State judicial security bill targets threats to judges

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In brief

• Massachusetts lawmakers are considering the Judicial Security Act to protect judges‘ personal information from public disclosure online.
• The proposal follows rising threats against judges nationwide, including violent rhetoric directed at federal judges after controversial rulings.
• The bill would require state and local agencies to remove judges’ personal information and allow lawsuits against data brokers that fail to comply.
• Court leaders support the measure but have raised concerns about funding and administrative burdens tied to maintaining a confidential database.

“I hope you lose your life by lunchtime.”

“The best way you could help America is to eat a bullet.”

Those are among the threats that Ana C. Reyes, a federal judge in Washington, D.C., read in open court last month. Reyes received the messages after she issued a ruling blocking the Trump administration from ending temporary immigration protections for Haitians living in the U.S.

Reyes repeated the threats at a virtual forum hosted by the nonpartisan organization Speak Up for Justice, which featured three of her colleagues who reported that they, too, have been increasingly targeted with violent rhetoric.

All too often, the vitriol directed at the judiciary has crossed the line into actual violence, as the Christian Science Monitor noted recently. In 2020, a former attorney dressed as a FedEx delivery man attacked the New Jersey home of U.S. District Court Judge Esther Salas, killing her son and wounding her husband. State court judges in Wisconsin and Maryland were killed at their homes in 2022 and 2023, respectively, the Monitor added.

After the shooting at Salas’ home, the New Jersey Legislature swiftly passed Daniel’s Law, named for Salas’ son, to prohibit disclosure of the residential addresses of judges and others on websites controlled by state, county and local government agencies. Rhode Island’s version of Daniel’s Law took effect Jan. 1.

Local bar leaders and members of the judiciary are hoping Massachusetts will soon follow suit.

Under the Senate version of the Massachusetts Judicial Security Act, S. 1278, state, county and municipal agencies would be prohibited from ​publicly posting or displaying on the internet the personal information of any “protected individual” — defined as a current or retired state or federal judge — without first obtaining the individual’s written permission.

Judges could also file a written notice of their status as a protected individual — for themselves and their immediate family — to any state, county or municipal agency and ask each agency to mark their personal information as confidential.

The bill also targets data brokers, giving them 72 hours upon receipt of a written request to remove personal information from the internet and granting judges and other at-risk individuals the right to sue for injunctive or declaratory relief to remedy violations of the law. If a suit were to be successful, the violator would have to pay the plaintiff’s costs and attorneys’ fees.

The House version, H. 5059, differs in that it would charge the Trial Court Office of Court Management with maintaining a confidential database and otherwise administering a system to ensure the confidentiality of the personal information of judicial officers and their immediate families.

That potential administrative burden is a “sticking point” for court leadership, according to Martin W. Healy, chief legal counsel and chief operating officer of the Massachusetts Bar Association.

“There would be a number of resources needed to create that and to run it, and there are some budgetary concerns because the legislation itself does not contain any provisions for funding,” Healy explains.

That concern aside, Healy believes there is a growing appreciation on Beacon Hill for the need to resolve any such concerns and get a bill passed.

“It’s a very volatile time politically, and people seem to be supercharged regarding the judiciary’s role in the democratic process and don’t fully understand what it means to be a judicial officer,” Healy says.

In other words, some people mistakenly view judges as lawmakers, according to Healy.

“They’re clearly not,” he says. “They’re deciding disputes that are brought by many parties before them.”

Healy called to mind the incident last year at Woburn District Court in which a 28-year-old Yarmouth Port man, Nicholas Akerberg, entered the courthouse wearing a helmet, gas mask, tactical boots and sunglasses. In the ensuing altercation, Akerberg used one of eight canisters of pepper spray he had brought with him on multiple court officers, a Stoneham police officer and an assistant district attorney, according to a press release from the Middlesex County District Attorney’s Office.

The press release noted that the Woburn incident was the third serious event at a courthouse in just over a month.

When he has crossed paths with state court judges, Healy says they all inquire about the status of the Judicial Security Act.

“It’s clearly on the top of their radar in terms of what their concerns are,” Healy says.

The leadership of the MBA has been part of a “full-court press, in the true meaning of the word,” to get the law passed, Healy adds.

Joining that “full-court press” has been U.S. District Court Chief Judge Denise J. Casper, who has written a pair of letters to the chairs and vice chairs of the Judiciary committees in the state House and Senate, one in October and one earlier this month.

She confirmed in the letters that federal judges in Massachusetts have not been immune from the threats faced by their counterparts elsewhere in the country.

Family members of one judge — at four separate residences — received pizza deliveries, one addressed to “Daniel Anderl,” Judge Salas’s son, Casper wrote in her March 3 letter.

“As Judge Salas explained in a ‘60 Minutes’ segment earlier this week, such a chilling act is intended to communicate that a potential bad actor knows where the judge’s family lives and harm can come to them as it did for Judge Salas’ child,” Casper wrote.

Casper also explained that, last year, one of the court’s senior judges received a credible threat, even though the judge is no longer presiding over cases. The judge received 24-hour, seven-day-a-week protective service from the U.S. Marshal’s Office.

“To the extent that [the] Committee is considering whether the proposed Judicial Security Act should protect retired judges as well as active judges, the simple answer is yes, it should,” Casper wrote.

In her earlier letter, Casper noted that while the federal Daniel Anderl Judicial Security and Privacy Act has helped judges shield their personally identifiable information from federal agencies and commercial data brokers, its protections do not extend to state agencies.

“A few of my colleagues recently have encountered difficulty in their attempts to have such information removed from the public records of state and local agencies here in Massachusetts,” she reported.

Healy says this is not the first session in which a Daniel’s Law-type bill has been filed at the State House, but he hopes it is the last.

“We don’t want to see this turn into a perennial refile,” he says. “It’s something that’s too important and very much needed.”