A citizen in Hamilton Township in New Jersey was sued by the town for requesting surveillance footage of town buildings under the Open Public Records Act. A judge stepped up to end this bizarre lawsuit that had tried to get the judge to rule that the citizen would be barred from making any future open records requests and to pay the town’s legal fees. “A public policy that gives a government agency the right to sue a person who asks for a government document is the antithesis of the policy underlying both OPRA and the common law to provide citizens with a means of access to public information to keep government activities open and hold the government accountable,” wrote the judge. (techdirt, July 1, 2015, by Tim Cushing)
Though rare, these cases do occur regularly and include cases from Billings, Montana, Vermont, Burlington, North Carolina, Manhattan Beach, California and Dallas, Texas. Adam Marshall of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, said that the lawsuits run the risk of damaging democracy. “When public agencies force members of the public to appear in court to defend their right to know, everyone loses. The public loses faith in the institutions that are supposed to work on their behalf, valuable resources are spent on litigation, and ultimately the democratic nature of our government is itself weakened,” said Marshall. (Columbia Journalism Review, June 30, 2015, by Jonathan Peters)