Georgia Supreme Court unanimously declares state's approach to lifetime GPS monitoring for sex offenders violates Fourth Amendment

The Supreme Court of Georgia issued a notable unanimous opinion yesterday in Park v. Georgia, No. S18A1211 (Ga. March 4, 2019) (available here), declaring unconstitutional the state's lifetime GPS monitoring requirement for certain sex offenders. The opinion for the court authored by Chief Justice Melton starts this way:

We granted an interlocutory appeal in this case to address Joseph Park’s facial challenge to the constitutionality of OCGA § 42-1-14, which requires, among other things, that a person who is classified as a sexually dangerous predator – but who is no longer in State custody or on probation or parole – wear and pay for an electronic monitoring device linked to a global positioning satellite system (“GPS monitoring device”) that allows the State to monitor that individual’s location “for the remainder of his or her natural life.” Id. at (e). For the reasons that follow, we conclude that OCGA § 42-1-14(e), on its face, authorizes a patently unreasonable search that runs afoul of the protections afforded by the Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution, and, as a result, subsection (e) of the statute is unconstitutional to the extent that it does so.

Notably, a concurring opinion by Justice Blackwell seems interested in helping the state legislature find a work around to this ruling. His opinion starts this way:

The General Assembly has determined as a matter of public policy that requiring some sexual offenders to wear electronic monitoring devices linked to a global positioning satellite system promotes public safety, and it enacted OCGA § 42-1-14(e) to put that policy into practice. The Court today decides that subsection (e) is unconstitutional, and I concur fully in that decision, which is driven largely by our obligation to faithfully apply the principles of law set forth by the United States Supreme Court in Grady v. North Carolina, ___ U.S. ___ (135 SCt 1368, 191 LE2d 459) (2015).  I write separately, however, to emphasize that our decision today does not foreclose other means by which the General Assembly might put the same policy into practice.

Our decision rests in significant part on the fact that subsection (e) requires some sexual offenders to submit to electronic monitoring even after they have completed the service of their sentences.  But nothing in our decision today precludes the General Assembly from authorizing life sentences for the worst sexual offenders, and nothing in our decision prevents the General Assembly from requiring a sentencing court in the worst cases to require GPS monitoring as a condition of permitting a sexual offender to serve part of a life sentence on probation.