Woman can stay in her home while she sues over sex-offender law

Wendy Whitaker, the lead plaintiff in a federal lawsuit challenging Georgia’s sex-offender law, can spend Thanksgiving in her home. On Monday, a Columbia County judge signed an order giving Whitaker a reprieve. She had been ordered to leave her home outside of Augusta by Thanksgiving because it is within 1,000 feet of a child care center and a church.

Whitaker, 29, is on the sex-offender registry for having oral sex with a high school classmate three weeks before his 16th birthday. Whitaker had just turned 17. She pleaded guilty to sodomy and received five years’ probation.

The order allows Whitaker to stay in her home while her lawsuit makes its way through the court system. On Friday, she filed suit in Columbia County, seeking to have her name eliminated from the registry on grounds that making Whitaker register as a sex offender is cruel and unusual punishment, The suit also sought a halt to her removal from her home in Harlem.

“This is a great relief to Ms. Whitaker,” her lawyer, Sarah Geraghty of the Southern Center for Human Rights, said. “She is grateful she will be able to stay in her home for the Thanksgiving holiday and thereafter while the case is being litigated.”

In a separate, federal lawsuit filed in 2006, Whitaker and other plaintiffs are seeking to overturn the state law’s provisions that make it a crime for sex offenders to live or work within 1,000 feet of places children congregate. That case is pending in U.S. District Court in Atlanta.