FAC Urges Ohio Supreme Court to Consider Real-World Employment Registration Challenges
Yesterday, we watched oral arguments before the Ohio Supreme Court in State v. Smith, a case that highlights the often-impossible realities of registry compliance. The State’s position suggests that a person working for a cleaning company, landscaping service, construction crew, or similar would be required to report, in person at the sheriff’s office, every location where they are sent to work. We were deeply troubled by the arguments advanced and by the apparent disconnect between legal theory and the realities faced by people trying to maintain employment while complying with registration requirements.
In response, FAC has sent the following letter to the Ohio Supreme Court and members of the Ohio General Assembly. This is not a legal brief. Rather, it is an effort to explain the real-world consequences of interpretations that make lawful employment impossible and compliance more difficult, ultimately undermining the very public-safety goals these laws are intended to serve.
You can read the letter here: Ohio Supreme Court Letter_Redacted
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Very well written, FAC!
I hope they take the time to read it and deeply consider the the volatility of this ambiguous statute.
The man was doing his best to be compliant, and yet was still ensnared by a statute that does not clearly define where a place of employment is.
Thank you, FAC.
Civil Degrees
Written by Quiet too long — 06/11/2026
When we apply for what the State calls our “registry reporting duties,” no one ever discloses the truth about what this obligation has become. The State continues to describe it as a simple administrative check‑in, a harmless clerical task that requires no skill and imposes no burden. But that description reflects a world that no longer exists. At the inception of these laws twenty years ago, the obligation was indeed understood as a passive, low‑burden administrative requirement. Through successive statutory amendments, however, the State has retroactively transformed this once‑simple check‑in into a full‑scale technical occupation. The State has shifted the entirety of its database maintenance, verification risks, and investigative field operations onto the individual registrant under threat of felony incarceration. What was once a civil list has become a compulsory job—and this transformation is especially unconstitutional when applied to people who have completed their entire judge‑ordered sentence. Individuals on parole or probation remain under the State’s custody and control; the supervising authority has broad discretion because those individuals are still serving a criminal sentence. But once a person has completed every day of incarceration, probation, and parole, the State’s authority ends. They are no longer under supervision, no longer subject to discretionary control, and no longer “owned” by the State in any legal sense. Yet the registry imposes a level of control, surveillance, and compulsory labor that exceeds even what parole officers can demand. It forces a person who has fully discharged their sentence to perform continuous, uncompensated administrative and technical labor under threat of felony incarceration.
To comply without falling into strict‑liability felony traps, the modern registrant must now possess the advanced skills, analytical training, and operational precision found only in specialized, degree‑holding professional fields. The State demands the real‑time asset tracking, logistical coordination, and inventory control expected of someone with a bachelor’s degree in logistics, supply chain management, or business administration. It requires a flawless, constantly updated inventory of every address, workspace, temporary shelter, and vehicle connected to the registrant’s life — and, in some states, a complete and continuously shifting database of every digital application, online account, or communication platform the individual may access. This digital‑tracking mandate is not uniform; it appears and disappears across the nation’s 3,224 registration districts, creating an unpredictable and unannounced obligation that can change overnight. This requirement is itself equivalent to an additional professional discipline, one that would constitute a separate job classification if it existed in the civilian labor market, because it requires constant monitoring, cataloging, and compliance within a maze of rules that even trained IT administrators struggle to navigate.
The State also demands the spatial awareness and geospatial calculation skills of a trained surveyor or geomatics professional. It holds individuals criminally liable for miscalculating invisible, unmarked, and undisclosed exclusion zones such as school and daycare buffers. A licensed surveyor uses instruments, GIS overlays, satellite mapping, and formal training to determine these boundaries. The registrant, by contrast, is expected to perform these precise calculations by instinct, without tools, without training, and without access to the State’s proprietary maps. A miscalculation of a few feet—something even a trained professional could not determine without equipment—becomes a felony.
In addition, the State demands the constant vigilance and rapid‑update capabilities of a certified emergency telecommunications dispatcher. Any short‑notice change in travel, temporary lodging, employment location, or vehicle access must be tracked, processed, and relayed with the speed and accuracy of a professional communications operator. Human error is punished at a felony level. The registrant is effectively forced to operate as an uncompensated compliance officer and data dispatcher twenty‑four hours a day, seven days a week, with no margin for mistake.
These demands are not theoretical. They define daily life. The registrant must maintain a real‑time inventory of every address connected to their existence, track vehicles they do not own, and monitor geographic risk zones that may be hidden behind buildings, unmarked, or unknown. A person can stand on a street, see nothing dangerous, and yet be within 250 feet of a daycare concealed behind another structure. The State knows this. The State has the maps. But the burden is placed entirely on the registrant, who is held criminally responsible for information the State refuses to provide. If the registrant misjudges a distance that only a trained surveyor could accurately measure, the State calls it a crime.
