Trenton, NJ Building Safety: Door Locking Hardware (2026)

The rule comes from Trenton's technical amendments to the New Jersey Uniform Fire Code at § 97-9M, adopted under Chapter 97, Fire Prevention. It flatly prohibits draw bolts, slide bolts, and barrel bolts, surface bolts, flush bolts, hooks, hasps and padlocks, and key-operated deadbolts from the egress side on all egress doors, and requires that any such devices already installed be removed and the hardware brought into conformance with approved egress hardware. The narrow exception applies only to dwelling units: draw bolts, hooks and key-operated deadbolts remain permitted on egress doors of a dwelling unit, but only if the key cannot be removed when the door is locked from the side from which egress is to be made, so an occupant can never be trapped without the means to unlock the door from inside.

The same technical amendment package also restricts what can go on an egress door once it is lawfully hardware-compliant: § 97-9N bars using egress doors for advertising displays and prohibits decorating them in a way that obscures or confuses the door's purpose, though signage reading Entrance, Exit, In, Out, Push, Pull, the street address, or business hours remains allowed. The Fire Official enforces these provisions as part of general fire-code inspections, and noncompliant hardware found during an inspection must be removed and replaced with approved egress hardware.