Retired West Virginia officer sued Whitepages in 2024 under the state's Daniel's Law analog

What happened

On August 26, 2024, a retired West Virginia law-enforcement officer filed a class-action lawsuit against Whitepages in federal court. The complaint, Jackson v. Whitepages, Inc. (No. 1:24-cv-00080, Northern District of West Virginia), alleges the site published the home addresses and unlisted phone numbers of thousands of West Virginia public servants, including the plaintiff, without their written permission.

The suit cites W. Va. Code §5A-8-24, West Virginia's Daniel's Law analog. The Record from Recorded Future News reported the filing on September 6, 2024.

What the law does

West Virginia enacted §5A-8-24 in 2021, modeling it on New Jersey's Daniel's Law from 2020. The statute covers current, former, and retired judicial officers, prosecutors, public defenders, and law-enforcement officers, along with their immediate family.

In plain terms, it bars a business from publishing a covered person's home address or unlisted phone number without written permission. It requires removal after a written request. As written, it provided a private cause of action for at least $1,000 per violation, plus punitive damages and attorney's fees. A business that willfully refuses to remove the information within 24 hours of a request can also face a criminal misdemeanor.

This suit was among the first publicly reported civil actions against a data broker under the law.

How the case ended

On August 18, 2025, Senior U.S. District Judge Michael Urbanski dismissed the case with prejudice. He ruled that Section E of §5A-8-24 is facially unconstitutional under the First Amendment. That is the provision that let a covered person sue a broker for damages. The judge treated it as a content-based restriction on truthful speech, which fails strict scrutiny.

The order consolidated several parallel suits against brokers including LexisNexis, Thomson Reuters, and PeopleConnect. It was the first ruling to strike down a Daniel's Law provision on First Amendment grounds. The state can appeal, and the outcome may change. For now, the private-lawsuit path under §5A-8-24 is blocked.

Why New Jersey matters here

West Virginia based its law on New Jersey's Daniel's Law. That law is named after the son of a federal judge who was killed at the family's New Jersey home in 2020 by a man who had located their address online. In early 2024, more than 100 lawsuits were filed in New Jersey against data brokers under it. West Virginia officers, judges, and prosecutors now have a similar tool.

What this means for your own exposure

After the 2025 ruling, you cannot currently sue a broker for damages under §5A-8-24 in West Virginia. You can still ask brokers to take down your home address and unlisted phone number. That request works the same way it always has, and it does not depend on any one statute surviving a court challenge. The burden is on you to send the request, document what the broker does, and follow up if the listing returns.

The follow-up is the hard part. A home address on a people-search site ties you to the place your family lives, and removing it once does not keep it down, because brokers often rebuild profiles from public records. Frontline Privacy files the removal requests and keeps checking for listings that come back.