NEW HAVEN — A federal judge has ruled that a Connecticut requirement for convicted sex offenders to provide state police with all their internet identifications is unconstitutional.
“Although the state is right that it has an important government interest in detecting and deterring sex offenders from using the internet to engage in crime, the state falls short in showing that compelling sex offenders to report all their internet communication identifiers actually advances this interest,” U.S. District Judge Jeffrey Alker Meyer ruled.
Meyer’s decision came in the case of a former New York lawyer, James Cornelio, who now lives in Connecticut and is a convicted sex offender. Cornelio sued Connecticut and the state police after he was arrested for not providing his email address.
In his lawsuit, Cornelio did not seek specific money damages, but requested the judge to issue an order to prevent enforcement of the disclosure law against Cornelio and the disclosure law against all other sex offenders.
But Meyer, while agreeing to bar police from enforcing the law against Cornelio, declined to widen that to others.
“The reasons that the law is invalid as to Cornelio would appear to apply with equal force to all other sex offenders. But Cornelio did not bring this action as a class action, and I am wary of taking the extraordinary step of granting relief to persons who are not parties before me,” the judge ruled.
Cornelio’s lawyer, Robert Berke, of Bridgeport, declined to comment on the decision.
“We are reviewing the decision and evaluating next steps,” said Elizabeth Benton, spokesperson for the state Office of the Attorney General.
In 2007, the General Assembly passed a law that requires sex offenders to notify the state of any email addresses or other identifiers that they use for internet communications.
In 2005, according to court documents, Cornelio was convicted in New York for one count of a second-degree criminal sexual act and 10 counts of possessing a sexual performance by a child.
After he served his prison term in New York, Cornelio, who is also the author of a book on his experience, “Two to Six: A sex offender’s story,” moved to Connecticut where he was required to register with state police as a sex offender.
In April 2018, state police arrested Cornelio after he sent numerous emails to the Sex Offender Registry Unit using an email address that he had not previously disclosed to the unit as required by the law.
After a state judge dismissed the criminal charge against Cornelio, he filed a federal lawsuit raising several constitutional challenges to Connecticut’s sex offender registration law.
Cornelio claims in his lawsuit that the internet disclosure law violates his right to free speech under the First Amendment.
Meyer said the state failed to show that the law advances an important government interest that is unrelated to the suppression of free speech and that the law does not burden substantially more speech than necessary to further the government’s interest.
“Despite the fact that the disclosure law has been in place for more than 15 years, the state cannot point to a single example of when its database of sex offenders’ email addresses and other internet communication identifiers has helped the police detect or solve any crimes. And the state concedes that it has no evidence that requiring sex offenders to disclose their Internet communication identifiers deters them from using the internet to commit more crimes,” the judge stated.
