N.J.A.C. 4A:2-2.3 General causes

The charge against you, and what it actually means

Twelve causes, and the list closes there. Incompetency, inefficiency or failure to perform duties. Insubordination. Inability to perform duties. Chronic or excessive absenteeism or lateness. Conviction of a crime. Conduct unbecoming a public employee. Neglect of duty. Misuse of public property, including motor vehicles. Discrimination that affects equal employment opportunity, including sexual harassment. Violation of the Federal regulations on drug and alcohol use by employees who perform commercial motor vehicle functions, together with the State and local policies issued under them. Violation of the New Jersey residency requirements. And other sufficient cause.

The section names the cause and says nothing about the penalty, which is why an identical charge can arrive on either disciplinary track. Five working days is the line. Removal, disciplinary demotion, or a suspension or fine of more than five working days at one time is major discipline; at or below that it is minor, and the causes for minor discipline are these same causes. No suspension or fine may exceed six months in any event, other than a suspension pending a criminal complaint or indictment.

Two of the twelve carry no definition. Conduct unbecoming a public employee and other sufficient cause are written broadly and left that way, which is why so much of the case law sits under them. What constrains them is not the wording but the burden: in an appeal from major discipline the appointing authority has to prove the charge, and the Commission may reverse or modify what the appointing authority did, though it may not substitute removal for a lesser penalty.

Three causes borrow their content from somewhere else, and reading them alone will mislead you. Discrimination that affects equal employment opportunity takes its meaning from the State Policy rules, which reach applicants as well as employees and cover conduct at any location that can reasonably be regarded as an extension of the workplace. The residency cause points at a 2011 statute, and an employee appointed on or after 1 September 2011 who has no principal residence in New Jersey and has not obtained an exemption within a year of appointment is defined by that statute as unqualified for employment, which makes immediate suspension as unfit for duty available. Conviction of a crime runs into the forfeiture machinery: where a court enters an order of forfeiture the appointing authority notifies the employee and records it, and where an employee has pled guilty to or been convicted of a forfeiture offense but no order has issued, the Commission will not hear the forfeiture question.

Who these causes can be applied to is a separate question from what they say. The major discipline subchapter covers permanent career service employees and people serving a working test period; appointing authorities may set up their own procedures for anybody else. Where the State and a majority representative have agreed on a review procedure before the appointing authority, that agreement is the exclusive route, and where they have agreed to binding arbitration, it replaces the appeal to the Commission altogether.

One phrase people expect to find here is nearly absent. Progressive discipline appears once in the whole of Title 4A, in the provision allowing an appointing authority and the employee, or the majority representative where one exists, to agree in writing to a suspension on the record carrying the same force for future disciplinary actions as one actually served. How heavily an earlier charge weighs on a later one is not settled by the rules.

Related on this site: /discipline-removal

Written by the NJ Civil Service Navigator editorial team. Every statement here traces to the rules cited on this page. It is not legal advice, and a collective agreement may change how these rules apply to you.