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Judicial safety bill on property records laid over after judges and counties seek more work on scope
Summary
House File 2127, which would let judicial officers privatize property-record information to protect home addresses, was laid over after testimony from judges stressing safety concerns and county officials raising implementation, scope and liability questions.
The Judiciary Finance and Civil Law Committee laid over House File 2127, a bill intended to allow judicial officers to privatize property-record information to protect their home addresses, after extended stakeholder testimony and questions about scope, implementation, and liability.
Chief Judge (federal) Schlitz and several state judges described a series of high-profile attacks on judges and family members in recent years and urged that home addresses be protected. They said property records are a common means by which home addresses become publicly available online and that the prior-year judicial-security law left a gap by excluding property records. Chief Judge Schlitz asked the committee to close that loophole and approved the stakeholder-crafted amendment pending in the committee.
Judges and judicial-branch representatives emphasized protections would apply only to current addresses, would require the judicial officer to take affirmative steps to request protection, and would not require counties to “scrub” historic internet postings. Judge Todd Shuffman described a months-long stakeholder work group that included land-title professionals, county representatives and the Federal Bar Association; he said the group reached consensus on procedures intended to preserve real-estate market functioning while protecting officers.
County recorders, the Minnesota Association of County Officers, and county-technology representatives told the committee the work group made progress but warned that implementation carries significant operational challenges, especially for scanned, unindexed, or historical records, and that the law’s scope has already expanded from a few hundred judges to thousands of potential protected persons if other groups seek similar treatment. County witnesses urged narrowing scope to records publicly posted online and proposed a $5,000 liability cap for counties.
The committee laid the bill over to allow further work between judges, county officials and privacy advocates.
