Gundy v. United States
The Court upheld a federal law letting the Attorney General decide how to apply sex-offender registration requirements to people convicted before the law took effect, finding no unconstitutional transfer of Congress's lawmaking power.
The plurality opinion left the broader rule limiting how much lawmaking power Congress can hand to agencies largely undisturbed, but a forceful dissent argued the Court should tighten that rule substantially in a future case.
“That delegation easily passes constitutional muster.”
The plurality's bottom-line conclusion that the law does not violate the Constitution's limits on delegating lawmaking power.
How it got here: A federal trial court convicted Gundy of failing to register; the Second Circuit affirmed, rejecting his claim that Congress unconstitutionally delegated lawmaking power to the Attorney General.
The Case in Depth
What happened
In 2006 Congress passed a law requiring convicted sex offenders to register with state and federal authorities. For people convicted before the law took effect, Congress let the Attorney General decide how the registration rules would apply to them. Herman Gundy, convicted of a sex offense in 2005, later failed to register in New York after his release and was prosecuted for that failure.
The question before the Court
Did Congress hand the Attorney General too much unchecked lawmaking power by letting him decide how sex-offender registration rules apply to people convicted before the law existed?
The Court's answer
No — the Court ruled that Congress did not hand the Attorney General unconstitutional lawmaking power. Four Justices, in an opinion by Justice Kagan, concluded the law only let the Attorney General decide how quickly to require older offenders to register, not whether to require it at all, giving him a limited, feasibility-related job rather than free rein to write his own rules.
Justice Alito supplied the fifth vote for that result, but on different grounds: he said the law satisfies the Court's existing lenient standard for delegations, even though he'd be open to a stricter approach if a majority of the Court wanted one. Three Justices dissented, arguing the law effectively gives the Attorney General unlimited discretion over a half-million people, which crosses the constitutional line.
Curious how the Court got there? See the step-by-step legal reasoning →
Why it matters
The ruling keeps in place the Attorney General's authority to require registration by roughly half a million people convicted of sex offenses before 2006. More broadly, it signals how far the current Court is willing to let Congress hand rule-making power to executive officials, a question that touches countless federal programs run by agencies.
What changes now
This is a final merits decision, so Gundy's conviction stands and the Attorney General's existing registration rule for pre-Act offenders remains in effect nationwide. The plurality's narrow reading resolves this case, but Justice Alito's separate vote leaves the broader question of how strictly to police congressional delegations unsettled, and the dissent's call to revisit that approach could resurface in a future case decided by a full Court.
What this does not decide
The decision does not adopt any new test for judging delegations of power, since only four Justices joined the plurality's reasoning. Justice Alito declined to reconsider the Court's lenient approach only because a majority was unwilling to do so, leaving open whether a future case could tighten the limits on delegating power to agencies.
Concurrences and dissents
Concurrence — Justice Alito
Justice Alito agreed only with the outcome, not the plurality's reasoning. He said he would support tightening the Court's lenient approach to delegation questions if a majority of the Court were willing to do so, but since no majority existed, he would not single out this one statute for stricter treatment than every other delegation the Court has upheld for decades.
Dissent — Justice Gorsuch
“It purports to endow the nation’s chief prosecutor with the power to write his own criminal code governing the lives of a half-million citizens.”Gorsuch's central objection that the law lets the Attorney General write his own criminal rules for sex offenders.
Justice Gorsuch argued the law gives the Attorney General free rein to write his own registration rules for a half-million people, letting one prosecutor act as legislator for an unpopular group. He argued the statute fits no traditional category of permissible delegation, contains no real governing standard, and would have struck it down while urging the Court to revive a stricter separation-of-powers test in a future case with a full Court.
How the Court got there
The legal reasoning, step by step
- The plurality applied the intelligible-principle test, the longstanding rule that Congress may hand authority to an agency as long as it lays down a guiding standard for the agency to follow, rather than jumping straight to the constitutional question.
- Before reaching that constitutional question, the plurality first had to figure out what the statute actually required, since whether a delegation is too broad depends entirely on what task and instructions the law assigns.
- Relying on the Court's earlier decision in Reynolds, the plurality read the statute's text, stated purpose, and legislative history together and concluded Congress meant registration to eventually cover everyone convicted before the law passed, giving the Attorney General only the job of working out timing given practical registration problems.
- Because the Attorney General's discretion was thus limited to feasibility and transition issues rather than whether pre-Act offenders would ever have to register at all, the plurality treated the grant of authority as comparable to other broad delegations the Court has long upheld.
- Applying the deferential intelligible-principle standard to that narrow reading of the statute, the plurality concluded the delegation easily satisfied the Constitution's limits on transferring legislative power.
Doctrinal impact
Cases affected by this decision
Reaffirms Reynolds v. United States (565 U. S. 432)
The Court relied on and built out Reynolds' reading that the Attorney General's role is limited to timing, not whether to require registration.
Distinguishes A. L. A. Schechter Poultry Corp. v. United States (295 U. S. 495)
The Court treated SORNA's delegation as far narrower than the standardless delegation struck down in this 1935 case.
Distinguishes Panama Refining Co. v. Ryan (293 U. S. 388)
The Court said this remains one of only two cases finding an excessive delegation, unlike the limited authority here.