Liberals Courted Neil Gorsuch’s Vote to Strike Down a Terrible Sex Offender Law
During Tuesday’s oral arguments in Gundy v. United States at the Supreme Court, Justice Neil Gorsuch name-dropped an unusual ally: the American Civil Liberties Union. Gorsuch asked Jeffrey Wall, the principal deputy solicitor general, to respond to an argument in the ACLU’s amicus brief on behalf of Herman Gundy, a sex offender challenging…
Playing with fire refers to a double-edged-sword in that this legal doctrine could be applied to other liberal causes as well. Things such as tight environmental and business regulations for starters.
Yet Gundy creates a dilemma for the left, because SORNA is a truly terrible law, and its retroactivity provision deserves to be invalidated. Herman Gundy is represented by the Federal Defenders of New York, a public defender office that aids indigent people charged with federal crimes. It often represents individuals who failed to comply with SORNA’s stringent registration scheme, sometimes by mistake. SORNA drives America’s mass incarceration problem by sending rehabilitated offenders back to prison because they failed to fill out certain paperwork. Any criminal justice reformer should oppose its extension to the half-million people convicted before it passed 12 years ago.
Slate.com article by MARK JOSEPH STERN