Opinion ID: 2791466
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: The Constitutionality of SORNA

Text: We review the district court’s denial of Mr. White’s motion to dismiss the indictment on constitutional grounds de novo. See United States v. Brune, 767 F.3d 1009, 1015 (10th Cir. 2014). “As a part of our de novo review, however, we must presume that the statute is constitutional.” Id. (internal quotation marks omitted). We may “invalidate a congressional enactment only upon a plain showing that Congress has exceeded its constitutional bounds.” United States v. Morrison, 529 U.S. 598, 607 (2000).
Mr. White first claims his conviction violates the Commerce Clause. Although he acknowledges that we rejected a Commerce Clause challenge to SORNA in United States v. Hinckley. 550 F.3d 926, 939–40 (10th Cir. 2008), abrogated on other grounds by Reynolds v. United States, 132 S. Ct. 975 (2012), Mr. White argues that our decision has been superseded by subsequent authority from the United States Supreme Court.2 Specifically, he contends the Supreme Court’s decision in National Federation of 2 Although typically, one panel of this court cannot overrule the judgment of another panel, we may do so if an intervening decision from the Supreme Court invalidates our previous analysis. See United States v. Brooks, 751 F.3d 1204, 1209 (10th Cir. 2014). -6- Independent Businesses v. Sebelius, 132 S. Ct. 2566 (2012) (NFIB), calls into question our decision in Hinckley. For the following reasons, we disagree. To put our analysis in context, we begin with an overview of the Commerce Clause and our application of that jurisprudence in Hinckley. Next, we discuss the Supreme Court’s decision in NFIB and explain why it is not controlling of the Commerce Clause issue presented here. The Constitution authorizes Congress to “regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian Tribes.” U.S. Const. Art I, § 8, cl. 3. The Supreme Court has identified three areas that Congress may regulate under the Commerce Clause: (1) “the channels of interstate commerce,” (2) “persons or things in interstate commerce,” and (3) “those activities that substantially affect interstate commerce.” NFIB, 132 S. Ct. at 2578; United States v. Lopez, 514 U.S. 549, 558 (1995); see also United States v. Morrison, 529 U.S. 598, 608–09 (2000). The bounds of Congress’s power to regulate the third field—activities that substantially affect interstate commerce—have been defined by the Supreme Court jurisprudence. In Lopez, the Court struck down a federal statute prohibiting possession of a gun in a school zone because the activity regulated was purely intrastate and was not an economic activity which substantially affected interstate commerce. 514 U.S. at 561–63. Five years later, the Court struck down provisions of the Violence Against Women Act providing a federal civil remedy for victims of gender-motivated violence for the same reasons: the regulated violence was purely intrastate and it did not substantially affect -7- interstate commerce. Morrison, 529 U.S. at 609–612. In both cases, the Supreme Court considered it significant that neither statute contained an express jurisdictional element requiring some connection with interstate commerce. Id. at 611–12, Lopez, 514 U.S. at 562. In our decision in Hinckley, the defendant relied on Lopez and Morrison to argue that Congress could not criminalize his failure to register as a state sex offender because there was nothing inherent in being a state sex offender that substantially affected interstate commerce. 550 F.3d at 940. We distinguished the statutes at issue in Lopez and Morrison because they related solely to intrastate activity which could be regulated only if it fell within the third Lopez category by “substantially affect[ing] interstate commerce,” Lopez, 514 U.S. at 559. Hinckley, 550 F.3d at 940. In contrast, SORNA “comprises two elements: post-SORNA failure to register coupled with interstate travel.” Id. Thus, Congress’s authority to regulate the activity covered by SORNA is confirmed by the first and second prongs of Lopez, which regulate the “channels of interstate commerce” and “persons or things in interstate commerce.” Lopez, 514 U.S. at 558. In Hinckley, we held Congress could act “to keep the channels of interstate commerce free from immoral and injurious uses.” Id. (internal quotation marks omitted). Mr. White asks us to reconsider that decision in light of NFIB. The plaintiffs in NFIB challenged the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA), arguing that its individual mandate, which requires individuals to purchase a health insurance policy providing a minimum level of coverage, was unconstitutional. -8- 132 S. Ct. at 2577. In a splintered decision, the Court upheld the PPACA under Congress’s tax power, but at least five justices also concluded the PPACA violated the Commerce Clause. Compare id. at 2585–91 (Roberts, C.J., concluding that the PPACA was not a valid exercise of the Commerce Clause), and