A Smith & Wesson .357 magnum revolver cools down at a target range at the Los Angeles Gun Club on December 7, 2012, in Los Angeles. Gun enthusiasts rent the the weapon to try out before making a purchase at a gun store. Leading firearms maker Smith & Wesson reported an almost 50% increase in sales revenue. (Photo by Kevork Djansezian|Getty Images)

Gun manufacturer Smith & Wesson must release marketing documents sought by a subpoena issued by the New Jersey Attorney General, a federal appeals court ruled Tuesday.

The federal appeals court ruled it could not toss the subpoena because of a legal doctrine, called issue preclusion, that bars judges from reconsidering another court’s ruling on a single issue of contention between the same parties.

A state appellate court upheld the subpoena in 2023 in a case Smith & Wesson called a “carbon copy” of its federal complaint. 

“Smith & Wesson lost its case at every level of the New Jersey court system, which concluded that the gun company’s efforts to evade subpoena compliance were meritless. The decision shows that Smith & Wesson cannot run to federal court when it did not get its way in state court,” Attorney General Matt Platkin said in a statement.

The case centers on a subpoena issued to the gun manufacturer to probe whether it had violated New Jersey’s Consumer Fraud Act by misstating the legality, safety, effectiveness, and benefits of its firearms.

Smith & Wesson has charged the subpoena violates a series of constitutional rights and, in its federal appeal, argued the state appeals court did not properly weigh its constitutional claims, denying the gunmaker’s appeal based only ripeness — a measure of how prepared a case’s facts are for trial.

But the newer ruling says that is a faulty reading of the state court’s decision. New Jersey’s Appellate Division had indeed weighed the constitutional claims and found them wanting, the judges wrote.

“The Appellate Division considered Smith & Wesson’s constitutional defenses, held they were not legally cognizable, and held that, in the alternative, the claims were not ripe,” the federal judges wrote.

They also discounted the gunmaker’s claim that state proceedings did not afford them a chance to state their case, finding “Smith & Wesson had a full and fair opportunity to litigate its claims in state court” even though it was a pretrial proceeding.

One judge on the federal panel took a dissenting view, arguing state court rulings had not delved deep enough into the gunmaker’s constitutional arguments and, therefore, failed to reach the merits.

“More than three years ago, Smith & Wesson asked a federal court to decide whether the novel decision by New Jersey’s Attorney General to use a state consumer fraud law to investigate ads for ordinary guns and ammo treads on the freedoms recognized by the U.S. Constitution. Today, and four opinions later, those questions remain unanswered,” Circuit Judge Paul Matey wrote in his dissent.

Smith & Wesson did not return a request for comment, and it’s unclear whether the firm will petition the matter to the New Jersey or U.S. Supreme Courts. The gunmaker has already furnished documents responsive to the subpoena, though those documents are subject to a protective order that demands their return if the subpoena is declared unlawful.

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New Orleans for Transgender Day of Visibility (Greg LaRose)

The U.S. Supreme Court announced Monday morning it will take up a challenge to Tennessee’s 2023 ban on gender-affirming care for transgender youth.

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and Lambda Legal asked the court to review a ruling by the 6th Circuit Court of Appeals that upheld the law.

Tennessee’s law prohibits doctors from providing gender-affirming medical care to minors that includes puberty blockers, hormones and surgeries.

“Tennesseans deserve the freedom to live their lives as their authentic selves without government interference, yet every day this law remains in place, it inflicts further pain and injustice on trans youth and their families,” said Lucas Cameron-Vaughn, staff attorney for the ACLU of Tennessee. “The Court has the power to protect trans youth’s right to access the healthcare they need by striking down this discriminatory law.”

Legal advocates initially sued Tennessee on behalf of Samantha and Brian Williams of Nashville and their 15-year-old transgender daughter, two other plaintiff families filing anonymously, and Memphis-based doctor Dr. Susan Lacy.

