Dave Byrnes of the Courthouse News Service wrote that the Seventh Circuit panel heard two cases against Wisconsin’s sex offense laws. In one case, two separate plaintiffs argued that the state laws were unjust. In the second case, the three plaintiffs challenged the constitutionality of Wisconsin’s housing regulations for those labeled as sexually violent.
With all due respect to the bench, the registry is punishment or else you wouldn’t put two non-sex offense convicted people on it to begin with. Listing them with others in a database such as this is not sharing info with the masses, but purposely doing to them what PFRs have had done to them for ages, no matter what the Legislative/Congressional intent was at the time. The bench knows this and should opine like this or will look like a**es if they avoid it altogether.
I get the impression that the judges are looking for reasons to avoid ruling or opining and to ignore the entire subject matter.
“Those [congressional] investigations found statistical correlations between child abduction and child molestation.”
Placing the two burglars on the registry by using some statistical correlations points out the severe asymmetry in the use of statistics. Statistics are very clear that people previously convicted of a sex offense rarely reoffend. Yet I don’t see any legislative findings that sex offense registries aren’t necessary.
Every time we get a win, the law makers seem to vow to create 5 or more new restrictions of us. The old saying of “One step forward, three steps back”.
They hate it when we win a case and then we are punished with harsher new requirements. There are entire cities I avoid driving through due to their officers scanning license plates and pulling people over for no reason other than driving while being an ex-felon. I have personally been pulled over since on the registry at least 20 times, only 2 of them were legit traffic stops.
[Moderator’s note: Article does not reference wins by registrants nor new requirements imposed by the legislature. Members are encouraged to stay on-topic].