US Appeals Court upholds Adam Walsh act...including on reservations

From the Billings Gazette and an AP story:

"U.S. Attorney Bill Mercer said Thursday that he will resume prosecuting sex offenders who fail to register with local authorities when they move to Western Montana, following an appeals court ruling this week that upheld the practice.

Mercer's office stopped pursuing such cases in June 2008 after U.S. District Judge Donald Molloy in Missoula ruled the Sex Offender Registration and Notification Act of 2006 was unconstitutional.

Prosecutions had continued in Eastern Montana, supported by a ruling in a separate case before U.S. District Judge Richard Cebull in Billings.

Mercer said prosecutions in the western half of the state would resume based on a 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals opinion issued Tuesday. In a case that originated in Yakima, Wash., the San Francisco-based appeals court said the sex offender act did indeed pass constitutional muster.

In a footnote, the court said it "disapproved" of Molloy's ruling last year, in which he had said Congress lacked authority to enact the law under the interstate commerce clause.

The panel wrote that Congress has the right to enact such a law as long as it is "necessary and proper" under the commerce clause.

The federal law applies to sex offenders who move between states or between a state and an American Indian reservation."

See the full story HERE.

twp