The 11th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled on a case Monday more than seven years after it was filed, hours after Talking Points Memo (TPM) published an article about the delay, TPM reports. The 81-page ruling was per curiam, meaning that all Judges Ed Carnes, Jill Pryor, and Kenneth Ripple signed off on it, but no one claimed authorship. Iin 2015. Michael McGuire, a homeless Black man living in Montgomery, Al., had sued in 2011 to overturn Alabama’s sex offender registry law, alleging that it was unconstitutional. The district court found that McGuire was being forced to live under a bridge because of the law, and struck down two portions of it that imposed additional reporting and travel requirements on the homeless as unconstitutional.
In 2021, 2021, Alabama’s attorney general asked the court for a ruling. The three-judge panel replied that the case presented “a number of complex issues” and added that “The Court has worked diligently on the case and continues to do so, but more work remains to be done.” The court ended up against McGuire across the board, vacating the district court’s decision to rule parts of the Alabama law unconstitutional.