We were expecting this, but now it has happened. Federal District Court Judge Cleland has ordered the state legislature to revise the SORA, and has given a 90 day deadline to get this done. He says that 90 days is reasonable “given that the Does I decision has been final since October 2017”. You can see the actual order on the ACLU web site.
If the state does not change the law within 90 days, Cleland has ordered that the 2006 and 2011 amendments to SORA cannot be applied ex post facto to the whole class of people required to register. This is the minimum change that he will make to the law, and this in itself will be huge, but, this isn’t the end of his order. He also says that he might find that the 2011 amendments to SORA are not severable from the rest of the SORA, and therefore that the SORA is null and void for anyone whose offense occurred before April 12, 2011. He also reminds us that he decided earlier that a number of registration requirements (residency and work exclusion zones, registration of internet ids and vehicles, etc.) are unconstitutional, and that he might order that these cannot be enforced.
Big news indeed! We can be sure now that big changes to the Michigan SORA will occur before the end of the year. This order is something we should detail in our future lobby visits with legislators.
