The Unconstitutionality of International Megan’s Law for Sex Offenders

Dear Members and Advocates,

Last Week, a Federal Judge in the Central District of California dismissed a challenge to the International Megan’s Law (IML). In a 17 page opinion (which can be read here), comprised of mostly history of the law, the Court found that the complaint brought by the Alliance for Constitutional Sex Offense Laws (ACSOL) should be dismissed without leave to amend. A particularly harsh and foreclosing ruling on the case. Janice Bellucci, attorney for ACSOL, indicated she would consider appealing the decision.

The lawsuit challenged the implementation of IML from a procedural perspective, specifically, ACSOL argued that the government violated the Administrative Procedure Act (“APA”) by issuing the rules without going through the notice and comment procedures required for agency rulemaking, and that the government exceeded its authority when it determined that it would not issue passport cards to covered sex offenders. Essentially, that the government did not go through the proper steps before unilaterally deciding how to implement IML and deciding to take steps they were not authorized by the legislature to take. The argument didn’t persuade the Judge.

The loss is disappointing, but by no means the end of the road. IML can still be challenged on Constitutional and other grounds and now that this avenue has been foreclosed, undoubtedly those involved will shift gears to other strategies.

For those who travel internationally, the IML is devastating. First, it requires people to provide twenty-one days advance, in person, notification of international travel. That’s three weeks!!! For someone doing business internationally, can you imagine having to tell a prospective client that you’d love to meet with them but the soonest you can would be in three weeks!?!? Or how about someone with families living outside the US? They will miss family events or the opportunity to rush to a dying family member’s bedside.

The requirement that registrants give three-weeks’ notice is just one horrible aspect of IML, but the most heinous element is what our government does with that information. The government then sends a “green notice” to the country you are travelling to, warning them that you are coming! Even if you’ve never been involved in sex trafficking, human smuggling or even had a direct victim, they send a notice as if the purpose of your trip is to kidnap and sex traffic their children! Good luck seeing your family or attending to your business when they get that notice!

IML, however, does not stop there. The government has already blocked your ability to travel to several countries because of this notification process, but that’s still not satisfactory to them. For those countries who may still allow you in, the US wants to make sure that your stay is as uncomfortable and dangerous as possible by stamping registrant’s passports with a notification that the holder is a “child sex offender”. When you travel abroad, often passports are used as identification or required to check into hotels. Registrants and the family members they travel with, will be subject to harassment and potentially even physical harm because of this brand on their passport. The only regimes to brand identifying marks on their citizens passports were the Nazis and former Soviet Union.

For those who don’t travel internationally, the IML is still devastating. If you don’t travel outside the US and don’t think you need to worry about IML you’re wrong. Very wrong! Many of us are descendants from immigrants. Ancestors who left their birth country to escape political or religious persecution or to make a better life for their children. The writer is a descendant of holocaust survivors whose family escaped and came here. I never understood how things can become so bad in your own country, that you would leave an entire life and all your possessions behind and flee… until this registry!

If you think a country closing off it’s borders to prevent people from leaving so they can remain in persecution is something that only happens in communist or authoritarian countries, you are wrong. Australia, just last year, enacted legislation preventing sex offenders from leaving the country! If you think the holocaust can never happen again, you are also wrong. Presently, one-half of Syria’s pre-war population (11 million people) have been killed or forced to flee! Almost every year, states and the federal government pass new, harsher laws impacting the lives of persons required to register and their families. If things become so unbearable that you can’t earn a living or even parent your own children – and they might be that bad already – you will want the option to flee this country and pursue a better life for your family elsewhere.

Fighting IML is something that’s critically important to all of us. It’s a fight we won’t give up.

Sincerely,

The Florida Action Committee

SOME HEADLINES FROM THIS WEEK

PA: 5 years for missed re-registration date goes back for resentencing

A Pennsylvania man who received a five to 10 year prison sentence for being three weeks late for a registration, will get a re sentencing. The 45 year old man was required to register because of a 2004 conviction in Maryland. He registered in Maryland for years and…

Courts deemed Michigan’s sex offender registry unconstitutional. Two years later, nothing’s changed

The American Civil Liberties Union is challenging the state of Michigan over its handling of the state’s sex offender registry. In 2016, the 6th Circuit Court ruled that aspects of Michigan’s Sex Offender Registry Act, SORA, were unconstitutional. The court’s opinion…

Bad Decision out of the 7th Circuit

On Wednesday, the US Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit handed down a horrible decision affirming a lower court’s decision that effectively allowed a city to evict people required to register, from their homes. In Vasquez v. Foxx, 17-1061 (7th Cir. 2018) two men…

FDLE Responds to FAC’s Request for Clarification

The FDLE has responded to our inquiry from May as to (a) what happens in emergency situations or when a registration office is not open, and (b) what is the definition of the term ‘day’, as it relates to the revision in the statute that requires IN PERSON notification…