Gundy v. United States

• Decision Date: 20 June 2019
• Docket Number: No. 17-6086,17-6086
• Citation: 204 L.Ed.2d 522,139 S.Ct. 2116
• Parties: Herman Avery GUNDY, Petitioner v. UNITED STATES
• Court: U.S. Supreme Court

139 S.Ct. 2116

204 L.Ed.2d 522

Herman Avery GUNDY, Petitioner

v.UNITED STATES

No. 17-6086

Supreme Court of the United States.

Argued October 2, 2018

Decided June 20, 2019

Sarah Baumgartel, New York, NY, for Petitioner.

Jeffrey B. Wall, Washington, DC, for Respondent.

Noel J. Francisco, Solicitor General, Brian A. Benczkowski, Assistant Attorney General, Jeffrey B. Wall, Deputy Solicitor General, Jonathan C. Bond, Assistant to the Solicitor General, Sonja M. Ralston, Attorney, Department of Justice, Washington, DC, for Respondent.

Jeffrey L. Fisher, David T. Goldberg, Pamela S. Karlan, Stanford Law School, Supreme Court, Litigation Clinic, Stanford, CA, Sarah Baumgartel, Federal Defenders of New York, Inc., Yuanchung Lee, Barry D. Leiwant, Edward S. Zas, New York, NY, for Petitioner.

Justice KAGAN announced the judgment of the Court and delivered an opinion, in which Justice GINSBURG, Justice BREYER, and Justice SOTOMAYOR join.

The nondelegation doctrine bars Congress from transferring its legislative power to another branch of Government. This case requires us to decide whether 34 U.S.C. § 20913(d), enacted as part of the Sex Offender Registration and Notification Act (SORNA), violates that doctrine. We hold it does not. Under § 20913(d), the Attorney General must apply SORNA's registration requirements as soon as feasible to offenders convicted before the statute's enactment. That delegation easily passes constitutional muster.

I

Congress has sought, for the past quarter century, to combat sex crimes and crimes against children through sex-offender registration schemes. In 1994, Congress first conditioned certain federal funds on States' adoption of registration laws meeting prescribed minimum standards. See Jacob Wetterling Crimes Against Children and Sexually Violent Offender Registration Act, § 170101, 108 Stat. 2038, 42 U.S.C. § 14071 et seq. (1994 ed.). Two years later, Congress strengthened those standards, most notably by insisting that States inform local communities of registrants' addresses. See Megan's Law, § 2, 110 Stat. 1345, note following 42 U.S.C. § 13701 (1994 ed., Supp. II). By that time, every State and the District of Columbia had enacted a sex-offender registration law. But the state statutes varied along many dimensions, and Congress came to realize that their "loopholes and deficiencies" had allowed over 100,000 sex offenders (about 20% of the total) to escape registration. See H. R. Rep. No. 109–218, pt. 1, pp. 20, 23–24, 26 (2005) (referring to those sex offenders as "missing" or "lost"). In 2006, to address those failings, Congress enacted SORNA. See 120 Stat. 590, 34 U.S.C. § 20901 et seq .

SORNA makes "more uniform and effective" the prior "patchwork" of sex-offender registration systems. Reynolds v. United States , 565 U.S. 432, 435, 132 S.Ct. 975, 181 L.Ed.2d 935 (2012). The Act's express "purpose" is "to protect the public from sex offenders and offenders against children" by "establish[ing] a comprehensive national system for [their] registration." § 20901. To that end, SORNA covers more sex offenders, and imposes more onerous registration requirements, than most States had before. The Act also backs up those requirements with new criminal penalties. Any person required to register under SORNA who knowingly fails to do so (and who travels in interstate commerce) may be imprisoned for up to ten years. See 18 U.S.C. § 2250(a).

The basic registration scheme works as follows. A "sex offender" is defined as "an individual who was convicted of" specified criminal offenses: all offenses "involving a sexual act or sexual contact" and additional offenses "against a minor." 34 U.S.C. §§ 20911(1), (5)(A), (7). Such an individual must register—provide his name, address, and certain other information—in every State where he resides, works, or studies. See §§ 20913(a), 20914. And he must keep the registration current, and periodically report in person to a law enforcement office, for a period of between fifteen years and life (depending on the severity of his crime and his history of recidivism). See §§ 20915, 20918.

Section 20913—the disputed provision here—elaborates the "[i]nitial registration" requirements for sex offenders. §§ 20913(b), (d). Subsection (b) sets out the general rule: An offender must register "before completing a sentence of imprisonment with respect to the offense giving rise to the registration requirement" (or, if the offender is not sentenced to prison, "not later than [three] business days after being sentenced"). Two provisions down, subsection (d) addresses (in its title's words) the "[i]nitial registration of sex offenders unable to comply with subsection (b)." The provision states:

"The Attorney General shall have the authority to specify the applicability of the requirements of this subchapter to sex offenders convicted before the enactment of this chapter ... and to prescribe rules for the registration of any such sex offenders and for other categories of sex offenders who are unable to comply with subsection (b)."

