NE: Can an association restrict persons required to register as sex offenders?
A Nebraska Judge will soon decide whether a homeowners association can restrict someone registered as a sex offender from its community.
The Wildwood Estates Homeowners Association in Gage County, Nebraska, is seeking a temporary injunction to remove a registered sex offender from residing in its part of town. The association is arguing that it’s restrictive covenants specifically exclude people required to register from living in the community and courts have upheld unambiguous covenants in homeowners docs. Attorneys for the man argue that political subdivisions, and only political subdivisions, could create restrictions on where certain people could live, not associations and that the association is more akin to a membership and the association can’t prevent a class of people from being members.
The judge has taken the matter under advisement and will render a decision.
I don’t understand how a group of private citizens can determine where a man can or cannot live. If the law says he/she can live there, then an uppity HOA should have no say what so ever.
I lived in a mobile home community in Michigan for 8 years and the mobile home community changed the rules that if you are a registered sex offender you may not live in the community. After 8 years i was forced to move. Just not right.
This concerns me personally. Where I live they are trying to form an association so they can force me out. I explained to them two things.
First, I have lived here for the past 20 years, before all but two other residents even lived here.
Secondly, an association that was formed after residents bought, has many times been ruled that you cannot force someone to join an association ex post facto.
As for now, until they get a decision, they are using the power of Next door to harass me and my family. Yesterday I found several bags of dog doo in the driveway. Camera revealed who it was and police were called. They talked to the lady and she said ” OH, I sat them down for a second and forget them”.
If this gets passed, every single neighborhood in America will use it to block people on the registry from living there. When I first got released, I lived in an apartment, the registry then was very limited. After a few years I tried to move into a better apartment and was told by ALL of the places that I applied that I was not welcome there. The reason I was moving, the old apartments got tired of the police coming around to check on me randomly so they did not renew my lease.
Part 2
Oh I forgot to add, NONE of this is punishment of course, just business as usual, nothing to see here folks.
When they burn us all at the stake like the witch trials, I guess that will not be punishment either. Almost, every time I call the police for vandalism or harassment I get told ” you should have thought about that before you committed a sex crime.
I wonder, when an ex murderer, robber or car jacker calls the police to say someone threw a rock at their window, do the cops say ” you should have thought of that before you killed, etc someone”?
I completely understand and empathisize with the problems you are facing around the HOA taking this to the extremes…
I got out ahead of this in my community by actually getting on the board of the HOA. Of course I didn’t have to or need to disclose to join and most HOA boards are desperate for people to sit on the board.
By the time my offense came to light I had people standing up and absolutely defending me to be on the board and even had neighbors go as far as insisting that I never move.
I completely understand I’m one of the few fortunate folks out there.
But the Registry is NOT Punishment!?!?!?!?.
Just to add to the subject.
A black man in Texas City near Houston is suing the city for onep million dollars for leading him down a street on a rope with the Officer on horseback. He says they did it to humiliate him and he was being treated like a slave. I agree. But also is that not also the same reason for the registry? It’s only purpose is to humiliate and to mark as those they feel are sub human by publicly humiliating them and causing them to be public outcasts. They try to say it’s to protect the children but that idea has been 100% proven false.
If he wins the suet which he probably will would that not also open another door to challenge the registry and it’s purpose as being similar?
I’ve always hated HOAs. Exactly what gives them the right to dictate to people how often they cut their grass, what color they can paint their house, or any other thing a person wants to do with their own house?
…And you pay them for this privilege 🤣
What gives them the right is that they are a legal entity/requirement that people sign legal contracts to participate in. If a person does not want to be subject to an HOA, then he/she should not sign a contract for it. If a person wants to live in a nice neighborhood that others cannot trash, then it’s a good option. Also, HOAs are set to require anything from very, very little all the way up to things like you described (how often to cut grass). You should only buy into what you want (but you have to be careful if/how that can be amended over the years). I’ve lived in very nice neighborhoods and definitely wanted an HOA. These days I prefer a lot more land with no close neighbors or HOA.
Having said all that, it is truly disgusting and immoral that our truly disgusting, immoral, out-of-control governments keep lists of people that others can use for idiotic, immoral harassment. THAT is the real problem.
This is a bad precedent.
At what point does ”substantive due process” take effect. Its crazy this ”civil” legislative law doesn’t infringe on due process yet? If SOR isn’t a form of probation then what is?
I read this about the same time I read another article by Lenore Skenazy (the “Free Range Children” woman), regarding the Colorado child abuse registry. Yes, there are such lists! Entry onto that list only requires an administrative finding by a caseworker, not a judicial action.
A father left his 3-year old sleeping unattended in a child car seat for 20 minutes on a 40 degree day, and police were called. Even though the man was allowed to leave with the child (no state law was broken nor was the child endangered), a caseworker subsequently filed a “finding” that placed him on the registry.
The couple hired an attorney to get the man’s name expunged from the registry only to find that the husband’s name was still on the list but merely flagged as “expunged.” An adoption agency refused an adoption but kept their $15,000 deposit.
SO registries are not the only scarlet letters created from society’s insane moral panic. I presume an HOA could use that list to exclude undesirables as well. I keep waiting for some common sense to mitigate our ever-increasing official and unofficial police state. “Hope springs eternal in the human breast.”
Veritas.
Ed
Some places also have Animal abuse registries. They are usually not made public but used only by places that would sell or adopt out a pet to keep bad people from gaining custody of more pets to abuse.
This will establish a bad precedent. I don’t really see how HOAs wouldn’t have a right to ban all felons from living there, let alone all sex offenders.
The issue is, will it be applied Ex post facto. How can you kick someone out of a house they own and have lived in for 30 years?
I am having that issue with them trying to form an HOA. I told them I moved here because there was not one and you do what you want but I am not joining and will see you in court. ( A lawyer I spoke to said if you sue them early, you can drain all their funds for forming the association )
I wish I had of done that, I moved , having no funds to sue at the time. Good luck.
After one has been in the system for a few years, it becomes increasingly apparent, this noose only tightens. If at all possible, move out of the city, into the country and live in peace. There’s way worse things on the horizon to be concerned about than power grubbers and foolish liberals. Once the SHTF, and it’s going to hit the fan soon, it’s everyone for themselves. Personally I’m ready for the coming revolution. Stop worrying about power grubbers and paranoid masses…There are basic needs. Food, water and shelter. Worrying about power grubbers and foolish liberals is a waste of time…