Michigan Supreme Court Just Erased Larry Nassar From the Sex Offender Registry Over One Technicality

Larry Nassar molested hundreds of young gymnasts – and prosecutors promised his name would mark him forever.

Michigan's Democrat-controlled Supreme Court just ruled his earliest crimes happened before a cutoff date that wipes out the requirement entirely.

The same ruling just freed thousands of other predators Michigan families thought were being tracked for life.

Why a 2011 Legal Cutoff Let Larry Nassar Slip Off the List

The ruling came down unanimously on September 9, 2026, in People v. Eddie Lee Smith, and it did not read like a culture war opinion.

It read like tax code.

The 2021 Sex Offenders Registration Act, the court said, cannot be applied retroactively to anyone whose crimes happened before the original 2011 version of the law took effect.

Translation: if the sex crime happened before July 1, 2011, Michigan no longer considers it the public's business to know.

Michigan State Police had no choice but to comply.

Within days, troopers had stripped more than 20,000 names off a registry that held roughly 43,000 people just before the ruling.

Director Col. James Grady II made clear his department did not want this outcome, saying "the MSP did not make this change to the law" and telling critics to take it up with the Legislature instead.

Larry Nassar's name went with the rest.

The disgraced USA Gymnastics doctor molested hundreds of young women and girls for decades under the cover of "medical treatment," and his 2018 convictions turned him into the most hated man in American sports.

None of that mattered to the court's math.

Eaton County's prosecuting attorney confirmed the insult to Nassar's victims directly: "Nassar is no longer there because his conduct occurred before 2011 despite his convictions coming after."

He remains locked away on a sentence of 40 to 175 years plus decades of federal time, so the ruling will not free him from prison.

It erases his public face from the list every parent in that state is supposed to be able to check.

https://twitter.com/wxyzdetroit/status/2105687203070300227

More Than 20,000 Other Sex Offenders Got the Same Free Pass

Nassar is the name that made headlines, but he is one of more than 20,000.

Kassem Hallak, convicted in 2013 of assaulting patients, no longer has to register at all.

Convicted offenders including Damon Warner and Kevin Kalmbach will walk back into Michigan communities when they are released with no registration requirement waiting for them, despite convictions that never went away.

Eaton County Prosecutor Doug Lloyd did not mince words about the ruling's precision, calling it a "chainsaw" where the court should have used a scalpel.

A state appellate defender quoted elsewhere called the old registry "bloated" and questioned whether it protected anyone in the first place – a fine theory for a law professor and a nightmare for a mother checking the registry before her kid's babysitter shows up.

The ACLU Got the Ruling It Wanted and Voters Get the Next Move

The ACLU of Michigan has publicly called the registry "broken and bloated" and pushed lawmakers toward exactly the kind of narrower system this ruling just handed them by judicial order instead.

Michigan voters do not have to settle for a press release about it.

Chief Justice Megan Cavanagh and Justice Noah Hood, the two Democratic nominees who signed this unanimous decision, are both on the ballot this November, running against Republican challengers Michael D. Warren Jr. and Casandra Morse-Bills for those same two seats.

Nobody on the current court has to look a single Michigan family in the eye and explain why Larry Nassar's name is gone.

Michigan voters do not need a law degree to understand what just happened to them – only a ballot this November, and two Republican names already on it.

Sources:

• Mike LaChance, "Serial Predator Larry Nassar and More than 20,000 Sex Offenders Removed from Michigan Registry Thanks to the Unanimous Ruling by Democrat-Controlled State Supreme Court," The Gateway Pundit, October 2, 2026.
• Fox News, "Michigan decision forces removal of disgraced sports doctor Larry Nassar from sex offender registry," Fox News, October 1, 2026.
• Fox 2 Detroit, "Larry Nassar among those removed from Michigan sex offender registry after ruling, prosecutor says," Fox 2 Detroit, October 1, 2026.
• Daily Caller, "Larry Nassar's Name Scrubbed From Sex Offender Registry Amid Shock Court Ruling," Daily Caller, October 1, 2026.
• Bridge Michigan, "Who's Running for Michigan Supreme Court? Six Candidates Compete for Two Seats," Bridge Michigan, October 1, 2026.