A federal judge in Newark ordered the Trump Justice Department, for at least the fourth time this year, to let a state decide who walks through the nonpublic doors of its own buildings. On September 4, 2026, U.S. District Judge Georgette Castner dismissed the United States' lawsuit against Governor Mikie Sherrill and the State of New Jersey over Executive Order 12 — the directive barring state executive-branch agencies from letting federal immigration officers into nonpublic areas of state property, or using that property as a staging ground, without a judicial warrant. United States v. New Jersey, No. 26-1770 (D.N.J. Sept. 4, 2026).
If you practice in front of the New Jersey Division of Workers' Compensation, or you represent injured workers who happen to be immigrants, this ruling is worth five minutes of your time. Here's why.
What EO12 Actually Does
Signed by Governor Sherrill on February 11, 2026, EO12 does two narrow things. It tells state departments and agencies not to let ICE and CBP officers into nonpublic areas of state-owned property — think the back hallways of a courthouse, not the lobby — to carry out civil immigration enforcement. And it bars state property from being used as a staging area or processing site for that enforcement. Either restriction disappears the moment an agent shows up with a judicial warrant signed by an Article III or state Superior Court judge. The order doesn't touch public areas, and it says so explicitly.
The United States sued, arguing EO12 violates the Supremacy Clause three different ways: that it's preempted by the Immigration and Nationality Act, that it unconstitutionally discriminates against the federal government, and that it unconstitutionally regulates the federal government. Judge Castner rejected all three, and the reasoning is the interesting part.
Why the Government Lost
Preemption. The DOJ's strongest argument was that a patchwork of INA provisions — detainer statutes, transfer-of-custody rules, the criminal obstruction provisions — creates a "cooperative framework" that EO12 obstructs. Judge Castner wasn't buying it. Every cooperation provision Justice cited, she found, is written in permissive language: states "may" cooperate; ICE detainers are requests, not commands. That's not a drafting accident. The Third Circuit already held in Galarza v. Szalczyk, 745 F.3d 634 (3d Cir. 2014), that immigration detainers "do not and cannot compel" a state or local agency to hold anyone. If Congress had actually tried to make state cooperation mandatory, that statute would run headlong into the anticommandeering doctrine the Supreme Court built in New York v. United States, 505 U.S. 144 (1992), and sharpened in Printz v. United States, 521 U.S. 898 (1997): Congress cannot issue direct orders to state governments or conscript state officers to administer a federal program. A voluntary framework that New Jersey has voluntarily declined to join isn't in conflict with anything — it's the system working as designed. As the Ninth Circuit put it in a parallel fight over California's sanctuary-state laws, United States v. California, 921 F.3d 865 (9th Cir. 2019), extending preemption to reach a state's lawful decision not to help isn't preemption at all — it's commandeering wearing a preemption label.
Intergovernmental immunity — regulation. The government also argued EO12 unconstitutionally "regulates" federal immigration officers. Judge Castner drew a proprietor/regulator line straight out of the Third Circuit's recent CoreCivic, Inc. v. Governor of New Jersey, 145 F.4th 315 (3d Cir. 2025): when a state is deciding what happens on its own property, it's acting as a landlord, not a lawmaker. EO12 governs access to state-owned buildings. It doesn't purport to tell ICE how to do its job anywhere else, and the mere inconvenience of getting a warrant before entering a nonpublic hallway doesn't rise to the level of unconstitutional interference.
Intergovernmental immunity — discrimination. This is the part every workers' compensation lawyer should read twice, because the Court's yardstick came straight out of a workers' compensation case. To prove a state law discriminates against the federal government, you need a comparator — some similarly situated non-federal actor that the state treats better. The DOJ pointed to United States v. Washington, 596 U.S. 832 (2022), the Supreme Court's decision striking down a Washington State law that made it easier for federal contract workers at the Hanford nuclear site to collect workers' compensation benefits than it was for state or private-sector workers. That law discriminated because it singled out federal workers by law and imposed a real, measurable cost — extra compensation liability — that state and private employers never bore.
