In every year since OPRA’s enactment in 2002, the Supreme Court and Appellate Division have issued opinions with far-reaching impact on OPRA law and procedure. 2021 was no different. Some of the cases decided this year constituted landmark developments in New Jersey public records law.

In Bozzi v. Jersey City, the Supreme Court resolved an issue that municipal custodians have struggled with since OPRA’s enactment, in holding that the names and addresses of those who have obtained dog licenses must be disclosed. The Court’s opinion also addressed, for the first time, the larger question of whether a person’s home address is protected by OPRA’s privacy requirement. The Court effectively concluded that OPRA does not shield home addresses from public disclosure.

In another landmark case, the Supreme Court upheld the Attorney General’s requirement that the names of police officers who have committed serious disciplinary violations must be made public.

The third Supreme Court OPRA opinion, issued in 2021, Banfi v. Mercado, said a police department is required to respond to an OPRA request for electronic information concerning complaints and summonses, where police officers entered such arrest-related information into the Judiciary’s Electronic Complaint Disposition Record (eCDR) system.

The Appellate Division issued a significant opinion in Gannett v. Neptune Twp. The court held that a police officer’s internal affairs file, although exempt from disclosure under OPRA, is subject to disclosure under the common law. This opinion also contained an even more important ruling concerning common law record requests: the court held, for the first time in a published Appellate Division opinion, that successful common law requestors are eligible to be awarded attorney fees.

The other major Appellate Division case was Doe v. Rutgers. In addition to being one of the few cases to discuss OPRA’s provisions relating to higher education student records, the opinion also discusses a situation that many custodians often have confronted–an OPRA request asking for all records related to the agency’s response to that request. The court stated that this was an invalid request, because the records sought did not exist at the time the request was made. And more crucially, the court further indicated that these records would not be disclosable, because they fall within the deliberative process exemption.