High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! Piscataway School Board v. Taxman, 91 F.3d 1547 (3d Cir. 1996) was a racial discrimination case that began in 1989. The school board of Piscataway, New Jersey needed to eliminate a teaching position from a high schools Business Education department. Under New Jersey state law, tenured teachers have to be laid off in reverse order of seniority. The newest tenured teachers, Sharon Taxman and Debra Williams, white and African-American respectively, had started working at the school on the same day. In the interest of maintaining racial diversity (Williams was the only black teacher in the department, and 50% of the students were minorities), the school board voted to lay off Taxman. Taxman complained to the EEOC, saying that the board had violated Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.