MI: After a Registry is Ruled Unconstitutional, Whom, If Anyone, Can Registrants Sue for Damages?
Registrants represented by Oliver Law Group appeal dismissal of their suit against governors and state police, as reported by Courthouse News.
For more background on Michigan registrants’ challenge, visit Michigan ACLU’s SORA Resources Page.
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The buck has to stop somewhere as Pres Truman said and it was with him, so why can these at the top who sign laws into action not be held accountable again? Does the buck not stop with them?
TS:
Sovereign immunity is a legal fiction created by the U.S. Supreme Court. A sex offender did win in Michigan on a similar issue of being arrested when he was not required to register, see Hart v Hillsdale, 6th Cir. 2020. The difference was that he sued the city and county, not the state.
If the 6th Circuit upholds this decision the plaintiffs may consider naming the city and county as defendants. There is a fair probability that they will win monetary compensation. We just have to wait and see.
Any time someone wonders whether sex offenders are treated fairly by the courts, all they have to do is look at Michigan. You couldn’t have asked for a bigger victory than when the Sixth Circuit finally struck down completely the old Michigan SORA law. Yet not one offender was removed from the registry because the Legislature simply wrote a new law that threw everyone back on the registry. Ex post facto law on steroids.
@Gerald
And what is to keep that happening anywhere else. I am pondering if taking $10,000 out of my 401k to get off the registry is worth it, when 6 months later a law could be written to say being let off was no correct. Then you are double screwed. Essentially what happened to those in Michigan.
Seems lawmakers can judge override a judge with a new law?
Yeah, and who’s to say if a lot of us are removed if we get a favorable outcome to our latest lawsuit that the State will find a way to put us all back on it? All they have to do is arrest us for anything they can think up and BOOM! back on the registry we go.
Gerald:
Now they can request monetary compensation. We will have to wait to see if they can win on the issue of monetary compensation.
Those SOBs deliberately thumbed their noses at that court decision for, what, 3 years?
The standard of deliberate indifference (at the least) seems appropriate.
They (collectively and severally) had an obvious duty as executives of the state to issue policy papers and to insist on enforcement!
They practiced malfeasance in a deliberate and indifferent manner, and they committed torts (at the least) against those registrants!
Just my opinion.
@JJJJ
Sounds like a power trip of “Just because I can-ness”.