As part of the settlement, the county agreed to pay damages of $2,500 each to the plaintiffs ― sex offenders Charles Munsey Jr., Vincent Rinaldi and Charles Violi ― plus pay $150,000 for plaintiffs’ attorney fees.

The lawsuit filed in January 2022 in U.S. District Court was triggered by a 2006 Brevard County ordinance that, with some exceptions, prohibits people on the sex offender registry from being within 1,000 feet of a school, day care center, park or playground. Violators are subject to up to 60 days in jail and up to a $500 fine.

Because the Brevard County Government Center in Viera is within 1,000 feet of a school — and the ordinance had no exceptions for attending public meetings — sex offenders were prohibited from attending County Commission meetings.

Legal action filed: 3 Brevard County registered sex offenders file federal lawsuit against county

The lawsuit alleged that, because of this, the county violated the First Amendment and Florida’s Government in the Sunshine Law.

After the lawsuit was filed, the County Commission changed the rule to allow an exception for attending commission meetings. But the lawsuit continued, until the plaintiffs and the county agreed to the settlement.

Appearing before commission: Registered sex offenders address county commission after rule changed to allow them

In commenting on the settlement, the plaintiffs’ lead attorney in the case, Ray Taseff of the Florida Justice Institute, said: “We’re happy that the Brevard County government is now truly open to everyone. Cities and counties should take note that they cannot restrict who attends their public meetings.”

Taseff added that “it is quite unfortunate that this lawsuit had to be filed in the first place.”

Another attorney for the plaintiffs in the case, Jessica Travis of the law firm DefendBrevard.com, said: “It is important that every single citizen be able to address their elected officials, regardless of who they are or what their background may be.”

Taseff noted that, before the County Commission carved out an exception for its meetings, the plaintiffs could not even address commissioners when the commission in 2020 was considering making sex offender ordinances more restrictive by barring offenders from entering within 1,000 feet of businesses where children typically congregate, a proposal that commissioners approved.

Brevard County Communications Director Don Walker said the county would have no comment on the settlement other than saying the payments of the legal fees and the payment to the plaintiffs would be covered by insurance.

After the County Commission modified the ordinance in March 2022 to allow sex offenders to come to County Commission meetings, the plaintiffs attended a May 17, 2022, meeting. During the public comment period, they spoke about how the remainder of the ordinance negatively affects their lives, such as restricting their ability to take loved ones to the hospital or attend events with their grandchildren.

By settling the lawsuit, the case did not go to trial, and no formal judicial ruling was issued.

While registered sex offenders in Wyoming are generally prohibited from coming onto school grounds or loitering within 1,000 feet, some exceptions in Wyoming law exist if people’s own children are attending schools or if registered sex offenders are themselves students.

Under the previous law, registered sex offenders could access schools to attend their children’s extracurricular activities or conferences. Wyoming House Bill 68 modifies this law so that permission is required before registered sex offenders can access schools for this purpose.

The new law will allow such access “with the written permission of the school principal, vice‑principal or person with equivalent authority.”

Registered sex offenders will still be allowed to access school grounds to drop off or pick up their own children without permission from principals.

With the signing of the bill into law, people who are registered sex offenders are barred from entering school facilities or loitering within 1,000 feet of school grounds unless the registered sex offender:

• Is a student in attendance at the school
• With the written permission of the school principal, vice‑principal or person with equivalent authority, is attending an academic conference or other scheduled extracurricular school event with school officials present when the registered offender is a parent or legal guardian of a child who is participating in the conference or extracurricular event
• Resides at a state licensed or certified facility for incarceration, health or convalescent care that is within one thousand (1,000) feet from the property on which a school is located
• Is dropping off or picking up a child and the registered offender is the child’s parent or legal guardian
• Is temporarily on school grounds during school hours for the purpose of making a mail, food or other delivery
• Is exercising his right to vote in a public election
• Is taking delivery of his mail through an official post office located on school grounds
• Has written permission from the school principal, vice-principal, or person with equivalent authority, to be on the school grounds or upon other property that is used by a school
• Stays at a homeless shelter or resides at a recovery facility that is within one thousand (1,000) feet from the property on which a school is located if such shelter or facility has been approved for sex offenders by the sheriff or police chief

Perhaps North Carolina lawmakers can learn from our fellow Americans in Wyoming how to amend our draconian state school statute. A significant number of registrants in North Carolina are parents. These parents must be engaged with his/her child at every opportunity to provide a roadmap towards parental and academic success. Wyoming gets it and puts it in the hands of school leaders. North Carolina is lagging far behind and puts it in the hands of sheriffs that have no business in managing school affairs. 

