The state of New Jersey has been sued twice over its infant DNA program. Like the rest of the nation, New Jersey hospitals collect a blood sample from newborns to test them for 60 different health disorders. That part is normal.

But New Jersey is different. Rather than discard the samples after the testing is complete, it holds onto them. For twenty-three years. That’s unusual. And it’s a fair bet that almost 100% of New Jersey parents are unaware of this fact.

There’s a reason parents don’t know this and it has nothing to do with parents just not paying attention when this test is performed. According to the lawsuits, New Jersey healthcare professionals do what they can to portray the testing as mandatory, even though it isn’t. They also take care to keep parents uninformed, never once informing them that they are free to opt out of the testing for religious reasons.

The state, however, is fine with this. The biggest beneficiary of this program is state law enforcement, which can freely obtain these DNA samples without having to go through the trouble of obtaining a warrant. Warrants are needed to obtain DNA samples from criminal suspects, but there’s nothing stopping cops from searching the DNA database for younger relatives of the suspect whose DNA might still be in the possession of the state’s Health Department.

That’s why the state is facing multiple lawsuits, making it an anomaly in this group of 50 states we Americans call home. And that’s likely why the state’s health officials are trying to healthwash this by crafting a new narrative for this uniquely New Jersey handling of infant blood tests. Here’s Elizabeth Nolan Brown with a summary of the rebranding for Reason.

Mandatory genomic sequencing of all newborns—it sounds like something out of a dystopian sci-fi story. But it could become a reality in New Jersey, where health officials are considering adding this analysis to the state’s mandatory newborn testing regime.

Genomic sequencing can determine a person’s “entire genetic makeup,” the National Cancer Institute website explains. Using genomic sequencing, doctors can diagnose diseases and abnormalities, reveal sensitivities to environmental stimulants, and assess a person’s risk of developing conditions such as Alzheimer’s disease.

Ernest Post, chairman of the New Jersey Newborn Screening Advisory Review Committee (NSARC), discussed newborn genomic sequencing at an NSARC meeting in May. An NSARC subcommittee has been convened to explore the issue and is expected to issue recommendations later this year. It’s considering questions such as whether sequencing would be optional or mandatory, the New Jersey Monitor reported.

The state wants to take what’s already problematic and make it a privacy nightmare. But, you know, for the children. The framing encourages people to think this is about early detection and preemptive responses to expected long-term health problems.

And that’s not to stay it won’t have the stated effect. The problem is the state hasn’t been honest about its newborn DNA collection in the past and health care providers (whether ignorant of the facts or instructed to maximize consent) haven’t been exactly trustworthy either.

Now, the state wants to expand what it can do with these blood samples despite not having done anything to correct what’s wrong with the program as it exists already. This just opens up additional avenues of abuse for the government — something it shouldn’t even be considering while it’s still facing two lawsuits related to the existing DNA harvesting program.

The ACLU is obviously opposed to this expansion. The statement it gave to the New Jersey Monitor makes it clear what’s at stake, and what needs to happen before the state moves forward with gene sequencing of newborn blood samples.

If New Jersey adopts genomic sequencing, policymakers must create “a real privacy-protective infrastructure to make sure that genomic data isn’t abused,” said Dillon Reisman, an ACLU-NJ staff attorney.

“What we’re talking about is information from kids that could allow the state and other actors to use that data to monitor and surveil them and their families for the rest of their lives,” Reisman said. “If the goal is the health of children, it does not serve the health of children to have a wild west of genomic data just sitting out there for anyone to abuse.”

Maybe that will happen before this program goes into effect. But it seems unlikely. Given the history of the existing program, the most probable outcome is a handful of alterations as the result of court orders in the lawsuits that are sure to greet the rollout of this program. The state seems super-interested in getting out ahead of health problems. But it seemingly couldn’t care less about heading off the inherent privacy problems the new program would create.

This week, a federal judge ruled that a major provision of New Jersey's "assault weapon" ban is unconstitutional, but he was not happy about saying so. The decision illustrates how the Supreme Court's Second Amendment precedents have constrained the discretion of judges who are personally inclined to support gun control.

