Sex Offenders Don't Have a Right to Facebook

Disir

Platinum Member
Sep 30, 2011
28,003
9,605
910
North Carolina bans registered sex offenders from Facebook. Unsurprisingly, a sex offender wants the Supreme Court to strike down the law. Perhaps more surprisingly, he has support from 16 notable professors of constitutional law -- from left, right and center.

I’m loath to disagree with an all-star cast of colleagues that includes some of my teachers and good friends. But I think their argument goes too far.

Supreme Court precedent requires that a ban on speech allow “ample alternative channels” for expression. The North Carolina law says that registered sex offenders can’t access social networking sites that allow underage members -- which would rule out all the big networks like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat and Tumblr. Are there ample alternative channels? The professors say no.

I say … yes. There's no disputing the ubiquity of social media. But there are still other ways to express your ideas and communicate with other humans. Without social media, I can still create content and publish it. I can read a vast array of opinions of others. And I can communicate directly with other people, through e-mail and other platforms.

What really bothered my colleagues was the North Carolina Supreme Court’s application of a 1994 Supreme Court case called City of Ladue v. Gilleo. In that case, the court struck down a city ordinance that banned all signs in front of private residences. Justice John Paul Stevens said that “even regulations that do not foreclose an entire medium of expression … must leave open ample alternative channels for communication.”

The North Carolina court did not make my argument -- that social media is not essential -- but instead said that the state law left “numerous” alternative social media channels, like the Paula Deen Network, where users share recipes; a local radio station’s user network; a website called Glassdoor.com, which requires users to be 18; and Shutterfly, the photo site.

In the best line of their brief, the law professors say, with some justice, that the list of Facebook alternatives proposed by the court “looks more like a parody of the ‘ample alternative channels’ analysis than a serious application” of it.
Sex Offenders Don't Have a Right to Facebook

Facebook is not a right.
 
Well the theory is good, but its not doing much to protect anyone. Because any SO wanting to meet and hurt kids wouldn't go as themselves anyway, they would make a fake account. But that being said, I don't think its legal (or it shouldn't be legal) to ban someone who is not on parole or probation from doing anything like this. They can kill someone, do 8 years, and get out and get on Facebook and befriend 1000 preteen kids. Perfectly legal. But if he's 18 with his 16yo gf in a state with a 17yo AOC he won't be allowed on facebook for decades, if ever again.

No, it's stupid.
 
Banning "predators" from facebook? That's the dumbest fucking thing I've ever heard. No, Facebook is not a right, but speech is. And being arbitrarily denied one form of speech that is granted to all others merely because of a past conviction is unAmerican.
 
There are alternatives ways of communication.
 

Forum List

Back
Top