Doe v. California Dept. of Justice

In Doe v. California Dept. of Justice (2009) 173 Cal.App.4th 1095 (hereafter, G.G. Doe), the appellant, the uncle of a victim of a sexual offense, claimed that the Legislature's restriction of the exclusion in section 290.46, subdivision (e) to parents, stepparents, siblings and grandparents violated his right to equal protection. The G.G. Doe court rejected the appellant's claim that disclosure on the Department's Web site of his sexual offenses implicated his fundamental liberty interests in privacy and reputation. (G.G. Doe, supra, at p. 1113.) The G.G. Doe court reasoned that the United States Supreme Court had rejected such an argument with respect to a similar statutory scheme on the ground that disclosure is based on the fact of conviction, and the "'offender has already had a procedurally safeguarded opportunity to contest'" the facts leading to that conviction. (Ibid.)