In U.S. v. Wang, Judge Ted Stewart of the District of Utah imposed a probation condition requiring the defendant to notify any intimate partners that she has been convicted of cyberstalking and poses a risk of stalking and harassment to intimate partners. The defendant had objected that the condition was vague, so the judge replaced it with that explicit formulation, finding it necessary to protect the public given her history of cyberstalking and her relationships with past victims.
The case stems from Wang's conviction for cyberstalking two men she met on online dating platforms. According to the Justice Department, she used multiple accounts and fake names to harass and disparage the victims publicly and privately, and filed false complaints with the federal Internet Crimes Complaint Center to get law enforcement to investigate them. She also had a prior stalking conviction in New York from 2013.
Writing about the order, Reason's Eugene Volokh noted that similar notification conditions are sometimes imposed on sex offenders, but this appears to be the first time he has seen one applied to a stalker. He also observed that after a criminal conviction, courts evaluate probation conditions restricting or compelling speech under a more government-friendly standard than they would otherwise.