The law has been on the books for the past 3 state fairs — banning the state’s 24,000 registered sex offenders from the festivities.

They could be arrested if caught on the fairgrounds. Now a group is coming in defense of sex offenders and is lobbying the Wake County Sheriff to ignore the law that they argue is unconstitutional.

Monday marks 10 days till the start of the State Fair in Raleigh.

More than a million fairgoers are expected: Moms, dads, and lots of kids.

When ABC11 polled the parents at Moore Square on Monday about this idea of ignoring state law and allowing the state’s registered sex offenders to enjoy the fun too — yes answers were in short supply.
“No, not at all,” said mom Meisha McDonald. “I don’t want them coming up to my son anyways, let alone my son running around freely.”

Brittany Soto has an 11-month-old at home. “I wouldn’t want that. There are a lot of children that go to the fair,” she said.

“The same way that (registered sex offenders) are supposed to live a certain distance away from a school, I think that as far as the state fair. I think that maybe they should not be invited there also,” Shawnette Lubin added.

A group is pushing Wake Sheriff Gerald Baker to ignore the 2015 law that bans registered sex offenders from the North Carolina State Fair.
We’re talking to the president of @ncrsol1 and parents. Plus, response from the sheriff. #abc11

Robin Vander Wall is president of North Carolinians for Rational Sexual Offense Laws.

His group argued laws that ban registered sex offenders from living near school zones are just as unconstitutional as North Carolina’s state fair ban.

They insist registered sex offenders have paid their debt to society and are being denied basic rights.

“We’re calling on the sheriff not to enforce the law, basically,” said Vander Wall. “We’re asking the sheriff to stand on principle and protect the rights and privileges of the citizens of the state and in particular the citizens of Wake County who happen to be sex offenders to allow them to go to the state fair.”

In 2015, the year the state approved the ban, Wake County sheriff’s deputies arrested four registered sex offenders at the fair. — including someone initially charged with flying a drone over the fairgrounds and a convicted child molester charged with posing as a state inspector to get into the kiddie ride section.

ABC11 asked Vander Wall about parents’ concerns about having someone with a predatory past at the child-friendly event.

“I understand and I respect that opinion. But the perception is flawed,” Vander Wall said, “People concerned about the safety of their children ought to be more concerned about people who are at the state fair with no record at all. Because 95 percent of sex crimes that will be committed today will be committed by people who have no record and not on the sex offender registry.”

Despite the efforts of NCRSOL, Wake Sheriff Gerald Baker is holding firm.

“Sheriff Baker wants to assure fair attendees, especially parents bringing their children, that this law will be stringently enforced,” said WCSO Chief Legal Advisor Rick Brown. “There will be increased presence in the children’s area of both uniformed and plain clothes deputies and other law enforcement officers. The sheriff is committed to continue making this great family tradition a safe one.”

The North Carolina State Fair begins Thursday, Oct. 17.

SOURCE: ABC11 WTVD

At issue in this case are a variety of grievances presented by the complainants about the N.C. Sex Offender Registry and the prohibitions and restrictions that flowfrom them. Chief among them is that the registry laws are punitive and violate the federal constitution’s prohibition against the ex post facto effect of civil regulatory schemes that are burdensome and deprive citizens of liberty interests in accordance with an analysis first articulated by the U.S. Supreme Court in Kennedy v. Mendoza-Martinez, 372 U.S. 144 (1963) and applied by that Court in the seminal registry case of Smith v. Doe, 538 U.S. 84 (2003).

The lawsuit also seeks a judgment declaring that N.C.G.S. §§ 14-208.18 (a)(2) and (a)(3) (premises statute) are facially overbroad in violation of the First and Fourteenth Amendments by unconstitutionally burdening plaintiffs’ freedom of association and exercise of religion, and that section (a)(3) of the same statute is void for vagueness in failing to provide a reasonable person enough understanding about precisely what physical spaces he is restricted from accessing.

The lawsuit also seeks a declaratory judgment holding all of Article 27A (“the registry law”) unconstitutional in violation of the Fourteenth Amendment on the basis that the myriad laws burden plaintiffs’ fundamental right to direct the education and upbringing of their children, their right to pursue the common occupations of life, and their right to acquire useful knowledge.

Additional claims for relief are advanced in the original complaint that is 88 pages long and contains 657 paragraphs, a fact the state’s attorney has been keen to emphasize in its Motion for Dismissal. Among other reasons the state seeks dismissal is that the plaintiffs lack standing and that the Court lacks subject matter jurisdiction over the claims asserted. The state also moves for dismissal on grounds that the named defendants are not proper parties to the action in accordance with Rule 12(b)(1),(2), and/or (6) of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure.

