Cherry Hill School District Sues Journalist Over OPRA Requests

Cherry Hill’s school district is suing a local journalist for filing public records requests at a rate of roughly one per month, and the case is shaping up as exactly the kind of abuse that critics warned about when New Jersey lawmakers rewrote the Open Public Records Act two years ago.

The district filed suit against Ben Shore, a 25-year-old who runs Shore Investigates, a local news site focused on Cherry Hill. The district claims Shore’s 14 public records requests over a 12-month period constitute “numerous, repeated and vexatious” filings that have “substantially interrupted” district operations. The district wants a judge to ban Shore from filing any records requests for a full year.

Fourteen requests. One a year would be too many for these people.

Let’s put that in perspective. Cherry Hill’s school district serves roughly 10,000 students, employs about 1,000 people, and operates on a $256 million annual budget. The notion that a single journalist filing one OPRA request per month has brought this Camden County district to its knees is not a serious argument. It is a pressure campaign dressed up in legal clothing.

Shore told the New Jersey Monitor that he has filed records requests with Cherry Hill’s municipal government without any trouble. The school district is a different operation entirely. “This is an agency that is doing everything they can to not comply with the public records statute,” Shore said.

The records Shore sought are not gossip or opposition research. He asked for videos of board meetings, legal bills, and invoices. Standard accountability journalism. The kind of work that keeps public institutions honest. When the district denied his requests, Shore filed four lawsuits to compel compliance. Those lawsuits cost the district time and money, yes. But that cost was self-inflicted. Comply with the law and the lawsuits don’t happen.

The provision enabling this kind of retaliation was inserted into OPRA during the 2024 legislative overhaul. It allows public entities to sue citizens who file what the agency deems excessive requests. Critics warned loudly at the time that the provision would be weaponized against legitimate requestors, particularly journalists and watchdogs doing exactly the work the law was designed to protect.

CJ Griffin, a transparency attorney who represents Shore in this case, said she and other advocates raised alarms when the provision was being debated. “We screamed at the top of our lungs that agencies would unfairly target requestors, and here we are with someone being sued because they filed a whopping 14 requests in a year,” Griffin said. She has filed a motion asking the court to dismiss the district’s complaint.

This case deserves attention far beyond Cherry Hill. What the district is attempting sets a template that other resistant public agencies across New Jersey will notice. If a $256 million school bureaucracy can walk into a courtroom and claim victimhood over 14 records requests, then the right to public information in this state is not a right at all. It becomes a privilege extended at the discretion of whichever administrator finds your questions inconvenient.

OPRA exists because the public has a right to know how its tax dollars are spent and how its institutions operate. School boards make decisions about children’s education, employee contracts, legal settlements, and vendor relationships. Citizens and journalists asking questions about those decisions are not harassers. They are doing exactly what a functioning democracy requires.

The Legislature needs to revisit this provision before more agencies follow Cherry Hill’s lead. The ability to sue frequent requestors was always the most dangerous piece of the 2024 OPRA rewrite, and this case proves why. Lawmakers who voted for it should be asked directly whether this is the outcome they intended.

Ben Shore filed 14 records requests in a year and got sued for it. The Cherry Hill school district should be embarrassed. The judge should dismiss this case. And every public official in New Jersey watching this story should understand something clearly: the public’s right to know is not a courtesy you extend when it suits you.