Pa. House Panel Delays Voting on Bill Like Daniel's Law
A Pennsylvania House panel punted for now on a bill protecting the personal information of public servants, similar to Daniel’s Law from neighboring New Jersey.
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At a Judiciary Committee meeting streamed Monday, the committee voted 14-12 to amend HB-1822, with Democrats voting yes and Republicans voting no. Afterward, bill sponsor and committee Chairman Tim Briggs (D) said the panel wouldn’t vote on the amended bill “until a future meeting.” Saying that he knew a non-present Democratic committee member, Rep. Dan Miller, is currently opposed to the bill, Briggs said it was "not worth pursuing ... further at this point."
HB-1822 “would give vulnerable public servants the ability to protect themselves from having their personal addresses, telephone numbers, email addresses, license plate numbers, and other identifying information shared online,” said a June 16 sponsor memo.
In the wake of the shooting deaths that month of former Minnesota House Speaker Melissa Hortman (D) and her husband and the attempted killing of John Hoffman (D), a Minnesota senator, and his wife, “these protections for public officials are more important than ever,” the memo said.
The bill says it would allow a covered person or their assignee or authorized agent to “bring a civil action in the appropriate court of common pleas.” In a civil action, a court could award the “greater of actual damages or liquidated damages computed at the rate of $1,000 for each violation” of the section of the bill on nondisclosure of protected information.
The court could also award punitive “damages upon proof of willful or reckless disregard of the law,” reasonable attorney fees and litigation costs, plus any “other preliminary and equitable relief as the court determines to be appropriate.”
Legislators in other states also are looking to replicate Daniel's Law, or even expand its scope, following the Minnesota shooting (see 2507030055). The original Daniel’s Law was written after a litigant targeted a federal judge in July 2020, obtaining the judge's personal information from data-broker sources. Intending to assassinate the justice at her residence, the litigant instead shot and killed the judge's 20-year-old son, Daniel, and wounded her husband.