Source: courthousenews.com 12/18/2021
A group of registered sex offenders have asked the appeals court to overturn a federal judge’s ruling in favor of a sheriff’s office that posted signs telling trick-or-treaters to keep away from the offenders’ homes on Halloween.
ATLANTA (CN) — A class of registered sex offenders asked an 11th Circuit panel Friday to overturn a federal judge’s ruling allowing Georgia sheriff’s deputies to put warning signs on their lawns before Halloween.
The Butts County Sheriff’s Office has argued in legal briefs that it was merely trying to protect “unwary trick-or-treating children from coming face-to-face with sex offenders” when it began a policy in 2018 of putting signs in front of the homes of every registered sex offender in the county.
The signs read: “Warning! No Trick-or-Treat At This Address!! A Community Safety Message From Butts County Sheriff Gary Long.”
A leaflet was also given to residents of the homes, warning them that tampering with the signs is a criminal offense.
A class of sex offenders led by Christopher Reed, Reginald Holden, and Corey McClendon alleged in a lawsuit against the sheriff’s office that the signs violated their First Amendment rights. The men claimed they were unfairly required to appear to endorse the message.
“The signs deprived [plaintiffs] of their autonomy to determine what they would and would not say on their own property,” the plaintiffs argued in a brief submitted to the 11th Circuit.
Though the men won a court order in 2019 blocking the deputies from putting out the signs that year, the victory was short-lived.
Curious if the Sheriff followed proper protocol and sought/received the proper permits for his signs. There are usually specific rules for what can be posted in the right-of-way for road safety reasons, and even the county must abide by them.
As much as they should win this, can they? 11th circuit is Florida’s Circuit and Alabama’s Circuit. There’s a reason those 2 states are the strictest and rarely rule in favor of sex offenders. This will have to head to the supreme court. Even then, will they hear the case?
Well, if Judge Pryor has anything to do with it, its a loss.
I always thought a public right of way (ROW) was for the sole purpose of travel / transportation (and utility use with permission) and therefore a sign like this would exceed the allowed purpose of the ROW.
A sign such as a those for a garage sale or open house, landmark etc would be pointing out some place in order to direct someone to it and therefore would serve the purpose of transportation and thus an allowed use (often with a permit/permission requirement).
This type of sign would not be serving a transportation based purpose. As such I am not sure it is an allowed use of the ROW. Maybe the ROW allowed use is different there.
Give ‘em’ hell.
This certainly is not part of the Smith or CT DPS decisions. SCOTUS allowed publication of “mostly public” data about PFRs in a method the citizen must affirmatively seek and that provides the conviction information so the citizen can make his/her own determination about the risk the PFR may involve. This, just like branded DLs/IDs, is a horse of another color. This is the government singling out someone–shaming, even. Shaming is a historical method of punishment.
Though I think the compelled-speech argument is the most effective way to attack, I wonder about attacking on the grounds the government is burdening the homeowners’ free speech rights. The sheriff is stepping in and altering the possible interaction between citizens, when a perfectly “good” method exists: ML webpages. Or perhaps the sheriff doesn’t feel the ML site is helpful?