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Tuesday, January 09, 2007
Ind. Law - Jeffersonville bans sex offenders from parks
Ben Zion Hershberg of the Louisville Courier Journal reports today:
The Jeffersonville City Council voted unanimously last night to adopt an ordinance banning convicted sex offenders from city parks.For background, see this Nov. 19, 2006 ILB entry.The law will take effect 30 days after Mayor Rob Waiz signs it, as he has said he will do soon. * * *
"I believe it raises constitutional issues," Ken Falk, the legal director of the Indiana Chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union, said yesterday in an interview.
He thinks such "blanket bans" violate rights guaranteed by the Indiana Constitution.
Larry Wilder, the lawyer who wrote the ordinance, has said he believes it would withstand a legal challenge.
Wilder said 96 people on the Indiana Sex Offender Registry live in Jeffersonville and about 280 live in Clark County.
Wilder told the council in December, when it took the second of three required votes on the ordinance, that Falk's argument against the ban has lost in at least two cases from other Indiana counties that were appealed to the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Chicago.
Wilder also said a more recent case is pending in Marion County in which U.S. District Court issued a preliminary injunction against an ordinance saying sex offenders could be no closer than 1,000 feet to parks and other facilities children might use.
The district court's preliminary ruling said the ordinance would make it impossible for a sex offender to even travel through Marion County, and a final ruling is expected soon.
Falk said two sex-offender cases which he lost on appeal in recent years -- one in Michigan City and one in Lafayette -- involved bans on one individual in each community.
"No blanket ban has been upheld in Indiana," he said.
Posted by Marcia Oddi on January 9, 2007 08:41 AM
Posted to Indiana Law