Today I realized that there are still, seven years after the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals held unconstitutional Texas’s “dirty talk to minors” statute, people registering as sex offenders for violating that statute.
If you’ve followed me for a while, you may know that my first big free-speech win was in Ex parte Lo, where I convinced a unanimous CCA that section 33.021(b) of the Texas Penal Code was facially overbroad under the First Amendment.
After Lo, I sent letters to many of the people who had been convicted or put on probation for violating the void statute, offering my services to reopen their cases with writs of habeas corpus and then seek dismissal, removal from the sex-offender registry, and expunction. I got this relief for several dozen people before winding up in the Texas Supreme Court arguing, against the Attorney General’s Office, that a person who had been put on probation for violating a void statute was entitled to expunction when the case was eventually dismissed:
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