Court Opinion

ID: 9434382
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 23:45:50.987171+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:23:50.078461
License: Public Domain

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, *9as 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.