State Supreme Court rules agencies must provide information extracted from documents

A State Supreme Court ruling on Tuesday clarified the obligations of government agencies to provide information kept in electronic databases even when some work is required to extract it from a larger public document.

Overturning an appellate decision, the justices ruled that Galloway Township in Atlantic County is required to supply a list of internal emails to a public records advocate in a case that began four years ago. Township officials had denied the request by saying the list was not a public document and would have to be created, although the emails themselves were public.

They also acknowledged in court documents that the list would have taken two to three minutes to compile.

John Paff, who heads the New Jersey Libertarian Party's Open Government Advocacy Project, had requested a list of emails under the state’s Open Public Records Act, or OPRA, for a two-week period in 2013. He asked that the township include information about the sender, recipient, date and subject matter.

OPRA requests subject to open records law, court rules

Appellate ruling: Nutley did not violate OPRA

He said the selection was made randomly. Paff frequently makes records requests of public agencies to gauge their responses.

Justice Barry T. Albin, who wrote the court's opinion, said in court papers that “extracting digital information” from emails “is not the creation of a new record,” as the township had argued. “We reject the Appellate Division’s statement that ‘OPRA only allows requests for records, not requests for information,’ ” he wrote.

Paff said the ruling strengthens an area of OPRA that has been the subject of various interpretations by government agencies, with some supplying information embedded in databases and others saying they would supply only existing public documents. Some towns have declined to provide lists of contractors, for example, saying they would provide only public documents related to those contractors.

“It makes it clear that information in public databases is not exempt from OPRA,” Paff said of the ruling.

Galloway Township officials could not be immediately reached for comment.

The township initially rejected Paff’s request for the list of emails between the township clerk and its police chief, saying it “is not required to create new records in response to an OPRA request.”

However, the township acknowledged that the emails themselves were public records, although in some cases such emails might be subject to redaction because they were related to an internal investigation or included information about private citizens.

A Superior Court judge ruled that Paff’s request was valid under OPRA, but that decision was overturned by appellate judges. Supreme Court justices wrote that the Appellate Division’s reading of OPRA was “overly restrictive” and “cannot be squared” with the objectives of the law.

"In enacting OPRA, the Legislature intended to bring greater transparency to the operations of government and public officials," Albin wrote. He added that state lawmakers did not define government records as documents or files, but as "information."

"Information in an electronic form, even if part of a larger document, is itself a government record," he wrote. "Thus, electronically stored information extracted from an email is not the creation of a new record or new information; it is a government record."

He added that if the record is maintained in electronic form, the person requesting it "is entitled to the document in electronic form."