Senate adopts amendment to extend judges' privacy protections to online property records; counties raise cost and scope concerns

The Senate Judiciary and Public Safety Committee on March 17 adopted an author's amendment (A1) to a judicial-safety bill that would extend existing privacy protections for judges and judicial staff to specified online property records. The committee then laid Senate File 2039 over for possible inclusion in the committee's omnibus package.

Supporters, including state and federal judges, told the committee that most violent attacks or threats against judges have occurred at judges' homes and that property records are a common way attackers find home addresses online. "If we judges could protect only one category of our personal information, only one, it would be our home addresses," said Chief U.S. District Judge Patrick Schultz, who described high-profile attacks in other states in recent years.

Judge John Guthman of Ramsey County, a member of the Judicial District Judges Association and the Legislative Advisory Work Group, described a multi-stakeholder drafting process. He said the compromise adopted by the committee narrowed protections to internet-available digital records and requires judicial officials to request protection and identify specific parcel or document identifiers so county recorders are not required to search records indiscriminately.

County recorders and the Association of Minnesota Counties testified that the bill, as drafted, still poses operational and fiscal challenges. Amber Bouge, Hennepin County recorder and co-chair of the Minnesota Association of County Recorders, said retroactive redaction of records in diverse digital formats (scanned PDFs, microfilm, indexed tax rolls) is labor-intensive. Bouge estimated 10 to 15 staff hours of supervisor-level work in Hennepin County for a single complex file and urged limiting the law to records made publicly available on the internet and a liability cap to protect counties from retroactive exposures.

Andrew McGuire, speaking for the recorders' association, said the pool of people seeking protection could grow beyond roughly 300 judges to about 2,500 judicial staff, and that other groups (peace officers, county attorneys) are likely to seek protections in other bills. Nathan Zacharias of the Association of Minnesota Counties warned that smaller counties with limited staff could struggle to implement the program if protections expand widely.

The committee heard testimony from stakeholders and press accounts of past attacks; judges said the legislative change is designed to close a gap in last year's law that left property records vulnerable. The adopted A1 language reflects stakeholder compromises: protection applies to online/digital real property records, requires the judicial official to file a request that identifies the specific records (parcel numbers or document numbers), and excludes paper tract books at counties at the request of recorders.

Some testifiers urged further narrowing of the covered population and clearer liability rules. The county recorders proposed a $5,000 civil-penalty cap for liability related to compliance; proponents of stronger protections said existing Data Practices Act remedies and the statute's intentional-violation cap provide an enforceable framework.

The committee adopted the A1 amendment by voice vote and laid the bill over for possible inclusion; a fiscal note and local impact analysis were expected to follow.

Why it matters: Sponsors described the change as a targeted safety measure to reduce the ease with which attackers can find judges' homes online, while recorders and county officials warned of substantial implementation costs and of precedent-setting scope expansion if other occupational groups seek similar protections.