From Judge Michael Urbanski (W.D. Va.) Monday in Jackson v. Whitepages, Inc. (N.D. W. Va.) (emphasis added):
Section E of West Virginia's Daniel's Law provides a cause of action for damages and prohibits "disclos[ing], redisclos[ing] or otherwise mak[ing] available the home address or unpublished home or personal telephone number of any active, formerly active, or retired judicial officer, prosecutor, federal or state public defender, federal or state assistant public defender, or law-enforcement officer under circumstances in which a reasonable person would believe that providing such information would expose another to harassment or risk of harm to life or property." …
Section E regulates speech based on its content … [and] cannot survive strict scrutiny because it is not narrowly tailored. Indeed, comparing West Virginia's Daniel's Law to the many other state and federal statutes aimed at the same legislative objective provides a helpful illustration of the ways in which West Virginia's statute is far from the least restrictive means of achieving West Virginia's undeniably compelling interest in protecting its public servants from harassment and violence….
[C]ourts consistently hold that factual disclosures of individuals' personal data, including Social Security Numbers, ages, and dates of birth, constitute speech. See, e.g., Ostergren v. Cuccinelli, 615 F.3d 263, 271 (4th Cir. 2010) (concluding that posting unredacted Virginia land records containing Social Security Numbers on a website was speech); IMDb.com Inc. v. Becerra, 962 F.3d 1111, 1120 (9th Cir. 2020) (treating publication of the ages and dates of birth of entertainment industry professionals as speech). Indeed, lower courts have specifically found that disclosures of public officials' and law enforcement officers' home addresses and phone numbers are speech. See, e.g., Publius v. Boyer-Vine, 237 F. Supp. 3d 997, 1012-13 (E.D. Cal. 2017) (finding that a law barring disclosure of "home address or telephone number of any elected or appointed official" regulated "speech"); Brayshaw v. City of Tallahassee, 709 F. Supp. 2d 1244, 1249 (N.D. Fla. 2010) (deciding that posting information on the internet concerning a police officer's name, age, family members, address, phone number, and email address was protected speech); Sheehan v. Gregoire, 272 F. Supp. 2d 1135, 1141 (W.D. Wash. 2003) (identifying as a regulation of speech a state statute prohibiting selling or publishing the addresses, phone numbers, birthdates, or Social Security Numbers of law enforcement officers). And of most significance here, in Atlas Data Privacy Corp. v. We Inform, LLC (hereinafter, "Atlas"), which concerned New Jersey's Daniel's Law, a district court recently concluded that the disclosures of law enforcement officers' home addresses and phone numbers prohibited by the New Jersey statute were speech. 758 F. Supp. 3d at 334….
