A retired police officer with the Bergen County Bureau of Police Services is claiming the former sheriff laid him off two years ago because he is Jewish — an accusation the former sheriff denies.

In a lawsuit filed Monday in state Superior Court in Hackensack, Officer Gary Bendit says former Sheriff Michael Saudino broke the state’s ban on discrimination based on religion when he included Bendit in a mass layoff of bureau officers in June 2017. In the complaint, Bendit says his seniority and job performance should have prevented the move, and he pointed to Saudino’s record of making racially charged remarks to prove Bendit’s Jewish faith drove the decision.

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“Plaintiff suffered adverse employment actions as a direct result of his religion in the form of a wrongful separation of employment and failure to retain Plaintiff as an employee,” the suit alleges.

Saudino, who resigned last September after the release of a tape containing racist and homophobic remarks he made in early 2018, called the lawsuit “a bunch of nonsense.”

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He did not know Bendit was Jewish, he said Wednesday. And he did not pick which officers to lay off — the state Civil Service Commission decided that based on seniority, he said.

“This guy’s just jumping on the bandwagon, like I’m anti-everything in the world,” Saudino said.

Saudino, a retired Emerson police chief, recently announced he would return to the Bergen County Republican Party, from which he defected in 2016. The move infuriated state Republicans, many of whom condemned his statements and refused to take any money he raises for their campaigns.

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The suit is seeking unspecified compensatory and punitive damages, as well as the cost of attorneys’ fees.

Robert Tandy, Bendit’s Woodcliff Lake attorney, did not respond to a request for comment Wednesday, nor did representatives of Bergen County or the Sheriff’s Office, both of which are named as defendants.

The allegations are the latest in the avalanche of lawsuits that followed Saudino’s decision to lay off 26 bureau officers and demote 11 more. At the time, Saudino blamed a budget crunch — he needed 36 more sheriff’s officers to provide court security, but could not hire them because of a budget cap.

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The bureau’s police union in turn accused him of union-busting and called the layoffs retaliation for earlier contract grievances. Six months later, 21 current and former county police members sued Saudino for allegedly retaliating against them because they rejected a labor deal that would have dissolved their union and made them sheriff’s officers.

Voters first elected Saudino in 2010. He served until September 2018, when he resigned in disgrace after WNYC, a New York radio station, released the recording.

On it, Saudino mentioned Gov. Phil Murphy's proposal to legalize marijuana and said it would "let the blacks come in, do whatever the [expletive] they want, smoke their marijuana, do this do that, and don't worry about it. You know, we'll tie the hands of cops.”

He also said on the recording that Gurbir Grewal, the nation's first Sikh state attorney general, got his job only "because of the turban" and wondered aloud whether Sheila Oliver, the lieutenant governor, is gay because she has not been married.

Criticism poured in, with Murphy himself leading calls for Saudino to resign. The Sheriff's Office said he resigned the next day, along with his four undersheriffs.

Wednesday’s lawsuit detailed one instance in which Bendit claims he offered to introduce Saudino to various Jewish organizations after his election to sheriff. But Saudino was allegedly uninterested.

“Saudino responded, ‘I don’t need any votes from them,’ and walked away from Plaintiff,” the suit reads.

Email: janoski@northjersey.com