TRENTON, N.J., April 9, 2025 – A group of civic-minded businesses is urging state lawmakers to amend Daniel’s Law to address issues introduced by 2023 changes to the law that have made New Jersey’s public servants less safe and allowed the creation of a cottage industry that has turned tragedy into a moneymaking enterprise. The Public Safety Information Protection Coalition (PSIPC) is committed to restoring the original intent of Daniel’s Law to ensure that the personal information of judges, law enforcement, and other public officials is properly protected.

“Daniel’s Law serves a noble purpose, but the law is broken,” said PSIPC spokesperson John Molinelli, who served 14 years as the Bergen County prosecutor and is a covered person under Daniel’s Law. “Having worked alongside judges, law enforcement officers, and other dedicated public servants, I’ve seen how their work can place them at heightened personal risk. Daniel’s Law was created to mitigate this risk by ensuring their privacy is protected. Restoring the law to its original intent isn’t just a matter of policy — it’s a matter of upholding a duty to protect those who protect us.”

New Jersey passed Daniel’s Law in 2020 to protect judges and other public servants by allowing them to stop the online disclosure of their home addresses and telephone numbers. It is named for Daniel Anderl, the son of U.S. District Judge Esther Salas, who was murdered during an attack on the family’s New Jersey home in which Salas was the intended target. PSIPC members raised no objection to the law when it passed and began dutifully complying with nondisclosure requests submitted under the law.

But in 2023, a company called Atlas Data Privacy Corporation helped push through amendments to Daniel’s Law that have bogged down the nondisclosure process, transferred public servants’ rights to third parties, like Atlas itself, and opened the door to predatory lawsuits, primarily from Atlas. The amendments have made compliance extremely difficult—and in some cases impossible—for many businesses acting in good faith and allowed Daniel’s Law to be exploited by those scheming to line their own pockets at the expense of the safety of public servants they claim to represent.

Last month, the U.S. Third Circuit Court of Appeals agreed to hear arguments in a constitutional challenge to New Jersey’s Daniel’s Law after U.S. District Court Judge Harvey Bartle ruled in November that the mandatory damages requirement (i.e., strict liability) added in by the 2023 amendments is unconstitutional. To salvage the statute, Judge Bartle interpreted Daniel’s Law as including a negligence standard for evaluating a company’s response to nondisclosure requests. In other words, a company can only be liable for a Daniel’s Law violation if it failed to exercise reasonable care in responding to requests under the law. The case before Judge Bartle remains ongoing and there are several other legal challenges to Daniel’s Law working their way through numerous courts.

“The 2023 amendments to Daniel's Law were promoted to ensure the protection of more public safety officials’ information, but the opposite occurred,” Molinelli said. “A federal judge has already found flaws in New Jersey’s law, and I fear Daniel’s Law could be struck down in the courts if it is not restored to its original form or otherwise repaired.”

Under the current law, any business or individual could be subject to hefty, mandatory money damages simply for possessing but not disclosing information and despite good-faith efforts to comply with, in some cases, massive and unworkable nondisclosure requests. Moreover, third parties, like Atlas, could sue and seek damages for themselves as opposed to the public servants they purportedly represent—all while making it more difficult to protect those public servants’ personal information.

“Within months of securing these changes to Daniel’s Law, Atlas bombarded businesses with tens of thousands of nondisclosure requests each, all at once, refusing to help verify them, and then sued over 140 businesses for more than $2.6 billion when they couldn’t comply within the 10-day period,” Molinelli continued. “It became a self-fulfilling prophecy that Atlas engineered when they fought to change the law, so they could reap the profits from predatory lawsuits.”

PSIPC represents the interests of individuals, small businesses and companies across industries—real estate, lending, credit reporting, background checks, fraud detection, legal services, identity protection and verification, veterans’ services, social services agencies, nonprofits, consumer reporting, B2B marketing, data services, and others—that rely on data in order to operate in an increasingly digital economy and whose products serve New Jersey consumers as well as the law enforcement officers protected by Daniel’s Law..

Coalition members complied with Daniel’s Law without complaint until Atlas’ mass demands, which were designed to render compliance impossible. Many have simple and easy-to-use tools to remove a person’s information—often with just the click of a button—and have been using them for years, long before Daniel’s Law existed. Even now, member companies continue to process requests as best as they are able.

“PSIPC is dedicated to fixing the law so that it can better protect public safety,” said Molinelli.

For more information, go to www.RestoreDanielsLaw.com.

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