FAC Weekly Update: The Ripple Effect of a Constitutional Challenge | September 15, 2026 | Recording 390

Help Make Florida the Next Ripple

Dear Members and Advocates,

One of the most important things about a major constitutional lawsuit is that its impact can extend far beyond the original case. We saw a perfect example of that this past week in Michigan.

The Ripple Effect in Michigan

On September 9, the Michigan Supreme Court issued a short but extraordinarily important order in People v. Eddie Lee Smith. Smith was not a plaintiff in the groundbreaking litigation brought by the ACLU of Michigan challenging Michigan’s registry. His case was his own separate criminal case. But his victory was a direct product of that litigation and the legal foundation it established.

Michigan had already determined that its Sex Offender Registration Act was punishment. Once that was established, the next question was obvious: If the registry is punishment, can the government impose that punishment retroactively on people whose crimes occurred before the law was enacted? In Smith, the answer was no.

Smith committed the crimes for which he was required to register in 1995 and 2010. Nevertheless, Michigan was requiring him to register under the 2011 version of SORA and then criminally prosecuted him for not doing so. The Michigan Supreme Court held that the statutory requirements enacted after his crimes constituted punishment and that applying those requirements to Smith therefore violated the Ex Post Facto Clauses of both the United States and Michigan Constitutions.

Technically, Smith was an individual case. But the implications were much bigger. Michigan has apparently finally recognized that it would be rather difficult to keep tens of thousands of people subject to a law that had already been determined could not constitutionally be applied to them (and continue to charge them with violations). The Michigan State Police announced Friday that it had already removed more than 20,000 people from the registry as of September 11, with the review and removal process continuing. That’s the ripple effect. The ACLU’s lawsuit established constitutional principles that helped Smith beat his failure to register case.

What This Could Mean for Florida

That is hopefully what we will see in Florida Action Committee v. Glass also. If we succeed, the consequences could reach far beyond the current case, and that possibility is particularly important right now for the hundreds of people who are facing criminal registration-violation charges. Florida has conducted numerous registration-enforcement crackdowns over the past six months, resulting in a bunch of people being charged with technical registration violations. Some of those prosecutions involve registration requirements that are being challenged in FAC v. Glass. If a registration requirement is ultimately determined to be unconstitutional, that could become highly relevant in cases where someone is being prosecuted for violating that very requirement.

This is not a suggestion that every pending prosecution will be affected by our lawsuit. It is just a reminder that constitutional litigation can change the legal landscape — and defense attorneys need to know when that landscape may be changing.

Please Email an Attorney

Please take a moment to email your criminal defense attorney (or the attorney who represented you in the past) and make sure they know about FAC v. Glass. You don’t have to be facing a registration violation yourself. There is a very good chance that your former attorney has another client who is and we’re all in this together. Let them know that Florida’s registry is being challenged and point them toward the case. The more Florida criminal defense attorneys who understand what we are doing, the more likely it is that these issues will be raised when they matter.

Please help us make Florida the next ripple.

Sincerely,
The Florida Action Committee