Judge Castner found EO12 does no such thing, because there's no comparator to speak of. State and local police aren't a valid stand-in for federal immigration officers, because only the federal government has authority to enforce civil immigration law in the first place. When a law "touches on an exclusively federal sphere" and there's no similarly situated non-federal actor getting better treatment, there's no discrimination claim to make — full stop. Washington worked because Congress had drawn a line between federal and non-federal workers and then treated them differently. EO12 doesn't draw that line at all.
What This Means for Workers' Compensation Practice
New Jersey's Division of Workers' Compensation runs its hearings, settlement discussions, and pre-trial conferences out of state-owned buildings — exactly the kind of nonpublic space EO12 is designed to protect. That matters more than it might look at first glance.
Undocumented and immigrant workers are entitled to pursue workers' compensation benefits in New Jersey regardless of status — that's settled law here. But entitlement on paper means nothing if a worker is too afraid to show up. Every practitioner in this field has heard some version of the same story: a claimant skips a deposition, a hearing, or even an IME because a courthouse felt like the one place they couldn't risk being seen. EO12, and now this decision upholding it, removes a real source of that fear for claims and hearings conducted on state property. That should mean more claims actually get prosecuted rather than quietly abandoned, fewer default and dismissal issues tied to no-shows, and cleaner records for everyone — claimants, carriers, and judges of compensation alike.
There's a second, more technical takeaway buried in the Washington discussion. If you ever litigate a jurisdictional or coverage fight involving a federal enclave, a federal contractor, or a comp scheme that treats federal and non-federal workers differently, this opinion is a clean, recent explanation of exactly what the intergovernmental immunity discrimination test requires: an actual comparator, not just an incidental burden. Keep it in the toolbox.
Don't expect this to be the last word. The DOJ has now lost similar fights over Illinois's and Colorado's non-cooperation policies and a Boston trust ordinance, and it isn't showing signs of retreat — an appeal to the Third Circuit is the way to bet. Practitioners with clients or claimants who could be affected should watch the docket.
Sources
1. United States v. New Jersey and Sherrill, Civil Action No. 26-1770 (GC)(JTQ) (D.N.J. Sept. 4, 2026) (Castner, J.) — full opinion, CourtListener/RECAP
2. New Jersey Executive Order No. 12 (Feb. 11, 2026), Office of the Governor — official text, nj.gov
3. New York v. United States, 505 U.S. 144 (1992) — CourtListener
4. Printz v. United States, 521 U.S. 898 (1997) — CourtListener
5. Murphy v. National Collegiate Athletic Ass'n, 584 U.S. 453 (2018) — CourtListener
6. Galarza v. Szalczyk, 745 F.3d 634 (3d Cir. 2014) — CourtListener
7. CoreCivic, Inc. v. Governor of New Jersey, 145 F.4th 315 (3d Cir. 2025) — CourtListener
8. United States v. Washington, 596 U.S. 832 (2022) — Justia
9. Arizona v. United States, 567 U.S. 387 (2012) — Justia
10. United States v. California, 921 F.3d 865 (9th Cir. 2019) — Justia
11. Nikita Biryukov, "Federal judge upholds Gov. Sherrill order barring ICE from some state property", New Jersey Monitor (Sept. 8, 2026
Recommended CitationJon L. Gelman, Court Upholds NJ's ICE Firewall, Workers' Compensation, workers-compensation.blogspot.com (Sept. 10, 2026), https://workers-compensation.blogspot.com/2026/09/court-upholds-njs-ice-firewall.html
About the Author
Jon L. Gelman of Wayne, NJ, is the author of NJ Workers' Compensation Law (West-Thomson-Reuters) and co-author of the national treatise Modern Workers' Compensation Law (West-Thomson-Reuters).
LinkedIn: JonGelman
LinkedIn Group: Injured Workers Law & Advocacy Group
Author: "Workers' Compensation Law" West-Thomson-Reuters
Blue Sky: jongelman@bsky.social
Substack: https://jongelman.substack.com/
© 2026 Jon L Gelman. All rights reserved.
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