Credit: NJ Spotlight News

New Jersey’s highest court on Wednesday set up a crucial constitutional test of Daniel’s Law, the 2020 legislation designed to thwart violence against judges, prosecutors, police and other law-enforcement professionals.

The law was enacted four months after the death of Daniel Anderl, a Catholic University of America junior and son of U.S. District Judge Esther Salas. Anderl and his father, Mark Anderl, were shot at the family’s North Brunswick home by a disgruntled attorney who had come to assassinate Salas. He failed to wound her.

Credit: (Courtesy of St. Joseph High School)

Salas championed the legislation, which requires the withholding of some government employees’ home addresses and phone numbers from records accessible to the public. Federal judges in particular have reported increasing threats of violence, prompting U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts to say in March that the hostility toward them has “got to stop.”

In a ruling issued Wednesday in Atlas Data Privacy Corp. v. We Inform LLC, the New Jersey Supreme Court said companies that fail to remove the information within 10 days of a request cannot be sued for negligence.

That was a win for data brokers like LexisNexis and Thomson Reuters Corp., which were at risk of billions of dollars in fines. Such companies can be held liable if they knowingly or recklessly fail to remove data.

In its 5-0 decision, though, the court left a broader issue to the federal appeals system.

“Whether Daniel’s Law is constitutional – regardless of what the Court has decided today – is for the Third Circuit to determine,” wrote Justice Fabiana Pierre-Louis, joined by colleagues Rachel Wainer Apter, Douglas Fasciale, Michael Noriega and John Hoffman. Chief Justice Stuart Rabner and Justice Anne Patterson did not participate.

Critics of Daniel’s Law say it violates First Amendment rights, snuffs watchdog journalism and restricts communication with public employees. Those arguments were before U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit last year. The three-judge panel said it couldn’t rule about constitutionality until the New Jersey court decided the liability issue.