Retroactive Sex Offender Registration Law

For over a decade, the ACLU of Michigan has been challenging Michigan’s sex offender registration law which has barred people with past offenses from living and working in large portions of the state, and has subjected them to ongoing supervision and reporting requirements, in most cases for life, all without any consideration of individual circumstances. In 2012 the ACLU of Michigan, working with the University of Michigan’s clinical law program, challenged the law in federal court on behalf of six registrants—including a man who was never convicted of a sex offense and several men convicted of consensual sex with younger teens, one of whom he has since married. In 2016 the Sixth Circuit issued a groundbreaking decision ruling that the retroactive application of the amendments to those convicted before 2011 violates the United States Constitution’s rule against ex post facto laws. But despite the Sixth Circuit’s ruling, Michigan failed to bring its registry into compliance, leaving tens of thousands of other registrants at risk of prosecution unless they complied with the law’s onerous and unconstitutional requirements. Therefore, in 2018 we filed a class action lawsuit to ensure that all Michigan registrants obtain the benefit of the rulings in the earlier case. In 2020 Judge Robert Cleland ruled in favor of the class. Judge Cleland further ruled that the statute’s exclusion zones and certain reporting requirements are unconstitutionally vague for all registrants, and that strict liability prosecutions under the law are impermissible. In 2021 the Michigan Supreme Court, in a case where we filed friend-of-the-court briefs, also ruled that retroactive application of the statute is unconstitutional. Unable to enforce the old law, the legislature passed a new version which made only minor tweaks. In February 2022 we filed another class action challenging the revised law. (John Does #1-5 v. Snyder; John Does #1-6 v. Snyder; John Does A-H v. Whitmer, People v. Betts; ACLU Attorneys Miriam Aukerman, Dan Korobkin, Monica Andrade, Elaine Lewis, Rohit Rajan, and Dayja Tillman; Cooperating Attorneys Paul Reingold of U-M Law School and Roshna Bala Keen and Imani Franklin of Loevy & Loevy; co-counsel Alyson Oliver and Cameron Bell of Oliver Law Group.)