Constitutionality of sex offender registriesin the United States The Adam Walsh Child Protection and Safety Act[1] is a federal statute that was signed into law by U.S. President George W. Bush on July 27, 2006.

As of 2024, the Justice Department reports that 18 states, 137 tribes and 4 territories have substantially implemented requirements of the Adam Walsh Act.

[2] On May 17, 2010, the Supreme Court upheld the law, ruling in United States v. Comstock that the Civil Commitment Provision was within Congress's authority.

[6] At the time of passage, at least 100,000 of more than a half million sex offenders in the United States and the District of Columbia were said to be 'missing' and unregistered as required by law.

The act allocated federal funding to assist states in maintaining and improving these programs so a comprehensive system for tracking sex offenders and alerting communities would be developed.

As part of the campaign, Walsh was joined by Congressman Jim Sensenbrenner, representatives from the NCMEC, and other victims' advocates and parents.

These included Patty Wetterling, children's advocate from Minnesota and mother of Jacob Wetterling, who was abducted and murdered in October 1989; Mark Lunsford, whose daughter Jessica was killed in Florida in 2005; Linda Walker, the mother of North Dakota college student Dru Sjodin who was kidnapped and murdered by a released Minnesota sex offender in November 2003; and Erin Runnion, whose five-year-old daughter Samantha Runnion was raped and killed in California in 2002.

In 2019, the U.S. Supreme Court heard oral arguments in the case of United States v. Haymond, in which the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit had overturned a provision of the Adam Walsh Act that established a five-year mandatory minimum prison sentence, and a possible life without parole sentence, for sex offenders who, in a revocation hearing before a judge, are found by a preponderance of the evidence to have committed new sex offenses while on supervised release.

On June 26, 2019, the Supreme Court ruled in a 5–4 decision in United States v. Haymond that the defendant's Fifth and Sixth amendment rights to a trial by jury were violated.

A study conducted in Ohio found that retroactive AWA reclassification increased the number of offenders and altered their placement in management categories.

The Act also for the first time limits the rights of citizens or permanent residents to petition to immigrate their spouse or other relatives to the U.S. if the petitioner has a listed child sex abuse conviction.

For Adam Walsh Act Immigration cases, the citizen must submit evidence beyond a reasonable doubt that he or she poses no risk to the beneficiary.