New Jersey's Assault Firearms Law—which the state Legislature approved in 1990, responding to a mass shooting at a Stockton, California, elementary school the previous year—bans a list of specific rifle models, along with "any firearm manufactured under any designation which is substantially identical to any of the firearms listed above." According to guidelines that New Jersey Attorney General Peter Verniero issued in 1996, the latter description encompasses semi-automatic rifles that accept detachable magazines and have at least two of five features: a folding or telescoping stock, a pistol grip, a bayonet mount, a flash suppressor or threaded barrel designed to accommodate one, or a grenade launcher. Illegal possession of "assault firearms" is a second-degree crime punishable by five to 10 years in prison and a maximum fine of $150,000.

In separate lawsuits that U.S. District Judge Peter Sheridan considered together, several gun owners and two gun rights groups, the Firearms Policy Coalition (FPC) and the Association of New Jersey Rifle and Pistol Clubs (ANJRPC), argued that the rifle ban is unconstitutional. Sheridan's decision in ANJRPC v. Platkin focuses on the Colt AR-15, one of the specifically banned rifles, because it was the model mentioned most frequently by the plaintiffs and the state.

"The information presented to the Court focuses largely on one specific type of firearm: the AR-15," Sheridan writes. "And given the variety of firearms regulated in the Assault Firearms Law and the nuances that each individual firearm presents, the Court's analysis of the Assault Firearms Law is limited to the firearm with which the Court has been provided the most information: the AR-15."

Sheridan, a senior judge who was appointed to the U.S. District Court for the District of New Jersey by George W. Bush in 2005, repeatedly refers specifically to "the Colt AR-15." But he also notes that "the AR-15 is produced by several different manufacturers," including FN, Ruger, Remington, Bushmaster, Rock River Arms, Wilson Combat, Barrett, Panther Arms, H&K, Lewis Machine, Olympic Arms, Palmetto State Armory, and Mossberg. So his conclusion that "the AR-15 Provision is unconstitutional" evidently applies to all AR-15-style rifles, regardless of who makes them or what they are officially called.

Before explaining his reasoning in reaching that conclusion, Sheridan expresses his dismay at the Supreme Court precedents he is required to follow. "It is hard to accept the Supreme Court's pronouncements that certain firearms policy choices are 'off the table' when frequently, radical individuals possess and use these same firearms for evil purposes," he says. "Even so, the Court's decision today is dictated by one of the most elementary legal principles within our legal system: stare decisis. That is, where the Supreme Court has set forth the law of our Nation, as a lower court, I am bound to follow it. This principle—combined with the reckless inaction of our governmental leaders to address the mass shooting tragedy afflicting our Nation—necessitates the Court's decision."

Despite his personal policy preferences, Sheridan thinks it is clear that the AR-15 qualifies as a weapon "in common use" for "lawful purposes like self-defense"—the sort of arms that the Supreme Court has said are covered by the Second Amendment. He notes a 2022 estimate that Americans owned about 24 million "AR-15s and similar sporting rifles," and he highlights testimony that such guns are useful for home defense.

"Plaintiffs have shown that AR-15s are well-adapted for self-defense," Sheridan writes. "Evidence has been presented to the Court that the build of the AR-15 makes it well-suited to self-defense because it is 'light weight, [has] very mild recoil, and [has] good ergonomics'; it is a weapon which is 'well suited to younger shooters, female shooters, and other shooters of smaller stature.'" He adds that "the AR-15's design features—including the effectiveness of its cartridge for self-defense use and its better continuity of fire when used with available magazines—make the AR-15 a good choice for self-defense." And he notes that "the AR-15 has been used recently in several, relatively high-profile self-defense events in Florida, Illinois, Texas, Pennsylvania, and Oklahoma."

Those points should be disregarded, the state argued, because handguns are a more popular choice for self-defense and one that New Jersey allows. But as Sheridan notes, the Supreme Court's decision in the landmark 2008 case District of Columbia v. Heller, which overturned a local handgun ban, explicitly rejected that sort of argument. "It is no answer to say…that it is permissible to ban the possession of handguns so long as the possession of other firearms (i.e., long guns) is allowed," Justice Antonin Scalia wrote in the majority opinion. "It is enough to note, as we have observed, that the American people have considered the handgun to be the quintessential self-defense weapon."

