{"id":5404,"date":"2023-03-23T16:46:49","date_gmt":"2023-03-23T20:46:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.lindabury.com\/firm\/?p=5404"},"modified":"2025-02-24T13:07:58","modified_gmt":"2025-02-24T18:07:58","slug":"new-jersey-court-ruling-private-social-media-posts-are-subject-to-discovery","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lindabury.com\/firm\/insights\/new-jersey-court-ruling-private-social-media-posts-are-subject-to-discovery.html","title":{"rendered":"New Jersey Court Ruling: Private Social Media Posts Are Subject To Discovery"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>On March 16, 2022, the New Jersey Appellate Division concluded in <em>Davis v. Disability Rights of New Jersey<\/em> that a plaintiff-employee\u2019s privacy interests in her social medial posts and personal cell phone bills did not restrict her employer\u2019s right to the production of these records when defending against claims that the plaintiff\u2019s termination violated New Jersey\u2019s Law Against Discrimination (the \u201cNJLAD\u201d) and caused her to suffer emotional distress.\u00a0 This decision is the first in New Jersey to detail the scope of discovery regarding a litigant\u2019s private social media posts.<\/p>\n<p><strong>The Background<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>In <em>Davis<\/em>, the plaintiff filed a NJLAD complaint against her former employer alleging wrongful termination and emotional distress. In its discovery requests, the employer demanded that the plaintiff produce copies of all her social media content \u201cconcerning any emotion, sentiment or feeling of [p]laintiff, as well as events that could reasonably be expected to evoke an emotion, sentiment, or feeling.\u201d The employer also sought the production of the plaintiff\u2019s personal cell phone bills on the grounds that she had used her personal cell phone to perform work duties remotely.<\/p>\n<div class=\"read_more_link\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.lindabury.com\/firm\/insights\/new-jersey-court-ruling-private-social-media-posts-are-subject-to-discovery.html\"  title=\"Continue Reading New Jersey Court Ruling: Private Social Media Posts Are Subject To Discovery\" class=\"more-link\">Continue Reading \u203a<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>On March 16, 2022, the New Jersey Appellate Division concluded in Davis v. Disability Rights of New Jersey that a plaintiff-employee\u2019s privacy interests in her social medial posts and personal cell phone bills did not restrict her employer\u2019s right to the production of these records when defending against claims that the plaintiff\u2019s termination violated New [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[65,247,291],"tags":[],"coauthors":[296],"class_list":["post-5404","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-insights","category-labor-employment-insights","category-gingeleskie"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.4 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>New Jersey Court Ruling: Private Social Media Posts Are Subject To Discovery &#8212; March 23, 2023 &#8212; Lindabury, McCormick, Estabrook &amp; Cooper, P.C. Firm News &amp; Events<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"On March 16, 2022, the New Jersey Appellate Division concluded in Davis v. Disability Rights of New Jersey that a plaintiff-employee\u2019s privacy interests\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.lindabury.com\/firm\/insights\/new-jersey-court-ruling-private-social-media-posts-are-subject-to-discovery.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"New Jersey Court Ruling: Private Social Media Posts Are Subject To Discovery &#8212; March 23, 2023 &#8212; Lindabury, McCormick, Estabrook &amp; Cooper, P.C. Firm News &amp; Events\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"On March 16, 2022, the New Jersey Appellate Division concluded in Davis v. Disability Rights of New Jersey that a plaintiff-employee\u2019s privacy interests\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.lindabury.com\/firm\/insights\/new-jersey-court-ruling-private-social-media-posts-are-subject-to-discovery.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Lindabury, McCormick, Estabrook &amp; Cooper, P.C. 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Disability Rights of New Jersey that a plaintiff-employee\u2019s privacy interests","og_url":"https:\/\/www.lindabury.com\/firm\/insights\/new-jersey-court-ruling-private-social-media-posts-are-subject-to-discovery.html","og_site_name":"Lindabury, McCormick, Estabrook &amp; Cooper, P.C. Firm News &amp; Events","article_published_time":"2023-03-23T20:46:49+00:00","article_modified_time":"2025-02-24T18:07:58+00:00","author":"Lisa Gingeleskie","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","twitter_misc":{"Written by":"Lisa Gingeleskie","Est. reading time":"3 minutes"},"schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Article","@id":"https:\/\/www.lindabury.com\/firm\/insights\/new-jersey-court-ruling-private-social-media-posts-are-subject-to-discovery.html#article","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.lindabury.com\/firm\/insights\/new-jersey-court-ruling-private-social-media-posts-are-subject-to-discovery.html"},"author":{"name":"Lindabury, McCormick, Estabrook &amp; Cooper, P.C.","@id":"https:\/\/www.lindabury.com\/firm\/#\/schema\/person\/429b3bd6b52a7aa6eb9a0709bbb4d06f"},"headline":"New Jersey Court Ruling: Private Social Media Posts Are Subject To Discovery","datePublished":"2023-03-23T20:46:49+00:00","dateModified":"2025-02-24T18:07:58+00:00","mainEntityOfPage":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.lindabury.com\/firm\/insights\/new-jersey-court-ruling-private-social-media-posts-are-subject-to-discovery.html"},"wordCount":600,"articleSection":["Insights","Labor &amp; Employment","Lisa Gingeleskie"],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.lindabury.com\/firm\/insights\/new-jersey-court-ruling-private-social-media-posts-are-subject-to-discovery.html","url":"https:\/\/www.lindabury.com\/firm\/insights\/new-jersey-court-ruling-private-social-media-posts-are-subject-to-discovery.html","name":"New Jersey Court Ruling: Private Social Media Posts Are Subject To Discovery &#8212; March 23, 2023 &#8212; Lindabury, McCormick, Estabrook &amp; Cooper, P.C. 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