https://fox49.tv/news/local/leon-county-sheriff-arrests-registered-sex-offender-on-warrant-for-failing-to-report-info

I think it’s best to ask them as little as possible, and instead just read the statute.

Dear Ms. Hanna Liebman Dershowitz,

I recently saw your comments on FOX 13 Tampa Bay regarding Florida’s new laws, including HB 45 and SB 212. I appreciate your interest in researching how these laws are affecting people throughout the state, and I wanted to reach out personally to offer my perspective.

These laws have affected me directly. As a registered sex offender, I now face consequences that extend beyond issues such as homelessness. One of the most significant impacts is that I am unable to receive treatment through the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs without risking criminal consequences under these new restrictions. In my experience, these laws create barriers that reach into healthcare, rehabilitation, and daily life in ways that are often overlooked in public discussions.

There is much more to Florida’s sex offender laws than what is often reported. Many of these laws continue to affect me and my family every day as we are simply trying to live our lives, remain law-abiding, and move forward. The challenges extend into housing, healthcare, family life, and other aspects that deserve greater public understanding.

If you are interested, I would welcome the opportunity to speak with you and share my experiences in more detail. I believe my perspective may provide additional insight into the broader effects of these laws and could be helpful to your research.

Also asked if they could check out FAC website provided your mission statement

For those who do not know Mike, our “Wild Man,” he is an Air Force Vietnam veteran who spent his career answering the call to serve. During his military career, he was invited to attend the Army’s OSR program—and he was crazy enough to accept the challenge. That example says a lot about who Mike is: someone willing to step into difficult situations, take on challenges, and stand up when others might walk away.

Mike demonstrates the qualities of a true American hero and patriot. Like many veterans, he believes in defending our constitutional rights, but he also understands the unique challenges faced by veterans who are forced to register alongside the broader PFR population.

Those challenges are often overlooked. They include issues such as denial of access to military installations, questions about eligibility for military burial benefits for retired or qualified veterans, difficulty connecting with veterans’ advocacy organizations that may not understand our specific hardships, and questions about how registry requirements affect veterans’ benefits and services.

What separates Mike from many others is that if he does not know the answer, he does not simply dismiss the question. He researches, investigates, and fights to find the correct answer—or at least the right path toward finding one. He has used the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), along with FAC’s knowledge and experience, to help uncover information that directly impacts veterans on the registry.

One issue Mike and I are currently working on involves the implementation of provisions within the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) under Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth. We are seeking to determine whether the Department of Defense has implemented requirements involving notification of registered sex offenders within military communities, as well as other registry-related policies that may affect veterans. These are important questions because veterans on the registry face unique circumstances that are not always addressed by general registry policies.

These are exactly the types of veteran-specific questions that deserve attention and answers. Veterans who served our country should not be left without guidance when facing complicated issues involving military access, benefits, advocacy, and constitutional rights.

The Florida Action Committee continues to provide a place for these conversations. FAC hosts a **virtual Veterans Support Group on Thursday, August 27, from 8:00 to 9:30 PM** for registered veterans, family members, and public supporters. Details for attending can be found in the **Calendar section of the FAC website**.

I believe a veteran-focused conference or calendar addressing registry-related issues affecting veterans would be an invaluable resource. FAC’s willingness to research, advocate, and seek answers through education, communication, and tools such as FOIA is why I continue to support their efforts.

For additional background on the Department of Defense and questions surrounding military sex offender notification requirements, see:
https://prospect.org/2025/08/20/2025-08-20-hegseth-defense-department-public-military-sex-offender-registry/

Well, we don’t pay registry fees, we don’t have to turn in Internet identifiers, and we don’t have statewide residency restrictions. Although municipalities are allowed to pass local-level laws (only municipalities, not counties), they are limited to 500 feet from schools and daycares ONLY.

We aren’t as bad as FloriDUH. Not too many places are. That coul always change, but we have Nebraskans Unafraid to challenge any attempts at passing bad legislation. It is not as big as FAC but they’re pretty tight-knit.

FloriDUH, Alabama, Tennessee, Louisiana, and Oklahoma are easily worst five. HOWEVER, local-level laws can make some places WORSE than any place even these five states.

Many people in Florida assume that every state treats people on the registry the same way. That simply is not true. Florida is not the national standard. Many states, including Colorado, follow a tier-based system that is much closer to the federal guidelines.

For example, in Colorado, Tier 1 and many Tier 2 registrants generally do not appear on the public neighborhood maps that people in Florida are familiar with. The public registry requires someone to specifically search for a person’s name, and it does not publicly display residential addresses the way Florida does.

That difference has real-world consequences. Background checks can be less stigmatizing, employment opportunities can be better, housing is often easier to obtain, and you are generally treated more like a member of society than someone who is permanently marked for public shaming.

Colorado’s compliance model is also very different. As a Tier 1 registrant, I only had one annual in-person verification. There was no rigid deadline measured in days. During one year, I was camping with my family for nearly a month when my assigned officer attempted the home verification. He called me, I explained where I was, and he simply said, “That sounds fun. When you get back, give me a call and I’ll come out and complete your annual check.”

Coming from Florida, I asked what would happen if someone missed their annual verification because of something like a hospital stay. His response was straightforward: call the office or call him. They would document the circumstances, complete the necessary report, and work with the individual to satisfy the requirement. Officer discretion is part of the process because the goal is compliance, not creating unnecessary felony arrests.

That experience showed me a completely different philosophy of policing. Colorado’s registry system is not perfect, but it is much closer to the federal tier model than Florida’s system. The focus is on helping people comply with the law instead of looking for technical violations that can result in new felony charges.