The Biden administration also asked the Court to review the case under federal law allowing the government to intervene in private cases alleging violations of the right to equal protection under the law.

Justices will hear United States vs. Skrmetti in the fall and a decision is expected by June or July 2025.

Tennessee Lookout is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Tennessee Lookout maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Holly McCall for questions: info@tennesseelookout.com. Follow Tennessee Lookout on Facebook and X.

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NEW YORK, NEW YORK - JUNE 11: Fred Daibes arrives for trial at Manhattan Federal Court on June 11, 2024 in New York City. Jose Uribe, who is cooperating with federal prosecutors in their case against Sen. Bob Menendez (D-NJ) testified on Monday. He will continue his testimony regarding a backyard meeting with the senator in September 2019. Menendez along with his wife Nadine are facing bribery charges. The indictment is the second in eight years against Menendez. The indictment also includes charges for Wael Hana, Fred Daibes, and Uribe who are cooperating with federal prosecutors in hopes of a lenient sentence. Nadine Menendez's trial is expected to take place later this summer. (Photo by Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images)

The U.S. Attorney for New Jersey told jurors in Manhattan Wednesday that Sen. Bob Menendez complained to him about the criminal prosecution of his friend and asked him to “look at it carefully.”

Philip Sellinger is the second top enforcement official from New Jersey to testify during Menendez’s corruption trial, which is now in its fifth week, that the senator asked for special treatment in a specific criminal matter. Former state Attorney General Gurbir Grewal testified last week that the three-term Democrat asked him about an insurance fraud investigation threatening to ensnare a friend’s company.

Sellinger told jurors he was a private attorney angling to become New Jersey’s new U.S. attorney at the time of his December 2020 conversation with Menendez in the senator’s Washington, D.C., office.

New Jersey’s senior senator told Sellinger that his friend Fred Daibes “was being treated unfairly,” according to Sellinger.

“Sen. Menendez hoped that if I became U.S. attorney, I would look at it carefully,” Sellinger told jurors.

Daibes’ name didn’t ring any bells, so Sellinger assured the senator he would regard all cases carefully as U.S. attorney, he testified. But he called the three-term Democrat the next day to inform him that he discovered he’d been involved in a 2017 lawsuit against the borough of Edgewater that implicated Daibes, a real estate developer and bank founder there. If he became U.S. attorney, he told Menendez, he’d have to alert his bosses at the Department of Justice about it as a potential conflict of interest and they would decide if he should recuse himself from the case, he testified.

That didn’t end the matter. Sellinger recounted in court several other calls and meetings — by Menendez and his associates — where they brought up the Daibes case.

Sellinger said the senator’s ask was unusual. The U.S. attorney is the top federal law enforcement official in New Jersey, overseeing all operations, including 1,500 criminal and 2,500 civil cases a year, as well as investigations and appeals, Sellinger told jurors. That means the person in that position rarely gets personally involved in specific cases, he added.

Sometime later, Menendez told Sellinger that he wouldn’t suggest President Biden nominate him to be New Jersey’s next U.S. attorney, saying the White House had requested multiple candidates to consider. Menendez instead named Esther Suarez — now Hudson County’s prosecutor — as his pick.

When her appointment later fell through, Sellinger reached back to Menendez to tell him he was still interested, and by December 2021, he had the job. On his first day as U.S. attorney, he reviewed the office’s major cases and alerted his new supervisors of four cases where potential conflicts of interest might warrant his recusal — including Daibes, he testified.

The next week, Sellinger’s bosses ordered him off the Daibes case.

A friendship ended

Sellinger told jurors he first met Menendez about 20 years ago, when he began supporting his campaign fundraisers. They became so close that Sellinger attended the Menendezes’ October 2020 wedding, and the two couples socialized.

But it didn’t take long after Sellinger’s recusal from Daibes’ case for him learn the senator was irked, testimony showed. Sellinger told jurors he called Menendez in March 2022 to see if he’d speak at the formal ceremony recognizing his appointment.

