By T Chris

Lawyers on behalf of the Iowa Civil Liberties Union will ask a U.S. District Court judge on Monday to make permanent a temporary restraining order that blocks enforcement of a law restricting the availability of housing to sex offenders. By prohibiting convicted sex offenders from living within 2,000 feet of a school or day care center, the law places about 30 percent of some Iowa towns "off limits." It has prevented some offenders from returning home to live with parents, and has kept others in prisons or halfway houses for lack of alternative housing.

Randall Wilson, legal director of the Iowa Civil Liberties Union, argues that the law "violates the Constitution in several ways, the most serious of which is that it essentially banishes people from the state." Problems arose shortly after the law was enacted.

Police and correction officials have complained of sex offenders filling up halfway houses while waiting for places to live, overpopulation of offenders in legal areas, and intentional disregard for the sex offender registry -- Iowa has about 4,500 registered sex offenders.

Similar laws exist in ten states. They seriously jeopardize a rehabilitated offender's ability to rejoin society while offering illusory protection: is a town safer if a former sex offender lives 2,005 feet away from a school but not 1,995 feet away?