• by Ray Schultz , March 12, 2025

North Dakota is mulling a law that would allow public notices to be publish online — with one difference from proposed laws in other states.  

“Unless otherwise provided by law, a notice required by law which is filed and posted by the secretary of state fulfills publication requirements if a newspaper fails to publish the notice required by law,” the bill, SB 2069, states. 

This does not seem to deliberately exclude news publications, but to ensure that notices will appear if the newspapers are unable to publish. 

This could cover a variety of possible situations, like the cyber attack suffered last month by Lee Enterprises or the closing of newspapers -- either in print or in their entirety -- by publishers.

Last year, the city of Wichita, Kansas moved legal notices from the Wichita Eagle, which had that plum worth $132,000 per year, to its own website. 

But a bill in New Jersey states that public notices and legal advertisements can appear in certain newspapers “without regard to format,” meaning the notices could be posted on publishers’ web sites.