id. at 2645–48 (Scalia, J., joined by Kennedy, J., Thomas, J., and Alito, J., dissenting on taxation power grounds, but agreeing that the PPACA was not authorized by the Commerce Clause), with id. at 2615– 25 (Ginsburg, J., concurring in part and dissenting in part, and joined by Sotomayor, J., Breyer, J., and Kagan, J., who all agreed the PPACA was constitutional under the Commerce Clause).3 All of the justices focused their discussion of the Commerce Clause on the third Lopez prong and addressed whether the individual mandate was a valid regulation of intrastate activity that substantially affects interstate commerce. Chief Justice Roberts 3 As the Eighth Circuit has noted, NFIB provides, “no controlling opinion on the issue of whether provisions of the Affordable Care Act violated the Commerce Clause.” United States v. Anderson, 771 F.3d 1064, 1068 n.2 (8th Cir. 2014); see also United States v. Robbins, 729 F.3d 131, 135 (2d Cir. 2013) (“It is not clear whether anything said about the Commerce Clause in NFIB’s primary opinion—that of Chief Justice Roberts— is more than dicta, since Part III-A of the Chief Justice’s opinion was not joined by any other Justice and, at least arguably, discussed a bypassed alternative, rather than a necessary step, in the Court’s decision to uphold the Act.”). Ordinarily we would apply the opinion of Chief Justice Roberts because his opinion articulated the narrowest grounds for upholding the individual mandate. Id.; see Marks v. United States, 430 U.S. 188, 193 (1977) (“When a fragmented Court decides a case and no single rationale explaining the result enjoys the assent of five Justices, ‘the holding of the Court may be viewed as that position taken by those Members who concurred in the judgments on the narrowest grounds.’” (internal quotation marks omitted)). But because none of the opinions in NFIB affect our analysis in Hinckley, we leave for another day the precise scope of NFIB’s holding. -9- explained that the Constitution only provides Congress with the power to regulate commerce, which “presupposes the existence of commercial activity to be regulated.” Id. at 2586 (opinion of Roberts, C.J.). He concluded the individual mandate did not regulate existing activity, but compelled individuals to become active in commerce by purchasing health insurance. Id. at 2587. Because he concluded the law did not, in the first instance, regulate commercial activity or any activity which substantially affects interstate commerce, the Chief Justice concluded it was unsupported by the Commerce Clause. Id. Justice Scalia, joined by Justices Kennedy, Thomas, and Alito, agreed the individual mandate could not be supported by Congress’s power to regulate activities that substantially affect interstate commerce. Id. at 2647–48 (Scalia, J., dissenting). He noted that the mandate does not apply to persons who purchase health care services or goods, but instead forces persons who are not participants in the relevant health care market to join the market. Id. Like Chief Justice Roberts, Justice Scalia drew a distinction between activity and inactivity. Id. at 2649. As nonparticipants are, by definition, inactive in commerce, he concluded their activity cannot have a substantial effect on commerce. Id. at 2647–48.4 4 Justice Ginsburg, joined by Justices Sotomayor, Breyer, and Kagan, would have upheld Congress’s exercise of the commerce power because Congress had a rational basis for concluding that the uninsured substantially affect interstate commerce. National Federation of Independent Businesses v. Sebelius, 132 S. Ct. 2566, 2616–18 (2012) (Ginsburg, J., concurring in part and dissenting in part). Justice Ginsburg reasoned the decision to forgo insurance was not inactivity but rather an economic choice that Congress has the constitutional power to regulate. Id.at 2617. While she disagreed with Continued . . . -10- Mr. White claims SORNA regulates inactivity by compelling state sex offenders to act and is therefore unconstitutional under the Supreme Court’s analysis in NFIB. We are not convinced. First, the provision of the PPACA at issue in NFIB implicated only the third prong of Lopez, the power to regulate intrastate activity that substantially affects interstate commerce. In Hinckley, we upheld SORNA as a valid exercise of Congress’s power under the first and second Lopez prongs: regulation of channels of interstate commerce and regulation of persons in interstate commerce. 