A federal appeals court has ruled on the future of Michigan's sex-offender registry, sending the most contested part of the case back to a trial court while upholding the registry's tier system and its in-person reporting rules. The decisions, issued on November 13, 2026, by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit in Cincinnati, affect thousands of people on Michigan's registry and the way the Michigan State Police classify them.

Two appeals, one registry law

The court decided two appeals about Michigan's Sex Offenders Registration Act as amended in 2021, known as SORA 2021. The same three-judge panel — Judges Karen Nelson Moore, John K. Nalbandian and Stephanie Dawkins Davis, with Judge Moore writing the opinions — heard both cases. In Doe v. Whitmer, case numbers 25-1413 and 25-1414, a class action, the court affirmed in part, vacated in part and remanded. In Does v. Michigan State Police, case number 25-1415, it affirmed the dismissal of a Fourth Amendment claim challenging the registry's in-person reporting requirements.

The litigation has run for more than a decade. In 2016, the Sixth Circuit held in Does #1-5 v. Snyder that the retroactive application of the 2011 version of the registry law violated the Ex Post Facto Clause of the U.S. Constitution. Michigan amended the law in 2021 to remove the features that led to that ruling, and a new class action — Does III — was filed in 2022 challenging the amended scheme on several constitutional grounds.

The ex post facto question goes back to the trial court

The district court had held that applying SORA 2021 to people whose offences came before the 2011 amendments violates the Ex Post Facto Clause, and that the law could not be applied at all to people whose registrable offences occurred before July 1, 2011. But after oral argument in the Sixth Circuit, the Michigan Supreme Court decided People v. Smith in September 2026, holding that SORA 2021 cannot be retroactively applied to registrants whose criminal acts occurred before the 2011 amendments took effect.

The Sixth Circuit did not decide the merits of that question. Noting a Michigan State Police statement that the agency had removed more than 20,000 offenders from the registry, the court described the facts as a moving target and sent Counts I and II back for the district court to determine in the first instance whether the Michigan Supreme Court's decision in Smith moots those claims. It vacated the related plea-agreement claim along with them.

Tiers and removal petitions upheld

The court upheld the registry's offence-based tier system. Under SORA 2021, registrants are placed in Tier I, Tier II or Tier III depending on their offence. Tier I registrants report in person once a year, Tier II twice a year and Tier III four times a year, and all must report changes to their name, address, employment or schooling in person within three business days. Applying rational-basis review, the court held that SORA 2021 rationally relates to reducing reoffending, and that it would meet even a more searching form of that review.

The court also rejected an equal-protection challenge to the rules on petitions for removal from the registry. Tier I registrants may petition to come off the registry after ten years, but most Tier II and Tier III registrants cannot. The court agreed with the district court that the legislature could reasonably conclude that people who committed more serious crimes should be monitored for longer periods without the opportunity for removal. It also held that reporting duties about students' travel, employers and vehicles were not facially vague.

Out-of-state convictions: the plaintiffs win on due process

On one point the court ruled for the plaintiffs. The Michigan State Police decide whether an offence committed in another state is substantially similar to a Michigan offence, and which tier it falls in, without giving the person notice or a hearing. The majority held that misclassification implicates liberty interests under the stigma-plus test, that a later lawsuit is not an adequate substitute because nothing about the process is random or unauthorised, and that additional pre-deprivation procedures are required. Judge Nalbandian dissented from that holding, saying the district court had not identified precisely what liberty interest was at stake and that he would have vacated the issue and left it to the district court and the parties on remand.

In-person reporting is not a seizure, the court says

In the companion case, the court held that SORA's in-person-reporting requirements do not render the plaintiffs seized under the Fourth Amendment. It compared reporting in person to a grand jury subpoena and a court summons, following its 2020 decision in Willman v. Attorney General on federal registry reporting. The court said the holding has limits: it did not decide whether registry duties amount to a continuous seizure, and it noted that other restrictions on liberty added to reporting might be a seizure. The plaintiffs had argued that the threat of prosecution is a show of authority, so that no reasonable person would believe they were free to ignore the requirement; the panel rejected that view unanimously.

What happens next

The ex post facto claims now return to the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan, which must first decide whether People v. Smith has made them moot. The American Civil Liberties Union of Michigan, which has represented the registrants, had explained before the ruling that the district court's judgment was partly in effect and partly stayed while the appeals were pending. The Sixth Circuit also decided a separate appeal about Tennessee's registry law, Doe #1 v. Lee, on the same day. For the thousands of Michigan registrants, the practical effect depends on the district court's next ruling — and on whether the Michigan State Police's removal of more than 20,000 names from the registry has already resolved the retroactivity dispute for many of them.