New Jersey has no sexual harassment training mandate. What it has instead is something rarer and, for an employer, more useful: a state Supreme Court that has said in terms that training is part of what earns you a defence.
If you want a legal reason to train that is not a statute, New Jersey has the clearest one in the country.
New Jersey in practice
Trenton is the state capital, though the population concentrates in Newark, Jersey City, Paterson, Elizabeth, and Edison. New Jersey is the most densely populated state in the country and it is the last state where drivers are not permitted to pump their own fuel.
For anyone in beverage alcohol, New Jersey is unlike anywhere else. The state caps consumption licences at roughly one per three thousand residents in a municipality, which has made liquor licences among the most expensive in the United States, routinely six and sometimes seven figures on the secondary market. That scarcity is why New Jersey has such a deep BYOB restaurant culture, and why a licensed venue there is protecting an asset worth more than most of its equipment.
The Law Against Discrimination
The LAD sits at N.J.S.A. 10:5-1 through 10:5-49. It reaches employers broadly, without the fifteen-employee threshold that limits federal Title VII, and it is enforced by the New Jersey Division on Civil Rights. New Jersey is also unusual in not requiring administrative exhaustion: a claimant can go to the Division or straight to Superior Court.
Lehmann, and then Aguas
For twenty-two years, New Jersey was the hardest state in the country to defend a supervisor harassment claim in. In Lehmann v. Toys ‘R’ Us, 132 N.J. 587 (1993), the state Supreme Court held employers vicariously liable for harassment by a supervisor with no affirmative defence available at all. As the dissent in the later case put it, an employer could not hide behind a paper policy.
That changed on February 11, 2015. In Aguas v. State of New Jersey, the Supreme Court adopted, five to two, the Faragher and Ellerth affirmative defence familiar from federal law. Where no tangible employment action has been taken against the complainant, an employer can now defend a hostile work environment claim by proving two things:
That it exercised reasonable care to prevent and promptly correct sexually harassing behaviour
That the employee unreasonably failed to use the preventive or corrective opportunities the employer provided
Aguas also settled who counts as a supervisor under the LAD for these purposes: someone with authority to take or recommend tangible employment actions, or to direct the day-to-day work of a subordinate.
Why this makes training the deliverable
Read the first prong again. Reasonable care to prevent is not satisfied by having a policy. In Aguas itself, the employer regularly trained its people on its anti-harassment policy, and that conduct was part of what the Court weighed.
The following year, in Griffin v. City of East Orange, 225 N.J. 400 (2016), the Court set out factors for assessing these claims, including whether the employer had shown an unequivocal commitment from the top down rather than a document nobody had read. Practitioners since Aguas have been consistent on the point: a failure to train makes it very difficult to establish that an employer acted with due care.
There is a limit worth knowing. The defence is unavailable where the complainant suffered a tangible employment action, such as a demotion or a discharge, connected to the harassment. It protects you against the rogue supervisor, not against your own decisions.
What New Jersey employers actually do
No mandate means no prescribed hour count or renewal interval. Most New Jersey employers who take Aguas seriously run periodic training for everyone, not just managers, precisely because the defence turns on reasonable care across the organisation rather than in the management layer alone.
A company account lets you train both populations on separate tracks, keep the dated per-employee records that evidence the first prong, and show that the complaint channel was communicated to the people expected to use it, which is what the second prong turns on.
New Jersey sexual harassment training FAQ
Is sexual harassment training required in New Jersey?
No. There is no statutory mandate, no prescribed course length, and no required interval. New Jersey case law nonetheless makes training central to an employer’s defence.
What is the Aguas affirmative defence?
From Aguas v. State of New Jersey (2015), where no tangible employment action was taken, an employer can defend a hostile work environment claim by showing it exercised reasonable care to prevent and promptly correct harassment, and that the employee unreasonably failed to use the opportunities provided.
Does a written policy alone protect me?
No. The standard is reasonable care to prevent, and courts have looked at whether the policy was communicated, trained on, and actually enforced.
When is the defence unavailable?
Where the complainant suffered a tangible employment action, such as discipline or discharge, connected to the harassment.
How many employees before the LAD applies?
The LAD reaches employers broadly and does not carry the fifteen-employee threshold that applies under federal Title VII.
Harassment training in other states
Requirements differ sharply by state on duration, frequency, and headcount thresholds, so take the version for the state you operate in: New Mexico, New York, Nevada, and more in the full compliance catalog. If your state sets no mandate, the general non-state-specific course covers the federal baseline. Track completion across a roster from the Learn Brands dashboard.
