United States v. Dean
United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit
604 F.3d 1275 (2010)
Christopher Dean (plaintiff) was convicted of a sex offense in 1994 and failed to register as required by the Sex Offender Registration and Notification Act (SORNA) after failing to do so in 2007. SORNA, enacted in 2006, let the Attorney General (defendant) decide whether to apply it retroactively to people convicted before its passage, and in February 2007 the Attorney General did so by an interim rule issued without notice and comment, citing good cause to protect children from sex offenses immediately. Dean appealed his 2008 conviction, arguing the Attorney General lacked good cause to skip notice and comment.
Whether a federal agency may bypass the Administrative Procedure Act's notice-and-comment provisions if it has good cause to find that applying them is impracticable, unnecessary, or contrary to the public interest.