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Tonight on NJ Spotlight News, unanimous decision.

The New Jersey Supreme Court strikes down one hospital's effort to end charity care for the state's lowest earners.

Plus, ICE raid questioned.

Renewed scrutiny surrounding a crackdown that detained 20 workers at a warehouse in Edison.

It's going to take the people organizing and learning about the trends of ICE.

We're going to have to get to workers before ICE gets to workers.

Also, parental rights fight.

The father who sued Delaware Valley Regional High School and lost is appealing.

The argument is the judge got that constitutional question wrong, and that's where the irreparable harm comes in, is the harm to the constitutional rights.

And lifeguard shortage.

Lawmakers sound off on the dangerous shortage of lifeguards at National Park Service beaches here in New Jersey.

I don't know that there's anybody in Congress, Democrat or Republican, that feels that we should be skimping on health and safety.

And that's what I fear is happening here.

NJ Spotlight News begins right now.

♪ ♪ >> From NJ PBS Studios, this is NJ Spotlight News with Brianna Vanozzi.

>> Good evening, and thanks for joining us on this Wednesday night.

I'm Raven Santana in for Brianna Vanozzi.

We begin with a few of today's top stories.

First, a landmark decision was handed down from the New Jersey Supreme Court that affects hospitals and patients across the state.

In a unanimous ruling, the court rejected Inglewood Hospital's claim that charity care is an unconstitutional taking of their property without just compensation.

Inglewood claimed charity care was both a financial and staffing burden on the hospital.

This ruling upholds a long-standing rule that hospitals must provide charity care to patients who can't pay as a way to reinforce their role in serving the community.

The ruling does allow Inglewood and other health care facilities free to challenge their annual subsidy allocations through administrative channels and to lobby the legislature to make policy changes that would address more broadly the concerns they raise.

The ruling, which began back in 2017, now closes a chapter in this high-stakes legal battle.

>> Also tonight in our spotlight on business report, Votorama on Capitol Hill.

Debate over a rescissions package that would cut billions of dollars for public broadcasting was nonstop in the Senate chamber going late into the night last night and picking back up today.

A vote in favor of this bill would ultimately slash over $9 billion in federal funding for PBS, NPR, and foreign aid.

Republicans argued the bill is another step in the president's agenda to root out waste, fraud, and abuse.

>> The total funding cuts about $1.1 billion for public media and over $7 billion for foreign aid, including gutting the corporation for public broadcasting, which distributes funds to affiliate stations all over the country like ours, and USAID programs that combat disease and famine worldwide.

The bill passed the house last month, and after a new amendment was added for international HIV prevention, it will be headed back to the house.

>> Support for the business report is provided by the Newark Alliance Presents the 2025 Halsey Fest, featuring the vibrancy of Newark's arts and education district and Halsey Street.

Halsey, a neighborhood built on hustle and heart.

The 2025 Halsey Fest schedule is available at HalseyNWK.com.

>> Flash flooding has devastated parts of New Jersey this week, with Union Township taking one of the hardest hits.

Torrential rain, over six inches in just two and a half hours, submerged homes and businesses, prompting rescues, shutting down major roads, including routes 22 and 28, and flooding parts of the New Jersey Turnpike.

>> In the rain-filled two people tragically lost their lives when their vehicle was swept away by rising waters.

But the danger isn't over yet.

A new flood watch is in effect for seven counties through early Thursday morning, as more storms threaten additional flash flooding.

And a heat wave is in the forecast for the rest of this week.

Newark already declared a code red for the next three days.

>> The July 9th ICE immigration raid in New Jersey is drawing national attention and raising concerns about how it was carried out.

On Tuesday, July 9th, ICE agents stormed the Alba Wine and Spirits Warehouse, lining up workers and checking their immigration status.

Those with valid ID were given wristbands.

Others, according to witnesses, were zip-tied and loaded into vans.

According to ICE, 20 people were detained.

>> The raid comes amid increasing legal scrutiny of ICE operations.

