Opinion ID: 2095176
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Does SORA Deny Substantive Due Process by Significantly Infringing Appellants' Fundamental Rights or Liberty Interests?

Text: The Constitutional guarantee of due process of law has a substantive component, which forbids the government to infringe certain `fundamental' liberty interests at all, no matter what process is provided, unless the infringement is narrowly tailored to serve a compelling state interest. Reno v. Flores, 507 U.S. 292, 302, 113 S.Ct. 1439, 123 L.Ed.2d 1 (1993) (italics in original); accord, Washington v. Glucksberg, 521 U.S. 702, 720, 117 S.Ct. 2258, 138 L.Ed.2d 772 (1997) (The Clause also provides heightened protection against government interference with certain fundamental rights and liberty interests.) Appellants invoke this principle of substantive due process. They contend that SORA infringes their fundamental liberty interests by subjecting them to a lifetime of invasive government monitoring; stigmatizing them as registered sex offenders and broadcasting their faces and personal information on an Internet registry designed to warn the public of their presence in society until the day they die; and invading their right to keep personal information private, particularly their home addresses. Appellants concede that the District of Columbia does have a compelling state interest in doing these things, namely the protection of the community from recidivist sexual offenders. Appellants argue, however, that SORA is not narrowly tailored to serve that compelling state interest. Specifically, appellants contend that SORA is overbroad because it designates  all former sex offenders as legal lepers unfit for ordinary society, regardless of whether they pose any threat to public safety at all. Only individualized proof of actual dangerousness, appellants argue, can justify the restrictions on liberty that SORA imposes. The substantive due process challenge to an offense-based sex offender registration statute that appellants advance with such rhetorical force rarely has been attempted, andto our knowledgeit never has met with success. Most recently, for example, the Ninth Circuit rejected a substantive due process attack on Alaska's law (on remand from the Supreme Court after Smith ) in Doe v. Tandeske, 361 F.3d 594, 597 (9th Cir.2004) (per curiam). Acknowledging that the registrants' liberty interests are indeed important, the Ninth Circuit found itself forced to conclude nonetheless that persons who have been convicted of serious sex offenses do not have a fundamental right to be free from the registration and notification requirements set forth in the Alaska statute. Id; see also Gunderson v. Hvass, 339 F.3d 639, 643 (8th Cir.2003) (holding that because Minnesota's predatory offender registration statute is not punitive in nature, it does not infringe on a fundamental right embodied in the presumption of innocence). Normally, [s]tate legislation which has some effect on individual liberty or privacy may not be held unconstitutional simply because a court finds it unnecessary, in whole or in part. Whalen v. Roe, 429 U.S. 589, 597, 97 S.Ct. 869, 51 L.Ed.2d 64 (1977). To trigger strict judicial scrutiny of SORA under the doctrine of substantive due process, therefore, it is not enough for appellants to show that the law restricts their liberty or invades their privacy. At a minimum, they must show that SORA impinges on rights and liberties that are fundamental [21] a test that is not easy to meet, as the Supreme Court has explained it: [T]he Due Process Clause specially protects those fundamental rights and liberties which are, objectively, deeply rooted in this Nation's history and tradition, [citing Moore v. East Cleveland, 431 U.S. 494, 503, 97 S.Ct. 1932, 52 L.Ed.2d 531 (1977) (plurality opinion)]; Snyder v. Massachusetts, 291 U.S. 97, 105, 54 S.Ct. 330, 78 L.Ed. 674 (1934) (so rooted in the traditions and conscience of our people as to be ranked as fundamental), and implicit in the concept of ordered liberty, such that neither liberty nor justice would exist if they were sacrificed, Palko v. Connecticut, 302 U.S. 319, 325, 326, 58 S.Ct. 149, 82 L.Ed. 288 (1937). Glucksberg, 521 U.S. at 720-21, 117 S.Ct. 2258 (holding that the asserted right to assistance in committing suicide is not a fundamental liberty interest protected by the Due Process Clause). History and tradition are the starting point, though not in all cases the ending point of the substantive due process inquiry. Lawrence v. Texas, 539 U.S. 558, 123 S.Ct. 2472, 2480, 156 L.Ed.2d 508 (2003) (quoting County of Sacramento v. Lewis, 523 U.S. 833, 857, 118 S.Ct. 1708, 140 L.Ed.2d 1043 (1998) (Kennedy, J., concurring). [22] If the rights or liberties that SORA affects are not fundamental ones, the law need bear only a reasonable relation to a legitimate state interest to be constitutional). Glucksberg, 521 U.S. at 722, 117 S.Ct. 2258. The law does not, in that case, have to be narrowly tailored to serve a compelling state interest. The Supreme Court has found comparatively few rights and liberties to be fundamental for due process purposes. [I]n addition to the specific freedoms protected by the Bill of Rights, the `liberty' specially protected by the Due Process Clause includes the rights to marry; to have children; to direct the education and upbringing of one's children; to marital privacy; to use contraception; to bodily integrity, and to abortion .... We have also assumed, and strongly suggested, that the Due Process Clause protects the traditional right to refuse unwanted lifesaving medical treatment. Id. at 720, 117 S.Ct. 2258 (internal citations omitted). A few other rights or liberties have been recognized to belong on the list as well. [23] See also Lawrence, 123 S.Ct. at 2484 (invalidating a Texas law criminalizing the private consensual sexual intimacy of adult same-sex couples whose right to liberty under the Due Process Clause gives them