Gov. Jerry Brown signed a closely watched bill on Sunday to block the creation of any so-called Muslim registry should President Trump choose to act on a proposal he repeatedly suggested during his 2016 campaign.
Senate Bill 31 by state Sen. Ricardo Lara (D-Bell Gardens) bars state and local governments from releasing personal information to the federal government for the creation of any religious list, registry or database. It also prohibits them from using resources to create their own lists.
Dubbed the California Religious Freedom Act, the bill coasted through the legislative process this year, the only proposal to gain bipartisan support from a package introduced by majority Democrats to counter Trump’s policies.
Hmmmm….I wonder if this bill can easily be appropriated, as religion alone cannot be used upon its own merits for instituting such a registry. In short, it’s either allow all registries, or no registries. Smith v. Doe itself appears to be in violation of the new California law based upon those tenets.
A Muslim registry? Will Muslim registrants have to turn off their porch lights for Ramadan? Maybe a tier based system based on how Muslim you really are? Maybe after no suicide bombings for 20 years you can petition to get off? At least they can live by schools and parks and take part in their children’s education. 🖕🏼 Trump
Yet they continue to circle the wagon around Megan’s law claiming that “it’s needed” for public safety and constitutionally sound. Disgusting!
The bill text can be read here:
https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billTextClient.xhtml?bill_id=201720180SB31
It forbids state law enforcement from participating in any scheme, particularly federal laws, that would create a registry on the basis of “religious belief, practice, or affiliation, national origin, or ethnicity.” One could argue that the principles behind SB 31 could apply to registrants and I believe it’s worth making that point in the right setting, such as litigation against current registration schemes.
That said, there may be a practical way to directly translate it to the current registry on the basis of ethnicity. It is no secret that every registrant’s public profile includes a description of their ethnicity and other personal identifying information like hair and eye color. It is extremely easy to compile data from the Megan’s Law website that would provide you with demographic distributions based on ethnicity. For example, you could use Megan’s Law data to determine how many latino sex offenders live within 2 miles of San Francisco, or what is the most common type of sex offense among black men. It is in fact a database filled with ethnic information and one could make inferences based on statistical ethnic information.
Last year a study* found that “the sex offender registration rate for blacks is twice that of whites.” Previous court precedent has found that discrimination can be proven even if it is not knowing or intentional discrimination, if the result is disproportionate based on protected class status. This is especially true in the area of criminal law. Using the Megan’s Law website, one could make inferences about the dangerousness of specific ethnicities and conclude that certain ethnicities pose a greater risk of offending than others. We all know what a slippery slope this is, particularly with “risk assessment tools” like the Static-99.
We know sex offender laws disproportionately impact racial and sexual minorities. Due to the confusion regarding the laws in other nations, I suspect immigrants are also disproportionately affected, and so registration has a different impact based on national origin. Furthermore, statistical associations between some racial minorities and the Catholic religion would likely show a disproportionate impact against Catholics.
I believe the argument could go one step further because the registry also includes information that could be used to identify a person’s religious affiliation or practice and their national origin. In theory, listings on the Megan’s Law website should be representative of the overall demographic in that region of the state. It would therefore be quite easy to determine what parts of the state have larger Asian populations, for example, or areas with people who have blonde hair and blue eyes. Using the photographs and other personal identifying information, I don’t think it would be difficult to use the Megan’s Law website to determine where most Muslims are located in the state. And from there you already have, in effect, a Muslim registry.
Try it yourself. Choose a name that is common in a specific ethnic background and then map it. Search for every registrant named Mohamed, for example, or Jamal. In these examples the pins are concentrated around Los Angeles and even provided the immigration status of at least one offender listed as “deported.” Yet if you search for registrants named Matthew, the highest concentrations are in Long Beach, San Jose, and Sacramento. Of the thousands of registrants named John, I couldn’t find any deportations, yet for the list of registrants named Juan, there were 8 deportations in the first results.
Finally, the Megan’s Law website includes scar/mark/tattoo information in the database. One registrant’s profiles specifically lists that he has a cross tattoo on his right hand, likely indicating a Christian denomination.
From the text of the new bill:
“Notwithstanding any other law, a state or local agency or public employee acting under color of law shall not:…(3) Make personal information from agency databases available, including any databases maintained by private vendors contracting with the agency, to anyone or any entity for the purpose of investigation or enforcement under any government program compiling a list, registry, or database of individuals based on religious belief, practice, or affiliation, or national origin or ethnicity for law enforcement or immigration purposes.”
“Notwithstanding any other law, state and local law enforcement agencies and their employees shall not:
(1) Collect information on the religious belief, practice, or affiliation of any individual…”
The sex offender registry is a de facto religious registry, ethnic registry, and national origin registry, particularly when one considers how specific subsets of these protected classifications are disproportionately prosecuted for sex offenses.
*http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/lsi.12189/abstract
I don’t understand how CA would pass a bill to protect a demographic from being placed on a public list, since the USSC ruled that such public listings are “administrative” and not punishment.
..unless it IS punishment?
(And even if the “administrative” label can’t be overturned and the SO list stays, how can the laws passed that target people on those lists – especially after sentences have been served – be legal?)
But……”if it keeps just one family (child) safe”…..