U.S. District Court Finds New Jersey’s Assembly Bill 5207 Unconstitutional

This week U.S. District Judge Robert Kirsch of the District of New Jersey struck down New Jersey’s Assembly Bill 5207 as unconstitutional. The law was passed in 2021 to prohibit New Jersey from contracting to own or operate a civil immigration detention facility. Prior to the law’s passage, New Jersey had four detention centers, but now has just one: The Elizabeth Detention Center in Elizabeth, New Jersey operated by CoreCivic (pictured above). The contract with CoreCivic was set to expire today–August 31, 2023–and Core Civic brought suit, alleging that the law violates the Supremacy Clause.

This week, Judge Kirsch found AB 5207 unconstitutional as applied to CoreCivic’s operation of the Elizabeth Detention Center. In so ruling, Judge Kirsch noted that he was not “rul[ing] on a blank slate,” citing to Geo Group, Inc. v. Newsom, 50 F.4th 745 (9th Cir. 2022), an en banc panel of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals that found California’s law banning contracting with civil immigration detention facilities unconstitutional. He concludes: “[T]he statute is a dagger aimed at the heart of the federal government’s immigration enforcement mission and operations. Congress’s assignment to the federal government the responsibilities to enforce the civil immigration laws, including, when necessary, through detention, renders AB 5207 unconstitutional under the Supremacy Clause.”

A copy of the decision is available here and additional coverage of the case is available on Politico.

IE