Document ID: s3://data.kl3m.ai/documents/govinfo/USCOURTS/USCOURTS-ca5-08-51185/USCOURTS-ca5-08-51185-1/pdf.json

Parties Involved:
Anthony James Kebodeaux
Appellant
United States of America
Appellee

Document Text:

IN THE UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS

FOR THE FIFTH CIRCUIT

No. 08-51185

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA,

Plaintiff-Appellee,

versus

ANTHONY JAMES KEBODEAUX, Also Known as Anthony Kebodeaux,

Defendant-Appellant.

Appeal from the United States District Court

for the Western District of Texas

Before JONES, Chief Judge, KING, JOLLY, DAVIS, SMITH, GARZA,

BENAVIDES, STEWART, DENNIS, CLEMENT, PRADO, OWEN, ELROD,

SOUTHWICK, HAYNES, and GRAVES, Circuit Judges.*

JERRY E. SMITH, Circuit Judge:

Anthony Kebodeaux, a federal sex offender, was convicted, under the Sex

Offender Registration and Notification Act (“SORNA”), of failing to update his

United States Court of Appeals

Fifth Circuit

F I L E D

July 6, 2012

Lyle W. Cayce

Clerk

Judge Higginson was not a member of the court when this case was submitted to the *

court en banc and did not participate in this decision.

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No. 08-51185

change of address when he moved intrastate. A panel of this court affirmed.

United States v. Kebodeaux, 647 F.3d 137 (5th Cir. 2011). The panel majority

rejected Kebodeaux’s argument that Congress does not have the power to criminalize his failure to register because it cannot constitutionally reassert jurisdiction over his intrastate activities after his unconditional release from federal

custody. Judge Dennis concurred in the judgment and assigned lengthy reasons,

urging that SORNA is authorized by the Commerce Clause. The panel opinion

was vacated by our decision to rehear the case en banc. United States v. Kebodeaux, 647 F. 3d 605 (5th Cir. 2011). Because we agree with Kebodeaux that,

under the specific and limited facts of this case, his commission of a federal

crime is an insufficient basis for Congress to assert unending criminal authority

over him, we reverse and render a judgment of dismissal. 

I.

While in the military, Kebodeaux had consensual sex with a fifteen-yearold when he was twenty-one and was sentenced in 1999 to three months in

prison. He fully served that sentence, and the federal government severed all

ties with him. He was no longer in federal custody, in the military, under any

sort of supervised release or parole, or in any other special relationship with the

federal government when Congress enacted a statute that, as interpreted by the

Attorney General, required Kebodeaux to register as a sex offender. When he 1

See 42 U.S.C. § 16913 (2006) (requiring a sex offender to register in each jurisdiction

1

in which he resides and to update that registration); 28 C.F.R. § 72.3 (2007) (specifying that

§ 16913’s requirements apply to all sex offenders, “including sex offenders convicted of the

offense for which registration is required prior to the enactment of [§ 16913]”). Because Kebodeaux committed his offense before SORNA’s passage, his duty to register comes from the

Attorney General’s regulation rather than the statute itself. Reynolds v. United States,

132 S. Ct. 975, 984 (2012). Despite the fact that the Attorney General did not follow the procedures laid out in the Administrative Procedure Act when issuing the regulation, we found that

to be harmless error as applied to a defendant who had moved interstate but was otherwise

(continued...)

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failed to update his state registration within three days of moving from San

Antonio to El Paso, he was convicted under 18 U.S.C. § 2250(a) (also enacted in

2006) and sentenced to a year and a day in prison.

Kebodeaux argues that § 2250(a)(2)(A) and the registration requirements

that it enforces are unconstitutional as applied to him, because they exceed the

constitutional powers of the United States. He is correct: Absent some jurisdictional hook not present here, Congress has no Article I power to require a former

federal sex offender to register an intrastate change of address after he has

served his sentence and has already been unconditionally released from prison

and the military.2

The federal requirement that sex offenders register their address is unconstitutional on narrow grounds. We do not call into question Congress’s ability

to impose conditions on a prisoner’s release from custody, including requirements that sex offenders register intrastate changes of address after release.

After the federal government has unconditionally let a person free, however, the

fact that he once committed a crime is not a jurisdictional basis for subsequent

regulation and possible criminal prosecution. Some other jurisdictional ground,

such as interstate travel, is required.3

 (...continued)

1

in substantially the same situation as is Kebodeaux. United States v. Johnson, 632 F.3d 912,

931-32 (5th Cir.), cert. denied, 132 S. Ct. 135 (2011). Although the rule may be valid as applied

to a sex offender who moves interstate, the portion of the statute that gives the Attorney Generalthe authority to apply SORNA to pre-act offenders who move intrastate would not be valid

if Congress does not have the power under Article I to apply the statute to pre-act sex offenders. Therefore, our analysis focuses on whether Congress had that authority that it attempted

to grant to the Attorney General.

Cf. 18 U.S.C. § 2250(a)(2)(B) (criminalizing state sex offenders’ failure to register or 2

update registration if they travel in interstate commerce).

Thus, even with respect to past federal sex offenders such as Kebodeaux, Congress

3

presumably could remedy the constitutional problem merely by adding an element of interstate travel to the crime of failing to register. Because it is not before us, however, we make

(continued...)

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This finding of unconstitutionality therefore does not affect the registration requirements for (1) any federal sex offender who was in prison or on supervised release when the statute was enacted in 2006 or (2) any federal sex

offender convicted since then. Instead, it applies only to those federal sex

offenders whom the government deemed capable of being unconditionally

released from its jurisdiction before SORNA’s passage in 2006. Moreover, even 4

as to those sex offenders, it means only that Congress could treat them exactly

as all state sex offenders already are treated under federal law. It also has no

impact on state regulation of sex offenders.

 (...continued)

3

no ruling on that speculative issue.

In her well-written dissent, Judge Haynes disputes that the federal government 4

unconditionally released Kebodeaux from its jurisdiction upon his release from custody. Citing

the Wetterling Act of 1994, as amended by the Lychner Act of 1996, 42 U.S.C. §§ 14071-14073,

repealed by SORNA Pub. L. No. 109-248, § 129, 120 Stat. 587, 600 (2006), the dissent argues

that Kebodeaux has been subject to federal registration ever since his 1999 conviction. But

that notion overlooks a fundamental difference between SORNA and its predecessors. 

Although SORNA directly imposes a registration requirement on covered sex offenders,

see § 16913(a), pre-SORNA federal law merely conditioned federal funding on states’

maintaining their own sex-offender registries that were compliant with federal guidelines, see

§ 14071(g) (2000) (repealed by SORNA). Only sex offenders residing in non-compliant states

were subject to federal registration for intrastate changes in residence. See § 14072-

(g)(1)-(3), (i) (2000) (repealed by SORNA). 

Because his state of residence, Texas, was compliant with federal guidelines at the time

of his offense, Kebodeaux was not subject to federal registration requirements. See Creekmore

v. Attorney Gen. of Tex., 341 F. Supp. 2d 648, 654 (E.D. Tex. 2004) (observing that Texas

enacted its registry in 1991 and amended it “four times: in 1993, 1995, 1997, and 1999 to

ensure that the program met minimum federal requirements” (citations omitted)); Creekmore

v. Attorney Gen. of Tex., 116 F. Supp. 2d 767, 773 (E.D. Tex. 2000) (noting that Texas’s registration program was “federally-approved”); Wayne A. Logan, Sex Offender Registration and

Community Notification: Past, Present, and Future, 34 NEW ENG. J. ON CRIM. & CIV. CONFINEMENT3, 6 (2008) (observing that all fifty states and the District of Columbia had complied with

the Wetterling Act by the end of 1996). Thus, before the passage of SORNA, Kebodeaux was

subject only to state, not federal, registration obligations.

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II.

SORNA says, in relevant part, that “[a] sex offender shall register, and

keep the registration current, in each jurisdiction where the offender resides,

where the offender is an employee, and where the offender is a student.” Those 5

requirements are made applicable to former federal sex offenders via 42 U.S.C.

§ 16913(d) and 28 C.F.R. § 72.3. SORNA then includes the following criminal 6

provision:

WhoeverSS

(1) is required to register under [SORNA];

(2) (A) is a sex offender as defined for the purposes of

[SORNA] by reason of a conviction under Federal law

. . .; or

(B) travels in interstate or foreign commerce . . . ; and

(3) knowingly fails to register or update a registration as

required by [SORNA];

shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than 10 years,

or both.

18 U.S.C. § 2250(a). Kebodeaux argues that Congress has no authority under

Article I to subject him to conviction pursuant to § 2250(a)(2)(A). The government, on the other hand, maintains that its power to criminalize the conduct for

which Kebodeaux was originally convicted includes the authority to regulate his

movement even after his sentence has expired and he has been unconditionally

released.

42 U.S.C. § 16913(a). In addition, “[f]or initial registration purposes only, a sex

5

offender shall also register in the jurisdiction in which convicted if such jurisdiction is different

from the jurisdiction of residence.” Id. A registration must be updated within three days of

any change. § 16913(c).

See § 16913(d) (“The Attorney General shall have the authority to specify the applica6

bility 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

. . . .”); 28 C.F.R. § 72.3 (specifying that § 16913’s requirements apply to all sex offenders,

“including sex offenders convicted of the offense for which registration is required prior to the

enactment of that Act”).

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The most analogous Supreme Court decision is United States v. Comstock,

130 S. Ct. 1949, 1954 (2010), in which the Court examined whether Congress has

the Article I power to enact a civil-commitment statute that authorizes the

Department of Justice to detain mentally ill, sexually dangerous federal prisoners beyond when they would otherwise be released. The Court upheld that statute on narrow grounds because of “five considerations, taken together.” Id.

at 1956, 1965.

Kebodeaux’s facts go beyond those in Comstock, however, because this case

is not merely about whether Congress can regulate the activity of someone still

in federal custody past the expiry of his sentence. Importantly, it raises the further question whether Congress can regulate his activity solely because he was

once convicted of a federal crime. The “considerations” that the Court found

important in Comstock are not expansive enough to subject Kebodeaux to federal

criminal sanctions under the unusual circumstances that he presents.

A.

First, the Comstock Court explained, and the panel majority here stressed,

that Congress has broad authority to enact legislation under the Necessary and

Proper Clause. Id. at 1956. Thus, to be constitutional under that clause, a statute must constitute a means that is “rationally related” or “reasonably 7

adapted” to an enumerated power. Congress has “a large discretion” as to the 8

choice of means, id. at 1957 (quoting Lottery Case, 188 U.S. 321, 355 (1903)), and

we apply a “presumption of constitutionality” to its enactments, id. (quoting

Comstock, 130 S. Ct. at 1956-57 (citing Gonzales v. Raich, 545 U.S. 1, 22 (2005); Sabri

7

v. United States, 541 U.S. 600, 605 (2004); United States v. Lopez, 514 U.S. 549, 557 (1995);

Hodel v. Va. Surface Mining & Reclamation Ass’n, Inc., 452 U.S. 264, 276 (1981)).

Comstock, 130 S. Ct. at 1957 (quoting Raich, 545 U.S. at 37) (Scalia, J., concurring in 8

the judgment); United States v. Darby, 312 U.S. 100, 121 (1941).

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United States v. Morrison, 529 U.S. 598, 607 (2000)). This first factor is not factspecific; it suggests that the analysis always starts with a heavy thumb on the

scale in favor of upholding government action.9

We must take care not to misunderstand the use of the words “rationally

related” as implying that the Necessary and Proper Clause test is akin to rational-basis scrutiny under the Due Process and Equal Protection Clauses. That 10

would mean that federal action would be upheld so long as there is merely a

conceivable rational relationship between an enumerated power and the action

in question. But that would be inconsistent with both the Court’s Commerce 11

Clause jurisprudence and Comstock, which held that 18 U.S.C. § 4248 is 12

Although the panel majority was correct that there is a presumption of constitutional- 9

ity, it is troubling that it engaged in an extended discussion of all the different constitutional

challenges against which SORNA has been upheld, as though those instances somehow make

it more likely that Kebodeaux’s constitutional challenge fails. That courts have upheld the

five-year-old statute against an ex post facto challenge, a due process challenge, a nondelegation challenge, and a Commerce Clause challenge to a clause that explicitly is limited

to persons traveling in interstate commerce does not suggest that we must uphold this SORNA

provision against this challenge.

See Comstock, 130 S. Ct. at 1966 (Kennedy, J., concurring in the judgment) (“This 10

Court has not held that the [Williamson v. Lee Optical of Okla., Inc., 348 U.S. 483, 487-88

(1955),] test, asking if ‘it might be thought that the particular legislative measure was a

rational way to correct’ an evil, is the proper test in this context. . . . Indeed, the cases the

Court cites in the portion of its opinion referring to ‘rational basis’ are predominantly Commerce Clause cases, and none are due process cases.”).

See id. (Kennedy, J., concurring in the judgment)(explaining that rational-basis scru- 11

tiny under the Due Process Clause requires asking whether “‘it might be thought that the particular legislative measure was a rational way to correct’ an evil” (quoting Lee Optical, 348

U.S. at 487-88)).

See id. at 1967 (Kennedy, J., concurring in the judgment) (“[The Court’s Commerce

12

Clause] precedents require a tangible link to commerce, not a mere conceivable rational relation, as in Lee Optical.”). For example, in Morrison the Court struck down a civil remedy for

violence against women under the Commerce Clause despite copious evidence that such violence had a substantial effect on (and thus was conceivably rationally related to) interstate

commerce. See Morrison, 529 U.S. at 615 (finding statute unconstitutional because, “[i]f

accepted, petitioners’ reasoning would allow Congress to regulate any crime as long as the

nationwide, aggregated impact of that crime has substantial effects on employment, produc-

(continued...)

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constitutional because of “five considerations, taken together,” only one of which

involves “the sound reasons for the statute’s enactment in light of the Government’s [legitimate interest].” Thus, unless this court were to hold that the 13

other “considerations” in Comstock were entirely superfluous, it follows that,

although our analysis begins with great deference to constitutionality, we should

not confuse it with Due Process Clause rational-basis scrutiny.

B.