Two days later, a federal court in California ruled that similar raids in the Los Angeles area likely violated constitutional rights, citing the denial of legal counsel and said agents cannot make arrests solely on racial profiling.

Longtime immigration advocate Reverend Seth Kaper-Dale, with the Reformed Church of Highland Park, who witnessed the New Jersey raid, joins me now.

Reverend, thanks for joining me.

>> Glad to be here, Raven.

>> You were there as the ICE raid unfolded last week.

Can you walk us through exactly what you witnessed?

>> What I witnessed was getting to the back of a warehouse where I was on the phone with somebody who was talking to someone inside, saying, you know, go in through the back 361 Mill Road.

We went in through a long driveway that had a big sign saying no trespassing, so that was a little nerve-wracking.

When we got in there, there were indeed U.S. Border and Customs Patrol vehicles blocking half of the parking lot, most of the parking lot.

None of the 18-wheelers trying to come through and drop off or pick up their cargo at the docks could do so, and we were told to stay back.

We started seeing people come out with yellow zip ties.

They had their hands in front of their face, kind of like this, and I don't know if they could put their hands down or if they were putting them up so they could wave to us.

It was kind of unclear.

They could see that there were people who were concerned within their vision.

We were kind of far away, but we were close enough so that those who had been detained could see that there were witnesses to what was going on.

We saw people loaded into white passenger vans.

I saw at least two of those vans, and the vans went out around the warehouse the opposite direction, so they did not come in the direction of us, or we would have had to make a decision about whether we stood in front of the vans or did any of that.

Reverend, do you know the status?

Were those 20 people, were they detained?

Were they being held?

Most everyone is at Delaney Hall.

There are a couple at Elizabeth Detention Center, but we have been given the opportunity to meet with 13 families.

Nobody gave us a list of all who were picked up.

Alba Warehouse hasn't produced a list of which workers were sent away, so a lot of this is us waiting for phone calls to come in on our hotline from families that were impacted.

Families know to call because we were handing out our number that day at the raid itself, and that number got passed around, and we've been offering real support.

We spoke about this after it happened, about your phone line was very busy with families who were concerned, who were looking for help, especially legal help.

You also expressed deep concern over what you described as the employer silence and lack of empathy.

Can you elaborate on why you believe the company turned its back on the workers?

The company didn't just turn its back.

It continues to turn its back.

I imagine they're afraid, like everybody is afraid right now.

They've been caught having people who are working there who don't have all the proper papers or potentially don't have the proper papers, and they're just laying as low as they can.

They're worried about the bottom line.

We know that the Alba Warehouse folks have not reached out to any of those who've been detained, have not reached out to their families, not expressed an ounce of concern.

They might have concern, but silence is rejection, and that's what the workers at Alba Warehouse feel.

We've been told that other workers were the ones who brought the personal items of their co-workers back to their families because Alba sure didn't make sure that their lunch boxes and their keys and their cars got back.

It was up to other workers to take care of each other.

We've also heard that the only phone calls that have come from Alba are very strong demands for those who are still working to start working double shifts because they're down workers now.

What are the next steps that your organization can do to protect employees like the ones apprehended and their families and those working and who are still very much afraid?

So in terms of next steps across the state, it's going to take the people organizing and learning about the trends of ICE.

We're going to have to get to workers before ICE gets to workers.

One of the things that we've started to learn about is bonded warehouses, and we learned that it hasn't been too long that Alba Warehouse has been a bonded warehouse.

But it seems that the bonded warehouse is a door in for ICE, that those who came in and said they were going to inspect products came in to inspect their product, which is cheap brown labor.

Wow.

Reverend Seth Kaper-Dale, thanks for being here and good luck.

Thank you.

A legal battle over parental rights here in New Jersey is also drawing national attention.

A father is suing his child's school district, claiming they violated his parental rights by socially transitioning his daughter without telling him.

Now a conservative legal group is appealing the case backed by a 23 state coalition.

