Supreme Court: New Jersey wants to leave Mob Waterfront Commission
The Supreme Court appeared poised Wednesday to allow New Jersey to withdraw from a commission the state created with New York decades ago to combat mob influence in their shared haven.
During arguments in the High Court, both Liberal and Conservative justices suggested that the Garden State did not need New York’s approval to withdraw from the New York Harbor Waterfront Commission. The Commission was formed in 1953 when organized crime had infiltrated the port, using blackmail and violence to demand payments from workers and shippers.
The two-member commission — with one commissioner from each state — oversees licensing and inspections in the ports of New York and New Jersey, and has its own police force.
The creation of the commission was followed several decades by the creation of the far larger Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which oversees transportation infrastructure in the area.
Chief Justice John Roberts said at one point during the argument it seemed to him that after 70 years of the Waterfront Commission’s work, “it would take a long time and hard work to somehow unravel all this” if New Jersey were to go.
Elsewhere, however, Roberts distinguished the Port Authority from the Waterfront Commission, which he described as “a very important but relatively small entity dealing with a specific issue.” Roberts suggested to Judith Vale, arguing on behalf of New York, that it wouldn’t be “so disruptive” for New Jersey to withdraw.
Vale pushed back, suggesting that the commission, which employs about 70 people, “makes it harder for corruption and undue influence to succeed.”
Judge Amy Coney Barrett told Vale that it “seems very odd” that New York would want to stand by the commission when the majority of the port’s business is conducted through the New Jersey side.
When the commission was formed, about 70 percent of the port’s business was conducted through the New York side of the port. Today, in the age of container shipping, around 80 percent of cargo goes through New Jersey.
New Jersey lawmakers say changes in the industry, including the development of container shipping, have reduced organized crime’s impact on the port and reduced the need for a commission. The state says the commission has “become an obstacle to economic growth”.
In 2018, then-New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, a Republican, signed legislation pulling his state out of the Covenant. Ultimately, New York took the matter to the Supreme Court, which handles disputes between states.
The wording of the pact establishing the Commission does not specifically address whether each state can choose to withdraw. But New Jersey argued, among other things, that “mere silence about withdrawal gives one state no basis for holding another hostage to a pact forever.” Some judges also seemed particularly persuaded by New Jersey’s assertion that the commission should always be temporary.
“We know here that the parties never intended this to last,” New York-raised judge Sonia Sotomayor said.
Elena Kagan, also raised in New York, was as skeptical of the state’s reasoning as the sole member of the New Jersey court, Judge Samuel Alito.
New Jersey has the support of the Biden administration, which has told the court that the text of the pact suggests that each state can withdraw itself.
New York argued that when the pact was written, states “intended to prohibit, not permit, unilateral termination.”
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