Public Business Belongs on Public Email
Every good municipal attorney cautions newly elected local officials to stick to their public email account and to use their public provided cell phone when conducting public business. The New Jersey Supreme Court’s recent decision in Rosetti v. Ramapo-Indian Hills Regional High School Board of Education has now addressed this issue.
The Court’s answer was straightforward and uncomplicated. The fact that an email sits in a personal inbox or comes from a personal email address does not necessarily place it beyond the reach of New Jersey’s Open Public Records Act (OPRA).
What makes Rosetti noteworthy is that the Court seemed to recognize a growing problem in modern government. School board members, municipal officials, and other public servants increasingly conduct official business on personal devices and personal accounts. Sometimes it is done out of convenience. Sometimes it is done because people simply fall into bad habits. Either way, it creates problems.
OPRA Dispute Over Personal Email Logs
The dispute began with an Open Public Records Act (OPRA) request submitted by Alex Rosetti seeking records related to communications among members of the Ramapo-Indian Hills Regional High School Board of Education. Specifically, Rosetti sought email logs concerning board business, including communications that may have occurred through board members’ personal email accounts.
The Supreme Court unanimously concluded that emails relating to government business do not escape OPRA simply because they are stored on private servers or sent through personal accounts. As Justice Fabiana Pierre-Louis wrote for the Court, “Emails related to government business, whether stored on government or private servers, are within OPRA’s reach.” The Court further held that the Board must produce logs of the government-related emails contained in the personal email accounts of Board members
The New Jersey Supreme Court’s decision follows the central principle underlying OPRA: the public’s right to know cannot be defeated by the medium chosen to conduct government business. If a record concerns official governmental activity, it may qualify as a government record regardless of where it is stored. Had the Court ruled otherwise, public officials could potentially move discussions away from government systems and beyond meaningful public scrutiny simply by switching accounts. That outcome would have been difficult to square with either the text or purpose of OPRA.
Notably, the New Jersey Supreme Court did not hold that public officials surrender all privacy rights in their personal email accounts. Nor did it suggest that every email stored in a personal inbox automatically becomes a government record.
“We do not find that logs of entire private email accounts are government records by virtue of the fact that government-related emails might be present in those accounts,” Justice Pierre-Louis wrote. “For example, if out of 1,000 emails in a personal email account only 10 are government-related, a log of those 1,000 emails (even with the private emails redacted) cannot be said to constitute a government record under OPRA. It is only the log of government-related emails that is a government record.”
In line with prior OPRA decisions, the focus remains on communications relating to public business. However, once officials choose to conduct public business through private accounts, they should not assume those communications will remain private.
Public Business Belongs on Public Email Accounts
The New Jersey Supreme Court’s opinion in Rosetti contains another point that deserves attention. The justices emphasized that many of the issues presented in the case could have been avoided if officials had simply used their government-issued email accounts in the first place.
“Lastly, we reiterate that emails related to government business, whether stored on government or private servers, are within OPRA’s reach, so using a private email account will not shield those government records from production under OPRA. The issues in this case could have been avoided altogether if Board members did not use their private email accounts to conduct Board business and instead used only their government-issued email accounts, as intended,” Justice Pierre-Louis wrote.
For public officials, the lesson is simple. If the email concerns public business, it belongs on a public system. Every public entity in New Jersey spends time and money responding to records requests. When official communications are scattered across personal accounts, compliance becomes more difficult. Record retention becomes more difficult. Litigation becomes more likely. Determining what is and is not a government record becomes more complicated than it should be. The easiest way to avoid becoming the next OPRA test case is to use the government email account that was provided for exactly that purpose.
Broader Focus on Transparency
The broader lesson extends beyond OPRA. Public confidence depends on the ability of citizens to understand how decisions are made and who influences those decisions. When official communications occur through private channels, transparency becomes more difficult and public trust can erode. The Supreme Court’s decision reinforces a basic principle of open government — public business should be conducted in a manner that allows the public to hold officials accountable.