Press not exempt from law limiting publication of officials’ addresses, court rules

by Nikita Biryukov, New Jersey Monitor

A state law that shields from public disclosure the addresses and phone numbers of police, prosecutors, and judges can be used to bar press from publishing that information, the New Jersey Supreme Court unanimously ruled Tuesday.

The high court found that New Brunswick could invoke the threat of civil and criminal sanctions against Charlie Kratovil, editor of New Brunswick Today, under a statute known as Daniel’s Law to bar him from publishing the address of the city’s police director.

Kratovil discovered through public records in 2023 that Anthony Caputo, then the city’s police director, lived more than two hours south of New Brunswick and seldom attended public meetings.

“As applied to Kratovil, Daniel’s Law as written is narrowly tailored to achieve the state interest of the highest order: protection of certain public officials from harm and the threat of harm so that they can perform their public duties without fear of reprisal,” Justice Anne Patterson wrote for the court.

Tuesday’s ruling affirms lower court decisions in the case.

Three justices — Associate Justices Douglas Fasciale and John Hoffman and Chief Justice Stuart Rabner, who advocated for the passage of Daniel’s Law — did not participate in the decision. Appellate Division Judge Jack Sabatino joined the high court as a sixth member for the case.

New Brunswick officials sought to bar Kratovil, who was represented by the ACLU of New Jersey, from publishing Caputo’s address after he already had published a separate story noting Caputo’s residency in Cape May County. Charlie Kratovil is founder and editor of New Brunswick Today. (Dana DiFilippo | New Jersey Monitor)

The journalist had gleaned Caputo’s address from voter records obtained through an Open Public Records Act request.

Kratovil’s attorneys said city officials threatened him with civil or criminal penalties in a letter that cited the law, even though Caputo’s address was readily available online when Kratovil received the letter in May 2023. Such threats constituted an unconstitutional effort to chill protected speech, the attorneys said.

But state courts at all levels found the law did not unconstitutionally chill speech. The Supreme Court ruled the law’s purpose — to protect certain public employee from disclosures that may harm them — was a state interest of highest order that, per U.S. Supreme Court precedent, could justify curtailing speech rights.

Tuesday’s ruling is the latest to defend Daniel’s Law. The statute is named after Daniel Anderl, who was slain during a 2020 assassination attempt targeting his mother, U.S. District Court Judge Esther Salas, at the family’s New Jersey home.

Unlike its federal counterpart, Daniel’s Law has no exception for disclosures made as part of news articles, editorials, or political speech.

“When the government provides information to the media, the U.S. Supreme Court instructs courts to assume that the government should use other tools to guard against the dissemination of that information and not take the extreme step of punishing truthful speech,” said Alex Shalom, an attorney for Kratovil. “We are disappointed that the New Jersey Supreme Court did not follow this precedent.”

Susan O’Connor, an attorney for New Brunswick, did not immediately return a request for comment.

The high court ruled the law was narrowly tailored enough to pass constitutional muster because it applies only to a limited group of current or former public employees, bars the publication of only their addresses and phone numbers, and threatens criminal and civil penalties only after an individual covered by the law provides notice invoking its protections.

“That strict notice requirement ensures that the statute is not a trap for the unwary,” Patterson wrote.

After receiving a Daniel’s Law notice, individuals have 10 business days to comply before facing sanctions.

Kratovil’s case drew interest from a bevy of law enforcement and civil rights groups, including the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, the County Prosecutors Association of New Jersey, and the State Troopers Fraternal Association of New Jersey, among others.

The suit did not seek to invalidate the law as a whole but asked to limit its scope as applied to reporters.

It’s not the only legal challenge to Daniel’s Law. Scores of data brokers facing suits from Atlas Data Privacy say 2023 amendments to Daniel’s Law that added mandatory monetary penalties for violations created a cottage industry for lawsuits.

Atlas has filed 178 suits to enforce the law since February 2024, according to state court records, and judges have dismissed some of them for lack of prosecution. Data brokers have charged that the wave of lawsuits — including 143 filed that February and many on a single day — made compliance impossible.