If you haven’t looked at your job descriptions since you hired for the role, they’re probably out of date — and in New Jersey, that gap has real legal exposure attached to it. Job descriptions aren’t just onboarding paperwork. They’re evidence. When a hiring decision, a termination, or an accommodation request gets challenged, your job description is often the first document regulators and plaintiffs’ attorneys ask for.
Below is what a periodic review should actually cover, and why New Jersey employers in particular can’t afford to skip it.
Start With What the Job Actually Requires Today
Roles evolve. Software changes workflows, teams get reorganized, and responsibilities quietly shift from one person to another. A job description written three years ago may no longer reflect what the role actually demands.
A good review confirms that every listed duty is still being performed, adds duties that have become part of the job but were never written down, and clearly separates essential functions from marginal ones — a distinction that matters enormously if an employee later requests a disability accommodation. This is really an exercise in job analysis, the same discipline that underpins sound compensation and pay-equity decisions.
Make Sure Every Requirement Is Actually Necessary
This is where many job descriptions run into trouble. Degree requirements, minimum years of experience, and specific certifications often reflect habit or preference rather than a genuine business need. The problem is that a requirement doesn’t have to be written with any discriminatory intent to create legal risk — it just has to have a disproportionate effect on a protected group. That’s the legal theory known as disparate impact discrimination.
Disparate impact occurs when a facially neutral policy — one that applies the same way to everyone — ends up screening out a protected group at a significantly higher rate, and the employer can’t show the requirement is genuinely necessary for the job. Unlike intentional discrimination, disparate impact doesn’t require proof that anyone meant to discriminate. It only requires proof of the effect.
This matters right now more than ever for New Jersey employers. In April 2025, the federal government moved to scale back disparate impact enforcement at the federal level, directing agencies to deprioritize claims built on this theory. New Jersey went the opposite direction.
In December 2025, the state’s Division on Civil Rights adopted formal rules — N.J.A.C. 13:16 — confirming that disparate impact discrimination remains fully actionable under the New Jersey Law Against Discrimination (NJLAD), regardless of what’s happening at the federal level. The state followed up with detailed FAQs in March 2026 confirming that the LAD applies broadly, including to criminal history exclusions, driver’s license requirements, English-only policies, and automated hiring tools — and that employers are responsible for a vendor’s screening software if it produces a discriminatory result.
In short: disparate impact liability is not going away in New Jersey. If anything, the state has doubled down on it. Under the LAD’s burden-shifting framework, an employee only has to show that a policy has a statistically significant adverse effect on a protected group. At that point, the burden shifts to the employer to prove the requirement is necessary to achieve a substantial, legitimate business interest — and even then, the employee can still win by showing a less discriminatory alternative existed. Outdated, copy-pasted job requirements are exactly the kind of practice this framework is designed to catch.
Write Down the Soft Skills You’re Actually Hiring For
Interpersonal and communication expectations get used informally in hiring decisions all the time, even when they’re never written down. That’s a problem — undocumented expectations are far more vulnerable to unconscious bias. Naming the specific skill and why it matters for the role (“clear client communication under time pressure,” not just “good communicator”) gives hiring managers an objective standard to apply consistently.
Define “Culture Fit” in Behaviors, Not Vibes
“Culture fit” is one of the most common — and most legally risky — phrases in hiring. Left undefined, it becomes a stand-in for gut feeling, and gut feeling is where bias hides. Translate it into specific, observable behaviors tied to your organization’s actual values: collaboration style, adaptability, accountability. Then apply those standards the same way across every candidate for the role.
Get the Physical Demands Right
Physical requirements need to reflect the real, observed demands of the job — not boilerplate copied from a similar posting. This is directly tied to compliance with the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) and the NJLAD, both of which require an interactive process around reasonable accommodations. A job description that overstates physical requirements can improperly screen out a qualified candidate with a disability before the conversation even starts. The federal Job Accommodation Network offers practical guidance on writing descriptions that capture a role’s true essential functions.
A good review specifies the actual physical demands (lifting weights, standing or sitting duration, repetitive motion, travel) based on real observation of the role rather than assumption. It distinguishes essential physical requirements from those that could be modified or accommodated without undue hardship. And it avoids boilerplate physical-demand language copied across unrelated roles, which tends to create requirements that don’t reflect the real job and expose you to liability.
Build a Review Process You Can Actually Defend
The single best habit is a scheduled annual audit of every job description, with an immediate update any time a role changes significantly. Involve both HR and the relevant department supervisor so the description reflects reality. Document the review itself — the date and who conducted it — so you can demonstrate a good-faith compliance effort if a description is ever challenged. And before finalizing revised descriptions for roles with physical requirements or restrictive qualifications, run them past legal counsel.
Job descriptions are one of the few compliance tools that cost almost nothing to maintain and pay for themselves the first time one is challenged. In New Jersey’s enforcement climate, keeping them current isn’t administrative housekeeping — it’s risk management.
If you’d like help auditing your current job descriptions or building a review process tailored to your organization, contact our office and we’ll walk you through it.