RICHMOND, Virginia — A federal appeals court on Tuesday, October 27, struck down West Virginia's Daniel's Law, ruling that the state law shielding the home addresses and unpublished telephone numbers of judges and law-enforcement officers violates the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. The United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, sitting in Richmond, affirmed a lower court's dismissal of the lawsuits that had been brought under the law, in the case Jackson v. Thomson Reuters America Corp.
Source: ABA Journal
The ruling is the first time a federal appellate court has overridden one of the state privacy shields of this kind, according to the ABA Journal's report of the Reuters coverage. Laws like West Virginia's spread across the United States after 2020, when a gunman killed the son of a federal judge at the family's home — a killing that pushed judge safety and personal-data privacy to the centre of American legal debate.
What the West Virginia law did
West Virginia passed its Daniel's Law in 2021. The provision at issue — section 5A-8-24 of the state code — was designed, in its own words, 'to enhance the safety and security' of judicial and law-enforcement officials. It prohibited any person or business from disclosing the home address or unpublished phone number of a covered person — a group defined broadly to include any active, formerly active or retired judicial officer, prosecutor, public defender or law-enforcement officer — where a reasonable person would believe the disclosure would expose that person to harassment or a risk of harm to life or property. Covered persons could sue for damages.
Source: Reason (Volokh Conspiracy), quoting the Fourth Circuit opinion
Why the court said the law fails
The opinion was written by Circuit Judge Paul Niemeyer and joined by Judges Steven Agee and Pamela Harris. The panel held that disclosing information of this kind is speech protected by the First Amendment, and that because the West Virginia law singles out disclosures based on their content, it must pass the toughest test in American free-speech law — strict scrutiny. The court accepted that protecting officials' safety is a compelling state interest. It held, however, that the law was not the least restrictive way of serving that interest, and so it also violates the Fourteenth Amendment as applied to the state.
Source: Justia, Jackson v. Thomson Reuters America Corp. opinion summary
The fatal flaw, the judges said, is what West Virginia's version leaves out. Unlike the Daniel's Laws of other states, it does not require a covered person who discovers an improper disclosure to notify whoever published the information and ask for it to be deleted before liability arises. Nor must the publisher know that the information belonged to a protected official. Liability, the court said, comes 'automatically simply because such information relating to a broad group of people unknowingly includes information about judicial and law-enforcement officials.'
"For generations now, home addresses and telephone numbers have been disseminated to the public" and that sharing "has long been protected by the First Amendment" — and, the court added, even in the digital age, where information can be shared more efficiently, "the tradition continues with the understanding that it is protected speech." (quoted in Privacy Daily's report of the decision)
The lawsuits behind the ruling
The case began with Michael Jackson, a retired West Virginia law-enforcement officer, who filed five class-action lawsuits against data-broker and people-search companies — including Thomson Reuters, Whitepages Inc., PeopleConnect and LexisNexis — alleging they had published his home address and unpublished telephone number online without his consent, and had done the same to thousands of other protected officials. The U.S. District Court for the Northern District of West Virginia dismissed the actions, holding the provision facially unconstitutional because it imposed liability without any notice or knowledge requirement. The Fourth Circuit has now affirmed that dismissal. Philip Fraietta of Bursor & Fisher, the attorney representing Jackson, did not comment, according to the ABA Journal.
Source: Bloomberg Law
Thomson Reuters welcomed the result. A company spokesperson said it 'has long been committed to honoring privacy and keeping personal data safe… But in its current form, the statute is overbroad and violates the First Amendment.' Chris Mohr, president of the Software & Information Industry Association, called the decision 'a significant win for the business of information,' adding in an emailed statement that 'even compelling government interests have limits.'
Source: Privacy Daily
The 2020 killing that started it all
Daniel's Laws are named for Daniel Anderl, the 20-year-old son of U.S. District Judge Esther Salas of the District of New Jersey, who was shot and killed by a gunman at the family's New Jersey home in 2020. States responded by passing laws to keep judges' and officers' personal information off the open internet, and in 2022 Congress passed the federal Daniel Anderl Judicial Security and Privacy Act to protect federal judges' personal information online. West Virginia's statute was part of that wave — and Tuesday's ruling makes it the first of the state laws to fall in a federal appeals court.
What happens next
The decision does not automatically bring down the Daniel's Laws of other states: the Fourth Circuit's reasoning turns on the missing notice requirement, and statutes that let an official demand deletion before any liability arises are built differently — a distinction the opinion itself draws. Inside the Fourth Circuit, which covers West Virginia, Virginia, Maryland and the Carolinas, West Virginia's provision can no longer be enforced as written. The paths now open are the familiar ones after an appellate ruling of this kind: the plaintiff can ask the full Fourth Circuit or the U.S. Supreme Court to take another look, and West Virginia's lawmakers can rewrite the law with a notice-and-delete mechanism of the kind other states use. Neither side has announced its next step in the reports so far. For judges, prosecutors and police officers in West Virginia, the practical effect is immediate: the damages shield they had since 2021 is gone unless and until a new version is passed.