September 5, 2025
Hon. Dave Siedell, Mayor and members of the
Haddonfield Board of Commissioners
242 Kings Highway East
Haddonfield, NJ 08033 (via email)
Dear Mayor Siedell and Commissioners:
I write regarding Ordinance 2025-11, scheduled for final adoption on September 29. Having reviewed the ordinance alongside existing Borough Code Chapter 158 and New Jersey case law, I believe the proposal repeats provisions long preempted by state law and, if enacted, would invite both litigation risk and constitutional challenge without meaningfully addressing homelessness.
Under State v. Crawley (90 N.J. 241, 1982) and State v. Paserchia (356 N.J. Super. 461, App. Div. 2003), local ordinances duplicating or conflicting with Title 2C — or criminalizing conduct the Legislature deliberately excluded — are unenforceable. The goal of Title 2C was to eliminate the patchwork of local criminal codes and create uniform statewide regulation of public order offenses.
Here, the existing Borough Code provisions on “Peace and Good Order,” especially §§158-3 and 158-5, already fall within Crawley and Paserchia’s preemption holdings. The proposed §158-6 largely restates them but adds a new clause targeting homelessness.
Specifically, §158-6(A) provides:
“From dusk to dawn, no person shall sleep or protractedly lounge on the seats or benches or other public areas or engage in loud, boisterous, threatening, abusive, insulting, or indecent language or disorderly conduct...”
Because this language is set out in the disjunctive (“or”), each clause stands alone as a separate offense. If enacted, a homeless person peacefully sleeping on a park bench at night would violate the ordinance even if he uttered no threats, made no noise, committed no lewd acts, and disturbed no one.
The remaining clauses (“loud, boisterous, threatening…,” “urinating or defecating in public”) are legally superfluous. Disorderly conduct and offensive language are already fully covered by N.J.S.A. 2C:33-2; urination and defecation, if the Borough wishes to prohibit them, could be handled separately. Once these redundancies are stripped away, §158-6(A) functions as a direct prohibition on homelessness in public places after dark.
The Borough appears to recognize some constitutional risk: §158-7 requires police to inform violators of available shelter and offer transportation before enforcement. This mirrors Martin v. City of Boise (9th Cir. 2018), which held that criminal penalties for sleeping in public when no shelter beds exist violate the Eighth Amendment. But the U.S. Supreme Court’s recent decision in City of Grants Pass v. Johnson (2024) narrowed Martin without affecting New Jersey’s preemption doctrine under Crawley and Paserchia. That doctrine remains an independent barrier to enforcing this ordinance regardless of shelter availability.
In short, the ordinance’s only real effect is to criminalize homelessness itself — an approach courts have repeatedly rejected when municipalities attempted to ban loitering or vagrancy. Whether someone is sitting idly at noon or asleep at midnight makes no difference under Crawley; Title 2C deliberately left such status-based offenses out of the criminal code.
I appreciate that the Borough faces pressure from residents and business owners, but enacting a preempted ordinance exposes Haddonfield to litigation while failing to address root causes. A statewide policy discussion — through the Legislature or League of Municipalities — would be a more lawful and effective venue than piecemeal local ordinances destined for challenge.
For these reasons, I respectfully urge the Commissioners to reconsider adoption of Ordinance 2025-11 in its present form and instead petition the Borough's representatives in the General Assembly and Senate to work on a statewide solution. I also ask the Commissioners to instruct the Borough's Solicitor, Salvatore Siciliano, to review §§158-3 and 158-5, as currently written, and render an opinion on whether those sections are preempted by Title 2C.
Respectfully,
John Paff, Chairman
Libertarian Party of New Jersey – Preempted Ordinance Project
email: