Court Opinion

ID: 9755309
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-28 20:34:37.223872+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:28:06.143086
License: Public Domain

Justice RIVERA-SOTO,
dissenting.
The majority defines “[t]he issue in this ease [as] whether the arbitrator exceeded his authority in applying the continuing violation doctrine to conclude that plaintiff, the Alpha Board of Education (Board), improperly denied health insurance benefits to certain part-time employees.” Ante, 188 N.J. at 597, 911 A.2d at 904 (2006). Acknowledging both that “the collective negotiations agreement provided that a grievance must be filed within seven *610school days [and that] defendant, the Alpha Education Association (Association), did not file a grievance until more than two years after the Board discontinued providing the benefits[,]” id. at 597, 911 A.2d at 904,1 the majority concurs with “[t]he arbitrator [who] found that the grievance was not timely filed, but sustained it because there was a continuing violation.” Ibid.
To so conclude, the majority perforce ignores our recent and consistent holdings in respect of the applicability and reach of the “continuing violation” doctrine, as well as the scope of our duties in respect of public-sector collective negotiations agreements. Because the majority misapplies that doctrine, I respectfully dissent.
I.
A.
We have made clear that, under New Jersey law, the “continuing violation” doctrine is “an equitable exception to the statute of limitations[.]” Shepherd v. Hunterdon Developmental Ctr., 174 N.J. 1, 6, 803 A.2d 611 (2002). As Shepherd explains, “[u]nder that doctrine, a plaintiff may pursue a claim ... if he or she can demonstrate that each asserted act by a defendant is part of a pattern and at least one of those acts occurred within the statutory limitations period.” Id. at 6-7, 803 A.2d 611 (citation omitted). Stated differently, a continuing violation “claim, by definition, is comprised of a pattern or series of acts connected for liability purposes by the fact ‘that an act contributing to the claim occurs within the filing period.’ ” Id. at 24, 803 A.2d 611 (quoting Nat’l R.R. Passenger Corp. v. Morgan, 536 U.S. 101, 117, 122 S.Ct. 2061, 2074, 153 L.Ed.2d 106, 124 (2002)).
*611Our application of the continuing violation doctrine, however, has been limited to “the assertion of discrimination in employment[.]” North Plainfield Educ. Ass’n v. Bd. of Educ. of the Borough of North Plainfield, 96 N.J. 587, 595, 476 A.2d 1245 (1984). In the context of this case, and relying explicitly on Shepherd, the Appellate Division, in an unpublished per curiam decision, correctly held that “[t]he [continuing violation] doctrine is intended to ameliorate the harshness created by a strict application of the statute of limitations[ ] in the context of employment discrimination eases alleging a hostile work environment, not to rescue defendant from the consequences of its deliberate, ill-fated strategy.” Therefore, because the claims asserted by the Association in the arbitration against the Board do not, on their face, allege employment discrimination, the continuing violation doctrine is inapplicable.
B.
Seeking to justify its unprecedented extension of the continuing violation doctrine to the cause at issue between the Association and the Board, the majority takes great pains to distinguish what is, to me, clear, unequivocal, and binding precedent: North Plainfield, supra, 96 N.J. at 595, 476 A.2d 1245. In North Plainfield, two teachers who took semester-long sabbatical leaves were not advanced to their next pay grade when they returned from their sabbaticals. Id. at 591, 476 A.2d 1245. After the teachers returned to their teaching duties, the North Plainfield teachers’ union filed a grievance alleging that the failure to advance those two teachers to their next pay grade while on sabbatical violated the collective negotiations agreement between the school board and the union. Ibid. Based on the school board’s policy and practice of denying credit for salary advancement to teachers for time spent on sabbatical, the arbitrator sustained the school board’s position; tellingly, “[t]he teachers neither denied knowledge of the [school board]’s practice nor sought to correct or modify the award.” Ibid.

 "Unlike private-sector employees, public employees are not given the right to ‘bargain collectively.' Public employees instead may engage in collective negotiations." Camden Bd. of Educ. v. Alexander, 181 N.J. 187, 193-94, 854 A.2d 342 (2004) (citations omitted).