A federal lawsuit has been filed challenging a sex offender ordinance in the City of Arcadia that severely restricts where sex offenders (“registered citizens”) may live. This is the first in a series of lawsuits to be filed in Los Angeles County after the CA Supreme Court decided that residency restrictions for some sex offenders violate the federal constitution.
“Arcadia’s residency restrictions place more than ninety percent of Arcadia’s residential property in ‘Residential Exclusion Zones’ effectively ‘banishing’ registered citizens from living in that city,” stated California Reform Sex Offender Laws president Janice Bellucci. “The law in Arcadia violates the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments as well as the Ex Post Facto Clause of the United States Constitution.
The legal challenge asserts that Arcadia’s ordinance imposes burdens on the families of registered citizens, does not protect children, fails to provide sufficient notice to registered citizens, and is “a politically motivated act… in response to popular sentiments, based upon misinformation, which seeks retribution against ‘a socially outcast minority.’”
“Modern day unsubstantiated myths conjure up the stereotype of a registered citizen as a continuing threat to society and children,” stated Bellucci. “State and federal government statistics officially debunk these myths.”
Arcadia Weekly will have in in-depth report with the city’s repose to the suit in due course.
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