You are invited to join ACSOL Executive Director and civil rights attorney Janice Bellucci and an ACSOL board member for our next meeting. The meeting will be held on Saturday February 17, online on Zoom beginning at 10 a.m. Pacific time, 1:00 PM Eastern, and will last at least two hours. You can use the Zoom app or you can call in using a Zoom phone number. There is no registration needed for this meeting. No government officials are allowed to attend the meetings. This meeting will be recorded. Within a…
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Change IS afoot at CASOMB – Occasional Musings by the President of ACSOL, Catherine L. Carpenter
Occasional Musings by the President Change IS afoot at CASOMB By Catherine L. Carpenter President, Alliance for Constitutional Sex Offense Laws Slowly, change is taking place at California Sex Offense Management Board (CASOMB). It is not change with a capital “C,” nor is it the widespread overhaul ACSOL is demanding. But even small positive changes are important in an advocacy movement. So, I want to take a moment to celebrate the small, but powerful shift I witnessed at this week’s CASOMB board meeting. On Thursday, January 18, I attended the…
Read MoreAR: Lawsuit Filed Challenging Halloween Sign Requirement in Arkansas County
Source: ACSOL A lawsuit was filed on January 18 challenging a Halloween sign requirement in Marion County, Arkansas. The Halloween sign was created by the government and a registration officer taped the sign to the front door of a registrant’s home. The sign was required to be posted for about two weeks, one week before Halloween and one week after Halloween. According to the lawsuit, the plaintiff in the case objected to the posting of the Halloween sign on his home and told the registration officer that the sign violated…
Read MoreCA: Number of CA Registrants Continues to Decline
Source: ACSOL The number of individuals required to register in California continues to decline, according to a report made by the California Department of Justice (CA DOJ) during the January 18 meeting of the California Sex Offender Management Board (CASOMB). Specifically, the number of individuals required to register decreased by 896 from 105,738 to 104,842 between November 2023 and January 2024. Of that total, there are 76,575 registrants in the community of whom 19,789 are in violation due to registration issues. There are also 6,503 individuals required to register who…
Read MoreIL: How Illinois Housing Banishment Laws Push People into Homelessness and Prison
Source: boltsmag.org 1/16/24 Organizers with past sex offense convictions are championing a bill in the state legislature that could end the cycle and roll back residency restrictions. James Orr was in his apartment in the Austin neighborhood on Chicago’s West Side one Wednesday morning in 2013 when he heard his phone buzz. “James, you have 30 days to move,” an Illinois state police officer on the other end told him. The 62-year-old, who had moved into the apartment with his wife in 2006 after finishing a three-year prison sentence, was…
Read MoreOH: Want to Watch Porn in Ohio? New Bill Would Require Viewers to Show ID
Source: thedailybeast.com 1/16/24 A bipartisan group of lawmakers in Ohio have proposed a new bill that would require porn sites to verify the age of their users in the state in a bid to keep explicit online content out of the hands of minors. Senate Bill 212, as it’s known, mandates that would have would-be degenerates submit a photo of their state ID or provide their personal information to a third-party company before allowing them access to pornography. Companies that fail to comply could be slapped with stiff penalties. Asked…
Read MoreCase brought to Supreme Court by herring fishermen may gut federal rulemaking power
Source: scotusblog.com 1/16/24 The Supreme Court will hear oral argument on Wednesday in a case involving the deference that courts should give to federal agencies’ interpretations of the laws that they administer. From health care to finance to environmental pollutants, administrative agencies use highly trained experts to interpret and carry out federal laws. Although the case may sound technical, it is one of the most closely watched cases of the court’s current term, which is filled with blockbuster cases involving abortion, gun rights, and whether a former president is eligible…
Read MoreWill the Supreme Court gut SORNA or overturn the Gundy decision in the Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo hearing?