Senior correspondent Brenda Flanagan has the latest on the case and the surprising twist it's taken.

The lawsuit centered at Delaware Valley Regional High School, where last year a freshman girl we'll call Jane Doe asked teachers to call her by a male name and pronouns, but without informing her father, Kristen Heaps.

The school complied, Heaps' attorney says.

It went on for a few months without telling him.

He found out that they were treating her as a boy at school because another parent referred to her as a boy.

And he said, who are you talking about?

And they said, oh, don't you know, you know, your daughter is being socially transitioned at school.

And that was shocking to him.

Heaps sued.

The school board here had adopted Jersey's controversial policy 5756, which protects a student's gender identity as a matter of safety.

Counselors did urge Jane to tell her dad.

The school board's attorney says.

We want to respect, obviously, parents' rights.

Right.

I'm a parent myself.

But also treat with dignity and respect the students who are coming to the school with an issue and asking the school to resolve it for them.

That's the issue.

And that's the conundrum facing school districts, not just, I think, in New Jersey, but probably across the country.

Schools are in a hard position because they need to protect the students' identity.

Sometimes the disclosure in the school environment can lead to self-harm of the student or, as we've seen in too many cases, actual violence against students.

Experts in education law aren't surprised the case ended up in federal court where Judge Georgette Kastner ruled the district properly followed its policy.

Heaps has not yet established a likelihood of showing that the board defendants have interfered with plaintiff's right to make medical decisions for Jane Kastner, wrote, finding no harm or violation of her dad's constitutional parental rights under 5756.

The court denied his request for a preliminary injunction to block the policy.

Heaps appealed.

The argument is the judge got that constitutional question wrong, and that's where the irreparable harm comes in, is the harm to the constitutional rights.

Because the school has said, this is the policy, we're going to continue enforcing it against parents.

But the case took an unexpected turn.

Jane, who had been removed from school and instructed at home during the legal battle, apparently announced she no longer wants to transition.

And yet the lawsuit continues.

So from our standpoint, we said, well, that means that the student can come back to school and we can put at least this part of the litigation aside.

Student never returned, and I think you have to ask yourself why?

Why haven't they come back if this is not an issue anymore?

Jane's father says he won't let her return to public school unless the district provides her with a personal monitor.

But critics see a different motive.

Because, yes, they absolutely want to bring a test case before the Supreme Court.

Putting the challenge of parents' rights versus the government's compelling interest in protecting the safety and health of children.

An LGBTQ rights advocate points out the dad's lawyers are from the Alliance Defending Freedom, which was named a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center, and that their suit will include an amicus brief from a 23-state coalition that asked the Third Circuit Court of Appeals to reverse the U.S. District Court's decision and allow parents, not school boards, to direct the upbringing of their children.

We're talking about a whole bunch of organizations whose basic premise is LGBTQ is wrong.

It's against religious precepts.

It's against God.

And we have to do whatever we can to eliminate this community and strip them of all their rights.

I mean, we're dedicated to defending parental rights, marriage and the family, religious freedom, free speech and life from conception to natural death.

Those are our focuses.

And sometimes that interacts with issues like gender identity and LGBTQ issues.

But those are our focuses.

The Alliance Defending Freedom claims it's a smear tactic to call them a hate group and that they do hope the Supreme Court takes up a case like Jane's.

It's already ruled in two transgender cases supporting a ban on gender affirming care for minors and siding with parents who want to opt their kids out of class with gender inclusive books with more cases on the docket this fall.

I'm Brenda Flanagan and Jay Spotlight News.

With the major gubernatorial election in full swing tonight, a shakeup in New Jersey's voter registration.

In just the one month surrounding the June primary, the number of registered Democrats surged by more than eighty two thousand, double the number of new Republican registrations.

Meanwhile, unaffiliated voter numbers dropped by nearly one hundred and seventeen thousand.

