Since the enactment of OPRA, many requestors have tried to evade the statute’s protection of the privacy of personal information found in public records. Two recent Appellate Division cases involve examples of the egregious disregard that some requestors have for privacy rights.

In Wolosky v. Sparta, Bd. of Ed., decided January 13th, the records in question contained references to various students, identified by their initials. Despite having no need for the students’ names, and despite the obvious privacy rights of young students, the requestor argued to the appellate court that OPRA requires disclosure of the students’ full names.

Similarly, in Scheeler v. NJDOE, issued January 19th, the requestor demanded disclosure of school board members’ home addresses, despite having no need for these addresses.

While the court rejected the requestors’ claims in both cases, these are not precedential opinions. The absence of precedent means that nothing prevents future requestors from continuing to file litigation aimed at weakening OPRA’s limits on the disclosure of individuals’ private information.

In an opinion issued today, the Appellate Division upheld the redaction of school board members’ home addresses under OPRA’s privacy exemption. Scheeler v. NJ Dept. of Ed.

The addresses appeared on financial disclosure statements filed by local school board members with the School Ethics Commission. The GRC determined that the addresses should be redacted to protect these individuals’ privacy interests. In reaching this decision, it noted that the School Ethics Law does not require that home addresses be shown on the disclosure statement.

The Appellate Division applied OPRA’s privacy balancing test and held the addresses were properly redacted. It found that the school board members had a strong privacy interest in their addresses here, because of the existence of other personal information on the disclosure statement form, such as their personal finances. The court also concluded that the requestor had shown no public interest would be served by disclosure of the addresses.

As I’ve discussed before, see this post, New Jersey courts have yet to resolve the important issue of whether OPRA requires disclosure of home addresses. Unfortunately, Scheeler is not a precedential, published opinion, so there remains no definitive court ruling on this question.

In an unpublished opinion, the Appellate Division rejected the claim that OPRA requires disclosure of students’ initials, where their initials appear on a public record. Wolosky v. Sparta Bd. of Ed.

The records in question were school board attorney invoices, which contained references to various students, identified by their initials. The court upheld the redaction of the initials under OPRA’s exemption for privacy. The court determined that disclosing the initials could lead to identifying the students, and students’ strong privacy interests outweighed the requestor’s interest in disclosure.

Notably, the Appellate Division relied on a 2016 published trial court opinion, C.G. v. Winslow Tp. Bd. of Ed., which had similarly rejected the argument that OPRA mandates disclosure of students’ initials. See here for a discussion of the C.G. case.

Over the past week, the Appellate Division has issued two OPRA opinions with strikingly different views of individuals’ privacy rights. The Appellate Division’s recent police dashcam video opinion,  discussed here, dealt a blow to privacy interests in ruling that people shown in such videos have no reasonable expectation of privacy. A few days later, a different Appellate Division panel upheld privacy rights in concluding that home addresses may be entitled to privacy protection under OPRA. Brennan v. Bergen County Prosecutor’s Office.

The issue in the case was whether Bergen County had to disclose the names and addresses of people who bid at an auction of sports memorabilia held by the County. (The memorabilia had been seized from an individual by the prosecutor’s office). The documents showing the names and addresses were non-exempt government records, but the court held that OPRA’s privacy provision rendered this personal information confidential.

The court said that the bidders had a reasonable expectation that their names and addresses would be private. Notably, the court rejected the argument typically expressed by requestors seeking home addresses, that there’s no privacy interest because home addresses are publicly available. The court emphasized that there is a strong privacy interest when name and address is linked with other information about an individual; in this case, the additional information was that the person bought memorabilia, indicating that he may have a valuable collection. The court determined that the bidders had a genuine concern that they could become the targets of theft.

The court also noted another significant factor favoring privacy: the absence of confidentiality would deter bidders from entering an auction, thereby harming governments’ abilities to hold auctions to generate income.

The court concluded that these confidentiality factors outweighed the requestor’s limited interest in disclosure of the names and addresses. The panel reached the same result with regard to the common law claim for disclosure of this information.

As this blog has previously noted, there is little case law guidance on whether home addresses are protected under OPRA. Although the Brennan opinion is unpublished, it is still an extremely important case in showing that home addresses are entitled to privacy protection.