John Paff v. Galloway Township and Thalia C. Kay

Summary

The New Jersey Supreme Court held that electronically stored email fields, including sender, recipient, date, and subject information, are government records subject to disclosure under the Open Public Records Act. The Court rejected the Appellate Division’s conclusion that producing the information would impermissibly require creation of a new record and remanded for consideration of any applicable exemptions, exceptions, or redactions.

Holdings

1. The sender, recipient, date, and subject fields electronically stored within the identified emails are government records under OPRA.
2. OPRA permits a requester to seek specifically identified information from existing electronic records, and a public agency with the means to do so must provide that information, subject to applicable fees and statutory exceptions.
3. The Government Records Council's informal guidance was not entitled to substantial deference in the Superior Court proceedings.
4. The Supreme Court did not decide whether any requested information was protected by an OPRA exception or exemption; those issues had to be resolved by the trial court on remand.

Questions Presented

1. Whether specified fields of information electronically stored within emails constitute government records under the New Jersey Open Public Records Act.
2. Whether OPRA requires a municipality to extract and compile discrete electronically stored information from existing emails when the request is specifically defined and can be fulfilled without substantial technological burden.
3. Whether the Government Records Council's informal guidance was entitled to substantial deference.
4. Whether OPRA exceptions, exemptions, privacy protections, or redactions barred disclosure of some or all of the requested information.

Disposition

reversed_and_remanded