Paul Rooney swept floors, scrubbed bathrooms and tidied classrooms at Schuyler Elementary School in Kearny for 35 years before retiring in 2025. Along the way, his family says, he was paid about $15,000 less per year than his co-workers doing the same basic job — a disparity that led to a lawsuit and, this past September, a $185,000 settlement with the Kearny School District.
Rooney has intellectual disabilities that trace back to a boyhood accident in which he fell from a chair and struck his head, afterward developing epilepsy, according to the lawsuit detailed by NJ.com. He reads at the level of an 8- or 9-year-old, walked six blocks to work from his parents’ home each day, and, per his brother Michael Rooney, never once faced discipline during his time at the school. The lawsuit, filed in Superior Court in Hudson County, accused the district of exploiting Rooney and his vulnerabilities in violation of New Jersey’s Law Against Discrimination.
According to the suit, Rooney’s family didn’t discover the pay gap until January 2025, while helping him prepare for retirement. They allege the district imposed a less generous individual contract on him near the end of his career that capped his salary at $45,000 a year — even though his paychecks still carried regular deductions for union dues, despite Rooney apparently not being represented by the Kearny School Employees Association. Kearny’s unionized custodians, the family’s suit says, performed the same basic duties Rooney did while earning far more.
How the Numbers Stack Up
The lawsuit alleged Rooney’s pay was lower than that of his unionized co-workers and estimated that, accounting for lost wages and future pension earnings, he was shortchanged more than $200,000 over the course of his career…