Colorado Chief Justice Monica Márquez describes the doxxing, spoofing, and swatting of the state Supreme Court

What happened

Márquez gave the account on a virtual panel hosted by Speak Up for Justice, a group of judges, lawyers, and advocates working to counter threats against the courts. One of its members is US District Judge Esther Salas, whose 20-year-old son Daniel Anderl was killed in 2020 by a man who found the family's home address online.

Márquez said the justices were doxxed, spoofed, and swatted. Their home addresses and personal phone numbers were published. Callers impersonated family members to reach and yell at the justices. Personal email accounts were signed up for unwanted subscriptions, including pornographic sites. A relative of one justice had a voicemail greeting hacked and replaced with a profane message. Justices received repeated unsolicited pizza deliveries, a tactic prosecutors call pizza doxxing because it signals that the sender knows where you live.

The most serious incident was a swatting. Justice Melissa Hart's home was surrounded by nine officers with guns drawn after a false emergency call. Other swatting attempts followed, including one on Christmas Day. At one point the justices were advised to leave their homes for several days.

A sitting state chief justice rarely describes this on the record. Márquez's account lines up with a national pattern. CBS News reported that federal prosecutors charged 126 people in 2025 with threatening federal and senior state officials.

How the exposure works

Spoofing, swatting, and doxxing draw on the same underlying data.

• Spoofing needs a working phone number tied to the target.
• Swatting needs a home address tied to the target.
• Doxxing pulls both together, along with relatives, past addresses, and property records.

For a sitting judge, all three trace back to the same places: people-search sites, property records that brokers have already copied and resold, and listings that link relatives by household. The information that made this campaign possible is sold by name on commercial broker sites.

The law in Colorado

Colorado has no statute that requires data brokers to take down a judge's home address on demand.

The state does have an anti-doxxing law. Colorado's anti-doxxing statute makes it a crime to post a protected person's personal information online when the poster knows it creates an imminent, serious threat. It can punish a specific harmful post. It does not force a broker to remove a listing.

Other states go further. Illinois's Judicial Privacy Act lets a covered judge send a written demand that requires removal of listed personal information. New Jersey's Daniel's Law does the same for judges, prosecutors, and police. The federal Daniel Anderl Judicial Security and Privacy Act, known as the Lieu Act, covers federal judges only. None of these apply to a Colorado state judge.

What this means for you

If you are a state judge, magistrate, or sworn officer in Colorado, no state law today forces data brokers to remove your home address when you ask. That may change. After the June 2025 killing of Minnesota Representative Melissa Hortman and her husband at their home, more states have considered removal laws modeled on Daniel's Law. The attacker carried a notebook listing 11 people-search websites, according to court filings. Until a Colorado law passes, the protection you have is whatever you put in place yourself.

The practical defense is to keep your home address and phone number off the broker sites that resell them, and to keep checking, because removed listings often come back.

For more on the pattern Márquez described, see doxxing, swatting, and stalking.