the full right to engage in their conduct without intervention of the government). [24] That many of the rights and liberties protected by the Due Process Clause sound in personal autonomy does not warrant the sweeping conclusion that any and all important, intimate, and personal decisions are so protected.... Glucksberg, 521 U.S. at 727, 117 S.Ct. 2258. To the contrary, [a]s a general matter, the Court has always been reluctant to expand the concept of substantive due process because guideposts for responsible decisionmaking in this uncharted area are scarce and open-ended. Collins v. City of Harker Heights, 503 U.S. 115, 125, 112 S.Ct. 1061, 117 L.Ed.2d 261 (1992). In Glucksberg the Court elaborated on the reasons for its reluctance to characterize rights or liberties as fundamental: By extending constitutional protection to an asserted right or liberty interest, we, to a great extent, place the matter outside the arena of public debate and legislative action. We must therefore exercise the utmost care whenever we are asked to break new ground in this field, [citing Collins, supra ], lest the liberty protected by the Due Process Clause be subtly transformed into the policy preferences of the members of this Court.... 521 U.S. at 720, 117 S.Ct. 2258. The interests in personal freedom and privacy that appellants assert are not among those that the Supreme Court has heretofore declared to be fundamental or, as the Court said in Lawrence, central to the liberty protected by the Fourteenth Amendment. 123 S.Ct. at 2481 (quoting Casey, 505 U.S. at 851, 112 S.Ct. 2791). Adhering, with due caution, to the exacting standards set forth in Glucksberg, we cannot say appellants' interests are so deeply rooted in this Nation's history and tradition or so implicit in the concept of ordered liberty that they should be added to the fundamental list. To begin with, we cannot conclude that appellants' interest in being free of SORA's registration obligations is fundamental in a constitutional sense. While the requirements of registration, verification and updating do impose a burden and may be irksome, they do not infringe significantly on appellants' basic liberties. Registrants are not prevented, for example, from changing their physical appearance, or from residing, working, attending school, or traveling wherever, whenever and with whomever they wish. They remain able to go about their daily lives and exercise their rights unimpeded. Registration is intended, to be sure, to facilitate the government's ability to check on sex offenders, but not to a degree that is disruptive of their individual liberty. Nor do the registration requirements of SORA represent as radical a departure from American norms as appellants suggest. Criminal registration laws are not a recent innovation. See Lambert v. California, 355 U.S. 225, 229, 78 S.Ct. 240, 2 L.Ed.2d 228 (1957) (noting that such laws are common and their range is wide); see also Note, Criminal Registration Ordinances: Police Control Over Potential Recidivists, 103 U. Pa. L.Rev. 60 (1954) (reviewing the (admittedly less than glorious) history of such laws, which became prevalent starting in the 1930s). Furthermore, citizens are obliged in many other contexts to supply information about themselves and their activities to the government and to update that information periodically and sometimes in personfor instance, in connection with paying their taxes, registering for the draft and serving in the military, or applying for public benefits. See Whalen, 429 U.S. at 605, 97 S.Ct. 869. Such duties do not infringe on fundamental liberties. The collection and subsequent public disclosure of information from registrants that SORA authorizes is an intrusion on appellants' privacy. But there is no constitutional right of anonymity. We may assume that the individual interest in avoiding disclosure of personal matters of an intimate or confidential nature may fall within a constitutionally protected `zone of privacy.' Whalen, 429 U.S. at 598-99, 97 S.Ct. 869 (upholding a statute requiring the collection of confidential patient drug use information from physicians where the information is safeguarded adequately). Under SORA and its implementing regulations, however, no such sensitive personal information is collected or disseminated to the public; only truthful and accurate information of a non-confidential, mainly public nature is disclosed. [25] Appellants' criminal adjudications, in particular, are matters of public record. The Supreme Court has held that a state violates no fundamental right of privacy protected by the Due Process Clause when it publicizes a person's criminal record. See Paul v. Davis, 424 U.S. 693, 713, 96 S.Ct. 1155, 47 L.Ed.2d 405 (1976) (rejecting contention that police violated respondent's constitutional right to privacy by publicizing his arrest for shoplifting). Nor can appellants successfully maintain that truthful public notification pursuant to SORA jeopardizes a fundamental right or liberty interest by stigmatizing them and damaging their reputations. See id. at 712, 96 S.Ct. 1155 (holding that state official's defamatory publications, however seriously they may have harmed respondent's reputation, did not deprive him of any `liberty' or `property' interests protected by the Due Process Clause). [26] Since SORA does not threaten rights and liberty interests of a fundamental order, appellants cannot succeed on their substantive due process challenge. As has already been discussed, SORA easily passes rational basis review. Appellants do not contend otherwise. Our rejection of appellants' substantive due process claim therefore disposes as well of their procedural due process challenge to SORA. The statute thus survives all of appellants' constitutional challenges. We turn to the remaining issue, raised by appellant W.B., which concerns the burden of persuasion and the standard of proof in proceedings in Superior Court to review CSOSA's factual determinations.