“He said, ‘I’m going to pass. The only thing worse than not having a relationship with the United States attorney is people thinking you have a relationship with the United States attorney, and you don’t,’” Sellinger testified.

Prosecutor Lara Pomerantz asked Sellinger what he thought the senator meant.

“That we no longer had a relationship,” Sellinger responded.

Prosecutors have accused Daibes of giving the Menendezes cash and gold bars in exchange for his help in squashing his criminal troubles. Daibes has long been accused of using money to expand his influence in Edgewater, schemes the State Commission of Investigation revealed last year.

As Wednesday wound to a close, defense attorney Avi Weitzman began his cross-examination. He focused on Sellinger’s reputation and self-perception as someone whose integrity and good name are of paramount importance. Weitzman asked: Had he made those “core values” known to Menendez?

“I never believed him to be asking me to do something unethical or improper,” Sellinger said.

Jose Uribe cross continued

Earlier Wednesday, defense attorneys finished cross-examining Jose Uribe, the failed insurance broker who became the prosecution’s star witness when he agreed to plead guilty and testify against his co-defendants.

Uribe has said he gave Nadine $15,000 for a down payment for a new Mercedes-Benz convertible and paid her monthly $900 payments for almost three years in a “deal” that required her to connect him with the senator, who he expected to “stop and kill all investigation.”

The New Jersey Attorney General’s Office, at that time, had indicted Uribe’s friend Elvis Parra and Uribe worried investigators’ continuing, expanding probe would reach a company, Phoenix Risk Management, that he was running illicitly after he was barred from the business because of his own 2011 insurance fraud conviction.

Through questioning by defense attorney Adam Fee, Uribe acknowledged that he never mentioned money or the Mercedes to Sen. Menendez, spelled out the terms of his deal with Nadine Menendez to the senator, or discussed details about the senator’s calls and meeting with Grewal.

While Fee spent Tuesday trying to depict Uribe as a chronic liar and criminal, he spent Wednesday morning attacking his memory, accusing Uribe of regular intoxication and Xanax use.

“Sir, have you driven drunk before?” Fee asked Uribe, prompting an objection from prosecutors that Judge Sidney H. Stein sustained.

Uribe denied he was drunk or otherwise incapacitated when he met with Menendez.

“I am not sitting with a U.S. senator to discuss a serious matter when I am intoxicated,” he said.

Wednesday also brought some ping-ponging testimony from prosecutors and defense attorneys about some of the more salacious moments of Uribe’s testimony.

Fee suggested during cross-examination that Uribe made up his “super weird” claim that Menendez rang a little bell to summon Nadine when the men needed paper so Uribe could write down the names of the people and companies he wanted the senator to inquire about.

But Pomerantz showed jurors a text Nadine sent Fred Daibes in August 2019 that read: “I am looking for the perfect bell. I have not found it yet, but I will.”

Earlier, Fee tried to cast doubt on Uribe’s claim that Menendez told him in Spanish during a dinner when Nadine Menendez had disappeared to the bathroom: “I saved your little a** not once but twice.”

Pomerantz then showed jurors a text Menendez sent his wife during that dinner that read: “Can you go to bathroom.”

Also on Wednesday, Stein held a closed-door hearing about Nadine Menendez’s trial date, which had been scheduled for July 8. He pushed it to Aug. 5 but requested additional information from her doctors about the state of her breast cancer, her prognosis, and a projection for when she might be able to assist in her defense in hopes of setting “a more realistic trial date.”

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(Photo by Joe Raedle/Getty Images)

A legal exception that allows police to search vehicles without first obtaining a warrant in some circumstances extends to locked glove boxes and other secured compartments within a vehicle’s interior, a state appellate panel ruled Wednesday.

The three-judge panel’s decision overturns a trial court ruling that found police exceeded the authority afforded them under the automobile exception to the warrant requirement for searches when they opened a locked glove box during a November 2018 traffic stop search initiated after an officer smelled marijuana.

