The New Jersey Supreme Court has provided us with the second meaningful shakeup to the Open Public Records Act (“OPRA”) in the past 12 months. On January 21, 2025, the Court decided Fuster v. Twp. Of Chatham, which has significant implications on OPRA requests relating to police body cam footage. This decision is a small yet substantial win for those who were discouraged and upset by Governor Murphy's signing of the 2024 amendments to OPRA, which many critics, especially in the journalism field, characterized as a “gutting” of OPRA.

The Plaintiff, Antonio Fuster (“Plaintiff”), filed a police report after his child with special needs accused an adult male relative of sexual misconduct. Plaintiff went to the police station to file a report on his child's allegation. The officer who received Plaintiff's statement was wearing a body camera at the time and recorded the conversation. When reviewing the initial police report, Plaintiff noticed that the report was missing several key facts which he mentioned in his conversation with the officer. Plaintiff believed that this resulted in gross inaccuracies in the police report. Ultimately, no criminal charges were brought against the relative. 

As such, Plaintiff sought out the body camera footage such that he could prove that the report was inaccurate and file a complaint. Pursuant to the Body Worn Camera Law (N.J.S.A. 40A:14-118.5), Plaintiff was allowed to review the footage to request a three-year retention period for the footage. Plaintiff requested that retention. Plaintiff filed an OPRA request for copies of the footage. Plaintiff's request was denied by the custodian of records because “disclosure would not advance the public interest”. Plaintiff sued the Township, alleging that they had unlawfully denied their rights to access the body cam footage under OPRA because it fell under no exception to the act.

The Supreme Court reversed the lower Court's determination that the OPRA request for the footage should be denied based upon case law which held that records related to uncharged individuals are subject to confidentiality because this case law predates the OPRA statute and was supplanted by OPRA once implemented. The Supreme Court held that denying the request would not protect any significant privacy interests and as such the footage was subject to review and inspection under OPRA.

The implications of this ruling are vast as it sees our Supreme Court setting aside a wide array of caselaw for the sake of ensuring that public records are available for the public. The new regime for body camera footage is now that it must be released unless it falls under one of the exceptions of the Body Worn Camera Law or a different OPRA exception and the more speculative and esoteric privacy rights exception is to be on a much shorter leash than before, especially when the requestor is the subject of the footage.