It is widely accepted that student records are exempt from public access under OPRA, either under the Federal Education Rights and Privacy Act (“FERPA”) or New Jersey’s Pupil Records Act (“NJPRA”). In other words, everyone accepts that students are entitled to privacy and that the public is not able to access grade cards, discipline records, and other sensitive information. However, when it comes to records that relate to an individual student but involve a significant expenditure of public funds, such as settlement agreements, most courts have permitted access to them ...
Recently, Pashman Stein Walder Hayden P.C. has filed several amicus curiae briefs in pending Supreme Court appeals dealing with transparency issues:
Paff v. Ocean County Prosecutor’s Office: This case will provide further guidance on whether dash cam videos are available under OPRA. While the Court recently ruled that dash cam recordings of a police-involved shooting were not subject to OPRA in North Jersey Media Group Inc. v. Twp. of Lyndhurst, this appeal considers arguments that were not made in that case. We filed an amicus brief in support of transparency on behalf of Latino ...
We have previously written about our nearly three-year battle to secure access to police records relating to the police-involved shooting of Kashad Ashford in 2014. We are happy to announce that the Supreme Court of New Jersey has issued a landmark ruling in this case and has restored transparency over the use of force by police officers. Our press release is available here.
In a decision written by Chief Justice Stuart Rabner, the Court unanimously ruled that use of force reports, the names of officers involved in the shooting, and dash camera footage of the incident should be released. ...
Pashman Stein Walder Hayden P.C. recently secured a victory in Matt Mills v. Township of Monroe, a case that challenged the sufficiency of a public agency’s search for emails responsive to an OPRA request.
In this case, Mr. Mills requested emails sent to or from various township employees and officials relating to the township’s EMS services. After the township responded to the request and produced emails, Mr. Mills noticed that not everything was produced. After he followed up, the township produced more emails, but Mr. Mills was still aware of other emails that were not ...
Last year, in Paff v. Township of Galloway, 444 N.J. Super. 495 (App. Div. 2016), the Appellate Division issued a rather shocking decision —in essence, the court held that even though OPRA includes electronically stored information is in the definition of “government records,” an agency has no obligation to extract that data because it would be “creating a new record.”
Mr. Paff’s request involved a log of emails that included the “to,” “from,” “subject,” and “date.” The agency admitted that it could print the log and it would take only two to three ...
The Borough of Flemington has made the news recently when it voted to impose an automatic special service charge on all OPRA requests that the Custodian estimates will take over two hours to fulfill. When the Custodian receives such a request, she will provide an estimate to the requestor who will then have to pay one-third of the costs in advance.
We previously discussed the imposition of special service charges on this blog. While OPRA does permit a special service charge where a request requires an “extraordinary expenditure of time and effort to accommodate,” as ...
OPRA permits agencies to withhold most criminal investigatory records, but requires them to disclose certain enumerated information to the public:
if an arrest has been made, information as to the name, address and age of any victims unless there has not been sufficient opportunity for notification of next of kin of any victims of injury and/or death to any such victim or where the release of the names of any victim would be contrary to existing law or court rule. In deciding on the release of information as to the identity of a victim, the safety of the victim and the victim's family, and the ...
One question we frequently receive is whether an agency can charge a requestor an hourly rate to respond to an OPRA request. The answer is yes, but only in specific circumstances where a requestor seeks an extraordinarily large volume of records.
N.J.S.A. 47:1A-5(c) provides that:
Whenever the nature, format, manner of collation, or volume of a government record embodied in the form of printed matter to be inspected, examined, or copied pursuant to this section is such that the record cannot be reproduced by ordinary document copying equipment in ordinary business size or involves an ...
For years, individuals have filed OPRA requests with agencies to obtain all of the OPRA requests an agency has received during a specific timeframe. Requestors use these records in a variety of ways, such as a) finding out how many OPRA requests an agency is handling during any specific timeframe (since agencies have no obligation to calculate that information and let the public know); b) being able to contact another member of the public who is interested in the same type of government issues; c) learning more about government by seeing what other requestors are seeking from their ...
The third exception to OPRA’s personnel records exemption provides that:
data contained in information which disclose conformity with specific experiential, educational or medical qualifications required for government employment or for receipt of a public pension, but not including any detailed medical or psychological information, shall be a government record.
[N.J.S.A. 47:1A-10.]
In Kovalcik v. Somerset Cty. Prosecutor's Office, 206 N.J. 581, 593 (2011), the Supreme Court has made it clear that this exception does not authorize disclosure of all records that ...
