by Douglas Ankney

The United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit held that 18 U.S.C. § 2422(b), the federal coercion and enticement statute, requires a defendant to know that the victim is a minor. Applying this interpretation, the Court ruled that Florida lewd and lascivious battery, a strict liability offense as to the victim’s age, is not comparable to § 2422(b) under the Sex Offender Registration and Notification Act’s categorical approach, meaning the defendant qualified as a Tier I rather than Tier II sex offender. The Court also vacated the defendant’s 20-year supervised release sentence as procedurally unreasonable, concluding that the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Tennessee operated under a misunderstanding of the applicable Sentencing Guidelines range. In reaching its statutory interpretation, the Court acknowledged a circuit split and aligned with the Seventh and Ninth Circuits against the Fourth and Eleventh Circuits on whether § 2422(b) requires knowledge of a victim’s age.

Background

In 2017, Rihanna Buddi was convicted under Florida law of lewd and lascivious battery and transmission of harmful materials to a minor. In December 2023, she relocated from Florida to Tennessee and knowingly failed to register as a sex offender and failed to notify Florida of her move in accordance with SORNA. She pleaded guilty to failure to register under 18 U.S.C. § 2250(a).

The presentence report classified Buddi as a Tier II sex offender based on her Florida conviction, resulting in a base offense level of 14 and a Guidelines imprisonment range of 21 to 27 months. The Guidelines range for supervised release was calculated as a flat five years. Buddi objected, arguing that Florida lewd and lascivious battery lacks a mens rea requirement comparable to federal coercion and enticement under § 2422(b), and therefore, she should be classified as Tier I. The District Court overruled her objection and sentenced her to 24 months’ imprisonment followed by 20 years of supervised release, 15 years above the Guidelines range.

Analysis

The Court began its analysis by noting that SORNA establishes a three-tier system for classifying sex offenses, with offenders defaulting to Tier I unless their qualifying offense is “comparable to or more severe than” specified federal crimes triggering Tier II or III status. The Sixth Circuit applies the categorical approach, comparing “what the state law offense requires – not what an individual defendant did” to the relevant federal comparator. United States v. Barcus, 892 F.3d 228 (6th Cir. 2018). If a state offense sweeps more broadly than the federal comparator, a conviction for that offense does not trigger heightened tier status, the Court explained.

The parties agreed that the relevant Tier II comparator was § 2422(b), which criminalizes using interstate commerce to “knowingly persuade[], induce[], entice[], or coerce[] any individual who has not attained the age of 18 years, to engage in prostitution or any sexual activity for which any person can be charged with a criminal offense.” The dispute centered on whether “knowingly” applies to the victim’s age.

Whether § 2422(b) Requires Knowledge of the Victim’s Age

The Court held that § 2422(b) requires knowledge of the victim’s minor status. It began with the Supreme Court’s observation in Flores-Figueroa v. United States, 556 U.S. 646 (2009), that “[i]n ordinary English, where a transitive verb has an object, listeners in most contexts assume that an adverb (such as knowingly) that modifies the transitive verb tells the listener how the subject performed the entire action, including the object as set forth in the sentence.” The Court found it “difficult to understand how ‘knowingly’ could modify a transitive verb like ‘persuades, induces, entices, or coerces’ without also modifying the grammatical object, an ‘individual who has not attained the age of 18 years.’”

The Court also relied on precedent establishing that “courts ordinarily read a phrase in a criminal statute that introduces the elements of a crime with the word ‘knowingly’ as applying that word to each element.” Flores-Figueroa (citing Liparota v. United States, 471 U.S. 419 (1985)). In United States v. X-Citement Video, Inc., 513 U.S. 64 (1994), the Supreme Court held that “knowingly” reached the element of a victim’s minor status even though it appeared in a different subsection. The Court concluded that these precedents supported reading § 2422(b) as requiring knowledge of age.

The Circuit Split

The Court observed that the Seventh and Ninth Circuits have adopted this interpretation. See United States v. Coté, 504 F.3d 682 (7th Cir. 2007); United States v. Meek, 366 F.3d 705 (9th Cir. 2004). As the Seventh Circuit ruled in Coté, “Section 2422(b) is not unconstitutional on its face and … in order to ensure the requisite criminal intent, the statute should instead be interpreted to require proof of the defendant’s knowledge of the age of the victim.”

However, the Fourth and Eleventh Circuits have reached the opposite conclusion, holding that § 2422(b) does not require knowledge of age. See United States v. Banker, 876 F.3d 530 (4th Cir. 2017); United States v. Daniels, 685 F.3d 1237 (11th Cir. 2012). The Court explained that these circuits relied heavily on the consensus interpretation that the neighboring child sex trafficking statute, 18 U.S.C. § 2423(a), does not require knowledge of age, reasoning that the statutes should be interpreted consistently as adjacent provisions of the Mann Act.

The Court identified meaningful distinctions between the two statutes. First, § 2423(a) incorporates two distinct mental states, introducing a second mens rea (“with intent”) that disrupts the pattern Flores-Figueroa contemplates. Second, and more importantly, “the victim’s age is often the only thing that makes § 2422(b) conduct criminal.” The Court explained that “[w]ith few exceptions, the inducement of a person over the age of 17 into sexual activity is generally not illegal.” This distinguishes § 2422(b) from § 2423(a), where “the minor’s age is not what makes the conduct criminal – it is what triggers an increased criminal penalty” compared to § 2421, which criminalizes sex trafficking of adults.

The Court also invoked the presumption in favor of scienter. Quoting X-Citement Video, the Court explained that scienter ordinarily “should apply to each of the statutory elements that criminalize otherwise innocent conduct.” The Court then referenced Rehaif v. United States, 588 U.S. 225 (2019), as a recent application of that rule of construction. Because a victim’s minor status is the “‘crucial element’ separating innocent from wrongful conduct,” the presumption applies here. The Court rejected the Government’s arguments based on common-law strict-liability traditions for sex offenses and Congress’s child-protection purpose, noting that X-Citement Video already applied “knowingly” to the element of minor status in a child-exploitation statute.

Because Florida lewd and lascivious battery does not require knowledge of the victim’s age – Florida law expressly provides that ignorance, misrepresentation, or bona fide mistaken belief about age cannot be raised as a defense – it sweeps more broadly than § 2422(b) and is not comparable under the categorical approach. Thus, the Court held that Buddi is a Tier I sex offender.

Procedural Reasonableness of Supervised Release Sentence

The Court also found procedural error in imposing Buddi’s 20-year supervised release term. At sentencing, the District Court stated the Guidelines range was “five years to life on supervised release,” when the correct range was a flat five years. The Court stated that this error was evident from the District Court’s framing of the figure as a Guidelines calculation sandwiched between other Guidelines ranges, and the court never corrected it.

The Court noted that sentencing under an incorrect Guidelines range “can, and most often will, be sufficient to show a reasonable probability of a different outcome.” Molina-Martinez v. United States, 578 U.S. 189 (2016). The Court reasoned that it “defies credulity” that a court that carefully imposed a middle-of-the-Guidelines imprisonment sentence would knowingly impose a supervised release sentence 15 years above the Guidelines with no acknowledgment or explanation.

Conclusion

Accordingly, the Court reversed the District Court’s SORNA classification ruling, vacated the supervised release sentence, and remanded for resentencing. See: United States v. Buddi, 168 F.4th 439 (6th Cir. 2026).

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