Dixon v. Rutgers, the State University of NJ

The opinion of the Court was delivered by

GARIBALDI, J.

This appeal concerns the interest of a university in maintaining the confidentiality of peer review materials used in its tenure and promotion decisions, and a faculty member’s competing interest in obtaining such materials to establish a prima facie claim of unlawful sex discrimination under the Law Against Discrimination (LAD), N.J.S.A. 10:5-1 to -42. We reject the University’s request to create a qualified privilege to protect the confidentiality of academic peer review materials. While we hold that the requested peer review materials…