The second factor in Comstock, 130 S. Ct. at 1958, is that the civilcommitment statute at issue was but “a modest addition to a set of federal

prison-related mental-health statutes that have existed for many decades.” Although “even a longstanding history of related federal action does not demonstrate a statute’s constitutionality,” id. (citing Walz v. Tax Comm’n of N.Y., 397

U.S. 664, 678 (1970)), it expands the deference afforded to a statute. Con- 14

versely, the absence of an historical analog reduces that deference.15

 (...continued)

12

tion, transit, or consumption”); id. at 628-29 (Souter, J., dissenting) (discussing the “mountain

of data assembled by Congress . . . showing the effects of violence against women on interstate

commerce”). So, plainly, more is required.

Comstock, 130 S. Ct. at 1965. For example, the Comstock Court also relied on the fact

13

that the statute was “narrowly tailored” or “narrow [in] scope,” id., an analysis that is not

necessary to uphold a law under rational-basis scrutiny under the Due Process or Equal Protection Clause, see, e.g., Lee Optical, 348 U.S. at 487-88.

Cf. Walz, 397 U.S. at 678 (“‘If a thing has been practised for two hundred years by 14

common consent, it will need a strong case for the Fourteenth Amendment to affect it. . . .’”

(quoting Jackman v. Rosenbaum Co., 260 U.S. 22, 31 (1922))).

Va. Office for Prot. & Advocacy v. Stewart, 131 S. Ct. 1632, 1641 (2011) (“Respondents 15

rightly observe that federal courts have not often encountered lawsuits brought by state

agencies against other state officials. That does give us pause. Lack of historical precedent

can indicate a constitutional infirmity . . .” (citing Free Enter. Fund v. Pub. Co. Accounting

Oversight Bd., 130 S. Ct. 3138, 3159 (2010))); Free Enter. Fund, 130 S. Ct. at 3159 (“Perhaps

the most telling indication of the severe constitutional problem with the PCAOB is the lack

(continued...)

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SORNA’s sex-offender-registration requirements have a short history:

They have existed only since 2006, and federal law relating to sex-offender registration only since 1994. The government admits that federal sex-offender reg- 16

istration laws are of “relatively recent vintage” but urges that they should be

analogized to probation or supervised-release laws, which have a longer

pedigree. 

There is, however, a big difference between SORNA’s sex-offender-registration requirements and probation or supervised releaseSSa distinction that

goes to the heart of this case. Unlike the situation involving probation or supervised release, SORNA’s sex-offender-registration requirements (and § 2250(a)-

(2)(A)’s penalties) were not a condition of Kebodeaux’s release from prison, let

alone a punishment for his crime.17

The Department of Justice cannot find a single authority, from more than

two hundred years of precedent, for the proposition that it can reassert jurisdiction over someone it had long ago unconditionally released from custody just

because he once committed a federal crime. Thus,SORNA’s registration requirements for federal sex offenders are constitutionally novel, as the panel majority

conceded. This factor weighs against the government.

 (...continued)

15

of historical precedent for this entity” (quoting Free Enter. Fund v. Pub. Co. Accounting Oversight Bd., 537 F.3d 667, 699 (D.C. Cir. 2008) (Kavanaugh, J., dissenting))).

See Carr v. United States, 130 S. Ct. 2229, 2232 (2010); Richard G. Wright, Sex 16

Offender Post-Incarceration Sanctions: Are There Any Limits?, 34 NEW ENG.J. ON CRIM. &CIV.

CONFINEMENT 17, 29-36 (2008) (discussing history of federal sex-offender-registration laws).

Every circuit, including ours, has held that, unlike probation or supervised release,

17

SORNA’s registration requirements are civil regulations whose purpose is not to punish for

crimes. See United States v. Young, 585 F.3d 199, 204 (5th Cir. 2009) (per curiam); cf. Smith

v. Doe, 538 U.S. 84, 101-02 (2003) (upholding Alaska’s sex-offender-registrationstatute against

ex post facto challenge and distinguishing it from probation and supervised release because

it is not a punishment).

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C.

This brings us to the third factor. That inquiry is whether Congress reasonably extended its well-established laws by applying sex-offender-registration

requirements to someone long free from federal custody or supervision.18

1.

The government argues, and the panel majority held, that the statute is

reasonably adapted to Congress’s military powers. For that proposition, they 

again rely on the analogy between sex-offender-registration requirements, on the

one hand, and supervised release and probation, on the other: Because the latter are constitutional, the former must be too, or so the argument goes.

But that theory obscures two crucial distinctions: First, as we have mentioned, SORNA’s registration requirements, unlike probation and supervised

release, are not a means to punish a sex offender for committing his crime but 19

instead are merely civil regulations. Indeed, they cannot serve any punitive 20

purpose in the case of Kebodeaux, because SORNA was enacted long after he

committed his crime. If SORNA’s registration requirements wereSSlike probation and supervised releaseSScriminal punishments, they would violate the

See Comstock, 130 S. Ct. at 1961 (explaining that the third factor is that “Congress

18

reasonably extended its longstanding civil-commitment system to cover mentally ill and sexually dangerous persons who are already in federal custody, even if doing so detains them

beyond the termination of their criminal sentence”).

See id. at 1979 n.12 (Thomas, J., dissenting) (referring to supervised release as a

19

“form of punishment”); United States v. Knights, 534 U.S. 112, 119 (2001) (“Probation, like

incarceration, is a ‘form of criminal sanction . . . .’” (quoting Griffin v. Wisconsin, 483 U.S. 868,

874 (1987))).

See Young, 585 F.3d at 204; see also Smith, 538 U.S. at 101 (explaining why Alaska’s 20

sex-offender-registration requirements are not, like probation and supervised release, forms

of punishment).

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Ex Post Facto Clause. But because SORNA’s registration requirements are 21

civil and were enacted after Kebodeaux committed his crime, the government

cannot justify their constitutionality on the ground that they merely punish

Kebodeaux for the crime he committed while in the military.22

Secondly,unlikeSORNA’s registration requirements, probation and supervised release are conditions of release from (or instead of) custody. Like the 23

civil confinement statute at issue in Comstock, they are thus “reasonably

adapted . . . to Congress’ power to act as a responsible federal custodian” of its

prisoners, because they “avert the public danger likely to ensue from the release

of . . . detainees.” Comstock, 130 S. Ct. at 1961 (internal quotation marks and

citations omitted). By contrast, although § 2250(a) is surely meant to “avert . . .

public danger,” it is not, at least in cases such as Kebodeaux’s, from “the release

Young, 585 F.3d at 204; see also United States v. Caulfield, 634 F.3d 281, 283 (5th

21

Cir. 2011) (“The heart of the Ex Post Facto Clause bars application of a law that changes the

punishment, and inflicts a greater punishment, than the law annexed to the crime, when committed.” (quoting Johnson v. United States, 529 U.S. 694, 699 (2000))).

The panel majority inaccurately asserted that Kebodeaux conflates his Article I argu- 22

ment with an Ex-Post-Facto-Clause argument. In fact, his Article I contention works only

because § 2250(a)(2)(A) is not an ex post facto criminal punishment. Because SORNA’s registration requirements are not criminal punishments, but a civil regulatory scheme, they do not

pose an ex post facto problem. But for that very reasonSSthat SORNA registration is a civil

regulatory scheme and not a punishment imposed on Kebodeaux for his federal crimeSSCongress needs some other jurisdictional hook to apply the requirement to persons such as him.

Compare 18 U.S.C. § 2250(a)(2)(A) (criminalizing the failure to register or update reg- 23

istration as a sex offender regardless of the date of the crime) and 28 C.F.R. § 72.3 (specifying

that “[t]he requirements of [SORNA] apply to all sex offenders, including sex offenders convicted of the offense for which registration is required prior to the enactment of that Act”) with

18 U.S.C. § 3603(1) (tying the duties of the probation officer to “the conditions specified by the

sentencing court”), § 3601 (same), § 3563(a) (explaining the “condition[s] of a sentence of probation”), § 3583(d) (same for supervised release), and United States v. Johnson, 529 U.S. 53,

56 (2000) (“A prisoner whose sentence includes a term of supervised release after imprisonment shall be released by the Bureau of Prisons to the supervision of a probation officer who

shall, during the term imposed, supervise the person released to the degree warranted by the

conditions specified by the sentencing court.” (quoting 18 U.S.C. § 3624(e)).

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of . . . detainees,” because it applies even to those who have long severed all ties 24

with the criminal justice system. It therefore makes no sense to say that

SORNA’s registration requirements areSSlike probation, supervised release, or

the civil commitment of mentally ill prisonersSS“reasonably adapted” to the government’s role as “custodian . . . of its prison system.”25

The tenuousness of the government’s position can be shown just by listing

the chain of causation from Congress’s military power to its criminalization of

Kebodeaux’s failure to register a change of address: Congress can supervise

military personnel, so it can establish crimes for them, so it can prosecute and

convict them, so it can supervise them for the duration of their sentence and

while they are in federal custody, so it can pass a law to protect society from

someone who was once in prison but seven years ago had fully served his sentence

and has not since been in contact with the federal government. That last power

is not reasonably adapted to Congress’s ability to regulate the military.

2.

The government, like the panel majority, responds by seizing on language

in Comstock that says that the power to imprison violators of federal law includes “the additional power to regulate the prisoners’ behavior even after their

release.” Id. at 1964 (emphasis added). But the government and the majority

quote the Court too selectively by omitting the beginning of the sentence. What

Comstock actually says is, “Indeed even the dissent acknowledges that Congress

has . . . the additional power to regulate the prisoners’ behavior even after their

release.” Id. The Court was merely enumerating those government actions that

Comstock, 130 S. Ct at 1961 (citation omitted) (emphasis added).

24

Id. at 1965 (emphasis added) (holding that “§ 4248 is a reasonably adapted and nar- 25

rowly tailored means of pursuing the Government’s legitimate interest as a federal custodian

in the responsible administration of its prison system”).

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even the Comstock dissent conceded were constitutional. And the portions of 26

the dissent cited by the majority assert only that Congress has the power to

regulate a prisoner’s behavior post-release as part of his sentence; the dissent

specifically rejects the notion that the government has open-ended authority to

regulate him after his punishment has ended merely by virtue of some sort of

vague “special relationship” between the federal government and one who once

committed a federal crime.27

The Comstock majority distanced itself from the notion that the panel

majority endorsed here. The Court cabined its holding by noting that the Solicitor General had conceded that the government could not commit a person who

had already been released from federal custody or sent to state custody; only 28

See id. at 1964 (“Indeed even the dissent acknowledges that Congress has the implied 26

power to criminalize any conduct that might interfere with the exercise of an enumerated

power, and also the additional power to imprison people who violate those (inferentially

authorized) laws, and the additional power to provide for the safe and reasonable management

of those prisons, and the additional power to regulate the prisoners’ behavior even after their

release” (citing id. at 1976-77, 1978 n.11 (Thomas, J., dissenting)). The majority opinion cites

slip op. p. 17, n.11 of the dissent, but it must have meant note 12, because note 11 does not

appear on page 17 (although note 12 does), and note 11 has nothing to do with regulation after

release (e.g. in the form of supervised release), whereas that is precisely what is discussed in

note 12.

See id. at 1979 n.12 (Thomas, J., dissenting) (“Contrary to the Government’s sugges27

tion, federal authority to exercise control over individuals serving terms of ‘supervised release’

does not derive from the Government’s ‘relationship’ with the prisoner, . . . but from the original

criminal sentence itself.”(citations omitted) (emphasis added)); id. at 1976-77 (Thomas, J., dissenting) (concluding that“[f]ederal laws that criminalize conductthatinterferes with enumerated powers, establish prisons for those who engage in that conduct, and set rules for the care

and treatment of prisoners awaiting trial or serving a criminal sentence” are constitutional

(emphasis added)); id. at 1979 (Thomas, J., dissenting) (“Once the Federal Government’s criminal jurisdiction over a prisoner ends, so does any ‘special relationship’ between the government and the former prisoner.” (alteration omitted)).

See id. at 1963 (“[T]he Solicitor General acknowledges that ‘the Federal Government 28

would have no appropriate role’ with respect to an individual covered by the statute once ‘the

transfer to State responsibility and State control has occurred.’” (citation omitted)); id. at 1965

(noting that the Solicitor General conceded that “the Federal Government would not have . . .

the power to commit a person who . . . has been released from prison and whose period of

(continued...)

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if he was still in federal custody could the government commit him. But if the 29

power to regulate a person stems merely from the fact that he was once convicted of a federal crime, then whether he is presently in federal prison or subject to federal supervision would make no difference: Once he has been convicted

of a federal crime, the government’s authority over him to protect society would

continue as long as he lives.

Thus, in the instant case the government is reneging on precisely those

concessions that caused the Court to reason that the civil commitment statute

at issue in Comstock was “narrowly tailored . . . [to] pursuing the Government’s

legitimate interest as a federal custodian in the responsible administration of its

prison system.” Id. at 1965. And the panel majority endorsed the government’s

about-face.

3.

The other case on which the panel majority relied is Carr, which it cited

for the startling proposition that § 2250(a)(2)(A) is constitutional because the

federal government has a “direct supervisory interest” over anyone who once

committed a federal sex offense. It is true that Carr stated, 130 S. Ct. at 2239,

that “the Federal Government has a direct supervisory interest” over federal sex

offenders. But, as the panel majority acknowledged, Carr did not address the

extent of Congress’s Article I power at allSSit involved a statutory-interpretation

issue and an Ex-Post-Facto-Clause question that the Court avoided. Moreover, 30

 (...continued)

28

supervised release is also completed”).

See id. at 1964-65 (quoting the Solicitor General for the proposition that “[federal 29

authority for § 4248] has always depended on the fact of Federal custody, on the fact that this

person has entered the criminal justice system . . .”).

See Carr, 130 S. Ct. at 2232-33 (“At issue in this case is whether § 2250 applies to sex

30

(continued...)

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the briefs in that case show that no oneSSneither parties nor amici curiaeSS

raised the argument that Kebodeaux brings here. Thus, the panel took an iso- 31

lated statement from Carr out of context to make it a constitutional principle

with far-reaching implications about the scope of federal power.

