RALEIGH, N.C. (WNCN) —The North Carolina chapter of Reform Sex Offender Laws (RSOL) is speaking out against the new law banning registered sex offenders from attending the North Carolina State Fair. The State Fair is now underway and will run through Oct. 23.

The group said in a press release that “For the first time since 1891, thousands of North Carolina citizens and taxpayers are legally prohibited from attending the annual State Fair.”

The group compared the sex offender ban to when African-Americans were banned from the fair up until the early twentieth century. The group said the fair was not fully integrated until 1965 with the creation of “Colored days.”

NCRSOL believes that the premises statute (N.C.G.S. § 14-208.18) passed by the North Carolina General Assembly is a violation of sex offenders’ civil rights.

Sen. Buck Newton (R-Wilson) introduced the bill to ban sex offenders who have been identified as threats to children from places like arcades, parks and swimming pools.

Gov. Pat McCrory signed “Jessica’s Law” on July 21.

The law is named after Jessica Lunsford. She was from Gastonia, but moved to Florida, where she was abducted and murdered by a registered sex offender in 2005.

“Jessica’s Law” is more specific, and outlines restrictions for registered sex offenders whose victims were under 18.

“The bill clarifies that certain sex offenders are prohibited from any place where minors frequently congregate. Including, libraries, arcades, amusement parks, recreational parks, and swimming pools,” McCrory said at the time.

The state had a similar law passed in 2009, but that law that also banned sex offenders from places children gather was ruled unconstitutionally broad by a federal court in April. The state appealed the ruling.

Newton said at the time of the appeal that the state would maintain the 2009 law if the appeal is successful.

The group said that the law bans “registered sex offenders who have served their criminal sentences and fulfilled all their probation or post-release supervision obligations.”

The new law “simply goes too far. It’s egregious and outrageous. It’s overkill,” said Robin Vanderwall, president of NCRSOL. “[Officials] know full well that there is not, and never has been, a problem with registered sex offenders attending the State Fair.”

Source: http://wncn.com/2016/10/13/sex-offender-law-reform-group-calls-ban-on-registered-offenders-at-nc-state-fair-outrageous/

The decision is an especially important one, possibly signaling, in Mark Stern’s words over on Slate, that “the judiciary has finally begun to view draconian sex offender laws as the unconstitutional monstrosities they obviously are.”

Here’s the case, in a nutshell. The Michigan SORA is typical of the schemes in place in all of the 50 states. Beginning in the mid-’90s, states (with federal encouragement and financial assistance) began requiring all those who had been convicted at any point in the past of having committed a “sex offense” — typically defined, as in the federal statute (42 USC 16911), as “a criminal offense that has an element involving a sexual act or sexual contact with another”** — to provide a wide range of identifying information (names, addresses, places of employment, schools being attended, vehicle make and model, etc.) to law enforcement officials. This information was then placed in state-operated, publicly accessible sex offender registry databases.

** Definitions of the “sex offenses” that require registration vary state by state. While a number of truly heinous and deplorable crimes — rape, assault, child molestation — are included, so too, as detailed in a survey by Human Rights Watch, are many lesser crimes, such as soliciting or providing adult prostitution services (five states), public urination (13 states), consensual sex between teenagers (29 states) and exposing genitals in public (32 states).

Several of these early SORAs were challenged on ex post facto grounds, on the theory that the registration and public notification schemes imposed additional punishment retroactively, i.e., on individuals whose crimes had been committed, and who had been convicted, before the SORA legislation had taken effect (and, indeed, on individuals who had completed serving whatever period of punishment and probation or parole had been imposed upon them, and who therefore, at least in theory, possessed the same constitutional rights as you or me).

The Supreme Court, however, disagreed. In Smith v. Doe, 538 US 84 (1999), the Court held that the registration and public notification provisions of Alaska’s SORA didn’t constitute ex post facto imposition of punishment because they were not “punitive,” but rather “regulatory”: “clearly intended as a civil, non-punitive means of identifying previous offenders for the protection of the public.” The “stigma and adverse community reactions” that could result from registration did not render the Act punitive because “the dissemination of the registration information, which was largely a matter of public record, did not constitute the imposition of any significant affirmative disability or restraint.”

Please see David’s full analysis at The Volokh Conspiracy in the Washington Post.

North Carolina’s previous sex offender law was a constitutional monstrosity that essentially gave prosecutors—as well as law enforcement and probation officers—the power to punish offenders who dared to leave their house. Under the statute, offenders could not be present in any place used by children. Its hazy, sweeping regulations were interpreted to forbid former offenders from attending G-rated movies, eating at fast food restaurants with attached play areas, walking in or near recreational facilities, and going to church. Former offenders were also barred from visiting hospitals, museums, malls, shopping centers, and community colleges, because children might be present. (Bizarrely, the law applied to offenders whose crimes did not involve minors.)

A federal judge struck down most of the previous law, holding that it was unconstitutionally vague and overbroad in violation of the First Amendment. So North Carolina simply re-enacted it it with several tweaks. The new version explicitly lists the kind of places where sex offenders may not go and limits its application to offenders whose crimes involved minors. While the old law barred offenders from “any place where minors gather for regularly scheduled educational, recreational or social programs,” the new one bars them from places where minors “frequently congregate”—including libraries, amusements parks, recreational facilities, and swimming pools. Moreover, the most stringent new provisions apply only to offenders whose crimes involved minors, and only bar offenders from no-go zones when minors are actually present.

Please continue reading on Slate.