In order to serve in law enforcement in New Jersey, you'll now have to hold a valid active license issued by the state's Police Training Commission.

The new requirement, it went into effect last month, adding New Jersey to a list of more than 40 other states with the same mandate.

Some 40,000 police officers here have to comply to keep their jobs.

Advocates say it was designed to build public trust and confidence in law enforcement.

But as Ted Goldberg reports, one requirement involving officers social media accounts is still up for debate.

Anyone who wants to become a police officer in New Jersey could face a unique hurdle.

The things they post on social media.

If you're putting out biased content onto your social media platforms, that that can impact your ability to serve the residents of this state and you can be held accountable for that.

The Police Training Commission gives out licenses for police, and if proposed rules are accepted, licenses could be revoked for posting, sharing or commenting on content that supports, quote, hatred or bias toward individuals or groups based on race, creed, color, national origin, ancestry, sex, marital status, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, or any other protected characteristic where the conduct or behavior would undermine public confidence in the ability of the individual law enforcement officer.

Attorney General Matt Platkin says this policy sets apart New Jersey's law enforcement officers from those in other states.

I am confident that this is the right thing to do to ensure that the public has confidence in our law enforcement.

And I think this provision in particular is going to set us apart as setting a national standard.

We're very close to a place that we can live with, and we think that it protects the right amount.

The rules are in the middle of a 60 day public comment period that runs until mid-March.

Kevin Lyons works for the state's PBA and serves on the Police Training Commission.

He says the rules are a good compromise, considering earlier drafts required recruits to share data from banking apps and their Amazon accounts.

We want to protect people's private lives to some degree.

If they're in a Liberty GQ group chat.

That's not something an employer needs, you know?

A group chat would have been considered social media if there is a reason for access to go get a subpoena for it.

Lyons has concerns about how the rules will be interpreted, but he also thinks the rules will help the hiring process for police.

Nobody's saying that if an officer has a swastika on their front page or their their Facebook page, let's say that that officer should be scrutinized.

We don't want those officers.

It's important to make sure that the officers we're hiring to police us.

All right.

A diverse society don't inhabit these types of biases.

Jason Williams is an associate professor of justice studies at Montclair.

I think agencies ought to check.

They ought to become part of the background check.

He thinks the rules will help departments identify problematic people before they get hired and become a bigger headache for their superiors.

I think it's better that they weed these officers out from the outset, Right.

Rather than allowing them to come on into the agency.

And then now you have this problem snowballing and then you only deal with it once something materializes.

Some people have argued this violates freedom of speech.

Lyons mentioned courts who have ruled that while people have a First Amendment right to speak their mind, that doesn't mean they're free from consequences.

And the First Amendment doesn't guarantee you the right to be a police officer.

Law enforcement officers have a restricted First Amendment right.

And we realize that when we take the job, we don't love it.

You know, we're still human beings.

But but at the same time, we want to make sure that the public's trust is assured.

Attorney General Platkin says New Jersey's licensing bill is the strongest in the country.

We'll see if the social media policy is altered when the public comment period ends next month.

For NJ Spotlight News, I'm Ted Goldberg.