The mobility burden compounds the impossibility. Many reporting offices are twenty to thirty miles away, unreachable by public transportation. The State does not care whether the registrant can drive, whether they have a vehicle, whether they are disabled, or whether they can physically make the trip. If they must wheel themselves, hobble, crawl, or beg for a ride, that is their problem. Failure to appear—regardless of the obstacle—is treated as a criminal act. No employer in America would impose such mobility requirements on an unpaid worker. The State does so without hesitation.
The conclusion is unavoidable: the registry is no longer a passive civil regulation. It is an active, compulsory, and punitive civil occupation. The State cannot legally or logically maintain the fiction that this is a “simple administrative requirement” when compliance requires the specialized competencies of logistics managers, geomatics professionals, certified dispatchers, IT administrators, and licensed surveyors.
When failure to possess these professional skills results in immediate deprivation of liberty, the constitutional façade collapses. The modern registry is not a list. It is uncompensated professional labor, imposed retroactively, enforced through felony penalties, and incompatible with the Ex Post Facto and Due Process Clauses. It is civil servitude disguised as regulation. And it is imposed on people who have already served their time, completed their sentences, and paid their debts. The State continues to call it “reporting,” but the reality is far more honest: it is unpaid, unacknowledged, and unending labor, demanded under threat of incarceration, and justified by a system that refuses to admit what it has created. The State insists that this is a civil obligation, yet it requires the precision of a surveyor, the logistical mastery of a supply‑chain manager, the vigilance of a dispatcher, and—in some jurisdictions—the digital‑tracking expertise of an IT administrator. No other civil requirement in American law demands this level of professional competency, punishes mistakes with felonies, or forces a free citizen to perform continuous labor for the State without compensation. The contradiction is no longer subtle. A system that requires professional‑grade labor from people who are no longer under supervision, no longer serving a sentence, and no longer subject to State custody cannot be defended as “civil regulation.” It is compelled service under threat of imprisonment, imposed on citizens who have already paid their debts in full.
I’m playing devil’s advocate here to show, even from the idiotic perspective of law enforcement (LE), their intentions don’t actually work in the real world.
From LE perspective, I would argue the public safety interests of the statute were met by the person reporting the business name and place of business. Any customer of that business could look up the business if they were so inclined and see what was returned.
The state’s argument is not very persuasive, and in fact, counter-productive. If, now, the person doesn’t register under the place of business, but rather the customer’s location each day, that information won’t be available to the customer until, literally, that day the person shows up (if the website even updates that quickly). How does that help them? Are they going to check the registry EVERY SINGLE DAY to see if their lawnmower, janitor, carpet cleaner, window washer, landscaper, electrician, plumber, carpenter, etc. are SEX OFFENDERS (oh my!)??? This becomes even less useful if the registering individual can report the change after the fact (and in fact I would encourage all to do so if the statute permits).
If the customers aren’t going to bother with this insane daily ritual, I guarantee the general public are not going to do so before they patronize the place or business in question to see if (for example) the gardener out front is a PREDATOR (oh my!). This has to be the closest working definition of insanity I’ve seen. If a person told their shrink they check the registry before visiting anywhere outside their home for PREDATORS, I’m pretty sure a level-headed professional would diagnose them with some disorder and recommend therapy, or perhaps commitment.
What is so frustrating about this is the whole aspect of “legislative intent”. The state has a decent argument in that regard. Their attempt to show the state intended the law to require registrants to report each “location of emplyment” turns this into an argument that the law itself needs to be changed by legislative process. I feel as though this is where the justices questions were leaning when they were asking about the person being given the statutes at sentencing (as if any lay person should be expected to fully understand statutory writing).
I understand the registrant is simply asking for a definition of “employer” or “place of employment”, but this could be another one where a Supreme Court defers responsibility to legislatures for clarification. When this happens it can “pause” the entire registration section of statutes or pause that section in question of the statute until the legislature addresses the issue. And we all know legislation tends to er on the side of more restrictive wording.
I did find it interesting (and annoying) when the state used the term “burden” when describing the requirements of a person “burdened” by the registration statutes. Burden versus punishment. Frustrating.
They don’t want you working jobs where you are required to move about different locations.
They want PFR’s to have no way of supporting themselves, so they become homeless, end up with some kind of FTR violation and back in prison at the taxpayer’s expense. Make any of this make sense?
💖 thank you!!