ATLAS DATA PRIVACY CORPORATION v. CIVIL DATA RESEARCH, 1:24-cv-04143

Plaintiffs, comprised of individual law enforcement officers and Atlas Data Privacy Corp. (assignee of ~19,000 others), sued dozens of data brokers and related businesses for violating New Jersey's Daniel's Law by disclosing their home addresses and unlisted phone numbers.
Daniel's Law was enacted following the 2020 attempted assassination of Judge Esther Salas, giving certain public officials/legal actors a civil and criminal remedy against disclosure of their personal info after written notice.
Defendants, after removal to federal court on diversity grounds, filed a consolidated motion to dismiss, arguing Daniel’s Law is facially unconstitutional as an abridgment of free speech under the First Amendment.
The New Jersey Attorney General and several law enforcement organizations intervened or filed amicus briefs in support of the law’s constitutionality.
The court stayed all other proceedings except the jurisdiction and facial constitutionality issues, and analyzed the motion under the applicable framework for privacy laws restricting speech.

Issue	Plaintiff's Argument	Defendant's Argument	Held
Is Daniel’s Law a restriction on speech?	Law regulates data, not speech; no First Amendment problem	Law restricts publication/dissemination of home addresses and phone numbers	Law restricts speech, not just data
Commercial or non-commercial speech?	Regulation covers commercial speech, thus merits intermediate scrutiny	Law restricts non-commercial, content-based speech; strict scrutiny applies	Law is content-based, not commercial speech
Constitutionality under First Amendment (facial challenge)	Privacy tort exceptions, permissible to restrict for safety; law constitutional	Law not narrowly tailored, not all home addresses are private/newsworthy; law is underinclusive	Law is constitutional under privacy law analysis
Standard for civil liability	Negligence or higher intent required for damages	Statute imposes strict liability for damages, unconstitutional for strict liability	Must be read as negligence to avoid unconstitutionality

Neitzke v. Williams, 490 U.S. 319 (standards for Rule 12(b)(6) motion)
Central Hudson Gas & Electric Corp. v. Public Service Commission of N.Y., 447 U.S. 557 (standard for analyzing commercial speech restrictions)
Reed v. Town of Gilbert, 576 U.S. 155 (distinction between content-based and content-neutral speech regulations)
City of Austin v. Reagan National Advertising of Austin, LLC, 596 U.S. 61 (test for content-neutrality in speech regulation)
The Florida Star v. B.J.F., 491 U.S. 524 (balancing privacy laws with First Amendment; strict liability in privacy statutes unconstitutional)
Smith v. Daily Mail Publishing Co., 443 U.S. 97 (limitations on punishing publication of lawfully obtained truthful information)
Williams-Yulee v. Florida Bar, 575 U.S. 433 (underinclusiveness and tailoring of speech regulations)
U.S. Department of Justice v. Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, 489 U.S. 749 (privacy in compiled computerized data vs. scattered public records)