The panel majority was correct that § 2250(a)(2)(A) applies to individuals

over whom the federal government has a “direct supervisory interest” because

they are in custody or have been released from custody on the condition that

they comply with SORNA. But that section also applies, as relevant here, to 32

those who have long been free of federal custody and supervision after fully serving their sentences. To say that Congress continues to have a “direct supervisory interest” over such personsSSlike KebodeauxSSis to announce that it has an

eternal supervisory interest over anyone who ever committed a federal sex

crime. And that is no different from saying that Congress has such an interest

over anyone who ever committed any federal crime, because there is nothing

that is constitutionally special about sex crimes.33

 (...continued)

30

offenders whose interstate travel occurred prior to SORNA’s effective date and, if so, whether

the statute runs afoul of the Constitution’s prohibition on ex post facto laws.”).

A Commerce Clause argument related to applying the statute to pre-SORNA travel 31

(i.e., not the issue Kebodeaux raises) was made by amicus but not addressed by the Court in

light of its holding. See id. at 2248 (Alito, J., joined by Thomas, J., and Ginsburg, J., dissenting) (noting that “[i]t can also be argued that a broader construction would mean that Congress exceeded its authority under the Commerce Clause,” but not addressing that argument

(citing Brief for the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers as Amicus Curiae

16-17)).

See 18 U.S.C. § 3583(d) (making compliance with SORNA “an explicit condition” of 32

a sex offender’s supervised release).

Similarly, the law concerning Congress’s military powers suggests that Congress does

33

not have continuing military jurisdiction over Kebodeaux after he was discharged from the

military. Except in very limited situations, a discharged person is no longer subject to the

Uniform Code of Military Justice. See 10 U.S.C. § 803. In United States ex rel. Toth v. Quarles, 350 U.S. 11, 13, 22-23 (1955), the Court held that the Necessary and Proper Clause does

(continued...)

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4.

In sum, as applied to Kebodeaux, SORNA’s registration requirements are

not, and cannot be, an attempt to punish the initial crime or to act as a responsible custodian of prisoners; they are merely an effort to protect the public from

those who may be dangerous because they once were convicted of a sex offense.

By that logic, Congress would have never-ending jurisdiction to regulate anyone

who was ever convicted of a federal crime of any sort, no matter how long ago he

served his sentence, because he may pose a risk of re-offending.

Indeed, thatlogic could easily be extended beyond federal crimes: Congress

could regulate a person who once engaged in interstate commerce (and was

thereby subject to federal jurisdiction) on the ground that he now poses a risk of

engaging in interstate commerce again. In short, the only “rational relation” between § 2250(a)(2)(A)’s application to Kebodeaux and an enumerated federal

power is that Kebodeaux was once subject to federal jurisdictionSSreasoning that

is so expansive that it would put an end to meaningful limits on federal power. 

The third Comstock “consideration” thus favors Kebodeaux.

D.

The fourth “consideration” is whether “the statute properly accounts for

 (...continued)

33

not give the federal government power to try an ex-military serviceman by court-martial five

months after he left the military for a crime committed while in the military. Because he had

left the military, he had the same Article III protections as did any ordinary civilian. 

If anything, the link between the military power and the federal government’s action

is even more attenuated in this case than in Toth, because the court-martial in Toth served

the purpose of punishing someone for his illegal conduct while in the military, see id. at 13,

whereas here the sex-offender-registration requirements serve no such purpose. As discussed,

SORNA’s purpose is merely to reduce the risk to society posed by one who has committed certain crimes. See 42 U.S.C. § 16901 (stating that SORNA’s purpose is to “protect the public

from sex offenders and offenders against children”). Indeed, the government does not argue

that it still has military jurisdiction over Kebodeaux, but only that its power to criminalize his

predicate crime includes the power to regulate his present-day conduct.

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state interests.” Comstock, 130 S. Ct. at 1962. “[T]he ‘States possess primary

authority for defining and enforcing the criminal law.’” Lopez, 514 U.S. at 561

n.3 (quoting Brecht v. Abrahamson, 507 U.S. 619, 635 (1993)). Thus, “[w]hen

Congress criminalizes conduct already denounced as criminal by the States, it

effects a ‘change in the sensitive relation between federal and state criminal jurisdiction.’” Id. (quoting United States v. Enmons, 410 U.S. 396, 411-12 (1973)).

Alternatively, it “displace[s] state policy choices . . . [when] its prohibitions apply

even in States that have chosen not to outlaw the conduct in question.” Id.

(citation omitted).

As the government points out, some aspects of SORNA do accommodate

state interests. A state forgoes only ten percent of its federal funding by failing

substantially to comply with SORNA (for example, by failing to maintain a registry). See 42 U.S.C. § 16925(a). And § 2250 itself allows an affirmative defense

if “uncontrollable circumstances”SSwhich, according to the government, would

include a state’s failure to collect registration dataSSprevent an individual from

complying with its registration requirements. 18 U.S.C. § 2250(b). Indeed, as

the panel pointed out, this court recently upheld SORNA against a TenthAmendment challenge on the ground that the statute does not require the states

to comply with it. United States v. Johnson, 632 F.3d 912, 920 (5th Cir.), cert.

denied, 132 S. Ct. 135 (2011).

Nevertheless, the degree of state accommodation with respect to § 2250-

(a)(2)(A) is substantially less than that present in Comstock, 130 S. Ct. at

1962-63, in which the Court found that Congress’s statutory scheme for civilly

confining mentally ill and sexually dangerous prisoners accommodated state

interests because the Attorney General was required to notify interested states

about the confinement and to release prisoners if a state wished to assert authority over them. Thus, continued federal confinement was, in essence, continually

subject to the states’ veto.

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Here, by contrast, there is no provision by which someone federally prosecuted under SORNA can be subjected to state penalties or transferred to state

custody instead. Unless a former federal sex offender proves that a state has

made it impossible for him to register, he is subject to federal prosecution and 34

up to ten years of imprisonment for failing to update his state registration within three days of a change of address, employment, name, or student status, even

if the state believes a more moderate response would be appropriate (which 35

Texas and many other states apparently do ). The state is thus forced into the 36

binary choice of keeping a former federal sex offender off its own registry entirely or subjecting him to § 2250(a)(2)(A)’s harsh penalties; it cannot control the

punishment given to those who fail to update their registration.

Thus, because SORNA mandates federal penalties for the failure of a state

resident to update his state sex offender registration solely because of an intrastate change of address without giving states a veto of the sort present in Comstock, it is a much more substantial imposition on the states’ traditional policepower authority over the criminal law within their own borders than what was

See 18 U.S.C. § 2250(b); Resp. to Pet. for Reh’g En Banc at 12. 34

See 42 U.S.C. § 16913(a)-(c) (requiring a sex offender to register in each jurisdiction

35

in which he resides and to update that registration); 18 U.S.C. § 2250(a) (criminalizing the

failure to update registration upon any change of address if one has been convicted of a federal

sex offense); U.S. DEP’T OF JUSTICE, THE NATIONAL GUIDELINES FOR SEX OFFENDER REGISTRATION AND NOTIFICATION 6 (2008), available at http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/smart/pdfs/-

final_sornaguidelines.pdf (“[SORNA] generally constitutes a set of minimum national standards and sets a floor, not a ceiling, for jurisdictions’ programs.”).

Texas and forty-six other states do not substantially comply with SORNA. TEX.SEN36

ATE CRIMINALJUSTICE COMM., INTERIMREPORTTO THE82ND LEGISLATURE 14 (2011), available

at http://www.senate.state.tx.us/75r/senate/commit/c590/c590.InterimReport81.pdf. One of

the problems with SORNA is that it “relies solely on [the] offense” of conviction to determine

whether a former sex offender is a threat to public safety, not “risk assessments” of a sex

offender’s likelihood to reoffend. Id.; see also id. at 19 (recommending risk assessments). In

addition, it does so without any apparent increase in effectiveness, because “[t]he recidivism

rate of those on the registry is not lower than that of the individuals not on the registry.”

Id. at 16.

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at issue in Comstock. It is true that § 2250(a)(2)(A) applies only to federal sex

offenders; but, as we have discussed, in the case of persons such as Kebodeaux

those are individuals with whom the federal government had previously severed

all ties. Accordingly, the fourth Comstock “consideration” ultimately cuts in

Kebodeaux’s favor.

E.

The final factor is whether the “links between [the statute] and an enumerated Article I power are not too attenuated” and the “statutory provision [is

not] too sweeping in its scope.” Comstock, 130 S. Ct. at 1963. The panel majority’s position was that the statute is narrow because it applies only to sex offenders. But even assuming that a statute that applies to all sex offenders were considered narrow, its logic is expansive, because the only jurisdictional basis for

§ 2250(a)(2)(A) is the fact that a person once committed a federal sex crime. That

reasoning opens the door, as discussed in part II.C, to congressional power over

anyone who was ever convicted of a federal crime of any sort. That is anything

but narrow. Accordingly, the fifth Comstock factor also cuts in Kebodeaux’s

favor.

F.

In summary, even taking into account “the breadth of the Necessary and

Proper Clause,” Comstock, 130 S. Ct. at 1965, SORNA’s registration requirements and criminal penalty for failure to register as a sex offender, as applied

to those, like Kebodeaux, who had already been unconditionally released from

federal custody or supervision at the time Congress sought to regulate them, are

not “rationally related” or “reasonably adapted” to Congress’s power to criminalize federal sex offenses to begin with. The statute’s regulation of an individual,

after he has served his sentence and is no longer subject to federal custody or

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supervision, solely because he once committed a federal crime, (1) is novel and

unprecedented despite over 200 years of federal criminal law, (2) is not “reasonably adapted” to the government’s custodial interest in its prisoners or its interest

in punishing federal criminals, (3) is unprotective of states’ sovereign interest

over what intrastate conduct to criminalize within their own borders, and (4) is

sweeping in the scope of its reasoning. For those reasons, and with high respect

for its careful reasoning, the panel majority wrongly decided this case.37

III.

Finally, the government, like the panel concurrence, offers an alternative

argument for upholding the statute: that SORNA’s registration requirements for

federal sex offenders, and the criminal penalties for failing to comply, are necessary and proper to effect Congress’s Commerce Clause power. Under its

Commerce-Clause and Necessary-and-Proper-Clause authority, Congress may

(1) “regulate the use of the channels of interstate commerce,” (2) “regulate and

protect the instrumentalities of . . . or persons or things in interstate commerce,

even though the threat may come only from intrastate activities,” and (3) “regulate those activities having a substantial relation to interstate commerce, i.e.,

The panel majority also urged that it would be unwise to decide in favor of Kebodeaux 37

because that would require disagreeing with United States v. George, 625 F.3d 1124, 1130 (9th

Cir. 2010), vacated on other grounds, 672 F.3d 1126 (9th Cir. 2012). That case, however, is

easily distinguishable.

Because the defendant in George was convicted in 2008, compliance with SORNA was

an explicit condition of his sentence. 18 U.S.C. § 3583(d). He therefore fell into the category

of offenders to whom SORNA is perfectly constitutional. But because Kebodeaux was long free

from federal custody before SORNA even existed, he is in a different category that George had

no occasion to consider. To the extent George implies that the federal government has Article I

power to regulate anyone who ever committed a federal sex crimeSSand by implication anyone

who ever committed any federal crime, because it has a “direct supervisory interest” over them

SSits reasoning stretches far beyond the issue before that court and is unpersuasive.

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those activities that substantially affect interstate commerce.”38

The panel concurrence maintains that this case fits into the first two categories of Commerce Clause authority. According to that view, SORNA’s regulation of federal sex offenders can be seen as necessary and proper regulation of

“the channels of” or “persons . . . in interstate commerce” because it reduces the

risk of unmonitored interstate travel by sex offenders. The argument in the concurrence runs as follows: Because a federal sex offender would face no federal

sanction for failing to register until he travels interstate, he could hide from

authorities before he does so. Thus, to prevent the purported risk that he evades

detection before traveling interstate, no requirement of interstate travel ought

to be necessary; Congress should be able to criminalize the mere act of failing to

register, even if a sex offender never travels interstate, because it reduces the

risk that he will someday travel interstate undetected.

Thus, the concurring judge on the panel would subtly but significantly

expand Congress’s power under the first two categories of Commerce Clause

authority beyond the regulation of “the use of the channels of interstate commerce” or “persons or things in interstate commerce,” Lopez, 514 U.S. at 558

(emphasis added), to the regulation of the possible use of the channels of interstate commerce and persons or things because they will potentially be in interstate commerce. With due respect for the concurrence’s well-stated position, its

contention is both contrary to precedent and so expansive that it would confer

on the federal government plenary power to regulate all criminal activitySS

precisely what the Court sought to avoid in Lopez and Morrison.

See Lopez, 514 U.S. at 558-59, 567 (citation omitted) (holding that because the Gun- 38

Free School Zones Act does not fall within any of the three categories, it is an unconstitutional

exercise of federal power).

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A.

1.

Under the first category of its Commerce Clause authority, Congress may

regulate the use of the channels of interstate commerce: “the use of the interstate transportation routes through which persons and goods move.” Morrison,

529 U.S. at 613 n.5 (internal quotation marks omitted). “Congress may impose

relevant conditions and requirements on those who use the channels of interstate commerce in order that those channels will not become the means of promoting or spreading evil . . . .” Because the federal government “exercis[es] [a] 39

police power . . . within the field of interstate commerce,” Brooks, 267 U.S. at

436-37, i.e., with respect to the channels, instrumentalities, persons, and goods

involved in interstate commerce, Congress may regulate those who use the channels of interstate commerce even if their activity is non-economic in nature.

Thus, for example, Congress may prohibit “enticing a woman from one state to

another for immoral ends, whether for commercial purposes or otherwise,” id.

at 437, transporting kidnaped persons across state lines, United States v. Darby,

312 U.S. 100, 113 (1941), traveling across state lines to commit domestic violence, United States v. Lankford, 196 F.3d 563, 572 (5th Cir. 1999), or traveling

interstate as a state sex offender without having first registered as such.40

But just as this category of Commerce-Clause authority gives the federal

government a “police power” over those who use the channels of interstate commerce, even if their activity is non-commercial, Brooks, 267 U.S. at 437, the corN. Am. Co. v. SEC, 327 U.S. 686, 705 (1946) (citing Brooks v. United States, 267 U.S. 39

432, 436-37 (1925)); accord Lopez, 514 U.S. at 558 (“Congress may regulate the use of the

channels of interstate commerce.”).

