Once Again, Appellate Division Rules That A Request Requiring Research Is Invalid
New Jersey OPRA Law Reporter Blog
by lscheindlin
4d ago
It’s a bedrock OPRA principle, stated consistently by the courts, that a request must be for a specific record, and cannot require the custodian to conduct research to fulfill the request. For this reason, the Appellate Division recently upheld the denial of a request that sought the “real reason” for the separations of various police officers from employment. Owoh v. Maple Shade Police Department. The request asked the police department for personnel information that’s not exempt from disclosure under OPRA–the “[n]ames, date of hire, date of separation and reason for separation and salary of ..read more
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A Reminder from the Appellate Division: When Internal Affairs Reports are Requested, Make a Complete Analysis of the Factors of the Common Law Balancing Test
New Jersey OPRA Law Reporter Blog
by lscheindlin
1M ago
In its 2022 opinion in Rivera v. Union County Prosecutor’s Office, the Supreme Court held that police internal affairs (IA) records are exempt under OPRA, but may be disclosable under the common law right to know. A common law records request requires the public body to conduct a balancing test, which evaluates whether the public interest in disclosure outweighs the need for confidentiality of the record. The Appellate Division recently issued an unpublished opinion reversing the denial of a common law request for IA reports, because the trial judge had failed to conduct a complete analysis of ..read more
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2023 OPRA Case Law Review
New Jersey OPRA Law Reporter Blog
by lscheindlin
3M ago
The courts issued were many OPRA case rulings during 2023, but only a handful of precedential opinions. However, the three precedential opinions resolved crucial government records law questions. In June, the Supreme Court issued a landmark opinion, Gannett v. Neptune Tp., holding that a successful common law records requestor is not entitled to an award of attorney fees. This ruling ended decades of uncertainty as to whether common law requestors, like OPRA requestors, may demand that public bodies pay their litigation fees. The Appellate Division issued two published opinions involving OPRA ..read more
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Appellate Division: Police Body Cam Video Revealing Criminal Allegations against an Individual who was not Charged With A Crime Is Not Disclosable Under OPRA and the Common Law
New Jersey OPRA Law Reporter Blog
by lscheindlin
3M ago
The Appellate Division, in a recent published opinion, addressed an issue of first impression: whether the exemptions from disclosure of a police officer’s body worn camera (BWC) footage, which are set forth in the statute governing such cameras, abrogate other disclosure exemptions found in OPRA. The court determined that although the BWC statute provides for withholding BWC videos under certain circumstances, OPRA’s exemptions also continue to apply to such videos. Specifically, the court held that the custodian had properly withheld disclosure of a BWC video under OPRA’s exemption for confi ..read more
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New Appellate Division Opinion Addresses An Important Issue Regarding the Statute of Limitations for OPRA Actions
New Jersey OPRA Law Reporter Blog
by lscheindlin
3M ago
In Dalnoky v. Pinelands Reg. School Dist., the court dealt with an OPRA issue of first impression: whether a requestor may refile his OPRA request, after the custodian denied the request and the requestor did not file a court complaint challenging this denial within the 45-day statute of limitations. The Appellate Division concluded that a requestor may not avoid the statute of limitations by filing the same OPRA request at a later date. In this case, the custodian denied the OPRA request on October 23, 2020. The requestor subsequently filed the same OPRA request several other times during 202 ..read more
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Reminder: OPRA Does Not Permit Disclosure of Mugshots
New Jersey OPRA Law Reporter Blog
by lscheindlin
7M ago
Today’s top news story is Trump’s mugshot, taken upon his booking on Georgia felony charges. Apparently, mugshots are publicly accessible under Georgia law. But in New Jersey, mugshots cannot be accessed under OPRA. As I discussed in this post, the GRC has consistently ruled that OPRA exempts arrest photos from disclosure to the public. The GRC bases this conclusion on Executive Order 69 (Whitman), which exempts “fingerprint cards, plates and photographs and similar criminal investigation records….” This executive order is still in force; notably, the Attorney General’s current Law Enforcement ..read more
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A Rare Court Opinion On OPRA’s Security Exemption
New Jersey OPRA Law Reporter Blog
by lscheindlin
8M ago
In 2016, the Supreme Court, in Gilleran v. Bloomfield Tp., for the first time addressed OPRA’s exemption for security information which, if disclosed, would jeopardize security of a building or create a risk to a person’s safety. The Court held that the exemption applies to footage from a building’s surveillance camera. Since this Supreme Court opinion, there has been almost no case law dealing with this security exemption, except for a single, unpublished 2018 Appellate Division opinion that determined the exemption covers computer security information. The Appellate Division recently issued ..read more
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Appellate Division: No OPRA Violation Where Custodian Was Temporarily Unable To Search For Records Due To Covid Shutdown
New Jersey OPRA Law Reporter Blog
by lscheindlin
9M ago
In an unpublished opinion, the Appellate Division determined that a public body acted appropriately, and did not violate OPRA’s response deadline, where it told the requestor it would search for the requested records after the end of a Covid shutdown. C.E. v. Elizabeth Public School Dist. This is the first appellate opinion to deal with the effect of pandemic closures on the handling of an OPRA request. The OPRA request was submitted to the School District in May 2020, when all District schools and offices were closed indefinitely due to Covid. As a result, the District advised the requestor ..read more
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Supreme Court to Review Whether OPRA Requires Disclosure of Residents’ Email Addresses
New Jersey OPRA Law Reporter Blog
by lscheindlin
9M ago
The Supreme Court recently granted review of a consequential OPRA issue: the applicability of OPRA’s privacy provision to residents’ personal email addresses. Since OPRA’s enactment, municipalities have been frustrated by the absence of precedential case law governing requests for residents’ email addresses. The Supreme Court will now remedy this situation, in Rise Against Hate v. Cherry Hill. Specifically, the question in the case, according to the Court’s website, is: “Are email addresses submitted by members of the public to a public agency to sign up for electronic newsletters and notices ..read more
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A Reminder from the GRC: Officials’ Private Calendars are Exempt from Disclosure
New Jersey OPRA Law Reporter Blog
by lscheindlin
9M ago
In 2005, the Appellate Division held that an official’s appointment calendar is exempt under OPRA. There’s been no change in the law since this ruling, but requestors still occasionally seek disclosure of this type of calendar. The GRC recently upheld the denial of such a request, which asked for disclosure of the Outlook calendars of the State Registrar of Vital Statistics. Since is was undisputed that these contained only internal information, rather than public meeting schedules, the GRC held that they were exempt, based on the Appellate Division’s 2005 opinion and the GRC’s 2017 decision i ..read more
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