§ 2422(b) Requires Knowledge of Minor Status for SORNA Tiering, and Misstating the Supervised-Release Guidelines Range Is Procedural Error (Sixth Circuit)

Introduction

United States v. Rihanna Buddi (6th Cir. Mar. 2, 2026) addresses two recurring federal sentencing problems in failure-to-register prosecutions under the Sex Offender Registration and Notification Act (SORNA): (1) how to classify a prior state sex offense within SORNA’s tier system using the categorical approach, and (2) how appellate courts should treat a sentencing record indicating the district court misunderstood the Guidelines range for supervised release.

Buddi pleaded guilty to failing to register under 18 U.S.C. § 2250(a) after moving from Florida to Tennessee. The Presentence Report (PSR) classified her Florida conviction for lewd and lascivious battery as a SORNA Tier II predicate, increasing her base offense level. At sentencing, the district court overruled Buddi’s objection, treated her as Tier II, imposed 24 months’ imprisonment, and imposed 20 years of supervised release—well above the advisory supervised-release Guidelines term, which the parties agreed was a flat five years.

Summary of the Opinion

  • SORNA tiering: The Sixth Circuit held that 18 U.S.C. § 2422(b) (coercion and enticement) requires knowledge of the victim’s minor status. Because Florida lewd and lascivious battery lacks a comparable knowledge-of-age requirement, it is not “comparable to or more severe than” § 2422(b) under the categorical approach. Buddi is therefore a Tier I offender for SORNA purposes.
  • Supervised release: The court held the district court committed procedural error by indicating at sentencing that the “advisory [G]uideline range” for supervised release was “five years to life”—a description of the statutory range—without later correcting the record. The Sixth Circuit vacated the 20-year supervised release term and remanded for resentencing.

Analysis

Precedents Cited

1) SORNA tier classification and the categorical approach

  • United States v. Barcus: The central Sixth Circuit precedent adopting the categorical approach for SORNA tiering—courts compare statutory elements, not the defendant’s conduct. The Buddi panel applies Barcus to ask whether Florida’s statute is narrower than (or matches) the federal comparator offense listed in SORNA.
  • United States v. White, United States v. Berry, United States v. Morales: Sister-circuit authorities cited in Barcus and reiterated here to support using categorical comparisons for SORNA tiers.

2) Statutory interpretation of “knowingly” and scienter

  • Flores-Figueroa v. United States: Supplies the opinion’s principal grammar-and-ordinary-meaning rule: when “knowingly” introduces elements, it ordinarily applies to each element that follows. The court analogizes § 2422(b)’s structure to the statute interpreted in Flores-Figueroa.
  • Liparota v. United States and United States v. X-Citement Video, Inc.: Reinforce the reading that “knowingly” can reach beyond the immediately adjacent verb and extend to status elements (including age/minor status), especially when that element separates lawful from unlawful conduct.
  • Morissette v. United States and Staples v. United States: Invoked through the presumption in favor of scienter—courts generally require mens rea for elements that criminalize otherwise innocent conduct.
  • Rehaif v. United States: A modern expression of the same principle: “knowingly” reaches the “crucial element” (status) that separates innocent from wrongful conduct. The Buddi court uses Rehaif to bolster the view that minor status in § 2422(b) typically performs that separating function.

3) Comparing § 2422(b) to § 2423(a) (transporting minors) and in pari materia arguments

