This Feb. 17, 2016 file photo shows the Supreme Court in Washington.

The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday overturned the conviction of a Kansas man who was charged with failing to update his registration as a sex offender after he left the state and moved to the Philippines.

In a unanimous opinion written by the late Justice Antonin Scalia, the court threw out the conviction of Lester Ray Nichols for failing to re-register, and it clarified the scope of a federal law known as the Sex Offender Registration and Notification Act, or SORNA.

That law was enacted in 2009 to bring federal uniformity to earlier laws enacted by Congress and all 50 states known as “Megan’s law” that require convicted sex offenders to register with law enforcement agencies, reporting their name, address and places of work or school. Those offenders are required to appear in person to update their registrations whenever any of those details change.

Nichols was convicted in 2003, before the law was updated, on federal charges of engaging in interstate travel to have sex with a minor. He was eventually released in December 2011 after the updated law took effect, and continued to live in the Leavenworth area.

He remained in Leavenworth until Nov. 12, 2012, when, according to the court’s decision, “he abruptly disconnected all of his telephone lines, deposited his apartment keys in his landlord’s drop-box, and boarded a flight to Manila.”

When he failed to show up at a mandatory sex-offender treatment program, a warrant was issued for his arrest, and he was eventually brought back to the United States on charges that he had failed to notify Kansas officials of his departure.

But the Supreme Court said Nichols was not required to notify Kansas that he had left the state. Nor was he required to notify the Philippine government because it had no jurisdiction in the U.S. criminal matter.

Under SORNA, the court said, sex offenders are required to notify at least one of the jurisdictions “involved” whenever they change their address.

Specifically, the law says a sex offender “shall register, and keep the registration current, in each jurisdiction where the offender resides, where the offender is an employee, and where the offender is a student.”

The court noted that the federal statute refers to each of those conditions in the present tense, and therefore cannot be construed to mean that offenders must notify a jurisdiction after they have left.