SCOTUS Slams the Door on First Step Act Relief: Why the Compassionate Release Era is Over

The End of Equitable Sentencing Disparities

For the past six years, the defense bar has wielded the First Step Act of 2018 as the Swiss Army knife of post-conviction relief. District courts, empowered by the Act's expansion of 18 U.S.C. § 3582(c)(1)(A), routinely granted compassionate release to inmates serving draconian sentences that Congress had since repudiated. But on May 28, a fiercely divided Supreme Court abruptly confiscated the knife.

In a 6-3 decision, the Court ruled that federal judges may no longer grant early release simply because a prisoner would receive a dramatically shorter sentence if convicted under today’s laws. Furthermore, the Court explicitly barred inmates from using compassionate release provisions to challenge the underlying validity of their convictions. To hammer the point home, the conservative majority took the extraordinary step of invalidating a 2023 U.S. Sentencing Commission policy that had explicitly broadened eligibility for inmates serving "unusually long sentences."

Prioritizing Finality Over Equity

To understand why this decision is a seismic shift for criminal practitioners, we have to look at the tension between compassionate release and habeas corpus. Under the First Step Act, Pub. L. No. 115-391, Congress allowed inmates to directly petition courts for sentence reductions based on "extraordinary and compelling reasons."

Defense attorneys masterfully utilized this vague statutory language to bypass the brutal procedural strictures of the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996 (AEDPA). If an inmate was serving a stacked 18 U.S.C. § 924(c) firearms sentence—a mandatory minimum practice effectively abolished by the First Step Act—but the change was not made retroactive, defense counsel would argue that the massive disparity between the old sentence and modern law constituted an "extraordinary and compelling" reason for release.

The U.S. Sentencing Commission agreed. In its 2023 amendments to U.S.S.G. § 1B1.13(b)(6), the Commission expressly permitted judges to consider non-retroactive changes in law for inmates who had served at least 10 years.

The Supreme Court just blew that framework to pieces.

"By invalidating the Sentencing Commission's policy, the Court is violently re-establishing the boundary between compassionate release and collateral attacks under 28 U.S.C. § 2255. The Court's message to the defense bar is unequivocal: finality trumps equity."

The ruling makes it clear that 18 U.S.C. § 3582(c)(1)(A) is not a backdoor around AEDPA's statute of limitations or its bar on successive habeas petitions. If a client has doubts about the legal validity of their conviction, they must navigate the unforgiving gauntlet of a § 2255 motion. If they are serving a sentence that Congress now admits is unjustly long, that disparity is a matter for the legislature to fix retroactively, or for the executive's pardon power—not for a district judge's equitable discretion.

Immediate Practice Implications

If you are a federal defense practitioner, this ruling requires an immediate audit of your post-conviction docket.

• Pivot your arguments: If you have pending compassionate release motions relying heavily on non-retroactive sentencing disparities, they are now dead on arrival. You must immediately file supplemental briefing pivoting to traditional U.S.S.G. § 1B1.13 factors: terminal illness, severe physical or mental deterioration due to age, or the death/incapacitation of a family caregiver.
• Manage client expectations: The era of leveraging statutory evolution for early release is over. Clients serving pre-First Step Act mandatory minimums need to understand that the judicial avenue for relief has been closed.

A Procedural Gift: The Disqualified U.S. Attorneys

While the Supreme Court was busy closing doors, federal appellate courts recently handed defense attorneys a bizarre but highly potent procedural weapon. In a string of startling decisions over the last few months, multiple circuit courts have disqualified Trump-appointed U.S. Attorneys, finding they were not validly serving under the Appointments Clause and the Federal Vacancies Reform Act.

On September 9, the Ninth Circuit disqualified Sigal Chattah from serving as Nevada’s top federal prosecutor, stripping her of the authority to supervise criminal cases. This follows identical rulings from the Second and Third Circuits concerning Alina Habba in the District of New Jersey and John Sarcone in the Northern District of New York.

Why this matters for your practice: If you are defending a federal case in Nevada, New Jersey, or the Northern District of New York, you must immediately scrutinize the signature line and authorization trail of your client's indictment. If a disqualified U.S. Attorney—or a subordinate acting under their unlawfully delegated authority—signed off on the prosecution or authorized a wiretap, you have a prime opportunity for aggressive motion practice.

Expect the Department of Justice to frantically invoke the de facto officer doctrine, arguing that the invalid appointments constitute harmless error that shouldn't derail otherwise valid indictments. Do not concede this ground. The sheer constitutional chaos of unappointed executives directing federal criminal dockets is a structural error that demands suppression of evidence or outright dismissal of indictments.

Between the Supreme Court stripping equitable discretion from sentencing judges and appellate courts aggressively policing executive appointments, the landscape of federal criminal practice is shifting toward strict formalism. Success in this new era requires abandoning generalized "fairness" arguments and leaning heavily into rigid statutory interpretation and procedural exactitude.