New Jersey Supreme Court: Government-related emails in officials’ personal accounts are subject to OPRA

Unanimous ruling says public officials cannot shield records from disclosure by conducting government business through private email accounts.

The New Jersey Supreme Court ruled unanimously Thursday, June 11, that logs of government-related emails contained in public officials’ personal email accounts are subject to disclosure under the Open Public Records Act, strengthening public access to records involving government business even when officials use private accounts.

The case arose from a records request filed by Alex Rosetti seeking email logs from members of the Ramapo-Indian Hills Regional High School Board of Education. Rosetti requested logs showing basic metadata, including senders, recipients, dates, times, subjects, and attachments for emails involving board business. While the school board produced logs from official district-issued email accounts, it refused to provide logs from members’ personal accounts.

The court held that emails concerning government business do not lose their status as government records simply because they were stored from private email accounts. Because the emails themselves are government records under OPRA, the court found that logs identifying those emails are also subject to disclosure.

Writing for the court, Justice Fabiana Pierre-Louis said OPRA’s broad definition of a government record includes electronically stored information created, maintained, or received in the course of official business. The court emphasized that New Jersey’s public records law is intended to promote transparency and maximize public access to information about government affairs.

The ruling builds on earlier decisions holding that email metadata, including sender, recipient, date and subject fields, can constitute a government record even when extracted into a separate log. The court also cited prior cases recognizing that government records can remain subject to disclosure regardless of where they are stored or who maintains them.

But the court also narrowed the scope of both Rosetti’s request and the Appellate Division’s earlier ruling. The justices rejected the idea that entire personal email account logs automatically become government records simply because some government-related emails may be present in those accounts. Instead, only logs of emails related to government business are subject to disclosure. Personal, non-government emails remain outside OPRA’s reach.

The court noted that Rosetti ultimately agreed that a narrower search would satisfy his request. Rather than requiring a technical extraction of metadata from private email servers, the court said board members may search their personal accounts for communications involving board business and create logs from those results. Board members must search relevant folders, including inboxes, sent items, and deleted messages, and provide certifications describing the searches they conducted so courts can evaluate whether the searches were adequate.

The board and supporting organizations had argued that generating email logs from private accounts would be technologically difficult and burdensome because the district lacks access to personal email servers. The court said those concerns did not eliminate the board’s obligation to identify and disclose government-related records.

The opinion also contained a warning for public officials who use personal accounts for government business.

“Using a private email account will not shield those government records from production under OPRA,” the court wrote. The justices added that government agencies “should strongly advise their employees, elected officials, and others engaged in government-related business to refrain from using their personal email accounts when conducting government-related business.”

The court said the dispute could have been avoided if board members had conducted official business exclusively through government-issued email accounts.

Rosetti was represented by Donald Doherty, Jr. Lawyer CJ Griffin represented two groups that argued in favor of releasing the logs, the ACLU NJ and Libertarians for Transparent Government. Griffin said the decision from a unanimous Supreme Court sends a strong message to public agencies.

“Government employees and elected officials must not use personal email accounts to conduct government business,” Griffin told The Vindicator. “If they do, those emails (and logs of emails) will still be subject to public access under OPRA. There is no evading OPRA’s promise of transparency.”