The case challenges the federal SORNA law that requires individuals who had been released from their registering duties in one state to resume registering upon relocating to another state. Currently, in cases where an individual has completed his/her registering period or where the courts have ruled that state’s registry law to be unconstitutional, the individual can be placed back on the sex offender registry in a different state after moving or visiting and could face severe retributions if they fail to report the change.

On October 1st, 2019, United States District Judge Gershwin A. Drain granted the U.S. Attorney General’s motion to dismiss the case, citing the plaintiff’s failure to identify the specific statutory language he is challenging and several arguments that were undercut in previous court rulings. An appeal was promptly filed to the 6th Circuit Court in November 2019.

This story is a reprint from the NARSOL website

Emboldened by a recent decision of the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals that set aside similar amendments and enhancements imposed by the state of Michigan, NARSOL and NCRSOL are joined by individual plaintiffs who seek to set aside legislative enactments since 2006 that have incrementally expanded the scope of restrictions imposed upon citizens required to register as sex offenders.

For more than a decade, the North Carolina Legislature has continued to add increasingly burdensome restrictions on its registrant population as evidenced by its recent passage of a revised premises statute (§ 14-208.18) even despite significant push back from the federal courts.

Such restrictions include prohibitions on where registrants may live and work, go to school, dine, recreate, attend sporting events, or even worship. Registered sex offenders are forbidden to change their names, access a wide variety of social media websites, and are generally restricted from being within 300 feet of any location where children frequently congregate including libraries, shopping malls, and many restaurants.

“The time has come to confront these laws more aggressively. They simply do not protect the public. The research is clear that laws such as North Carolina’s actually increase the danger to the public by preventing people from effectively reintegrating into society. At the same time, too many people are being denied basic constitutional rights under the guise of public safety. Nobody disputes the state’s compelling interest in protecting children and adults from sexual abuse. But no American citizen should have to give up fundamental, guaranteed, First Amendment freedoms in the name of a policy that simply doesn’t work,” said Robin Vanderwall, president of NCRSOL.

Paul Dubbeling, a Chapel Hill attorney who was successful in a previous challenge to the state’s defunct premises statute, filed the new complaint in federal district court on Monday. When asked about this new suit, Dubbeling stated: “This is ultimately about public safety. The North Carolina registry law simply fails to actually protect the public while at the same time unnecessarily denying basic constitutional rights to tens of thousands of citizens. To protect both the public and the Constitution, we need to return the power to decide who is dangerous and who isn’t to those best able to judge – the judges themselves.”