The three defendants — Tavius Wilson, James Hooks, and Sadale Loatman — faced a series of firearms charges over three handguns found in the glove box and argued that evidence should be suppressed because a locked container carried a greater expectation of privacy and could not be opened while the vehicle was running.

They said the search violated protections against unreasonable search and seizure in the Fourth Amendment and the New Jersey Constitution.

The judges rejected those arguments in Wednesday’s decision, reasoning they would all but eviscerate the automobile exception, which exists to allow searches where evidence might be destroyed or hidden if police were to leave the scene and seek a warrant.

“Whether locked or not, a glove box is just as ‘readily mobile’ as the vehicle and thus its contents are subject to the same inherent risks associated with mobility that gives rise to the automobile exception,” the court ruled.

The court turned down defendants’ arguments that the glove box could not be searched because it was locked and inaccessible to them, noting the automobile exception pays no heed to accessibility.

Court precedent limits warrantless searches of locked trunks if such a search would be unreasonable or unrelated to the initial justification for the warrantless search. Wednesday’s ruling says that does not also shield a locked container inside the vehicle’s interior.

“As a matter of common experience as well as common sense, a glove box that opens directly onto the front passenger seat is part of the passenger compartment. It is not part of the engine compartment or trunk/rear storage area,” the judges wrote.

They added the method police use to open a locked interior container could taint a warrantless search. The automobile exception “does not contemplate disassembling a vehicle or using the jaws of life to find the objects of the search,” they said, but it would allow containers to be opened by a key or another less damaging method.

Searching a locked glove box or other container during a warrantless search may be a lesser intrusion than impounding the vehicle and holding its occupants while authorities obtain a warrant, the court added.

The odor of marijuana no longer constitutes probable cause to initiate a warrantless search in New Jersey, but the 2022 law that barred the practice was not applied retroactively.

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(Illustration by Alex Cochran for New Jersey Monitor)

A legal fight is brewing over an increasingly expansive New Jersey statute called Daniel’s Law that bars the release of addresses and other personal information belonging to judges, prosecutors, and a growing list of public officials.

On Monday, scores of data brokers, real estate firms, marketing businesses, and other companies asked a federal judge to declare Daniel’s Law unconstitutional, saying it is an impermissibly overbroad violation of the First Amendment.

“Although Daniel’s Law was intended to serve the state’s interest in enhancing the safety of judges, law enforcement officers, and other public officials, it is not sufficiently tailored to advancing that purpose, as required by the Constitution, and it is also unconstitutionally vague in critical respects,” the filing reads.

This represents the latest legal challenge to Daniel’s Law, a statute enacted in 2020 after the attempted assassination of federal Judge Esther Salas left the judge’s son, Daniel Anderl, dead and her husband critically wounded.

It also comes after lawmakers have moved to expand the list of officials the law covers. Last year, Gov. Phil Murphy signed a bill that would bar disclosure of personal information concerning child protective investigators and made a host of other changes that enabled lawsuits.

A bill introduced in May would cover court administrators and deputy court administrators.

The filing is a consolidated response to more than 100 lawsuits lodged by a company called Atlas Data Privacy that allege it asked the companies to remove the addresses and other personal information of people covered by the statute and the companies failed to comply. The firm was founded after the enactment of Daniel’s Law.

Atlas’ lawsuits were filed on behalf of more than 19,000 individuals covered by Daniel’s Law after sending tens of thousands of takedown requests.

“In these tumultuous times, it is critical that the most sensitive personal information of those who serve the public be protected from unwarranted disclosure,” says one of the lawsuits, which alleges that police officers have been targeted by ex-inmates and others who find the officers’ home addresses online.

Atlas alleges the companies it has sued owe it damages that would likely creep into the tens of millions of dollars. In a statement, Atlas President Matt Adkison charged the companies’ motion was a bid to keep their businesses afloat.

