Daniel Anderl Judicial Security and Privacy Act (Lieu Act)

What the Lieu Act actually does

The Daniel Anderl Judicial Security and Privacy Act, often referred to as the Lieu Act after House sponsor Ted Lieu (D-CA), was signed into federal law in December 2022 as part of the FY2023 NDAA (Pub. L. 117-263). It's the federal answer to what Daniel's Law did at the state level in New Jersey.

The act creates a federal mechanism for federal judges and their families to demand removal of their personally identifiable information from data brokers, government websites, and other public sources. The covered information is broad: home address, phone, social security number, vehicle registration, names of family members, names and addresses of children's schools and employers.

It's named for Daniel Anderl, the 20-year-old son of US District Judge Esther Salas, killed in 2020 when an attacker who'd looked up his mother's home address came to the door.

Who it covers

Coverage is limited to federal judges and their immediate families:

• Article III judges (US District Court, Court of Appeals, Supreme Court)
• Senior judges
• Federal magistrate judges
• Federal bankruptcy judges
• Spouses, parents, and children of any of the above

The act does not cover state court judges, state-level prosecutors, or local law enforcement. Those officials look to state-level analogs — Daniel's Law in NJ, the Judicial Privacy Act in IL, and similar statutes in other states.

How to invoke

The Administrative Office of the US Courts (AOUSC) operates a centralized intake through its Threat Management Branch in the Judiciary Security Division. Eligible judges enroll once, and the TMB handles batched removal demands across the major data brokers on the judge's behalf. Brokers have 72 hours to remove after receiving the demand under the federal statute.

Judges who prefer to file independently — or who want to add to the AOUSC list — can send written demands directly to brokers and government agencies. Civil remedies for non-compliance include actual damages plus injunctive relief.

State-level privacy programs run alongside the federal one for federal judges who reside in NJ, NY, IL, or other states with their own statutes. Filing under both layers is allowed and increases coverage.

Enrollment so far

The numbers tell you who's actually using it. As of April 2024 — sixteen months after enactment — about 69% of active federal judges had enrolled, plus 54 retired judges and 185 qualifying family members. The AOUSC's contracted removal vendor (DeleteMe) had redacted roughly 4.22 million pieces of personally identifiable information across the broker landscape on behalf of enrolled judges. Adoption has continued upward since.

Where it doesn't reach

The Lieu Act is a federal statute focused on federal judiciary. It does not reach:

1. Non-judicial officials. Federal agents (FBI, DEA, USMS, ATF, HSI) and AUSAs aren't covered. Their agencies may help, but none of them can personally sue a broker the way a federal judge can under the Lieu Act. The 2020 Portland federal-officer doxxing wave is the working reference for what happens when 38 federal officers get doxxed and the legal protection that exists is for judges, not agents.
2. State officials. State court judges, DAs, AGs, sheriffs, and local PD are governed by whatever state law applies in their jurisdiction.
3. Property records and court filings. The act covers personal info in broker files; it doesn't reach the underlying property records or court filings the brokers scrape from.

What we do

For federal judges enrolled in the AOUSC program, we operate alongside the federal removal pipeline. We sweep 200+ broker sites including the smaller ones the AOUSC doesn't always reach, and we re-check every two weeks because the broker re-aggregation pattern doesn't pause for the federal statute. If you're an Article III, magistrate, or bankruptcy judge and you want belt-and-suspenders coverage on top of the AOUSC enrollment, that's what we add.