Our colleague and NJFOG Treasurer John Paff asked the NJ Supreme Court to amend their rules to explicitly permit OPRA lawsuits to be filed by an anonymous plaintiff. This issue gained steam recently when the Appellate Division held that, absent extraordinary circumstances, an OPRA lawsuit could not be filed anonymously, creating tension between OPRA, which allows for anonymous requests, and the available remedy, which would reveal the identity of the anonymous requestor. The Court has rejected the proposed amendment, so the general rule that an OPRA requestor must use their name in Court papers remains. -NJFOG
NJ Open Government Notes
by John Paff
March 2, 2016
Paff wrote:
On August 9, 2015, I posted a blog article regarding my October 2, 2012 request for an amendment to New Jersey’s court rules that would allow anonymous OPRA requestors to proceed in court anonymously if their requests are denied.
In its 2016 report, the Civil Practice Committee rejected my request because on September 17, 2015 the Appellate Division ruled in A.A. v. Gramiccioni, 442 N.J. Super. 276 (App. Div. 2015) that anonymous OPRA lawsuits are not permitted.
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Blog post online here and re-posted above. See John’s blog for more information.