In 1989 the Piscataway, New Jersey school board decided to abolish one teaching position at the High School’s business education department.  New Jersey law requires that tenured teachers be laid off in reverse order of seniority.  Two teachers (Sharon Taxman and Debra Williams) both started their jobs on the same day.  Taxman is white and Williams is Black.  Everyone agreed that they were equally qualified.  The school board decided to layoff Taxman since Williams was the only minority in the whole department of fourteen teacher and minorities composed 50% of the student population.  The school board had never discriminated against black employees.  In 1975 they adopted an affirmative action plan that favored racial diversity “when candidates appear to be of equal qualification.”  Taxman filed a complaint with the federal EEOC.  She argued that the board’s actions violated Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.  The federal appeals court and 3rd US Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in favor of Taxman and upheld that ruling respectively.  The case was appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court.
 
 

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