“At a time when threats against judges, prosecutors, and law enforcement officers are skyrocketing, the message from these multi-billion-dollar companies is clear: Daniel’s Law is too great a threat to their business models and must be overturned no matter the human cost,” he said.

But the companies sued by Atlas say the law has failed to accomplish its stated purpose of protecting individuals’ personal information and that Atlas’ “misuse” of the law illustrates its over-broadness.

The law requires private entities to remove information that also appears in property records that governments, by law, are barred from redacting, the defendants note. Names and addresses for some of the named plaintiffs, each of whom is covered by Daniel’s Law, were readily available online from government websites, the defendants said.

“These contradictions and holes in the statute’s coverage imply that, as currently constructed, Daniel’s Law is not effectively designed to reduce danger to public officials,” reads Monday’s filing, a motion to dismiss Atlas’ lawsuits.

The defendants further argue that Daniel’s Law includes no verification requirement to confirm that takedown requests to private entities are filed by people covered by the law. That requirement was removed in 2023 by the same bill that made damages mandatory under Daniel’s Law.

They added the short timeline to respond to takedown requests — private entities get only 10 business days while governments get 30 — all but ensures businesses will pay damages “when tens of thousands of notifications are intentionally sent en masse within a short time period in a purposeful effort to frustrate timely compliance, as Atlas did here.”

Raj Parikh, an attorney for the plaintiffs, did not respond to a request for comment. Attorney General Matt Platkin will intervene in the case to defend Daniel’s Law.

“Daniel’s Law is a critical law that protects the safety of our judges and law enforcement officers, and we look forward to defending its constitutionality in court,” said a spokesperson for the Office of the Attorney General.

Judge Harvey Bartle III of Pennsylvania’s Eastern District is presiding over the case. Salas is a judge in the District of New Jersey.

Bartle is due to rule on the defendants’ motion to dismiss on July 15, and he’s set a June 15 deadline for outside parties to seek to join the case as friends of the court.

The case isn’t the first to challenge the constitutionality of Daniel’s Law. Last September, a Superior Court judge ruled against Charlie Kratovil, the editor of New Brunswick Today, after he asked the court to bar criminal charges over Daniel’s Law.

The editor argued the law violated his freedom of speech. Officials cited the law when it sought to bar him from publishing the address of the city’s now-former police director, who lives hours away from New Brunswick in Cape May County.

Kratovil did not publish the police director’s address but named the street he lives on during a council meeting and gave council members documents obtained through the Open Public Records Act that showed his address.

A panel of appellate judges affirmed the lower court ruling in April, and Kratovil has petitioned the case, which turns on different arguments than the Atlas suit, to the New Jersey Supreme Court.

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John Hoffman speaks to reporters on June 10, 2025, after Gov. Phil Murphy said he intends to nominate Hoffman to sit on the New Jersey Supreme Court. (Courtesy of the Governor's Office)

Gov. Phil Murphy will nominate former acting Attorney General John Hoffman to fill retiring Justice Lee Solomon’s seat on the state’s Supreme Court, the governor announced Monday.

Hoffman, who has been general counsel and a senior vice president at Rutgers University since 2016, is an unaffiliated voter who served as Gov. Chris Christie’s acting attorney general for a little under three years — the longest anyone held the post without being confirmed.

“As many will attest, John is already a pillar of New Jersey’s legal community,” Murphy said during the announcement at the Statehouse. “Like Justice Solomon, he has devoted almost the entirety of his career to public service.”

His confirmation, should it come to pass, would maintain the New Jersey Supreme Court’s tradition of partisan balance. Historically, the governor’s party maintains a 4-3 majority on the high court.

Hoffman, who served for six years as a federal prosecutor and seven as a federal civil litigator, would sit for an initial seven-year term and, if renominated and reconfirmed, would remain on the Supreme Court until he reaches the age of mandatory retirement age of 70 on Aug. 23, 2035.

“This is an incredibly humbling moment in my life,” he said at the announcement.