For additional insight into the written arguments proffered by opposing parties, please see the plaintiffs’ Response to the state’s Memorandum in support of the Motion to Dismiss, and the state’s Reply to Plaintiffs’ Response.

For those of us who were in the courtroom, we could not have been more pleased with the performance of our attorney during two hours of oral argument which was divided into three phases organized in view of Judge Loretta Biggs’ assessment of the subject matter. Several members of NARSOL and NCRSOL were in attendance and sat directly behind Mr. Dubbeling who occasionally utilized our presence as a rhetorical device. Aside from its attorney, there was nobody at the hearing in support of the state.

At the conclusion of the hearing, Judge Biggs thanked the counselors and assured each of them that she would make a decision in the forthcoming weeks, which we anticipate will be anywhere from one to six months. Because neither of the parties have moved for summary judgment, Judge Biggs is restricted to ruling on the state’s Motion to Dismiss, alone. The standard of review for the Court is to assume that all factual allegations contained in the complaint are true and to draw all reasonable inferences in favor of the plaintiffs.

Whatever the outcome of the case in federal district court, it’s important for everyone to understand that this case is headed to the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond, Virginia, which, by de novo standard (Latin term meaning “as if from the start”), is entitled to review all aspects of the complaint irrespective of the outcome before Judge Biggs.

If you have any compassion for your fellow man, or any concern for civil rights, human rights and justice, it behooves you to read David Feige’s well-timed op-ed column (New York Times, Sept. 12, 2017) https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/12/opinion/when-junk-science-about-sex-offenders-infects-the-supreme-court.html and to view the accompanying eight minute video which addresses the distorted stereotyping of citizens labeled as sex offenders as well as the concomitant explosion of sex offender legislation https://narsol.org/2017/09/breaking-the-frightening-and-high-myth/. 

It is unfathomable that the highest Court in our nation relied on false information by which to support sex offender legislation. Support of such legislation, based on fear and inaccurate information over and above actual facts, is an affront to human rights, human decency, and to the livelihoods of our nation’s registered citizens and their families.

Mr. Feige emphasizes that in the coming months new cases before our highest court provide ample opportunity for re-examination of real evidence and real data. It follows that our state (and others) should do the same. Reliance by our highest Court on the falsehoods of an article published in a 1986 edition of Psychology Today (e.g. that recidivism rates of sex offenders are “frightening and high”), and to base laws on this falsehood is, by itself, perverse and ominous. There is numerous reputable research indicating that sex offender recidivism rates are quite low; on average about 3%. To base our nation’s laws on this “junk science,” to devastate a person’s ability to live in the community, to hold a job, and to provide a livelihood for himself and family, all these things are an affront to human decency, and no less our Constitution.

In re-examining sex offender registration laws, the Supreme Court and North Carolina must ask: What evidence exists to support them as valid and effective? Who are they for? Do they really keep children safer? What impact do they have on our citizens, our communities, and our businesses? Is there a political agenda here? Anyone who professes to legislate on behalf of our children’s safety is likely to get a vote, but fear-based laws based on false information, steeped in hysteria and ignorance, do more harm than good. We have only to look at Japanese internment camps during World War II for an example of how hysteria corrupts sound, constitutional law.

North Carolina doesn’t really have to wait for the Supreme Court to rights its wrong. It’s time our state set a good example for the nation to follow. We don’t need another HB2, another Packingham, or another Does v. Cooper to force us to do the right thing. North Carolina can reform its image, and, more importantly, take the higher ground by deciding to set a precedence of inclusiveness, by respecting the rights of all its citizens, and by allowing people who have committed crimes the opportunity to reintegrate and rejoin our communities as they demonstrate adherence to just and rational laws. Ostracization and exclusion only serve to breed more crime and dependence, not growth or productivity.

It’s my fervent hope that next September, the North Carolina Mountain State Fair will welcome ALL the citizens of North Carolina to celebrate the wondrous bounties of its state. As abundant flowers draw the honey bee, laws that promote civil rights and human dignity foster growth and resilience.

[Alert Conspiracy readers will recall that the Supreme Court has agreed to review a decision by the North Carolina Supreme Court that rejected a First Amendment challenge to a different section of the N.C. sex offender regulatory scheme — one that imposes criminal penalties on sex offenders who “access … commercial social networking websites” for any reason. Eugene and I have blogged extensively about this case: See here, here, here, and here].

