Monthly Archives: December 2018

New York Times Editorial Board Makes The Case For Why Home Addresses Should Be Exempt

All who deal with OPRA routinely face the difficult question of whether home addresses in government records are confidential. Although the courts have recognized that there’s a privacy interest in a home address, they have sometimes held that this personal information is not exempt under OPRA.

This recent opinion piece by the the New York Times editorial board, “Home Addresses are Up for Sale. Time to Take Back Your Privacy,” makes a compelling argument for why people have a strong interest in maintaining the privacy of their home addresses. The key point is that the easy accessibility of home addresses online is dangerous, as this information can be “weaponized” by “trolls…, stalkers, domestic abusers and criminals.”

For this reason, as the Times notes, sites like Facebook and Twitter prohibit the posting of a person’s address. I think New Jersey courts should similarly enforce OPRA’s privacy exemption, and prevent OPRA requestors from accessing individuals’ home addresses.

Once Again, The Appellate Division Rejects Overbroad Requests

Requestors persist in filing overbroad OPRA requests, despite settled law that such discovery-like demands are invalid. The Appellate Division recently dealt with an egregious example of this in Port Auth. PBA v. Port Auth. of NYNJ.

According to the opinion, the litigation began in 2016, and involved a 78-page complaint concerning over 50 OPRA requests.The appeal involved 38 requests, almost all of which were obviously improper. One example illustrates the way the requests were written: it sought records of meetings participated in by a named person and any employee of the FAA, since 2009. The court rejected this request, and the many similar requests here, as invalid under OPRA.

Also of note is that even though the plaintiff prevailed on a few of its requests at the trial level, the Appellate Division held that it was entitled to only a minuscule attorney fee award. Due to the requestor’s limited success in the litigation, the court awarded $5400, far below the $46,000 sought by the requestor.

2018 Review: A Year of Significant OPRA Cases

The many landmark cases issued in 2017 made that year the most important year in OPRA’s history. Although 2018 did not match that standard, it nevertheless saw many major court rulings on crucial OPRA issues.

The Supreme Court issued two OPRA opinions. Brennan v. Bergen Prosecutor said that bidders at public auctions lack a reasonable expectation of privacy in their names and addresses. Paff v. Ocean Prosecutor also dealt with OPRA’s privacy exemption, with regard to police dashcam videos, and in addition held that these videos are exempt criminal investigatory records.

The Appellate Division issued several important published opinions on a variety of OPRA topics, including the right of nonresidents of New Jersey to make OPRA requests; the confidentiality of student records; the confidentiality of draft meeting minutes; and attorney fees.

And as in previous years, OPRA litigation resulted in a large number of non-precedential decisions that people who deal with OPRA need to know about. In 2018, the Appellate Division ruled on a number of meaningful OPRA matters in unpublished opinions.