The fight over what to do with North Carolina’s sex offenders could be headed to federal court after a lawsuit was filed to reduce the restrictions placed on them.

A North Carolina nonprofit is part of the team that filed the lawsuit.

“There’s a place for a kind of register. I think it ought to be a registry like Canada has and most of Europe,” Robin Vanderwall, with the National Association for Rational Sexual Offense Laws, said. “Law enforcement knows who to look for and who to watch out for, be careful about, but the general public at large doesn’t have access to that information because they’re wise enough to realize the danger.”

Vanderwall said sex offenders face dangers like threats, harassment and other harm coming to them at the hands of people who know where they live.

He said the restrictions on sex offenders has grown tighter over the years, limiting where they can live, work, go to school or even worship.

Vanderwall said it has nothing to do with the public’s safety.

“The idea that a sex offender is sitting there and all you have to do is find them on a computer and that makes your kids safe because you know exactly where they’re at, that’s not true. That’s irrational. That’s not logical thinking,” Vanderwall said.

He’s not alone in his thinking.

Geoff Sidoli, director of the Mountain Child Advocacy Center, said more than $30 billion a year is spent on sex offender registries and the study’s he’s seen shows they don’t really work.