West Virginia’s Daniel’s Law Fails Strict Scrutiny: Disclosure Liability Without Notice or Knowledge Is Insufficiently Tailored

1. Introduction

This published decision addresses the constitutional boundary between protecting public officials from targeted violence and preserving the dissemination of factual information. The Fourth Circuit held that West Virginia Code § 5A-8-24(e), part of the State’s Daniel’s Law, facially violated the First and Fourteenth Amendments because its restrictions on publishing officials’ home addresses and unpublished telephone numbers were not narrowly tailored.

West Virginia enacted Daniel’s Law after the 2020 murder of Daniel Anderl, the son of United States District Judge Esther Salas. The attacker located the family’s home address online before approaching the residence disguised as a delivery driver. The legislature responded by restricting disclosure of certain personal information concerning judicial and law-enforcement personnel.

Michael Jackson, a retired West Virginia law-enforcement officer, brought five proposed class actions against Thomson Reuters America Corporation; Whitepages, Inc.; Thryv, Inc.; PeopleConnect, Inc. and five affiliated defendants; and LexisNexis Risk Solutions, Inc. He alleged that their internet “people search” services disclosed his home address and unpublished telephone number, together with similar information about thousands of other protected officials, without permission.

The central issue was not whether protecting these officials constituted a compelling governmental interest; everyone agreed that it did. Rather, the question was whether West Virginia pursued that interest through a sufficiently precise restriction on protected speech. The court concluded that liability arising without notice or knowledge of a person’s protected status created an unjustifiably broad deterrent to lawful publication.

2. Statutory Framework and Procedural History

The challenged restriction

Section 5A-8-24(e) prohibited a person, business, or association, absent prior written permission, from disclosing, redisclosing, or otherwise making available a covered person’s home address or unpublished home or personal telephone number:

“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.”

The protected categories included active, formerly active, and retired judicial officers, prosecutors, federal or state public defenders and assistant public defenders, and law-enforcement officers. The statutory scheme also protected individuals residing at covered persons’ home addresses. Its definition of disclosure encompassed dissemination over the internet.

The provision authorized private enforcement, with actual damages of at least $1,000 for each violation, punitive damages, attorneys’ fees, and preliminary or equitable relief. Unlike the comparator statutes discussed by the court, West Virginia’s provision did not require the protected individual to request removal before liability arose. Nor did liability require the publisher to know that the disclosed information concerned a protected person.

Jackson’s allegations

Jackson alleged that the defendants assembled information from public records, social media, and other data brokers, then offered access through paid search services. He emphasized that these services made information substantially easier to obtain than separate searches of government records: a user could search using only a person’s name and state.

To establish risk, Jackson relied partly on a Federal Trade Commission report recognizing that people-search products can facilitate harassment, stalking, retaliation, and other harm. He sought declaratory and injunctive relief, $1,000 for each violation, and attorneys’ fees.

Dismissal and appeal

The defendants jointly moved to dismiss under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 12(b)(6), arguing that the provision was facially unconstitutional and impermissibly vague. The district court held that it imposed a content-based speech restriction that failed strict scrutiny because it lacked adequate narrowing safeguards. Having resolved the First Amendment challenge, the district court did not reach vagueness.

The Fourth Circuit reviewed the dismissal de novo and unanimously affirmed. The decision therefore concerns the legal enforceability of the statutory provision, not factual findings establishing that any defendant committed actionable misconduct.

3. Summary of the Opinion

1. Disclosing factual data is speech. Addresses and telephone numbers do not lose First Amendment protection merely because they are facts rather than expressions of opinion.
2. The restriction is content-based. Its application depends on the information disclosed and whether that information identifies a protected official.
3. Official safety is a compelling interest. The court accepted the importance of preventing harassment and violence against justice-system personnel.
4. The provision is not narrowly tailored. Liability can arise without notice or knowledge of protected status, encouraging publishers to suppress broader directories containing lawful information.
5. The risk-of-harm language does not adequately narrow liability. Under the interpretation advanced by Jackson and accepted in the court’s analysis, virtually any online disclosure of contact information creates some additional risk.
6. No proposed alternative framework avoids strict scrutiny. Arguments based on truthful reporting, historical confidentiality protections, and commercial speech did not justify a less demanding standard.

