For sex offender registration purposes, the “place of employment address” is where the offender performs work, even if it is temporarily in a different county, the Supreme Court of Ohio ruled today.

In a unanimous decision, the Supreme Court upheld the conviction of Christopher B. Smith Jr. for failure to register as a sex offender in Geauga County. Smith had been assigned by his Cleveland-based employer to provide janitorial services to a children’s camp in Geauga County for several weeks.

Smith appealed his conviction, arguing the registration law is unconstitutionally vague because it is unclear whether he was to report his employer’s Cleveland business address or the address of his daily work assignments.

Writing for the Court, Justice Patrick F. Fischer explained that under the plain meaning of the phrase “place of employment address,” Smith should have known that he needed to report that his new place of employment was at the camp when he was taken there on a daily basis for an extended period of time to work.

Offender Did Not Report Working at Camp
Smith, a Tier III sex offender, was employed by the Center for Employment Opportunities in Cleveland, an employment services organization. He was placed with Immaculate Cleaning, a janitorial service that works with businesses throughout Northeastern Ohio.

Smith would meet an Immaculate Cleaning van driver at a designated location in Cleveland each workday, and he and the rest of the janitorial crew would then take the van to an assigned job site. In 2023, Smith and his fellow crew members were assigned to Camp Wise in Geauga County.

On June 21, 2023, Smith was arrested at the camp for failing to register as sex offender with the county sheriff. At the time, it was unclear how many days Smith had worked at Camp Wise, but he acknowledged it had been for several weeks.

Two months later, Smith was indicted in Geauga County Common Pleas Court for failure to register his new place of employment, a third-degree felony under R.C. 2950.05(F)(2). Smith asked the trial court to dismiss the case, arguing the camp was not a new place of employment, and that he registered his place of employment as Immaculate Cleaning of Cleveland with the Cuyahoga County Sheriff’s Office. Smith argued R.C. 2950.05(F)(2) was ambiguous and unclear as to how he was to report his place of employment address.

The Geauga County Prosecutor’s Office responded that the law was not ambiguous and the plain meaning of “place of employment” is the location where the offender performs work. Smith performed his work at Camp Wise and should have registered in Geauga County, the prosecutor maintained.

The trial court denied Smith’s motion to dismiss and reasoned that his place of employment was where he spent most of his workday on a daily basis, not the corporate address of his employer, where Smith did not spend his workday.

Smith pleaded no contest to the charge, and the trial court sentenced him to three years of community control.

Smith appealed his conviction to the Eleventh District Court of Appeals, which affirmed the trial court’s decision. Smith then appealed to the Supreme Court, arguing the law violated his federal and state constitutional rights.

Smith maintained that the statute, R.C. 2950.05(F)(2), is void for vagueness as it applied to his case, noting that the “place of employment address” is not defined in the statute.

Supreme Court Explained Employment Address
Justice Fischer explained that a criminal law will not be considered void for vagueness if the law defines “the criminal offense with sufficient definiteness that ordinary people can understand what conduct is prohibited and in a manner that does not encourage arbitrary and discriminatory enforcement.”

R.C. 2950.05(F)(2) states that no offender who is required to register “a new residence, school, institution of higher education, or place of employment address with a sheriff” shall fail to register in accordance with provisions of divisions (B) and (C) of R.C. 2950.05. Those divisions describe reporting a new place using the same manner and forms described in R.C. 2950.04, which governs the initial registration as a sex offender.

Smith argued the law is vague as applied to him because the provision makes it unclear that registering his employer’s place of business, as opposed to the location of his daily work assignment, amounted to criminal conduct.

The opinion stated that the Eleventh District found that the common, everyday meaning of “place of employment address” is the location where the offender is physically present while performing work. The Court agreed, noting dictionary definitions of “place” mean a physical environment, and “employment” is “activity in which one engages or is employed.”

The Court noted that Smith argued this approach would require him to register with the sheriff of any county in which he performs daily work activities, and that requirement defies common sense.

The Court rejected his argument, noting that “place of employment” cannot be viewed in a vacuum but must be read in the context of the entire state law on sex offender registration requirements. The opinion noted that R.C. 2950.04, which governs the initial duty to register, is referenced in the law requiring the reporting of new places of employment. That law explains how to report temporary and transient work assignments and does not, as Smith suggests, require an offender to report in a new county on a daily basis.

Smith also argued that defining the employment address as the location where the offender is physically present while performing work places an unfair burden on offenders who work as pizza delivery drivers, plumbers, and other tradespeople who do not physically work in one set location.

The opinion stated that Smith challenged the constitutionality of the law only as it applied to him, and the Court would not consider how it relates to “other hypothetical offenders.”

“Therefore, we will save for another day the effect that R.C. 2950.05(F)(2) might have on other working offenders,” the opinion stated.

Because Smith worked at Camp Wise for several weeks before the date he was charged for failure to register, the Court concluded that R.C. 2950.05(F)(2) provided sufficient notice to him that he was required to register the camp with the county sheriff as his employment address.

2025-1215. State v. Smith, Slip Opinion No. 2026-Ohio-3472.

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