NJ Judges Can Rule on Laws They Authored as Legislators

Judge Joann Kagan Downey was extremely familiar with the employment rule at issue in the case before her—she wrote the law.

Does that closeness to the law make her too biased to enforce it? Not in New Jersey.

A state appeals court Monday upheld Downey’s refusal to step aside from a case filed by a teacher’s family suing a school after the educator returned to work in 2021, contracted Covid-19 and died. The school can’t remove Downey after siding with the family and keeping the case alive, even if she wrote the “essential employee” law, the New Jersey Superior ...