An Ocean County school district said the judge should not have issued a ruling pertaining to a law she sponsored when she was an assemblywoman. (Getty Images)
A New Jersey judge is not required to recuse herself from a case touching on a 2020 law she helped shepherd through the Legislature as an assemblywoman, an appellate panel ruled Monday.
The three-judge panel found Judge Joann Downey, who oversees workers’ compensation cases, is able to judge a case centered around a 2020 law she sponsored, one that lowered the bar for essential workers to receive workers’ compensation benefits following a COVID-19 infection. Downey served three terms in the Assembly as a Monmouth County Democrat before losing reelection in 2021
“A judge’s personal knowledge of or experience with certain legislative history does not necessarily render the judge biased or unable to make a fair judgment in the matter,” the judges wrote Monday.
The 2020 law extended a rebuttal presumption to essential workers that assumed any contractions of COVID-19 were related to their duties, enabling such workers to more easily obtain benefits following an infection.
The case in question involves the estate of a teacher for the Ocean Township School District who died after contracting the virus. Her estate argues it is entitled to workers’ compensation benefits under the law, which did not explicitly list teachers as essential workers.
Attorneys for the district argued Downey improperly issued a pretrial decision in the estate’s favor. They said she ruled based on an interpretation of the law she developed as a legislator rather than on evidence presented to the court.
The district had asked the appellate court to remand the case for trial under a different judge to avoid the appearance of bias, reviving an earlier request for her recusal that Downey denied.
The appeals court rejected those arguments, finding Downey’s decision was based on the record and her legislative past did not unduly influence her.
“Her knowledge of the law and lawmaking was not extrajudicial knowledge but rather judicial knowledge that many judges take with them to the bench,” the judges wrote.
The panel also discounted arguments that charged Downey could be called as a witness in the case, noting courts are generally disinterested in a single legislator’s beliefs about the correct interpretation of a statute.
The rules of professional conduct for workers’ compensation judges, who are a part of the Department of Labor and not the Judiciary, spell out conditions for recusal, but they do not require judges to step back from cases touching laws they enacted.
They do, however, require recusal where a judge’s impartiality or the appearance of the same may be reasonably questioned.
Citing court rules, Downey declined to comment Friday, before the decision was published.
The appellate ruling affirmed Downey’s determination that teachers are covered under the statute. Though the statute creating the rebuttable presumption did not explicitly name teachers, it contained language allowing the government to expand coverage to groups of workers not specifically identified.
The appellate panel found New Jersey’s Office of Emergency Management added teachers to the list when it adopted guidance from the federal Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Administration that named teachers as essential employees.
“Even if the statute did not identify teachers as essential employees, it nevertheless encompassed any other employee the governing authority deemed essential,” the court found.
The district could still overcome the presumption by showing the teacher’s COVID-19 infection was unrelated to her work.