Colorado’s Peace Officer Standards and Training (POST) board is a criminal justice agency, and it did not abuse its discretion by denying two news organizations’ requests for the state’s database of certified and decertified law enforcement officers, the Colorado Court of Appeals decided Thursday.

Affirming 2021 rulings by Denver District Court Judge J. Eric Elliff, a three-judge appellate panel wrote that POST is subject to the Colorado Criminal Justice Records Act (CCJRA) rather than the Colorado Open Records Act (CORA) because “it collects and stores arrest and criminal records information when it revokes a peace officer’s certification.”

That legal distinction mattered in a lawsuit brought by The Gazette, Gazette reporter Chris Osher and the Chicago-based Invisible Institute because CCJRA permits criminal justice agencies to deny requests for many records after conducting a balancing-of-interests test. If CORA had governed the release of POST records, disclosure of Colorado’s peace officer database would have been subject to a provision entitling requesters to copies of public records in “sortable” and “searchable” formats minus any confidential fields of information.