New Jersey’s attorney general is urging a federal judge to reject a bid by numerous businesses to declare a new law, which bars the disclosure of home addresses and other personal information belonging to judges and prosecutors, unconstitutional. In a brief filed on Monday, New Jersey Attorney General Matthew Platkin’s office argued that the disclosure restrictions serve to protect public safety and do not violate the companies’ free speech rights under the U.S. Constitution’s 1st Amendment.
“The law achieves that important public-safety goal and reflects the venerable tradition of safety and privacy in one’s home, in well-tailored ways,” the state’s lawyers told U.S. District Judge Harvey Bartle in Camden.
The measure, known as Daniel’s Law, was signed into law in 2020 by Democratic Governor Phil Murphy following the fatal shooting of the 20-year-old son of U.S. District Judge Esther Salas at her New Jersey home by a disgruntled lawyer. The law, which has since been expanded, allows current and former judges, law enforcement, prosecutors, and other officials to request that private entities not disclose their home addresses or unpublished home phone numbers. Companies that do not comply with an official’s request to withhold their information can be sued for damages.
A similar federal law, the Daniel Anderl Judicial Security and Privacy Act, was enacted by Congress in late 2022 to protect judges by shielding their personal information online.
The constitutional challenge to New Jersey’s law arose in response to over 100 lawsuits against various businesses filed by a company called Atlas Data Privacy, which was assigned claims by over 19,000 people eligible for protection under Daniel’s Law. The companies sued include real estate businesses, marketing companies, data brokers, and credit reporting agencies. Among the defendants are CoStar Group, Oracle Corp, Zillow, and Thomson Reuters, Reuters’ parent company.
Thomson Reuters stated it “has long been committed to honoring privacy and keeping personal data safe.” It said Daniel’s Law “attempts to serve a laudable goal” but, in its current form, is overbroad and violates the 1st Amendment. The companies argued in June that the law was too sweeping and “restricts substantially more speech than necessary to achieve its goal of enhancing the safety of public officials.”
Platkin’s office, which intervened to defend Daniel’s Law, stated in Monday’s brief that the companies could not meet the high bar of establishing the law as facially invalid under the 1st Amendment and that it lacked a plainly legitimate sweep. The legislature enacted the law for a valid purpose to combat an “appalling trend” of threats to judges by “empowering individuals to protect their own privacy at home, a tradition that has always coexisted with the First Amendment.”
Lawyers for Atlas argued in a separate brief that the data regulated by Daniel’s Law did not constitute “speech” protected by the 1st Amendment and that, even if it did, the law was a valid content-neutral restriction that could be upheld.
