Hinfey v. Matawan Regional Bd. of Educ.

• Decision Date: 21 January 1977
• Parties: Patricia HINFEY, Jacquelyn Walker for Monmouth County N.O.W., Complainants-Appellants, v. MATAWAN REGIONAL BOARD OF EDUCATION et al., Respondents.
• Court: New Jersey Superior Court — Appellate Division

Page 201

147 N.J.Super. 201

371 A.2d 78

Patricia HINFEY, Jacquelyn Walker for Monmouth County

N.O.W., Complainants-Appellants, v. MATAWAN REGIONAL BOARD OF EDUCATION et al., Respondents.

Superior Court of New Jersey,

Appellate Division.

Argued Nov. 30, 1976.

Decided Jan. 21, 1977.

Nadine Taub, Newark, attorney for complainants-appellants.

William F. Hyland, Atty. Gen., for respondent Director of the Div. on Civ. Rights (Mary Ann Burgess, Trenton, of counsel and on the brief).

Edward A. Parker, Newark, filed a brief on behalf of the amici curiae Congresso Boricua De New Jersey and American Civil Liberties Union of New Jersey.

Before Judges CRANE, MICHELS and PRESSLER.

The opinion of the court was delivered by

PRESSLER, J.S.C., Temporarily Assigned.

The issue raised by this appeal is whether the enactment by the Legislature in 1973 of N.J.S.A. 18A:36--20 ¹ divested the Division on Civil Rights (Division) of its adjudicatory and enforcement jurisdiction over acts of discrimination committed by school districts in their status as public accommodations. The Director of the Division (Director) so held, relying on a formal opinion of the Attorney General, F.O. 1975 No. 28, which determined that that statute conferred exclusive jurisdiction over such controversies upon the Commissioner of Education (Commissioner). We disagree and conclude that the import of the Title 18A enactment was merely to confirm the concurrent jurisdiction of the Commissioner without any abrogation or diminution of the continued jurisdiction of the Division accorded by the Law Against Discrimination, N.J.S.A. 10:5--1 Et seq.

The factual and procedural context in which this jurisdictional question arises has its genesis in early 1973 when various county chapters of the New Jersey branch of the National Organization for Women began filing complaints with the Division on Civil Rights against local school Districts alleging proscribed sex discrimination in curriculum assignments, employment practices and the availability of other school advantages and facilities. ² The Director of the Division made an initial determination that he had subject matter jurisdiction to proceed pursuant to the express provisions of the Law Against Discrimination. ³ By the end of 1974 over 40 such complaints had been filed, including the complaint of the complainants here, which charged respondents with unlawful sex-discriminatory practices, both as employers and as offerors of public accommodations. ⁴ By October 1975 some of the cases had already been terminated by the entry of consent orders by which the respective respondents undertook to take corrective action. The remaining 40 cases, including the instant controversy, were in various stages of quasi-judicial processing, ranging from the awaiting of a probable cause finding, pursuant to N.J.S.A. 10:5--14, to the awaiting of assignment of a public hearing date. On October 15, 1975, pursuant to a request made of him by the Director, the Attorney General delivered the formal opinion heretofore referred to. Accordingly, the Director in November 1975, by separate order entered in each of the 40 cases, transferred all of them, to the extent curriculum issues were raised therein, to the Department of Education for completion. All complainants, including those here, filed notices of appeal from that administrative action. By interlocutory order heretofore entered by this court, the appeal from the transfer order in respect of the Hinfey complaint is being separately prosecuted; the other 39 cases have been consolidated for appeal purposes and are presently pending in this court.

We are persuaded that the opinion of the Attorney General, which motivated the action of the Director here appealed from, misconstrued the scope of N.J.S.A. 18A:36--20 and misconceived the history, import and public policy of the Law Against Discrimination. The legal principle upon which the Attorney General relied is the canon of statutory construction by which a later special law is deemed to repeal by implication an earlier general one addressed to the same subject. We do not quarrel with the viability of that principle but rather with its application here. We do not view those provisions of the Law Against Discrimination which confer jurisdiction upon the Division on Civil Rights in respect of school districts to be general at all. Indeed we view them as considerably more specific than N.J.S.A. 18A:36--20. Thus, N.J.S.A. 10:5--4 expressly declares as a civil right the opportunity 'to obtain all the accommodations, advantages, facilities, and privileges of any place of public accommodation' without discrimination because of race, creed, color, national origin, ancestry, age, marital status or sex. A place of public accommodation is defined by N.J.S.A. 10:5--5 as specifically including 'any kindergarten, primary and secondary school, trade or business school, high school, academy, college and university, or any educational institution under the supervision of the State Board of Education, or the Commissioner of Education of the State of New Jersey.' N.J.S.A. 10:5--6, which creates the Division, also confers upon it 'general jurisdiction and authority' to 'prevent and eliminate discrimination in the manner prohibited by this act'.

