A new group of civic-minded businesses, the Public Safety Information Protection Coalition (PSIPC), is sounding the alarm over recent changes to New Jersey’s Daniel’s Law that have made businesses the target of predatory lawsuits while making public servants covered under the law less safe.
First enacted in 2020, Daniel’s Law was intended to protect the personal information of judges, law enforcement officers, and other public officials and their families by allowing them to submit requests to stop the online disclosure of their home addresses and telephone numbers.
The law is named in honor of U.S. District Court Judge Esther Salas’ son, Daniel Anderl, who was murdered during an attack on the family’s home. The 2020 iteration of Daniel’s Law, enacted in response to that tragic event, served as an effective mechanism to protect public safety officials from threats of violence by criminals who would misuse public information.
According to PSIPC, amendments to the law passed in 2023 have created an unworkable scheme that is a nightmare for the business community and fails to protect New Jersey public safety officials as originally intended.
The amendments also allow covered persons to assign their rights to third parties, expand the law to include businesses merely possessing covered information as opposed to publicly disclosing it, remove the role of the New Jersey Office of Information Privacy to verify the identity of covered persons, and establish mandatory damages for violations of the law regardless of a company’s good faith efforts. According to state lobbying records, a company called Atlas Data Privacy Corporation helped push through these changes to the law.
Since the 2023 amendments, hundreds of lawsuits have been filed by Atlas against businesses of all sizes for alleged noncompliance, seeking over $3.1 billion in mandatory damages, according to court documents.
“The 2023 amendments to Daniel's Law were promoted as a way to strengthen the protection of more public safety officials’ information, but the opposite occurred,” said PSIPC spokesperson John Molinelli, who served 14 years as the Bergen County prosecutor and is a covered person under Daniel’s Law.
The amendments, Molinelli argued, have made it extremely difficult, in some cases impossible, for businesses acting in good faith to verify and comply with Daniel’s Law nondisclosure requests.
“Because the law now does not require those making the request to provide basic information to verify it, it’s harder for businesses to figure out if a request that comes in is legitimate and whether they are removing the right person’s information,” said Molinelli.
“In response, companies are now having to create new processes, buy new software, and even hire and train new staff to handle compliance. But the threat of mandatory penalties and ‘gotcha’ lawsuits for those who fall short despite their best efforts has racked up legal bills and forced some to stop doing business in New Jersey or close altogether. This trend can cause lasting damage to our state’s economy,” he added.
Shortly after the amendments went into effect, Atlas — the entity behind the amendments — bombarded businesses with tens of thousands of nondisclosure requests at once after collecting the assigned rights of thousands of covered persons over a several-month period.
Atlas, PSIPC said, then refused to help verify the requests and sued the businesses for billions in mandatory damages when they naturally could not comply within the 10-day period, according to court records.
“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,” Molinelli said.
PSIPC, which represents the interests of individuals, small businesses and companies across industries – such as real estate, lending, credit reporting, background checks, fraud detection, legal services, identity protection and verification, veterans’ services, social services, nonprofits, consumer reporting, B2B marketing, and data services– has launched a website, www.RestoreDanielsLaw.com, to raise awareness of the issues created by the 2023 amendments and call for legislative action to reform Daniel’s Law so that it can function as originally intended.
“Daniel’s Law serves a noble purpose, but the law is broken,” Molinelli continued. “PSIPC is dedicated to fixing the law so that it can better protect public safety.”
“A federal judge already has found flaws in New Jersey’s law, and I fear Daniel’s Law could be struck down in the courts if it is not repaired,” said Molinelli.
“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.”
“At the same time, businesses do not have the time or the resources for this to play out in court. This requires a legislative solution that provides uniformity and certainty to people affected by the law,” he added. “In the meantime, businesses need to be aware of this issue and take measures to protect themselves.”
