As new legislative session begins, some major bills go back to starting line • New Jersey Monitor

When the Legislature ended its 2024-25 session Monday with a marathon voting session, a number of high-profile bills never made it to a final vote.

Those include measures that would have created an official statewide definition of antisemitism, shielded patients and providers from liability for getting or giving health care related to gender dysphoria and gender incongruence, and targeted polluters by forcing them to pay fines to the state.

A bill that would have barred federal immigration agents from wearing masks, which Gov.-elect Mikie Sherrill campaigned on last year, also failed to advance to a full vote, as did a much-discussed bill to ban smoking in Atlantic City casinos.

New Jersey aims to take over Lakewood schools

With a new legislative session underway — the state Assembly reorganized Tuesday with 12 new members — supporters of those bills must go back to the starting line and try to get them moved through legislative committees once again.

Assemblyman Gary Shaer (D-Passaic), who sponsored the antisemitism bill and pushed for the last two years to advance it, said there are a number of lessons to be learned.

“The most obvious and clearest of all is there needs to be better communication with leadership in the Assembly and the Senate and then the governor’s office, and hopefully, with that education and additional fine-tuning, we’ll find something that works for everyone concerned,” Shaer said.

The bill, which would have had the state adopt the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s definition of antisemitism, was opposed by critics who said it would have stifled criticism of Israel. But it had 59 sponsors in the Assembly, where at least 41 yes votes are needed for passage, and 17 in the Senate, where 21 votes are needed.

Assembly Speaker Craig Coughlin (D-Middlesex), who controls what legislation makes it to a floor vote in the chamber, said the antisemitism bill was one of many “tricky bills” facing the Legislature in the last session.

“Making sure that you get the bill right — and as you all know, there were hours of testimony about that. There were free speech concerns, and making sure that we got the language right and getting everybody on the same page sometimes takes longer,” he told reporters Monday.

The transgender health care bill was nearly as popular with lawmakers as the antisemitism bill, with 39 Assembly members and 19 senators signing on as sponsors. The health care bill never even made it to a committee vote, though, dooming its chances.

Sen. Teresa Ruiz (D-Essex), one of the bill’s prime sponsors along with Sen. Nicholas Scutari (D-Union), reintroduced the bill Tuesday. Its passage is one of her main priorities, she told the New Jersey Monitor.

“I’m looking forward to working with the new administration to get it to the finish line and protect human beings in the state,” Ruiz said.

Scutari told reporters Monday that he has to “pick and choose” what bills make it to a floor vote. He has said he wants to stick to a rule that limits the number of bills the Senate votes on during a given voting session to 30, though that rule is routinely waived.

“We can’t pass every bill, and we’ll be back next week anyway,” he said.

Sen. John McKeon (D-Essex) said he expects Sherrill to support his bill that targets polluters with fines, known as the “Climate Superfund Act.” The measure advanced through legislative committees but never saw a full vote despite intense lobbying by environmentalists who said it would make fossil fuel companies “pay their fair share.” McKeon reintroduced it Tuesday.

During the last legislative session, McKeon said of Sherrill, “the answer was consistently that they were big supporters of the Climate Superfund act, so I would hope that that wouldn’t change at all.”

Coughlin said legislative leaders, when considering what bills to advance, have to be mindful of action Washington, D.C., might take. The Trump administration has targeted states and private entities on issues related to health care for transgender people and immigration.

“So making sure we get that all right is really important,” he said. “Sometimes, you guys are pretty easy to criticize us for racing things through. You should be complimenting us for taking the time to be thoughtful on these things.”

Dana DiFilippo, Nikita Biryukov, and Sophie Nieto-Muñoz contributed.