Larry Nassar — the former Michigan State University and USA Gymnastics physician convicted of sexually abusing more than 150 women and girls over decades — is no longer on Michigan's sex offender registry. Not because his sentence changed. Not because he was exonerated. Because of a date. On 9 September, the Michigan supreme court ruled that the state's Sex Offender Registration Act (SORA) cannot be applied retroactively to offenses committed before 1 July 2011. Michigan State Police responded by removing more than 20,000 individuals from its online sex offender database. Nassar, whose crimes predated the cutoff, was among them. The Eaton County prosecuting attorney's office confirmed his removal by sharing a screenshot showing zero results for his name. The ruling turns on a constitutional principle — retroactive application of punitive registration requirements — not on the merits of any individual case. The court determined that SORA's expanding obligations over the years had become sufficiently punitive that applying them to pre-2011 offenders violated constitutional protections against ex post facto laws. The result is structurally correct and practically devastating. The Eaton County prosecutor's office called the decision "deeply concerning," noting that "our community, along with the victims of these crimes, expected the registry to provide a measure of protection and awareness — assurances that have now been removed." In a follow-up, the office acknowledged it is "bound to respect and follow the ruling" despite disagreeing with it. Nassar remains imprisoned. He was sentenced in 2018 to up to 175 years across state and federal convictions. His projected earliest federal release date is 2068, when he would be 104. The registry removal changes nothing about his incarceration — but it changes the informational infrastructure surrounding every other removed offender who is not behind bars. Michigan's legislature has the authority to pass new legislation that could restore registry requirements for affected offenders, but the supreme court's ruling cannot itself be reversed by lawmakers. Any new statute would need to be carefully drafted to survive constitutional scrutiny — the same scrutiny that just destroyed the previous framework. The gap between the court's ruling and any legislative fix is where the real risk lives. More than 150 women and girls accused Nassar of assault, including Olympic gold medalists Simone Biles, Aly Raisman, McKayla Maroney, and Gabby Douglas. Nassar pleaded guilty in November 2017 to multiple counts of first-degree criminal sexual conduct. He survived a stabbing in prison in July 2023. His case became one of the most significant institutional abuse scandals in American sports history — and his name now returns zero results on the state's public safety tool.