The holding invalidates the challenged provision, § 5A-8-24(e). It does not hold that every provision of West Virginia’s Daniel’s Law, or every comparable law elsewhere, is unconstitutional.

4. Analysis: Precedents Cited and Their Influence

A. Review of dismissal and facial constitutional challenges

• Blair v. Appomattox Cnty. Sch. Bd., 147 F.4th 484, 491 (4th Cir. 2025), supplied the standard of review. Because the district court dismissed the complaints for legal insufficiency under Rule 12(b)(6), the appellate court independently assessed the legal questions rather than deferring to the district court’s conclusions.

• Nat'l Ass'n of Diversity Officers in Higher Educ. v. Trump, 167 F.4th 86, 100 (4th Cir. 2026), explained both the ordinary demanding standard for facial challenges and the more protective First Amendment approach. The opinion relied on it for the proposition that a substantial risk of suppressing protected speech can support facial relief.

• Edgar v. Haines, 2 F.4th 298, 313 (4th Cir. 2021), appeared through the court’s quotation of the ordinary facial-challenge rule: a challenger generally must establish that a law is unconstitutional in all its applications or lacks any plainly legitimate sweep. It provided the baseline from which First Amendment overbreadth analysis departs.

• Moody v. NetChoice, LLC, 603 U.S. 707, 723 (2024), supplied the central First Amendment formulation. A facial challenge may succeed when a substantial number of a law’s applications are unconstitutional relative to its legitimate reach. This allowed the court to consider deterrence of lawful publication beyond the immediate disputes involving Jackson.

B. Constitutional protection and strict scrutiny

• Manhattan Cmty. Access Corp. v. Halleck, 587 U.S. 802, 808 (2019), supported the application of First Amendment restrictions to the States through the Fourteenth Amendment. The Fourteenth Amendment’s principal role in the holding was incorporation; the court did not separately decide the asserted vagueness challenge.

• Moshoures v. City of N. Myrtle Beach, 131 F.4th 158, 167 (4th Cir. 2025), stated the governing presumption: laws restricting speech because of its content are presumptively unconstitutional. That principle established the demanding starting point for reviewing West Virginia’s provision.

• Reed v. Town of Gilbert, 576 U.S. 155, 163 (2015), supplied two essential rules. First, facial distinctions based on a communication’s subject or meaning are content-based. Second, such distinctions must be narrowly tailored to a compelling governmental interest. The court used both rules to classify and test the challenged law.

• McCullen v. Coakley, 573 U.S. 464, 478 (2014), furnished the least-restrictive-means requirement applicable under strict scrutiny. The availability of narrower approaches, especially notice-and-removal procedures, was therefore central rather than incidental to the constitutional analysis.

C. Why factual disclosures constitute speech

• Texas v. Johnson, 491 U.S. 397, 404 (1989), was invoked by Jackson for language concerning conduct that conveys a particularized message likely to be understood by its audience. The court rejected his attempt to make that formulation a universal limitation excluding factual disclosures from speech protection.

• Sorrell v. IMS Health Inc., 564 U.S. 552, 570 (2011), provided the principal answer to Jackson’s data-versus-speech argument. Its recognition that facts are the starting point for much essential communication established that factual information can itself receive constitutional protection.

• Ostergren v. Cuccinelli, 615 F.3d 263, 271–72 (4th Cir. 2010), reinforced that conclusion through circuit precedent involving publication of unredacted Social Security numbers. The court cited the decision with its contextual qualification: sensitive identifying information was protected speech in the circumstances presented, not necessarily immune from every possible restriction.

