Gundy v. United States

Background

A man who pleaded guilty to a sex offense before Congress passed the Sex Offender Registration and Notification Act (SORNA) challenged the law’s treatment of people like him. Congress left the question of how SORNA would apply to more than 500,000 people convicted before the law to the Attorney General, giving that official authority in 34 U.S.C. § 20913(d). Different Attorneys General later issued different rules about who must register and when.

Reasoning

The Court considered whether Congress had improperly handed its lawmaking power to the Attorney General. The justices issued a fractured decision. A plurality accepted a broad reading of the statute, Justice Alito provided the decisive fifth vote to affirm the result (while not joining the plurality’s reasoning), and Justice Gorsuch dissented, arguing the statute unlawfully delegated legislative power. The practical result is that the Court left the Attorney General’s authority intact for now.

Real world impact

Because the ruling affirms that Congress left the matter to the Attorney General, who has in practice imposed varying requirements, pre-Act offenders may be subject to registration rules and criminal penalties depending on the Attorney General’s choices. The decision leaves unresolved broader constitutional questions about how much lawmaking Congress may assign to a single executive official and could be revisited in a future case.

Dissents or concurrances

Justice Gorsuch warned that the statute hands a prosecutor power to write a criminal code for hundreds of thousands of people and would have struck it down; Justice Alito concurred in the judgment but did not join the plurality’s analysis and signaled openness to revisit the issue later.