CJ Griffin Quoted in New Jersey Monitor regarding Troubling Emails Sent by the Executive Director of Election Law Enforcement Commission

News
3.24.23

CJ Griffin, Partner and Director of the Justice Gary S. Stein Public Interest Center at Pashman Stein Walder Hayden, was quoted in a New Jersey Monitor article, “Emails from election law watchdog reveal fixation on LGBTQ community.” In February, it had been reported that the Murphy Administration had tried to force the Executive Director of the New Jersey Election Law Enforcement Commission (ELEC) to resign over a single alleged anti-gay email. As a transparency and media attorney and LGBTQ person, Griffin sought to help the public learn more about the accusations. The article discusses how Griffin used the Open Public Records Act to seek more emails from the Executive Director’s account and that the response revealed what New Jersey Monitor called “a fixation with queer folks.”

But Brindle didn’t keep his snark about the LGBTQ community confined to that one email, according to a batch obtained via the Open Public Records Act by CJ Griffin, a transparency advocate and attorney who has represented the New Jersey Monitor.

Griffin told me when she first heard about the National Coming Out Day email, it set off “alarm bells” and made her wonder whether there was more going on, “especially since it seemed unlikely that a single email would cause Murphy to demand a resignation.”

“I also doubted that his actions were just a ‘power grab.’ I always tell my clients to ‘OPRA the emails,’ so I did. As is often the case, transparency revealed that there is indeed more to the story,” Griffin said.

To view the article, click here.

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