I still keep in touch with the detective assigned to my area in Colorado. He’s a great officer who understands the difference between someone intentionally committing a crime and someone who is making a good-faith effort to comply. That kind of professional discretion makes a tremendous difference.

The point is not that Colorado is perfect. The point is that Florida is not the standard for the rest of the country. Many states have adopted a very different approach, and people living in Florida should not assume they will be treated the same way everywhere else.

Derek L., if you see this, could you share how Nebraska handles its registry? I think it would help people understand that registry laws vary significantly from state to state, and that Florida’s approach is not the model followed nationwide.

One of the bad things that happened in my life was to have my daughter convicted of child abduction in 1999 and not discover that she was wrongfully convicted until 2021 (22 years later). When my sister and I started reviewing the court record, we found defense counsel–quickly turned state actor–brought home a victory for the state by an involuntary plea at the defective plea hearing. Black’s Law Dictionary calls such staged bench trials, “Kangaroo courts.” (See Wisconsin appellate court case 2024AP2239.) My daughter filed for review by the Wisconsin Supreme Court on March 2, 2026. Still waiting.

Anyway, my wife was observed walking behind somebody’s house. Out of concern for her, the person called 911. Because similar incidents have occurred, the police contacted me and brought my wife home. The next day, one of my neighbors told me that the incident was posted on an app. I signed into the app to in order to thank the person for the concern shown by calling 911. With the help of another one of my daughters, we composed in informational “Thank you!” However, I was unable to log back into the app to thank the community response.

I reached out to the application administrator and reported that I was unable to access the app to offer thanks. A few days later I received a response from the administrator: “I apologize for the difficulty you experienced signing up. The problem is that your address was listed in the Florida Offender Registry as the address of a registered sex offender. This caused our system to automatically block you from joining [the app]. The good news is that I rechecked the Florida Offender Registry and your address is no longer flagged. I’ve lifted the restriction, so you should be able to log in with no issues now.”

My response in kind: “Knowing that you are marginalizing citizens convicted of sex offenses, I am no longer interested in [the app]. Through the police report, I found the ‘good Samaritan’ who made the 911 call on my wife’s behalf and personally thanked her for her concern. Citizens convicted of sex offenses need community engagement. Sex offender registries are exclusionary devices used to ruin lives, families, and communities. If such hypocritical schemes are allowed to persist, they will destroy this country.

Could only imagine that being a PFR and wining only would make things worse with public spotlight being on them

Please complete a declaration today. This is one of the most important things you can do right now, and the deadline is today. These declarations are critical to our lawsuit and could make a significant difference in our legal challenge.

In addition, donations remain essential. We cannot move this challenge forward without the financial support needed to cover the costs of litigation. Every contribution helps.

As we prepare our upcoming legal challenge, one of the most important ways you can support FAC—aside from financial contributions—is by sharing your personal experience.

We are looking for individuals who have been directly affected by Florida’s recent amendments and are willing to submit a declaration explaining how these new restrictions have impacted their lives.

Remember, your declaration should describe your specific situation and explain how the passage of SB 212 and HB 45 has affected or changed your life. The court needs to hear real stories showing the practical, day-to-day impact of these laws.

Examples include:

“I visit my elderly mother several times each year. Because I visit more than three days in a calendar year, I am required to register her address as a temporary residence. Since she lives in a community with a pool, I can no longer visit her.”
“The lease on my apartment expires this year, and my family planned to move from a one-bedroom apartment to a two-bedroom apartment within the same community. Because the community has a pool, we can no longer relocate—even within the same complex.”
“I work in a shopping mall and interact with dozens of people every day. I cannot always determine whether a customer is 17 or 19 years old, so I do not know whether I can legally communicate with them. I asked my supervising officer whether the mall is considered a ‘place where children congregate,’ and he did not know.”

If you have been affected in a similar way, please submit your declaration today. Your voice matters, and your experience could play an important role in helping the court understand the real-world impact of SB 212 and HB 45.

Thank you for your support, your willingness to stand up, and for helping us continue this fight.

Ryan

Thank you so much for your input. Well said and lots of good information and knowledge from your post on my lottery questions and scenarios. Nice post and reply, thanks again.

I studied this for a paper in college so here is a quick summary what I found and again this is not for people on the registry just winners who suffer

Winning a lottery forces individuals into a stressful semi-celebrity status that often destroys their peace of mind through relentless, aggressive financial harassment. Because most states mandate public disclosure, a winner’s identity, face, and hometown are pushed into the media spotlight, stripping them of anonymity and attracting non-stop solicitations from long-lost relatives, complete strangers, high-pressure charitable organizations, and religious groups. This influx of attention is accompanied by a barrage of predatory pitches from shady financial advisors and con artists looking to exploit their sudden wealth, alongside frivolous, opportunistic lawsuits aimed at securing quick cash settlements. To escape this constant bombardment and ensure their personal safety, winners are frequently forced to go into hiding, change phone numbers, hire private security, or relocate entirely. This toxic environment distorts all personal interactions, creating profound social isolation as winners realize they can no longer distinguish between genuine relationships and those motivated entirely by greed.

References
Certified Financial Planner Board of Standards: Documentation outlining how public exposure and sudden wealth attract fraudulent professionals and overwhelming predatory financial pitches.
National Endowment for Financial Education (NEFE): Research highlighting how sudden-wealth recipients face intense social pressure and persistent demands from social networks, frequently contributing to eventual bankruptcy.
“Curse of the Lottery” Case Studies: Historical documentation of high-profile winners (such as Jack Whittaker, Abraham Shakespeare, and Billy Bob Harrell Jr.) who faced relentless public litigation, extortion schemes, and systemic harassment from strangers and organizations following their public wins.