Subsection (d), in other words, focuses on individuals convicted of a sex offense before SORNA's enactment—a group we will call pre-Act offenders. Many of these individuals were unregistered at the time of SORNA's enactment, either because pre-existing law did not cover them or because they had successfully evaded that law (so were "lost" to the system). See supra, at 2121 – 2122. And of those potential new registrants, many or most could not comply with subsection (b)'s registration rule because they had already completed their prison sentences. For the entire group of pre-Act offenders, once again, the Attorney General "shall have the authority" to "specify the applicability" of SORNA's registration requirements and "to prescribe rules for [their] registration."

Under that delegated authority, the Attorney General issued an interim rule in February 2007, specifying that SORNA's registration requirements apply in full to "sex offenders convicted of the offense for which registration is required prior to the enactment of that Act." 72 Fed. Reg. 8897. The final rule, issued in December 2010, reiterated that SORNA applies to all pre- Act offenders. 75 Fed. Reg. 81850. That rule has remained the same to this day.

Petitioner Herman Gundy is a pre-Act offender. The year before SORNA's enactment, he pleaded guilty under Maryland law for sexually assaulting a minor. After his release from prison in 2012, Gundy came to live in New York. But he never registered there as a sex offender. A few years later, he was convicted for failing to register, in violation of § 2250. He argued below (among other things) that Congress unconstitutionally delegated legislative power when it authorized the Attorney General to "specify the applicability" of SORNA's registration requirements to pre-Act offenders. § 20913(d). The District Court and Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit rejected that claim, see 695 Fed.Appx. 639 (2017), as had every other court (including eleven Courts of Appeals) to consider the issue. We nonetheless granted certiorari.

583 U.S. ––––, 138 S.Ct. 1260, 200 L.Ed.2d 416 (2018). Today, we join the consensus and affirm.

II

Article I of the Constitution provides that "[a]ll legislative Powers herein granted shall be vested in a Congress of the United States." § 1. Accompanying that assignment of power to Congress is a bar on its further delegation. Congress, this Court explained early on, may not transfer to another branch "powers which are strictly and exclusively legislative." Wayman v. Southard , 23 U.S. (10 Wheat.) 1, 42–43, 6 L.Ed. 253 (1825). But the Constitution does not "deny[ ] to the Congress the necessary resources of flexibility and practicality [that enable it] to perform its function[s]." Yakus v. United States , 321 U.S. 414, 425, 64 S.Ct. 660, 88 L.Ed. 834 (1944) (internal quotation marks omitted). Congress may "obtain[ ] the assistance of its coordinate Branches"—and in particular, may confer substantial discretion on executive agencies to implement and enforce the laws. Mistretta v. United States , 488 U.S. 361, 372, 109 S.Ct. 647, 102 L.Ed.2d 714 (1989). "[I]n our increasingly complex society, replete with ever changing and more technical problems," this Court has understood that "Congress simply cannot do its job absent an ability to delegate power under broad general directives." Ibid. So we have held, time and again, that a statutory delegation is constitutional as long as Congress "lay[s] down by legislative act an intelligible principle to which the person or body authorized to [exercise the delegated authority] is directed to conform." Ibid. (quoting J. W. Hampton, Jr., & Co. v. United States , 276 U.S. 394, 409, 48 S.Ct. 348, 72 L.Ed. 624 (1928) ; brackets in original).

Given that standard, a nondelegation inquiry always begins (and often almost ends) with statutory interpretation. The constitutional question is whether Congress has supplied an intelligible principle to guide the delegee's use of discretion. So the answer requires construing the challenged statute to figure out what task it delegates and what instructions it provides. See, e.g., Whitman v. American Trucking Assns. , Inc., 531 U.S. 457, 473, 121 S.Ct. 903, 149 L.Ed.2d 1 (2001) (construing the text of a delegation to place constitutionally adequate "limits on the EPA's discretion"); American Power & Light Co. v. SEC , 329 U.S. 90, 104–105, 67 S.Ct. 133, 91 L.Ed. 103 (1946) (interpreting a statutory delegation, in light of its "purpose[,] factual background[, and] context," to provide sufficiently "definite" standards). Only after a court has determined a challenged statute's meaning can it decide whether the law sufficiently guides executive discretion to accord with Article I. And indeed, once a court interprets the statute, it may find that the constitutional question all but answers itself.

That is the case here, because § 20913(d) does not give the Attorney General...