Current Challenges to Residency Restrictions - Nicholas and Weinberg

The workshop will focus on recent successful challenges to residency restrictions in Wisconsin and prospects of future challenges elsewhere. The workshop will address four main issues:
(1) Case selection issues: How do you decide whether a particular restriction can and should be challenged? What characteristics are you looking for -- extreme distances? severe effect on housing availability? lack of connection to the protection of children? How do you identify a good plaintiff? Does plaintiff selection matter?
(2) Available legal theories: What are the best federal constitutional theories - ex post facto? due process? What alternative state court theories are available preemption? state constitutional theories?
(3) Evidentiary issues: What is most persuasive to the courts to prove that a particular residency restriction goes too far? How relevant is the social science research that demonstrates the ineffectiveness of residency restrictions as a crime prevention tool? What is the persuasive force of first-person accounts of how plaintiffs or class members were forced into homelessness?
Mark Weinberg is an attorney in Chicago. He has devoted the last eight years of his professional life to challenging the constitutionality of restrictions imposed on people convicted of sex offenses, including challenges to residency restrictions, GPS monitoring requirements, conditions of supervised release (internet and child contact), and restrictions that force people to remain in prison past their outdates due to the unavailability of compliant housing. He has brought all of his lawsuits with his co-counsel Adele Nicholas. They have brought cases in Illinois, Wisconsin, and Minnesota.
Adele Nicholas is the executive director of Illinois Voices for Reform and a civil rights attorney based in Chicago. Since 2016, she has been litigating constitutional challenges to the harmful, permanent punishments, including housing banishment laws and registration schemes, that apply to persons who have been convicted of sexual offenses.