Cite as: 538 U. S. 84 (2003)
Souter, J., concurring in judgment
further, given pervasive attitudes toward sex offenders, see infra this page and 110, n. See Weaver v. Graham, 450 U. S. 24, 29 (1981) (Ex Post Facto Clause was meant to prevent "arbitrary and potentially vindictive legislation"). The fact that the Act uses past crime as the touchstone, probably sweeping in a significant number of people who pose no real threat to the community, serves to feed suspicion that something more than regulation of safety is going on; when a legislature uses prior convictions to impose burdens that out-pace the law's stated civil aims, there is room for serious argument that the ulterior purpose is to revisit past crimes, not prevent future ones. See Kennedy, supra, at 169.
That argument can claim support, too, from the severity of the burdens imposed. Widespread dissemination of offenders' names, photographs, addresses, and criminal history serves not only to inform the public but also to humiliate and ostracize the convicts. It thus bears some resemblance to shaming punishments that were used earlier in our history to disable offenders from living normally in the community. See, e. g., Massaro, Shame, Culture, and American Criminal Law, 89 Mich. L. Rev. 1880, 1913 (1991). While the Court accepts the State's explanation that the Act simply makes public information available in a new way, ante, at 99, the scheme does much more. Its point, after all, is to send a message that probably would not otherwise be heard, by selecting some conviction information out of its corpus of penal records and broadcasting it with a warning. Selection makes a statement, one that affects common reputation and sometimes carries harsher consequences, such as exclusion from jobs or housing, harassment, and physical harm.*
*I seriously doubt that the Act's requirements are "less harsh than the sanctions of occupational debarment" that we upheld in Hudson v. United States, 522 U. S. 93 (1997), De Veau v. Braisted, 363 U. S. 144 (1960), and Hawker v. New York, 170 U. S. 189 (1898). See ante, at 100. It is true that the Act imposes no formal proscription against any particular employ-
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