Opinion ID: 775532
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: The Stigma

Text: 28 A stigma is [a] mark or token of infamy, disgrace, or reproach.... The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language 1702 (4th ed. 2000). Publication of the Connecticut Sex Offender Registry plainly stigmatizes the people listed on it insofar as it asserts that they are persons convicted of crimes characterized by the State as sexual offenses. But those assertions are concededly true. The gravamen of stigma as part of a due process violation is the making under color of law of a reputation-tarnishing statement 16 that is false. See Codd v. Velger, 429 U.S. 624, 627 (1977) (per curiam) (holding that plaintiff was not entitled to a hearing with respect to derogatory statements about him because [n]owhere in his pleadings or elsewhere has [he] affirmatively asserted that the [statements in issue were] substantially false); Quinn v. Syracuse Model Neighborhood Corp., 613 F.2d 438, 446 (2d Cir. 1980) ([T]o constitute deprivation of a liberty interest, the stigmatizing information must be both false... and made public... by the offending governmental entity.) (alterations in original; citation and internal quotation marks omitted). The plaintiff therefore asserts not merely stigma, but false stigma: that the Connecticut law violates [his] due process rights by stigmatizing [him] as [a] presently dangerous sex offender[], which he maintains is false and gives him a right to a hearing comporting with due process requirements to provide him with an opportunity to prove that he is not in fact a present threat to public safety. Appellee's Br. at 7 (emphasis added); see also Doe v. Lee, 132 F. Supp. 2d at 63 (Plaintiff contends that he is stigmatized because his inclusion in the registry conveys the false message that he is a dangerous sex offender and a threat to public safety.) 29 To meet the stigma element of his claim, then, the plaintiff is required to show a stigmatizing statement about him made or to be made under color of law that is capable of being proved true or false. He has only to allege, not prove, that the statement is false in order to establish a due process right to the hearing he seeks. See Brandt v. Bd. of Coop. Educ. Servs., 820 F.2d 41, 43 (2d Cir. 1987). It is at such a hearing that the plaintiff would have the opportunity to have his name cleared and the false stigma thus avoided. 30 The district court concluded that the plaintiff met the stigma element of his claim. The court's opinion is not entirely clear, however, as to how public dissemination of the registry falsely stigmatizes the plaintiff. We read the court's decision as containing two possible explanations: that the registry implies that every person listed therein is in fact dangerous; and that it implies that some of the registrants are dangerous and that each individual registrant is more likely than the average person to be currently dangerous. 31 As to the first of these possibilities, the court, echoing the plaintiff's argument, stated: 32 The stigma question... [is] whether, assuming plaintiff is not dangerous, public dissemination of the sex offender registry conveys the erroneous message that he is. The answer to this question must be yes. Despite the accuracy of the registry data concerning the plaintiff and the statement on the web site that no determination of any individual's dangerousness has been made, the registry suggests that plaintiff is currently dangerous. 33 Doe v. Lee, 132 F. Supp. 2d at 63. The defendants respond that the inference of dangerousness the [d]istrict [c]court drew, and that it assumes the public will draw, from th[e] accurate and public information [contained in the registry] is not supported by any facts in the record. Appellants' Br. at 25. They argue that to the contrary, by including in the website version of the sexual offender registry the statement that the DPS has made no determination that the persons included are currently dangerous, the State has specifically negated this inference. Id. at 25-26. 34 We share some of the State's doubt as to whether, as a matter of law, public dissemination of the registry implies to any particular reader, its average reader, or to an appreciable fraction of its readership, Peck v. Tribune Co., 214 U.S. 185, 190 (1909) (Holmes, J.) (defamation action), that every listed person, including the plaintiff, is currently dangerous. The registry purports to be a list of virtually all offenders convicted of covered crimes, not only presently dangerous sex offenders. The website disclaimer enforces that notion, at least to those visitors to the website who actually read it, by implying that the site includes both dangerous and non-dangerous offenders. While the registry thus necessarily communicates the idea that registrants committed covered offenses and thereby implies that they may pose a current danger, we cannot conclude on the record before us that visitors to the website necessarily understood it to say or imply that all of the registrants are in fact currently dangerous. Our inability to reach that conclusion is enhanced by the fact that the website has been shut down and we have no means to examine the registry in the form and context in which actual readers would have viewed it. But the district court also said: 35 The stated purposes of the [law] are to protect the public and facilitate law enforcement. Registration and dissemination serve these goals only because some registrants are likely to reoffend. Thus, the message that some registrants are currently dangerous is, and is intended to be, communicated to viewers of the registry. 36 Doe v. Lee, 132 F. Supp. 2d at 64 (emphasis added) (footnote omitted). With this we agree. The sexual offender registry conveys the message that some of the persons listed on the registry are currently dangerous; disclosing the identity of persons who are currently a threat to public safety is the sole avowed and legitimate purpose of the registry. Even the disclaimer itself, by asserting that the DPS has made no determination that any individual included in the Registry is currently dangerous, clearly implies that some may be. But the list is undifferentiated; it does not say which registrants are or may be currently dangerous and which are not. 37 We think that it follows that publication of the registry implies that each person listed is more likely than the average person to be currently dangerous. That implication seems to us necessarily to flow from the State's choice of these particular individuals about whom to disseminate information, a record as to their sex offences, and information as to their current whereabouts. This implication stigmatizes every person listed on the registry. And the plaintiff claims that, as to him, it is false. 38 If the plus factors are present -- a question to which we will turn shortly -- then the plaintiff is entitled to due process in the form of a hearing at which he would have the opportunity to establish that he is not currently dangerous and therefore should not be listed in a publicly disseminated registry in a way that falsely implies that he is particularly likely to be dangerous. 39 The State of Connecticut contends that by enjoining the publication of the information on the registry, the district court was doing no more than enjoining the dissemination of truthful information about the criminal history of the registrants. That would be troubling if it were so. 17 We would be deeply concerned about a federal court's order the purpose of which was to require the State of Connecticut to keep truths from its citizens. Cf. Virginia State Bd. of Pharmacy v. Virginia Citizens Consumer Council, Inc., 425 U.S. 748, 770 (1976) (deprecating as highly paternalistic a state law that, in violation of the First Amendment, sought to protect consumers by prohibiting truthful advertising). We conclude, however, that the district court's order does not target truthful speech. Publication of the registry in its present form implies that persons listed on the registry are particularly likely to be currently dangerous. Unless everyone on the registry is particularly likely to be dangerous, a proposition that the State neither asserts nor embraces, that implication is not true. 40 The listings alone, true or false -- the stigmatizing by the State -- are not, under Paul, actionable as due process violations. But ifplus factors are present, the plaintiff is entitled to due process to establish whether the implication of likely dangerousness, as applied to him, is false and to prevent its communication to the public until he has had that opportunity and has failed.