NOTICE: If you are or may be eligible to be a class member in the Gulino litigation, please visit www.gulinolitigation.com to get updates, access documents, and read further details. You can also ask questions and receive updates on the status of your claims by calling 212-806-1224.

Gulino v. The Board of Education of the City of New York and the New York State Education Department is a class action lawsuit filed on behalf of public school teachers of color challenging the use of discriminatory tests and licensing rules to deprive them of equal salaries, pensions, benefits, and seniority.

The Center for Constitutional Rights worked closely with a support group of teachers, the Committee for a Fair Licensing Procedure, to challenge the Board's over-reliance on the National Teachers Examination (NTE) in terminating the regular licenses of experienced teachers. The disparate impact on minority teachers constituted racial discrimination.

Elsa Gulino, Peter Wilds, Mayling Ralph, and Nia Greene – all teachers of color – charged that when the State Education Department and the New York City Board of Education imposed the requirement that they take and pass the NTE, they lost their permanent teaching licenses, seniority, retention rights, and in some cases their tenured teaching positions, and had their salaries drastically reduced. They were, nonetheless, expected to keep teaching and maintain their current course load.

All of the teachers passed content specialty exams, completed other required course work, and consistently received satisfactory evaluations in their years of employment in the City schools. Class members proved that the NTE has never been validated for any use other than to assess entry-level teachers and that the exam has a disproportionate impact on teachers of color.

In addition to the NTE, the case challenged the use of the Liberal Arts and Sciences Test (LAST), another certification examination that was never validated for any professional teaching assessment. This test, too, shows a glaring gap in the passage rate between white teachers and Black and Latinx teachers.

Estimates of the number of public school teachers who have suffered demotion, termination, and salary and other benefit losses now range from 8,000-15,000.

NOTICE: If you are or may be eligible to be a class member in the Gulino litigation, please visit www.gulinolitigation.com to get updates, access documents, and read further details. You can also ask questions and receive updates on the status of your claims by calling 212-806-1224.