The Appellate Division issued an opinion on October 16th upholding the Attorney General’s July 2020 Law Enforcement Directive that requires the public disclosure of the names of police officers who have committed serious disciplinary violations. The court determined that the Attorney General was empowered to enact this new requirement under his statutory law enforcement authority.

Since the Supreme Court is almost certainly going to review this case, the Appellate Division’s opinion is unlikely to be the final word on the validity of the Directive. However, it’s interesting to note that the Appellate Division emphasized that it was not basing its decision on OPRA, even though previous litigation seeking public disclosure of the identities of disciplined officers has been under OPRA. In this case, the court unambiguously stated that OPRA’s personnel exemption prohibits an OPRA requestor from obtaining the names of disciplined officers.

In reaching this conclusion, the court correctly rejected, as contrary to clearly settled law, the Attorney General’s argument that OPRA permits a public body to disclose exempt personnel information (as well as all other records exempted by OPRA) if the public body chooses to do so.

As a result, this precedential opinion reaffirms what has always been the law in New Jersey–the personnel information of public employees is not accessible under OPRA.