550 F.3d at 940. And we concluded that “whether such an activity has a substantial effect on interstate commerce is irrelevant.” Id. Thus, NFIB’s discussion of the limits of Congress’s power to regulate intrastate activity based solely on its effect on interstate commerce does nothing to undermine our analysis in Hinckley. Second, even assuming the Commerce Clause discussion in NFIB is a holding and that it is relevant to SORNA, Mr. White’s conviction was not based solely on his inactivity. Instead, it is based on his interstate activity—moving from Oklahoma to Texas. But Mr. White argues SORNA should be evaluated solely under the third prong of Lopez because his status as a sex offender is a purely intrastate matter. In doing so, Mr. ______________________________________ Cont. the Chief Justice and the dissenters’ view that there is a constitutional difference between commercial activity and commercial inactivity, Justice Ginsburg maintained that the decision to self-insure is “an economic act with the requisite connection to interstate commerce.” Id. at 2621–24. Accordingly, she would have upheld the PPACA as a valid exercise of Congress’s commerce power. -11- White attempts to sever SORNA’s registration provision from its enforcement provision, and then argues SORNA lacks an interstate element. See 42 U.S.C. § 16913 (registration requirement);18 U.S.C. § 2250 (enforcement provision). This argument is unavailing. In United States v. Lawrance, we held that when reviewing SORNA’s federal registration requirements as applied to state sex offenders like Mr. White, we consider both its regulatory and enforcement provisions. 548 F.3d 1329, 1336–37 (10th Cir. 2008). If, taken together, they are a valid exercise of the commerce power, we must uphold the statute. Id. SORNA uses a combination of civil and criminal components to achieve its goal of keeping track of sex offenders. See Carr v. United States, 560 U.S. 438, 455 (2010) (“Section 2250 is not a stand-alone response to the problem of missing sex offenders; it is embedded in a broader statutory scheme enacted to address the deficiencies in prior law that had enabled sex offenders to slip through the cracks.”). The statute’s civil component—42 U.S.C. § 16913—“requires all sex offenders to register.” United States v. Carel, 668 F.3d 1211, 1213 (10th Cir. 2011) (internal quotation marks omitted). In turn, “SORNA’s criminal provision—18 U.S.C. § 2250(a)—imposes criminal penalties for failing to comply with § 16913’s registration requirement,” id., only if a state sex offender “travels in interstate or foreign commerce, or enters or leaves, or resides in Indian country,” 18 U.S.C. § 2250(a)(1)(B). Taking these provisions together, SORNA contains an express jurisdictional element requiring interstate travel. See Morrison, 529 U.S. at 611–12; Lopez, 514 U.S. at 562. -12- Mr. White moved from Oklahoma to Texas without updating his registration, and drove back to Oklahoma every ninety days to maintain the illusion that he continued to reside there. As Mr. White’s behavior illustrates, §§ 16913 and 2250(a) directly regulate activity, specifically activity involving the interstate movement of persons and activity that employs the channels of interstate commerce. Accordingly, SORNA is a proper exercise of Congress’s Commerce Clause power under the first and second Lopez prongs. That was our conclusion in Hinckley, and nothing in NFIB causes us to doubt the continuing validity of that decision.5
Mr. White next argues SORNA’s requirement that pre-Act sex offenders register violates the Ex Post Facto Clause by increasing the punishment for a past offense. See U.S. Const. art. I, § 9, cl. 3. We squarely addressed this issue in United States v. Lawrance, 548 F.3d 1329 (10th Cir. 2008), and upheld SORNA because it is a regulatory statute and any criminal penalties attach only to future failures to register. Id. at 1332-36. 5 Our conclusion is consistent with that of every federal circuit to have considered the issue since the Supreme Court’s decision in NFIB. See United States v. Anderson, 771 F.3d 1064, 1070–71 (8th Cir. 2014) (upholding SORNA as a valid exercise of the Commerce Clause combined with the Necessary and Proper Clause); United States v. Cabrera-Gutierrez, 756 F.3d 1125, 1129–32 (9th Cir. 2013) (holding that SORNA does not regulate inactivity); United States v. Robbins, 729 F.3d 131, 134–36 (2d Cir. 2013) (same); United States v. Rivers, 588 F. App’x 905, 907–909 (11th Cir. 2014) (unpublished) (holding that NFIB does not say anything about a statute like SORNA which falls within the first two Lopez prongs and is triggered by activity in the form of interstate travel). -13- Mr. White contends Lawrance was wrongly decided in the first instance and that we should reconsider the issue in light of a growing number of state courts holding that state registration schemes violate the Ex Post Facto Clause. But we are bound by the holding in Lawrance. “[O]ne panel of this court cannot overrule the judgment of another panel absent en banc consideration or an intervening Supreme Court decision that is contrary to or invalidates our previous analysis.” Nichols, 775 F.3d 1225, 1230 (10th Cir. 2014) (alterations and internal quotation marks omitted). Mr. White does not claim that either exception to the horizontal stare decisis rule is present here and even acknowledged at oral argument that he raised the issue solely to preserve it for possible en banc reconsideration or review by the United States Supreme Court. We therefore affirm the district court on this issue.