See United States v. Whaley, 577 F.3d 254, 258 (5th Cir. 2009) (“Because § 2250[(a)-

40

(2)(B)] applies only to those failing to register or update a registration after traveling in interstate commerceSSin this case, Whaley traveled from Kansas to TexasSSit falls squarely under

the first Lopez prong.”).

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ollary is that that police power must also be limited to the “field of interstate

commerce,” see id. at 436. For example, although Congress may regulate those

who use the channels of interstate commerce for any reason, “[t]he regulation . . .

of intrastate violence that is not directed at the instrumentalities, channels, or

goods involved in interstate commerce has always been the province of the

States.” Morrison, 529 U.S. at 618 (emphasis added).

In Whaley, 577 F.3d at 259-60, in which this court upheld SORNA’s

requirement that state sex offenders register their addressSSas distinguished

from the federal sex-offender-registration requirement at issue hereSSwe were

careful to limit our holding by explaining that the statute at issue there neither

targets nor sanctions anyone who did not in fact use the channels of interstate

commerce. We explained that, with respect to state sex offenders, SORNA punishes a person only if he travels interstate without having first registered or

updated his registration. Id. at 261. Thus, the registration requirement’s

“focus” with regard to state offenders is solely on enforcing the criminal prohibition on traveling interstate without having registeredSS“rather than on requiring sex offender registration generally.” Id. at 259.41

2.

As the Court explained in Carr, 130 S. Ct. at 2238, however, Congress

“chose to handle federal and state sex offenders differently.” In contrast to 42

SORNA’s regulatory scheme with regard to state sex offenders, Congress, for

federal offenders, “requir[es] sex offender registration generally.” Whaley, 577

See also id. at 260 (“And perhaps most significantly . . . a [state] sex offender who

41

does not travel in interstate commerce may ignore SORNA’s registrationrequirementswithout

fear of federal criminal consequences.”).

Compare 18 U.S.C. § 2250(a)(2)(A) with § 2250(a)(2)(B). The structure of § 2250(a) 42

is such that all federal sex offenders are covered under § 2250(a)(2)(A), but all remaining sex

offenders, i.e., state sex offenders, are under § 2250(a)(2)(B).

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F.3d at 259. The statutes regulating the movement of all federal sex offenders,

42 U.S.C. § 16913 and 18 U.S.C. § 2250(a)(2)(A), apply to all intrastate as well

as interstate movement without regard to whether a sex offender ever uses the

channels of interstate commerce. Those statutes therefore do not regulate only

activity “directed” at the channels of interstate commerce. Morrison, 529 U.S.

at 617. Federal sex offenders are subject to criminal sanctions if they fail to

register or update their registration even if they never step foot outside their

state. In short, federal sex offenders are regulated merely by virtue of the fact

that they are federal sex offenders. The view expressed in the panel concurrence

would thus do away with precisely the limits we considered crucial to our holding in Whaley.

Indeed, notably, the Solicitor General has expressly denied that § 2250-

(a)(2)(A) is constitutional as a regulation of the channels of interstate commerce,

asserting instead that it applies because the federal government has a “direct

supervisory interest” over those who committed federal offenses, see Carr, 130

S. Ct. at 2238-39, irrespective of whether they have a connection to interstate

commerce. Here the government makes an about-face only now that its orig- 43

inal justification for the statute’s constitutionalitySSthat of the panel majority

SSis in question in light of the fact that the panel opinion has been vacated for

rehearing en banc.

In Carr, the Solicitor General expressly asserted that § 2250(a) “reaches two categor- 43

ies of sex offenders: those whose underlying sex offenses were criminalized by virtue of federal

or tribal authority . . ., and all other sex offenders whose actions directly implicated Congress’s

Commerce Clause authority as a result of ‘travel[ing] in interstate or foreign commerce . . . .’”

Brief for United States at 21-22, Carr, 130 S. Ct. 2229 (No. 08-1301), 2010 WL 181570,

at *21-22; see Carr, 130 S. Ct. at 2238 (“According to the Government, these categories correspond to two alternate sources of power to achieve Congress’s aim of broadly registering sex

offenders.” (internal quotation marks omitted)).

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3.

The panel concurrence nevertheless urges that SORNA’s registration

scheme for federal sex offenders is constitutional as well, because it allows the

federal government better to monitor sex offenders in case they someday travel

interstate. The concurrence therefore would expand the federal police power

over individuals who “use . . . the channels of interstate commerce,” see Lopez,

554 U.S. at 558; Brooks, 267 U.S. at 437, to those who might someday do so.

Neither this court nor the Supreme Court, however, has ever extended

Congress’s “police power” over those who use the channels of interstate commerce to punish those who are not presently using them but might do so. The

theory expressed in the panel concurrence is unprecedented, and for good rea- 44

son: Because every person is mobile, anyone might someday travel interstate.

Thus, by the reasoning of the concurrence,the federal government could regulate

anyone on that ground who might someday travel interstate. Myriad, longstanding federal statutes, both economic and non-economic, that have as a jurisdictional nexus the movement of a person across state lines would suddenly no

longer need that nexus.45

The recent Tenth Circuit case that the panel concurrence cited is inapposite; it 44

addresses only whether § 2250(a)(2)(A) is constitutional under the Commerce Clause on the

assumption that requiring intrastate sex offender registration is constitutional, an assumption

that trivializes the whole question. See United States v. Yelloweagle, 643 F.3d 1275, 1289

(10th Cir. 2011) (holding that Congress has the power to criminalize a federal sex offender’s

intrastate failure to register under § 2250(a)(2)(A) on the conceded assumption that it has the

power to require a federal sex offender to register purely intrastate activity), cert. denied,

132 S. Ct. 1969 (2012). If anything, that the panel majority made sure to consider the issue

only on those exceptionally narrow grounds suggests that it attempted to avoid precisely the

weightier question that we face here.

See, e.g., 18 U.S.C. § 228(a)(2) (criminalizing interstate travel to evade child support

45

obligations); § 1073 (interstate flight to avoid prosecution, giving testimony, service of process,

or contempt proceedings under state or federal law); § 1201(a)(1) (interstate transportation

of a kidnaped person); § 1231(interstate transportation of strikebreakers); § 1369 (interstate

travel with intent to injure or destroy a public monument); § 2101 (interstate travel with

intent to cause riots); § 2261(a)(1) (interstate travel with intent to commit domestic violence);

(continued...)

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For example, it is a federal crime to travel across state lines to evade childsupport obligations. 18 U.S.C. § 228(a)(2). As with former federal sex offenders,

deadbeat parents might move around within a state to evade state authorities,

and as with former federal sex offenders, that might increase the risk that they

go undetected before they travel across state lines. Therefore, by the logic of the

panel concurrence, the federal government should be able to regulate the intrastate movement of deadbeat parents as well. 

Thus, Congress could require anyone who owes child support obligations

under state law to report their changes of address to the federal government,

and if they do not, the Attorney General could criminally prosecute them; the

government would no longer need to wait until deadbeat parents cross state

lines: The crime would be complete when they move intrastate without notifying

federal authorities, because of the likelihood that they might otherwise someday

cross state lines undetected. The federal government could, as here, use the

mere risk of travel across state lines to justify far-reaching intrastate regulation

in an area of traditional and exclusive state concern.

Indeed, there is nothing about the panel concurrence’s reasoning that

limits its application to reporting requirements and criminal punishments for

failing to comply with them. For example, it is a federal crime to transport a

kidnaped person across state lines. 18 U.S.C. § 1201(a)(1). As with former federal sex offenders, someone who is transporting a kidnaped person is capable of

moving around and thereby potentially evading state authorities. And as with

former federal sex offenders, were the federal government to have no jurisdiction

 (...continued)

45

§ 2421 (interstate transportation of prostitutes); § 2423 (interstate transportation of minors

for illicit purposes); Morrison, 529 U.S. at 613 n.5 (noting 18 U.S.C. § 2261(a)(1), which criminalizes interstate spousal abuse). Most obviously, 18 U.S.C. § 2250(a)(2)(B), which criminalizes

a state sex offender’s travel across state lines without having registered, would no longer need

interstate travel as a jurisdictional hook; Congress could require registration of all sex offenders generally.

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over kidnapers until they cross state lines, the likelihood that they would evade

authorities before traveling interstate would be greater. Thus, according to the

concurrence, the federal government should have the power to criminalize the

intrastate transportation of kidnaped persons, just as it should have the power

to proscribe the intrastate movement of sex offenders who did not register,

because, in both cases, it would reduce the risk that the criminals evade detection before crossing state lines.

More generally still, every crime (indeed every act) brings with it the risk

that the perpetrator will flee across state lines before being detected. Although

the panel concurrence is stated in the context of former sex offenders, there is

nothing limiting its logic to past, rather than present, criminals. Accepting his

logicSSthat the mere risk that a dangerous person will cross state lines undetected gives the federal government authority to police his intrastate movements

preemptivelySSwould mean that the federal government would have the power

to arrest someone who committed a murder, rape, or any other crime traditionally subject to state authority on the ground that he might otherwise evade state

authorities and escape across state lines undetected after doing so. In short, the

concurrence offers no limiting principle that would allow the federal government

to track and arrest former sex offenders because they might someday travel

interstate, but not allow it to do the same to anyone else for that same reason.

4.

The basic flaw in the panel concurrence is that it overlooks the role of the

states in policing within their own borders, relying on the implicit premise that

the federal government must regulate sex offenders’ intrastate movements

because the states will not do so. Every state has its own sex offender registry

and has every incentive to track and arrest sex offenders as long as they remain

intrastate. For example, it was state, not federal, authoritiesSSspecifically,

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El Paso Police Department officersSSwho both registered Kebodeaux and discovered that he had failed to update his registration. Indeed, the federal sexoffender registry consists of nothing more than the amalgamation of state registry (along with tribal and territorial registry) data obtained from local

officials.46

Only if a sex offender travels out-of-stateSSi.e., uses the channels of interstate commerceSSdoes a state’s jurisdiction end, making itinadequate to the task

oftracking and arresting a sex offenderSSand the federal government’s role there

begins. To give, instead, to the federal government the overlapping power to do

exactly what a state could already do itself, in an area completely unrelated to

commerce, just because criminals, like all human beings, can potentially cross

state lines, would violate basic tenets of federalism. In effect, the panel concur- 47

rence asserts that the federal government should be able to police individuals

within state borders just because states might not do so and those individuals

might thus pose a risk to inhabitants of other states. But the federal government’s jurisdiction does not expand or contract based on a state’s criminal-policy

choices.48

See 42 U.S.C. §§ 16920-16921 (stating that the National Sex Offender Registry’s web

46

site shall include “relevant information . . . listed on a jurisdiction’s Internet site” and that the

Attorney General shall include information in the Registry obtained from “an appropriate official in the jurisdiction” of registration); Sex Offender Registry Websites, FBI.GOV, http://www.-

fbi.gov/scams-safety/registry (last visited June 6, 2012) (linking to every state sex offender registry and explaining that “the national registry simply enables a search across multiple

jurisdictions”).

See Morrison, 529 U.S. at 611 (“Were the Federal Government to take over the regu- 47

lation of entire areas of traditional state concern, areas having nothing to do with the regulation of commercial activities, the boundaries between the spheres of federal and state authority would blur” (quoting Lopez, 514 U.S. at 577 (Kennedy, J., concurring)), “and political

responsibility would become illusory,” Lopez, 514 U.S. at 577 (Kennedy, J., concurring)).

See Darby, 312 U.S. at 114 (“Th[e power of Congress over interstate commerce] can 48

neither be enlarged nor diminished by the exercise or non-exercise of state power.”).

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B.

The panel concurrence fares no better under the second category of Congress’s Commerce-Clause authority: Congress may regulate the instrumentalities of, and, as most relevant here, persons or things in, interstate commerce, as

well as intrastate activities threatening them. Lopez, 514 U.S. at 558. For

example, the Court has upheld the regulation of vehicles used in interstate commerce, the destruction of aircraft, and thefts from interstate shipments on 49 50 51

those grounds.

The panel concurrence took this category of authority to mean that Congress may police any person or thing that might cross state lines. That misunderstands the precedent. First, crossing state lines does not mean a person is

engaging “in interstate commerce,” because that mere fact does not constitute

engaging in “commerce” by any definition of the term. Rather, it constitutes a

“use of the channels of interstate commerce,” which the first category of Commerce-Clause authority is meant to regulate. See part III.A. With all due

respect, the concurrence thus confuses the first category of regulable activity

with the second.

Second, a person who only might cross state lines is not engaging “in interstate commerce,” because he has not yet engaged in interstate activity. Thus,

SORNA’s sex-offender-registration requirements do not regulate persons in

interstate commerce, because sex offenders do not engage in activity that is

either “interstate” or “commerce” just by virtue of being sex offenders. That a

person might someday engage in interstate commerce is very different from saying that he is a “person[] . . . in interstate commerce.” Lopez, 514 U.S. at 558.

Lopez, 514 U.S. at 558 (citing S. Ry. Co. v. United States, 222 U.S. 20 (1911)).

49

Id. (citing Perez v. United States, 402 U.S. 146, 150 (1971)).

50

Id. (citing Perez, 402 U.S. at 150). 51

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Under this category of authority, Congress may regulate and protect the latter,

not the former. See id.

Lastly, though Congress may protect the instrumentalities of, and persons

or things in, interstate commerce from intrastate threats, those threats must be

“directed at” the instrumentalities of, or persons or things in, interstate commerce; they cannot just be a general threat to society of the sort that sex offenders pose. For example, Congress may regulate the destruction of an “aircraft 52

used, operated, or employed in interstate, overseas, or foreign air commerce,” 18

U.S.C. § 32(a)(1), even though the destructive activity occurs within a single

state, because aircraft are themselves “instrumentalities of interstate commerce,” Perez, 402 U.S. at 150. Analogously, Congress may regulate thefts from

interstate shipments, even though the thefts occur within a single state, because

the shipments themselves are “things in [interstate] commerce.” Id. (citing 18

U.S.C. § 659). Those regulations are permissible because Congress limited itself

to regulating threats “directed at” interstate commerce. See Morrison, 529 U.S.

at 618.