There are, further, essential public policy considerations as well which constrain us to conclude that N.J.S.A. 18A:36--20 was neither intended to repeal the Division's jurisdictional grant nor should be construed to have done so. The Law Against Discrimination is based upon the express legislative finding that discriminatory conduct prohibited by the Act 'threatens not only the rights and proper privileges of the inhabitants of the State but menaces the institutions and foundation of a free democratic State * * *.' N.J.S.A. 10:5--3. The act, whose purpose is to eradicate such invidious discrimination, is thus a cornerstone of our fundamental social and political philosophy which demands assiduous and solicitous protection from casual or unintended erosion. Indeed, the entire legislative history of this act has been one of continual enlargement of the power and jurisdiction of the Division to enable it more readily to discharge its awesome responsibilities in the quest for a just society. ⁵ The judicial construction of the act has been concomitantly liberal and to the same end. ⁶ We, therefore, cannot read N.J.S.A. 18A:36--20, essentially a broad and general policy statement, as constituting an intended first reversal of a 31-year history of expanding jurisdiction. ⁷

We note that N.J.S.A. 18A:6--9 accords the Commissioner jurisdiction to hear and determine all disputes arising under the school laws. This jurisdictional scope is interpreted as necessarily extending as well to the general policies implicit in the school laws and their state constitutional underpinnings, including, of course, the firm anti-discrimination policy to which this State is irrevocably committed--an anti-discrimination policy which is defined by the content of N.J.S.A. 10:5--1 Et seq. See, E.g., Booker v. Plainfield Bd. of Ed., 45 N.J. 161, 174--175, 212 A.2d 1 (1965); Jenkins v. Morris Tp. School District and Bd. of Ed., 58 N.J. 483, 279 A.2d 619 (1971). And see N.J.Const. (1947), Art. I, par. 5. Accordingly, all parties concede, and quite properly so, that prior to the 1973 enactment of N.J.S.A. 18A:36--20 the Commissioner and the Division had concurrent quasi-judicial jurisdiction over all alleged acts of discrimination committed by the public schools, whether as employers or as the offerors of a public accommodation. It is also quite properly conceded here that both agencies continue to have concurrent jurisdiction in respect of alleged employment discrimination. ⁸ And it is further conceded here that prior to the enactment of N.J.S.A. 18A:36--20 the Commissioner had jurisdiction over alleged curriculum discrimination concurrent with that of the Division.

The question, then, is to ascertain, in the absence of a direct legislative statement, what the legislative intent was in enacting N.J.S.A. 18A:36--20. As we have said, we do not conclude that it was intended to diminish the jurisdiction of the Division on Civil Rights. The inferring of such an intention from this statute would be contrary to its own verbiage. It would, moreover, result in a conflict with the express legislative grant to the Division and the Division's primary responsibility for the elimination of all proscribed discrimination. It would also result, at least in respect of these kinds of alleged discrimination, in the complainants' loss of the special expertise, administrative mechanisms and investigative techniques developed by the Division over the years in identifying and dealing with acts of proscribed discrimination. Nor is such an interpretation required in view of the broad area of concurrent jurisdiction theretofore exercised by the Director and the Commissioner and which will, in any case, continue to be exercised. We are, therefore, satisfied that the essential purpose of N.J.S.A. 18A:36--20 derives from Art. I, par. 5 of the 1947 New Jersey Constitution, which prohibits discrimination in the public schools based only on 'religious principles, race, color, ancestry or national origin.' It is our view that the 1973 statute was intended laudably and certainly within the Legislature's power to do so, simply to extend the constitutional bases of proscribed discrimination in respect of student opportunities to include sex. If the constitutional provision is itself not construable as having conferred exclusive jurisdiction on the Commissioner, neither is this statute.

The final argument raised by the Attorney General derives from the promulgation by the State Board of Education of detailed regulations implementing N.J.S.A. 18A:36--20, more particularly N.J.A.C. 6:4--1.3 and 5, and 6:8--2.2 to 2.4, inclusive. These regulations confer a broad...