More than 20,000 convicted sex offenders, including former USA Gymnastics and Michigan State University doctor Larry Nassar, have been removed from Michigan’s official sex offender registry. The mass purging follows a Michigan Supreme Court ruling that barred the retroactive application of 2021 SORA amendments to offenses committed before July 1, 2011.
Larry Nassar, 63, no longer appears on the official online public registry maintained by the Michigan State Police, as confirmed by authorities on October 1, 2026. While his name has been scrubbed from the active public database, state and legal officials emphasize that the action does not alter his convictions or ongoing prison sentences handed down in state and federal courts. The public registry is intended to assist the public in preventing and protecting against the commission of similar future criminal behavior by providing details such as names, photos, primary addresses, and court records.
Court Ruling Purges 20,000 Names
The sudden removal of tens of thousands of names from the database is the direct result of a unanimous Michigan Supreme Court ruling issued on September 9. The high court determined that enforcing 2021 amendments to the state’s Sex Offender Registration Act against individuals whose crimes occurred before July 1, 2011, violates both the U.S. and Michigan constitutions.
You cannot add new punishments for crimes that were committed before the punishment was enacted,
Brendan Beery, a professor at Cooley Law School, said regarding the ruling.
Before the ruling, roughly 43,000 individuals were actively registered under the statute across Michigan. Because Nassar’s systematic abuse of young female athletes took place prior to the 2011 cutoff date—even though his trials, guilty pleas, and multi-decade sentencings occurred years later—he fell squarely into the group whose retroactive registry requirements were struck down. The Michigan State Police subsequently scrubbed more than 20,000 offenders from the online database, and searches for his name yield no results.
Prosecutors Condemn Registry Purge
Local law enforcement agencies expressed immediate outrage over the mass deletion. The Eaton County Prosecutor’s Office issued a public statement on social media criticizing the judiciary’s approach, arguing that the court could have adopted a narrower interpretation to keep violent offenders visible to the public rather than dismantling public tracking entirely. Eaton County Prosecutor Doug Lloyd, who is the Republican nominee for Michigan attorney general, also blasted the court’s decision in a statement.
The Michigan Supreme Court’s decision to eliminate SORA requirements for these offenders is deeply concerning.
Eaton County Prosecutor’s Office
The prosecutor’s office further noted that questions regarding how well the registry functions ought to be addressed by elected officials in the legislature rather than resolved by the courts.
“Reversion to the version in existence in 2011 was an option for the court and would have allowed for sex offenders to remain on the registry. Rather the court chose to toss the scalpel aside and use a chainsaw.”
Eaton County Prosecutor’s Office
Advocates Point to Institutional Betrayal
Survivor advocates and support organizations echoed the frustration of prosecutors, characterizing the sudden disappearance of public safety data as a profound institutional failure for victims and families.
It feels like an institutional betrayal for the system to rescind that without another solution based on a legal technicality,
said Grace French, who heads The Assist as its founder and president, a support network dedicated to survivors of athletic, sexual, and general abuse and assault. French also noted that seeing Nassar’s name back in headlines tied to removal is super disorienting and painful, even though he remains incarcerated.
French noted that survivors of abuse are frequently left with the sense that their safety is treated as a secondary priority. Lawmakers now face pressure to draft a compliant sex offender registry framework, though state officials have not yet established a formal timeline for creating new legislation to address the court’s constitutional roadblocks. Legal experts have pointed out that the legislature does not currently have a replacement law ready.
Prison Sentences Remain Unchanged
Nassar is currently incarcerated at the U.S. Penitentiary Lewisburg in Union County, Pennsylvania. He was also stabbed eight times in a Florida prison in 2023. He is serving multiple sentences that will keep him behind bars for the remainder of his life, making his release extremely unlikely.
His criminal convictions stem from decades of abusing young female athletes under the guise of medical treatments while working as a team physician for Michigan State University and USA Gymnastics. He joined the USA Gymnastics national team medical staff in 1986 and was later appointed national medical coordinator for USA Gymnastics, working with the team at the Olympic Games in Atlanta in 1996, Sydney in 2000, and Beijing in 2008 before retiring in 2014. He also served as a team physician at Michigan State until 2016.
His victims included prominent Olympic gold medalists such as Simone Biles, Gabby Douglas, Jordyn Wieber, McKayla Maroney, and Aly Raisman, alongside more than 265 women and girls who accused him of abuse. In federal court, he was sentenced on December 7, 2017, to 60 years in prison on child pornography charges. He was subsequently sentenced in Eaton County Circuit Court on February 5, 2018, to an additional 40 to 125 years in prison for three counts of criminal sexual assault, and also pleaded guilty in Ingham County to seven counts of first-degree criminal sexual conduct, receiving a sentence of 40 to 175 years.