The Supreme Court recently granted review of a case presenting a claim by a reporter that Daniel’s Law unconstitutionally prohibited him from publishing news stories that included the home address of an official covered by this law. Kratovil v. City of New Brunswick.

I’m surprised the Supreme Court decided to review this case, which does not present broad issues of the overall constitutionality of the law’s prohibition against disclosing the home addresses of judges, prosecutors, and law enforcement personnel. Instead, the appeal involves the narrow question of the validity of applying Daniel’s Law to this reporter, under the specific factual circumstances of this case. The Court itself described the question before it us whether Daniel’s Law is “unconstitutional as applied to plaintiff [the reporter]?”

The Appellate Division opinion highlights the limited nature of this matter. In affirming the trial court, it stated:

The trial court, however, did not tell plaintiff what he could or could not
publish….The trial court stated that the publication of the town where Caputo [New Brunswick Police Director] lived was a matter of public concern, but Caputo’s specific street address was
not. The trial court did not, however, enjoin or restrain plaintiff from publishing
a story about where Caputo lived while he was a City official.

In other words, this case does not raise a challenge to the core requirement of Daniel’s Law, which prohibits disclosure of certain officials’ home addresses. And this means that the Court’s opinion in this matter is unlikely to affect OPRA, which now mandates redaction of home addresses in responding to requests.