In short, none of the Court’s cases under the second Commerce Clause

category even hints, let alone turns on the fact, that Congress could regulate

someone because he might someday threaten interstate commerce. And for good

reason: By that flawed logic, Congress could regulate ordinary thieves on the

ground that they pose a “threat” to interstate commerce by virtue of the fact

that, someday, they might steal an instrumentality of interstate commerce.

Accordingly, the panel concurrence’s reliance on the second Commerce Clause

category is unpersuasive.

See Morrison, 529 U.S. at 618 (“The regulation . . . of intrastate violence that is not 52

directed at the instrumentalities, channels, or goods involved in interstate commerce has

always been the province of the States.” (citing Cohens v. Virginia, 19 U.S. (6 Wheat.) 264,

426, 428 (1821) (Marshall, C.J.))).

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C.

Indeed, it is telling that the panel concurrence’s main source of authority

is Gonzales v. Raich, 545 U.S. 1 (2005), which held that a congressional statute

prohibiting marihuana possession was constitutional under the third category

of Commerce-Clause authority, Congress’s “power to regulate activities that substantially affect interstate commerce,” id. at 17. Indeed, the Court stated that

“[o]nly the third category” of Congress’s Commerce-Clause authority was “implicated in the case at hand.” Id. It logically follows that the Court believed that

the case did not “implicate” the two other “categories” of Commerce-Clause

powerSSthose at issue here: Congress’s powers to “regulate the channels of

interstate commerce” and to “regulate and protect . . . persons or things in interstate commerce.” See id. at 16-17. That is unsurprising, given that the statute

at issue criminalized purely intrastate marihuana possession, which is not a

part of “the channels of” or a “thing[] in interstate commerce” or a “threat” to

“things in interstate commerce.”

Moreover, in holding that the marihuana-possession statute was constitutional under the third Commerce-Clause category, the Raich Court explicitly

based its decision on the fact that the statute was part of a comprehensive regulation of “quintessentially economic” activity. That the statute regulated eco- 53

nomic activity was what distinguished the case from Lopez and Morrison, which

struck down statutes regulating intrastate conduct because ofthe “noneconomic,

criminal nature of the conduct at issue.” Raich thus merely followed the line 54

See Raich, 545 U.S. at 25 (“Unlike those at issue in Lopez and Morrison, the activities

53

regulated by the CSA are quintessentially economic.”); id. at 25-26 (defining “economic” activity as “the production, distribution, and consumption of commodities”).

See Morrison, 529 U.S. at 610-11 (“[A] fair reading of Lopez shows that the noneco- 54

nomic, criminal nature of the conduct at issue was central to our decision in that case. . . . 

Lopez’s review of Commerce Clause case law demonstrates that in those cases where we have

sustained federal regulation of intrastate activity based on the activity’s substantial effects

(continued...)

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drawn in Lopez and Morrison between economic and non-economic activity

under the third category.

In contrast to the statute in Raich, and like the statutes in Lopez and Morrison, the statute here regulates non-economic, intrastate conduct that is not “an

essential part of a larger regulation of economic activity.” Lopez, 514 U.S. at

561. It is a criminal statute that “by its terms has nothing to do with ‘commerce’

or any sort of economic enterprise, however broadly one might define those

terms.” Morrison, 529 U.S. at 610 (quoting Lopez, 514 U.S. at 561). It would

thus fail the Lopez/Morrison/Raich test under the third Commerce Clause category, as it should. To hold a non-commercial statute regulating purely intrastate

conduct constitutional would read the word “commerce” out of the Commerce

Clause.55

But by the logic urged in the panel concurrence, Raich should not have

turned on the economic/non-economic distinction or on the third category of

Commerce Clause authority at all. Because marihuana possessed intrastate

surely poses a risk of subsequently moving interstate, the Court instead should

have found the statute constitutional as a regulation of “the channels of” or

“things in interstate commerce” without any need to resort to the catchall category of intrastate “activities that substantially affect interstate commerce.” But

that was not what the Court did or said in Raich.

The panel concurrence’s reliance on the first two “categories” of Congress’s

Commerce-Clause authority instead of the third amounts to an avoidance of

Lopez, Morrison, and Raich. That reasoning, far from faithfully applying Raich,

 (...continued)

54

on interstate commerce, the activity in question has been some sort of economic endeavor.”

(citations omitted)).

See id. at 613 (“[T]hus far in our Nation’s history our cases have upheld Commerce

55

Clause regulation of intrastate activity only where that activity is economic in nature.”).

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expands the first two “categories” to cover non-economic, intrastate activities

that could not be regulated under the third. The fatal flaw with that argument

is that it fails to come to terms with the role of the economic/non-economic

distinction in the Court’s Commerce-Clause jurisprudence: To be constitutional,

regulations of intrastate activity affecting interstate commerce must, logically,

have something to do with commerce. The statute at issue here does not.

D.

Finally, the panel concurrence contends that § 2250(a)(2)(A), although a

regulation of intrastate activity, is constitutional as a necessary and proper

means of enforcing § 2250(a)(2)(B)’s regulation of interstate travel under Raich.

56

But it is questionable how subsection (A), which criminalizes federal sex offenders’ failure to update registration, helps effect subsection (B), which criminalizes

state sex offenders’ failure to update. Subsection (B) makes it a crime for a state

sex offender to fail to update his registration if he travels in interstate commerce

without having registered. Subsection (A) mirrors subsection (B) for federal sex

offenders, except that there is no interstate-travel requirement. Not having an

interstate travel requirement for federal sex offenders in no way helps to protect

society from the interstate travel of state sex offenders.

E.

Therefore, as we have explained, the approach reflected in the panel concurrence fails, because it is an attempt to place under the Commerce Clause a

See Raich, 545 U.S. at 22 (holding that Congress has the authority to enact “compre- 56

hensive legislation to regulate the interstate market” even where that “regulation ensnares

some purely intrastate activity”); see Whaley, 577 F.3d at 259 (upholding 42 U.S.C. § 16913

SSwhich requires sex offenders to register changes of addressSSeven though it applies to intrastate activity, because, without it, “§ 2250 [which criminalizes the failure to register] has no

substance”).

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regulation that is neither “interstate” nor “commercial.” SORNA’s regulation of

federal sex offenders does not fit into any of the three categories of regulations

that the Supreme Court has upheld under the Commerce Clause, so it cannot be

justified under the commerce power.

Upholding § 2250(a)(2)(A) would go a big step further than has the applicable caselaw, because, unlike § 2250(a)(2)(B), this statute regulates federal sex

offenders “generally,” Whaley, 577 F.3d at 259, regardless of whether they

engage in interstate activity. The activity criminalized by § 2250(a)(2)(A) is

57

thus not “directed” at interstate commerce in the way that all previously upheld

provisions regulating the use of the channels of interstate commerce have been.58

IV.

In summary, and for the reasons discussed in parts II and III, 42 U.S.C.

§ 16913’s registration requirements and § 2250(a)(2)(A)’s criminal penalties for

failing to register after intrastate relocation are unconstitutional solely as they

apply to former federal sex offenders who had been unconditionally released

from federal custody before SORNA’s passage in 2006. Every federal sex

offender subject to federal custody or supervision when SORNA was enacted, or

who was convicted since then, is unaffected. Moreover, those who had been

unconditionally released before SORNA’s passage need not go unmonitored;they

could still be regulated just as state sex offenders currently are under federal

Cf. Carr, 130 S. Ct. at 2248 (Alito, J., joined by Thomas and Ginsburg, JJ., dissent- 57

ing) (noting that it “can also be argued” that interpreting § 2250(a)(2)(B)SSthe state sex

offender provisionSSto apply to interstate travel that occurred before SORNA’s enactment

“would mean that Congress exceeded its authority under the Commerce Clause.”). That is a

fortiori the case here, with the government arguing that an analogous statute requiring no

interstate travel at all is constitutional.

See Morrison, 529 U.S. at 618 (“The regulation . . . of intrastate violence that is not 58

directed at the instrumentalities, channels, or goods involved in interstate commerce has

always been the province of the States.” (citing Cohens, 19 U.S. (6 Wheat.) at 428)

(Marshall, C.J.)).

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law, and they remain subject to state authority.

The statute is an unlawful expansion of federal power at the expense of the

traditional and well-recognized police power of the state. The conviction is 59

REVERSED, and a judgment of dismissal is RENDERED.

 The unconstitutionality applies only as to those in the narrow and specific circum59

stance faced by Kebodeaux, and we make no holding as to others.

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OWEN, Circuit Judge, concurring.

I join in the judgment reached by a majority of the en banc court. I do not

entirely agree, however, with the majority’s analysis of Kebodeaux’s obligations

under federal law to register as a sex offender at the time he completed his

sentence for unlawful sexual relations with a fifteen-year-old. 

When Kebodeaux was sentenced in court martial proceedings in 1999, he

was required by federal law “to register in any State in which [he] resides, is

employed, carries on a vocation, or is a student following release from prison or

sentencing to probation” if that State required registration. Kebodeaux could 1

have been prosecuted under federal law, former 42 U.S.C. § 14072, for knowingly

failing to register in any State in which he resides. Federal law did not require 2

States to require federal offenders such as Kebodeaux to register, but it

encouraged them to do so. Among other requirements, Texas laws obligated 3

42 U.S.C. § 14072(i)(4) (Supp. IV 1999), repealed by Sex Offender Registration and 1

Notification Act, Pub. L. No. 109-248, 120 Stat. 587 (2006).

 See id., which provided: 2

(i) Penalty

A person who is–

(4) sentenced by a court martial for conduct in a category specified by the

Secretary of Defense under section 115(a)(8)(C) of title I of Public Law 105-119,

and knowingly fails to register in any State in which the person resides, is

employed, carries on a vocation, or is a student following release from prison or

sentencing to probation, shall, in the case of a first offense under this

subsection, be imprisoned for not more than 1 year and, in the case of a second

or subsequent offense under this subsection, be imprisoned for not more than

10 years. 

See 42 U.S.C. § 14071(b)(7) (Supp. IV 1999), repealed by Sex Offender Registration

3

and Notification Act, Pub. L. No. 109-248, 120 Stat. 587 (2006):

(7) Registration of out-of-State offenders, Federal offenders, persons sentenced

by courts martial, and offenders crossing State borders

(continued...)

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Kebodeaux to register with Texas authorities when he entered the state and to

provide notice of a change of residence within the state or the intent to change

residence within the state. Prior to the enactment of SORNA, Kebodeaux could 4

have been convicted under federal law, former 42 U.S.C. § 14072(i)(4), if he

moved from El Paso, Texas to San Antonio, Texas and failed to notify Texas

authorities of this intrastate change in residence in the manner required by

state law. There would have been no constitutional infirmity in this federal law

as applied to Kebodeaux because the federal requirement to comply with state

registration requirements was in existence at the time that he was sentenced in

the court martial proceedings. Congress was well within its powers under the

Necessary and Proper Clause to impose conditions such as intrastate registration and reporting requirements on federal sex offenders in connection with their

convictions and sentencing.

SORNA expanded registration requirements for sex offenders. However,

the question before us is whether Congress had the authority to criminalize the

conduct for which Kebodeaux was convicted. Kebodeaux was prosecuted under

18 U.S.C. § 2250(a) for knowingly failing to “update a registration as required

by [SORNA].” The registration requirements applicable to Kebodeaux under 5

 (...continued)

3

As provided in guidelines issued by the Attorney General, each State shall

include in its registration program residents who were convicted in another

State and shall ensure that procedures are in place to accept registration

information from–

(A) residents who were convicted in another State, convicted of a Federal

offense, or sentenced by a court martial . . . .

See TEX. CODE CRIM. PROC. art. 62.051. 4

 18 U.S.C. § 2250(a) (emphasis added). That section provides: 5

§ 2250. Failure to register

(a) In general.--Whoever--

(continued...)

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SORNA included the obligation to keep his registration current in the jurisdiction in which he was residing and that he provide notice of a change of his

residence within three business days, but not necessarily to the State in which

he was residing. These requirements differ from Texas law. One difference is 6

that under Texas law, a sex offender has seven days within which to provide

 (...continued)

5

(1) is required to register under the Sex Offender Registration and Notification

Act;

(2)(A) is a sex offender as defined for the purposes of the Sex Offender

Registration and Notification Act by reason of a conviction under Federal law

(including the Uniform Code of Military Justice), the law of the District of

Columbia, Indian tribal law, or the law of any territory or possession of the

United States; or 

(B) travels in interstate or foreign commerce, or enters or leaves, or resides in,

Indian country; and 

(3) knowingly fails to register or update a registration as required by the Sex

Offender Registration and Notification Act;

shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than 10 years, or both.

 42 U.S.C. § 16913. That section provides in pertinent part: 6

(a) In general

A sex offender shall register, and keep the registration current, in each

jurisdiction where the offender resides, where the offender is an employee, and

where the offender is a student. For initial registration purposes only, a sex

offender shall also register in the jurisdiction in which convicted if such

jurisdiction is different from the jurisdiction of residence.

. . . .

(c) Keeping the registration current

A sex offender shall, not later than 3 business days after each change of name,

residence, employment, or student status, appear in person in at least 1

jurisdiction involved pursuant to subsection (a) of this section and inform that

jurisdiction of all changes in the information required for that offender in the

sex offender registry. That jurisdiction shall immediately provide that

information to all other jurisdictions in which the offender is required to

register.

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notice of a change of address. Kebodeaux conceivably could have been convicted 7

under SORNA for conduct that complied with State law and therefore would

have also complied with the federal law to which Kebodeaux was subject at the

time he was convicted and sentenced.

There is another difference between the federal law in effect when

Kebodeaux was sentenced in 1999 and the provisions of SORNA under which he

was prosecuted. The federal criminal statute that obtained in 1999, former 42

U.S.C. § 14072(i)(4), provided that the maximum term of imprisonment for a

first offense of failing to register in a State was “not more than 1 year,” while

under SORNA, the maximum term of imprisonment for a first offense is 10

years. Kebodeaux was convicted under SORNA and sentenced to more than one 8

year of imprisonment—one day more.

