At least everyone who cares about this knows that Anthony Caputo, the one time New Brunswick police director, lived in Cape May.

That was the point, no?

The legal saga enveloping this case, which was ended this week by the state Supreme Court, began about two years ago when Charlie Kratovil, who edits an online news site, New Brunswick Today, discovered that Caputo resided about two hours from his place of business, the city of New Brunswick.This was a big deal. If a man lives two hours from his job, is he really doing it?

How did he know that? The editor was given Caputo's voting records, which had his Cape May address, through a public records request. All this was very much what reporters do during the regular course of business.

Kratovil sought comment from city officials about Caputo's residence, and that's when things got interesting.

The editor said he got what he termed a threatening letter from the city informing him that the publication of Caputo's address would violate the law,  or specifically, Daniel's Law.

This measure allows judges and law enforcement personnel to keep their home addresses confidential. It came about after a man invaded the home of a judge in 2020, killing her son.

Kratovil went to court, claiming the threatening letter violated his rights as a journalist.

During the various court hearings that ensued, there was general agreement that Kratovil could write that Caputo lived in Cape May and not mention the actual address.

This is really how things work. Reporters for years have been identifying people by hometown, not their actual street address.

But Kratovil and his lawyer were making a larger First Amendment point. Kratovil lawfully obtained Caputo's address from a government office. Why can't he print it?

That point did not pass muster with the Superior Court, the Appellate Division and most recently, the Supreme Court.

In a ruling on Tuesday, the court reiterated that Kratovil could publish Caputo's hometown, but not his street address.

In response, ACLU attorney Alexander Shalom, who represented Kratovil, said in a statement:

“In this case, the Court agreed that the information, which Daniel’s Law would otherwise prohibit publishing, concerned a matter of public significance and was lawfully obtained. When the government provides information to the media, the U.S. Supreme Court instructs courts to assume that the government should use other tools to guard against the dissemination of that information and not take the extreme step of punishing truthful speech.

We are disappointed that the New Jersey Supreme Court did not follow this precedent when considering the right of our public officials to be protected from violence in their homes, the right of journalists to publish information of public concern, and the right of the public to receive that important information.”

In an era when traditional newspapers have just about given up the fight for journalism access, it is comforting that Kratovil took this to the state's highest court.

And as noted, he has established that the then-police director in New Brunswick lived - at least for a time - two hours away in Cape May.