Federal Appeals Court Rules S*x Offenders Have Constitutional Right To Live With Their Own Children

What a disgrace.

A Federal Appeals Court has ruled some registered sex offenders have a Constitutional right to live with their own children.

The ruling was made by the the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit after convicted sex offender Bruce Henry sued the state of Alabama for its Alabama Sex Offender Registration and Community Notification Act which prohibited him from living with his son.

ABC 33 News had more details to share on the court’s decision and revealed how Henry became a sex offender:

A federal appeals court has ruled that an Alabama law permanently preventing some registered sex offenders from living with their own children must be reviewed under the highest level of constitutional scrutiny, marking a significant development in a lawsuit brought by a Tuscaloosa County father.

In an 8-5 decision issued Monday, the full U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit ruled that Bruce Henry retains a fundamental constitutional right as a parent to live with his child, despite his prior conviction for possessing child pornography.

The court did not strike down Alabama’s law. Instead, it sent the case back to a three-judge panel to determine whether the state’s restrictions can survive strict scrutiny, the most demanding constitutional standard courts apply when evaluating laws that burden fundamental rights.

“This case is about the fundamental right of parents to live with their children,” Judge Robin Rosenbaum wrote for the majority. “Parents—even those who have committed state-defined ‘misconduct’—enjoy the fundamental right to live with their children.”

Here’s how users on X reacted to the court’s decision:

Someone check this judges hard drive

— Mark J Vinton (@MarkJVinton) July 7, 2026

Arrest these Judges‼️‼️

— NevrlftAlliethebattlechi4 (@nevrlftalliechi) July 7, 2026

This was a good take:

So a parent that doesn't want their child to undergo a totally unnecessary life altering surgery before they are old enough to make this decision, doesn't have rights.

But a known sex offender that presents a real risk to the child does have rights.

— SlinginTrades (@SlinginTrades) July 7, 2026

Court House News provided a detailed background of Henry:

In 2013, Bruce Henry pled guilty to “knowingly possess[ing] any book, magazine, periodical, film, videotape, computer disk, or any other material that contains an image of child pornography.” When officers arrested him,Henry had two videos and 348 photos of prepubescent and adoles-
cent girls, all of which he had downloaded from the internet. Be- fore his arrest, Henry had no history of sexual offenses.

The district court sentenced Henry to 70 months in prison
and 60 months of supervised release with special conditions. He served five years of his sentence before his release in March 2018.

After release, Henry completed a qualified Sex Oﬀender Treatment Program, as well as individual and group counseling. Henry con- tinues to attend weekly Sex Addicts Anonymous meetings. He also maintains a steady job, attends church, and volunteers. We note two special conditions of Henry’s supervised re-lease.

First, Henry must participate in the United States Probation
Oﬃce’s computer restriction-and-monitoring program. That program prohibits Henry from possessing or using certain electronic devices that may communicate with other electronic devices with-out the Probation Oﬃce’s prior approval. And second, Henry may not have “any unsupervised, one-to-one contact with any children
under the age of 18 other than his own children.”
Despite these restrictions, while on supervised release,
Henry in two instances accessed pornography. In July 2019, Henry admitted during a polygraphed interview that he used an Amazon Firestick to view pornography.

A forensic examination revealed no saved images, but Henry had viewed images with “titles indicating that they were of young or teenage females.” And Henry admitted
in a follow-up polygraph test that he actively sought out images of teen girls and children posed in sexual positions.
Also, in December 2019, Henry used his wife’s unlocked
phone to search for pornographic images. He disclosed the inci-dent to his sexual-oﬀender-treatment provider but failed to inform his probation oﬃcer during the oﬃcer’s home visit in January 2020.

Instead, the probation oﬃcer learned about the incident from Henry’s supervision report for that month. Citing these violations, Henry’s probation oﬃcer filed a pe- tition to revoke Henry’s supervised release. A federal district court
declined. Instead, the court extended Henry’s term of supervised Since his December 2019 incident, Henry has not violated his supervised release.

In August 2021, Henry and his wife had a son. But because of the Act, Henry cannot live or reside overnight with him.