Bergen County Clerk John Hogan agreed to pay $29,279 in legal fees, closing litigation that began in 2020 and has reshaped New Jersey elections.

Nineteen of New Jersey's twenty-one county clerks spent six years in federal court defending a primary ballot design that existed nowhere else in America. The last holdout surrendered August 3.

Bergen County Clerk John Hogan agreed to settle the final piece of litigation that began in July 2020 and accelerated when then-U.S. Representative Andy Kim challenged the system in February 2024. 

Bromberg Law LLC and Weissman & Mintz LLC filed the suit, which survived seven motions to dismiss. The agreement mandates office-block ballots and requires Hogan's office to pay $29,279 in plaintiffs' legal fees, according to Politico Pro. All nineteen clerks named in the litigation have now accepted the office-block format.

The resolution closes a chapter that began long before most current voters were born. For roughly 75 years, party-endorsed candidates in 19 counties appeared in a single bracketed column or row running from president down to municipal committee. Challengers landed in obscure positions that political operatives once called "ballot Siberia." Salem and Sussex Counties were the only ones to never use the format.

Research by Julia Sass Rubin at the Edward J. Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy at Rutgers University found the line conveyed a real advantage. In an interview with NJ Spotlight News, Rubin stated that county-line candidates in congressional primaries from 2002 to 2022 outpaced opponents by 38 points on average. Only 3 of 209 legislative incumbents who captured the line in every county within their district lost a primary over the last two decades, according to the New Jersey Institute for Social Justice.

The 2024 Senate Primary Exposed the Line's Power

Then-First Lady Tammy Murphy's 2023-24 bid for Senate put the county line on full display. County Democratic organizations in seven counties — Middlesex, Essex, Camden, Hudson, Union, Passaic and Gloucester — handed her the party bracket. Those jurisdictions covered roughly two-thirds of the Democratic primary electorate, according to Politico. 

Andy Kim, who was also seeking the Democratic nomination, filed suit in late February 2024, arguing the ballot design violated the First and Fourteenth Amendments. A Murphy campaign spokesperson criticized the lawsuit the same day, saying "Andy Kim doesn't have a problem with the county line system, he has a problem with the idea of losing county lines."

Then-New Jersey Attorney General Matthew Platkin declined to defend the county line in mid-March of that year. In his letter to the court he called his decision "exceptionally rare," noting that the Attorney General "traditionally defends all state statutes from constitutional challenge." Then-Governor Phil Murphy said a defense would have been "consistent with the actions of prior Attorneys General."

Tammy Murphy suspended her campaign on March 24, 2024. She had met with county Democratic chairs at the Genova Burns law firm in Newark the previous week to determine a path forward for her campaign. Murphy's withdrawal left Kim as the Democratic nominee and eventual senator.

Less than one week after Murphy quit the race, U.S. District Judge Zahid Quraishi issued a forty-nine-page preliminary injunction on March 29. He found that the county line imposed a "severe burden" on candidates' First Amendment rights and noted the design was "used in no other state in the country." The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit affirmed the injunction on April 17, 2024.

By October 2024, 17 county clerks had settled in the original lawsuit, paying approximately $500,000 in plaintiffs' legal fees according to a defendants' filing. Union County Clerk Joanne Rajoppi and Bergen County Clerk Hogan remained the final holdouts into 2025.

Legislature Replaced the Court Order With Statute, Despite Criticism

On March 6, 2025, Governor Murphy signed A5116/S4142 into law, creating P.L. 2025, c. 32. The statute requires office-block ballots. All candidates for a given office must appear together without visual distinction. Slogans are limited to six words and cannot appear in bold or italic type. The New Jersey State Division of Elections published a Ballot Design Guide on April 8, 2025 to implement the new format.

At the time, Kim criticized the bill as falling short of what voters deserve. More than 75 advocacy groups, including the New Jersey Working Families Party and the American Civil Liberties Union of New Jersey, asked Governor Murphy for a conditional veto in February 2025, objecting to provisions that allowed joint-petition bracketing and letter-number position markers. Newark Mayor Ras Baraka, a Democratic candidate for governor at the time, threatened to join a lawsuit against the bill. 

Judge Quraishi wrote in June 2025 that the statute may carry "unconstitutional features," but has made no public comments on it since. Kim added in a September 2025 court filing that the law remained at risk of modification during lame-duck sessions. And the original litigation continued, even after the new ballots became law.

