F.A.C., NARSOL’s FL affiliate, say legislators ignored constitution in creating new laws
Florida Action Committee . . . Citizens and organizations across Florida are alarmed as the legislature appears headed to pass a law already found unconstitutional in Louisiana and Alabama, potentially leaving Florida taxpayers on the hook for hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal disputes. Florida House of Representatives bill HB 1085 would require the driver’s licenses and state-issued identification cards of all persons required to register as sex offenders in Florida to be printed entirely in red. A related bill winding its way through the Florida Senate (SB 1252) would require only certain information on those driver’s licenses to literally appear as “scarlet letters.”
However, according to Gail Colletta, President of the Florida Action Committee, the problem with both bills is that nearly identical laws in Louisiana and Alabama have been struck down as unconstitutional, as they violate the First Amendment prohibition against compelled speech. Currently, persons required to register as sex offenders in Florida must already possess a driver’s license or card bearing a unique numerical code printed in blue to alert law enforcement officers to the card holder’s status.
“The purpose of this code on driver’s licenses is to communicate information to law enforcement, not the public at large. The Supreme Court of Louisiana and a federal district court judge in Alabama have both determined that it is an unconstitutional violation of the Bill of Rights to require persons convicted of sexual offenses to bear branded driver’s licenses that alert the general public to the card holder’s status,” Colletta said. The Florida Action Committee, a non-profit organization dedicated to protecting the public through supporting rational sexual offender legislation based on empirical evidence, warned that if either version of the bill becomes law, it will almost certainly face immediate legal challenges in both state and federal courts on constitutional grounds, which would cost Florida taxpayers hundreds of thousands of dollars, if not more.
Information about both the Louisiana and Alabama judicial rulings declaring similar laws in those states unconstitutional was sent to multiple legislative staff analysts, yet that information curiously did not appear in the analyses performed for any of the legislative committees tasked with reviewing the bills. In fact, concerned citizens forwarded copies of the Louisiana and Alabama court decisions to several staff analysts for both the House and Senate. However, none of the staff analysts noted any potential constitutional concerns in the summaries provided for legislators before they voted on the bill, according to Colletta.
Colletta explained that this appears to be a pattern, especially in the Florida House of Representatives, where another bill currently under consideration known as HB 833 would have the practical effect of banning sexual offenders from all vacation rentals in the state. Even the FDLE, which maintains the Florida sex offender registry, has urged the House to remove this provision from the bill as it is likely unconstitutional, yet the bill is continuing to move forward in House committees.
For more information, contact: Gail Colletta – 833-273-7325, 352-554-4501, 357059@email4pr.com or visit www.floridaactioncommittee.org
The gov database & affirmative disability.
That position was upheld by the Rehnquist Court.
They paved the way. As in Packingham speech was always implicated. Always was speech regime.
Compelled speech for some, intentionally silenced speech for others. Judges want the online speech about their home addresses silenced. NARSOL can rightly insist on a registry of all public officials. Naturally the Feds will react by shutting your database registry down. Fact is tech firms are already covering their sixes in that regard.
That divergence will continue.
The voting public is ignorant of the US Constitution because they don’t teach civics anymore in primary education. When you remove that, you remove the knowledge they need to know and understand this is unconstitutional by the constitution and associated legal precedent.
Legislatures don’t care about this topic but only the voting cred they will garner from the public for efforts like this during elections. If they are held personally accountable by the public for frivolous spending of monies to defend losing efforts, then they may understand. But the public does not understand the financial aspect because the govt will just keep borrowing and taking from others to fund these habits. Staff is in place to do jobs like this at the expense of other more important matters, but people don’t care.
Raise the fear level here, as they are doing, with this only to see it stricken down. FLA is walking a dangerous path to a lawsuit, a very expensive lawsuit. I hope they do pass it so it will be sued with an injunction to stop it upon the “guvnah” signature with appeals all the way to the 11th CCOA to slap them back into place for that neck of the woods. IF FLA is so heat stricken then to appeal to SCOTUS for a national policy precedent against monikers like this, then so be it. It would be a wonderful thing and useful in many different ways.
I ask my twins me about constitutional rights and I get” huh, you mean…giberish.” However lets us not confuse a reasonable expectation of right AFTER you’ve waived civil rights by waiver in a court of law by your own choice. It is one thing to ” teach the constitution ” and quite another to adhere to its limitations.
FL can do this because they’ve little regard for rulings calling it unconstitutional. Why would they? When are politicians ever fired for unconstitutional bills? Never!
When are they defeated in a subsequent election because a law was overturned? Never! Why would a state abandon self determination in favor of letting others make the all rules? Never in the long run! See the Revolution & Brexit!
What you see here is a repeat of the Alaska SOR where Congress and Supreme Court ignored the constitution in favor of database.MV>HV=NULL (Asimov)
enslavement. a bad habit the US just cant seem to shed.
mut,
What happens my friend is this. It’s not different than what we see the professional treatment providers with all the issues.
The regimes prescribed by socialist thinking in a capitalist system specifically tend to be about group reciprocity rather than affecting the changes the people need or demand. In this scenario socialists’ feed one another through law or policy.
Because their social predilection of the socialist is to self sustain comes first, ineffective or less effective policy results. Because the policy is generally ineffective changes naturally result expanding the range or scope of the policy with hopes of increasing effectiveness. SOR is a prime example!
However in the long run, expanding but ineffective policies begin to get more expensive and less bang for the buck is rendered. Flaws in any given policies’ foundation begin to get exposed for the people to plainly see. Because the socialist is determined to maintain their favored policies’ position despite its obvious failure, they turn to others to make it cheaper, less costly to maintain. This will relieve the tax payer from the burden of dealing with criminal element* by giving the duty to privatization to cope with instead to the taxpayers. Essentially the socialist hires a fascist ( A pure capitalist) to cover their foundationally flawed social policy.
Thus we see ankle bracelets which are factually “leased properties” and not property owned by the people whole. The purveyors of said ankle bracelets, in all reality, play a similar role that of Mr. Schindler in “Schinldler’s list.” He was and they are able to capitalize on free labor created by laws and policy in Germany and now America.
I believe the purveyors of SOR are of the same ilk. But how to prove it……IN COURT!
*A better word may be “unwanted elements”