No Redaction of OPRA Documents for Irrelevance - ACLU v. NJ Division of Criminal Justice (A-3381-12T1)
Thursday, May 15, 2014
In a precedential reversal, New Jersey's Appellate Division holds that "Absent a legally recognized exception to disclosure, a citizen's right of access to public information is unfettered." Continuing, the Court wrote "The redaction policy adopted by DCJ is based entirely on the unilateral determination by the custodian of records of what, in his or her opinion, is relevant to the ACLU's request.
"This approach confers upon the custodian of government records quasi-judicial powers to determine what information contained within a 'government record,'...is relevant to a request and therefore subject to disclosure and, conversely, what information contained in this same document will be withheld from the public, based only on the custodian's notion of relevancy. We discern no legal support for such a policy in OPRA." (Emphasis added.)
Full text of decision (approved for publication) below...
"This approach confers upon the custodian of government records quasi-judicial powers to determine what information contained within a 'government record,'...is relevant to a request and therefore subject to disclosure and, conversely, what information contained in this same document will be withheld from the public, based only on the custodian's notion of relevancy. We discern no legal support for such a policy in OPRA." (Emphasis added.)
Full text of decision (approved for publication) below...