NJ Supreme Court Confirms Personal Email Is Within OPRA's Reach: What Boards, Municipalities, Public Officials And Public Entities Must Do Now

If Your Public Officials Conduct Public Business on Personal Accounts, Those Communications May Be Subject to Disclosure under the New Jersey Open Public Records Act (N.J.S.A. 47:1A-1 et seq.).

A recent New Jersey Supreme Court decision has direct consequences for every board of education, municipality, and public agency in the state. In Rosetti v. Ramapo-Indian Hills Regional High School Board of Education, decided June 11, 2026, the Court unanimously held that logs of government-related emails housed in officials’ personal email accounts are government records subject to the Open Public Records Act (OPRA). For public entities, the ruling confirms that the location of a communication does not determine whether it is subject to disclosure under OPRA; rather, the nature and content of the communication itself control whether disclosure is required. This decision further places the obligation on the public entity to find and produce responsive records.

What the Court Decided

The case began when Alex Rosetti, the OPRA requestor, submitted an OPRA request to the Ramapo-Indian Hills Regional High School Board of Education. The request sought:

All comments submitted by the public comments form received by the Board from August 1, 2022 through to the date [of] the response. The response should include the name, email, town, and the question or comment of the sender. Email logs of all past and current Board members for all email accounts in which they have conducted or discussed Board of Education matters or business during the time frame of November 1, 2022 through to the date of the response. The email log should contain the sender, recipient, those copied (“cc”) or blind copied (“bcc”), the date, time, subject, and identify the existence and name of any attachment.

The portion of the request relevant to this holding in particular is the request for all email logs for board members, including personal emails. The board produced logs from its official, government-issued accounts but declined to produce anything from members’ personal email accounts. A trial court ruled in favor of the board. The Appellate Division reversed, and the Supreme Court affirmed that reversal.

Writing for a unanimous Court, Justice Fabiana Pierre-Louis held that emails concerning government business fall within OPRA’s reach whether stored on government or private servers. Board members must search their personal email accounts, or use another acceptable method, to locate government-related emails and produce a log of them. The Court relied on its earlier decision in Paff v. Galloway Township, 229 N.J. 340 (2017), which established that email logs themselves qualify as government records because OPRA covers information stored electronically, not just paper documents.

However, despite reaching this holding, the Court still concluded that the request itself was overbroad. In this instance, the Court emphasized that the OPRA request for private email account logs was impermissibly expansive. “[The]… request for ‘[e]mail log[s] of Board Members from their own personal email addresses’ did not specify that it sought logs of government-related emails and seemingly requested logs of entire private email accounts, irrespective of the amount of non-government related messages the accounts might contain. Id. at 21. (emphasis added).”

Even with this holding, the Court also makes clear that OPRA requests must comply with OPRA’s requirements for specificity and reasonableness to constitute a valid records request.

The Ruling May Reach Beyond Email

Public entities should not read Rosetti as limited to email. Because the decision turns on the nature and content of a communication rather than the platform that houses it, the same reasoning can extend to text messages and social media messages. If a communication touches upon an official’s public position or the public body’s business, the medium in which it lives, whether email, text, or a messaging application, does not remove it from OPRA’s reach. Public officials and the entities they serve should assume that any channel used to conduct government business can become the subject of a records request.

What This Means for Your Agency

The practical takeaways for public entities are significant.

First, your officials’ personal accounts are not a safe harbor. If an elected official, board member, or employee uses a personal email account to conduct agency business, those communications can be reached through an OPRA request. Switching to a personal account does not remove a record from public scrutiny.

Second, the obligation to search runs to the individual official, but the compliance exposure runs to the agency. Under the procedure the Court endorsed, officials who search their personal accounts must submit a certification detailing the searches they conducted. A reviewing court can then evaluate whether the search was adequate to capture all relevant agency-related emails. This means your agency needs a process for directing officials to search, collecting their logs, and documenting those searches through certifications.

Third, there is a meaningful limit on scope that protects both officials and agencies. The Court rejected the broader demand for logs of officials’ entire personal inboxes. As Justice Pierre-Louis explained, if a personal account holds 1,000 emails and only 10 concern government business, a log of all 1,000, even with private entries redacted, is not a government record. Only the log of the government-related emails qualifies. Officials do not surrender all privacy in their personal accounts, and agencies are not obligated to produce wholesale inbox logs.

Fourth, the decision has real consequences for records retention. Because government-related communications in personal accounts are subject to disclosure, public officials who delete personal messages that would be responsive under OPRA may expose themselves to trouble. Deleting a message that qualifies as a government record does not eliminate the retention obligation, and it can create both compliance and litigation risks. Public bodies should treat the retention of these communications as seriously as they treat the retention of records in government systems.

The Clear Compliance Lesson: Keep Public Business on Public Systems

The Court went out of its way to offer guidance, and it is guidance every public entity should act on. The justices emphasized that the entire dispute could have been avoided if board members had simply used their government-issued accounts as intended. As Justice Pierre-Louis advised, government agencies should strongly counsel their employees, elected officials, and others engaged in public business to refrain from using personal email accounts for that work.

Every records request your agency answers costs time and money. When official communications are scattered across personal accounts, OPRA compliance becomes more difficult, record retention becomes more difficult, and litigation becomes more likely. Determining what is and is not a government record becomes more complicated than it needs to be. The simplest way to avoid becoming the next OPRA test case is to ensure officials use the government email accounts provided to them for exactly that purpose.

Recommended Action Steps

Public entities should consider taking the following steps now:

Adopt or reinforce a written policy directing all officials and employees to conduct agency business exclusively on government-issued email accounts and devices. Circulate clear guidance to board members and elected officials, particularly newly seated ones, explaining that personal-account use does not shield communications from OPRA and may expose them to search and certification obligations. Establish an internal protocol for responding to OPRA requests that may implicate personal accounts, including how searches will be directed, how logs will be collected, and how certifications will be documented.

Review your record retention practices to ensure agency-related communications, including text messages and other electronic communications, are captured and preserved regardless of the platform on which they originate, and remind officials that responsive messages should not be deleted.

The content of this article is intended to provide a general guide to the subject matter. Specialist advice should be sought about your specific circumstances.