People who fear for their safety, such as those attempting to escape domestic violence, sexual assault, harassment, or stalking, often establish new addresses in order to prevent their assailants or probable assailants from finding them.
The Safe at Home program is a statewide address confidentiality program for these people. The program assigns participants a P.O. Box to use as their legal address and also spells out how state and local agencies must respond to data requests on people in the program without disclosing their location.
A new law makes various administrative and clarifying changes to the program, which is administered by the Secretary of State, and to section 13.045 of the Government Data Practices Act, which classifies as private most identity and location data about participants in the program.
Some of the changes include:
• clarifying the requirement that a landlord cannot display a participant’s name at an address rented by the participant;
• clarifying what information cannot be disclosed after a participant has notified a person about his or her participation in the Safe at Home program; and
• expanding the definition of “real property records” that are prohibited from disclosure.
Rep. Jamie Becker-Finn (DFL-Roseville) and Sen. Karla Bigham (DFL-Cottage Grove) sponsor the law, which takes effect Aug. 1, 2022.
HF3249*/SF3087/CH83