Vartelas v. Holder, 566 U.S. 257 (2012), was a United States Supreme Court case in which the Court held that the enforcement of a provision of the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996[1] was applied retroactively to Panagis Vartelas and was thus unconstitutional.

[2][3] In the early 1990s, Panagis Vartelas, a Greek immigrant to the United States, got involved with counterfeiting traveler's cheques.

[4][5] In March 2003, Vartelas was served a notice to appear for removal proceedings "because he had been convicted of a crime involving moral turpitude in 1994.

The motion to reopen "claimed that Vartelas' prior counsel was ineffective having failed to raise the issue of whether 8 U.S.C.

Scalia held that the law was not applied retroactively under a "commonsense approach" to the statute and therefore this was a "relatively easy case.