HARBORING DIVISIONS
Fate of mob-busting pier watchdogs rests with Supremes
Whether a New York-New Jersey mob-busting law enforcement agency should sleep with the fishes was the subject of arguments Wednesday before the U.S. Supreme Court.
The survival of the Waterfront Commission of New York Harbor came before the nine justices after New York sued New Jersey over the Garden State’s unilateral effort to shut down the bistate agency.
Jeremy Feigenbaum, a lawyer for New Jersey, argued before the court that the 1953 agreement to create the commission had no language preventing one state from deciding to leave.
“As New York admits, there is nothing in the plain text of the compact that expressly limits New Jersey’s withdrawal,” Feigenbaum said.
Judith Vale, representing New York, argued that the agreement’s silence on unilateral withdrawal made the opposite point.
“[The states] would understand that when you do a compact, and you don’t say anything express about termination, that you are sticking together until you jointly decide to end it,” she said in response to questioning by Chief Justice John Roberts.
Vale also argued that the bistate nature of the compact was crucial to its function.
“When they entered the waterfront compact, the two states together, because of their shared port, they faced a really tremendous problem of crime and corruption at the shared port that the Port Authority was not prepared to deal with,” she said. “It is harder for corruption and undue influence to take hold if it has to succeed in two states.”
Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson signaled that she was unconvinced that the 70-yearold agreement between the two states was meant to be binding forever.
She noted the bistate agreement’s silence on the matter of whether the states “intended for this to continue forever, or that they would jointly agree to leave, but that one couldn’t decide ‘I’m done and out.’ ”
Jackson challenged Vale’s argument that because of that silence, both states must agree on the Waterfront Commission’s dissolution.
“I guess what I’m trying to push back on is that, if the reason they were silent was not because they thought this was in an agreement for all times, but because they were worried about signaling to the mob bosses that they would be leaving,” Jackson said. “I don’t know that we can draw the inference that you want us to draw.”
Jackson and other justices seemed skeptical of New York’s argument in the case.
“We know here that the parties never intended for this to be perpetual,” said Justice Sonia Sotomayor.
Justice Amy Coney Barrett said it “seems very odd” that New York wants to keep the commission even though most of the port’s business is now conducted on the New Jersey side of the harbor.
The Waterfront Commission of New York Harbor was created to address racketeering and unfair hiring practices at the jointly run Port of New York and New Jersey.
The commission regulates hiring and licensing on the waterfront, and continues in its efforts to make made guys scarce on the docks.
Over the years, the Waterfront Commission has documented how some union leaders in the ports have raked in hundreds of thousands of dollars in pay each year by submitting weekly reports in which they claim to work more hours than there are in a week.
New Jersey politicians say the commission has outlived its usefulness, and in 2018 then-Gov. Chris Christie signed a law withdrawing from the commission and handing over law enforcement operations on the New Jersey side of the port to the New Jersey State Police.
The Waterfront Commission sued New Jersey over the law — but its case was tossed when a federal appeals court ruled in 2021 that only New York could sue to stop the Garden State’s withdrawal.
That led Gov. Hochul to bring a new case last year before the Supreme Court. The justices will decide the case in the coming months.
‘When they entered the waterfront compact, the two states together, because of their shared port, they faced a really tremendous problem of crime and corruption at the shared port that the Port Authority was not prepared to deal with.’ JUDITH VALE, LAWYER FOR NEW YORK STATE