Family targeting of judge households

How this plays out for judge households

The defining case is Daniel Anderl. In 2020, a disbarred attorney targeted federal Judge Esther Salas at her home in NJ. He shot her son Daniel and her husband Mark. Daniel was killed. The attacker had pulled the household's home address from a private investigator who sourced it through public records and broker pages. The result was Daniel's Law at the state level — a statute that lets covered judges, prosecutors, and officers (and their immediate families) sue data brokers that don't remove their home address inside ten business days — and the Lieu Act at the federal level for federal judges.

The pattern repeats at lower volume across the bench. A controversial ruling drops. The judge is named in the opinion. Within hours, the home address — sometimes the spouse's workplace, sometimes the kid's school — surfaces on a forum or social media. The address came from a broker page.

For state court judges outside NJ and IL, there is usually no equivalent broker-removal statute. The judge's household is exposed through the same brokers as anyone else's.

What's at stake

The Anderl case is the floor, not the ceiling. Every controversial ruling makes a small group of people who feel personally wronged. Most never act. The handful who do have a known, documented way to find the household.

Federal judges face concentrated risk — there are only about 870 active Article III judges. The number of people angry at any one of them at any time is large enough that the few who follow through still produce real incidents.

What to do right now

Federal judges: enroll in the Lieu Act program through the Administrative Office of the US Courts. If a household member is already fielding threats after a controversial ruling, follow the family-threats playbook — it walks the time-bucketed steps from the first contact through long-term hardening. The AOUSC files batched removal demands across major brokers on behalf of you and immediate household members.

State judges: run a free scan on the spouse and any household member. NJ judges are covered by Daniel's Law. IL judges have the Judicial Privacy Act. Other state judges fall back on the broker opt-out path.

How we handle it

We work alongside the federal Lieu Act program — we sweep 200+ broker sites including the smaller ones the AOUSC doesn't always reach, for the judge and every household member, re-checked every two weeks. For NJ and IL judges, we file the state demands. For everyone else, continuous broker opt-outs across the household.

For the broader household picture, see families.