A registrant and his family filed a Motion for Preliminary Injunction (PI) in federal court late yesterday in order to stop a Halloween Ordinance in Simi Valley from being enforced. The ordinance requires registrants to post a sign on the front door of their home on Halloween as well as prohibits registrants from participating in Halloween activities including decorating their homes.
“After the lawsuit was filed, city officials have admitted that they have enforced the Halloween Ordinance for the past five years despite a judge’s ruling and a written promise that they would not,” stated ACSOL Executive Director Janice Bellucci. “The City’s unlawful acts must be stopped.”
In addition, the court has transferred the lawsuit to U.S. District Court Judge Percy Anderson who granted a Temporary Restraining Order in a similar case in 2012. In that TRO, the judge stated that the City’s requirement that registrants place a sign on the front of their home violates the First Amendment because it constitutes compelled speech and “poses a danger to sex offenders, their families and their property….its function and effect is likely to approximate that of Hawthorne’s Scarlet letter — ….potentially subjecting them to dangerous mischief common on Halloween night and to community harassment in the weeks and months following.”
Also in the TRO, the judge ruled that “the public interest is not served — indeed, it is undermined — by enforcement of an unconstitutional law singling out a discrete, outcast group to speak in such a way that their persons, property, and loved ones may be endangered. Because the impact on the public of enjoining this section of the Halloween Ordinance is likely to be negligible, the Court finds that a temporary restraining order is in the public interest.”
Janice, what recourse do registrants have that have been told to stay in their home from 5pm on Halloween to 5am the following morning? Talk about singling out a group of people!
Simply because the Nanny Big Government (NBG) S*x Offender Registries exist, if you are listed on them and are not on probation or parole, you have an American and moral obligation to go out of your way to be around random children as often as possible, completely anonymously. It is trivial to do, of course. And coincidentally that is pretty much how normal people live so it should be exactly what you are doing.
On Halloween, you should do whatever you want, as long as it is legal. Personally, I like to go driving around random neighborhoods far from where I live and enjoy the decorations and such. If you have younger children, you could take them trick-or-treating. Do it far from where you live if you prefer.
If some criminal regime tell you that you must do anything, you should tell them to go F themselves. Remind them that they are in America and that Americans are going to end their kind. Control freaks who love NBG need to be neutralized, ostracized, and pushed out of society. No American can care about them. Let them move to a crappy country where they will fit in better. Sue the criminal regimes if you have a case. Take any resources that you can away from them.
As a Simi Valley resident subject to compliance of the ordinance I am appalled. Was one of the original plaintiffs who fought against this on behalf of my spouse and my children who were unlawfully subjected to it by familial affiliation. We are a rather religious family, so we don’t really celebrate or decorate for this “pagan” holiday. But the sign outside our property the city required was beyond acceptable and caused great anxiety and fear among my wife and children.
While the TRO ensured we would not be required to post a sign outside our residence, over the past 5 years since it’s passing I have deliberately left town and vacationed in other locations so that my family would not be subject to the other provisions of this bull crap ordinance. The ordinance can only be applied to me. In my absence my family is free to do what they want on Halloween. But it saddens me that I am compelled under law to spend time away from my family during a holiday, pagan as it may be, so that they may enjoy their lives without restriction, because a law was passed that infringed on their ability to do so based upon the past transgression of someone who lives in their household.