• Bartnicki v. Vopper, 532 U.S. 514, 527 (2001), directly connected disclosure and publication with speech. Its observation that it is difficult to imagine what counts as speech if publishing information does not was especially persuasive because West Virginia expressly regulated those activities.

D. Content discrimination and chilling effects

• City of Austin v. Reagan Nat'l Advert. of Austin, LLC, 596 U.S. 61, 69 (2022), was cited by Jackson to argue that the law did not regulate a topic, idea, or message. The court nevertheless found facial content discrimination under Reed v. Town of Gilbert. It also relied on the former decision’s discussion at page 68, footnote 3, to reject intermediate scrutiny where a statute applies equally to commercial and noncommercial messages without exempting the latter.

• Counterman v. Colorado, 600 U.S. 66, 75 (2023), supported the concern that speech prohibitions can deter expression beyond their lawful boundaries. The court used that chilling-effect principle to explain why publishers lacking knowledge of protected status might suppress entire directories. It did not import a particular mental-state rule from the true-threats context into every privacy regulation.

E. Truthful reporting and historical privacy protections

• The Florida Star v. B.J.F., 491 U.S. 524, 530, 541 (1989), concerned punishment for publishing lawfully obtained truthful information and the competing interest in privacy. Jackson proposed that framework as an alternative. The court emphasized the decision’s expressly limited holding and questioned its fit with a statute governing publishers far beyond news organizations.

• Smith v. Daily Mail Publ'g Co., 443 U.S. 97, 101–05 (1979), likewise addressed truthful publication and was expressly narrow. Together with The Florida Star v. B.J.F., it did not establish the less demanding exception Jackson sought.

• Atlas Data Priv. Corp. v. We Inform, LLC, 758 F. Supp. 3d 322 (D.N.J. 2024), appeal docketed, No. 25-1587 (3d Cir. Mar. 31, 2025), illustrated another court’s use of the truthful-publication framework when evaluating New Jersey’s Daniel’s Law. The Fourth Circuit acknowledged that approach but did not treat the district court decision as controlling or adopt its treatment of a different statute.

• Soderberg v. Carrion, 999 F.3d 962, 964, 969 (4th Cir. 2021), supplied the decisive alternative answer: even if the truthful-reporting cases applied, strict scrutiny would still govern. Thus, the asserted alternative framework would not change the outcome.

• Am. Ass'n of Pol. Consultants v. FCC, 923 F.3d 159, 168 (4th Cir. 2019), undermined the suggestion that privacy-protective laws categorically escape rigorous First Amendment review. The cited decision applied strict scrutiny despite an asserted interest in personal and residential privacy.

• Barr v. Am. Ass'n of Pol. Consultants, 591 U.S. 610 (2020), was identified as the Supreme Court decision affirming that circuit judgment under a different case name. Its citation reinforced the privacy-related precedent; the opinion did not undertake a separate analysis of its remedial holdings.

F. Commercial speech

• Cent. Hudson Gas & Elec. Corp. v. Pub. Serv. Comm'n of N.Y., 447 U.S. 557, 563–64 (1980), provided the intermediate-scrutiny framework Jackson sought for commercial speech. The court rejected its application to the statute as a whole because the regulated disclosures were not uniformly commercial.

• Greater Balt. Ctr. for Pregnancy Concerns, Inc. v. Mayor & City Council of Balt., 879 F.3d 101, 108 (4th Cir. 2018), recognized economic motivation as a relevant consideration in identifying commercial speech. That relevance, however, did not make profit motive dispositive.

• Bolger v. Youngs Drug Prods. Corp., 463 U.S. 60, 67 (1983), established that economic motivation alone does not turn expression into commercial speech. Consequently, charging for access to information did not automatically subject the defendants’ publications to reduced constitutional protection.

