Chief Justice Stuart Rabner is expected to announce tomorrow that he will assign Hudson County Assignment Judge Jeffrey Jablonski to the appellate division and replace him with a judge from Essex County, David Katz.
The move is setting off a firestorm among some of the thirty Superior Court judges assigned to Hudson County who were passed over for the influential assignment judge post in favor of a candidate from another vicinage.
A sitting Hudson judge, who spoke on the condition of anonymity out of fear of retaliation, told the New Jersey Globe that “it’s a slap in the face to the Hudson bench.”
Among the local judges that didn’t get the job was Joseph A. Turula, the presiding judge of the civil courts in Hudson County. He was one of five candidates interviewed by Gov. Phil Murphy for nomination as an associate justice of the New Jersey Supreme Court last spring, but Rabner instead decided to go with Katz, a family court judge who’d been actively campaigning for an assignment judge post for years.
Katz met with Rabner last week – that’s not something he kept to himself – and “pledged his fealty to the chief justice…agreed to do his bidding in order to get the job,” the Hudson judge said.
In Hudson, there is some concern about the optics of elevating a white judge from Livingston who has never been a civil or criminal court judge to take the top slot in a county where 72% of the population is non-white. Thirteen of the fifteen assignment judges named by Rabner are white.
“Hudson has a diverse bench with a number of qualified men and women,” the judge said. “I think he could have found a great candidate to promote from within.
The timing of Rabner’s announcement – perhaps a coincidence – comes while the New Jersey State Bar Association is holding its’ mid-year meeting in Ireland. That takes some of the lawyers and judges who might have taken an interest in Katz’s appointment off the playing field.
This also puts Katz, not Jablonski, on center stage when a new, $350 million courthouse opens next year. Jablonski has played an active role in planning the opening.
Katz could lead the Hudson judiciary until he reaches the mandatory retirement age of 70 in 2029.