Yamhill County Judge Ladd Wiles should recuse himself from a recent lawsuit assigned to him because as the husband of former U.S. Attorney Amanda Marshall he has plenty of experience having his home address posted online. The lawsuit filed by members of the Newberg School Board accuses 4 people of violating Oregon's new unconstitutional anti-doxxing bill by posting information about their employers on Facebook. We believe that state law requires that Judge Wiles recuse himself due to his prior experience.
We posted Amanda Marshall's home address back in 2017, but that data is currently hid behind a block programmed to display the word "CENSORED" instead as long as the admin of Cop Blaster is never prevented from being able to login to his account for more than 14 days for any reason (see https://copblaster.com/blast/52/ex-prosecutor-and-slutty-stalker-sally-amanda-marshall). That block is the result of what seems to be a cessation of hostilities on the part of the federal government towards us. The feds responded to the information we released by getting our founder detained pending resolution of a supervised release violation he had already been charged with. While he sat in jail the site stayed up and the government made all sorts of wild accusations claiming that people in Ladd's wife's position feared for their safety, experienced emotional distress, etc. We believe that this experience created a pre-existing bias against the posting of personal information online and Judge Wiles is more likely to make an adverse ruling against the defendants as a result.
HB 3047 is unconstitutional for a few reasons. We recommend checking out our prior articles about the bill most of which are linked to at https://copblaster.com/blast/39676/oregon-state-senators-that-voted-for-anti-doxxing-bill. Our arguments are mostly based on overbreadth and are backed by federal court decisions striking down similar bills. Those similar bills were not as broad as HB 3047 and focused mostly on the disclosure of home addresses belonging to law enforcement officers. Courts have repeatedly protected that practice because it has legitimate uses such as organizing peaceful picketing. Some say HB 3047 was more focused on protecting private citizens, but even if banning the practice with regards to private citizens were deemed constitutional, the bill makes no distinction between a government official and a private citizen, so that is just one example of why HB 3047 is too broad. The legislature thinks they can use "intent to harass" to justify it, but the definition of harass adopted by the legislature is so broad that that it includes the intentional infliction of minor things including anxiety. So, if someone posts the contact information of a business hoping people will use it to complain about a specific employee because of something they did, they can be sued if they intended to cause that person anxiety or fear. The fear requirement is not limited to just fear of bodily harm, but could also be applied to fear of being fired and the anxiety associated with it. Such legislation endangers common forms of political and consumer advocacy. There is also a danger of people being accused of intentionally causing unintended emotional distress just because they were aware that such distress was a possibility, but not necessarily an intended result (ex: collateral damage https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collateral_damage). We also believe that the following applies: "First Amendment means that government has no power to restrict expression because of its message, its ideas, its subject matter, or its content" United States v. Stevens 130 S.Ct. 1577, 1584
Under Oregon law "No judge of a circuit court shall sit to hear or try any suit, action, matter or proceeding when it is established, as provided in ORS 14.250 (Disqualification of judge) to 14.270 (Time of making motion for change of judge in certain circumstances), that any party or attorney believes that such party or attorney cannot have a fair and impartial trial or hearing before such judge." (see ORS 14.250 https://oregon.public.law/statutes/ors_14.260). We believe that defendants in a doxxing trial cannot receive a fair trial before a judge whose home address has been posted online on a website under the circumstances.
We hope that Judge Wiles will have the good judgment to recuse himself from this case to avoid any possible appearance of bias. Letting a judge whose home address has been posted online preside over a doxxing lawsuit is like having a rape survivor preside over a rape case. Judge Wiles will likely remember what happened to his wife and even if he tries his best not to let it influence his decisions, his subconscious likely lacks such discipline. At worst we fear that Judge Wiles might make a point of staying on this case so that he can make an example out of someone before the law is overturned. We hope that the defendants file a motion for declaratory relief in federal court as soon as possible so that their fate is not left in the hands of any state judge let alone this one.