Solomon, a former Camden County prosecutor who has sat on the Supreme Court since 2014, will turn 70 on Aug. 17.

“For the last ten years, all of New Jersey has benefited from his wisdom and perspectives,” Murphy said of Solomon.

As acting attorney general, Hoffman enacted a policy that pushed the adoption of body-worn cameras for police, though his office argued against the release of some other documents, like police use-of-force reports and dashboard camera footage, before the state Supreme Court.

He presided over the enactment of the Overdose Prevention Act, which bars some minor drug charges for individuals who call 911 to aid with a drug overdose, expanding the policy to apply to others who collaborate in the call.

Later, his office launched pilot programs to provide Narcan, an opioid overdose antidote, to police.

“I know that a person of John’s intellect, of his integrity, of his professionalism — we couldn’t ask for a better person,” said Senate President Nicholas Scutari (D-Union).

Before joining the Attorney General’s Office, Hoffman directed the investigations division for the state comptroller, which probes governments for waste and abuse.

Hoffman said when Murphy offered him the nomination on Friday, the profoundness of the offer left him silent for roughly 30 seconds.

“I am not usually stuck for words like that, but this time I was,” he said Monday, adding directly to Murphy, “I appreciate your having certainly heard the roar that was in my silence.”

Hoffman’s confirmation is unlikely to face the same hurdles that delayed the confirmation of Justice Rachel Wainer Apter.

Bergen County Republican Sen. Holly Schepisi’s invocation of senatorial courtesy, an unwritten rule that allows senators to unilaterally block nominees from their home counties or legislative districts, left Wainer Apter’s nomination in stasis for 19 months.

Schepisi said she blocked the nomination to ensure the court’s partisan balance continued, and Wainer Apter was only confirmed once Republican Douglas Fasciale was nominated for a separate high court vacancy. Both Wainer Apter and Fasciale now sit on the court.

Hoffman is a resident of Burlington County, where Sens. Troy Singleton (D-Burlington) and Latham Tiver (R-Burlington) can exercise courtesy over his nomination.

As Senate president, Scutari could block his nomination, but that, too, is unlikely. The Senate president and the nominee are longtime acquaintances, and Scutari spoke highly of Hoffman Monday.

Hoffman’s nomination is the last Murphy is expected to make to the Supreme Court, and his successor may only get the chance to replace one justice, Justice Anne Patterson, who will turn 70 in 2029. Murphy’s term ends in January 2026.

The nomination is the fifth Murphy has made to the state’s court of last resort. If confirmed, Murphy will have placed more justices on the court than every governor since Gov. Christine Todd Whitman, whose tenure saw six confirmed to the Supreme Court.

An earlier version of this story should have said Murphy’s successor may have the chance to replace one Supreme Court justice.

The post Gov. Murphy will nominate Rutgers general counsel to Supreme Court appeared first on New Jersey Monitor.

(Getty Images)

Plaintiffs in a class-action lawsuit seeking to bar the state from retaining blood drawn to test newborns for disease asked a federal judge Tuesday to end a pause in the case amid a breakdown in settlement talks, according to court filings.

The request to resume the case comes three months after the parties said they were engaging in settlement talks over a longstanding screening program meant to identify scores of rare and potentially deadly conditions in newborns. The program has drawn controversy over other uses officials have found for the blood samples.

“I was hopeful that we could reach an agreement that would respect the rights of babies born in this state, but New Jersey still refuses to ask parents for consent to keep baby blood after the initial screening is done,” Hannah Lovaglio, one of the lead plaintiffs, said in a statement.

The Institute for Justice, a public-interest, libertarian law firm, filed the lawsuit in November.

In 2022, the Office of the Public Defender revealed that the New Jersey State Police used years-old blood drawn for the screening program to aid a criminal investigation.

Lacking probable cause for a warrant, the State Police subpoenaed the testing program to obtain the blood sample of a child whose father was suspected of committing the assault. DNA analysis of the blood was used to obtain a warrant for the father’s DNA, and he was later charged with a 1996 sexual assault.