The question, then, is whether, after Kebodeaux had completed his federal

sentence and had been released from federal oversight other than the reporting

requirements imposed at the time he was sentenced, Congress could constitutionally subject Kebodeaux to federal reporting requirements that criminalized

failure to comply with federal, as opposed to State, reporting requirements

regarding intrastate changes of residence, and that increased the punishment

for failure to comply with reporting requirements. I agree with a majority of the

en banc court that Congress could not constitutionally apply SORNA to

Kebodeaux’s intrastate relocations under either the Necessary and Proper

Clause or the Commerce Clause. I accordingly concur in the judgment.

 TEX. CODE CRIM. PROC. art. 62.051(a). 7

 18 U.S.C. § 2250(a). 8

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DENNIS, Circuit Judge, joined by KING, Circuit Judge, dissenting.

I respectfully dissent.

I.

The majority’s decision misinterprets and hobbles Congress’s use of its

enumerated and implied constitutional powers to enact the Sex Offender

Registration and Notification Act (SORNA or Act) for the purpose of deterring

dangerous sex offenders nationwide from moving either intrastate or interstate

in evasion ofSORNA registration and updating requirements to prey on children

and other vulnerable sex crime victims. SORNA establishes a comprehensive

federal and state legal system that, inter alia, requires convicted sex offenders

to register, and to keep their registrations current, in each locality where they

live, work, and go to school, 42 U.S.C. § 16913(a)-(c); withholds federal funds

from participating jurisdictions that fail to substantially implement SORNA, id.

§ 16925(a); requires each participating jurisdiction to enact criminal penalties

for the failure of a sex offender to comply with SORNA registration and updating

requirements within each jurisdiction, id. § 16913(e); makes it a federal crime

for a convicted sex offender who moves in interstate commerce and knowingly

fails to abide by the Act’s registration requirements, 18 U.S.C. § 2250(a)(1),

(2)(B), (3); and makes it a federal crime for a person convicted as a sex offender

under federal law to knowingly fail to abide by SORNA’s registration and

updating requirements, id. § 2250(a)(1),(2)(A), (3).

The question raised by Kebodeaux and the majority opinion is whether

SORNA’s 18 U.S.C. § 2250(a)(2)(A) can constitutionally apply to a person

convicted as a sex offender under federal law, who was released from federal

custody prior to the enactment of SORNA, but who knowingly failed to update

his registration after an intrastate residence change, as required by SORNA

subsequent to its effective date as specified by the Attorney General. 42 U.S.C.

§ 16913(d). The majority’s answer is that SORNA’s criminal, registration and

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notification provisions cannot constitutionally be applied to punish a federal sex

offender for his knowing failure to register or update a registration following his

intrastate change of residence if he had been released from federal custody prior

to SORNA’s enactment on July 27, 2006. The majority reaches this conclusion

for two independent reasons:

First, although Congress undisputedly has the implied power under

Article I of the Constitution to make criminal laws to govern persons in

furtherance of Congress’s enumerated legislative powers, see, e.g., United States

v. Comstock, 130 S. Ct. 1949, 1957 (2010), the majority concludes that power

cannot be applied to punish a federal sex offender for his knowing failure to

update his intrastate residence change under SORNA if he had been released

from federal custody prior to the enactment of SORNA on July 27, 2006.

Applying the “Comstock considerations,” see id. at 1965, the majority recognizes

first that Congress has broad authority to enact legislation under the Necessary

and Proper Clause, see id. at 1956; that a statute must constitute a means that

is “reasonably adapted” to an enumerated power; that Congress has a large

discretion as to the choice of such means; and that courts must apply a

presumption of constitutionality to Congress’s enactments. Maj. Op. 5-6. But

the majority finds that the other “Comstock considerations” outweigh that

presumption and show that SORNA is not reasonably adapted to Congress’s

undisputed Article I power to criminalize federal sex offenses because “[t]he

statute’s regulation of an individual, after he has served his sentence and is no

longer subject to federal custody or supervision, solely because he once

committed a federal crime, (1) is novel and unprecedented despite over 200 years

of federal criminal law; (2) is not ‘reasonably adapted’ to the government’s

custodial interest in its prisoners or its interest in punishing federal criminals;

(3) is unprotective of states’ sovereign interest over what intrastate conduct to

criminalize within their own borders; and (4) is sweeping in the scope of its

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reasoning.” Maj. Op. 19.

Alternatively, the majority concedes that Congress, under its Commerce

Clause and Necessary and Proper Clause authority, may (1) “regulate the use

of the channels of interstate commerce”; (2) “regulate and protect the instrumentalities of . . . or persons or things in interstate commerce, even though the

threat may come only from intrastate activities”; and (3) “regulate those

activities having a substantial relation to interstate commerce, i.e., those

activities that substantially affect interstate commerce.” Maj. Op. 20 (alteration

in original) (quoting United States v. Lopez, 514 U.S. 549, 558-59 (1995)); see also

Maj. Op. 20 n.38 (describing Lopez as “holding that because the Gun-Free School

Zones Act does not fall within any of the three categories, it is an unconstitutional exercise of federal power” (citing Lopez, 514 U.S. 549, 558-59, 567)). But

the majority finds that Congress nonetheless lacked the authority to subject

federal sex offenders released prior to the July 27, 2006 enactment of SORNA’s

registration requirements, 42 U.S.C. §§ 16913-16916, and pertinent criminal

provision, 18 U.S.C. § 2250(a)(2)(A), because they, like the statutes that were

struck down in Lopez and United States v. Morrison, 529 U.S. 598 (2000),

constitute regulation of only intrastate non-economic activity.

II.

Failing to recognize that statutory interpretation is a “holistic endeavor,”

United Sav. Ass’n of Tex. v. Timbers of Inwood Forest Assocs., 484 U.S. 365, 371

(1988); accord United States v. Johnson, 632 F.3d 912, 922 (5th Cir. 2011)

(same), the majority opinion’s reading of SORNA’s text is incomplete and

erroneous. Consequently, the majority fails to properly analyze and understand

how Congress rationally and simultaneously adapted SORNA’s provisions to the

three constitutional powers they carry into execution: the spending power, the

commerce power, and the power to enact criminal laws to further and to prevent

interference with its enumerated powers. The majority totally disregards

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Congress’s use in SORNA of its enumerated power to spend federal funds for the

general welfare. Importantly, Congress used its spending power both to

establish SORNA’s purpose as a legitimate end of the legislation, and as one of

the means, together with its Commerce Clause power and its power to legislate

criminal laws to further and protect its enumerated powers, in carrying all of

those powers into effect. 

The majority analyzes, one at a time, only two congressional powers that

SORNA seeks to execute, the Commerce Clause power and power to enact

criminal laws pursuant to its enumerated powers, and finds that SORNA is not

rationally adapted to execute either power. This analysis is manifestly incorrect,

however, because in SORNA, Congress plainly used three, not just two, of its

constitutional powers, and it used them simultaneously, not just one at a time.

In doing so, Congress reasonably adapted the SORNA provisions as the

necessary and proper means of carrying all three powers into effect at the same

time. The three powers are Congress’s enumerated spending power, U.S. Const.

art. I, § 8, cl. 1, its enumerated Commerce Clause power, id. art. 1, § 8, cl. 3, and

its well established implied power to enact criminal laws in furtherance of its

enumerated powers, e.g., to regulate commerce, to spend funds for the general

welfare, to enforce civil rights, and so forth, see Comstock, 130 S. Ct. at 1957-58

(citing U.S. Const. art. I, § 8, cls. 1, 3, 4, 7, 9; id. amends. XIII-XV). Recently, the

Supreme Court recognized that SORNA uses these three powers in “seek[ing] to

make the preexisting patchwork of federal and 50 individual state registration

systems . . . more uniform and effective . . . by setting forth comprehensive

registration-system standards; by making federal funding contingent on States’

bringing their systems into compliance with those standards; by requiring both

state and federal sex offenders to register with relevant jurisdictions (and to

keep registration information current); and by creating federal criminal

sanctions applicable to those who violate the Act’s registration requirements.”

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Reynolds v. United States, 132 S. Ct. 975, 978 (2012) (citing, inter alia, 18 U.S.C.

§ 2250(a) (criminal provision), 42 U.S.C. §§ 16911(10), 16913-16916 (registration

requirements), and 42 U.S.C. § 16925 (federal funding provision)). 

Chief Justice Marshall famously summarized Congress’s authority under

the Necessary and Proper Clause in McCulloch v. Maryland, which has stood for

nearly 200 years as the Court’s definitive interpretation of that text:

Let the end be legitimate, let it be within the scope of the constitution, and all means which are appropriate, which are plainly

adapted to that end, which are not prohibited, but consistent with

the letter and spirit of the constitution, are constitutional.

17 U.S. 316, 421 (1819). Congress’s purpose in enacting SORNA is to “protect

the public from sex offenders and offenders against children” by joining and

unifying the states and other jurisdictions in establishing a “comprehensive

national system” for registration and notification of the public by sexual

offenders. 42 U.S.C. § 16901. Thus, SORNA’s purpose constitutes a legitimate

end toward which a Congressional law may be directed — the spending of funds

for the general welfare — and SORNA’s provisions carry into execution that

spending power as well as Congress’s enumerated power to regulate interstate

and foreign commerce and its implied power to enact criminal laws in furtherance of those enumerated powers. 

The Supreme Court has also held that the Constitution “‘addresse[s]’ the

‘choice of means primarily . . . to the judgment of Congress. If it can be seen

that the means adopted are really calculated to attain the end, the degree of

their necessity, the extent to which they conduce to the end, the closeness of the

relationship between the means adopted and the end to be attained, are matters

for congressional determination alone.’” Comstock, 130 S. Ct. at 1957 (alterations in original) (quoting Burroughs v. United States, 290 U.S. 534, 547-48

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(1934)). In my view, Congress did not abuse its discretion in enacting 42 U.S.C.

§ 16913 and 18 U.S.C. § 2250(a)(2)(A), as part of the interconnected and highly

reticulated scheme of SORNA, in order to achieve the goal of establishing a

comprehensive national system for registration of, and notification by, sex

offenders.

In Sabri v. United States, 541 U.S. 600 (2004), the Court held that

“Congress has authority under the Spending Clause to appropriate federal

moneys to promote the general welfare, Art. I, § 8, cl. 1, and it has corresponding

authority under the Necessary and Proper Clause, Art. I, § 8,cl. 18, to see to it

that taxpayer dollars appropriated under that power are in fact spent for the

general welfare.” Id. at 605 (emphases added). Similarly, in SORNA, Congress

uses its spending power to induce the states and other defined jurisdictions to

join in accomplishing its purpose by providing, inter alia, that: a participating

jurisdiction that fails to substantially implement SORNA’s requirements shall

not receive 10 percent of the federal funds that would otherwise be allocated to

the jurisdiction under SORNA, 42 U.S.C. § 16925(a); each jurisdiction shall

maintain a jurisdiction-wide sex offender registry conforming to the requirements of SORNA, id. §16912(a); each jurisdiction, other than a federally

recognized Indian tribe, shall enact a criminal penalty that includes a maximum

term of imprisonment that is greater than a year for the failure of a sex offender

to comply with the requirements of SORNA, id. § 16913(e); the Attorney General

shall maintain a national database at the Federal Bureau of Investigation for

each sex offender and any other person required to register in a jurisdiction’s sex

offender registry, known as the National Sex Offender Registry, id. § 16919(a);

and the Attorney General shall ensure (through the Registry or otherwise) that

updated information about a sex offender is immediately electronically

forwarded to all relevant jurisdictions, id. § 16919(b). The foregoing SORNA

provisions are manifestly rationally adapted to carry Congress’s spending power

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into execution for the legitimate purpose of establishing a comprehensive

national system for the registration and notification by convicted sexual

offenders to protect the public against sex offenders and offenders against

children. 

At the same time, in SORNA, Congress under its power to enact federal

laws to criminalize conduct that would interfere with its enumerated powers,

criminalized a knowing failure by a federal sex offender to register or update a

registration. Thus, while Congress used its spending clause power to induce

each jurisdiction to enact a criminal penalty for the failure of a sex offender to

comply with the requirements of SORNA, see 42 U.S.C. § 16913(e), it also

enacted a federal criminal law counterpart that provides that a federal sex

offender who knowingly fails to register or update a registration as required by

SORNA shall be fined or imprisoned not more than 10 years, or both, 18 U.S.C.

§ 2250(a)(2)(A). This latter provision enables the federal government to

prosecute and convict federal sex offenders who knowingly fail to register, or to

keep the registration current in each place where the offender resides, is an

employee, or is a student, as required under § 16913(a)-(c). The states and other

defined jurisdictions are enabled to prosecute and convict sex offenders who

knowingly fail to comply with the requirements of SORNA under the criminal

penalties the participating states and other jurisdictions are required to enact

by § 16913(e). See, e.g., 42 U.S.C. § 16913(c) (Every sex offender “shall, not later

than 3 business days after each change of name, residence, employment, or

student status, appear in person in at least 1 jurisdiction involved” and “inform

that jurisdiction of all changes in the information required for that offender in

the sex offender registry.”). Thus, a federal sex offender, such as Kebodeaux,

who fails to update his registration as required by SORNA, after changing his

residence intrastate, may be prosecuted, convicted and punished for knowingly

failing to abide by SORNA requirements, by either the state or the federal

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government.

Section 2250(a)(2)(A) is necessary and proper to bring about parity and a

consistent level of enforcement, monitoring and tracking of all sex offenders, so

that laxity toward federal sex offenders does not disrupt or interfere with

Congress’s enumerated powers sought to be executed through SORNA. 

