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“Repeat sex offenders pose an especially grave risk to children. ‘When convicted sex offenders reenter society, they are much more likely than any other type of offender to be rearrested for a new rape or sexual assault.’”
–Supreme Court Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr., concurring opinion in Packingham v. North Carolina, June 19, 2017
In 2008, North Carolina passed a law banning convicted sex offenders from accessing websites where minors can sign up. Two years later, Lester Packingham, a registered sex offender who in 2002 pleaded guilty to a sex crime involving a kid, ran afoul of the law. He posted a picture of himself on Facebook under an alias account, celebrating a win in traffic court. A police officer spotted this post and arrested him.
Packingham challenged North Carolina’s law, and on June 19, the Supreme Court, in essentially a unanimous vote, ruled in favor of his right to free speech. The court found the state’s ban was too broad-reaching — it could even apply to sites like Amazon.com and WebMD.com, they found — and a violation of First Amendment rights.
Alito, Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., and Justice Clarence Thomas partially agreed with the majority’s opinion. They agreed that the North Carolina law’s “extraordinary breadth” violated the First Amendment, but stressed that states have a responsibility to try to stop the abuse of children before it occurs. Alito, who authored the opinion expressing partial agreement, said convicted sex offenders are “much more likely than any other type of offender to be rearrested for a new rape or sexual assault.”
Read the entire article on myStatesman from Austin American-Statesman – LINK BELOW
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June 21, 2017