Atlas Concerned NJ Bill Would 'Cripple Enforcement' of Daniel's Law
Aiming to stop a surge of litigation under New Jersey’s Daniel’s Law, state Sen. Gordon Johnson (D) introduced a bill this week to amend the legislation to protect the privacy of judges and other public servants. Atlas Privacy, which has sued many times as an assignee under Daniel’s Law, condemned the proposal Friday. However, a privacy lawyer who defends businesses welcomed the bill.
Sign up for a free preview to unlock the rest of this article
Export Compliance Daily combines U.S. export control news, foreign border import regulation and policy developments into a single daily information service that reliably informs its trade professional readers about important current issues affecting their operations.
Gordon introduced S-4884 in the state Senate on Monday, while a similar bill (A-6125) by Rep. Louis Greenwald (D) surfaced in the Assembly.
“Daniel’s Law is broken, and this legislation will fix it,” Johnson said in a Nov. 13 press release from New Jersey Senate Democrats. “Right now, we have a law that doesn’t work for anyone and could be struck down by the courts.”
Critically, the senator’s bill would remove a provision allowing a covered person to designate an assignee to bring a civil action on their behalf. Also under S-4844, judges “may” award damages for violations; the current law says they "shall" award damages. In addition, the bill would expand Daniel’s Law protections to cover legislators and municipal court administrators, and it would direct the Office of Information Privacy to set up an online portal for verification and authentication of covered persons.
However, Atlas condemned the proposal in a statement to Privacy Daily. "This bill is designed for one purpose: to protect data broker profits at the expense of individual privacy and safety,” a spokesperson said. “Removing the private right of action would cripple enforcement, returning us to a time when data brokers routinely ridiculed and ignored lawful privacy requests from New Jersey's public servants and their families.”
Daniel’s Law was written after a litigant targeted a federal judge in July 2020, obtaining her personal information from data broker sources. Intending to assassinate the judge at her residence, the litigant instead shot and killed the official's 20-year-old son, Daniel, and wounded her husband.
The New Jersey law gives certain covered persons, including judges, the ability to ask that their personal information be removed from data broker websites. In 2023, the statute was amended to allow third parties to act on behalf of a covered person to bring a claim. Since that change, Atlas has brought many claims against data brokers, which some privacy lawyers describe as frivolous and an abuse of the law (see 2504040031).
Though the New Jersey Supreme Court has struck down some First Amendment challenges to the law (see 2506180038), there's ongoing litigation over its constitutionality at the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals (see 2506300065). Oral argument was heard in front of the appeals court in August (see 2508110035), and the state Supreme Court agreed to weigh in on the case in late October (see 2510240028).
Klein Moynihan's David Klein cautioned in a blog post Tuesday that “this Daniel’s Law legislation is in its nascent stages.” Before the bill can become a law, “it is entirely possible that the Third Circuit agrees that Daniel’s Law, as written, is unconstitutional,” rendering the proposed legislation “moot,” the privacy lawyer said.
Johnson’s bill would roll back “several amendments passed in 2023 that have undermined the law, hindered compliance, and led to hundreds of lawsuits and constitutional challenges that have put the future of Daniel’s Law in doubt,” the state Senate Democrats’ press release said. “Loopholes” in the law “allow predatory companies to manipulate the law for financial gain.”
Johnson said the 2023 amendments “weakened compliance, putting the safety and privacy of our public servants at risk,” but his bill would “eliminate the loopholes and reaffirm the law’s original intent.”
Troutman's Joshua Davey is “happy to see that the New Jersey Legislature is discussing an amendment to Daniel’s Law to address the constitutional issues created by amendments to the law and to provide a mechanism for enhanced compliance," the privacy lawyer emailed us Friday.
The law “was originally enacted for a noble purpose -- to honor [the] memory of Daniel Anderl and enhance the safety of public officials" -- but then “it was subject to a series of amendments through lobbying efforts," including those by Atlas, said Davey. The changes “have made compliance more difficult, abuse of the Law more prevalent, and spurred the filing of hundreds of lawsuits by Atlas" seeking monetary damages. They have also created “significant constitutional scrutiny," he said.
S-4884 would address the current law's “constitutional infirmities" and make compliance "easier for both the covered person and the recipient of a nondisclosure request,” said Davey, adding that it would "enable New Jersey’s public officials to receive the benefits the law was designed to provide."
Other state legislators are looking to pass similar laws in their states (see 2507030055), including Vermont, which proposed its version this year (see 2503110077) before ultimately deciding to hold it until 2026 (see 2505010013). Meanwhile, a Pennsylvania version is making its way through the state legislature (see 2510150025). However, a recent court ruling that West Virginia’s version of the law is unconstitutional could affect other states’ ability to pass similar legislation (see 2508280036).