Opinion ID: 618714
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Overview of Firefighter Hiring in New Jersey

Text: New Jersey state law has regulated the hiring of firefighters for nearly a century. The current governing statute, the New Jersey Civil Service Act (Civil Service Act), was enacted in 1986 and establishes rules and procedures governing public employment that are intended to advance employees on the basis of their relative knowledge, skills and abilities. N.J. Stat. Ann. 11A:1-2. Among other things, the Civil Service Act requires New Jersey municipalities to fill civil service jobs, including firefighter, pursuant to a process controlled by the New Jersey Department of Personnel (NJDOP). [1] The NJDOP periodically creates, administers, and scores a firefighter examination. It then publishes hiring lists for the individual fire departments, designing each list to account for the hiring preferences a given municipality applies. New Jersey regulations permit local governments to give a hiring preference to their own residents, N.J. Admin. Code § 4A:4-2.11, and numerous municipalities do so. In some New Jersey municipalities, residency requirements are not only permitted, but judicially mandated. In 1977, the United States Department of Justice sued twelve municipalitiesAtlantic City, Camden, East Orange, Elizabeth, Hoboken, Jersey City, New Brunswick, Newark, Passaic, Paterson, Plainfield, and Trentonalleging that they engaged in race-based discrimination with respect to testing and appointments in the hiring and promotion of firefighters. See United States v. New Jersey, Nos. 77-2054, 79-0184 (D.N.J. filed Oct. 4, 1977). The case was settled on May 30, 1980 by a consent decree (Consent Decree) that mandated residency requirements in those twelve municipalities (Consent Decree Municipalities) and remains in effect over thirty years later. [2]