Bulur v. Office of the Attorney General, ___ N.J. ___ (2025). In 2023, after a fatal shooting by Paterson police officers, the New Jersey Attorney General announced on March 27, 2023 that his office was superseding (that is, taking over responsibility for) the Paterson Police Department. Lawsuits were filed and transferred to the Appellate Division. In an opinion reported at 480 N.J. Super. 395 (App. Div. 2024), and summarized here, the Appellate Division voided the supersession. Today, the Supreme Court reversed in a unanimous opinion by Justice Patterson.
The Court’s opinion was an unusual one. Most of the opinion was consumed by a discussion of the various authorities, including caselaw, statutes, and a 2022 Directive from the Attorney General, on which the Attorney General relied in defending the supersession. But Justice Patterson ultimately declined to “reach the question whether the Attorney General’s claim of general authority to supersede municipal police departments without the consent of municipal officials” based on those authorities.
Instead, the Court relied on two actions by the Legislature after the supersession was announced. First, the Legislature enacted Chapter 94 of the Laws of 2023 in July 2023, but retroactive to March 1, 2023. Thought hat statute was one of more general applicability in facilitating supersessions, testimony before the Assembly Judiciary Committee confirmed that Chapter 94 was “about Paterson.”
Second, as Justice Patterson said, “in L. 2023, c. 74, the Legislature appropriated $10,000,000 as direct state services for ‘Paterson Police Department -- State Costs,’ to cover costs incurred by the State in connection with operating the Department pursuant to the Attorney General’s supersession. The Legislature noted that ‘[i]n addition to the amount hereinabove appropriated for the Paterson Police Department -- State Costs, there are appropriated such additional amounts as may be necessary for the same purpose, subject to the approval of the Director of the Division of Budget and Accounting’” (citations omitted).
The Appellate Division had found that “the Legislature did not intend to authorize a supersession” of the Paterson Police Department’s daily operations when it enacted Chapter 94. Justice Patterson disagreed. “The Legislature did not question, much less invalidate, the supersession here; to the contrary, it expressly acknowledged that the Attorney General had superseded control of the Department and took affirmative steps to ensure that the [newly-appointed Officer in Charge under the supersession] would succeed in his crucial role in that supersession.”
Carefully limiting its ruling to the facts here, and avoiding any more general ruling about the Attorney General’s supersession powers, the Court concluded by saying “We view Chapter 94 and the Legislature’s appropriation of funds to express the Legislature’s intent that in this instance, the Attorney General’s supersession advances the Legislature’s goals and should proceed. On that specific ground, we do not find that the Attorney General’s supersession of the Paterson Police Department was arbitrary, capricious, or unreasonable, or that it lacked fair support in the record.”
