The federal Sex Offender Registration and Notification Act (Act) requires convicted sex offenders to provide state governments with, and to update, information, e.g., names and current addresses, for state and federal sex offender registries. It is a crime if a person who is “required to register under [the Act]” and who “travels in interstate … commerce” knowingly “fails to register or update a registration.” 18 U. S. C. §2250(a). The Act defines “sex offender” to include offenders who were convicted before the Act’s effective date, 42 U. S. C. §16911(1), and says that “the Attorney General shall have the authority to specify the applicability of the [registration] requirements” to pre-Act offenders, §16913(d). The Act, which seeks to make more uniform and effective a patchwork of pre-Act federal and 50 state registration systems, became law in July 2006. In February 2007, the Attorney General promulgated an Interim Rule specifying that the Act applies to all pre-Act offenders. He has since promulgated further rules, regulations, and specifications.
Petitioner Reynolds, a pre-Act offender, registered in Missouri in 2005 but moved to Pennsylvania in September 2007 without updating the Missouri registration or registering in Pennsylvania. He was indicted for failing to meet the Act’s registration requirements between September 16 and October 16, 2007. He moved to dismiss the indictment on the ground that the Act was not applicable to pre-Act offenders during that time, arguing that the Attorney General’s February 2007 Interim Rule was invalid because it violated the Constitution’s “nondelegation” doctrine and the Administrative Procedure Act’s notice and comment requirements. The District Court rejected on the merits of Reynolds’ legal attack on the Interim Rule, but the Third Circuit rejected his argument without reaching the merits, concluding that the Act’s registration requirements applied to pre-Act offenders even in the absence of a rule by the Attorney General. Thus, it found, the Interim Rule’s validity made no legal difference in the outcome.