A public records lawsuit lodged by the Office of the Public Defender and the New Jersey Monitor later revealed the newborn screening laboratory received five subpoenas from four law enforcement agencies over a period of roughly five years.

The class-action suit alleges that the state’s retention of dried blood used in the screenings — the samples can be retained for up to 23 years — and the use of that blood for purposes other than disease screening violate privacy protections under the Fourth Amendment.

It asks that the courts bar the state from retaining newborn blood after disease screenings are concluded unless officials inform parents of how the blood will be used and obtain their informed consent to retain it.

The Office of the Attorney General declined to comment.

The plaintiffs asked the court to set a June 25 deadline for the state to respond to their complaint, a timeline they said state attorneys did not object to.

“New Jersey had the opportunity to fix this problem without litigation. Instead, they’ve continued to operate under the flawed belief that these baby blood samples belong to the state, not the children from whom they’re taken,” said Christie Hebert, an attorney for the Institute for Justice.

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(Bill Pugliano/Getty Images)

A New Jersey appeals court declined Friday to expand a judicial doctrine requiring resentencing hearings for certain juvenile offenders to cover some young adults.

The three-judge panel’s opinion found ruling in favor of three long-jailed men would have exceeded the intermediate court’s authority, rejecting plaintiffs’ arguments that young adults’ incomplete cognitive development should require leniency.

“Our institutional role as an intermediate appellate court is a limited one,” Judge Lisa Rose wrote for the panel. “We are bound to follow the precedents of the United States Supreme Court and the Supreme Court of New Jersey, regardless of whether those precedents might seem outmoded.”

Earlier court decisions limiting lengthy sentences lay at the root of appeals lodged by Sean Jones, Timothy Harris, and Richard Roche, all of whom were between the ages of 18 and 20 when they committed murder and other crimes in the late 1980s or early 1990s.

A series of U.S. Supreme Court decisions issued in the last two decades limit life sentences without the possibility of parole for offenders under the age of 18, and New Jersey’s Supreme Court in 2022 ruled juvenile offenders are entitled to petition for resentencing after they spent 20 years in prison.

The state and federal court decisions shared the same rationale: Because children are less mature and more susceptible to outside pressures than adults, the law must give them some ability to demonstrate their maturity and rehabilitation.

Jones, Harris, and Roche argued that doctrine should be expanded to cover some young adults, citing research that found individuals in their early 20s, like adolescents, have less impulse control because their brains are not fully developed.

The panel rejected those arguments in Friday’s ruling, noting New Jersey’s Supreme Court said in a separate 2020 decision that the principles limiting lengthy sentences for juveniles do not apply to crimes committed by individuals 18 and older.

At the time, the high court noted 18 is indeed an arbitrary age but conceded “a line must be drawn.”

A spokesperson for the Office of the Public Defender, whose attorneys represented the three men, did not immediately return a request for comment.

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Justice Lee A. Solomon, Supreme Court of New Jersey, Trenton, January 29, 2024. (Mary Iuvone for New Jersey Monitor)

The New Jersey Supreme Court ruled Wednesday that the state’s Family Courts cannot end cases weighing whether parents are fit to care for their children but leave in place restraints that bar those parents from seeing them.

By unanimous decision, the high court found any restraints must be dismissed along with Family Court cases weighing whether separating a child from their parents is in the child’s best interest. Failure to do so could leave parents without legal representation in cases that carry significant consequences, the court said.

“A case should be dismissed only when the court determines that neither services nor supervision are required to ensure the child’s health and safety,” Justice Lee Solomon wrote for the court.

The decision does not extend to a separate statute meant to guard against child abuse — it applies only to cases weighing whether a parent is fit to care for their child.

In the case before the court, a woman identified in filings as Jan was barred by court order from seeing her two children after the Division of Child Protection and Permanency filed a complaint alleging her untreated mental illness risked the health of the children.

