Great News! Ex Post Facto II moves forward
Ex Post Facto II will move forward!!!
The below Order just came down from the Northern District of Florida. It says it’s partially granting the defendant’s motion to dismiss (which sounds like it’s bad), but that means that other parts of the motion to dismiss were denied and the case will move forward. The court has set a scheduling order, with a trial date set for January 17, 2023.
The main issue that the court will proceed forward on is the three-day travel requirement, which the Court agreed was absurd. This is also great news as the legislature is currently trying to reduce that even further to three “parts of a day” or 24 hours for vacation rentals!
Separately, the Court denied the Plaintiff’s motion to proceed anonymously, so unfortunately she will not be able to proceed under the Jane Doe pseudonym. We need to do our best to encourage and protect this brave individual who is fighting for all of us.
We will do a more comprehensive analysis of the Order short, but in the interest of time wanted to share it with you quickly.
I have a friend who has residences in both Michigan and Florida, and who is also on the registry in both states. As a lifelong fisherman, I have always wanted to visit Florida, but I won’t visit my friend there because of Florida’s onerous sex offender law. It’s obvious that the state continues to make changes in the law simply as a trap to ensnare more people and expose them to more public shaming. There is no evidence that their registry law has made anyone safer, but much evidence of the harm it does to registrants and their families. It does make a lot of money though for the conmen and women who get rich lobbying for the continued persecution of people who are just trying to get on with their lives. I noticed that the plaintiff in the case had been convicted of having sex with a 16 year old. Legislators know full well that a very large percentage of teens do NOT wait until they are 18 to have sex. Many of those same legislators were sexually active before they reached 18. But politicians obviously no longer believe that lies and hypocrisy are sins in any religion.
I read the order and I unfortunately do not share FAC’s enthusiasm. All of the claims were dismissed except for the 3-day temporary residence provision. Everything else, including the 48-hour deadlines for reporting internet identifiers, vehicles owned, employment addresses, telephone numbers, etc., as well as the lifetime registration requirement, were summarily upheld, again with cursory citation to Smith v. Doe. I guess rolling things back to 5 days instead of 3 would be a very small victory, marginally better than nothing, but the Court said that all registration components except the 3-day travel requirement are constitutional. That’s a 90% loss and a 10% possible future victory.
āAll claims were dismissed except for 3-day residence provisionā is not correct.
The 3-day residence provision is not even claim. Itās just a provision of the law. Other provisions also remain vulnerable to this challenge, particularly those passed since the 2005 opinion cited in the ruling. The 3-day provision was the courtās example of a provision that might not pass the rational basis test.
Those with a law background are of course free to correct me if Iām misinterpreting.
What has been the experience of our Brevard petitioners with respect to proceeding with their suit non-anonymously? Do they live with their family members, and has the Brevard suit affected them at all?
Overall, is there any advice that the Brevard petitioners would give this petitioner wrt proceeding non-anonymously, pros and cons?
I’m not following… this is not the Brevard case.
What advice do Brevard petitioners have here for Ms Doe, wrt proceeding in her own name? She has a personal decision to make.
Not to be a naysayer but I thought the main purpose of the Ex post Facto lawsuit was the retro active application of the registry? Was that what got thrown out, if so then the rest is pretty much moot.
And the fact that they cannot remain anonymous is why many of us haven’t been the plaintiffs in these types of cases. They are using this as a scare tactic and it works. Oy Vey! š
I will pray for the best and expect the worst.
CherokeeJack
Being anonymous isnāt the issue for me, but itās the vengeance from the Florida government including FDLE if you win. I think they make it tough for people not to bring lawsuits and find anything to get a case dismissed or the decision watered down. Florida doesnāt like being a loser; yet itās fine with being an embarrassment. Every time a weird story comes out guess where it happens? Starts with a F and ends in duh.
Brandon
In fact, to your point, there is even a book that was published called Weird Florida. I have never read it because we basically LIVE the weird Florida so why do I need to read about it.
CherokeeJack
I have that book and I laugh every time I read it. Did you know itās illegal to molest an alligator in Florida? I would assume thatās common sense, unless you want a missing limb or face the jaws of death.
Brandon
You are on to me, that is how I got on the registry. If the gator would have just kept quiet and let me make some boots out of it , everyone would have called me Gator Jack.
This does seem to be good news. Does it mean the Court is recognizing that the registry is punitive/punishment for an ex post facto challenge?
“Challenges to the new provisions are not foreclosed by decisions that did not address them.”
Hot Damn!!! The judge says (in part)
“…There is no obvious rational, nonpunitive purpose for requiring an in-person
report of a three-day trip, let alone three one-day trips. The most obvious purposes
for such a requirement are punishment and discouraging sex offenders from
traveling at all.”
Judge is very smart. Same on in The Delgado case who clarified what social media is. Also with this being allowed to go forward is there a way to get an injunction against enforcing the points being allowed to proceed. The Judge uses Doe Alaska case but does fail to point out that SCOTUS refusal in Doe v Snyder and Muniz 1 which basically found the registry to ex post facto. In my opinion SCOTUS also opened the door for lack of jurisdiction by the doj to make SORNA Retroactive when they said the Executive branch lacked authority to force the vaccine mandate
The Alaska case is binding precedent. Does v Snyder is not, except in a different circuit.
Yes but my point is that you can infer that SCOTUS not taking the case that they felt there was nothing to review and the Sixth got it right. Which would and does contradict the controlling Does original case. The Supremes simply kicked the can