Plaintiff in this CPLR Article 78 action had asked the City of New York Office of the Mayor [City] to provide redacted copies of "all Uniform Judicial Questionnaires for applicants ... under review by the Mayor's Advisory Committee on the Judiciary" submitted after a specified date pursuant to New York State's Freedom of Information Law [FOIL].
City declined to provide the redacted copies, contending that to do would "constitute an unwarranted invasion of personal privacy". Plaintiff appealed the City's rejection of the FOIL demand.
Supreme Court disagreed with the City's decision and, granting Plaintiff's petition, directing the City to provide Plaintiff with redacted copies of the records demanded. The City appealed Supreme Court's order and the Appellate Division unanimously reversed the lower court's ruling, on the law, and dismissed Plaintiff's CPLR Article 78 petition, without costs.
After addressing a number of procedural issues, the Appellate Division said that City had properly applied the personal privacy exemption* in denying Plaintiff's FOIL request.
The court opined that the City had sustained its burden of establishing that disclosure of the records sought by Petitioners in this case would "constitute an unwarranted invasion of personal privacy", in particular noting that the questionnaire had the word "CONFIDENTIAL" in upper-case letters and boldface near the top of its first page.
The Appellate Division opined that to provide the documents demanded by Plaintiff "would undermine the assurances of confidentiality provided to candidates for judicial office", citing Matter of Harbatkin v New York City Dept. of Records & Info. Servs., 19 NY3d 373, cert denied 568 US 1157. In the words of the Appellate Division, "disclosure would create a chilling effect, thus potentially diminishing the candor of applicants and causing others to decide against applying for judicial positions" as the questionnaire contains numerous questions touching on sensitive personal matters.**
In addition to the thrust and extent of the questionnaires, the Appellate Division observed that disclosure of the questionnaires could result in harm to certain applicants by revealing that they sought to leave their current employment or that they were ultimately unsuccessful in their efforts seeking a judicial position, citing Matter of Asian Am. Legal Defense & Educ. Fund v New York City Police Dept., 125 AD3d 531, leave to appeal denied 26 NY3d 919.
* Public Officer's Law §89[2][a].
** The information sought included personal relationships, reasons for leaving jobs, reasons for periods of unemployment, substance abuse, arrests, criminal convictions, testifying as a witness in criminal cases, as well as "a catch-all question at the end of the questionnaire" asking for any other information, specifically including unfavorable information, that could bear on the evaluation of the judicial candidate.
Click HERE to access the Appellate Division's decision posted on the Internet.