A new Georgia law aimed at keeping sex offenders away from children may be unenforceable at the moment, says the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. The law forbids sex offenders from living within 1,000 feet of school-board approved bus stops, but U.S. District Court Clarence Cooper said he could find no evidence that any local school board had formally signed off on its share of the thousands of school bus stops that exist across the state. “This ruling, therefore, may only result in delay, confusion, and inconsistent actions at the local level,” he wrote.
Laura Reilly of the Georgia School Boards Association, doesn’t anticipate that local school boards will rush to respond to Cooper’s ruling. She said: “Before anybody goes out and starts making policies and things, there needs to be some rational thought and [time to] step back a minute and look at what we have, what all the state board rules and regulations are, and what they need to do.” The school bus stop provision is being challenged in a federal lawsuit filed by the Atlanta-based Southern Center for Human Rights and the American Civil Liberties Union of Georgia. It contends that enforcement of the bus stop rule would drive thousands of now law-abiding sex offenders from their homes.
Link: http://www.ajc.com/metro/content/metro/stories/0726metsexoffender.html