The US Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit Tuesday upheld lifetime GPS monitoring for some convicted sex offenders in Wisconsin.

The plaintiffs in Braam v. Carr are repeat sex offenders who are subjected to lifetime GPS monitoring as a result of their convictions. The plaintiffs stated that the requirement for lifetime GPS monitoring violated their Fourth Amendment rights. The GPS monitoring program requires the plaintiffs to comply with GPS monitoring “for the rest of their lives unless they permanently move to a different state.”

The court analyzed the plaintiffs’ Fourth Amendment rights and held that lifetime GPS monitoring of post-supervision sex offenders convicted of multiple sex offences against children “is reasonable under the Fourth Amendment if the government’s interest in monitoring these offenders outweighs the privacy expectations of those who must comply with the program.” Thus, the court ruled that lifetime GPS monitoring for these convicted sex offenders advances Wisconsin’s primary interest in public protection and outweighs sex offenders’ “reduced expectation of privacy.”

The US Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit previously addressed lifetime GPS monitoring for convicted sex offenders in Belleau v. Wall where the court upheld the statute. This case also addressed Fourth Amendment rights, in which the court held that “the government’s interest in deterring recidivism by these dangerous offenders outweighs the offenders’ diminished expectation of privacy.”