Maryland judges’ personal information protected under bill passed by Senate after fatal shooting
ANNAPOLIS, Md. — Judges in Maryland could shield their personal information online to prevent hostile people from tracking them down, under a bill the Senate passed Thursday in response to the fatal shooting of a judge in his driveway.
The Senate voted 43-1 to pass the Judge Andrew F. Wilkinson Judicial Security Act, named after the Maryland court judge who was shot by a man just hours after Wilkinson ruled against him in a divorce case and won custody had granted to his wife over his children. in October.
“He was murdered for serving our state, for doing his job and for protecting children in a domestic matter,” said Sen. Paul Corderman, a Washington County Republican who sponsored the bill, adding that “this vicious attack is an immediate action required.”
Corderman noted before the vote that his own father was a Maryland judge who survived an explosion from pipe bombs sent to his home in 1989.
The measure now goes to the House of Representatives, where a similar bill is pending.
State lawmakers in the US have stepped up efforts to prevent personal information about judges, police, elected office holders and various government officials from being made public.
Chief Justice of the Maryland Supreme Court Matthew Fader testified last week at a hearing on a bill that judicial officers are “in real danger, as are their families, from easy access to their personally identifiable information from publicly available sources, especially over the Internet.”
The bill identifies specific types of personally identifiable information that would be protected from disclosure on the Internet by private and government entities, including home addresses and previously unpublished phone numbers, Fader said. It protects other sensitive information that could lead someone to a judge or family members, such as license plates, Social Security numbers or where their children go to school.
The measure exempts information that a judge previously authorized and information that is a matter of public interest, Fader said.
“The types of information covered by this law will rarely be matters of public interest, but where they are located they will be protected and may be made public,” Fader said.
Stephanie Wilkinson, the widow of the slain judge, urged lawmakers to pass the bill.
“If we don’t step in and provide our judiciary with the protection and privacy that they should have, we will certainly dilute the power of the justice system by getting less qualified candidates to fill those positions,” Wilkinson testified.
Judges in the US have been the target of threats and sometimes violence in recent years.
President Joe Biden signed a bill last year to provide 24-hour security protection to the families of Supreme Court justices after the leak of a draft court opinion overturning the abortion rights decision in Roe v. Wade, prompting protests outside the conservative US Houses of the Supreme Court Judges.
Federal Judge James Bredar, who is chief judge of the U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland, testified at the hearing last week that federal judges already have some protection of personally identifiable information under federal law. But he said it only protects information stored or traded by commercial entities.
“There are no protections in federal law for judges’ personal and private information stored in government repositories, but the bill you are considering, if passed, would fill this critical gap in our lines of defense,” he said. Bredar.
Bredar noted that the bill would protect judges’ most sensitive personal information now openly stored by the state government, including deeds and land records of homes.
“We live in a time when two phenomena intersect: an increasing tendency to harm judicial officers when ruling against litigants, at a time when personal information such as home addresses can be quickly obtained with just a few clicks on a computer” , says Bredar. .
The measure creates an Office of Information Privacy in the Administrative Office of the Courts in Maryland. The legislation also creates a task force to study the security of court facilities.
Pedro Argote, the man Judge Wilkinson ruled against in the divorce case, was found dead in a densely wooded area nearby about a week after the shooting.