5. Analysis: The Court’s Legal Reasoning

A. The Constitution protects information, not merely opinions

Jackson’s initial argument would have placed “pure facts” outside the First Amendment unless they conveyed a sufficiently particularized message. The court rejected that distinction because factual information supplies the foundation for communication, inquiry, and public discussion.

The relevant activity was also publication itself, not merely the passive existence of information in a database. The statute expressly restricted disclosure and dissemination. Characterizing its subject matter as “data” therefore did not remove the regulated activity from constitutional scrutiny.

This reasoning does not establish absolute protection for every disclosure. It establishes that restrictions on publishing these facts must be justified under the appropriate First Amendment standard.

B. Protected status makes the restriction content-based

The court illustrated content discrimination by comparing statements that a grocery-store clerk and a police officer live at the same address. The law treats the disclosures differently because of what each communicates about the resident’s identity and occupation.

Accordingly, the restriction distinguished both among types of information—addresses and unpublished telephone numbers—and among the people identified by that information. Its protective purpose did not erase these facial distinctions. A benevolent objective can support a compelling interest while leaving the restriction content-based.

C. The compelling interest did not resolve narrow tailoring

The court unequivocally accepted the importance of protecting justice-system officials and their households. The tragedy that prompted the legislation demonstrated the seriousness of that interest.

Strict scrutiny, however, requires separate consideration of means and ends. Showing that disclosure can facilitate violence does not establish that every restriction on disclosure is constitutionally permissible. West Virginia still needed a scheme that accomplished its objective while restricting no more protected speech than necessary.

D. Lack of notice or knowledge created broader self-censorship

The decisive example involved a publisher compiling a town directory from public land records. The directory might unknowingly contain information about a police officer or public defender. Because the statute did not require knowledge of protected status or a prior removal request, the publisher could incur liability without having a practical opportunity to identify and remove the protected entry.

The resulting incentive was to avoid publishing information about the town’s residents generally. The constitutional harm therefore extended beyond the particular entry the legislature sought to protect: liability associated with unknown protected persons could deter publication concerning people outside the statute’s protective categories.

The court described liability as effectively automatic in this setting. That description must be read alongside the statutory risk condition: the court’s conclusion was that the condition supplied little meaningful protection against liability, not that the words were absent from the law.

E. Generalized risk was not an effective limiting principle

Jackson maintained that the reasonable-person risk standard made the provision sufficiently narrow. But he could not identify a disclosure that would not expose a protected person to some possibility of harassment or harm. His complaints similarly treated disclosure itself as establishing exposure to risk.

The FTC report supported the legislature’s concern, but it also illustrated the breadth of Jackson’s interpretation: people-search information generally can facilitate harmful conduct. Under that approach, the risk condition did not distinguish targeted or unusually dangerous disclosures from ordinary publication.

The court thus identified a gap between identifying a genuine social danger and defining a sufficiently limited class of prohibited speech.

F. Notice-and-removal procedures demonstrated a less restrictive approach

The court compared West Virginia’s provision with laws under which liability follows a publisher’s failure to comply with a protected person’s removal request. Delaware’s statute, for example, required removal within 72 hours after receipt of a written request.

Such procedures give publishers information about protected status and an opportunity to comply before facing liability. Their existence supplied a concrete alternative to West Virginia’s immediate-liability model.

The court did not hold that notice is the only permissible safeguard. It expressly acknowledged other possible methods of narrowing the law. Nor did it determine that adding notice alone would necessarily resolve every constitutional issue in every comparable statute.

G. The facial holding rested on effects beyond these defendants

The law applied to any person, business, or association, not merely paid data brokers. Its reach therefore included noncommercial dissemination. This breadth mattered both to the overbreadth analysis and to the rejection of a commercial-speech framework.

The court’s analysis was qualitative rather than a numerical inventory of applications. It identified a recurring publication scenario in which uncertain liability could suppress substantial lawful speech, then contrasted that burden with readily available narrower approaches.