  • United States v. Daniels (6th Cir. 2011): Cited for the established rule that 18 U.S.C. § 2423(a) does not require knowledge of the victim’s age, because age there aggravates penalty rather than distinguishing innocent from criminal conduct. Buddi distinguishes Daniels rather than extending it.
  • United States v. Cox, United States v. Jones, United States v. Griffith, United States v. Taylor, United States v. Tavares, United States v. Tyson, United States v. Moreira-Bravo, United States v. Lacy, United States v. Morgan: Demonstrate broad consensus on § 2423(a)’s no-knowledge-of-age construction; the court uses them to frame (and then limit) the Government’s analogy.
  • United States v. Banker and United States v. Daniels (11th Cir. 2012): Represent the contrary view that § 2422(b) lacks an age-knowledge requirement, relying heavily on the § 2423(a) parallel. Buddi rejects this extension because § 2422(b) more often criminalizes conduct solely by virtue of minor status.
  • United States v. Meek and United States v. Coté: Sister-circuit decisions adopting the interpretation Buddi endorses: § 2422(b)’s “knowingly” reaches the age/minor-status object. The Sixth Circuit aligns with these cases.
  • United States v. Hart: Noted for recognizing (in the attempt context) the need for the defendant’s belief that the victim was under 18, consistent with the scienter reading, though Hart did not litigate the scope of “knowingly.”

4) Sentencing procedure: Guidelines anchoring, plain error, and supervised release

  • United States v. Xu: Cited for standards of review: legal conclusions (including tier status) de novo; sentences for reasonableness.
  • United States v. Morris: Provides the Sixth Circuit’s formulation of procedural reasonableness, including the duty to calculate the correct Guidelines range and explain the sentence.
  • Molina-Martinez v. United States, Peugh v. United States, Freeman v. United States: Establish the Guidelines’ “anchoring” role; a misunderstanding or miscalculation often affects outcomes and typically warrants correction.
  • Rosales-Mireles v. United States and United States v. Montgomery: Support correcting Guidelines errors under plain error review because such errors undermine fairness and are easy to remedy on remand.
  • United States v. Sears and United States v. Gardner: Frame the plain-error test and preservation/standard-of-review issues (though Buddi holds the result is the same under either standard here).
  • United States v. Tobias: Distinguished: failure to calculate Guidelines did not affect substantial rights when a mandatory minimum controlled. Buddi holds that rationale does not apply where the court had discretion and the record suggests a mistaken range drove the supervised-release term.
  • United States v. Solano-Rosales, United States v. Genschow, United States v. Maken: Support the court’s holding that Buddi’s appeal was not moot after release from prison because the supervised-release term could be reduced on remand.
  • Esteras v. United States: Cited to note a separate supervised-release constraint: courts may not rely on 18 U.S.C. § 3553(a)(2)(A) factors when setting supervised release (via § 3583(c)). The panel declines to reach this issue because it already found procedural error.
  • Berry v. Experian Info. Sols., Inc.: Used (in a sentencing context) for the preservation principle that a party may refine arguments on appeal so long as the issue was raised below.

Legal Reasoning

1) The new Sixth Circuit rule on § 2422(b) scienter (as used in SORNA comparisons)

The court’s core interpretive move is grammatical and structural: in § 2422(b), “knowingly” precedes the verbs (“persuades, induces, entices, or coerces”) and their direct object (“any individual who has not attained the age of 18 years”). Relying on Flores-Figueroa v. United States, the panel reads “knowingly” as modifying the whole action, including the victim’s minor status.

The court then reinforces that reading with (a) the “ordinarily applies to each element” principle (Flores-Figueroa), (b) United States v. X-Citement Video, Inc. (age as the critical line between lawful and unlawful conduct), and (c) Rehaif v. United States (scienter for the “crucial element” separating innocence from criminality).

The Government’s strongest counterargument—treat § 2422(b) like adjacent § 2423(a) under an in pari materia logic—is rejected because the statutes differ in structure and function. The opinion stresses that minor status in § 2422(b) often is the fact that makes the persuasion/enticement criminal at all, whereas in § 2423(a) age generally aggravates punishment for already-criminal trafficking conduct (contrasting the adult-trafficking provision, § 2421).

2) Applying the categorical approach to Florida lewd and lascivious battery

Having held that § 2422(b) requires knowledge of minor status, the panel compares that federal comparator to Florida’s lewd and lascivious battery. Florida law expressly bars mistake-of-age defenses (Fla. Stat. § 800.04(3)), meaning a defendant can be convicted without knowing the victim’s age. Under United States v. Barcus, this mismatch in mens rea means the Florida offense “sweeps more broadly” than § 2422(b), so it is not “comparable to or more severe than” the federal offense for Tier II purposes. Buddi therefore defaults to Tier I.

