Comparing the Peace Officer Standards and Training (POST) board to the dental board and similar state licensing agencies, an attorney for two news organizations Tuesday urged the Colorado Supreme Court to reverse an appellate ruling that keeps the state’s database of law enforcement officers confidential.

The justices will decide whether POST is a criminal justice agency whose records are governed by the Colorado Criminal Justice Records Act, as the Court of Appeals determined in 2023, or whether it is an agency subject to the Colorado Open Records Act.

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 — exceptions that must be narrowly construed by records custodians.