Like the law at issue in Heller, "the Assault Firearms Law's AR-15 Provision acts effectively as the total prohibition on a commonly used firearm for self-defense—AR-15s—within the home," Sheridan writes. And under Heller, "a categorical ban on a class of weapons commonly used for self-defense is unlawful." Given "the Supreme Court's clear direction on this point," Sheridan says, "the AR-15 Provision of the Assault Firearms Law is unconstitutional" as applied to "the Colt AR-15 for use for self-defense in the home."

Sheridan reached a different conclusion regarding another provision of New Jersey's Assault Firearms Law that the plaintiffs also challenged: the ban on "large capacity magazines" (LCMs). Legislators originally defined LCMs as magazines that hold more than 15 rounds but reduced the limit to 10 rounds in 2018. That restriction, Sheridan says, is "consistent with this Nation's historical tradition of firearm regulation"—the test established by the Supreme Court's 2022 ruling in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen.

Sheridan acknowledges that the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 3rd Circuit, which includes New Jersey, has recognized ammunition as "arms" within the meaning of the Second Amendment. But he thinks the LCM ban differs from the AR-15 ban in a crucial way.

"The LCM Amendment passes constitutional muster because although the Second Amendment right is implicated, this regulation is in line with the historical regulations within the tradition of our Nation," Sheridan writes. "Put more precisely, the reduction of capacity is a limitation on firearms ownership. It is not a categorical ban preventing law-abiding citizens from exercising their Second Amendment rights [with] a weapon that is in common use for self-defense."

Sheridan notes that "detachable magazines did not exist in the Founding period" and that "it was not until the mid-l800s that patents for magazines falling within the definition of the LCM Amendment began appearing in the historical record." While "rifles capable of holding more than ten rounds became available" in the 1860s, he adds, "the magazine was fixed." And "despite the issuance of a patent for detachable magazines in 1864, firearms with detachable magazines were not widely available until the end of the Nineteenth Century."

Magazines that could hold more than 10 rounds, Sheridan notes, "did not exist in 1791," when the Second Amendment was ratified, and "were not widely available in 1868," when the 14th Amendment required states to respect the right to arms. He says it therefore would be plainly unreasonable to demand that New Jersey "locate a statute or regulation from that time" that closely resembles its LCM ban.

In Bruen, Sheridan writes, the Supreme Court "noted that current regulations may implicate either 'unprecedented societal concerns' or 'dramatic technological changes' different from those that existed when the Second Amendment was ratified in 1791 or when the Fourteenth Amendment was ratified in 1868. In those circumstances, 'a more nuanced approach' to determine if historical regulations are 'relevantly similar' to the currently challenged regulations must be utilized based on two measurements: 'how and why the regulations burden a law-abiding citizen's right to armed self-defense.'"

Sheridan thinks the LCM ban's "how" is "relevantly similar" to the scope of historical restrictions on pistols and Bowie knives. "The LCM Amendment places a burden on self-defense that is comparable to the burden imposed by the historical analogues," he says. "Like these restrictions, the LCM Amendment is…a restriction responding to safety concerns present in our time."

As for the LCM ban's "why," Sheridan says, there is evidence that LCMs "increase the lethality of mass shooting events." In recent years, he notes, magazines holding over 10 rounds often have been used in mass shootings, including "all" such crimes from 2019 through 2022.

The "stated purpose" of New Jersey's LCM ban, which is to "effectively slow down a mass shooter," is "well-served" by that restriction, Sheridan writes. "A limitation on magazine capacity stops the rate at which victims can be injured," he says, and "allows for time during which a shooter may be intercepted, interrupted, or hopefully, stopped." While "such a problem" may be "new to us," he adds, it is "analogous to other safety issues presented by [weapons] commonly used…for lawful purposes confronted by our Nation in the past."

