N.J.A.C. 4A:5-1 Eligibility
Every section of N.J.A.C. 4A:5-1, Eligibility: 3 rules with full text, amendment history and citing decisions.
- 4A:5-1.1Veterans preference
The Commission does not decide who counts as a veteran. The Adjutant General of the Department of Military and Veterans' Affairs makes that determination by statute, and this section reproduces the standard for information only. Two things have to be true. The discharge or release from active United States military or naval service was under conditions other than dishonorable, and the service falls into one of sixteen listed categories. The older wars need 90 days of active service beginning within a fixed window: World War I, World War II, Korea, Vietnam. The later missions need 14 days, continuous or in the aggregate, in a named place within named dates, running from Lebanon in 1958 through Operation Iraqi Freedom. Length of service drops out entirely where the person received a service-incurred injury or disability during one of those periods. Two categories do not rest on the applicant's own service at all: qualifying service in an allied army or navy in either world war, and being the surviving spouse of a person entitled to preference who has not remarried.
- 4A:5-1.2Disabled veterans preference
Ten percent is the threshold. A person receiving, or entitled to receive, United States Veterans Administration compensation for a service connected disability of 10 percent or more, arising out of service that qualifies under 4A:5-1.1, has disabled veterans preference, abbreviated DV. Three other people can hold it without having served. The spouse of someone entitled to DV preference qualifies, but only while that person is not employed by any jurisdiction operating under Title 11A, and only if the spouse waives any preference of their own for the duration of that employment. An unremarried surviving spouse of a person entitled to DV preference qualifies. So does a parent or surviving spouse of someone who would have been entitled to veterans preference but died in service. Where more than one survivor could claim through the same person, one of them using the preference suspends the right of the others for as long as the first is employed by a Title 11A jurisdiction.
- 4A:5-1.3Filing for veterans or disabled veterans preference
Eight days is the number to watch. Preference runs prospectively from the date the Adjutant General first determines it, or from the date of a determination on appeal, and it does not reach backward. For eligible lists it applies to every list where the determination arrived no later than eight days before the list issuance date. A determination that lands inside those eight days does not attach to that list. Two situations run on different timing: initial employment in the noncompetitive division, and promotion from the noncompetitive division into the competitive division. For those, the preference takes effect on the date of the determination itself.