The U.S. Supreme Court has agreed to consider whether New Jersey’s public transit system may be sued for accidents that take place outside of its home state.

New Jersey Transit is being sued in state courts in New York and Pennsylvania after its buses allegedly struck people while operating outside the Garden State.

Although the transit agency operates buses, trains, and light rail primarily in its home state, service also extends to the Philadelphia and New York metropolitan areas.

The U.S. Supreme Court will review state court decisions on whether the New Jersey entity counts as an arm of that state that enjoys sovereign immunity in other states’ courts from lawsuits.

Sovereign immunity is a legal doctrine that prevents governments from being sued unless they consent to being sued. The sovereign immunity of U.S. states is enshrined in the 11th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

Top courts in two states disagree on whether the transit agency was entitled to sovereign immunity. A Pennsylvania court ruled that the agency was an arm of the state of New Jersey, but a New York court found that it was not. The U.S. Supreme Court is expected to resolve the split between the two state courts.

The U.S. Supreme Court’s new decision on July 3 took the form of an unsigned order. No justices dissented. The court did not explain its decision.

The high court ordered that the two appeals, New Jersey Transit Corporation v. Colt and Galette v. New Jersey Transit Corporation, will be heard together.

In the course of its deliberations, the U.S. Supreme Court may look at its 2019 ruling in Franchise Tax Board of California v. Hyatt, which overturned a 40-year-old precedent that allowed states to be sued in the courts of other states.

The nation’s highest court held in that case that states’ sovereign immunity must be upheld because it is “a historically rooted principle embedded in the text and structure of the Constitution.”

That ruling did not make clear whether state immunity extends to state entities such as public transit agencies, state-run hospitals, and student loan servicing agencies.

In the cases at hand, New Jersey argues that the personal injury lawsuits should be heard in New Jersey state courts because that is where New Jersey Transit is based. Attorneys for the alleged accident victims argue that the transit agency isn’t an arm of the state, so it isn’t entitled to immunity, and that the lawsuits should proceed in the courts of the states where the accidents took place.

In Galette v. New Jersey Transit Corporation, petitioner Cedric Galette sued New Jersey Transit after he was involved in a 2018 accident.

Galette said in his petition that he was injured when he was a passenger in a vehicle that was struck by a New Jersey Transit bus while the vehicle was stopped in Philadelphia.

The transit agency asked the Court of Common Pleas to dismiss the lawsuit, arguing that it enjoyed immunity in Pennsylvania courts. The agency said the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit has determined that the agency is an arm of the state of New Jersey.

The Court of Common Pleas denied the motion to dismiss. The Superior Court of Pennsylvania affirmed, but later the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania reversed, granting the transit agency’s dismissal motion, the petition said.

Galette urged the U.S. Supreme Court to accept the case and overturn the ruling of the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania.

New Jersey Transit also said the U.S. Supreme Court should grant Galette’s petition so the justices can clarify how sovereign immunity applies to state agencies.

The Supreme Court of Pennsylvania was correct when it ruled that the transit agency “is an arm of New Jersey,” the transit agency said in its brief.

That court held that the transit agency’s structure and mission “weigh heavily in favor of concluding that NJ Transit is an arm of the State of New Jersey.”

The agency was formed to “provide for the operation and improvement of a coherent public transportation system,” which the state says supports an “essential governmental function.”

The statute that created the agency formed an agency police department and gave the agency power to acquire land by using eminent domain, which governments use to seize private property for public projects. The political branches of the state government also “exercise a significant degree of control” over the agency, and the agency has to file a detailed account of its activities every fiscal year with the New Jersey Legislature and the state’s governor, the court said.

In New Jersey Transit Corporation v. Colt, respondent Jeffrey Colt sued New Jersey Transit in 2017 in New York state court, claiming that a transit agency bus struck him in New York City, according to the agency’s petition.

Claiming that it enjoys sovereign immunity, the transit agency asked the court to dismiss the lawsuit. The court did not rule on the immunity issue but dismissed the lawsuit on other grounds.

An intermediate appeals court in New York affirmed, holding that the transit agency “is an arm of the State of New Jersey … entitled to invoke the doctrine of sovereign immunity,” but found that fairness required that its immunity be overridden, the petition said.

Next, the New York Court of Appeals affirmed, finding that the transit agency is not an arm of New Jersey.

The U.S. Supreme Court is expected to hear the cases in its new term that begins in October.

This article by Matthew Vadum appeared July 6, 2025, in The Epoch Times. It was updated July 7, 2025.