In 1969, Neil Armstrong faced unknown risks as he embarked on the Apollo 11 mission, prompting William Safire to prepare the somber “In Event of Moon Disaster” speech. What is Armstrong’s risk of dying on that mission today, in 2025? The mission succeeded, and decades have passed. Armstrong passed away peacefully on Earth in 2012, rendering his current risk of lunar death precisely zero. Purchasing insurance against this “risk” now would be laughably cheap—unless the insurer absurdly relied on 1969 data to assess Armstrong’s risk today. Yet, this is precisely the type of actuarial miscalculation that Oregon’s Senate Bill 1122 (SB 1122) mandates by law in the sex offender registry context. The new law anchors risk assessments to the date an offender was released—sometimes decades ago—ignoring their actual danger to the public today (or lack thereof).

SB 1122, passed on May 15, 2025, prioritizes the appearance of being tough on crime over fiscal responsibility and basic common sense. In order to simplify the classification, any classification, of registrants with very old convictions, it codifies the use of outdated Static-99R scores, essentially snapshot of the distant past, leading to inflated risk designation that impose lifelong burdens without due process. This blog post explains how this happened and outlines why SB 1122 opens the door for robust legal challenges.

OREGON’S SEX OFFENDER RISK ASSESSMENT: A VERY SHORT HISTORY

A. AN ATTEMPT AT EVIDENCE-BASED REFORM

Oregon has struggled to assess sex offender risk for over a decade. In 2013, the legislature enacted ORS 163A.100, establishing a three-tier system to classify registrants based on their current risk of reoffending.

• Level One: Lowest risk, requiring limited notification.
• Level Two: Moderate risk, requiring moderate notification.
• Level Three: Highest risk, requiring the widest notification.

The 2013 reforms aimed to streamline Oregon’s bloated registry—the largest per capita in the U.S.—by focusing resources on only the highest-risk individuals. However, the law said the government had to classify thousands of existing registrants, not just new ones.

B. FAKE SCIENCE, REAL CONSEQUENCES: THE BOARD’S DECISION TO MISUSE THE STATIC-99R

Oregon’s solution was to use the Static-99R, an 10 question actuarial worksheet, and apply it to male sex offenders, even those whose convictions were years or even decades old. The problem? The Static-99R is all about short-term risk. It’s only valid for two years. Relying on historical Static-99R scores to gauge present dangerousness after multiple decades is akin to using a $20 blood pressure cuff to screen for cancer. The cuff may provide a quick, numerical result that appears scientific, but it’s irrelevant for detecting tumors.

C. A BELATED COURT OF APPEALS SMACKDOWN

In Thomsen v. Board of Parole, 333 Or. App. 703 (2024), a case litigated by our firm, the Oregon Court of Appeals ruled that risk means present day risk. The State law clearly required assessing “the risk of reoffending at the time of the assessment.” The court’s decision invited Oregon to adopt a more rational, evidence-based risk assessment system. The legislature went in the exact opposite direction.

SB 1122: A DEFINITIVE REJECTION OF EVIDENCE-BASED RISK ASSESSMENTS

SB 1122 rejects all available evidence of who actually poses a risk to the public and, in fact, explicitly overrides the idea that risk assessments should assess present-day  risk at all. Now, risk assessments “may consider exclusively the risk the sex offender presented at the time the sex offender was released from custody. . .” In everyday English: Oregon is is now allowed to assess “risk” by looking only at the past and ignoring everything that has happened since an offender was released from prison, even if 20, 30, or 40 years have passed.

Initially, even the Oregon District Attorneys Association (ODAA) opposed the change, arguing it ignored important risk-relevant information. Why, then, did the legislature pass this retreat to inaccurate assessments? The Board’s brief in Allen v. Board of Parole (A179800, 2023), another case our firm recently litigated, identifies one possible motive. “Using the Static-99R… saves the Board considerable resources in performing initial classifications,” the government writes. Accounting for desistance would “burden its resources by forcing it to adopt a… case-by-case evaluation.” The bill’s Fiscal Impact Statements echo these arguments. Inaccurate assessments do not actually save tax payer money, however. They shift costs to the taxpayer by mandating costly, pointless lifetimes supervision of thousands of harmless individuals.

KICKING OPEN THE DOOR FOR NEW CHALLENGES TO OREGON’S UNCONSTITUTIONAL SEX OFFENDER REGISTRY

SB 1122 is a constitutional disaster waiting to be challenged. Courts elsewhere have struck down similar “super-registration” laws for their cumulative punitive effects, finding they resemble historical punishments like banishment, shaming, and lifelong probation. The law’s dubious “emergency” declaration raises additional concerns. People assume challenging registration laws is a waste of time, but it’s been more than 20 years since the Supreme Court ruled in Smith v. Doe, 538 U.S. 84 (2003) that registration was not punitive. The world has unquestionably changed.

Advocacy groups that fought Measure 11’s mandatory minimums and championed juvenile justice reforms like SB 1008 have ignored this issue completely. Their silence on SB 1122 underscores the need for individual attorneys to step up. Every defense lawyer representing a defendant at sentencing for a sex crime should at least consider asserting a right to an evidentiary hearing on the necessity of registration. And if you have a client, friend, or family member recently designated as a Level III offender, contact our office today. We happily offer consultations to attorneys statewide and pro bono representation for eligible registrants.