Federal judge allows registered sex offenders in Michigan homeless shelters

 A federal judge’s ruling is opening the doors of Michigan’s homeless shelters to registered sex offenders.  

 Two years ago, a 51 year old homeless man was found frozen to death in Grand Rapids.  He was turned away by a   local homeless shelter because the man was a registered sex offender.   The shelter was less than a thousand feet from a school, which would have been a violation of a Michigan law barring sex offenders from living that close to a school.   

This week, a federal judge ruled seeking an overnight stay in a homeless shelter did not violate the law.  

Miriam Aukerman  is with the ACLU.   She says the ruling is good news to homeless shelters that felt the law forced them to send homeless people out in the cold.   

The federal judge denied the ACLU’s request for an injunction to block enforcement of Michigan’s Sex Offender Registration Act