Review of Piscataway Affirmative Action Case

The case involving teachers Sharon Taxman and Debra Williams is neither an affirmative action case nor truly about workplace diversity. It is a case about a school board's inability to make a tough personnel choice and an example of the abuse of the affirmative action law's intentions. It is a case that evolved into a political dispute between divergent ideologies in successive Presidential administrations and settled in a way that was, while not illegal, unseemly and of questionable ethics.

First and foremost, this was not an affirmative action case. The idea of affirmative action is to make sure that all get the same opportunities and compensation, but not to take those opportunities away from anyone. The Piscataway School Board cowardly hid behind this law to make budget cuts. In doing so, they abused its intent. Courts upheld in United States v. Paradise (1986) that affirmative action should be used to eliminate past discrimination , which had not occurred in Piscataway (Pynes 2009). In fact, Piscataway has a long history of multiculturalism, the school exceeded state-mandated goals for minority representation on staff (Gallagher 1995) , and according to Jerry Mahoney, the school board president in 1997, "Every neighborhood is integrated" (Pulley 1997).

This also points out that the case was not truly about workplace diversity either. Yes, there were not enough minority teachers in the business department; however, the school was already beyond state goals (Gallagher 1995). The school board hadn't received complaints about the diversity of the staff. But at his deposition, then-School Board President Theodore Kruse seems to argue that he has a moral imperative to make sure students from an already diverse and integrated community, a town with a multicultural Fourth of July Parade, needs to have more diversity in the classrooms. "In my own personal perspective I believe by retaining Mrs. Williams it was sending a very clear message that we feel that our staff should be culturally diverse... it's important that our school district encourage awareness and acceptance and tolerance and, therefore, I personally think it's important that our staff reflect that too" (Mansmann 1995) . But Ms. Taxman's lawyer, Stephen Klausner, pointed out to the 3rd Circuit Court, "the percentage of black teachers employed by the Piscataway township Board of Education is approximately twice that of the applicable qualified labor pool" (Hentoff 1995) . There was no need for diversity here. The Board accepted a recommendation to reduce staff, which it needed to do for budgetary reasons – no other reason was given (Mansmann).

Pynes also points out that voluntary affirmative action plans must meet four criteria, the fourth one being, "the plan does not require the discharge of white workers" (Pynes). Voluntary affirmative action plans aren't be used to displace non-minority workers. In a previous case, Wygant v. Jackson Board of Education (1986), Supreme Court Justice Lewis Powell said that giving preference to "minority role models" to overcome discrimination in society was not a "compelling reason" to lay off non-minorities. He went on to state that applying for a job and not getting it because of affirmative action is "much less burdensome than losing one you already have for the same reason" (Taylor Jr. 1986) . The firing was quite burdensome on Ms. Taxman as she was about to begin paying for her son's college education.

Republicans and Democrats had been battling over the idea of affirmative action programs for years prior to this case. Because this was perceived as a weak argument for affirmative action, the EEOC, then under the Bush Administration, saw the case as an opportunity to dismantle the affirmative action laws, if not eradicate the programs. So in 1991, the United States sued the school board for Ms. Taxman's job and back wages. As the school board continued to appeal the case into the Clinton Administration, new Assistant Attorney General Deval Patrick, with the support of the President yet the opposition of the Justice Department, argued to switch sides in the politically charged case and support the school board, saying that the Justice Department under the previous administration had erred in its interpretation of the