Supreme Court enters fight over Rise Against Hate receiving South Jersey email addresses

TRENTON – A nonprofit group suing for the email addresses of municipal-newsletter subscribers can take its fight to the state Supreme Court.

Rise Against Hate, an anti-racism and civil rights group, wants subscriber lists maintained by Cherry Hill, West Deptford and Bridgewater, Somerset County, a court record says.

The Cherry Hill-based nonprofit plans to send unsolicited emails to the addresses in an effort to promote its activities, it says.

But the requests for addresses, made under the state’s Open Public Records Act, have been under dispute since December 2020.

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Records custodians in the three townships rejected the group’s requests, saying subscribers’ “objectively reasonable expectation” of privacy outweighed the group’s right to obtain the addresses.

Rise Against Hate won the first round of lawsuits against each custodian, with state judges in each case ordering disclosure of the addresses.

Appeals court rejected arguments from Rise Against Hate

But a three-judge appeals panel overturned those rulings in March, and backed the custodians’ refusal to release the records.

The Supreme Court agreed to hear the case at its July 6 conference.

No hearing dates have been set.

RAH made its first request in December 2020, asking Cherry Hill to produce subscriber lists for “Mayor’s Weekly Update,” “Civil Alerts” and “Notify Me.”

But Municipal Clerk Nancy Saffos asserted the addresses were off-limits due to the personal privacy protection of the state’s OPRA law.

West Deptford Administrator Lee Ann DeHart similarly rejected RAH’s request. She said disclosure of the addresses would not advance OPRA’s purpose to promote awareness of local government operations.

The group had sought addresses for subscribers to West Deptford Township News and RiverWinds Community Center News

Camden judge ruled for records' release

Superior Court Judge Deborah Silverman Katz rejected Cherry Hill’s position, noting “email addresses can easily be changed” and often don’t reveal a person’s physical address or identity.

In addition, the Camden judge ruled, people who did not want to hear from RAH “can easily block, or divert to a spam folder, any future emails from them.”

She said Cherry Hill also had lessened the subscribers’ privacy interest by telling them addresses would be released if required by state law.

In the West Deptford case, Superior Court Judge Benjamin Telsey found “[a]ny objectively reasonable person knows that their email addresses are regularly disclosed, sold, whatever the case may be and that's why we all have these spam emails in our inboxes."

He also rejected West Deptford's claim that disclosure of the addresses could create cybersecurity concerns.

All of the decisions have been stayed and the cases were consolidated before the appeal.

Attorneys for both parties could not be reached for comment.

A second plaintiff in the case, Andrew Jung, is an RAH advisor who requested email addresses on behalf of another nonprofit, Asian Hate Crimes Task Force.

The appellate ruling acknowledged the OPRA law does not expressly prohibit disclosure of the email addresses, and said the harm from releasing the addresses “is likely minimal.”

But it said the custodians had made justifiable claims that disclosure of the address “would invade (subscribers’) reasonable expectations of privacy.”

And while unsolicited emails are an “unfortunate reality,” that does not mean people should receive them from organizations, “which may have political and social objectives with which they disagree, merely because they consented to receiving newsletters and notices from a municipality," the ruling added.

The decision also predicted “at least some members of the public will be deterred from subscribing to municipal newsletters and notices if subscriber lists are subject to public disclosure.”

And it said the nonprofits “are free to compile subscriber lists of their own from people who consent to receiving emails from them."

Municipal distribution lists, it said, “are not essential to accomplishing that goal.”

Jim Walsh is a senior reporter with the Courier-Post, Burlington County Times and The Daily Journal. Email him at jwalsh@cpsj.com.

This article originally appeared on Cherry Hill Courier-Post: Rise Against Hate wants to send unsolicited emails to NJ residents