Diane Schwerm Sykes is an American jurist and lawyer who serves as the chief judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit. She served as a justice of the Wisconsin Supreme Court from 1999 to 2004.
The Dru Sjodin National Sex Offender Public Registry is a cooperative effort between U.S. state agencies that host public sex offender registries and the U.S. federal government. The registry is coordinated by the United States Department of Justice and operates a web site search tool allowing a user to submit a single query to obtain information about sex offenders throughout the United States.
Jessica's Law is the informal name given to a 2005 Florida law, as well as laws in several other states, designed to protect potential victims and reduce a sexual offender's ability to re-offend which includes a mandatory minimum sentence of 25 years in prison and lifetime electronic monitoring when the victim is less than 12 years old. A version of Jessica's Law, known as the Jessica Lunsford Act, was introduced at the federal level in 2005 but was never enacted into law by Congress.
Milan Dale Smith, Jr. is an American attorney and jurist serving as a United States circuit judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. Smith's brother, Gordon H. Smith, was a Republican U.S. Senator from 1997 to 2009. Milan Smith is neither a Republican nor a Democrat, and he considers himself to be a political independent.
Neil McGill Gorsuch is an American jurist who serves as an associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States. He was nominated by President Donald Trump on January 31, 2017, and has served since April 10, 2017.
The Adam Walsh Child Protection and Safety Act is a federal statute that was signed into law by U.S. President George W. Bush on July 27, 2006. The Walsh Act organizes sex offenders into three tiers according to the crime committed, and mandates that Tier 3 offenders update their whereabouts every three months with lifetime registration requirements. Tier 2 offenders must update their whereabouts every six months with 25 years of registration, and Tier 1 offenders must update their whereabouts every year with 15 years of registration. Failure to register and update information is a felony under the law. States are required to publicly disclose information of Tier 2 and Tier 3 offenders, at minimum. It also contains civil commitment provisions for sexually dangerous people.
Connecticut Department of Public Safety v. Doe, 538 U.S. 1 (2003), was a United States Supreme Court case regarding the constitutionality of the Connecticut sex offender registration requirement which required public disclosure of information on sex offenders after they had been released from incarceration.
Citizens for Equal Protection v. Bruning, 455 F.3d 859, was a federal lawsuit filed in the United States District Court for the District of Nebraska and decided on appeal by the United States Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit. It challenged the federal constitutionality of Nebraska Initiative Measure 416, a 2000 ballot initiative that amended the Nebraska Constitution to prohibit the recognition of same-sex marriages, civil unions, and other same-sex relationships.
Doe v. Shurtleff, 628 F.3d 1217, was a United States Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit case assessing the constitutionality of Utah Code Ann. § 77-27-21.5, a law that requires sex offenders to register their internet identifiers with the state in order to "assist in investigating kidnapping and sex-related crimes, and in apprehending offenders." In this case, a convicted sex offender, appearing anonymously as John Doe, appealed a decisionArchived January 4, 2014, at the Wayback Machine by the United States District Court for the District of Utah to vacate an order enjoining the enforcement of Utah Code Ann. § 77-27-21.5. Even though Doe did not dispute the state's interest in enacting such a statute, he believed that the statute's enforcement ran afoul of his:
United States v. Bormes, 568 U.S. 6 (2012), is a decision by the Supreme Court of the United States holding that the Little Tucker Act, which provides jurisdiction to federal courts for certain claims brought against the federal government, does not apply to lawsuits brought under the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA).
United States v. Kebodeaux, 570 U.S. 387 (2013), was a recent case in which the Supreme Court of the United States held that the Sex Offender Notification and Registration Act (SORNA) was constitutional under the Necessary and Proper Clause.
Sex offender registries in the United States exist at both the federal and state levels. The federal registry is known as the National Sex Offender Public Website (NSOPW) and integrates data in all state, territorial and tribal registries provided by offenders required to register. Registries contain information about persons convicted of sexual offenses for law enforcement and public notification purposes. All 50 states and the District of Columbia maintain sex offender registries that are open to the public via websites; most information on offenders is visible to the public. Public disclosure of offender information varies between the states depending on offenders' designated tier, which may also vary from state to state, or risk assessment result. According to NCMEC, as of 2016 there were 859,500 registered sex offenders in United States.
The constitutionality of sex offender registries in the United States has been challenged on a number of state and federal constitutional grounds. While the Supreme Court of the United States has twice upheld sex offender registration laws, in 2015 it vacated a requirement that an offender submit to lifetime ankle-bracelet monitoring, finding it was a Fourth Amendment search that was later ruled constitutionally unreasonable by the state court.
Welch v. United States, 578 U.S. 120 (2016), was a United States Supreme Court case in which the Court ruled that the decision in Johnson v. United States announced a substantive rule change and is therefore retroactive.
Heffernan v. City of Paterson, 578 U.S. ___ (2016), was a United States Supreme Court case in 2016 concerning the First Amendment rights of public employees. By a 6–2 margin, the Court held that a public employee's constitutional rights might be violated when an employer, believing that the employee was engaging in what would be protected speech, disciplines them because of that belief, even if the employee did not exercise such a constitutional right.
Spokeo, Inc. v. Robins, 578 U.S. 330 (2016), was a United States Supreme Court case in which the Court vacated and remanded a ruling by United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit on the basis that the Ninth Circuit had not properly determined whether the plaintiff has suffered an "injury-in-fact" when analyzing whether he had standing to bring his case in federal court. The Court did not discuss whether "the Ninth Circuit’s ultimate conclusion — that Robins adequately alleged an injury in fact — was correct."
Ross v. Blake, 578 U.S. ___ (2016), was a United States Supreme Court case in which the Court held that "special circumstances" cannot excuse an inmate's failure to exhaust administrative remedies before filing a lawsuit under the Prison Litigation Reform Act of 1995, but clarified that inmates are required to exhaust only administrative remedies that are genuinely available. In so doing, it vacated and remanded the decision of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit.
Gundy v. United States, No. 17-6086, 588 U.S. ___ (2019), was a United States Supreme Court case that held that 42 U.S.C. § 16913(d), part of the Sex Offender Registration and Notification Act ("SORNA"), does not violate the nondelegation doctrine. The section of the SORNA allows the Attorney General to "specify the applicability" of the mandatory registration requirements of "sex offenders convicted before the enactment of [SORNA]". Precedent is that it is only constitutional for Congress to delegate legislative power to the executive branch if it provides an "intelligible principle" as guidance. The outcome of the case could have greatly influenced the broad delegations of power Congress has made to the federal executive branch, but it did not.
Rotkiske v. Klemm, 589 U.S. ___ (2019), was a decision by the Supreme Court of the United States involving the statute of limitations under the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act of 1977. The Court ruled that the statute of limitations begins one year after the alleged FDCPA violation took place, not one year after the violation was discovered by the plaintiff. This ruling affirmed a decision by the 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals. It is noteworthy for being the first signed opinion released from the 2019 term. It is also noteworthy for resolving a circuit split regarding a major consumer protection law.
Peter v. NantKwest Inc., 589 U.S. ___ (2019), was a United States Supreme Court case from the October 2019 term.