According to our senior writer, Colleen O'Day, most of the movement appears to be unaffiliated voters joining a party likely to be able to cast a primary ballot.

She joins me now to break down her reporting and what this trend could mean going forward.

Colleen, thanks for being here.

Thank you so much, Raven.

So your reporting shows a high turnout of voters in the June primary.

What sparked it?

So, you know, we think that it was that voters had a big choice.

You had six Democratic candidates and you had five Republican candidates.

And, you know, in some years there may be only a choice of one or two.

So when people have a choice, it certainly seems they want to go out and they want to try to get their choice elected or at least put on the ballot.

In this case, for the general election.

So, Colleen, what does this say about voter enthusiasm and where things stand as we head into November?

Yeah, I mean, I think it's it's a good sign for enthusiasm.

You know, our law in New Jersey doesn't prevent people who are unaffiliated from voting in the primary.

But it does require them if they want to vote to choose a party, choose the Democratic or Republican Party.

And so in a typical year, we found about 40,000 people do that.

This year, we had one hundred and seventeen roughly unaffiliated voters who switched parties, but two to one for Democrats.

So the idea that so many people who are unaffiliated came out in addition to the fact that we had a regular large turnout, it was one point three million.

Not an official figure, but it's at least one point three million shows that people were really interested in this election.

Yeah, we know much of the enthusiasm, the unaffiliated enthusiasm was on the Democratic side.

So what made that race more appealing to unaffiliated voters?

You know, so there's a lot of questions there.

Certainly you had a broad range of people.

You had a couple of very progressive candidates.

You had the Teachers Union candidate.

You had the middle of the roaders like Mikey Sherrill, who wound up winning.

You had more conservative candidates like a Steve Sweeney or a Josh Gottheimer.

So there was a whole range of, you know, ideologies that people could choose from.

I mean, the other question is, you know, we we've talked about New Jersey being a blue state for a long time.

And last year there were some surprising results in that the race was fairly close by New Jersey standards between Joe Biden and Donald Trump.

So the question was, is New Jersey turning purple?

I mean, the idea that we had a two to one switch from unaffiliated voters to Democrats over Republicans might indicate that maybe we are still a little bluer than purple.

Well, here's the thing.

The state GOP has in recent years bragged about their registration gains compared to Democrats.

Do these numbers undercut claims about Republican momentum in New Jersey?

There certainly has been Republican momentum, and I think that at least part of that was due to just being out of power.

You know, I think when you're out of power for so long, as Republicans have been now, now it's the eighth year in New Jersey.

I think it's it's harder, at least at first, to get people excited.

Now, they've been really working hard over the last several years.

I think Republicans would say that it's a reflection of Phil Murphy, Governor Phil Murphy's Democratic policies.

There are the legislature's overly progressive policies that have prompted people to embrace a more conservative Republican ideology.

But, you know, the Democrats still outnumber Republicans by more than 800000.

So it's a it's a pretty big gap.

Colleen, thanks for being here.

And you can see all of Colleen's reporting at NJ Spotlight News dot org.

Thanks so much, Raven.

Congressman Frank Pallone is sounding the alarm over what he calls a dangerous lifeguard shortage at Sandy Hook and other federally run beaches with peak summer crowds at the state's national parks and no response to his initial cry for help.

He's now ramping up pressure on federal officials.

Ted Goldberg reports on his plan to push for action before it's too late.

I don't know that there's anybody in Congress, Democrat or Republican, that feels that we should be skimping on health and safety.

And that's what I fear is happening here.

Sandy Hook's beaches bring in a lot of sunbathers and a lot of swimmers.

But Congressman Frank Pallone is concerned that there aren't enough lifeguards to keep them safe.

And he puts blame squarely on the Trump administration after their efforts to shrink the federal workforce.

This was doge.

This was a hiring freeze or an effort.

And many people who had applied and go back every year were told we're not hiring this year.

The money was allocated by Congress.

The lifeguards are willing to work.

They're not being hired.

And, you know, people are still paying the fee.

