New Jersey Supreme Court

In States Newsroom Inc. v. City of Jersey City (A-25-24/089943) (Decided August 4, 2025), the Supreme Court of New Jersey held that the State’s expungement statute does not bar release of a Jersey City Police Department (JCPD) internal affairs (IA) report regarding a JCPD lieutenant who was suspended for ninety days after discharging a shotgun at his home. 

According to the Court, because the IA report is not a criminal record, the expungement statute does not apply. However, the expungement statute and the expungement order do bar release of any information related to the lieutenant’s arrest, conviction, or the disposition of his criminal case. 

Facts of States Newsroom Inc. v. City of Jersey City

In August 2019, a JCPD lieutenant and his girlfriend hosted a gathering and then argued about the leftover food and drink. The lieutenant fired a shot in the direction of his girlfriend and her son. He was arrested and charged with terroristic threats and possession of a weapon for an unlawful purpose. He pled guilty to a lesser charge and enrolled in a twelve-month pre-trial intervention program.

The JCPD opened an IA investigation and requested records from the State Police and Sussex County Prosecutor’s Office (SCPO) about the incident. The JCPD ultimately sustained a finding of misconduct against the lieutenant and suspended him for ninety days. 

Counsel for defendants certified that the IA report “contains several pages worth of passages copied verbatim or nearly-verbatim” from State Police and SCPO records regarding the lieutenant. Following the issuance and affirmance of two Attorney General Directives amending the Internal Affairs Policy and Procedures (IAPP) to require law enforcement agencies to publish “the names of law enforcement officers who commit disciplinary violations that result in the imposition of ‘major discipline,’” the JCPD amended the report to identify the lieutenant by name but truncated its description of the incident. 

In an unrelated murder case in which the lieutenant had responded to the scene, the Hudson County Prosecutor’s Office publicly filed the State Police and SCPO records from the August 2019 incident as potentially exculpatory material. Plaintiff obtained those records from the public docket and ran an article describing the August 2019 incident and accusing the JCPD of “work[ing] hard to hide the incident” by deleting details.

In March 2022, the Court held that IA reports “can and should be disclosed under the common law right of access when interests that favor disclosure outweigh concerns for confidentiality.” Rivera v. Union Cnty. Prosecutors’ Off., 250 N.J. 124, 135 (2022). Four days later, plaintiff filed a request “under the Common Law Right of Access and Open Public Records Act (OPRA)” for “[c]opies of the internal affairs investigation reports relating to” the lieutenant’s “8/18/2019 incident.” Defendants denied the request, stating that internal affairs materials were confidential under the 2021 IAPP and were thus exempt from disclosure under OPRA. 

The denial did not address the common law or Rivera. Plaintiff repeated its request for access under the common law. Defendants again denied the request, this time concluding that under the factors set forth in Loigman v. Kimmelman, 102 N.J. 98 (1986), and Rivera, “the municipal interest against disclosure outweighs the public interest in disclosure in this particular case.”

Plaintiff sued, seeking access to the IA report under Rivera. While the civil case was pending, the lieutenant secured a criminal records expungement pursuant to N.J.S.A. 2C:52-1 et seq. The August 30, 2022 expungement order issued by the Sussex County Superior Court directed the listed court and law enforcement agencies to “remove from their records all information relating to [the lieutenant’s]” August 2019 arrest and criminal charges. It also directed those entities to “remove all records concerning the subsequent criminal . . . proceedings regarding such charge(s), including any conviction(s) . . . or disposition(s), if applicable.”

The trial court denied plaintiff access to the IA report and ordered the entire docket to remain permanently sealed. The Appellate Division reversed and remanded as to both the IA report and the sealing of court documents. 

The appellate court read the good cause exception in N.J.S.A. 2C:52-19, which the parties had not raised, to require the trial court to “analyze[] the facts of this case by applying Loigman and Rivera.” As to the sealing of court documents, the Appellate Division concluded the trial court “should not have sealed the entire file without finding good cause to overcome the strong presumption of public access to court records.” It directed the court, on remand, to undertake the analysis required by Rules 1:2-1(c) and 1:38-11 and Hammock v. Hoffmann-LaRoche, Inc., 142 N.J. 356, 380-83 (1995), “before deciding whether to seal” any specific document.

NJ Supreme Court’s Decision in States Newsroom Inc. v. City of Jersey City

The New Jersey Supreme Court affirmed but modified the Appellate Division’s judgment. “The JCPD was not listed on the expungement order. It contends, however, that the expungement statute, N.J.S.A. 2C:52-1 to -32.1, bars release of the IA report. We disagree. 

The expungement statute does not bar release of the report because the IA report is not a criminal record,” Justice Rachel Wainer Apter wrote on behalf of the unanimous Court. “The expungement statute and the expungement order entered by the Sussex County Superior Court do, however, bar release of any information related to the lieutenant’s arrest, conviction, or the disposition of his criminal case. Therefore, pursuant to the expungement statute and order, any such information must be redacted from the IA report.”

The New Jersey Supreme Court first held that the expungement statute does not categorically bar the release of IA reports. “Although our expungement statute generally permits a person whose record has been expunged to misrepresent his past, it does not impose a regime of silence on those who know the truth,” Justice Wainer Apter wrote.

While the New Jersey Supreme Court held that the statute does not bar the release of IA reports in general, it found that it does prohibit the release of any information about an expunged arrest, conviction, or related criminal proceeding that may be contained in such a report.

“The expungement statute bars a law enforcement agency from releasing any information that would reveal an arrest, conviction, or related proceeding that it knows has been expunged. We must respect and enforce the Legislature’s judgment,” Justice Wainer Apter explained.

“The JCPD need not, however, refrain from revealing information about the underlying incident that led to both the lieutenant’s arrest and its IA investigation,” Wainer Apter added. “And it need not refrain from revealing information about its IA investigation into whether JCPD rules or regulations were violated.”

The New Jersey Supreme Court remanded to the trial court to perform the redactions and to then conduct the common law balancing test set forth in Rivera on the remainder of the IA report. The Court advised that if the court finds that the “interests that favor disclosure outweigh concerns for confidentiality,” it must redact the additional information specified in Rivera, and then release the redacted report to plaintiff. 
With regard to the sealing of court documents, the New Jersey Supreme Court did not disturb the Appellate Division’s direction to the trial court to undertake the document-by-document analysis required by Hammock v. Hoffmann-LaRoche, Inc., 142 N.J. 356, 380-83 (1995), before deciding that any document must be sealed.