Appellate Court: County correctly redacted home addresses, e-mail addresses and telephone numbers from OPRA requests.

In an unpublished decision issued today, a two-judge panel of New Jersey Superior Court, Appellate Division affirmed a trial court's ruling that Somerset County was justified in redacting the home addresses, e-mail addresses and telephone numbers from fifty-four Open Public Records Act (OPRA) requests the County had received in early 2015.

In the case, Jesse Wolosky v. Somerset County, et al, Wolosky sought, among other records, "each OPRA request received by the County from persons other than [Wolosky] from February 15, 2015 to [May 18, 2015]."  The County's records custodian located fifty-four OPRA requests that fit within the scope of Wolosky's request but excised the requestors' home addresses, e-mail addresses and phone numbers before disclosing them to Wolosky.   The County claimed that the redactions were necessary "to safeguard from public access a citizen's personal information when disclosure of the information would violate the citizen's reasonable expectation of privacy."

The appellate panel agreed with the County's position holding that Wolosky does not have a right under OPRA or the common law to access the email and home addresses of persons who submitted OPRA requests to the County.