Case: 18-13445 Date Filed: 08/07/2019 Page: 1 of 9 [DO NOT PUBLISH] IN THE UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE ELEVENTH CIRCUIT ________________________ No. 18-13445 Non-Argument Calendar ________________________ D.C. Docket No. 1:15-cv-01867-TWT TYRONE WILLIAM HOLLAND, Plaintiff-Appellant, versus GOVERNOR OF GEORGIA, Defendant-Appellee. ________________________ Appeal from the United States District Court for the Northern District of Georgia ________________________ (August 7, 2019) Before WILSON, JILL PRYOR and BLACK, Circuit Judges. PER CURIAM: Case: 18-13445 Date Filed: 08/07/2019 Page: 2 of 9 Tyrone William Holland, proceeding pro se, appeals the district court’s dismissal of his 42 U.S.C. § 1983 action for failure to state a claim. He argues the district court erroneously determined that subsections (e)(1) and (e)(3) of Georgia’s sex offender registry statute, O.C.G.A. § 42-1-12, were not contradictory. According to Holland, (e)(1) exempted him from the registration requirement because his conviction was entered on May 24, 1996 (before July 1, 1996), and thus, he was not subject to (e)(3)’s requirement that all individuals who were previously convicted of a sex offense and released after July 1, 1996, must register. He asserts that requiring him to register under (e)(3), despite his exemption under (e)(1), violated his rights to substantive due process and equal protection under the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, and also amounted to cruel and unusual punishment in violation of the Eighth Amendment. He also contends that (e)(3) only has prospective application because it is not unambiguously retroactive. After review,1 we affirm the district court. 1 We review de novo a dismissal for failure to state a claim upon which relief may be granted, “accepting the allegations in the complaint as true and construing them in the light most favorable to the plaintiff.” Leib v. Hillsborough Cty. Pub. Transp. Comm’n, 558 F.3d 1301, 1305 (11th Cir. 2009). We also review questions of statutory interpretation and constitutional law de novo. U.S. ex rel. Osheroff v. Humana, Inc., 776 F.3d 805, 809 (11th Cir. 2015) (statutory interpretation); Nichols v. Hopper, 173 F.3d 820, 822 (11th Cir. 1999) (constitutional law). 2 Case: 18-13445 Date Filed: 08/07/2019 Page: 3 of 9 I. DISCUSSION A. Whether subsections (e)(1) and (e)(3) of O.C.G.A. § 42-1-12 are contradictory We begin the process of statutory interpretation by looking at a statute’s plain language. Brown v. Budget Rent-A-Car Systems, Inc., 119 F.3d 922, 924 (11th Cir. 1997). “As a general rule, the use of a disjunctive in a statute indicates alternatives and requires that those alternatives be treated separately. Hence, language in a clause following a disjunctive is considered inapplicable to the subject matter of the preceding clause.” Id. (quotations omitted). In other words, disjunctive language establishes alternative means of violating or triggering a statutory provision. Rine v. Imagitas, Inc., 590 F.3d 1215, 1224 (11th Cir. 2009). Georgia’s sex offender registration statute lists eight categories of individuals who must register as a sex offender. O.C.G.A. § 42-1-12(e)(1)-(8). These categories include any individual who: (1) Is convicted on or after July 1, 1996, of a criminal offense against a ...
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