In this case, the statute in question made it a Class H felony (punishable by “a presumptive term of imprisonment of 20 months) for sex offenders to “knowingly be” at any of the following locations:

(1) On the premises of any place intended primarily for the use, care, or supervision of minors, including, but not limited to, schools, children’s museums, child care centers, nurseries, and playgrounds.
(2) Within 300 feet of any location intended primarily for the use, care, or supervision of minors when the place is located on premises that are not intended primarily for the use, care, or supervision of minors, including, but not limited to, places described in subdivision (1) . . . that are located in malls, shopping centers, or other property open to the general public. [Or]
(3) At any place where minors gather for regularly scheduled educational, recreational, or social programs. NCGS 14-208.18(a).

The court held, first, that the provisions of subsection (3) are unconstitutionally vague; “neither an ordinary citizen nor a law enforcement officer could reasonably determine what activity was criminalized by subsection (a)(3).”

Two principal problems are evident in subsection (a)(3) which compel the conclusion it is unconstitutionally vague. In particular, a reasonable person, whether a restricted sex offender or a law enforcement officer, cannot reasonably determine (1) whether a program for minors is “regularly scheduled” or (2) what places qualify as those “where minors gather.” …

The term “regular” means happening at fixed intervals. Even if a restricted sex offender or law enforcement officer knew precisely how often and where the “scheduled programs” took place, the statute provides no principled standard at all for determining whether such programs are “regularly scheduled.” Notably, subsection (a)(3) provides no examples to guide restricted sex offenders or law enforcement as to how frequently the programs would need to occur in order to be “regularly scheduled.” …

Subsection (a)(3)’s “where minors gather” language is also without defining standards. For example, subsection (a)(3) does not explain how many minors must gather at the place. Subsection (a)(3) also does not explain whether a place where mixed groups of minors and adults gather, such as a community college that has some high school students or a church with a congregation of adults and minors, would be considered a restricted zone under subsection (a)(3).

Additionally, the court found that subsection (a)(2) could not withstand “intermediate scrutiny” under the First Amendment:

To pass intermediate scrutiny, a statute must materially advance[] an important or substantial [government] interest by redressing past harms or preventing future ones. In addition, it must have the right “fit.” That is, it cannot burden substantially more speech than is necessary to further the government’s legitimate interests.

The burden of establishing the required fit is placed “squarely upon the government,” and North Carolina failed to meet it — by a goodly distance, failing to present any evidence whatsoever that the statute advanced the state’s interest in protecting minors in any way. At trial, the district court “put the State on notice that its limited evidence was inadequate to meet its burden of proof, but the State “explicitly declined to introduce any additional evidence.”

[The State’s] decision to not provide expert testimony or statistical reports to the Court was somewhat unexpected. … The State tries to overcome its lack of data, social science or scientific research, legislative findings, or other empirical evidence with an appeal to “logic and common sense.” But neither anecdote, common sense, nor logic, in a vacuum, is sufficient to carry the State’s burden of proof.

[T]he State cannot rest its case on the conclusory assertion that minors would be “more exposed to harm without [this] prohibition than with it.” Without empirical data or other similar credible evidence, it is not possible to tell whether subsection (a)(2) — and specifically its application to offenders with only adult victims — responds at all to the State’s legitimate interest in protecting minors from sexual assault.”

That might seem an unspectacular point; if the State offers no evidence at all that the statutory prohibition does anything to ameliorate the evils at which it is aimed, it cannot possibly satisfy the State’s burden of demonstrating that the statute “materially advances” the State’s interest. It is noteworthy, however, because so many other courts have meekly accepted the “conclusory assertion,” based on “common sense,” that the statute does more good than harm, and does not burden more speech than necessary to accomplish that good. [In the other North Carolina case referred to above, for example, the state presented no evidence that the ban on accessing social networking sites was, in fact, effective in any way at protecting minors — but the North Carolina Supreme Court upheld it anyway].

So kudos to Judges Motz, Traxler and Agee. This is just what the federal courts are supposed to do when constitutional rights are at stake: hold the government’s feet to the fire, and demand that they demonstrate that have a damned good reason for doing what they’re doing.

(Source:The Volokh Conspiracy of The Washington Post.)

A new law that went into effect Sept. 1 bans the more than 17,000 registered sex offenders at the 163-year-old event. Supporters of the law say it protects children attending the fair from harm.

“It’s a place where there’s a lot of children, a lot of children running around, without direct parental supervision, who may be at risk if predators are around,” said Sen. Buck Newton, a Johnston County Republican who sponsored the bill. “It made sense to me. I don’t remember anyone voting against it.”

