But districts say they welcome all students and don't require documentation that parents don't have.
NEWARK -- Four New Jersey school districts and one charter school have enrollment practices that discriminate against the children of immigrants living in the country illegally, lawsuits filed by the The American Civil Liberties Union of New Jersey allege.
The districts require parents to produce either a New Jersey drivers license or state ID -- documents that unauthorized immigrants won't have, the ALCU said. That violates a 1982 Supreme Court decision that forbids school districts from excluding children from enrolling based on immigration status, the organization said.
Lawsuits were filed against the following districts:
- Fair Lawn School District
- Jamesburg School District
- Spotswood School District
- Port Republic School District
- Jersey City Global Charter School
"Especially in our current climate, schoolchildren and their families deserve assurance that their schools will not discriminate against them because of their immigration status," said Ari Rosmarin, ACLU-NJ's public policy director. "We cannot stand quietly by and let districts discriminate."
The lawsuits come after after ACLU-NJ in 2014 discovered that 136 school districts imposed illegal barriers to immigrant student enrollment and wrote letters asking them to comply with the law, the organization said. It issued repeated warnings that such restrictions violate students' rights, it said.
Two of the school districts, however, say the lawsuits are based on a misunderstanding.
John Davis, superintendent of Port Republic School District in Atlantic County, said the suit appears to be based on an outdated page on the district website. That page does not represent what the district requests when parents or guardians seek to enroll their children in the district, he said.
The page was removed as soon as the district received the lawsuit, Davis said.
"It truly is unfortunate that in our small community our severely limited tax payer dollars will have to be spent responding to the lawsuit, when a phone call could have resolved this non-issue," Davis said.
At Jamesburg School District in Middlesex County a drivers license is one form of ID a parent can provide but is not required for enrollment, Superintendent Brian Betze said. The district will revise its enrollment forms if necessary to make that clear, he said.
"We welcome all students here," Betze said.
The ACLU also called on the state Department of Education to play a more active role in enforcing civil rights laws. The department should provide districts with model enrollment forms and conduct regular audits to ensure compliance, the ACLU said.
"The ACLU of New Jersey can't play a perpetual game of whack-a-mole with New Jersey school districts, and we shouldn't have to," said Alexander Shalom, a senior staff attorney for ACLU-NJ. "It's the job of the Department of Education to make sure New Jersey school districts are following the Constitution, and they must take that duty seriously."
The Department of Education does send a notice to school districts each year reminding them they cannot deny a student enrollment because of immigration status, spokesman David Saenz said.
Adam Clark may be reached at adam_clark@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on twitter at @realAdamClark. Find NJ.com on Facebook.