What the Supreme Court’s NJ Transit Ruling Means for Injured Riders

All Practice Areas

By Michael J. Epstein, Managing Partner, The Epstein Law Firm, P.A. Rochelle Park, New Jersey · July 2026

 

In Brief

On March 4, 2026, the United States Supreme Court ruled unanimously that New Jersey Transit is not an arm of the State of New Jersey. That means NJ Transit can no longer rely on New Jersey’s sovereign immunity, by itself, to get lawsuits dismissed in other states’ courts. If you were hurt by an NJ Transit train or bus in New York or Pennsylvania, a defense that used to end cases has been sharply narrowed. If you were hurt in New Jersey, this ruling does not change your deadlines.

A Man Crossing 40th Street, and the Argument That Kept Him Out of Court

In 2017, Jeffrey Colt was crossing 40th Street in Midtown Manhattan when an NJ Transit bus struck him and knocked him to the ground. A year later, in Philadelphia, Cedric Galette was riding as a passenger in a car on Market Street when an NJ Transit bus crashed into it. Both men were seriously injured. Both did the ordinary thing and sued for negligence in the courts of the state where they lived and where they were hurt.

Neither case turned on how the crash happened.

Instead, NJ Transit moved to dismiss both lawsuits on a single argument: that it is not really a separate company at all, but an arm of the State of New Jersey, and that a state cannot be dragged into another state’s courtroom without its consent. New York’s highest court rejected that argument and let Colt’s case go forward. Pennsylvania’s Supreme Court accepted it and threw Galette’s case out.

So the same defendant, running the same buses, was immune in one state and not in the other. That is the split the Supreme Court agreed to resolve.

 

What NJ Transit Had Been Arguing

The doctrine at issue has a formal name, but the idea behind it is simple. States are generally protected from being sued in the courts of other states. That protection is personal to the state itself, and it extends to entities that are genuinely part of the state. Lawyers call those entities arms of the state.

NJ Transit’s position was that it qualified. Its enabling statute describes it as an instrumentality of the State exercising public and essential governmental functions. The Governor appoints its board members and can remove most of them for cause. A state cabinet officer chairs that board. The Governor can veto the board’s actions. New Jersey has poured public money into the system for decades. On paper, that is a substantial argument, and it persuaded the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania.

 

What the Court Decided

The Supreme Court rejected it, and did so without a single dissent. Justice Sotomayor wrote for the full Court.

The reasoning came down to structure rather than appearances. New Jersey created NJ Transit as a body corporate, with the ordinary powers of a corporation. It can sue and be sued in its own name. It signs its own contracts, buys and holds its own property, sets its own fares, and runs its own operations. New Jersey law says plainly that NJ Transit’s debts are not debts of the State, and NJ Transit conceded to the Court that New Jersey is not formally liable for what it owes.

The corporate form was the Court’s starting point and its strongest evidence. The absence of state liability, which NJ Transit conceded, confirmed it. As the Court put it, it has never once found a corporation that was liable for its own judgments to be an arm of the state, even where the state exercised significant control over it.

The opinion also cleared away several arguments that had been carrying weight in the lower courts. A history of state subsidy carries little weight, even when the funding is substantial. Day-to-day control can be considered, but the Court said it should be weighed with caution, because ultimate control over every state-created entity rests with the state that made it. And whether running buses and trains counts as a governmental function is beside the point. What matters is that New Jersey chose to perform that function through a legally separate corporation rather than through the State itself.

One limit deserves mention, because it is easy to miss and it matters. The Court decided only that NJ Transit is not an arm of the State. It left intact a separate rule under which a case can still be dismissed if the State turns out to be the real party in interest. NJ Transit never made that argument here, so the Court had no occasion to address it. The defense was narrowed, not erased.

 

The Detail in the Opinion I Keep Coming Back To

There is a passage in the ruling that has drawn less attention than the holding itself, and for a New Jersey lawyer it is the most interesting sentence in the case.

When the Court went looking for evidence that New Jersey had structured NJ Transit as something separate from itself, one of the places it looked was the New Jersey Tort Claims Act. That statute, our own state’s law governing claims against public entities, excludes entities with the power to sue and be sued from its definition of the State. NJ Transit is exactly such an entity. The Court cited that exclusion against NJ Transit, as one more indication that New Jersey never intended it to be the State itself.

New Jersey’s own tort statute helped prove that NJ Transit is not New Jersey.

That needs one clarification, because the wording invites a wrong conclusion. Being excluded from the definition of the State is not the same as being outside the Tort Claims Act. NJ Transit remains a public entity under that Act, and claims against it in New Jersey still run through it. The two ideas sit together comfortably once you see the distinction, but they are easy to blur.

