The Colorado Supreme Court will review whether appellate judges wrongly decided the Peace Officer Standards and Training Board (POST) is a criminal justice agency in a 2023 ruling that kept the state’s database of law enforcement officers confidential.

In granting certiorari Monday to The Gazette newspaper and the Chicago-based Invisible Institute, the justices indicated they will look at whether CORA, rather than the Colorado Criminal Justice Records Act (CCJRA), governs public disclosure of the database.

That legal distinction matters because CCJRA gives criminal justice agencies broad discretion to deny requests for many records after conducting a balancing-of-interests test. CORA, on the other hand, requires the disclosure of public records kept in “sortable” and “searchable” formats minus any fields of information that must not be released under exceptions in the law or elsewhere in state statutes. Those exceptions to CORA’s disclosure mandate must be narrowly construed, Colorado’s high courts have ruled.