Source: jdsupra.com One of the most significant areas of the law for businesses is administrative law. From questions about a new industry-specific regulation to marshaling a defense against enforcement proceedings, any entity that is subject to government regulations has an interest in developments in administrative law. Key U.S. Supreme Court decisions in recent years have significantly cabined the role of federal agencies and opened the door to new avenues for challenging government regulation. Even more changes may be on the horizon. Read the full article
Read MoreSupreme Court agreed to hear a case on homelessness
Source: scotusblog.com 1/12/24 The Supreme Court agreed on Friday to decide whether an Oregon city can enforce its ban on public camping against homeless people. The announcement came as part of a short list of orders released from the justices’ private conference earlier in the day adding five new cases to the court’s merits docket. The court’s ruling in City of Grants Pass v. Johnson could affect how other cities address their own epidemics of homelessness. San Francisco, which spent over $672 million during the last fiscal year to provide…
Read MoreAction Alert for CA: Time to Sign Up For Lobby Day on March 6 (changed from 5th) in Sacramento
It’s time to sign up for Lobby Day in Sacramento. The day will begin at 9 a.m. on Wednesday, March 6th (updated 2/1) with a training session at the Hyatt Hotel, 1209 L Street. Participants in Lobby Day must attend the training session. All participants will be assigned to a team led by an experienced team leader. The focus of Lobby Day is improvements to the Tiered Registry Law, including but not limited to, creation of an offramp for individuals assigned to Tier 3 that would allow them to…
Read MoreCA: CASOMB Issues Report Proposing Changes to Tiered Registry Law
The California Sex Offender Management Board (CASOMB) has issued a report which recommends to the state legislature several changes to the Tiered Registry Law. If the legislature adopts these changes, thousands of individuals required to register who are currently ineligible to petition for removal from the registry will become eligible. However, no one will be automatically removed from the registry if the legislature adopts these changes. The largest group of registrants who would be helped by these changes are those convicted of felony possession of child pornography. The members of…
Read MoreAL: Alabama cannot ban sex offender parents from living with kids, US judge rules
Source: reuters.com 1/11/24 Alabama only state with such a broad ban, according to judge Alabama has filed a notice of appeal Jan 11 (Reuters) – An Alabama law that bars people convicted of a sex offense involving a minor from living with a child, including their own, unconstitutionally violates the rights of parents to care for their children, a federal judge has ruled. U.S. District Judge R. Austin Huffaker in Montgomery, Alabama, in a ruling on Wednesday sided with a father who had, years before his son’s birth, been convicted…
Read MoreFL: Florida human trafficking database with names and mugshots of perverts caught paying for sex VANISHES after lawmakers failed to agree to extend it
Source: dailymail.co.uk 1/10/24 Florida’s database with names and mugshots of people convicted of paying for sex suddenly disappeared on January 1, 2024. The Soliciting for Prostitution Public Database was launched at the start of 2021, and racked up a list of hundreds of offenders, according to ABC. The Database mysteriously vanished on January 1, 2024, along with a message saying that ‘the section requiring the Florida Department of Law Enforcement to create and maintain the Solicitation for Prostitution Public Database stands repealed.’ Read the full article
Read MoreBan Government Involvement In Sex Trafficking
Source: public.substack.com 1/9/24 It sounds like a Hollywood movie. Government intelligence agencies, perhaps CIA and Mossad, use sex with dozens of teenage girls to blackmail some of the world’s most powerful people, including Bill Gates, Prince Andrew, and Bill Clinton. But it’s not a movie. It appears to be what New York investor Jeffrey Epstein did from the 1990s until 2018. One year later, he died in jail, either by suicide or murder. There’s a lot of misinformation out there about this case. The truth is that we don’t have…
Read MoreEFF Asks Court to Uphold Federal Law That Protects Online Video Viewers’ Privacy and Free Expression
Source: eff.org 1/4/24 As millions of internet users watch videos online for news and entertainment, it is essential to uphold a federal privacy law that protects against the disclosure of everyone’s viewing history, EFF argued in court last month. For decades, the Video Privacy Protection Act (VPPA) has safeguarded people’s viewing habits by generally requiring services that offer videos to the public to get their customers’ written consent before disclosing that information to the government or a private party. Although Congress enacted the law in an era of physical media,…
Read MoreWI Action Alert: Fight SB874 that would put many people back on lifetime GPS registration
Source: docs.legis.wisconsin.gov Call to action for Wisconsin registrants… Last year the high court in Wisconsin struck down former AG’s interpretation that multiple counts on the same case constituted multiple convictions for the purpose of registration and GPS monitoring. A bill was introduced last week that if passed would codify the former AG’s interpretation and put many people back on lifetime GPS registration. The bill is retroactive and seems like it will actually put more people on GPS monitoring than even before. The original statue would have required lifetime GPS monitoring…
Read MoreNM: Bill could change punishment for New Mexico probation violations
Source: krqe.com 1/6/24 NEW MEXICO (KRQE) – The New Mexico legislative session is starting soon, and several bills have been filed this week. One bill, backed by Senators Antonio Maestas and Bill O’Neil, aims to change the way probation violations are handled. … “Right now, under state law, you have two choices: Slap them on the wrist or remand them in custody, waiting for a judge to deem out final sentencing,” said Maestas. … Senator Maestas said other technical violations could have an explanation that was out of the parolees’ control, like…
Read MoreGoogle Contractor Pays Parents $50 to Scan Their Childrens’ Faces
Source: 404media.co 1/4/24 Google is collecting the eyelid shape and skin tone of children via parent submitted videos, according to a project description online reviewed by 404 Media. Canadian tech conglomerate TELUS, which says it is working on Google’s behalf, is offering parents $50 to film their children wearing various props such as hats or sunglasses as part of the project, the description adds. The project shows the methods some companies are using to build machine learning, artificial intelligence, or facial recognition datasets and products. Rather than scraping already existing…
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