The Last Clerk Capitulated in August

The August 2026 settlement ends Hogan's resistance and binds him to the office-block format the legislature already mandated. Hogan had argued the plaintiffs lacked standing because they were not running for office again; Quraishi rejected that argument in May 2025. Rajoppi settled in June 2026, leaving Hogan as the sole remaining defendant. 

The settlement mandates randomized placement of candidates for each office — no slate gets preferential positioning — and governs both mail-in and in-person ballots. The county can no longer transfer a drawing from one race to position an entire endorsed slate, nor isolate a candidate from opponents seeking the same office. Judge Quraishi approved the settlement August 4, 2026, one day after it was filed.

The $29,279 Bergen payment joins roughly $500,000 that the other 17 settled clerks had already paid. County funds covered the payments.

Kim called the final settlement "a massive win for New Jersey voters" in an August 3, 2026 statement. Antoinette Miles, State Director of the New Jersey Working Families Party, said "The county line is finally dead." 

The plaintiffs' attorneys — Yael Bromberg, Brett Pugach and Flavio Komuves — issued a joint statement saying "Every county clerk named in this case has now agreed to fair ballots."

Morris County Republican Chair Laura Ali told Politico in May 2025 that she wanted to revive the county line but would wait until after the 2025 primary to discuss it with other party leaders. Neither Republican nor Democratic organizations have publicly announced efforts to revive the line since the August 2026 settlement.

The county line lasted roughly 75 years. Its demise ends a practice that existed nowhere else in the country. The federal litigation that kept clerks in court for 6 years is finished, and the plaintiffs' attorneys say there is nothing left to argue. The office block format is now statutory law, but whether it endures beyond the next few cycles remains to be seen. For now, candidates for 2026 and 2027 will compete on ballots that treat every name the same.

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Sources

• Andy Kim, U.S. Senator (D, 3rd District), statement on county line settlement (August 3, 2026)

• Antoinette Miles, State Director, New Jersey Working Families Party, statement on county line settlement (August 3, 2026)

• Democracy Docket, "Federal Judge Blocks New Jersey's 'County Line' Ballot Design for 2024 Primary" (March 29, 2024)

• InsiderNJ, "End of The Line: 'County Line' Ballots Gone for Good After Last County Clerk Agrees to Settle in Court" (August 3, 2026)

• Jersey Vindicator, "New Jersey's county line is finally dead altogether as Bergen County agrees to settle" (August 3, 2026)

• Jersey Vindicator, "New Jersey's old ballot system reaches the end of the line" (August 4, 2026)

• Kim v. Hanlon, U.S. Ct. App. 3d Cir., No. 24-1594 (April 17, 2024)

• New Jersey Globe, "Kim, fellow anti-line activists say some issues still need resolving in county line lawsuit" (September 30, 2025)

• New Jersey Globe, "Murphy quietly signs primary ballot design bill" (March 6, 2025)

• New Jersey Institute for Social Justice, "More than 75 Groups Urge Gov. Murphy to Conditionally Veto Primary Ballot Redesign Bill" (February 28, 2025)

• New Jersey Monitor, "Critics of county line celebrate end of yearslong legal fight" (August 4, 2026)

• New Jersey Monitor, "Federal appeals court upholds order barring county-line ballots" (April 17, 2024)

• New Jersey Monitor, "Most county clerks settle lawsuit targeting county-line ballots" (October 31, 2024)

• New Jersey State Division of Elections, "Primary Election Ballot Design Guide" (April 8, 2025)

• NJ Spotlight News, "Q&A with Julia Sass Rubin to understand the party line" (December 4, 2023)

• Politico, "Andy Kim defeats NJ's 'county line' boss system in court" (March 29, 2024)

• Politico, "NJ first lady Tammy Murphy ends Senate campaign, paving way for Andy Kim" (March 24, 2024)

• Politico, "New Jersey's 'county line' is gone. But the fight over its constitutionality continues" (May 12, 2025)

• Politico Pro, "The last holdout in county line lawsuit agrees to settle" (August 3, 2026)

• Rutgers Policy Lab, "Gov. Murphy Signs Election Ballot Redesign Bill into Law" (March 10, 2025)

• Wang, Goldberg, and Rubin, SSRN, "Three Tests for Bias Arising from the Design of Primary Election Ballots in New Jersey" (November 28, 2023)