New Jersey lawmakers propose new limits on lawsuits under data privacy law

This story was originally published by the New Jersey Monitor.

New Jersey legislators are proposing major changes to a state law shielding addresses and other personal information of certain public officials in a bid to stem a tide of lawsuits enforcing its provisions.

The statute, called Daniel’s Law after the murdered son of a New Jersey federal judge, is broken and the proposed amendments will fix it, said bill sponsor Sen. Gordon Johnson (D-Bergen). Johnson, a former Bergen County sheriff whose information is shielded by the law, is sponsoring the measure along with Nilsa Cruz-Perez (D-Camden).

“This fix will protect covered people and strengthen enforcement and restore public confidence, of course, in this law,” Johnson said. “The filing of mass lawsuits for profit was a major issue for me to get involved in and to amend or change this bill to put it back to what its initial purpose was.”

New Jersey has seen hundreds of suits filed under the statute by Atlas Data Privacy on behalf of police officers and other officials whose information is shielded by Daniel’s Law, with Atlas alleging data brokers and other companies have not complied with requests to scrub the officials’ personal information from the internet. Those suits have spurred some constitutional concerns as they’ve proceeded through state and federal courts.

Johnson’s legislation would remove covered individuals’ ability to select an assignee to sue to enforce Daniel’s Law on their behalf, and it would give judges discretion to award damages in such cases. Those awards are mandatory under existing law.

The bill would also limit damages to cases where data companies accused of disclosing officials’ personal information showed negligence or intention to violate the law. There is no such requirement under existing law.

Johnson, echoing concerns raised by data firms that have sued to strike the law as unconstitutional, said amendments made to Daniel’s Law in 2023 that allowed individuals covered by the law to designate assignees to enforce it on their behalf created a “cottage industry” for outside firms to profit.

Those changes “opened the door for predatory companies who have turned this protection into a profit scheme, which does nothing to protect the people we’re trying to protect and makes money for them,” Johnson said.

But supporters of the 2023 bill that made those changes argue its provisions are key to the law’s enforcement. That measure’s prime Senate sponsor, Sen. Joe Cryan (D-Union), said data brokers had largely ignored Daniel’s Law until his bill increased their liability.

“We established true penalties, and we had assignability in there, and that was meant to simply protect people. And I noticed that’s when all the multi-billion data privacy companies that sell your data each and every day, that’s when they started to pay attention to it,” he said.

Removing covered persons’ ability to have third parties sue on their behalf would stifle enforcement by forcing individuals to fight large firms with teams of attorneys in court, Cryan said. Other penalties introduced by Johnson’s bill would not be enough to force compliance, he added.

In place of mandatory damages and a court-heavy enforcement system, Johnson’s amendments would require firms to regularly access an online portal where individuals whose information is shielded from disclosure can request it be removed, or pay a $200 fine.

“The reality is those fines are a drop in the bucket to these kinds of companies if they even pay attention to them. Remember, they have a demonstrated history of not paying attention, and when we amended this bill, that’s when they started to pay attention,” Cryan said.

Firms would also be forced to pay an annual fee to access the portal. The bill gives state officials the authority to set that fee.

Johnson acknowledged concerns about his bill’s effect on the enforceability of Daniel’s Law and said he is willing to discuss changes to his legislation, including possible provisions that would allow people covered by Daniel’s Law to lodge class action suits to shield their information.

“This bill is a living document that can be amended again,” Johnson said. “We’re always open for discussion.”

Cryan was Union County sheriff before entering the Legislature in 2002. His personal information, like Johnson’s, is already shielded by the law, though Johnson’s bill would extend its protections to court administrators and legislators.

Protections for lawmakers’ personal information, already a concern in Trenton after years of escalating threats of political violence, became a focal point for state lawmakers after a gunman in June killed Minnesota State Representative Melissa Hortman and her husband, Mark, and left another state lawmaker and his spouse critically wounded.

Johnson’s bill would give those hosting shielded information significantly more time to comply with removal requests, raising the window from 10 business days under current law to 45 business days.

Dozens of data brokers sued by Atlas Data Privacy last year argued in court that timelines under present law gave them little time to comply with takedown requests filed on behalf of more than 19,000 individuals.

That case is continuing to move through the courts. The U.S. 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals heard arguments in the case in July. In September, the appeals court said it was unsure of the law’s constitutionality and asked New Jersey’s Supreme Court to weigh the challenge.

Atlas opposes Johnson’s bill, which the senator has dubbed the “Protect Daniel’s Law Act.”

“Slapping a ‘Protect Daniel’s Law’ label on a bill that destroys privacy is like bottling poison and selling it as spring water. This bill would sacrifice the safety of New Jersey’s public servants, and their families, to increase the profits of powerful data brokers,” said Matt Adkisson, the company’s president.

Daniel’s Law is named for Daniel Anderl, who was slain during the attempted assassination of his mother, U.S. District Court Judge Esther Salas. The law’s critics have said it impermissibly chills speech, which they say is compounded by its targeting of even unintentional violations.

Johnson acknowledged those constitutional concerns as one of the bill’s drivers. He said Senate leadership agreed to give the bill a committee hearing, though it’s not clear when it will come before the Senate Judiciary Committee. Johnson said he hopes to have it passed before the new session of the Legislature begins in mid-January.

The bill’s Assembly companion is sponsored by Assemblyman Lou Greenwald (D-Camden), the chamber’s majority leader.

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