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Commission on Human Rights and Opportunities v. Board of Education of the Town of Cheshire8/31/2004
garding the public schools indicates a legislative intent to confer exclusive jurisdiction on it in the present case. Although we do not deny the state board's expertise over matters involving the public schools, and that such expertise would certainly cover claims of various forms of discrimination, we also recognize the commission's expertise over such claims. Indeed, we have implicitly recognized that expertise in the closely related area of claims of racial discrimination against a teacher. See, e.g., Board of Education v. Commission on Human Rights & Opportunities, 266 Conn. 492, 510-17, 832 A.2d 660 (2003). The point here is not that the state board does not have such expertise; the point is that its expertise is not exclusive of that of the commission so as to warrant an inference of a legislative intent to vest exclusive jurisdiction in the state board.
Finally, we do not agree with the defendants that interpreting our entire statutory scheme, regarding the type of claimed racial discrimination against a public school student in the present case, so as to vest concurrent jurisdiction in both the state board and the commission, will render the state board's jurisdiction superfluous. An individual complainant may prefer to take the state board route, rather than the commission complaint route, for various reasons. First, the availability of remedies may differ depending on whether the commission or the state board pursues the claim. Whereas the tenor of § 10-4b (b) is concerned with corrective or prospective measures, namely, "requir[-ing] the local or regional board of education to engage in a remedial process . . . implement a plan of action through which compliance may be attained," § 46a-86 (c) is more concerned with compensatory measures to remedy past discrimination, namely, "the damage suffered by the complainant . . . ." In this regard, the state board under §§ 10-4b and 10-15c may be better suited to address, say, a large-scale systemic problem that plagues a school system generally, and the commission under § 46a-86 (c) may be better suited to address, say, a discrete course of discriminatory conduct aimed at a particular individual. In addition, a complainant may choose not to seek any compensatory damages at all, and would prefer, for whatever reason, the more prospective measures available under § 10-4b. That will be his or her choice, however; but the fact of a choice does not render the alternate route superfluous. Furthermore, as we noted previously, the state board does not have to await such a complaint by an individual complainant; it may initiate such a complaint on its own under § 10-4b. Moreover, contrary to the defendants' suggestion, giving an individual such a choice will not necessarily mean that he or she could concurrently pursue both simultaneously, thus requiring the local board or its personnel to defend themselves in two different fora. The judicial doctrine of election of remedies would always be available to forestall such an inconvenient and wasteful result. See, e.g., Audubon Parking Associates Ltd. Partnership v. Barclay & Stubbs, 225 Conn. 804, 809 n.6, 626 A.2d 729 (1993); Grant v. Bassman, 221 Conn. 465, 472 n.7, 604 A.2d 814 (1992).
Finally, we address the dissent's contention that, under our " `broad and inclusive' reading of §§ 46a-58 and 46a-86 (c) in the present case, each student in the Hartford public schools would have a claim for damages against the state for the emotional distress caused by his or her racial isolation and perhaps for the costs of obtaining an alternate education up to the time that the discriminatory conditions are remedied . . . ." We do not suggest any such thing, and nothing in this opinion should be taken as doing
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