In a lengthy, published opinion, the New Jersey Appellate Division recently ruled on four appeals from different trial courts (that had reached conflicting results) about the ability of a nonprofit advocacy organization for disabled students and one of the parent’s efforts to obtain copies of settlement agreements from public school districts relating to the provision of special services to other qualified students.

The issue was how to strike a balance between privacy rights in educational records reflected in the New Jersey Pupil Records Act, and the Federal Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act of 1974, on the one hand, and the broad right to obtain public records under New Jersey’s Open Public Records Act or OPRA, on the other hand.  (See Litigation Law Blog’s Post on a Series of Recent OPRA Decisions by the New Jersey courts.)

The Appellate Division Panel held that the non-profit entity plaintiffs in three of the cases were entitled to copies of the requested records with personal identifying information redacted, if they establish that they are “bona fide researchers” under the New Jersey Public Records Act or if they obtain in advance an order from the trial court granting them access. The school districts were directed to not turn over the redacted records until first providing reasonable advance notice to the parents or guardians of the affected students.

The Court distinguished one of the cases on appeal in which the requestor sought a report that exclusively mentioned her own child, affirming parents’ right to obtain unredacted records relating to their children.