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Can Sex Offender be Barred From Church?

Courtesy of "Dorf on Law" 10/26/2009 By Mike Dorf As widely reported, including in this Time magazine story, sex offenders who are barred by state law from going near children have begun to invoke their free exercises rights when such state laws are used to keep them from attending religious services in houses of worhsip that also supervise children. The Time article focuses on a North Carolina case, but the problem is broader. Unfortunately, the article does not go into the real legal issues in any depth. I'll take a shot at clarifying. There is pretty clearly no federal free exercise problem here. Back in the day, the formal doctrine from SCOTUS said that whenever the govt substantially burdened somebody's ability to practice his or her religion, the law or policy doing the burdening had to be subject to strict scrutiny: The govt had to prove that the law or policy was narrowly tailored to serve a compelling state interest...continue to full post

Full post as published by Sex Offender Issues on October 25, 2009 (boomark / email).