As the last constitutional challenge to his conviction, Mr. White argues SORNA violates the Tenth Amendment by directing state officials to implement a federally mandated sex offender registry. The Tenth Amendment provides that the “powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.” U.S. Const., amend X. Under the Tenth Amendment, federal officers may not conscript or commandeer state officials into administering and enforcing a federal regulatory program. Printz v. United States, 521 U.S. 898, 935 (1997). In particular, the “Federal Government may neither issue directives requiring the States to address particular problems, nor command the States’ officers, or -14- those of their political subdivisions, to administer or enforce a federal regulatory provision.” Id. Notwithstanding this general principle, Congress may constitutionally obtain state cooperation with a federal program by conditioning federal funding on state implementation of a federal mandate. Kansas v. United States, 214 F.3d 1196, 1199 (10th Cir. 2000); see also South Dakota v. Dole, 483 U.S. 203, 206–08 (1987) (same). These arrangements are a constitutional exercise of the spending power so long as (1) the spending or withholding is in the pursuit of “the general welfare”; (2) the conditional nature is clear and “unambiguous[]”; (3) the condition is rationally related to the purpose of the federal interest, program, or funding; and (4) the condition does not require conduct that is barred by the [C]onstitution itself. Pittsburg Cnty. Rural Water Dist. No. 7 v. City of McAlester, 358 F.3d 694, 717 (10th Cir. 2004); see also United States v. Felts, 674 F.3d 599, 608 (6th Cir. 2012). Congress has set up such a scheme in SORNA, by asking states to implement SORNA in exchange for 10% of federal funding under the Omnibus Crime Control and Safe Streets Act of 1968. 42 U.S.C. §§ 16924, 16925(a). Mr. White does not claim Congress exceeded its spending power. Instead, he argues SORNA violates the Tenth Amendment by requiring Oklahoma officials to comply with federal sex offender registration even though Oklahoma has not implemented SORNA or accepted conditional funding. Mr. White relies on the website of the Office of Sex Offender Sentencing, Monitoring, Registering, and Tracking (SMART), which indicates Oklahoma is not among the states that have substantially implemented -15- SORNA. SORNA, SMART, http://ojp.gov/smart/sorna.htm (last visited 3/9/2015). He asks us to infer from the fact of his conviction, and the lack of a federally run system for registering sex offenders, that Oklahoma officials are forced to administer the federal registration program even though the state has not implemented SORNA. But he has not identified any federal statutory provisions that compel an Oklahoma official to act if the state refuses federal funding, and we decline Mr. White’s invitation to make such an inference. As the Fourth Circuit explained, “while SORNA imposes a duty on the sex offender to register, it nowhere imposes a requirement on the State to accept such registration.” Kennedy v. Allera, 612 F.3d 261, 269 (4th Cir. 2010); see also Felts, 674 F.3d at 602 (“Congress through SORNA has not commandeered Tennessee, nor compelled the state to comply with its requirements. Congress has simply placed conditions on the receipt of federal funds. A state is free to keep its existing sex-offender registry system in place (and risk losing funding) or adhere to SORNA’s requirements (and maintain funding).”). We join all of the federal circuits to have considered this issue in holding that SORNA does not violate the Tenth Amendment. See United States v. Richardson, 754 F.3d 1143, 1146–47 (9th Cir. 2014); United States v. Smith, 655 F.3d 839, 848 (8th Cir. 2011), vacated on other grounds by Smith v. United States, 132 S. Ct. -16- 2712 (2012) (mem.);6 United States v. Johnson, 632 F.3d 912, 920 (5th Cir. 2011); United States v. Guzman, 591 F.3d 83, 94 (2d Cir. 2010).7 In summary, we reject Mr. White’s claims that SORNA violates the Commerce Clause, the Ex Post Facto Clause, and the Tenth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. Because we uphold the statute, we also affirm Mr. White’s conviction for failing to comply with SORNA’s registration requirements. We now address Mr. White’s challenges to his sentence.