Herman Gundy stands convicted of violating a law that, for all intents and purposes, doesn’t exist. You may recall from high school civics that the Constitution separates the powers of the federal government among three coordinate branches. You may also recall from “Schoolhouse Rock” that a bill becomes a law after it’s passed by the two houses of the legislative branch and signed by the president. Unfortunately for Gundy, things are no longer so straightforward.
The Sex Offender Registration and Notification Act (SORNA) set up a national system of sex offender registration and made it a crime for sex offenders to fail to register with local authorities when they moved to a new state. While serving time on a federal drug charge, Gundy was transferred from prison in Pennsylvania to a halfway house in Brooklyn. According to the government, that counted as interstate travel sufficient to trigger reporting obligations of which he was never advised.
Gundy’s appeal of the conviction, to be heard by the Supreme Court this fall, addresses an odd facet of SORNA: while Congress laid out in detail those persons who would be required to register in the future, it did not determine who would have to register if the conviction occurred before SORNA was passed in 2006. Congress delegated that question to the Attorney General, and gave no guidance on how the determination should be made. Gundy’s sex offense is among those that predate SORNA, and therefore he was convicted of failing to register not based on anything Congress wrote in any law, but based on an administrative regulation written by the Attorney General.
Assigning such a determination to the executive branch raises a long-dormant canon of constitutional interpretation, the nondelegation doctrine. The basic idea is simple: the Constitution vests legislative power in the legislative branch and the legislature can’t delegate the power to write laws to a different branch. It’s a principle recognized by Chief Justice John Marshall in the first decades of the republic—indeed, its roots can be found in enlightenment thinkers such as Locke and Montesquieu—and reaffirmed in many Supreme Court opinions. The separation of powers means, at the very least, that the powers must remain separate.
Good article! Let us hope that the Supreme Court Justices will follow the Constitution and the principles & beliefs of the Country’s “founding fathers” ….. as many so often claim they do.
One problem is that there have been three cases that had a SORNA component to them since the AWA passed in 2006. There is precedent for the Supreme Court in affirming its compliance even though the gist of the law is mandated through separate powers of government. This case will be very interesting to see turn out, as frankly, any felony that emanates from a regulatory schema in the first place should be null and void. Scary times still.
Most congressman didn’t even read SORNA is my guess. They delegated their responsibilities to the public to pass well written laws. SORNA is based on lies and passed without a second thought.
Here’s another article on Gundy: https://www.dailysignal.com/2018/03/08/case-help-prevent-congress-outsourcing-power/amp/