Although § 2250(a)(2)(A) overlaps with the participating jurisdictions’ criminal

penalties enacted pursuant to § 16913(e), Congress evidently had reason to enact

a federal criminal law to further and protect its enumerated powers brought into

execution by SORNA. As the Supreme Court explained in Carr v. United States,

“it is entirely reasonable for Congress to have assigned the Federal Government

a special role in ensuring compliance with SORNA’s registration requirements

by federal sex offenders— persons who typically would have spent time under

federal criminal supervision.” 130 S. Ct. 2229, 2238 (2010). Congress could

reasonably expect the states to have an incentive and ability to monitor, track,

and convict state sex offenders who change names, residences, employment, or

schools intrastate without updating their registrations, while deeming that the

federal government should take primary responsibility for deterring federal sex

offenders from doing the same. After all, because federal sex offenders are

identified and classified as such by virtue of their federal convictions, it is

reasonable for Congress to require the federal government, rather than the

participating jurisdictions, to be primarily responsible for monitoring and

enforcing their registration and updating requirements under SORNA.

Congress also exercised its Commerce Clause authority to enact

§ 2250(a)(2)(B), which punishes sex offenders who travel in interstate commerce

and evade registration requirements. No one disagrees with this use of

congressional power in SORNA. Furthermore, “Congress may regulate even

noneconomic local activity if that regulation is a necessary part of a more general

regulation of interstate commerce [and] the means chosen are ‘reasonably

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adapted’ to the attainment of a legitimate end under the commerce power.”

Gonzales v. Raich, 545 U.S. 1, 37 (2005) (Scalia, J., concurring in the judgment).

Justice Scalia’s view of the Necessary and Proper Clause was adopted by five

additional members of the Supreme Court , the five members of the majority in

Comstock . In Comstock, the Court explained that in determining whether the 1

Necessary and Proper Clause grants Congress authority to enact a particular

piece of legislation, “the relevant inquiry is simply ‘whether the means chosen

are “reasonably adapted” to the attainment of a legitimate end under the

commerce power’ or under other powers that the Constitution grants Congress

the authority to implement.” 130 S. Ct. at 1957 (quoting Raich, 545 U.S. at 37

(Scalia, J., concurring in the judgment), in turn quoting United States v. Darby,

312 U.S. 100, 121 (1941)). 

Congress thus clearly also had the authority to enact § 16913(a)-(c), which

lays out registration and updating requirements for sex offenders, and

§ 2250(a)(2)(A), which provides a criminal penalty for federal sex offenders who

knowingly fail to comply with § 16913(a)-(c). Congress’s imposition of registration and updating requirements on federal sex offenders, even if they never move

to another state, is reasonably adapted to the exercise of its powers under

SORNA because it is a necessary part of the comprehensive national system of

SORNA that Congress enacted. Without uniform and consistent registration

requirements, sex offenders could change their information or identity intrastate

— for example, by changing their names or residences — decline to register such

changes, and subsequently feel able to commit sex crimes and/or move to

another state undetected. In so doing, they would undermine Congress’s goal of

In declining to join the majority in Comstock, Justice Scalia did not question his prior 1

reasoning regarding the Necessary and Proper Clause; rather, he joined Justice Thomas’s

dissent in Comstock on the ground that the statute at issue did not effectuate Congress’s

exercise of an enumerated power. See Comstock, 130 S. Ct. 1949, 1970 (Thomas, J.,

dissenting).

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establishing a nationwide, comprehensive scheme for tracking the whereabouts

of sex offenders. The reasoning of other courts of appeals in cases dealing with

state sex offenders is equally applicable to federal sex offenders. See United

States v. Howell, 552 F.3d 709, 717 (8th Cir. 2009) (“Although § 16913 may reach

a wholly intrastate sex offender for registry information, § 16913 is a reasonable

means to track those offenders if they move across state lines. In order to

monitor the interstate movement of sex offenders, the government must know

both where the offender has moved and where the offender originated. Without

knowing an offender’s initial location, there is nothing to ensure the government

would know if the sex offender moved. The registration requirements are

reasonably adapted to the legitimate end of regulating ‘persons or things in

interstate commerce’ and ‘the use of the channels of interstate commerce.’”

(quoting United States v. May, 535 F.3d 912, 921 (8th Cir. 2008), in turn quoting

Lopez, 514 U.S. at 558-59) (internal quotation marks omitted)); accord United

States v. Guzman, 591 F.3d 83, 89-91 (2d Cir. 2010) (“Requiring sex offenders to

update their registrations due to intrastate changes of address or employment

status is a perfectly logical way to help ensure that states will more effectively

be able to track sex offenders when they do cross state lines. To the extent that

§ 16913 regulates solely intrastate activity, its means ‘are “reasonably adapted”

to the attainment of a legitimate end under the commerce power,’ and therefore

proper.” (quoting Raich, 545 U.S. at 37 (Scalia, J., concurring in the judgment)));

cf. United States v. Pendleton, 636 F.3d 78, 87 (3d Cir. 2011), cert. denied, 132

S. Ct. 1290 (2012) (same). Section 2250(a)(2)(A) gives the federal government the

complementary power to enforce SORNA’s registration and updating requirements against federal sex offenders and thus reasonably adapts Congress’

commerce clause power to effectuate Congress’s purposes in enacting SORNA. 

And, as already explained, “it is entirely reasonable for Congress to have

assigned the Federal Government a special role in ensuring compliance with

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SORNA’s registration requirements by federal sex offenders — persons who

typically would have spent time under federal criminal supervision.” Carr, 130

S. Ct. at 2238. 

In sum, Congress could reasonably conclude that 18 U.S.C. § 2250(a)(2)(A)

and 42 U.S.C. § 16913 (a)-(c) were “convenient, or useful” or “conducive” to the

“beneficial exercise,” McCulloch, 17 U.S. at 413, 418; see also id. at 421, of its

legislative power, were means rationally adapted to the attainment of a

legitimate end— a national comprehensive system for registering, updating, and

tracking sex offenders—under the commerce power, the spending power, or

under other powers that the Constitution grants Congress the authority to

implement. Comstock, 130 S. Ct. at 1957 (citing Raich, 545 U.S. at 37 (Scalia,

J., concurring in the judgment), in turn quoting Darby, 312 U.S. at 121).

III.

The majority is also clearly in error in concluding that SORNA’s provisions

do not apply retroactively to Kebodeaux because he served his sentence before

the enactment of SORNA on July 27, 2006. Quite to the contrary, the Act

authorized the Attorney General to specify the applicability of its requirements

to sex offenders convicted before its enactment. 42 U.S.C. § 16913(d); see United

States v. Johnson, 632 F.3d 912, 922 (5th Cir. 2011) (“When SORNA was

enacted, Congress elected not to decide for itself whether the Act’s registration

requirements — and thus § 2250(a)’s criminal penalties—would apply to persons

who had been convicted of qualifying sex offenses before SORNA took effect.

Instead, Congress delegated to the Attorney General the authority to decide that

question.”). On February 28, 2007, the Attorney General issued an interim

regulation stating that SORNA’s requirements “apply to all sex offenders,

including sex offenders convicted of the offense for which registration is required

prior to the enactment of that Act.” Applicability of the Sex Offender Registration and Notification Act, 72 Fed. Reg. 8894, 8897 (Feb. 28, 2007); (codified at 28

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C.F.R. § 72.3). Neither SORNA nor the Attorney General’s interim regulation

provides any exception for released pre-act federal offenders from the retroactive

application of SORNA’s registration and notification requirements. 

Not only does the plain language of SORNA and the Attorney General’s

interim regulation make SORNA’s requirements retroactively applicable to

Kebodeaux and all other sex offenders, regardless of the dates of their convictions or releases from custody, our prior decisions have consistently upheld

SORNA against similar challenges and arguments. In Johnson, we reaffirmed

our holdings in United States v. Whaley, 577 F.3d 254, 260-64 (5th Cir. 2009),

that SORNA does not violate due process, exceed Congress’s authority under the

Commerce Clause, or exceed the non-delegation doctrine; and our holding in

United States v. Young, 585 F.3d 199, 206 (5th Cir. 2009), that SORNA does not

violate the Ex Post Facto Clause. Also, in Johnson itself, we rejected a challenge

to the validity of the Act and the decision of the Attorney General to apply it to

persons whose convictions for sex crimes predate its enactment, holding that

SORNA does not violate the Tenth Amendment, and that the Attorney General’s

failure to comply with Administrative Procedure Act procedures prior to

promulgation of the interim rule was harmless. 632 F.3d at 930-33. 

IV.

In summary, after agreeing with this courts’ prior decisions upholding

SORNA against Ex Post Facto, Due Process, Tenth Amendment, and other

attacks, the majority opinion offers no valid reason that SORNA is not a

reasonable adaptation of Congress’ spending power, commerce power, and power

to enact criminal laws to further and protect its enumerated powers, for the

legitimate end of establishing a comprehensive national sex offender registration

and notification system. Accordingly, in my view, SORNA is not unconstitutional 

as applied to Kebodeaux.

For these reasons I respectfully dissent. 

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HAYNES, Circuit Judge, joined by KING, DAVIS, STEWART, and

SOUTHWICK, Circuit Judges, dissenting:

I respectfully dissent. I would affirm Kebodeaux’s conviction.

I. The Original Challenge

I begin by addressing what we need no longer consider—a facial challenge

to Section 2250(a)(2)(A)’s constitutionality. In the district court, Kebodeaux

brought a broad-based challenge to Congress’s power to enact this section at all,

largely focused on Commerce Clause concerns. Before the original panel, though

mentioning the impact on him, Kebodeaux again largely confined his analysis

to the overall alleged unconstitutionality of this section discussing both the

“necessary and proper” basis and the Commerce Clause basis. His broad

assertions that Congress lacked power to provide civil collateral consequences

for federally-convicted offenders engendered the panel majority’s analysis of this

power. Only in supplemental briefing before the en banc court did Kebodeaux’s

argument begin to crystallize “solely” into an “as applied” challenge. Indeed, it

was not until oral argument before the en banc court that Kebodeaux’s attorney

finally conceded that Section 2250(a)(2)(A) could be constitutional “as applied”

to certain classes of offenders, just not Kebodeaux, i.e., that Congress has a

federal interest in the civil collateral consequences of federal offenses even when

those civil consequences are not imposed as part of the original sentence for the

offense.

The majority opinion continues in this vein, all but conceding that §

2250(a)(2)(A) is facially constitutional and declining to strike it down in its

entirety, as Kebodeaux originally sought so long ago in district court. Maj. Op.

at 3. Therefore, while I continue to stand by the panel majority opinion, 647

F.3d 137 (5th Cir.), vacated, 647 F.3d 605 (5th Cir. 2011), I will not reprise it

here (or further address the disagreements with it articulated by the majority

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opinion) beyond that necessary to address all that is left of the case—the as

applied challenge centered on Kebodeaux. In doing so, however, I note the

jurisprudential problems posed by an argument that changes from district court

to panel to en banc and the relative lack of utility in deciding Kebodeaux’s case

alone (not to mention the “narrow” group in which he falls) as an en banc court. 1

Respecting the right of my colleagues to address the present argument alone as

an en banc court, I address the “as applied” argument below.

II. Section 2250(a)(2)(A) is Constitutional As Applied to Kebodeaux

A. The Analytical Process

Any discussion of the constitutionality of a statute must begin with the

presumption of its constitutionality. See, e.g., United States v. Morrison, 529

U.S. 598, 608 (2000). As the majority opinion notes, the analysis “always starts

with a heavy thumb on the scale in favor of upholding government action.” Maj.

Op. at 7. The basic analysis focuses on whether the challenged statute

“constitutes a means that is rationally related to the implementation of a

constitutionally enumerated power,” United States v. Comstock, 130 S. Ct. 1949,

1956 (2010) (citing M’Culloch v. Maryland, 17 U.S. (4 Wheat.) 316, 421 (1819),

and Sabri v. United States, 541 U.S. 600, 605 (2004)); and, that the statute must

reflect a “‘means . . . ‘reasonably adapted’ to the attainment of a legitimate end

under’” an enumerated power, id. at 1957 (quoting Gonzales v. Raich, 545 U.S.

1, 37 (2005) (Scalia, J. concurring)); see also id. at 1961 (“Moreover, § 4248 is

‘reasonably adapted’ to Congress’ power to act as a responsible federal custodian

(a power that rests, in turn, on federal criminal statutes that legitimately seek

to implement constitutionally enumerated authority).” (citation omitted)). 

Starting with a presumption of constitutionality, Congress has “broad

As posited by the majority opinion,this “narrow group” presumably consists of federal 1

sex offenders released from prison and supervised release before SORNA’s enactment who do

not travel in interstate commerce after its enactment.

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authority” to enact laws that are rationally related to enumerated powers. Id.

at 1957. The majority opinion is right to distinguish this inquiry from due

process and equal protection rational-basis scrutiny, but that distinction by no

means lowers the high hurdle that Kebodeaux faces. See id. (“‘The Constitution

. . . leaves to Congress a large discretion as to the means that may be employed

in executing a given power.’” (quoting Lottery Case, 188 U.S. 321, 355 (1903)));

see also Morrison, 529 U.S. at 607 (“[Courts may] invalidate a congressional

enactment only upon a plain showing that Congress has exceeded its constitutional bounds.”). Further, the Comstock Court outlined the sometimes distant

and indirect relationship between an enumerated power and a properly enacted

statute implemented in furtherance of the Necessary and Proper Clause: 

Neither Congress’ power to criminalize conduct, nor its power to

imprison individuals who engage in that conduct, nor its power to enact

laws governing prisons and prisoners, is explicitly mentioned in the

Constitution. But Congress nonetheless possesses broad authority to

do each of those things in the course of “carrying into Execution” the

enumerated powers “vested by” the “Constitution in the Government

of the United States,” Art. I, § 8, cl. 18—authority granted by the

Necessary and Proper Clause.

130 S. Ct. at 1958. This statement provides the framework for any Necessary

and Proper Clause analysis.

With this general background in mind, I turn to the matter at hand.

Perhaps much of the disagreement between the majority opinion and the panel

majority opinion is in the framing of the issue. The majority opinion posits that

Congress in enacting Section 2250(a)(2)(A), and the Government in prosecuting

Kebodeaux under it, seek to “assert unending criminal authority” over convicted

federal sex offenders. If this premise were true, I would agree with the majority

opinion that Congress has exceeded its authority—albeit under the Ex Post

Facto Clause. However, because SORNA’s registration requirements are civil

in nature, as the majority opinion itself notes repeatedly (see, e.g., Maj. Op. at

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9 n.17), Congress appropriately exercised its power to prescribe civil collateral

consequences of a federal crime pursuant to the Necessary and Proper Clause.

