NC Court: Sex Offenders Can Go to Church

by Matt Kelley · 2009-12-18 13:53:00 UTC
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A North Carolina judge ruled yesterday that it is unconstitutional for a state law to deny people the right to go to church because they are convicted of a sex offense.

In October, I wrote about the case of James Nichols, a 31-year-old man who had been arrested moments after arriving home following a service at a Baptist church outside Raleigh. Nichols was a registered sex offender, and although he had been invited by the pastor, state officials argued that he had violated his sex offender restrictions because the church also housed a day care center.

Superior Court Judge Allen Baddour said yesterday that not only is it unconstitutional to restrict a person’s right to worship, but that the state’s law banning sex offenders from “any place where minors gather for regularly scheduled events” was too vague.

This is an important victory against an irrational and ineffective law, and I hope it spreads beyond North Carolina, which certainly isn’t the only state to go too far in placing restrIctions on sex offenders. When these laws overreach, they can do much more harm than good.

When people like James Nichols are denied access to church and other services they might be seeking to improve their lives and build a community, we’re hurting the chances of their rehabilitation. And when sex offender restrictions cause recidivism, they’re having the opposite of the intended impact. These laws can even mean life or death. I’ve written before about convicted sex offenders being denied access to homeless shelters and dying in the col, and End Homelessness blogger Shannon Moriarty asks if homelessness is inevitable under our strict sex offender laws..

North Carolina ACLU Legal Director Katy Parker said Judge Baddour’s decision could be a sign of  an overdue trend of reigning in these outlandish laws across the country.

"For a good while, the courts were upholding any restrictions against sex offenders no matter how drastic and you're starting to see the courts realize that some of these laws have gone way overboard," Parker said.

h/t Sentencing Law & Policy and change.org community member Thomas Kinney

Photo: FaceMePLS

Matt Kelley is the Online Communications Manager at the Innocence Project and a graduate of the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University. Follow him on Twitter @mattjkelley.
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