Piscataway v. Taxman

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Piscataway School Board v. Taxman, 91 F.3d 1547 (3d Cir. 1996) was a racial discrimination case begun in 1989. The school board of Piscataway, New Jersey needed to eliminate a teaching position from a high schools Business Education department. Under New Jersey state law, tenured teachers have to be laid off in reverse order of seniority. The newest tenured teachers, Sharon Taxman and Debra Williams, white and African-American respectively, had started working at the school on the same day. In the interest of maintaining racial diversity (Williams was the only black teacher in the department, and 50% of the students were minorities), the school board voted to lay off Taxman. Taxman complained to the EEOC, saying that the board had violated Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

The Third U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in favor of Taxman. The school board appealed to the United States Supreme Court and a hearing was scheduled for January 1998, but civil rights groups, fearing that the case could lead to the prohibition of affirmative action, provided money for the board to settle the case out of court, so the case was never heard. Deval Patrick (Clinton Administration Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights) encouraged the Justice Department, which had already agreed to support Taxman, to switch sides, citing that the Civil Rights Act of 1964 had not been violated. Taxman eventually dropped her suit after Jesse Jackson and others raised upwards of $400,000 to cover a settlement.