The Florida Action Committee, along with the Alliance for Constitutional Sex Offender Laws (California), Illinois Voices for Reform, Families Advocating Intelligent Registries (Maryland), Women Against the Registry Oklahoma Voices and Pennsylvania Association for Rational Sexual Offense Laws joined collaboratively in an amicus brief to the 6th Circuit Court of Appeals in Willman v. United States Attorney General (E.D. Mich. 2019). Other organizations, such as Texas Voices, filed independent briefs.
The case, essentially, challenges the federal duty to register under SORNA to individuals convicted of state-law sex offenses. In states where people are no longer required to register or where their State Supreme Courts have found SORNA violates their State’s constitution, the results would be absurd. For example, it would force people who have been removed from the State’s registry back onto the registry and since there is no “federal registry”, just an aggregation of all the state registries, it would force state employees to do a “federal regulatory function”.
A copy of the appellate brief can be read here: MULTI-STATE_AMICUS BRIEF FOR WILLMAN
Thanks to Adele Nicholas for doing the heavy lifting, to Val Jonas for serving as co-counsel on behalf of FAC and for all the other state advocacy groups for joining in this collaborative effort.
This reminded me of something I was told I believe by one of the deputies at the Pinellas sheriffs office. They said that while folks like us remain on the Florida registry even when we leave the state permanently, we are technically not required to register in Florida any longer. By that I mean that we are no longer required to maintain our current information with the sheriff or FDLE even if we were convicted in Florida or our offense. So how is it that federal law says that anyone on the registry in Florida for whatever reason who is not currently residing working attending school or what have you in Florida is somehow still obligated to “register” at a Federal
level Even if they were are no longer required to register in the state where they reside?
Of course, this is one of these eminently logical questions that seems to go unanswered in Florida like how can the state can permit cities and counties to enforce residency restrictions against people convicted prior to 2005 when the state has pretty much said that they would not be permitted to do so?
Thank you Adele Nicholas, Val Jonas, and all affiliates!
THANK YOU ADELE NICHOLS