3) The supervised-release procedural error holding

The panel treats the sentencing transcript as affirmative evidence of a Guidelines misunderstanding: the district court, while announcing it was calculating the “advisory [G]uideline range,” listed supervised release as “five years to life”—the statutory range—alongside the correct imprisonment and fine Guidelines ranges. The court emphasizes the Guidelines’ anchoring function (Peugh v. United States; Molina-Martinez v. United States), concluding that the misstatement tainted the supervised-release decision, particularly because the court imposed 20 years (four times the advisory five-year term) without acknowledging it was varying upward from the Guidelines.

Even assuming forfeiture, the panel finds the error warrants relief under plain-error doctrine as articulated in Molina-Martinez v. United States and Rosales-Mireles v. United States, and as applied in United States v. Montgomery.

Impact

  • SORNA tiering in the Sixth Circuit: The decision is likely to narrow Tier II classifications in cases where the federal comparator is § 2422(b) and the state predicate lacks a knowledge-of-age requirement. Practically, this can lower base offense levels for § 2250(a) prosecutions and may influence supervised-release exposure and conditions.
  • Federal statutory interpretation: The opinion strengthens a text-and-scienter approach to “knowingly” in child-exploitation statutes, aligning the Sixth Circuit with United States v. Meek and United States v. Coté and rejecting the analogy to § 2423(a) adopted in United States v. Banker and United States v. Daniels (11th Cir. 2012).
  • Sentencing practice: The supervised-release holding signals that district judges must clearly separate statutory ranges from Guidelines ranges, and that a single uncorrected misstatement can warrant resentencing where it plausibly anchored the outcome. It also underscores that adopting a correct PSR does not cure an on-the-record misapprehension of the Guidelines.
  • Supervised release factor limits: By citing Esteras v. United States while declining to decide the issue, the opinion flags that future challenges may succeed if sentencing courts rely on § 3553(a)(2)(A) considerations when setting supervised release.

Complex Concepts Simplified

  • SORNA “tiers” (Tier I/II/III): A severity classification system affecting registration duties and, in § 2250(a) cases, the applicable sentencing Guideline calculations. If a prior conviction is not “comparable to or more severe than” listed federal comparator offenses (or otherwise qualifying), the offender defaults to Tier I.
  • Categorical approach: Courts compare statutory elements of the prior state offense to the elements of a federal comparator offense, ignoring the defendant’s actual conduct. If the state statute is broader (criminalizes more conduct), it does not qualify.
  • Scienter / mens rea: The required guilty mind. Here, the key question was whether “knowingly” in § 2422(b) requires the defendant to know the victim is under 18.
  • Presumption in favor of scienter: An interpretive rule that courts generally require mens rea for elements that turn otherwise lawful conduct into a crime.
  • Guidelines range vs. statutory range: The statutory range is set by Congress (here, supervised release “five years to life”); the Guidelines range is an advisory recommendation calculated under the Sentencing Guidelines (here, a flat five years). Confusing the two is procedural error if it affects sentencing.
  • Procedural reasonableness: The requirement that sentencing follow correct steps—especially correct Guidelines calculation and an adequate explanation.
  • Plain error review: A stricter appellate standard when an objection was not preserved; Guidelines mistakes often satisfy it because they can strongly influence the sentence and are readily correctable.

Conclusion

United States v. Rihanna Buddi establishes two consequential points in the Sixth Circuit: (1) § 2422(b) requires knowledge of the victim’s minor status, which can prevent strict-liability state offenses from serving as comparable SORNA Tier II predicates under the categorical approach; and (2) a sentencing record showing the court treated a statutory supervised-release range as the Guidelines range is a serious procedural error warranting resentencing—particularly where the imposed term dramatically exceeds the advisory term without an explicit variance explanation.