Court Orders New Jersey to Increase Aid to Schools

The decision is a new milestone in the intertwined disputes over school financing, taxation and the role of the courts that have roiled the state’s politics since the 1970s. And those disputes remain; the ruling intensifies Mr. Christie’s running battles with the Supreme Court and the Legislature, and it will resonate in the coming negotiations to balance the budget, negotiate new contracts with state workers and rescue the government employee pension plans.

The majority in the 3-to-2 decision accused the state of willfully violating previous Supreme Court orders in the long-running school-aid case under review.

“Like anyone else, the state is not free to walk away from judicial orders enforcing constitutional obligations,” Justice Jaynee LaVecchia wrote in the ruling. She added that “the state made a conscious and calculated decision” to renege on the commitment it made two years ago, the last time the case, Abbott v. Burke, went before the court.

In response, Mr. Christie again cited school financing as the chief example of a liberal court run amok, which he vowed to remedy by choosing more conservative justices. Answering questions at a public forum in Cherry Hill, N.J., he said, “I’m going to appoint people who I believe understand their job, which is to interpret the law and not make law from the bench.”

Earlier, in a news conference at the State House, the governor said, “I believe that this decision represents everything that’s wrong with how Trenton has historically operated and everything that I’m here to fight to change.” He said the Supreme Court “should not be dictating how taxpayer dollars are spent and prioritizing certain programs over others.”

While the additional aid ordered by the court was far less than the $1.7 billion requested by some schools advocates, it was still a blow to a governor who has made a national name for himself by cutting spending and assailing perquisites and benefits for public employees, particularly teachers. He has accused the teachers’ union, the New Jersey Education Association, and the courts of promoting the view that more money equals better schools, a position he says has been discredited by decades of failure.

Jon S. Corzine, the Democrat who preceded Mr. Christie as governor, used a one-time infusion of federal stimulus money to increase school spending, even as the state budget shrank. But as that money ran out, Mr. Christie, a Republican who took office last year, cut more than $1 billion in aid to all 591 of the state’s school districts, out of an overall budget of more than $10 billion.

The decision on Tuesday will have no direct impact on most of those districts. Instead, the court order increased aid for only the 31 low-income, urban districts that have long been the subject of the Abbott case. The case, a lawsuit first filed in 1981, has resulted in a series of Supreme Court rulings that have forced the state to funnel billions of dollars into those districts, in cities like Camden, Elizabeth, Jersey City, Newark, Passaic, Paterson, Trenton and Union City.

Mr. Christie said he would comply with the latest ruling, though he had previously suggested that he might ignore such an order. He challenged the Democrats who control the Legislature to figure out where to get the money and ruled out a tax increase to pay for the spending.

Traditionally, the governor and the Legislature spend much of June hammering out a state budget, which is supposed to be adopted by the end of the month.

David Sciarra, executive director of the Education Law Center, the plaintiff in the Abbott case, said, “Neither the governor nor the Legislature should walk away from this at this critical point in time.” He said the need remained “to remedy the harmful impact” of aid cuts on children who were not in the so-called Abbott districts.

Nate Schweber contributed reporting.

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: May 26, 2011

An article on Wednesday about an order by the State Supreme Court of New Jersey to raise spending on poor, urban schools paraphrased incorrectly a separate majority opinion by Justice Barry T. Albin. He said he would have told New Jersey to stick to a 2008 school financing formula for 205 districts, not for every district. The article also misstated the effect that Justice Albin’s plan would have had on the cost to the state. It would have roughly doubled it, not more than tripled it.