Articles

The American Data Privacy and Protections Act is being considered in Congress.  Florida Action Committee wants to make sure that our members are aware of what it entails. This bill would allow individuals (no excluded groups) to force companies to delete information about them. As stated by Kevin Metcalf, opinion contributor for The Hill – 03/02/23, “The reality is that

The Illinois Supreme Court ruled this week that it is unconstitutional to ban people on the sex offense registry from social media sites, such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and LinkedIn.  The argument was that the ban was a violation of the U.S. Constitution’s First Amendment – fundamental right to free speech.  (The State Journal-Register) Fortunately, the Illinois Supreme Court realized

According to The Associated Press, 2023, “Restoring the voting rights of former felons drew national attention after Florida lawmakers weakened a voter-approved constitutional amendment and after a new election police unit championed by Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis arrested 20 former felons.  Several of them said they were confused by the arrests because they had been allowed to register to vote.”

Minnesota is now the 25th state to restore voting rights to all people with a past felony who have completed their term of incarceration.  The dominoes keep falling.  Florida will eventually be forced to follow suit or be even more of a social outcast from other states than it is now. Peter Charalambous with ABC News reported that “the passage

A Hillsborough County man who has a past sex offense was the first person in Florida to face trial on charges of voter fraud.  The jury came up with a split verdict:  guilty of false affirmation, but not guilty of voting as an unqualified elector. The false information:  Potential voters must swear, under penalty of perjury, that they are not

Some people forced to register who committed their crimes out of state could petition to get off the South Dakota state sex offense list under a bill passed Friday by the House Judiciary Committee.  The bill would allow an individual taken off an out-of-state sex offender list to petition to be removed from the South Dakota sex offense registry. We

A child being raped could easily be seen by most of society as the most heinous of all crimes.  Does it deserve the death penalty?  Florida Action Committee does not take a stand on this issue, but there are some facts to consider. Separate bills in both the house and senate have been filed that would eliminate the requirement for

The Chicago Sun Times, along with other media sites, are weighing in on the damage that Justice Kennedy caused in 2003 to hundreds of thousands of people forced to register.  The myth (the recidivism rates for people on the registry is frightening and high, possibly as high as 80%), has resulted in every state making policies NOT based on research.

This Sunday marks the 20th anniversary of Smith v. Doe, a Supreme Court decision that said Alaska’s sex offense registry was preventive, not punitive. Justice Anthony Kennedy said that the registry made sense as a public safety measure.  He also said “the risk of recidivism passed by ‘sex offenders” is ‘frightening and high,’ as high as 80%”.  Justice Kennedy’s opinion

According to an editorial/opinion piece in the Miami Herald, a Florida man “diagnosed with years of untreated schizophrenia, is fighting a de facto life sentence for possession of CP – a far greater sentence than is typical for his crimes.” The plea deal was for three years, but probably because of his mental instability, he chose to go to trial,