Since OPRA’s enactment, custodians have struggled with the unsettled question of whether a person’s home address is confidential, under the exemption for the reasonable expectation of privacy. This issue comes up in many OPRA requests; one that frequently recurs is a request for the names and addresses of people who submitted pet license applications to municipalities. The Appellate Division has now issued a definitive, precedential opinion on this issue, holding that the home addresses on these licensing records must be disclosed. Bozzi v. Roselle Park.

The requestor in this case, an installer of invisible dog fences, requested the names and home addresses of municipal residents from their dog licenses. Previous cases addressing this type of OPRA request have differed on whether the individual’s privacy interest in this information outweighed the need for its disclosure. However, in Bozzi the Appellate Division held that OPRA’s privacy exemption does not ever apply in this situation, because people have no reasonable expectation of privacy in their name and address information when they apply for a dog license.

The court’s holding is significant, in that it resolves the longstanding question of whether municipalities must grant access to addresses found in pet license records. But the opinion is of even greater importance because it affects all OPRA requests pertaining to home addresses. The court went beyond the specific issue of addresses in dog license records, and stated, for the first time in a precedential opinion, that the Legislature, in OPRA, did not intend to block disclosure of names and home addresses in any government record.

Although this portion of the opinion may be dicta, the Appellate Division’s direction is unambiguous: OPRA requests for records that disclose a person’s name and address should be granted.