Court: Sex offender housing restrictions unconstitutional
By Lydia O’Connor, Huffington Post
The California Supreme Court ruled Monday that a state law barring sex offenders from living within 2,000 feet of a school or park is unconstitutional.
The ruling immediately affects only San Diego County, where the case originated, the San Francisco Chronicle reported, but will “almost certainly apply to other densely populated counties.”
The housing restriction known as Jessica’s Law passed by voters in 2003 aimed to create predator-free zones. But it unfairly infringes on registered sex offenders’ personal liberties, Justice Marvin R. Baxter wrote, and has “severely restricted their ability to find housing in compliance with the statute, greatly increased the incidence of homelessness among them, and hindered their access to medical treatment, drug and alcohol dependency services, psychological counseling and other rehabilitative social services available to all parolees.”