N.J. State Pensions - Veto of Pension Funding Violates Public Employees’ Contractual Rights

On February 23, 2015, Judge Mary C. Jacobson of the New Jersey Superior Court for Mercer County held that Governor Chris Christie’s line-item veto of remedial funding for public-employee pensions violated those employees’ contractual rights to such funding. Burgos v. State, No. MER-L-1267-14 (N.J. Super. Ct. Law Div. Feb. 23, 2015). The opinion addresses hotly contested issues regarding the ability of governments to unilaterally revise promises of future benefits and concludes that creating contractual rights to those benefits by statute is a powerful, even constitutional, guarantee of the benefits. Read more.