Sheridan, who decries the "alarming frequency" of mass shootings, never acknowledges that they remain rare compared to other kinds of lethal crime. Based on the commonly used definition of mass shootings as public attacks that kill four or more people, they account for around 1 percent of homicides committed with guns. And while Sheridan implies that mass shootings are on the rise, the RAND Corporation notes that "chance variability in the annual number of mass shooting incidents makes it challenging to discern a clear trend" and that "trend estimates are sensitive to outliers and to the time frame chosen for analysis."

Sheridan nevertheless decries the "reckless inaction of our governmental leaders to address the mass shooting tragedy afflicting our Nation," which both exaggerates the frequency of these crimes and takes for granted that they could be prevented if only politicians tried hard enough. In addition to a lack of political will, Sheridan implicitly blames the Supreme Court for saying that the Second Amendment puts some gun restrictions "off the table." Yet despite these views, he felt constrained to reject New Jersey's AR-15 ban.

At the same time, Sheridan was curiously reticent to extend his analysis by considering the illogic of banning "substantially identical" rifles and defining that category based on an arbitrary set of features. With or without those features, a rifle fires the same ammunition at the same rate with the same muzzle velocity. Does it make any sense, for example, to expect that banning rifles with both folding stocks and threaded barrels would have any noticeable impact on mass shooting deaths, let alone homicide generally?

While Sheridan's concern about the use of LCMs in mass shootings is more plausible, it is based on an inconclusive correlation. The public safety benefit of banning them is speculative, and Sheridan did not even consider the argument that the ability to fire more than 10 rounds without changing magazines can be important in some self-defense situations—a point that legislators take for granted when they exempt current and former police officers from magazine restrictions.

The FPC plans an appeal to the 3rd Circuit, which it wants to "address legal deficiencies in [Sheridan's] opinion," and "seek the full relief" that the plaintiffs requested. "Bans on so-called 'assault weapons' are immoral and unconstitutional," says FPC President Brandon Combs. "FPC will continue to fight forward until all of these bans are eliminated throughout the United States."

The post A Federal Judge Reluctantly Concludes That New Jersey's AR-15 Ban Is Unconstitutional appeared first on Reason.com.

A powerful New Jersey businessman has been accused of Mafia-like behavior in order to enrich himself and his associates on the taxpayer's dime. But is it all that different from business as usual?

At a press conference this week, New Jersey Attorney General Matt Platkin announced a 13-count indictment, with charges including racketeering and extortion, against six defendants—chiefly George Norcross III, whom the New Jersey Monitor referred to as "a Democratic kingmaker widely regarded as New Jersey's most powerful unelected person." In an impressively bold move, George Norcross attended the press conference and sat in the front row, apparently even refusing to switch seats when asked by someone from Platkin's office.

According to the indictment, George Norcross has "led a criminal enterprise" since 2012, whose members "would extort others through threats of economic and reputational harm" in Camden, New Jersey. Specifically, in 2012–13, George Norcross and other indicted co-conspirators "used their political influence to tailor New Jersey economic development legislation to their preferences."

The Economic Opportunity Act of 2013 expanded the state's existing economic development grant programs, allowing a developer to claim "a credit of up to 35 percent of its capital investment, or up to 40 percent for a project located in a Garden State Growth Zone," defined as "the four New Jersey cities with the lowest median family income"—which would include Camden, the state's poorest city. The credits were intended to bring companies to the state or keep them from leaving. Recipients could claim the credits or sell them to other New Jersey taxpayers.

In 2019, The New York Times found that before that law passed, one attorney "was allowed by lawmakers to edit drafts of the bill in ways that opened up sizable tax breaks to his firm's clients." That attorney's firm was Parker McCay—whose CEO was George Norcross' brother, Philip Norcross, who is also indicted. The indictment alleges that after the law passed, Philip Norcross told a group of people, "We re-wrote a tax credit law…that says in essence, if you come to Camden, we're going to give you one hundred percent tax credit for all capital and related costs" over 10 years. "It will cause real havoc, it's unlimited."