I mean, there's still you still if you go to Sandy Hook, you still have to pay.

Pallone wrote a letter to the Department of the Interior criticizing the mass layoffs, saying in part, the cumulative impact of these policies have left Gateway National Recreation Area with a skeleton crew to run the fourth most visited National Park Service unit in the country.

There have been drowning incidents at Sandy Hook when the beaches are not open and fully staffed with lifeguards.

We cannot let this situation repeat itself this summer, though I am concerned your disregard for the vital health and safety roles that NPS staff play may result in tragedy at Sandy Hook.

Pallone wrote that on June 9th and says not only has he not heard back, but he hasn't been told about staffing levels for lifeguards at Sandy Hook.

We asked the Gateway spokesperson if swimming has been affected there and for updated numbers of lifeguards working there.

And we did not get a response.

People go to Sandy Hook and they're going to swim.

They'll go to a protected beach if they can.

But if they can't because there's no lifeguard, then they're going to swim anyway.

And yeah, sure, of course, we've had drowning.

Is there real potential for that to occur?

The amount of risk that we're taking by having unguarded beaches this summer is tremendous.

It's unfathomable.

Lauren Cosgrove works for the National Parks Conservation Association.

She's critical of the Trump administration's budget proposal, which would cut national park spending by a billion dollars a year and worries about the effects of the federal hiring freeze.

We don't know when this is going to stop.

So that means that places like Gateway are going to remain without a permanent superintendent.

That means that they're not going to have the permanent staff that are skilled to expedite, onboard and train the seasonal employees that we need right now in the summer busy season when so many of these communities depend on those visitors to come and spend money.

And that's leaving a bare bones federal workforce to protect America's best idea, to protect the most special places all across the country.

According to the MPSC, full time employees at the National Park Service have been reduced by nearly a quarter, while seasonal employees are down 40%.

That's led to some parks reducing their hours and services, which could cut down on tourism for surrounding communities.

They're buying gas at the local gas station.

They're going to restaurants.

They're staying in hotels.

They're going to the local bait and tackle shop to get some supplies and recreate in the park in the way that they'd like to.

We asked the Department of the Interior about Palones letter and if they can maintain safe staffing levels after potential cuts.

Their response in part says lifeguard shortages is a nationwide concern even outside of our public lands.

Many communities and cities across the country are experiencing a lifeguard shortage below ideal levels.

That's been an issue in New Jersey well before Trump returned to office, where places like Turtle Beach on the Delaware River have struggled to find recruits.

A pool might be more appealing than kind of a muddy river beach where you have a lot more people that you have to keep an eye on.

And we also have several water parks in the area where they also need lifeguards.

So I think the demand versus how many trained lifeguards are out there plays a factor.

Danny Cessna is a park spokesperson for the Delaware Water Gap National Recreation Area, which is also part of the National Park System.

She says they only got a couple of job applicants for the last few summers.

So the beach there is swim at your own risk.

We've had 106 drownings here since 1971, and that's the one thing that they all had in common.

Not a single person was wearing a properly fitted and fastened life jacket.

And the thing is, the river is a lot wider than it looks.

It's really easy to underestimate.

And the current is a lot stronger than it looks.

So especially during the summer, it looks low and slow and appealing.

But you think you're a strong swimmer and you get halfway across and you get tired and you start to struggle and you can't always make it all the way.

The Delaware Water Gap is now focused on preventative search and rescue rather than active lifeguarding.

But you can still swim there.

For NJ Spotlight News, I'm Ted Goldberg.

That's going to do it for us tonight.

But a reminder, you can download our podcast wherever you listen and watch us anytime by subscribing to the NJ Spotlight News YouTube channel.

Plus, you can follow us on Instagram and Bluesky to stay up to date on all the state's big headlines.

I'm Raven Santana.

For the entire team at NJ Spotlight News, thanks for being with us.

Have a great night.

Stay safe.

And we'll see you right back here tomorrow.

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