A Writ of Certiorari has been filed to the Supreme Court of the United States, asking the highest court to hear Vasquez v. Foxx, a sex offender case out of the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals.
The Vasquez case, which was previously reported on here. Upheld the eviction of two Illinois men who were required to register as sex offenders from their homes, because of a law passed after their offense date which restricted them from living within 500 feet of certain facilities, such as home day cares.
The SCOTUS receives approximately 8000 such Writs per year, asking them to hear cases across the US. They select approximately 1% to hear and consider.
A copy of the Writ can be found here: https://www.supremecourt.gov/DocketPDF/18/18-386/63912/20180921123222700_Petition%20for%20Writ%20of%20Cert%20-%20Vasquez%20v%20Foxx.pdf
My intent, back in February of this year, was to become a very active participant with an association such as Florida Action Committee, than in late March I was diagnosed with stage 2 pancreatic cancer. Its very difficult under going chemotherapy let alone while homeless living out of your car. It’s really amazing how we Human Beings can adapt.
So what troubles me is that every challenge to a sex offender regulation is argued either as ex post facto or due process. How narrow minded and limited this thinking is. Whether a statue is civil or criminal is a question of statutory interpretation.
Take for instance fl s775.21. Unlike all other remedial sex offender regulations, this is the only one where the penalty imposed points directly back to the original offense, applies only to those convicted on or after its enactment and does not apply to those who have adjudication withheld. The legislative history and statutory text is clear that 775.21 is more than a civil remedy, it was meant to punish.
In Wisconsin V Constantineau, the Supreme Court found that the “Posting” of Constantineau as an excessive drinker and making it unlawful for proprietors of liquor stores and taverns who had notice of the “Postings” to sell liquor was a deprivation of her Rights secured under the 14th amendment. It wasn’t the “POSTING” as an excessive drinker that was found unconstitutional rather making it unlawful to purchase liquor was.
Like that Miami Dade County makes it unlawful for any property owner, whose property is within 2500 feet of a school, from entering into a rental contract thus depraving not only the property owner of a protected liberty interest but also the one who is “Posted”. In fact the law requires the property to check the “POSTINGS” before entering into a lease agreement.
Just saying….off the top of my head.
Kudos to the attorney who drafted this appeal to SCOTUS. Too bad the same attorney wasn’t involved in arguing the Gundy case, as it is my opinion that attorney could have done a much better job (even the amicus briefs filed by the ACLU and criminal defense attorneys group made stronger arguments than Gundy’s attorney did before SCOTUS).
I thought this was a powerful statement:
The Seventh Circuit also departed from this Court’s precedents in holding that the Residency Ban is not “retroactive” because it only penalizes “conduct occurring after its enactment — i.e., knowingly maintaining a residence within 500 feet of a child day care home.” App. 8a. Under the Seventh Circuit’s understanding of what constitutes “retroactivity,” any burden, no matter how punitive, could be seen as prospective and thus would not raise ex post facto concerns. For example, a law banishing all people who have been convicted of sex offenses FROM THE STATE wouldn’t be retroactive because it would only penalize “conduct occurring after its enactment” — i.e., KNOWINGLY REMAINING IN THE STATE.
If SCOTUS does not intervene and put an end to this stupidity and nonsense by these state actors, it would not surprise me if in the near future a group of drooling politicians, supported by a grandstanding governor, went so far as to draft a statute literally banishing all Americans convicted of a sexual offense from the entire state and then conduct a mass round up and put them in concentration camps. American has been down this dark road before and, yet, it has not learned from history.
The Attorney is Adele Nicholas of Illinois. She is the attorney who most notably represented the registrant dad who was banned from the hospital where his son was admitted. She won that case and the hospital had to concede and let the father spend time with his sick son while he was hospitalized.
The 7th Circuit’s decision was a bad one. No other way to describe it. When it came out in July, the title of our post was “Bad decision out of the 7th circuit”.
For those who joined our Monthly Member Call with Val Jonas, we explained that the 7th Circuit decision was one of the main reasons why we chose to redraft some of our Ex Post Facto Challenge, so as not to introduce the same arguments and have the 7th Circuit opinion cited against us (no matter that, in our opinion, the decision was wrong). There are enough grievous wrongs with the Florida registry, that we didn’t need to run a play that didn’t yield a good result elsewhere.
Also, you will note from reading the Writ of Certiorari; the 7th conflicts with the 6th and even with our own case in the 11th (Does v. Miami-Dade), which was cited in the Writ. Knowing that this tug of war was going to play out and knowing that this SORR issue in Miami-Dade was going to trial later this month we deferred to the cases that were much farther along than bring THAT issue back to the starting line.
This case concerns the requirement to move from an established residency if a private daycare were to open within 500 feet of your residence. The court could find this requirement unconstitutional without touching other sections of Chicago residency restriction.
City Ordinances are made up by citizens not so much politicians. They mainly gravitate to constructing laws that they feel protect themselves. Most of these Ordinances are passed contrary to State Laws and can easily be challenged. JEV
Not sure what you mean. City ordinances are passed by city councils, these are elected politicians. Many Floriduh cities and counties have laws prohibiting registered citizens from living within 2500 feet of whatever, while the state prohibition is only 1000 feet. The cities and counties can and do go beyond the state requirements, much the same way Floriduh goes beyond SORNA. Having to challenge each and every one will take millions of dollars and several years, while more are being passed each year.
Janice Belluci’s model for dealing with this was quite successful in California. Many localities cooperated with Janice’s request rather than face a lawsuit which she had proven in other localities to be quite successful. They had the option of defending their ordinances and likely losing, costing them their own defense as well as plaintiff’s legal fees if she prevailed, or simply giving up the ordinances which the data showed had no positive effect on their communities. She gave them the excuse they need to not passionately defend the ordinances, then gave them the fiscal excuse to not fund a losing battle. In other words, she handed them a very clear win-win proposition where they could avoid the headache and not lose any political points in the process.
The problem is Florida is that the State essentially acknowledged that they could not impose residency restrictions on peel convicted prior to 2005, but they have permitted the localities to not only impose those restrictions but to enhance them. So how is it that the cities and counties can not only legally impose ex post facto restrictions when the state cannot, but also be given permission by the state to essentially enhance criminal sanctions?
@JZ, in the State of Florida, it’s constitution clearly prohibits the counties from enacting punishments and or enhancing a penalty lmposed by the State. It does allow countries the power to enact civil remedial sanctions greater than those imposed by the State.
As stated above any honest interpretation of the history and text of 775.21 makes clear it’s purpose and intent was to punish not merely remedial.