Jan was later diagnosed with bipolar disorder with psychotic features, which can cause delusions and hallucinations in addition to the mania and depression typical of the illness.

In June 2021, about a year after the Family Court entered its order, the division moved to dismiss the complaint. Jan was not taking prescribed medication and had seen little improvement in her mental health over the course of a year, a case worker and psychologist testified.

The court dismissed the case but left restraints in place that barred Jan from any unsupervised contact with her children or from driving them in a car, a decision an appellate panel later upheld.

But the high court found dismissing Jan’s case deprived her of the right to state-appointed counsel, which is provided for by statute in such cases while they are ongoing, and would likely run afoul of due process guarantees in the New Jersey Constitution.

In addition, the Legislature placed checks on the Division of Child Protection and Permanency in statute, and “those cannot be ignored by the courts,” Solomon wrote.

The court added such cases should only be dismissed when a court finds the division’s services and the court’s supervision are no longer required to guarantee a child’s safety.

Separately, the justices recommended the state amend a portion of its state code that requires the division to make regular weekly to monthly visits to children under their care.

Such visits are “inherently disruptive to the family in general and the children in particular,” the court said, and state regulations should allow for visits every three to six months in cases where the division and the Family Court agree the division’s services are not needed.

The high court’s decision is the second to touch on the Division of Child Protection and Permanency in as many weeks.

Last week, the justices unanimously ruled that a woman identified as Beth had not abused or neglected her newborn by leaving her at the hospital two days after giving birth and not returning to claim her. The ruling overturned decisions by the lower courts that had sided with the Division of Child Protection and Permanency’s accusation of abuse and neglect.

The high court found the division could not show the child, called Mia, had actually been impaired or faced an imminent risk of the same. The justices were unconvinced by arguments that the mother’s absence created an imminent risk because no parent could consent to care for her in case of an emergency.

“It is highly implausible that in an emergency or life-threatening situation, the medical staff at a hospital would not provide necessary care to a child already at the hospital but instead attempt to find the parent that had absconded in order to get permission to administer care,” Justice Fabiana Pierre-Louis wrote for the court.

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(Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images)

A trio of New Jersey residents lodged a class action lawsuit Tuesday seeking to reclaim equity in foreclosed homes that far exceeded the unpaid property taxes they owed.

The suit is the latest to challenge New Jersey’s Tax Sale Law since the U.S. Supreme Court in Tyler v. Hennepin County ruled governments that retained more money from tax sales than a resident owed were committing an unconstitutional taking barred by the Fifth Amendment.

“Home ownership is a core pillar of the American dream,” said Daniel Suhr, an attorney for the plaintiffs. “When governments take these victims’ homes and steal their equity, they are also stealing their dignity. By taking these properties and, in many cases, the life savings of these homeowners, they are not only grossly disrupting their lives, but also violating the Constitution.”

In New Jersey, governments can sell liens on properties with delinquent property taxes or unpaid utility bills to private holders or other governments at annual tax sale auctions.

The Tax Sale Law does not require municipalities or private investors to return surplus equity, though legislators are drafting legislation to bring the statute into compliance with Tyler.

In court filings, the three plaintiffs — Dorothy Thompson, Barry Seward, and Trude Sherrod-Polan — said they lost a combined $490,000 in excess home equity when their properties were foreclosed following sheriff sales. Together, the three owed $49,485.79 in back taxes and interest, according to the filing.

The suit is the second class action lodged over the state’s tax sale law. Three residents in December sued state officials to reclaim surplus equity in foreclosed homes. The newest suit additionally lists Trenton, Hazlet, and Lawrence as defendants.

New Jersey courts have already decided some cases based on the Tyler decision. While none of those cases have so far set precedent, a three-judge appellate panel in December warned applying the decision retroactively could prove unworkable.

But state courts elsewhere have disagreed. In Minnesota, where the Tyler case began, officials in March agreed pay $109 million to settle with homeowners of roughly 6,000 properties spanning seven years of foreclosures.

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