Source: courthousenews.com 4/23/25
The appellate panel said prohibiting parents who have been convicted of sex offenses from cohabitating with their minor children violates the Fourteenth Amendment.
Alabama cannot completely prohibit convicted sex offenders from cohabitating with minors, according to an 11th Circuit Court of Appeals panel on Wednesday.
After being convicted of one count of possession of child pornography in 2013 and serving his sentence for the crime, Bruce Henry married and his wife gave birth to a son, but state law prohibits sex offenders from residing together or conducting overnight visits with minors, even if it is their own child.
In his resulting lawsuit, Henry said the law was unconstitutional and the state had other methods to protect children that were not so extreme as to strip sex offenders of parental rights.
The three-judge appellate panel Wednesday agreed, concluding that the statute violates the Fourteenth Amendment by infringing upon the fundamental right of parents to make decisions concerning the care, custody, and control of their children.
The panel also found Alabama’s law was not narrowly tailored to serve the state’s compelling interest in protecting children, as it imposes a blanket prohibition without allowing individuals to demonstrate their fitness as parents.
Paul is within the NARSOL network of attys (and outta NC, IIRC). This is a great win for individual assessments as a means of determining fitness once the societal debt has been paid and not blanket restrictions of hysteria and fear for political reasons by those who don’t know better.
I should say also this is a persuasive opinion PFRs could use in favor of individual assessments to prove fitness of being released from registry or other restrictions much like CA v Thai is in CA, forcing the gov’t to prove PFRs aren’t fit to be released from the registry.
This opinion is really a stick in the eye of the three southern states which the 11th covers in their efforts to constrain PFRs beyond all reasonableness. I don’t think the state will attempt to appeal to the high court since this court got it right. The state needs to do their homework individually.
One of Project 25’s targets is to return to the old style family. Where the father works, the mother stays home and raises children. These ridiculous laws fly in the face of that and prove the hypocrisy of the people proposing these laws. These politicians are so reactionary that they don’t stop for a minute and realize they are shooting themselves in the foot every time they make life harder for everyone involved. How is creating an absentee father protecting a child. In majority of cases examined, a two parent household results in the safest environment for a child to be raised. It reduces crime and increases school attendance. I would say that is a win/ win.
Any win in Bama is a victory. I wonder if the US govt uses a similar rationale of “protecting children” as reason to deny those on the registry the ability to sponsor foreign spouses? If so, I don’t see why this Alabama victory can’t be used to fight the Adam Walsh policy.