The North Carolina Court of Appeals has held North Carolina’s ban on registered sex offenders using social media sites like Facebook and Twitter unconstitutional.   The court said the ban “is not narrowly tailored, is vague, and fails to target the ‘evil’ it is intended to rectify.”

“The statute violates the First Amendment’s guarantee of free speech, and it is unconstitutional on its face and as applied. Accordingly, we vacate the trial court’s judgment.”  The ruling centered around a Durham case in which Lester Gerard Packingham appealed his felony conviction for accessing a commercial networking site last year.  According to the trial records, the Durham Police Department was looking at evidence that registered sex offenders were using the websites MySpace and Facebook, and an officer recognized Packingham’s photo on Facebook.  The opinion is available at this link.