Georgia Supreme Court Rules that Registration Requirements Unconstitutionally Vague as Applied to Homeless

The Georgia Supreme Court has ruled in a case that we blogged about a while back concerning homeless sex offenders in the state. In a 6 to 1 decision, the Georgia Supreme Court held that the statute was unconstitutional as applied to homeless sex offenders because it was impossible for them to comply with the law's requirements. From the New York Times:

Georgia's top court ruled Monday that a provision in Georgia's strict new sex offender law is unconstitutional because it fails to tell homeless offenders how they can comply with the law.

The law is designed to keep sex offenders away from children by monitoring how close they live to schools, parks and other spots where kids gather. But critics say it unfairly subjects homeless offenders to a life sentence if they fail to register a home address.

The Georgia Supreme Court's 6-1 decision Monday found the law's registration requirements were ''unconstitutionally vague.'' The opinion also held that homeless offenders are not exempt from the statute, and suggested special reporting requirements for the homeless.

I'm clearly biased, but I was actually surprised there was even a dissent in the case. This seems like a pretty clear case where the statute merely punished the status of being homeless. The dissent advances a rather odd statutory interpretation of the Georgia law that I think is simply wrong. However, there is one dissent argument that has some merit concerning the proper remedy for the constitutional wrong in this case. I think a persuasive case could have been made that a homeless sex offender could have been offered compliance through some alternative reporting requirement (or simply excused from the address change requirement). It did not necessarily follow that the offender be excused from all registration requirements. Ultimately, I think the majority position is right that homeless offenders like Santos were put in an untenable position and, thus, the prosecution for failing to register should fail.

I think this case is consistent with law in other states, but it is nonetheless a great victory for the attorneys involved. And in a state like Georgia which has been very hard on sex offenders, the victory is particularly notable.

How Appealing is covering the opinion here.

Comments

[Daniel]

I actually agreed with the dissent, although it could have been written better. As I understand the dissent, it is saying the lawsuit is premature because the law does not mean what everyone thinks it means, namely, that there is in fact a requirement for homeless people to register at all. And one cannot find a constitutional problem with a requirement that doesn't exist.

The difficulty with the analysis of the majority is that it wants to apply the law to *all* the homeless, regardless of if and whether they ever had a residential address. But that is not what he is being charged with. He is being charged with failing to register a *new* address, which he's not required to do.

There are two possible situations in which a person is homeless. The first in when the person has a home, but loses it. The second is when the person never had a home at all. The majority's opinion treats these two situations as the same, even though they are not. Insofar as the law applies to people who are homeless and never had a home, the law is unconstitutional and the majority's analysis is correct. The problem is that this is not Santos situation. He is a person who had a home in Georgia, then lost it. I agree with the dissent that in that situation under Georgia law he's not required to report at all.