Tom Moran is the Star-Ledger Editorial Editor. This was first published at nj.com.

Our “progressive” governor won a court case last week that will allow him to maintain ferocious racial segregation in our public schools. What a win.

Not for the children, mind you. Racial segregation, especially in high poverty enclaves, is damaging stuff. And New Jersey schools are more segregated than those in Alabama, thanks mostly to zoning rules that block low-income housing in the suburbs.

Half our Black children attend schools that are 90 percent non-white, and one-quarter attend “apartheid schools” that are 99 percent non-white. The numbers for Latino kids are almost as bad. Murphy concedes that, but in six years, has done absolutely nothing about it.

The “victory” for Murphy is purely political. Fixing this problem would risk an uproar in the suburbs, and now our timid governor can avoid that fight, and keep all his political chips in the bank.

“It all comes down to the political, and what the backlash might be,” says the Rev. Charles Boyer, a civil rights leader based in Trenton. “At the end of the day, that’s the meat, the truth of it. It is a racism problem. But regardless of that, at some point, the political considerations cannot be the number one consideration.”

It would be nice if that were true. But what else explains Murphy’s long fight against this effort? I wanted to ask him, but he wouldn’t discuss it, and his office issued no press release on this one.

My best guess? This is not racism; it’s cowardice. But for Black and Latino kids stuck in apartheid schools, what’s the difference?

“From a political standpoint, it makes perfect sense why any administration would want to hold off,” says Frank Freyre of the Latino Coalition of New Jersey, a plaintiff in the case. “It would embroil any administration into years of controversy.”

That is the conventional wisdom, but I wonder. The remedies to this problem are not as dramatic as many people fear. No one is suggesting forced busing, as in Boston during the 1970s. The plaintiffs advocate strictly voluntary measures. Any family that is happy where it stands could stay put.

They suggest magnet schools to encourage racial mixing across district lines, as Connecticut is doing in the Hartford region today. Or allowing more minority students in cities to attend mostly white schools in the suburbs, as Massachusetts is doing in the Boston region. Or perhaps merging some of New Jersey’s more than 600 districts to create more racially mixed student bodies.

Would New Jersey voters really freak out at these gentle measures? Shouldn’t Murphy be at least testing those waters?

Pardon the digression into wishful thinking. The plaintiffs are asking the courts to intervene because they have concluded that the governor and Legislature won’t move on this unless they have a judicial gun to their heads. They wanted the judge in this case to declare the existing segregation to be a violation of the Constitution, then leave the remedy to the governor and Legislature.

That worked in the Abbott cases, when the state Supreme Court ruled that our funding system violated the rights of students in 31 poor urban districts. The court asked the political class to come up with the remedy, resulting in the funding formula we have today. But this time, the judge didn’t go that far.

“We wanted a gun to their head, but we didn’t get it,” says Larry Lustberg, the lead attorney for plaintiffs.

The opinion, from Superior Court Judge Robert Lougy, is a muddled mess. It concedes the statistics cited above, citing the “marked and persistent racial imbalance in numerous school districts” that the state has “failed to remedy.” But it orders no remedy.

That is baffling to many civil rights advocates, including former Supreme Court Justice Gary Stein, who is advising plaintiffs in this case, and sat on the bench for many of the Abbott cases.

“Having found intensive segregation in 23 urban districts, the court granted no relief for that segregation, or for the children being prejudiced by it,” he says. “It seems to me that having made the finding that segregation exists, it would be appropriate to grant relief. That’s what troubles me. It was a great disappointment.”

Adding insult to that injury, Lougy took nearly 20 months after oral arguments to issue his opinion, a shocking lapse to many court-watchers and frustrated civil rights leaders. The initial filing in this case came in 2018, shortly after Murphy took office.

“Five years is just crazy,” Freyre says. “The length of time it took him to come to this decision is what bothers me most.”

To me, this speaks directly to one of Murphy’s core flaws: He doesn’t take on the tough fights like this. He engages on the easy stuff for a governor in a blue state, like abortion rights, gun control and preschool funding. I agree with him on that, but he’s AWOL on the toughest issues like segregation, or police reform, or containing the cost of government. He plays it safe.

His people emphasize the money he’s spent on urban schools. But with segregation, that’s an argument for the discredited doctrine of “separate but equal.” And the Court forced his hand on spending in the first place.

In this case, an appeal is likely, and an eventual ruling from the state Supreme Court. And the record will show that Murphy knew about this problem from the start, but in his two terms in office, he didn’t lift a finger to solve it.

[photo credit] Flickr: Phil Murphy