Once the law passed, according to the indictment, the defendants "extort[ed] and coerce[d] others" in order to obtain their property along the Camden waterfront, "then occupied the properties they obtained interests in and sold the tax credits they obtained for millions of dollars."

George Norcross also apparently leaned on members of the Camden city government—including then-Mayor Dana Redd, who is also indicted—to pressure owners and developers to sell by denying necessary building permits or publicly disparaging them.

In one given example, George Norcross allegedly threatened a developer who refused to sell, saying he would "f**k you up like you've never been f**ked up before." City officials also denied him a permit to redevelop another site he owned, at Philip Norcross's insistence.

In the end, that developer apparently sold the rights to tax credits that eventually totaled $240 million, for a fraction of that amount. On one property, he sold credits for $1.95 million that would eventually total $18 million.

If this all sounds like a plot from The Sopranos, well, it basically is: For much of its run, the mobsters at the center of that show made money from a waterfront rejuvenation project in Newark, obtained through underhanded dealing with a crooked state official and which afforded plenty of no-show jobs and opportunities for graft.

The allegations against George Norcross are shocking, and yet also unsurprising. After all, the entire affair originated with a state economic development program, which already bears at least a passing resemblance to a Sopranos-style racket.

In 2019, The New York Times found that "over five years, 12 companies threatened to leave New Jersey" for New York—with each company even listing the exact same office complex as its intended destination—"unless the state provided tens of millions in tax credits." In each case, the New Jersey government agreed, totaling over $100 million in taxpayer money, and each company stayed. But the Times found that "nearly all of the 12 companies never seriously considered moving to New York." The leasing agent for the New York office complex even acknowledged, "We are aware that often times the tenant has no intention at all of relocating."

State economic development incentive programs are often sold on these sorts of "but for" incentives—as in, but for this tax break or grant, this company would go elsewhere. But these are rarely actually the deciding factors in a company's decision: In a 2018 paper, Timothy Bartik of the W.E. Upjohn Institute for Employment Research found that "typical incentives probably tip somewhere between 2 percent and 25 percent of incented firms toward making a decision favoring the location providing the incentive. In other words, for at least 75 percent of incented firms, the firm would have made a similar decision location/expansion/retention decision without the incentive."

Companies lobby for state-level handouts, even if they were likely to set up shop in that state anyway. And even by the state agencies' own numbers, the expenditures are rarely worth the cost.

"Beyond the state-specific political ramifications, the case also highlights a persistent problem in corporate subsidy programs that extends well beyond New Jersey: They're too easily corruptible, and they create a vicious feedback loop between political actors and politically connected corporations," writes Pat Garofalo in the Boondoggle Substack. "There's a very clear connection in academic literature between corporate subsidies, political donations, and ultimately corruption."

The George Norcross case, Garofalo writes, "highlight[s] the nexus between corporate tax handouts and corruption that is very often there but not usually this blatant."

Ultimately, the entire affair would just be a lurid story but for the fact that it involved hundreds of millions of dollars in state incentives which will ultimately be borne by New Jersey taxpayers.

The post N.J. Businessman Indicted for <i>Sopranos</i>-Style Economic Development Racket appeared first on Reason.com.

Very few governments and government agencies value the transparency and accountability that robust open records laws create. It took an act of Congress to even establish a presumptive right of access to government records. And all across the United States, state governments are always trying to find some way to limit access without getting hit with an injunction from courts that seem far more respectful of this right than the governments and agencies obliged to conform with statutory requirements.

Not for nothing is it pretty much de rigueur to engage in litigation to obtain records from entities legally required to hand them over. New Jersey is the latest state to help itself to more opacity while placing more obligations on the public — you know, the people who pay their salaries. While there have been a few moves towards the positive side of this equation over the past decade, legislators and Governor Phil Murphy have decided the public only deserves to know what the government feels like telling it.

As Matt Friedman reports for Politico, the new normal in New Jersey is discouraging people from suing after their records requests have been blown off by state agencies. This isn’t anything state residents want. This is the governor protecting the government from the people it’s supposed to be serving.

