Sex felons’ residency limitations under fire

Group fighting small cities’ restrictions

Forty-six small cities in Texas are facing a legal challenge to laws regulating where registered sex offenders can live, the latest development in a national trend to relax limitations.

AUSTIN — Forty-six small cities across Texas are facing a new legal challenge to their ordinances regulating where registered sex offenders can live, the latest development in a national trend to relax residency limitations that opponents say create more problems with ex-convicts than they solve.

On Monday, Texas Voices for Reason and Justice, a statewide criminal-justice advocacy group, announced it has ”initiated action to compel, through litigation if necessary,” the repeal of the ordinances in socalled “general law” cities — those with populations of 5,000 or less. Houstonarea cities include Brazoria in Brazoria County, Clear Lake Shores in Harris County, El Lago and Jamaica Beach, both in Galveston County, and Meadows Place in Fort Bend County.

Similar ordinances exist in hundreds of larger “home rule” Texas cities, which officials say have the legal authority to enforce them. Nonetheless, several larger cities already face litigation on the issue, on that grounds that residency restrictions violate the U.S. Constitution.

Mary Sue Molnar, the group’s executive director, said the small cities “are attempting to justify violating the Texas Constitution by relying on a universally discredited myth that residency restrictions will actually improve public safety.

“We know from expe-

rience in other states that residency restrictions do absolutely nothing to make children safer, that they have forced thousands of registrants into homelessness, that they have forced entire families to relocate, and that they have wasted an enormous amount of public resources that could have been appropriately expended elsewhere,” she said.

For the smaller communities, the new issue centers on a 2007 ruling by thenAttorney General Greg Abbott that determined that, under state statute, general law cities cannot enact local ordinances that regulate where registered sex offenders can live. Most of those smaller cities enacted those ordinances since the ruling, said Richard Gladden, a Denton attorney who sent the notice on behalf of the advocacy group.

Support for ordinances

Bennett Sandlin, executive director of the Texas Municipal League that represents cities’ interests in Austin, disputed the groups’ legal claim.

“Many of the city attorneys for our member cities believe that there are numerous provisions in the Local Government Code that permit general law cities to enact basic health and safety rules, which would include sex offender distance requirements,” he said. “We would certainly argue in support of those cities should the issue ever go up on appeal to a court.”

He said his organization supports passage of a law to clarify the right of cities to regulate where registered sex offenders can live. Two similar bills failed to pass the Legislature earlier this year.

Krum, a city near Denton, already has been sued and has asked Texas’ 2nd Court of Appeals to allow it to keep its ordinance intact. Alvarado, near Fort Worth,

is considering a repeal of a related ordinance after a separate challenge.

Pasadena, the largest city in Harris County outside of Houston, recently was sued for its ordinance, which opponents say limits almost any registered sex offender from living there, court filings show. Another case is pending against Lewisville, just northwest of Dallas.

Under current law, Texas has no statewide residency restriction for registered sex offenders, even though county probation and state parole rules require that they do not live within specified distances from schools, parks, day care centers and other sites considered “child safety zones.” Instead, cities and local police jurisdictions have enacted their own rules, with distance zones ranging from 500 to 3,000 feet.

“It renders registered sex offenders like illegal aliens in many places because they can’t live anywhere, even with their families,” Gladden said. “There’s never been any study that we can find that shows these ordinances make children safer, and more than 60 studies from prominent criminologists that show the opposite, that there are significant adverse effects.”

Other states have faced the same issue. In August, the Massachusetts Supreme Court struck down that state’s residency laws concerning registered sex offenders, comparing them to internment camps for Japanese-Americans during World War II.

Last February, New York’s high court ruled that communities could not enact laws restricting where registered sex offenders can live. Such residency restrictions have been struck down in Pennsylvania, and recently were loosened in California.

Marc Levin, policy director

for the national Right on Crime Initiative and director of the Austin-based Center for Effective Justice at the conservative Texas Public Policy Foundation, said extensive academic research has shown that residency requirements do not reduce recidivism among registered sex offenders, but “no one wants sex offenders living near them so these ordinances are popular.”

Laws struck down

William Habern, a Houston attorney who has represented ex-offenders who have challenged local residency ordinances, said Texas has “a patchwork of laws that varies from place to place.”

He said the issue is significant but seldom challenged in court “because the white-shoe law firms don’t want to represent sex offenders, and the offenders have no money to protect their rights.”

Conroe lawyer Scott Pawgan said he challenged the Pasadena ordinance because it “effectively prohibits any registered sex offenders from living in the city,” because it is interpreted to cover all neighborhood. Pawgan’s client, who formerly was held in the state’s civil commitment program for sex offenders, had been approved by state officials to move to his mother’s home last summer, but could not because she lived in Pasadena, he said.

Instead, he said, the man was forced to buy a home in Houston, where no such residency restrictions exist. Because of that, he said his lawsuit soon will be dropped, but the issue remains.

Pasadena officials could not be reached for comment.