Adding fuel to the debate over school costs, the group representing New Jersey''s superintendents filed a federal lawsuit yesterday against the state education commissioner, claiming new limits on administrators'' pay are arbitrary and unconstitutional.

The suit comes one day after the state released information about compensation for more than 3,000 administrators, including millions of dollars in stipends, benefits and other pay beyond their published salaries.

But the lawsuit, filed in federal court in Trenton, challenges new regulations enacted by Education Commissioner Lucille Davy last month that give the state the power to review and even reject the contracts of superintendents, assistant superintendents and business administrators.

The suit contends the new rules violate the administrators'' rights to due process and single them out over other public employees.

"The government can''t create arbitrary classes, and to regulate the salaries of 1,400 administrators and not 200,000 other school employees doesn''t make a lot of sense," said Stephen Edelstein, lawyer for the New Jersey Association of School Administrators and four individuals named as plaintiffs.