holding that Connecticut’s sex offender registry scheme, which was based upon previous convictions and did not provide hearings to determine current dangerousness, did not violate the federal Due Process Clause because “due process does not require the opportunity to prove a fact that is not material to the State’s statutory scheme”
How later courts described this case
- holding that Connecticut’s sex offender registry scheme, which was based upon previous convictions and did not provide hearings to determine current dangerousness, did not violate the federal Due Process Clause because “due process does not require the opportunity to prove a fact that is not material to the State’s statutory scheme”
- holding that procedural due process claims against sex offender registration laws that turn on the fact of an individual’s conviction for a particular offense are not cognizable because “convicted offender[s] ha[ve] already had a procedurally safeguarded opportunity to contest” the fact of their conviction
- holding that Connecticut's sex offender registry law does not violate procedural due process by not providing for a hearing on dangerousness because the registry is based on the conviction itself, which "a convicted offender has already had a procedurally safeguarded opportunity to contest"
- explaining that “[s]ex offenders are a serious threat in this Nation. The victims of sex assault are most often juveniles, and when convicted sex offenders reenter society, they are much more likely than any other type of offender to be re-arrested for a new rape or sexual assault.”
Written by the judges who cited it.
Distinguished
Distinguished by Tony Ray Coleman v. Doug Dretke, Director, Texas Department of Criminal Justice, Correctional Institutions Division, 409 F.3d 665 (2005)
As the panel opinion noted, Doe is distinguishable.
The opinion
Justice Scalia,
concurring.
I join the Court’s opinion, and add that even if the requirements of Connecticut’s sex offender registration law implicate a liberty interest of respondents, the categorical abrogation of that liberty interest by a validly enacted statute suffices to provide all the process that is “due” — just as a state law providing that no one under the age of 16 may operate a motor vehicle suffices to abrogate that liberty interest. Absent a claim (which respondents have not made here) that the liberty interest in question is so fundamental as to implicate so-called “substantive” due process, a properly enacted law can eliminate it. That is ultimately why, *9 as the Court’s opinion demonstrates, a convicted sex offender has no more right to additional “process” enabling him to establish that he is not dangerous than (in the analogous ease just suggested) a 15-year-old has a right to “process” enabling him to establish that he is a safe driver.