Should Sex Offenders Be Allowed to Use Facebook?

Two attorneys in North Carolina are fighting the 2008 state law barring registered sex offenders from using social networking sites like Facebook.

Two attorneys in North Carolina are fighting the 2008 state law barring registered sex offenders from using social networking sites like Facebook.

The lawyers say it’s unconstitutional to prevent sex offenders from using the sites, according to The News & Observer of Raleigh.

Of the 75 sex offenders charged in the state last year, eight were caught maintaining accounts on Facebook and MySpace. Two of those men, Christian Martin Johnson and Lester Gerard Packingham, hired lawyers to challenge the law.

Johnson’s lawyer said that the regulation does not just keep a sex offender from engaging in obscene speech with a minor – it prohibits all speech “however innocent,” according to the News Observer.

Packingham’s

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