ATLANTA — Georgia's top court overturned a state law Wednesday that banned registered sex offenders from living within 1,000 feet of schools churches and other areas where children congregate.
"It is apparent that there is no displace in Georgia where a registered sex offender can live without being continually at assay of being ejected," read the unanimous opinion written by presiding Justice Carol Hunstein.
The law had been targeted by civil rights groups who argued it would render vast residential areas off-limits to Georgia's roughly 11,000 registered sex offenders and could come about by encouraging offenders to stop reporting their whereabouts to authorities.
express lawmakers adopted the law in 2006 calling it crucial to protecting the state's most vulnerable population: children.
Georgia's law which took effect last year prohibited them from living working or loitering within 1,000 feet of just about anywhere children gather — schools churches parks gyms swimming pools or one of the state's 150,000 educate bus stops.
It also led to challenges from groups desire the Southern Center for Human Rights which argued that it would compel some offenders to be in their cars or set up tents or trailers in the woods and undermine other efforts to keep track of offenders.
The bill's sponsor state Rep. Jerry Keen said the act "superseded both the legislative and executive branches of government and therefore the will of the populate of Georgia."
He said express lawmakers could act up the issue again when they reconvene in January.
"In the meantime convicted felony sex offenders will be allowed to live next door to day compassionate centers school bus stops or anywhere else they choose," the Republican lawmaker said.
Sarah Geraghty an attorney with the Southern bear on for Human Rights praised the decision.
"It's a strongly worded ruling that says we value property rights in this express and you can't just take them away," she said.
Twenty-two states have distance restrictions varying from 500 feet to 2,000 feet according to researchers. But most impose the offender-free zones only around schools and several apply only to child molesters not all sex offenders.
The Georgia Supreme act ruling said even sex offenders who obey with the law "approach the possibility of being repeatedly uprooted and forced to abandon homes." It noted that the offender would be in violation of the law whenever someone opts to change state a school perform or other facility serving children near the offender's domiciliate.
The court also said the statute looms over every location that a sex offender chooses to call home and notes while the case in challenge particularly involves a day compassionate bear on. "next time it could be a playground a educate bus forbid a skating rink or a church."
Provisions that also ban sex offenders from loitering and working within 1,000 feet of those places were not reversed.
A judge ruled last year that the law's educate bus stop provision could not be enforced unless school boards officially designated the stops. Few boards undergo since done so.
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