NJ Supreme Court opinion on privacy law seen as win for data brokers

On Wednesday, New Jersey’s Supreme Court justices ruled that the portion of the law under which the data firms were sued does not include such a mental state requirement.

“The Legislature included a mental state requirement in the 2020 version of Daniel’s Law regarding actual damages — that ‘a reasonable person would believe that providing’ certain information ‘would expose another to harassment or risk of harm to life or property’ — but deleted that language in 2022,” Justice Fabiana Pierre-Louis wrote in the five-member decision, adding that the 2022 change “suggests that the Legislature intended for Daniel’s Law to require no specific mental state for the imposition of actual damages.”

The ruling notes that it does not represent the court’s view on the constitutionality of Daniel’s Law.

The data firms have argued the law is facially unconstitutional, and the 3rd Circuit said the law may unconstitutionally chill unrelated speech if it does not weigh violators’ intent or mental state.

The Legislature passed Daniel’s Law in 2020 after a disgruntled lawyer fatally shot a federal judge’s son, Daniel Anderl, at their North Brunswick home. It allows active or former judges, prosecutors, police officers, child-protection investigators, and immediate family living with them to stop people from sharing their addresses and phone numbers.

Wednesday’s ruling says a provision in the law allowing individuals covered by the law, or their designees, to sue and be awarded $1,000 if protected information was not removed within 10 days was automatic, rejecting arguments from Atlas Data Privacy and New Jersey’s attorney general that the law implicitly required negligence from those sued.

“The 10-day notice requirement is simply not the same as requiring a mental state of negligence; complying with that time frame is not synonymous with acting with reasonable care,” Pierre-Louis wrote.

In reaching its decision, New Jersey’s Supreme Court noted Daniel’s Law explicitly required “willful or reckless disregard” to award punitive damages but had no similar requirement for actual damages, which run at least $1,000 per violation.

Lawmakers’ removal of language that limited damages to cases where a reasonable person would believe the release of information could expose someone to harassment or harm from a prior version of the law also cut against Atlas’s arguments, the court said.

“Had the Legislature intended to include a negligence standard or require another mental state for the imposition of actual damages, it easily could have included that language in the 2022 iteration of the statute along with the notice requirement and 10-day compliance window,” Pierre-Louis wrote. “It did not.”

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