Carr v. United States
The Supreme Court ruled that a federal sex-offender registration law does not apply to someone whose move from one state to another happened before the law took effect, even if he failed to register afterward.
The decision narrows who can face federal prosecution under the 2006 Sex Offender Registration and Notification Act, protecting people whose only qualifying travel occurred before the statute existed from being charged under this federal provision.
“Indeed, it is strange to think that Congress might have enacted a statute that declined to cover pre-SORNA offenders but nevertheless covered pre-SORNA travel.”
The majority explains why reading the law to cover pre-enactment travel would be an odd result.
How it got here: A federal district court denied Carr's motion to dismiss; the Seventh Circuit affirmed his conviction; Carr asked the Supreme Court to resolve a circuit split over the law's scope.
The Case in Depth
What happened
Thomas Carr pleaded guilty to sexual abuse in Alabama in 2004 and registered there as required. Before Congress passed a new federal registration law in 2006, he moved to Indiana without registering under that state's rules. Years later he was federally indicted for failing to register, based partly on his earlier interstate move.
The question before the Court
Could a man be prosecuted for failing to register as a sex offender under a federal law when his interstate move happened before that law existed?
The Court's answer
No — the Court ruled that this federal registration-violation law does not apply when a person's interstate move happened before the law existed, even if the failure to register came later. The law's structure requires that a person first become subject to the registration duty, then travel between states, and only then fail to register — all after the law's effective date.
The Court based this on the statute's consistent use of present-tense verbs like 'travels,' which ordinarily point to future or ongoing conduct rather than past acts. Because Carr's only qualifying travel occurred before the law was enacted, his prosecution under this specific provision could not stand, and the Court did not need to reach the separate constitutional question about retroactive punishment.
Curious how the Court got there? See the step-by-step legal reasoning →
Why it matters
Sex offenders who moved between states before the 2006 federal registration law existed cannot be federally prosecuted under this provision just because they later failed to register, even though they may still face state charges or other federal consequences depending on later regulations. Prosecutors must now show that the qualifying interstate travel itself happened after the law's effective date.
What changes now
The case is sent back to the lower court for further proceedings consistent with the Court's reading of the statute. Because Carr's qualifying travel occurred before the law existed, his conviction under this provision cannot stand on that basis. The Court did not decide the separate constitutional question about retroactive punishment, since its statutory ruling made that question unnecessary to resolve. Other courts will apply this ruling to similar timing disputes.
What this does not decide
The Court did not decide whether prosecuting someone under this law violates the Constitution's ban on retroactive criminal punishment, since its statutory ruling made that question unnecessary. It also did not decide whether the law validly applies to people convicted of sex offenses before the law existed, an issue left to a separate regulatory dispute.
Concurrences and dissents
Concurrence in part — Justice Scalia
Justice Scalia joined the Court's opinion except for the section discussing legislative committee reports, arguing that only the text Congress actually voted on counts as authoritative, not preliminary drafts or committee statements. He believed the statute's plain text, context, and structure already resolved the case, so looking at legislative history was unnecessary and inappropriate once the meaning was clear.
Dissent — Justice Alito
Justice Alito argued the majority's textual reasoning about verb tense and sequencing was unsound and that Congress likely meant the law to reach offenders whose travel predated the law's enactment, since modern drafting conventions treat statutes as speaking from the time they are read, not enacted. He warned the ruling leaves many previously unregistered, dangerous sex offenders beyond federal reach and would have affirmed the conviction.
How the Court got there
The legal reasoning, step by step
- The Court read the statute's three requirements — being subject to the registration law, traveling between states, and failing to register — as a sequence that must happen in that order, since both sides agreed a sequential reading was necessary to link the travel to the failure to register.
- Because the law uses the present-tense verb 'travels' rather than 'traveled' or 'has traveled,' the Court concluded that Congress meant to cover only travel occurring after the law took effect, consistent with the ordinary meaning of present-tense verbs in criminal statutes.
- The Court reinforced this reading by noting that neighboring verbs in the same provision, and other elements of the offense, are also written in the present tense, suggesting a uniform forward-looking design rather than one applying different timeframes to different elements.
- The Court rejected the government's argument that treating state and federal sex offenders differently created an unfair gap, reasoning that Congress could reasonably give the federal government a narrower role for state offenders, stepping in only when their post-enactment interstate travel undermined state enforcement.
- The Court also rejected the government's purpose-based argument, concluding that other parts of the law, not this specific criminal provision, were designed to address the broader problem of missing sex offenders, so a narrower reading of this provision does not defeat the law's overall goals.
- Having concluded that the law's travel requirement must postdate its enactment, the Court determined that Carr's federal prosecution could not rest on his earlier, pre-enactment move, resolving the statutory question without needing to reach the separate constitutional question about retroactive punishment.
Doctrinal impact
Cases affected by this decision
Distinguishes Scarborough v. United States (431 U.S. 563)
The Court said the felon-in-possession precedent doesn't control here because travel, unlike gun movement, is the conduct Congress targeted.