I am writing today to announce the closure of the Michigan Messenger. After four years of operation in Michigan, the board of the American Independent News Network, has decided to shift publication of its news into a single site, The American Independent at Americanindependent.com. This is part of a shift in strategy, towards new forms [...]
An abstinence-only presentation provided to numerous school districts in Calhoun and Eaton Counties in October of this year provided false and misleading information to students about HIV, experts allege.
Two county registers of deeds filed a class action lawsuit Monday on behalf of Michigan’s 83 counties alleging that the Mortgage Electronic Registration Services owes millions of dollars in property title transfer taxes.
Despite evidence of the impact of mercury on children and public health, Michigan Attorney General Bill Schuette last month joined with 24 other state attorneys general in filing a lawsuit to scuttle new EPA regulations that would reduce mercury emissions from power plants.
The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that federal legislation governing the state sex offender registries does not apply to any actions taken prior to that legislation being passed.
The Sex Offender Registration and Notification Act was passed in 2006, requiring all sex offenders who move from one state to another to comply with all the registration requirements in the new state. The plaintiff in the case, Thomas Carr, was a convicted sex offender in Alabama who moved to Indiana prior to the passage of that bill without complying with Indiana registration laws.
Carr was convicted under the SORNA statute, but challenged his conviction on the grounds that the U.S. Constitution forbids ex post facto laws — laws that apply to actions taken before that law existed. The district and appeals courts ruled against Carr, but now the Supreme Court has overturned those rulings and reversed his conviction.
Interestingly, they did so without ruling on the constitutional question. Instead, the court looked at the statute itself and concluded that it did not apply retroactively. The SORNA law, therefore, is constitutional but the application of it in Carr’s case was not in line with the statute itself.
The lineup in this case was highly unusual. Instead of the usual conservative/liberal split, the majority opinion, written by Justice Sonia Sotomayor, was joined by Chief Justice Roberts and Justices Stevens, Breyer and Kennedy. The dissenting opinion, written by Justice Samuel Alito, was joined by Justices Thomas and Ginsburg. Justice Scalia wrote a separate opinion concurring with the majority ruling but dissenting from one part of the judgment.
Here is the full ruling:
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