Supreme Court upholds sex offender registration requirements

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Supreme Court upholds sex offender registration requirements

Jaclyn Belczyk | JURIST Executive Editor

June 24, 2013 03:19:02 pm

[JURIST] The US Supreme Court [official website] ruled [opinion, PDF] 7-2 Monday in United States v. Kebodeaux [SCOTUSblog backgrounder] that the federal government can compel a convicted sex offender to register with the Sex Offender Registration and Notification Act of 2006 (SORNA) [text; JURIST news archive] even if the offender completed his sentence before SORNA was enacted. In an opinion by Justice Breyer, the court found that this was within Congress’ power under the Necessary and Proper Clause [Cornell LII backgrounder], reversing the decision [text] of the US Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit:

SORNA’s general changes were designed to make more uniform what had remained “a patchwork of federal and 50 individual state registration systems,” … with “loopholes and deficiencies” that had resulted in an estimated 100,000 sex offenders becoming “missing” or “lost.” … SORNA’s more specific changes reflect Congress’ determination that the statute, changed in respect to frequency, penalties, and other details, will keep track of more offenders and will encourage States themselves to adopt its uniform standards. No one here claims that these changes are unreasonable or that Congress could not reasonably have found them “necessary and proper” means for furthering its preexisting registration ends.
We conclude that the SORNA changes as applied to Kebodeaux fall within the scope Congress’ authority under the Military Regulation and Necessary and Proper Clauses.

Chief Justice John Roberts filed a concurring opinion, saying that the majority’s discussion of the general public safety benefits of the registration requirement is “beside the point in this case.” Justice Samuel Alito also filed a concurring opinion. Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas filed dissenting opinions.

The Supreme Court heard oral arguments [JURIST report] in the case in April. The deputy Solicitor General argued that “Nothing in Article I prevents Congress from legislating retroactively with respect to civil remedies for past violations of Federal law. The Ex Post Facto Clause, the Due Process Clause, and Article I analysis under the Necessary and Proper Clause all provide some degree of protection against retroactive provisions, but no per se rule bars Congress from applying sex offender registration requirements, which this Court has held to be civil remedies not barred by the Ex Post Facto Clause to past Federal criminal convictions.” An attorney on behalf of Anthony James Kebodeaux argued that the situation should be analyzed under the five factors in United States v. Comstock [JURIST report]. She also argued that under “necessary and proper” analysis, the government’s requirement of registration here is beyond the scope of that power. “I don’t see any problem with them giving notice. That does not impose a Federal obligation on an individual. So there is no power being exerted on the individual.”

Martin Luther King Jr. wrote his Letter from Birmingham Jail

On April 16, 1963, an incarcerated Martin Luther King, Jr. (arrested for demonstrating in defiance of a court order) wrote his Letter from Birmingham Jail in response to a published statement by eight fellow clergymen from Alabama.

Part of the letter read: We have waited for more than 340 years for our constitutional and God-given rights. The nations of Asia and Africa are moving with jetlike speed toward gaining political independence, but we stiff creep at horse-and-buggy pace toward gaining a cup of coffee at a lunch counter. Perhaps it is easy for those who have never felt the stinging dark of segregation to say, "Wait." But when you have seen vicious mobs lynch your mothers and fathers at will and drown your sisters and brothers at whim; when you have seen hate-filled policemen curse, kick and even kill your black brothers and sisters; when you see the vast majority of your twenty million Negro brothers smothering in an airtight cage of poverty in the midst of an affluent society; when you suddenly find your tongue twisted and your speech stammering as you seek to explain to your six-year-old daughter why she can't go to the public amusement park that has just been advertised on television, and see tears welling up in her eyes when she is told that Funtown is closed to colored children, and see ominous clouds of inferiority beginning to form in her little mental sky, and see her beginning to distort her personality by developing an unconscious bitterness toward white people; when you have to concoct an answer for a five-year-old son who is asking: "Daddy, why do white people treat colored people so mean?"; when you take a cross-county drive and find it necessary to sleep night after night in the uncomfortable corners of your automobile because no motel will accept you; when you are humiliated day in and day out by nagging signs reading "white" and "colored"; when your first name becomes "nigger," your middle name becomes "boy" (however old you are) and your last name becomes "John," and your wife and mother are never given the respected title "Mrs."; when you are harried by day and haunted by night by the fact that you are a Negro, living constantly at tiptoe stance, never quite knowing what to expect next, and are plagued with inner fears and outer resentments; when you are forever fighting a degenerating sense of "nobodiness" then you will understand why we find it difficult to wait. There comes a time when the cup of endurance runs over, and men are no longer willing to be plunged into the abyss of despair. I hope, sirs, you can understand our legitimate and unavoidable impatience. Read the full text of the Letter.