Court cases that shape your privacy
A privacy law only helps you if courts enforce it. These rulings decide whether removal laws carry real weight, who they cover, and what happens when a broker ignores a valid request. Below are the decisions that shape how those laws protect your home address, each with a plain-English holding and why it matters.
Run a free scan. No signup.US Supreme Court
The highest court in the country. These rulings bind every court below.
Counterman v. Colorado
The Supreme Court held that prosecutions for true threats under the First Amendment require proof that the defendant subjectively understood his statements as threatening, applying a recklessness standard rather than an objective reasonable-person test.
Reno v. Condon
The Supreme Court unanimously upheld the federal Driver's Privacy Protection Act against a Tenth Amendment challenge, ruling that Congress can regulate state DMV data sales under the Commerce Clause because driver records are an article of commerce.
Federal Appeals
Circuit courts. Their rulings bind every district court in the circuit.
Federal District
Where most federal cases get decided. Persuasive elsewhere.
State Supreme Courts
Final word on state-law questions. Binds every court in the state.
Atlas Data Privacy Corp. v. We Inform LLC (certified question, NJ Supreme Court)
Pending. The New Jersey Supreme Court heard oral argument on March 17, 2026 on a single question certified by the Third Circuit: what mental state, if any, is required to establish liability under Daniel's Law, N.J.S.A. 56:8-166.1? No decision has issued as of July 2026.
City of Tallahassee v. Florida Police Benevolent Association
The Florida Supreme Court held that Marsy's Law (Fla. Const. art. I, §§ 16(b)–(e)) does not guarantee any victim, including a police officer, a categorical right to withhold their name from disclosure. The City of Tallahassee was not precluded from releasing the names of two officers whose conduct was at issue in separate fatal shootings.
Remsburg v. Docusearch, Inc.
The New Hampshire Supreme Court held that an information broker or private investigator can owe a duty of reasonable care to the person whose information it sells when criminal misuse is foreseeable, that selling a person's Social Security number can support an invasion-of-privacy claim, and that obtaining someone's workplace through a pretext call violates New Hampshire's Consumer Protection Act. The ruling let the victim's family take their claims to a jury; it did not decide final liability.