H. Neither confidentiality nor profitability supplied a categorical exception

Jackson failed to establish a historical tradition of regulating ordinary address and telephone directories in the manner West Virginia had chosen. The longstanding publication of Whitepages, Yellow Pages, and property records cut against the claimed categorical confidentiality exception.

Similarly, a commercial business does not engage exclusively in commercial speech merely because it sells information. The statute’s equal application to noncommercial publications independently prevented the court from reviewing the entire provision under a reduced standard.

6. Impact and Limits of the Decision

Consequences for privacy and official-safety legislation

The decision directs legislative attention toward practical compliance mechanisms. Advance notice, removal opportunities, and appropriately designed knowledge requirements may reduce the risk that publishers suppress lawful information about people who are not protected officials.

It also cautions against relying on generalized danger as the sole limiting condition. If every disclosure satisfies a risk standard, that standard contributes little to narrow tailoring.

Consequences for data brokers and publishers

The ruling confirms that information does not lose speech protection because a business aggregates it efficiently or charges for access. Jackson’s distinction between slow government-record searches and convenient online searches did not justify treating the resulting publication as constitutionally unprotected.

Nevertheless, the opinion does not create general immunity for data brokers. Properly tailored restrictions remain possible, and the court did not decide questions involving unlawful acquisition, contractual confidentiality, or other independently regulated conduct.

Consequences for future litigation

As published circuit precedent, the decision provides binding guidance within the Fourth Circuit on the challenged provision and its First Amendment analysis. Future challenges to similar laws are likely to focus on:

• Whether publishers receive notice of protected status;
• Whether liability requires relevant knowledge;
• Whether publishers have a meaningful opportunity to comply;
• Whether a harm threshold genuinely distinguishes prohibited disclosures;
• Whether the law reaches substantial noncommercial or otherwise protected publication.

The opinion’s favorable comparison with other statutes should not be mistaken for an adjudication of their validity. Their wording, procedures, scope, and operation would require separate analysis. The court also left the defendants’ vagueness argument unresolved.

7. Complex Concepts Simplified

Facial challenge

A challenge to a law’s operation generally, rather than only its application to one particular party or incident.

First Amendment overbreadth

A doctrine allowing facial invalidation when a law restricts a substantial amount of protected speech compared with its legitimate applications. It protects people who might otherwise remain silent rather than risk liability.

Content-based restriction

A rule whose application depends on what a communication says. Here, identifying an address as belonging to a protected official triggered restrictions that did not apply to identifying the same address as someone else’s home.

Strict scrutiny

A demanding constitutional test requiring a compelling governmental objective and narrowly tailored means of achieving it.

Narrow tailoring and least restrictive means

The government must avoid unnecessarily burdening protected speech when a less restrictive approach can accomplish its compelling objective.

Chilling effect

Self-censorship caused by fear of legal consequences. A publisher uncertain which directory entries concern protected officials might withhold the entire directory.

Notice-and-removal procedure

A process under which a protected person identifies information for removal and liability arises if the publisher fails to comply, rather than immediately upon initial publication.

Commercial speech

A constitutional category receiving a different level of protection. Speech is not automatically commercial merely because its publisher hopes to earn money.

De novo review

Independent appellate review of a legal question, without deference to the lower court’s legal conclusion.

Incorporation

The application of constitutional protections, including freedom of speech, to state governments through the Fourteenth Amendment.

8. Conclusion

The Fourth Circuit accepted the urgency of protecting public officials but rejected West Virginia’s chosen enforcement mechanism. Section 5A-8-24(e) imposed content-based restrictions without notice or knowledge safeguards sufficient to prevent substantial self-censorship, while its generalized risk condition failed to meaningfully narrow liability.

The decision’s central lesson is that a compelling safety objective does not excuse unnecessarily broad restrictions on factual publication. Carefully tailored protections remain possible; this provision failed because it burdened more speech than necessary, not because official safety lacks constitutional weight.