The Supreme Court ruled today that bidders at a public agency’s auction of forfeited property have no reasonable expectation of privacy in their names and home addresses, and therefore this information must be disclosed under OPRA. Brennan v. Bergen County Prosecutor’s Office.

The Appellate Division had determined that the balancing test applicable to OPRA privacy claims weighed in favor of privacy here, but the Supreme Court stated that the balancing test did not apply in this case. The Court said the balancing analysis is to be conducted only where there is a “colorable claim” that access to the information would invade an “objectively reasonable expectation of privacy.”

The bidders here had no such colorable argument, according to the Court; it concluded that people bidding at an agency’s public auction–“a quintessential public event”–could not reasonably expect their names and addresses to be private. As a result, there was no basis to withhold this information under OPRA’s privacy exemption.

Unfortunately, the Court did not resolve the question that has caused difficulty for custodians since OPRA’s enactment–are home addresses exempt from disclosure under OPRA’s privacy protection? The Brennan opinion deals only with bidders’ information, and offers no guidance on how to handle the many other situations where an individual’s address is shown on correspondence or some other document held by a government entity.