11th Circuit tackles sex offender residency ban
On Tuesday, the 11th Circuit grappledBruce Henry’s 14th Amendment challenge to Alabama’s residency restriction barring certain sex offenders from living with minors, including their own children.
Henry, a Tuscaloosa County resident, pleaded guilty in 2013 to federal child pornography possession and served 18 months in prison, completed sex offender treatment and has had no further offenses. In 2021, after marrying and fathering a son, Alabama law barred him from living with or overnighting with any minor, including his own child, forcing family separation without individualized risk assessment.
Henry sued in 2021, claiming the law violates his fundamental right to parental care and family integrity. In January 2024, U.S. District Judge R. Austin Huffaker Jr. agreed, declaring the provision facially unconstitutional. A three-judge panel of the 11th Circuit upheld the ruling in April 2025. Alabama Deputy Solicitor General Robert Overing sought to reverse those decisions in Atlanta, asking the full court to look at Henry’s case through a very narrow, historically specific lens. Instead of discussing a broad right of parents, he argued the court must define the right more precisely: as the right of a person convicted of a child sex or child pornography offense to live with a child.
Attorney Jeremy Kreisberg, representing Henry, urged the court to start from a simpler premise. “Our contention is there is a fundamental right to reside with children,” he said. “This law directly and substantially infringes that right, and there is a less restrictive alternative available, which is a system of individualized review.”
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Interesting to see an en banc review here after seeing a recent denied en banc request at the Eighth on PFR signs.
I am still awaiting them to send us all to “Sex offender Island”. Banishment was a real thing in many countries, and that is being seen majorly recently with Migrants here in the U.S. Some of these people were deported, even though that had temporary orders to be allowed to work. Migrants around the U.S are cheap labor and are who keep our crops and other industries thriving.
So who is going to take over those jobs? No other group of people in the U.S is going to work for minimum wages in extreme hot/cold/muddy conditions. And I am pretty sure they do not have health care plans, 401ks or any other perks. Many of them have to rent a place to live with 10 or more other people just to be able to cover rent and other costs.
You kind of wandered off the trail. The subject isn’t about illegal immigration pros and cons, however, in one instance there is some common ground. There is a lot of protesting about separation of families when an illegal alien is detained. In this case, it’s about separation of families of a citizen of the United States. He served his time.