Three years ago, a federal court found portions of Michigan’s sex offender registry act (SORA) unconstitutional. Last Thursday, a different federal judge gave Michigan’s legislature 90 days to finally get its act together and change the law.
In February, Daily Kos reported on the 2015 and 2017 decisions striking down amendments to Michigan’s sex offender registry laws that forbade previous offenders from working, living, or “loitering” within 1,000 feet of a school; placed the majority of past offenders on the registry for life; and retroactively placed people into registry tiers based solely on their past offenses, rather than on the likelihood of their committing another offense.
At that time, newly elected Democratic Attorney General Dana Nessel had filed briefs in two state Supreme Court cases related to the registry, arguing that the state’s current laws were both ineffective and unconstitutional. Nessel’s stance was a direct reversal of the office’s previous policy. In 2018, the Detroit Free Press reported that then-Attorney General Bill Schuette, a Republican, was continuing to enforce the unconstitutional provisions because the case in which they were overturned, Does v. Snyder, was a civil case and not a class-action lawsuit.
Schuette’s continued insistence on enforcing the unconstitutional provisions in the law created a two-tier system for previous offenders. Those with the means to hire an attorney could successfully sue to free themselves from those parts of the law. Past offenders without the means to go to court were forced to either comply or end up back in jail.
In response, the ACLU of Michigan refiled Does v. Snyder as a class-action suit, which resulted in this most recent decision. In a statement about the May 23 ruling provided to Daily Kos, Nessel said that revisions to Michigan’s sex offender registry law are “long overdue.” “In my view, these revisions ... will bring justice to many who have suffered significant burdens imposed by the obligations and requirements of this bloated registration scheme, which is out of touch with practical ramifications, with the needs of law enforcement, and with a more reasoned understanding of recidivism,” Nessel said.
A spokesperson for the ACLU of Michigan, which has been representing the more than 40,000 people on Michigan’s sex offender registry, said that Michigan’s current registry law “actually makes our communities less safe.” “We need and deserve effective public safety measures that protect our kids and families, rather than a bloated and ineffective registration scheme that in fact puts them at greater risk,” said ACLU senior staff attorney Miriam Aukerman. Aukerman is one of the lead attorneys in the case. “Legislators should seize on this opportunity to protect the public by replacing Michigan’s failed registry with policies and programs that have proven successful in preventing sexual offending.”
“We’ve been meeting with law enforcement about this issue for years, and they say they find the registry is not useful in protecting the public,” added Shelli Weisberg, the Michigan ACLU’s political director.
In 2017, the American Bar Association said in a report about geographic restrictions that the difficulty of finding compliant housing “leads to increased transience and homelessness for sex offenders,” and that transience and homelessness in turn “interfere with effective tracking, monitoring, and probation supervision, undermining the very purpose of sex offender registries.” According to the report, “laws that foster instability for offenders simply will not serve the best interest of public safety.”
In an interview with the Gongwer News Service (article behind a paywall) the day the latest ruling was announced, Republican state Sen. Peter Lucido, who chairs the state Senate’s Judiciary Committee, expressed openness to reforming Michigan’s SORA. "I'm not opposed to bringing about changes," Lucido told Gongwer, and "the Legislature is used to working under tight schedules."
Dawn Wolfe is a freelance writer and journalist based in Ann Arbor, Michigan. This post was written and reported through our Daily Kos freelance program.