B. Legal Reasoning
1. FOIL’s presumption of access and the post-§ 50-a baseline
The court begins from FOIL’s core presumption: “agency records are presumptively available for public inspection” unless an exemption applies
(Public Officers Law § 87 [2]). After the repeal of Civil Rights Law § 50-a, law-enforcement personnel records are not categorically shielded,
but officers still may invoke FOIL’s privacy protections. The pivotal move is rejecting NYSP’s categorical privacy claim while acknowledging
that some cases may warrant privacy-based redactions after individualized assessment.
2. Categorical redactions were improper, but “automatic unredaction” was not the remedy
Supreme Court treated NYSP’s blanket approach as warranting disclosure of the spreadsheet without any name redactions. The Third Department agreed that the
blanket approach was unlawful but declined to treat improper categorical invocation as a forfeiture that compels full disclosure. The court stressed
that it could not evaluate, on the present record, whether particular names should remain redacted; it found “sufficient indicia” that in some cases
privacy could outweigh disclosure.
The selected remedy tracks Matter of New York Civ. Liberties Union v City of Rochester (43 NY3d 543): where redactions can prevent
privacy invasions “without unreasonable difficulty,” courts should direct agencies to conduct individualized review and provide particularized, reviewable
justifications for withholdings.
3. Individualized justification must be reviewable (a functional “FOIL log” requirement)
The court’s directive that NYSP identify any redactions “in a manner that allows for review by a court” is a key operational requirement.
It prevents agencies from repeating the same problem (invoking privacy in the abstract) and ensures a court can test (i) whether a specific privacy interest is implicated,
(ii) whether redaction (rather than full withholding) suffices, and (iii) how the public interest balances against the asserted harm.
4. Cross-referencing risk is a legitimate privacy consideration
The opinion credits NYSP’s argument—echoed in Footnote 1—that disclosure of officer names on the spreadsheet could enable identification of sensitive,
personal, and embarrassing information by matching spreadsheet case numbers to underlying disciplinary reports already released. This matters because FOIL privacy
can extend to situations where requested records, combined with “other readily available information,” effectively disclose protected information.
5. Timing: “rolling” does not mean indefinite
NYSP sought a potentially “years”-long rolling approach based on volume of requests. The Third Department drew a sharp distinction between the earlier production dispute
spanning decades of records and the present request, which concerns a “limited and known universe of information”—the spreadsheet plus the corresponding disciplinary records
for the subset of redacted matters. Absent a developed record, the appellate court did not set the schedule itself but remitted for Supreme Court to establish a
reasonable and definitive timeline, rejecting an open-ended compliance horizon.
6. Counsel fees: categorical denial was unreasonable given prior guidance
Under Public Officers Law § 89 (4) (c) (ii), once the requester “substantially prevailed,” fees are mandatory if the agency had “no reasonable basis”
for denying access. The Third Department found unreasonableness because NYSP had been warned—by Supreme Court’s April 2023 decision and “existing appellate authority”—
that categorical reliance on the privacy exemption for unsubstantiated complaints was “strictly prohibited,” yet NYSP persisted with precisely that position.
NYSP’s later concession on appeal effectively confirmed that its original denial theory could not be justified.