I also want to be careful about how far the passage reaches. The Court cited the Tort Claims Act as a structural signal and nothing more. It said nothing about what that Act requires of an injured person, nothing about deadlines, and nothing about how you go about suing NJ Transit here at home. Those questions were not before it.

 

What This Does Not Change if You Were Hurt in New Jersey

This is the part that matters most for the people who call our office, and it is the part most likely to get lost.

The ruling addresses whether NJ Transit can claim immunity in another state’s courts. It says nothing about a case brought here. If you were injured on an NJ Transit bus in Newark, or struck by one in Bergen County, your claim still runs through the New Jersey Tort Claims Act, and that statute imposes a deadline far shorter than most people expect. You generally have ninety days from the date the claim arises to serve a formal notice of claim. Miss it, and you can lose the right to recover entirely, no matter how badly you were hurt or how clearly someone else was at fault.

Ninety days is not a long time when you are still in a hospital bed. The two-year deadline people have heard about is real, but it is not the first one you have to meet.

 

The Question Nobody Has Answered Yet

Here is where I have to tell you that the law does not yet have an answer.

NJ Transit buses cross state lines every day. Ours run into Manhattan constantly, and plenty of our neighbors in Bergen County ride them there and back. After this ruling, someone struck by one of those buses in New York can sue in New York. What is not settled is whether New Jersey’s ninety-day notice requirement travels with the bus across the river, or whether the forum state’s own rules govern instead. I am not aware of a controlling decision resolving it.

That uncertainty is not academic. It is the difference between a claim that survives and one that does not, and it will be litigated. Until it is resolved, the only prudent approach for someone injured by an NJ Transit vehicle anywhere is to treat the shortest possible deadline as the real one and to get the question in front of a lawyer quickly.

 

The Bottom Line

A unanimous Supreme Court narrowed a defense that had been ending legitimate injury cases in other states. Jeffrey Colt’s case can proceed. Cedric Galette’s case, dismissed in Pennsylvania, goes back to that court for further proceedings, where NJ Transit remains free to raise whatever other defenses it has. For anyone hurt by an NJ Transit vehicle outside New Jersey, one door that used to be closed is open.

Inside New Jersey, the clock is unchanged, and it is short.

 

Frequently Asked Questions

Can you sue NJ Transit? 

Yes. NJ Transit can be sued for negligence, and after the Supreme Court’s March 2026 decision it can no longer rely on arm-of-the-state status to avoid suit in another state’s courts. The Court left open a narrower path to dismissal where the State itself is the real party in interest, so the defense was limited rather than removed. Claims brought in New Jersey remain subject to the New Jersey Tort Claims Act and its notice requirements.

What did the Supreme Court decide in the NJ Transit case? 

The Court held that NJ Transit is not an arm of the State of New Jersey and therefore cannot share in New Jersey’s interstate sovereign immunity. The decision was unanimous. It affirmed the New York ruling allowing one case to proceed and reversed the Pennsylvania ruling that had dismissed the other.

Does this ruling change the deadline to file a claim in New Jersey? 

No. The decision concerns immunity in other states’ courts. A claim against NJ Transit arising in New Jersey still proceeds under the New Jersey Tort Claims Act, which generally requires a formal notice of claim within ninety days of when the claim arises.

I was hit by an NJ Transit bus in New York. Which state’s rules apply to me? 

This is genuinely unsettled. You can now bring the case in New York, but whether New Jersey’s ninety-day notice requirement still applies to an out-of-state action is a question I am not aware of any court having resolved. Because the answer could determine whether your claim survives at all, this is worth reviewing with a New Jersey attorney quickly rather than waiting.

Why did NJ Transit think it was immune in the first place? 

Its governing statute describes it as an instrumentality of the State, the Governor appoints its board and can remove most members for cause, and the State has funded it heavily for decades. The Supreme Court concluded that none of those features outweighed the fact that New Jersey set NJ Transit up as a separate corporation responsible for paying its own judgments.

Does this apply to other public agencies besides NJ Transit? 

Possibly. The Court’s reasoning turns on whether an entity is separately incorporated and formally responsible for its own judgments, which describes a number of authorities and public corporations. How far it reaches will be worked out case by case, and the Court noted that states remain free to restructure these entities if they choose.

 

Michael J. Epstein is the managing partner of The Epstein Law Firm, P.A., and a New Jersey Supreme Court Certified Civil Trial Attorney. 

 

Cases against public transit agencies turn on deadlines and classifications that are easy to miss and unforgiving when missed. That is the work we do. If you or a family member has been seriously injured by a bus or train in New Jersey, learn more about our New Jersey bus accident practice, or contact our office to talk through your specific situation.

Results may vary depending on your particular facts and legal circumstances.