The New Jersey Wage Theft Act was passed in August 2019. One of the things it did was stretch the statute of limitations from two years to six years. Since then, every plaintiff’s lawyer I have dealt with has claimed the law is retroactive, although there was not a shred of support for that in the law or the legislative history. Subsequently, a number of federal courts in the District of New Jersey have held that the statute was not retroactive. That all changed a few weeks ago when the NJ Appellate division ruled, essentially, that it was retroactive although it did not analyze the law through that prism.
For a more detailed analysis of the statute and its egregious impact on the employer-business community, see the attached article I authored, Look-Back Period Questioned in NJ Wage and Hour Case (foxrothschild.com)