It's Not There
New Jersey's Office of Administrative Law confirms that Governor Murphy's independent-contractor rule is not adopted, as Governor Sherrill takes over.
Yesterday, I wrote about the significance of today’s edition of the New Jersey Register. With Governor Phil Murphy’s term ending, and with Governor-elect Sherrill taking over, today’s edition of the New Jersey Register was the Murphy administration’s last chance to finalize its proposed independent-contractor rule.
That edition of the New Jersey Register is now online. You can access it by starting here. I searched it and then called the Office of Administrative Law to confirm.
Per that office, the rule remains in proposal form. The OAL’s spokeswoman told me that the Murphy administration did not adopt the proposed rule in today’s New Jersey Register.
This means Governor Sherrill will have several more months to decide what to do with this rule proposal before it expires. I laid out her options in yesterday’s story as well.
The timing here is particularly interesting from a regulatory perspective. Governor Murphy's decision not to finalize this rule in the last days of his administration suggests either strategic restraint or unresolved complexities in the proposal itself.
Now Governor Sherrill inherits both the discretion and the political implications. If she allows it to expire, it signals a departure from the previous administration's approach to worker classification. If she moves forward, she owns the consequences—both the benefits to traditional employment structures and the potential constraints on flexible work arrangements that many independent contractors value.
The multi-month timeline before expiration creates an interesting window. It's long enough for stakeholder input and policy analysis, but short enough that a decision will need to be made relatively quickly in her term. This could be an early indication of how her administration will balance labor protections with economic flexibility.
So that's one hurdle. Thank you for your smart, hard work and perseverance. Should we start sending emails to her office about letting the bill die?