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] Vartelas pleaded guilty in 1994 to "conspiracy to make or possess a counterfeit security."^[5]

In January 2003, Vartelas took a one-week trip to Greece. While returning through John F. Kennedy Airport, an immigration officer questioned Vartelas about his 1994 conviction.^[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."^[4]

Vartelas appeared before an immigration judge in a series of hearings. In 2006, an immigration judge denied Vartelas' application for waiver and ordered Vartelas removed to Greece. Vartelas made a timely appeal to the Board of Immigration Appeals, which the board dismissed.^[5]

Vartelas subsequently filed a motion to reopen with the Board of Immigration Appeals. The motion to reopen "claimed that Vartelas' prior counsel was ineffective having failed to raise the issue of whether 8 U.S.C. § 1101(a)(13)(C)(v) could be applied retroactively."^[5] The Board of Immigration Appeals denied the motion to reopen; Vartelas filed a petition for review with the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. The Second Circuit denied the petition for review; Vartelas appealed the Second Circuit's decision to the United States Supreme Court.^[5]

In a 6–3 opinion written by Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the Court held that the enforcement of a provision of the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996^[1] was improperly applied retroactively to Panagis Vartelas. Normally, laws are presumed to apply prospectively only. Absent clear evidence of a congressional intent that the law operate retroactively, it was error to do so^[3] Justice Ginsburg's opinion was joined by Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Anthony Kennedy, Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor, and Elena Kagan.

Justice Antonin Scalia wrote a dissenting opinion in which he stated that "we should concern ourselves with the statute's actual operation on regulated parties, not with retroactivity as an abstract concept or as a substitute for fairness concerns."^[2] He was joined in his opinion by Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito. Scalia held that the law was not applied retroactively under a "commonsense approach" to the statute and therefore this was a "relatively easy case."^[2]

• List of United States Supreme Court cases, volume 566