B. Even under the Majority Opinion’s Test, Kebodeaux’s

Conviction is not Unconstitutional

The thrust of the majority opinion’s analysis focuses on the “jurisdictional

hook” needed for Congress to impose civil registration requirements on a

prisoner convicted of a federal crime. The majority opinion concedes that

Congress may place conditions on a federal prisoner’s release from custody, or

even impose sex-offender registration requirements on anyone under federal

government supervision, even if those requirements were not expressly included

as part of the prisoner’s sentence. When a federal prisoner, however, is

“unconditionally released,” the majority opinion posits that the federal

government forfeits its ability to impose civil collateral consequences for that

federal crime, here, molesting a young teenager. Therefore, the majority reasons

that because Kebodeaux was “unconditionally released” prior to SORNA’s

enactment, Congress has no authority to require him to register under the Act.

Ultimately, the majority opinion contends that “SORNA’s registration

requirements are civil and were enacted after Kebodeaux committed his crime,”

Maj. Op. at 11 (emphasis added), and that Congress cannot “pass a law to

protect society from someone who was once in prison but seven years ago had

fully served his sentence and had not since been in contact with the federal

government.” Maj. Op. at 12. In other words, Congress must “strike while the

iron is hot.”

Assuming arguendo that the majority opinion’s premise is correct—that

Congress must enact a civil collateral consequence statute while the particular

federal offender regulated is still within the federal government’s

grasp—Congress did so. The federal government seized and never relinquished

its registration authority over Keboeaux from 1999 to the present. As the

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majority opinion concedes, “federal law relating to sex-offender registration [has

existed] since 1994.” Maj. Op. at 9. All agree that Kebodeaux was convicted in

1999 of a crime committed that same year. Thus, to the extent Congress must

strike while the iron is hot, I will next examine how it did so. 

The premise of the majority opinion’s jurisdictional analysis stems from

the fact that SORNA was implemented after Kebodeaux’s release, allegedly

leaving a gap in jurisdiction that prevents the federal government from

regulating civil consequences of his conviction pursuant to the Necessary and

Proper Clause. The majority opinion and Kebodeaux (through concessions by

counsel at oral argument) agree, however, that if SORNA had been implemented

while Kebodeaux was in custody or subject to supervised release, then this

argument would not apply. 

Kebodeaux was, in fact, continuously subject to federal registration

authority from the time of his release through SORNA’s inception (and

thereafter). In 1994, Congress enacted the Wetterling Act, which subjected 2

certain sex offenders to registration requirements through a state-based

registration system. See 42 U.S.C. § 14071, repealed by SORNA § 129, Pub. L.

109-248, § 129, 120 Stat. 600 (2006). The Wetterling Act required states to meet

minimum requirements in order to receive federal criminal justice funds. Id. In

1996, Congress enacted the Pam Lychner Act, which retained the Wetterling

Act’s minimum ten-year registration requirementfor sex offenders but expanded

lifetime registration requirements to a broader swath of offenders. See id. §

 Pertinent to the conviction from this appeal is taken, Kebodeaux was aware at the 2

time in question of the need to register as a sex offender and does not contend confusion about

the need to do so after SORNA’s passage. Nor does he contend some inability to comply. In

this case, he stipulated that he moved from San Antonio, Texas to El Paso, Texas in August

of 2007 and reported to the El Paso police department to file the necessary registration forms.

At that time, he acknowledged knowledge of the registration requirements. Thereafter, he

moved back to San Antonio without re-registering. That failure to register triggered the

prosecution underlying this conviction.

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14072, repealed by SORNA. The Lychner Act also enhanced federal involvement

in the registration process, creating a national database designed to allow the

FBI to track registrants and to provide a mechanism for registration where

offenders resided in states that chose not to comply with the Wetterling Act. Id.

In addition, the Lychner Act created a federal criminal penalty for certain

offenders’ failure to register. Id. § 14072(i); Wayne A. Logan, Criminal Justice

Federalism and National Sex Offender Policy, 6 OHIO ST. J. CRIM. L. 51, 72

(2008); United States v. Smith, 481 F. Supp. 2d 846, 847-51 (E.D. Mich. 2007)

(concluding that although § 2250 did not apply to a defendant’s pre-SORNA

offense, defendant was subject to federal misdemeanor for failing to register

pursuant to the Lychner Act). The next year, the Jacob Wetterling Improve- 3

ments Act extended registration requirements to certain federal and military

offenders. See Pub. L. No. 105-277, 112 Stat. 2440; 42 U.S.C. § 14072(i).

In 1999, Kebodeaux was convicted under Article 120 of the United States

Code of Military Justice for one count of carnal knowledge involving a minor.

This offense invoked theLychner Act’s federal registration requirement. Section

14072(i) required registration by any person “described in section 4042(c) of title

18.” 42 U.S.C. § 14072(i)(3) (effective Oct. 21, 1998 to July 26, 2009). Section

4042(c) included persons convicted of an “offense designated by the Attorney

General as a sexual offense for purposes of this subsection.” 18 U.S.C. §

See also United States v. Torres, 573 F. Supp. 2d 925, 932 (W.D. Tex. 2008) (“While 3

the Act primarily was regulatory in nature, similar to SORNA, the Wetterling Act also

provided criminal penalties of up to one year for a first offense, and up to ten years for

subsequent offenses, for sex offenders who failed to register in any state they resided, worked

or were a student.”); United States v. Hinen, 487 F. Supp. 2d 747, (W.D. Va. 2007) (“The Jacob

Wetterling Act of 1994 directly imposes registration requirements on certain classes of sex

offenders, and the defendant is included within this class. . . . Regardless of the applicability

of SORNA to the defendant, as of the dates in question, the nature of his conviction required

him, under a long-standing federal law, to register in his state of residence and any other state

where he was employed, carried on a vocation, or was a student.”), reversed on other grounds

by United States v. Hatcher, 560 F.3d 222 (4th Cir. 2009).

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4042(c)(4)(E), repealed bySORNA (effective through July 27, 2006). Accordingly,

the Attorney General designated as a sexual offense for purposes of § 4042(c),

the military sex offense that Kebodeaux later committed: “Uniform Code of

Military Justice . . . 120B1/2 (Carnal knowledge).” 28 C.F.R. § 571.72(b)(2); see

Designation of Offenses Subject to Sex Offender Release Notification, 63 Fed. Reg.

69,386 (Dec. 16, 1998).4

Regardless of the state in which Kebodeaux chose to reside after his

release, he was required to register for at least ten years. If he lived in a state

that complied with the Wetterling Act’s minimum requirements, then

Kebodeaux was required to register with that state. See 42 U.S.C. §§

14071(b)(6)-(7), 14072(i)(3). If, however, he lived in a state that was not 5

minimally compliant, Kebodeaux was required to register with the FBI. Id. §

14072(c)-(d), (g)(2), (i). At the time of his original conviction, Kebodeaux’s

“fail[ure] to register in [the] State in which [he] reside[d],” (or with the FBI, if he

was in a non-minimally compliant state) was punishable for a first offense, of

imprisonment “for not more than 1 year and, in the case of a second or 6

subsequent offense under [14072(i)], . . . not more than 10 years.” Id. §

14072(i)(1),(3)-(4); see United States v. Mantia, No. 07-60041, 2007 WL 4730120,

The Department of Justice’s guidance on sex-offender release notification designated

4

“UCMJ offenses . . . [to make] clear that persons convicted of military offenses in pertinent

categories are persons described in 18 U.S.C. § 4042(c)(4) for all purposes, including postrelease change of address notice by federal probation officers for persons under their

supervision pursuant to section 4042(c)(2).” 63 Fed. Reg. 69,386. 

42 U.S.C. § 14071(b)(7) required “minimally compliant” states to establish procedures 5

to accept registration information from residents convicted of federal offenses.

Based on this section, the concurring opinion filed by Judge Owen suggests that the 6

sentence was unconstitutional. In the briefing before our court, Kebodeaux has never

separately challenged his sentence; instead, he has sought only vacatur of his conviction. This

is probably because by the time his appellate brief was filed, he had already been released

from confinement such that any appeal of the sentence of confinement is moot. United States

v. Rosenbaum-Alanis, 483 F.3d 381, 382 (5th Cir. 2007).

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*1, 6 n.5 (W.D. La. Dec. 10, 2007) (unpublished).7

The Wetterling and Lychner Acts were folded into and repealed as standalone acts on July 27, 2006, in an effort to further expand and unify national sex 8

registration requirements. Reynolds v. United States, 132 S. Ct. 975, 978

(2012). UntilSORNA’s implementation (and continuing thereafter), Kebodeaux 9

had been continuously subject to federal registration requirements of some sort.

Though Kebodeaux challenges SORNA, using the majority opinion’s reasoning,

the federal government never gave up—or lost—its “jurisdictional hook” over

Kebodeaux. The majority opinion’s reasoning is based on a straightforward

syllogism: The federal government loses its right to enact civil collateral

consequences over a federal inmate once the inmate is unconditionally released

from its supervision; Kebodeaux was released from prison before SORNA’s

enactment; thus, the federal government no longer had federal jurisdiction over

Kebodeaux when it convicted him for failing to register under SORNA. Even if

we assume for the sake of argument that the majority opinion’s jurisdictional

premise is correct, Congress exercised “jurisdiction” over Kebodeaux while he

was still subject to federal restrictions. That one statute has been folded into

The majority opinion’s contention that Kebodeaux’s residence in a minimally 7

compliant state immunized him from federal requirements is incorrect. Maj. Op. at 4 n. 4. 

Whether a state was minimally compliant or not affected where Kebodeaux was to register but

not whether he had to register. Therefore, Kebodeaux’s location in a minimally compliant

state did not impact the fact that he was subject to federal penalties for failure to register. See

42 U.S.C. § 14072(i)(3) (applying a federal penalty to particular federal offenders that

“knowingly fail[] to register in any State in which the person resides . . .” (emphasis added)).

The Adam Walsh Act made clear, however, that the effective date of the repeal of 8

predecessor registry programs would not take effect until at least July 27, 2009. See Pub. L.

109-248, §§ 124, 129, 120 Stat. 598, 600-01; see also Guidelines for Sex Offender Registration

and Notification, 73 Fed. Reg. 38030, 38035 (July 2, 2008) (noting that the Wetterling Act

would be repealed “upon completion of implementation period for SORNA”).

Reynolds addressed the narrow question of when and how SORNA’s particular 9

requirements become effective as to persons who committed their offense prior to its

enactment. It does not address Congress’s power to prescribe registration requirements for

those offenders.

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another does not alter this assertion of civil “power” and “jurisdiction” over

Kebodeaux as a convicted federal sex offender. Kebodeaux was always required

to register under federal law; the federal government never gave up its “federal”

interest in Kebodeaux as a convicted federal sex offender. 

It is undisputed that SORNA revamped prior federal registration

requirements. Reynolds, 132 S. Ct. at 978. SORNA is a broader scheme that

applies to a greater number of sex offenders than the prior Acts. See 42 U.S.C.

§ 16911(5)-(8). In passing it, Congress sought to make prior sex offender 10

registration schemes “more comprehensive, uniform, and effective.” Carr v.

United States, 130 S. Ct. 2229, 2232 (2010). SORNA thus mandates more

comprehensive registration information and stringent check-in protocols. See

id. § 16914. Moreover, prior to SORNA’s passage, initial violations of federal

registration requirements only constituted a misdemeanor offense, see 42 U.S.C.

§ 14072(i), while SORNA makes failure to register a felony punishable by up to

ten years in prison, see 18 U.S.C. § 2250. Undoubtedly, then SORNA made

important changes to the scheme previously in place.

For purposes of addressing the majority opinion’s analysis, however,

SORNA’s broad applicability compared to prior law is of no relevance. If this

challenge is “as-applied,” as Kebodeaux now asserts, then the crux of the matter

as defined by the majority opinion is whether the federal government had

asserted jurisdiction to require civil registration over Kebodeaux as a convicted

federal sex offender when it had him in its grasp, not whether the two statutes

SORNA was enacted to create a “comprehensive national system for the registration

10

of sex offenders by creating a new set of standards for the states’ Megan’s Laws and imposing

registration obligations on sex offenders. The SORNA reforms were designed to ‘close

potential gaps under the old law, and generally strengthen the nationwide network of sex

offender registration and notification programs.’” United States v. Simington, 2011 WL

145326, at *3 (W.D. Tex. Jan. 14, 2011) (internal citations omitted). Assuming arguendo the

correctness of the majority’s analysis, the situation might be different if Kebodeaux fell in one

of those “gaps” pre-SORNA that was filled by SORNA. But that’s not the case.

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are exactly congruent. Because Kebodeaux was indeed subject to federal

11

registration requirements at the time of his release from prison under the

Wetterling and Lychner Acts and thereafter under SORNA, the “jurisdictional

hook” is not an issue. It makes little sense to contend that Congress lost its

power or “jurisdictional hook” over Kebodeaux simply because it updated the

national sex-offender registration system laws. 

I see no reason to distinguish the jurisdiction (as a matter of federal

power) exercised over Kebodeaux under SORNA from that exercised under its

predecessor sex offender registry laws that applied to Kebodeaux. Therefore, if

we are to assume that Kebodeaux’s conviction would be constitutional had

SORNA been enacted while he was in prison or on supervised release, then his

conviction is constitutional given the continuous federal jurisdiction Congress

exercised over Kebodeaux from the time he committed his original sex crime,

through his imprisonment, at the time of his release, through SORNA’s passage,

and to the present day.

In sum, Congress did “strike while the iron was hot,” at least as to federal

sex offender Kebodeaux, who was convicted when SORNA’s predecessors were

in place and imposed the basic requirement to register as to which Kebodeaux

later ran afoul. Kebodeaux’s “as-applied” challenge, therefore, should fail, and

the conviction should be affirmed. From the majority opinion’s failure to do so,

I respectfully dissent.

Again assuming arguendo the validity of the majority opinion’s analysis, the 11

situation could be different if SORNA had fundamentally altered Kebodeaux’s requirements

by imposing some brand new obligation fundamentally different from registration. But

Kebodeaux’s basic requirement of registration stayed the same.

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