People living in Michigan might be surprised to know that back on April 6th, U.S. District Judge Robert Cleland issued an Interim Order and Injunction in a case challenging the constitutionality of Michigan’s Sex Offenders Registration Act (SORA). 

The judge has stopped state authorities from enforcing the rules of SORA until the COVID-19 crisis is over.

In February, the judge had declared SORA unconstitutional and urged legislators to bring the law into compliance. He said that SORA is no longer enforceable against those who offended before 2011.

SORA contains information on convicted sex offenders that the public is allowed access to. In most cases, the public is able to know where the offenders live and what classification of the sex offense they committed. 

SORA requires offenders to tell the state within 10 days of a change of address. They must confirm their address with the police in person between one and four times a year, depending on the severity of their conviction. The law also bans most of the sex offenders from working, living or loitering with 1,000 feet of school property.

The judge ruled that the restrictions of keeping sex offenders on the registry for life and not being within 1,000 feet of a school were unconstitutional and that until the legislation fixes the act, it would be unenforceable against most of the registrants and only enforced in part against the registrants in the system after 2011.

The psychos at the ACLU, who were involved in the lawsuit, stated that the decision was a “win for public safety of Michigan communities.”

The ACLU represented 40,000 convicted sex offenders, including William Hetherington, who became infamous after a 1986 conviction of spousal rape. The poor guy was kicked out of a federal housing program for homeless military veterans because SORA had changed the law and kept him on the sex offender registry for life instead of 25 years as the original legislation stated. Civil rights advocates argued that changing the rules retroactively was unconstitutional.

Hetherington said, “All the government has ever done is violate my rights. Now they’re doing it again. It’s the story of my life.”

Hetherington and his 39,999 other criminal friends don’t seem to care about the violations of rights they committed against the public, on the adults and children they abused and assaulted. And the judge certainly does not care about the future victims of these 40,000 sex offenders and many others who should be tracked for life.

The ACLU and the judge care more about about the poor sex offenders who, in order to protect the public, were mandated to be on the sex offender registry forever and because of that, the criminals aren’t able to live off taxpayer money to get free benefits from government programs. How sad.

They also are upset that because the law protects innocent kids at schools, the criminals couldn’t watch their kids soccer matches or attend their graduations.

So the judge’s order in April has not allowed any enforcing registration, verification or school zone and fee violations of SORA that have occurred since February 14, 2020 because of the COVID-19 crisis. After the coronavirus crisis has ended, the registrants need to be notified by the Michigan State Police about what duties they have under the SORA going forward.

What constitutes the end of the coronavirus crisis? That would be when Governor Gretchen Whitmer’s Emergency Declaration is over or the court determines that conditions no longer dictate that the interim order is needed.

Luckily for victims in Michigan, the registry itself still exists on the internet and new registrants can be input into the system. 

But how do those new people get entered into the system? 

Well, the order doesn’t stop sexual offenders from voluntarily complying with the requirements of SORA. 

Yeah right. Like that’s gonna happen.