But the head of a new group that advocates on behalf of the state’s registered sex offenders says the law deprives an entire class of people of their civil rights. Robin Vanderwall, who co-founded the North Carolina chapter of Reform Sex Offender Laws (NCRSOL), said the group intends to file a lawsuit in federal court before year’s end seeking to have the new law declared unconstitutional.

The bill was introduced at the urging of state Agriculture Commissioner Steve Troxler, who earlier this year said the state needs tougher laws to ban sex offenders from the fair. During the 2015 State Fair, Wake County sheriff’s deputies arrested four registered sex offenders at the fair, including someone who was initially charged with flying a drone over the event and a convicted child molester who was charged with posing as a state inspector to get into an area reserved for children’s rides.

Only one of the four was wearing an ankle bracelet that some sexual offenders are required to wear, said Wake County Sheriff Donnie Harrison. The bracelets are equipped with global positioning systems that enable probation and parole officials to monitor the wearer’s movements.

Harrison said his office is working with probation and post-supervision officers across the state to identify sex offenders who may try enter the fair. If a sex offender wearing an ankle bracelet gets within a certain distance of the event, someone will call the sheriff’s office, Harrison said.

“If the person is inside the fairgrounds, we will pass that individual’s picture out to our officers,” he said. “It’s a good game plan, and it’s evidently working. We haven’t had any arrests.”

State Fair spokesman Brian Long said the Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services supported the bill and monitored its progress in the General Assembly, where it passed unanimously in both chambers and was signed by Gov. Pat McCrory on July 21.

“We wanted to make it clear because of the number of children who come here,” Long said. “It’s a child-oriented, family event. We wanted to keep it that way.”

But Vanderwall said it’s unfair to violate the civil rights of registered sex offenders who have served their criminal sentences and fulfilled all of their probation or post-release supervision obligations. He likened the new law to old Jim Crow laws.

“For the first time since 1891, thousands of North Carolina citizens and taxpayers are legally prohibited from attending the state fair,” Vanderwall said in a press release. “African Americans were officially ‘uninvited’ to attend in 1891 and remained ostracized from fair activities until the creation of so-called ‘Colored days’ in the early Twentieth Century.”

Vanderwall said that of the state’s more than 17,000 registered sex offenders, only 28 have been determined by the courts to be sexually violent predators. Vanderwall said the designation has to be declared by a judge who has reviewed expert testimony that shows an individual’s sexual predilections are untreatable and the person is mentally ill and likely to repeat the offense.

“I’m sure Donnie Harrison can flag 28 people to keep them out of the State Fair,” he said. “That’s easier than banning 17,000 people.”

Newton said state legislators who supported the law had “difficult decisions to make.”

“We have to respect the rights of people with a history [of sex offenses], against the legitimate work of trying to protect children against those who might commit future acts,” he said.

Source: The News & Observer

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.

The new law bans offenders whose victims were under 18, or anyone legally deemed a threat to children, from many places kids may gather. It replaces a previous law a judge deemed too vague in 2009.

Haywood County leaders say the new law lays out specific places sex offenders can’t go.

“It would prevent people who are registered sex offenders from going into libraries, from going to schools, from going to the fairgrounds when the fair is on,” County Manager Ira Dove said.

“I think it’s good. They need to stay away,” parent Amber Williams said.

“I think once you’ve committed a crime against children, there’s no going back,” parent Heather Russell said.
The law is named after Jessica Lunsford, a 9-year-old girl from Gastonia, who was killed by a sex offender after she moved to Florida in 2005.

The new law also bars sex offenders from going within 300 feet of places like shopping centers or other public places used mainly for the care or supervision of minors.

Not everyone thinks the law is fair. The North Carolina president of “Reform Sex Offender Laws” said it’s overly restrictive, narrowly interprets “sex offender,” and calls the restrictions “unconstitutional deprivations of liberty.”

“There must be some scrutiny, some level of scrutiny that protects people who are no longer under any court order, who are no longer serving any kind of time,” Robin Vanderwall, President of the North Carolina chapter of Reform Sex Offender Laws, said.
“I understand it in that perspective. But, I still don’t think…I mean…doing better or not…they still did what they did,” Russell said.

Opponents of the law plan to fight it.

“Our essential hope, legally speaking, is to finally put the state up against the wall when it comes to the presumption of dangerousness,” Vanderwall said.

Parents remain resolved.

“No kid needs to be around that. It’s awful. It is,” Williams said.

Please see full news video on WLOS News ABC 13