that gave extra money to the poorest districts, following a series of cases spanning three decades known as Abbott v. Burke. In 2009, the supreme court ruled that the new law was constitutional and fairly replaced the previous system.
Now, the Education Law Center, a Newark-based nonprofit that advocates for the districts, wants the court to rule that the cutbacks enacted for the 2010-11 school year violate its 2009 ruling on the funding formula.
The center argued in court papers that the cutbacks “strike at the very heart of this court’s decision upholding the formula’s constitutionality.” The aid helps districts such as Camden, Jersey City, and Newark, the state’s largest city, which is facing a budget crisis that forced Mayor Cory Booker to fire police officers.
No Tax Increase
Christie, who passed the budget in his first year without a tax increase, said in an interview that he’s confident the court will rule his way.
“I’m not going to get into hypotheticals of what the court might do or not do,” Christie, 48, said yesterday. “I think that everything we did in the budget was fiscally necessary and completely constitutional, and I’m confident the court will find that as well.”
Ronald Chen, the vice dean of Rutgers School of Law-Newark, said in an interview that “the court will probably try to find some way to accommodate the reality that the state is in a fiscal crisis right now, with its ultimate requirement to enforce the state’s constitution.”
Christie has pledged to overhaul the supreme court, which he has said is too “activist.” He started in May by refusing to reappoint Wallace after his initial seven-year term. Supreme court judges receive tenure following reappointment, then face mandatory retirement at the age of 70.
Leading Liberal
New Jersey’s highest court once included William J. Brennan Jr., later a leading liberal on the U.S. Supreme Court. The court in Trenton developed a liberal reputation through such cases as the so-called Mount Laurel rulings, which held that zoning that resulted in exclusion of minorities was the same as race discrimination.
In another case, the court ruled that the Boy Scouts of America illegally expelled a member who said he was a homosexual. That decision was reversed by the U.S. Supreme Court.
When Christie proposed a Republican corporate lawyer, Anne Murray Patterson, 51, to replace Wallace, Senate President Stephen Sweeney struck back. He refused to hold confirmation hearings on Patterson, effectively blocking her appointment.
Sweeney said the stalemate doesn’t reflect on Patterson’s qualifications. Rather, he said, it’s a protest against Christie’s tactics.
‘Conservative Movement’
“It’s about the independence of the court,” Sweeney, a leader of the International Association of Ironworkers, said in an interview yesterday. “He chose to monkey around with that to curry favor with the national conservative movement.”
Chief Justice Stuart Rabner, 5 0, stepped in and named Stern, 69, to replace Wallace, setting off a protest last month by Justice Roberto Rivera-Soto, 57, a Republican.
In a ruling last month on a case, Rivera-Soto said the constitution only permitted Rabner to make a temporary appointment to reach a quorum of five judges. He refused to rule on cases in which Stern participated. He said his colleagues were trying to “cajole, badger or threaten submission to the majority’s view of a constitutional question.”
Some Democratic lawmakers called on Rivera-Soto to resign. Sweeney said Rivera-Soto “created a no-show job for himself” with his decision to abstain.
Rivera-Soto was nominated to the court by Democratic Governor James McGreevey and began his term in September 2004. He is the first Hispanic-American to serve on the court. On Jan. 3, Rivera-Soto said he won’t seek a reappointment when his seven-year term expires in September and will return to private life.
‘Political Uncertainty’
“There’s always the danger of a perception that the current political uncertainty over the political composition of the court might cast a cloud over its credibility,” Chen said. “I’m worried about it.”
The seven-year term of Justice Helen Hoens, a Republican, will expire before Christie’s four-year term ends. Justice Virginia Long, a tenured Democrat, must retire when she turns 70 in March 2012.
Chen said the tradition of governors reappointing judges appointed by their predecessors, and of the state Senate giving quick consideration to nominees, has ended.
The impasse has hurt the perception of the court, said Mark Alexander, a law professor at Seton Hall University Law School.< ;br />
“This definitely makes people think that politics is everywhere, including in the courts, and that’s not good,” Alexander said. “The courts deserve better than what’s happening right now.”