The problematic law doesn’t dial back any obligations to respond to requests. Instead, it’s a bit more nefarious. It assumes government entities will fail to comply with their statutory obligations, but passes that cost on to the people directly by making it far more expensive to force records out of agencies’ hands.

Here’s the impetus:

The push for the bill has largely come from lobbyists for county and local governments, who say records custodians are burdened by commercial and unreasonable requests by a small number of people.

And here’s the outcome:

Most controversially, the legislation would end the current practice of mandatory “fee shifting,” in which governments pay the “reasonable” legal costs for any requester who successfully challenges a records denial in court. It would instead leave it up to a judge, who would only be required to award the legal costs to the plaintiff if they determine the denial was made in “bad faith,” “unreasonably,” or the government agency “knowingly or willfully” violated the law.

That places the burden of litigation almost entirely on records requesters. If they decide to initiate litigation to obtain what the law says the state must turn over, they’re now faced with the possibility of not being able to recover their litigation costs even if a judge rules a government agency must turn over the requested records. All the government needs to demonstrate (and a judge needs to trust its narrative) is that any failure to provide records wasn’t a “knowing” violation of the law. This is the government seeing all the litigation non-compliant agencies generate and somehow arriving at the conclusion that it just must be too easy to sue the government for refusing to uphold its end of the public records bargain.

And that’s not all. The law also grants a presumptive fee burden on requesters, requiring them to demonstrate (to agencies already unwilling to comply with requests) that the requested fees are “unreasonable.” More specificity is also demanded of requesters, which is insane because requesters in some cases can’t possibly know the specifics of the records they’re requesting and will likely only have those specifics if the government agency actually hands over the records.

Bizarrely, it also bars requesters from sharing any photo or video received via a public records request if it contains “any indecent or graphic images of the subject’s intimate part” without getting direct permission from the person captured in the recording or photo. And that makes it pretty easy for the government to bury photos and recordings it doesn’t want to have shared by refusing to redact or blur any footage/photos containing an “intimate part.”

That means things like a violent arrest of person suffering a mental health crisis could be buried just because (as happens frequently in cases like these) the person being violently subdued by cops is underclothed or naked. If nothing else, it passes on the expense of redacting footage to those receiving the recordings, rather than place that obligation on those releasing records that might violate the stipulations of the revised public records law.

The gist of the law — and definitely the gist of the governor’s statement [PDF] in support of his own signature on said law — is that the government is real victim here. It’s being steadily crushed under the litigious heel of requesters who sue when the government violates the law, refuses to hand over records it’s obligated to hand over, or just make what the government considers to be too many records requests.

After a thorough examination of the provisions of the bill, I am persuaded that the changes, viewed comprehensively, are relatively modest.

Hmmm. Except that no one but government entities seeking greater opacity (or at least angling for a lower obligation for responses) is in favor of this law. Anyone actually engaged in transparency and accountability efforts doesn’t see this as “modest” revision of the state’s public records law, much less as a win for the general public. This is the government doing what it does with its greatest enthusiasm: protecting itself from the people it’s supposed to be serving.

A New Jersey fire chief allegedly became irate when a man's sump pump leaked rainwater onto the firehouse. So he handled it like a gentleman by taking revenge, pouring a bucket of rocks and gravel over the man's extremely rare sports car. — Read the rest

The post New Jersey fire chief vandalizes neighbor's rare car with rocks — and it was caught on video appeared first on Boing Boing.

A New Jersey fire chief allegedly became irate when a man's sump pump leaked rainwater onto the firehouse. So he handled it like a gentleman by taking revenge, pouring a bucket of rocks and gravel over the man's extremely rare sports car. — Read the rest

The post New Jersey fire chief vandalizes neighbor's rare car with rocks — and it was caught on video appeared first on Boing Boing.

A New Jersey fire chief allegedly became irate when a man's sump pump leaked rainwater onto the firehouse. So he handled it like a gentleman by taking revenge, pouring a bucket of rocks and gravel over the man's extremely rare sports car. — Read the rest

The post New Jersey fire chief vandalizes neighbor's rare car with rocks — and it was caught on video appeared first on Boing Boing.