Galette v. New Jersey Transit Corp

In August 2018, Cedric Galette was riding in a car stopped on a Philadelphia street when a New Jersey Transit bus struck the vehicle, injuring him. Around the same time, a similar collision in Midtown Manhattan injured Jeffrey Colt. 

Both men injured in the accident sued NJ Transit in the respective courts of the states where each man was injured: Galette in Pennsylvania and Colt in New York.

NJ Transit moved to dismiss both suits, arguing that as an "instrumentality" of New Jersey, it was entitled to share New Jersey's sovereign immunity from being sued in another state's courts without its consent.

The two cases produced flatly contradictory answers from state supreme courts: the New York Court of Appeals ruled NJ Transit was not an arm of the state and could be sued, while the Pennsylvania Supreme Court ruled the opposite. 

On July 3rd of 2025, the Supreme Court granted certiorari to resolve both cases. The cases were consequently consolidated into an hour of oral argument on Jan 14th of 2026. After Justice Sotomayor issued an opinion on behalf of the Court for both cases.

In the arguments, NJ Transit pointed to the statutory language creating it as an "instrumentality of the State exercising public and essential governmental functions," along with its public transportation mission, its dependence on state funding, and the governor's power to appoint its board, arguing all of that made it a true arm of New Jersey. 

Galette and Colt countered that NJ Transit was deliberately structured by the legislature as a separate corporate body, should be able to be sued, and that, critically, the State itself bears no legal liability for NJ Transit's debts or court judgments, meaning a lawsuit against NJ Transit doesn't actually reach the New Jersey treasury the way sovereign immunity is meant to protect.

A unanimous Court sided with the injured passengers. Sotomayor's opinion held that the "arm of the state" inquiry turns predominantly on formal legal structure and fiscal independence rather than on an entity's public mission or the degree of state oversight it operates under. 

Considering NJ Transit is responsible for its own debts and judgments, it doesn't qualify. The Court affirmed the New York ruling and reversed the Pennsylvania one, thus sending both cases back for respective proceedings. Past the two incidents, the ruling displays how courts nationwide assess sovereign immunity claims by the hundreds of public authorities, making it harder for such entities to use immunity to escape out-of-state lawsuits simply because of their public function or state ties.