CALL TO ACTION #1 for HB 1085 Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles

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HB 1085 Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles FILED by Patt Maney (Part of Okaloosa)

 SB 1224 Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles FILED by Senator Danny Burgess

 HB 1085 would require color or markings of licenses for the operation of motor vehicles or identification cards for people designated as sexual predators under 775.21 or as sexual offenders under 943.0435 or 944.607.  Their license/identification card “shall have ALL PERSONAL INFORMATION printed on the front of the license or identification card in THE COLOR RED.”

Specifically, the following will be required to be on licenses/identification cards in THE COLOR RED by July 1, 2023:

For people classified as a “sexual predator”:  the marking “SEXUAL PREDATOR”

For people classified as a “sexual offender”:  the marking “943.0435, F.S.”

“A sexual offender or sexual predator who is asked by a law enforcement officer, school resource officer, school official, day care operator, or government official to present his or her driver’s license or identification card must completely remove the license or identification card from the place in which it is stored or contained and present the license or identification card to the law enforcement officer, school resource officer, school official, day care operator, or government official without any of the colors or markings required under subsection (3) being obscured or hidden.”

See lines 116 – 144 of HB 1085.

For SB 1224, the concerns are lines 135-163.  This bill requires “SEXUAL PREDATOR” AND “943.0435” to be RED on registered citizens’ drivers’ licenses.

What needs to be done:

Please call, email, or send letters through the U.S. Mail to Representative Patt Maney, the author of this bill.  You will need to state your name and that you oppose this part of Bill 108 – Lines 116-144 that address the markings on the license or ID.

If you happen to be a constituent (or supporter) of Representative Maney, let him know that.  You do NOT need to state that you are on the registry if that is your particular situation.

This bill has been moved to the House Transportation & Modals Subcommittee with no scheduled meeting at this time.

If you call and voicemail picks up, state your name and that you oppose HB 1085.  If time permits, give a brief reason(s) why you oppose the bill.  The aides say that they do listen to the voicemails.

NOTE:  If you are willing to voice opposition to lines 116-144 in HB 1085 and are NOT a registered citizen, family member/friend of a registrant, or do NOT live in Florida, share you concern that such a barbaric law could be passed in the state of Florida as you do not want to see something like this come to your state.  You see Florida as a fun, carefree state to visit and will not support a state that violates the rights of any of its citizens “just because they can do so.”  Or as a citizen of Florida, you are ashamed that Florida would continue to punish people who have served their sentence and are now law-abiding citizens.  Nothing has happened to make this proposed bill (lines 116-144) necessary.  I do not want my state to base laws on myths and emotions.  I want to be in a state that bases laws on research-based facts.

COMMITTEE MEMBERS TO BE CONTACTED

Senate Bill 1224: Not assigned a committee at this time but contact the author of the bill:

Senator Danny Burgess                 850-487-5023                    [email protected]

House Transportation & Modals Subcommittee for HB 1085:

Talking points – These are Facts that can be supported by evidence, studies and research

• There are currently 52 registry requirements for people on the sex offense registry. Every Florida legislator should have received a copy of the timeline of these registry requirements that started off with 3 in 1997 and have grown to 52 by 2020.  Failure to fulfill any of these requirements could lead up to 5 years of imprisonment, even for the thousands of Florida registrants who are now law-abiding citizens. 
• The U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear Louisiana’s appeal of a decision against its 2006 law requiring that people on the sex offense registry have their driver’s license or identification card marked with “SEX OFFENDER” in orange letters. The Louisiana Supreme Court said the marking was compelled speech and could not be justified by the state’s interest in protecting public safety.
• In 2019, a federal judge struck down Alabama’s sex offense registration law that required registrants to carry a driver’s license or official ID with “CRIMINAL SEX OFFENDER” emblazoned in red.
• While there is no research showing a need for this bill (lines 116-144), there is an abundance of research showing that the sexual recidivism rate for people with a past sex offense is lower than that for all other crimes, with the exception of murder.
• Research has shown that at least 90% of FUTURE sex crimes will be committed by people NOT on the registry.
• The first-of-its-kind meta-analysis study of 25 years of findings of the Sex Offender Registration and Notification (SORN) evaluations and their effects on recidivism was published in 2021. Eighteen research articles including 474,640 formerly incarcerated individuals were used.  (Journal of Experimental Criminology, “The effectiveness of Sex Offender Registration and Notification: A meta-analysis of 25 years of findings”, Kristen M. Zgoba and Meghan M. Mitchell, September 2021)
• Some of the findings of the above-mentioned study: (1) The sex offense registries have had no effect on sexual and non-sexual crime commission over their periods of existence, thereby failing to deliver on the intention of increasing public safety; (2) Public safety could likely be maximized by focusing limited resources on the highest-risk individuals, rather than utilizing a one-size-fits-all law; and (3) It is time that we work as an empirically informed community, unhindered by emotion, to find a solution to reining the “horse back into the barn”, i. e., reining in the numerous sex offense registry statutes.

Talking points – Personal Opinions

If you choose to state a personal opinion, use respect when delivering what you intend to be a common sense remark and that is not intended to be received as an attack on the legislator(s).  The intent is to get them to think through their bill and the consequences, giving them scenarios that they may not have considered.

• The proposed bill states: “A sexual offender or sexual predator who is asked by a law enforcement officer, school resource officer, school official, day care operator, or government official to present his or her driver’s license or identification card must completely remove the license or identification card from the place in which it is stored or contained and present the license or identification card to the law enforcement officer, school resource officer, school official, day care operator, or government official without any of the colors or markings required under subsection (3) being obscured or hidden.”
  • Doesn’t law enforcement require EVERYONE to remove their license from its holder and hand it to them?
  • Why is this specific to a law enforcement officer, school resource officer, school official, day care operator, or government official when the DL/ID is used for much more like cashing a check, boarding a plane, visiting in a hospital, buying a car and much more?
  • Is it only law enforcement officer, school resource officer, school official, day care operator, or government official that are unable to read the markings in black?
  • What if the reader is color-blind, will this matter to them, will they be less safe?
• How many draconian registry requirements does it take for Florida Legislators who are using these simply to get votes?
• This was all done by Louisiana to impose additional punishment on registered citizens under the guise of “regulation”.
• Lawsuits are sure to follow if lines 116-144 are kept in HB 1085.
• Where is the research to show that this bill will make society safer? There is no such research.
• What has happened that would cause a Florida house member to propose such an additional restriction on the thousands of registrants on our state registry who are now law-abiding restrictions?
• Being on the registry is for life in Florida, which is one of only three states that have such a requirement. If this bill passes, there are people who “mooned” their high school classmates, juveniles who texted nude photos to other juveniles, 22-year-olds who had consensual sex with their 17-year-old girlfriend/boyfriend and married them after release from prison, people with dementia or autism who unknowingly committed a sex offense, and the list goes on and on, who will be punished the rest of their lives because of this bill if it passes.

SPEAK UP – Make the phone calls and let them hear from you, a Florida Taxpayer, that the action in the lines we oppose are a waste of our tax dollars and have no impact on public safety.  STOP the shaming tactics.

This Call To Action has been superseded. Comments are now disabled.
CLICK HERE FOR THE NEW CTA