Should a sex offender be forced to move?

That is what the Ohio Supreme Court will decide this year. Gerry Porter, a registered sex offender, committed his offenses before the residency restrictions went into effect. He owns his home – which is 983 feet from an elementary school – and has lived there since 1991. Porter was ordered to move and the First District Court of Appeals upheld that decision.

Then last year, the Ohio Supreme Court ruled in Norwood v. Horney – the landmark eminent domain decision arising out of the city of Norwood’s taking of property for a retail and office complex – that property ownership is a “fundamental right” that “must be trod upon lightly.”

Porter’s lawyer, David Singleton of the Cincinnati-based Ohio Justice and Policy Center, argued that those property rights should also apply to sex offenders.

However, the Second Circuit, in another case, held that a sex offender could not be forced to move. The Supreme Court has taken this case to resolve that conflict.

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