Even Sotomayor Smelled the Scam: NJ Transit Cannot Hide Behind Sovereign Immunity

I knew what I was smelling before I finished the first page: that swampy mix of bureaucrat aftershave and legal hairspray. Somebody tried to dodge accountability by shouting a magic phrase like it was a force field. This time the magic word was sovereign immunity. And the U.S. Supreme Court just tossed that word on the coals and watched it melt.

What the Supreme Court ruled (March 4, 2026)

On March 4, 2026, the Court ruled unanimously that the New Jersey Transit Corporation is not an “arm of the State” of New Jersey for interstate sovereign immunity purposes. The opinion was written by Justice Sonia Sotomayor.

Translation in F-150 language: NJ Transit does not get to operate across state lines, then throw a Jersey flag over the hood and claim it cannot be sued in another state’s courts just because it was created by New Jersey.

The two cases that forced the issue

The Court took consolidated cases involving two different crashes and two different courts reaching opposite conclusions:

• Jeffrey Colt was struck by an NJ Transit bus in Midtown Manhattan in 2017 and sued in New York.
• Cedric Galette was injured in a 2018 crash in Philadelphia and sued in Pennsylvania.

New York’s top court said NJ Transit could be sued there. Pennsylvania’s top court said NJ Transit was immune. The Supreme Court stepped in and settled the split: no automatic out-of-state immunity shield for NJ Transit in these suits.

Why NJ Transit could not hide behind the label

NJ Transit argued New Jersey controls it. Sure, the state has levers. But the Court said control alone is not the secret sauce.

What mattered was how New Jersey structured it: NJ Transit is a corporation with corporate powers. It can sue and be sued, hold property, make contracts, and raise funds. And New Jersey law says the state is not formally liable for NJ Transit’s debts and liabilities. If the state built it to be legally separate when the checks go out, it cannot magically become “the state itself” when a lawsuit shows up.

Also, calling it an “instrumentality of the State” did not do the heavy lifting. Labels are cheap. Liability is not.

What the Court did not decide

This ruling did not decide negligence or who is at fault. It decided whether NJ Transit can invoke New Jersey’s interstate sovereign immunity to block these out-of-state suits in the first place. And in America, getting into court is step one of accountability.