Source: floridaactioncommittee.org 10/6/26
On August 22, 2025, Michael A. McGuire filed a federal civil rights lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Alabama. The case is McGuire v. Richardson, No. 2:25-cv-00681. It was the latest step in a fight he had carried on for more than a decade against the way Alabama treats people on its sex offender registry. The defendants are Montgomery Police Officer Jadarius Charles Richardson, his supervisor Heather Williams, the Montgomery Police Department, and the City of Montgomery. McGuire alleged that he was arrested and prosecuted without probable cause after a so-called “home-compliance check,” the kind of visit registrants across the country know too well.
McGuire had moved back to his hometown of Montgomery in 2010. According to the complaint, he had not committed a crime since 1985, had never harmed a child, and had been off probation and parole for more than thirty years. Even so, the Alabama Sex Offender Registration and Community Notification Act (ASORCNA) kept him from living with his wife, and for a time he lived under a bridge. That changed in May 2024, when a federal court ruled in McGuire v. Marshall that parts of ASORCNA’s residence restrictions were unconstitutional as applied to him and others. The complaint also describes years of harassment by Montgomery police during home checks. Officers pounding on his doors and windows, threatening arrest, and demanding proof that he lived where he was registered. His attorney sent the City a cease-and-desist letter about this conduct in 2017.
The events behind the lawsuit started on July 24, 2023, when McGuire completed his quarterly …