For the second time in five years, a federal lawsuit is challenging the constitutionality of a Simi Valley law that bars registered sex offenders listed on the Megan’s Law website from opening their doors to trick-or-treating children on Halloween.

The law, enacted by the City Council in September 2012, also forbids the registered sex offenders from decorating the outside of their homes or front lawns with Halloween ornaments and mandates that they turn off outdoor lighting on their properties from 5 p.m. to midnight on Halloween.

The law initially required the sex offenders to post a sign on their front door on Halloween that stated, “No candy or treats at this residence.” But in a settlement stemming from a 2012 federal lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of the law, the city agreed not to enforce the sign requirement.

The latest lawsuit was filed Monday in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles by a Simi Valley registered sex offender and his mother, brother and daughter, all of whom live in the same home. The mother, brother and daughter are not registered sex offenders. All are identified in the suit as John Does.

The suit, brought on behalf of the defendants by a group called the Alliance for Constitutional Sex Offense Laws, names as defendants the city and Simi Valley Police Chief Dave Livingstone.

It seeks a permanent injunction barring the city from enforcing all provisions of the law. It also asks the court to declare the law unconstitutional, under both the U.S. and the California constitutions.

After The Star forwarded him a copy of the civil action, Simi Valley City Attorney Lonnie Eldridge said Monday “although the city has not yet been formally served with this lawsuit, the city is reviewing the complaint and examining its options in this matter.”

Livingstone said the city has never enforced the law.

“We just send out a copy of the ordinance to all of our registered sex offenders, just making them aware of it,” he said. “We have never enforced it and no threat of arrest was ever given.”

The copy of the ordinance given to the sex offenders still references the front door signs, he said.

Currently, 165 registered sex offenders are listed in Simi Valley on the Megan’s Law website, Livingstone said.

Attorney Janice Bellucci, executive director of the Alliance for Constitutional Sex Offense Laws, first challenged the constitutionality of the law in the 2012 federal lawsuit filed on behalf of five registered sex offenders, three of their spouses and two of their children, all Simi Valley residents.

In October 2012, U.S. District Judge Percy Anderson left the bulk of the law intact but temporarily blocked the portion requiring the offenders to post the signs on their front doors on Halloween.

The judge found that the sign requirement was likely unconstitutional and posed a danger to the sex offenders and their families.

Anderson likened the requirement to “The Scarlet Letter,” the 1850 Nathaniel Hawthorne novel about an adulteress in a Puritan community who wears a scarlet “A” on her clothing as a badge of shame.

Anderson found that the plaintiffs had made a strong case that the sign requirement, “a form of compelled speech,” violated the First Amendment’s free speech guarantees.

Following Anderson’s ruling, the city and the plaintiffs reached the settlement in which the city agreed not to enforce the sign requirement.

But “the city has reneged on its agreement and defied the court’s ruling by enforcing the sign posting mandate against” the registered sex offender who brought Monday’s lawsuit “and perhaps against others,” the lawsuit states.

Bellucci said in an interview that two Simi Valley Police Department plainclothes detectives recently served the registered sex offender with a flier about the ordinance.

“I got a call out of the blue from a registrant in Simi Valley who was very shaken up and he said he had been handed a flier by two detectives from Simi Valley telling him that was what he needed to do on Halloween,” she said. “And I just about had a conniption — ‘What the heck is going on here?’ “

Bellucci said the flier “makes no mention of compliance as voluntary. In addition, the detectives did not tell him compliance was voluntary.

“But even if the city sought voluntary compliance with the sign provision of the ordinance, the city has breached the settlement agreement,” she said.

But Livingstone said there “has never been a threat of enforcement. The intent is to make them aware of it. We’re encouraging voluntary compliance.”

Livingstone said police have made the city’s registered sex offenders aware of the law every year but last year, when, because of personnel changes, police did not make them aware.

Bellucci said she plans to quickly formally serve the city with the lawsuit. Once she does, the city has 30 days to file a response, she said.

“But we’re not planning on waiting for them to answer,” she said.

She said she will seek a preliminary injunction on Friday, forbidding the city from enforcing any of the components of the law in time for Halloween.

Championed by Mayor Bob Huber, the Simi Valley City Council adopted the law in September 2012 to try to prevent the city’s registered sex offenders from having contact with trick-or-treating children on Halloween.

But Bellucci said there are no reported cases of a child being assaulted by a registered sex offender while trick-or-treating on Halloween in California.

However, according to Ventura County Superior Court documents, one of Simi Valley’s Megan’s Law registrants was convicted of exposing himself to six people at a Thousand Oaks home on Halloween in 2010 while dressed as a woman. It is unclear whether the victims included children, but the man had a separate child molestation conviction.

A 2009 study titled “How safe are trick-or-treaters?” concluded that the findings of a nine-year review “suggest that Halloween policies may, in fact, be targeting a new urban myth similar to past myth warning of tainted treats,” Bellucci said.

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