SCOTUS Legislation Update on Sex Offender Cases
Weekly Update 2017-07-19
Dear Members and Advocates,
When a court decision is entered, it’s sometimes hard to predict how far-reaching its impact will extend. Case in point; the Supreme Court’s decision in Packingham, which ruled that a State can’t block registrants from social media.
As an organization that advocates for registrants and one that happens to be involved in an Internet identifier challenge, we monitor the influence Packingham has on the courts and in policy making. You can imagine our surprise to find Packingham being used in a case where President Trump is blocking people from his Twitter account! It’s true; a group of individuals sued the President because after they spoke out against things he “tweeted”, he blocked them. In that case, it points out that the Supreme Court Justices just ruled that social media is tantamount to the modern-day public square where people used to speak out – and blocking people from the public square is clearly unconstitutional.
Applying that same line of argument… what about the constitutionality of literally blocking people from the public square? More specifically; banning registrants from parks. If public parks have historically been considered the “public square” than how can a municipality order that anyone deemed a “sex offender” be banned from a park forever and without exception, without violating that individual’s right to free speech and association?
In Hague v. Committee for Industrial Organization, 307 U.S. 496 (1939) the Supreme Court ruled against the Mayor of Jersey City, NJ, who sought to ban the CIO (a labor organization) from meeting in public places through a City ordinance. The Mayor claimed the ban was to prevent the spread of communist propaganda, as he considered the CIO to be communists. The Supreme Court voided the City ordinances, holding that they violated the First Amendment right to freedom of assembly. It would be interesting to see how today’s Supreme Court feels about ordinances designed to ban a disfavored group from public places (think proximity ordinances or park bans).
In NAACP v. Alabama, 357 US 449 (1958) the Supreme Court ruled against the State of Alabama, which sought to require the civil rights group disclose their membership list. In an interesting opinion by Justice Harlan, he said, “[t]his Court has recognized the vital relationship between freedom to associate and privacy in one’s associations. Compelled disclosure of membership in an organization engaged in advocacy of particular beliefs is of the same order. Inviolability of privacy in group association may in many circumstances be indispensable to preservation of freedom of association, particularly where a group espouses dissident beliefs.” It would be interesting to see how today’s Supreme Court feels about ordinances designed to require a disfavored group to identify their public speech online (think registration of internet identifiers and where they are used).
The point of all this being; as the courts are taking a deeper look into the constitutionality of sex offender laws, we need to think beyond the surface and outside the box. Since this area of law is so new, cases like Packingham are few and far between. However, cases which upheld the First and Fourteenth Amendment rights of disfavored groups throughout history are plentiful.
Sincerely,
The Florida Action Committee
SOME HEADLINES FROM THIS WEEK
Legal Update – What’s going on with the Ex-Post-Facto Suit?
Earlier this year, thanks to the contributions of many of our members, we hit our fundraising goal to initiate a lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of the sex offender registration requirements on ex-post-facto grounds. Many have reached out to FAC or posted…
Note: The McGuire case is in the 11th Circuit, which is the same Federal Appellate Circuit as Florida. A decision in this case will be binding precedent for Florida. It is an important case to follow. The below article will give you some background. ______ A lawsuit…
Many have been asking about the status of the SORR (Sex Offender Residency Restriction) Challenge which was recently reversed (in our favor) in the 11th Circuit (Federal Appellate Court). Trial in this case is scheduled for the two-week period commencing Monday,…
Canada blocks extradition of accused sex offender because of civil commitment
Nova Scotia’s highest court is ordering Canada’s justice minister to take another look at her decision to allow the extradition of a Nova Scotia man accused of sex crimes in Minnesota. Robert Charles Carroll is facing charges involving a teenage girl he knew when he…
But they are blocked from social media, just through the back door. To get around this ruling, Florida makes them put their profiles on a publicly searchable database, so anyone on FB can simply search their ID, let FB now, and it’s FB’s policy to ban them. The crux of all the unconstitutional consequences that come from registering is that the registry is made public; not that it exists. While initially the registry was supposed to be for no reason but to inform; People, and even legislatures (oddly enough), have evolved into using that registry to make life miserable for those on it, perhaps most markedly by making it almost impossible to find a decent place to live, especially when such place needs to be near family, work, or other commitments. Simply put, both the public and legislatures have been irresponsible in the information that was made available to them for no other reason than to notify. This leaves only two constitutionally effective scenarios: Either the US S. Ct. must deem the registry being public as unconstitutional, under the precedent of inevitable unconstitutionality, or allow it to be public, and provide anti-discrimination protections that prevent the public and legislatures from dishing out, what is clearly, inevitable punishment, on a whole plethora of levels (housing/occupation/parenting/college/voting/rehabilitation, etc.). A third option could allow limited additional public notification and/or repercussion potential, if on the basis of being both an actual pedophile, and either likely to reoffend or unresponsive to treatment, but that should be the farthest it should ever go. There simply is no evidence to justify the ludicrousness of these enormous punishments to people’s lives, most of which either don’t have pedophilia or increased risk tendencies, and the vast majority of which are trying to actually rehabilitate their lives, the very thing all these punishments fly in the face of.