138 S. Ct. 798 (2018)
In September 2013, a federal grand jury in the District of Columbia indicted Rodney Class.1 The indictment charged him with possessing a firearm in his locked jeep parked in a lot on the grounds of the United States Capitol in violation of 40 U.S.C. §5104(e)(1).2 Class appeared pro se in the United States District Court for the District of Columbia and moved to dismiss the indictment.3 He alleged that the statute violated the Second Amendment and that it failed to give fair notice under the Due Process Clause of the areas where firearms were banned.4
The District Court denied the motion to dismiss.5 Several months later Class pleaded guilty to possession of a firearm on U.S. Capitol Grounds.6 The written plea agreement listed specific categories of rights that Class waived, including statute-of-limitations defenses, specified trial rights, the right to appeal a sentence at or below the guideline range, most collateral attacks, and rights to investigative information.7 It also enumerated categories of claims he could still raise on appeal, such as newly discovered evidence, ineffective assistance of counsel, and statutes providing for sentence reductions, but said nothing about the right to challenge the constitutionality of the statute of conviction.8
The District Court conducted a Rule 11(b) plea hearing, accepted the guilty plea after giving the required warnings, and sentenced Class to 24 days of imprisonment followed by 12 months of supervised release.9 Class appealed to the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit and again raised his Second Amendment and due-process claims.10 The Court of Appeals held that the guilty plea had waived those claims.11 The Supreme Court granted certiorari.12
Whether a guilty plea bars a federal criminal defendant from challenging the constitutionality of the statute of conviction on direct appeal?13
A guilty plea does not bar a federal criminal defendant from challenging the constitutionality of the statute of conviction on direct appeal.14 Such a claim challenges the government's power to prosecute rather than an independent pre-plea constitutional violation.15 It can be resolved on the existing record without contradicting the indictment or plea agreement.16
No. Class's Second Amendment and due process claims challenge the validity of 40 U.S.C. §5104(e)(1) on its face.17 They are consistent with the facts admitted in the indictment and plea.18 They require no new evidence beyond the record already before the District Court.19 The written plea agreement expressly preserved appellate claims for newly discovered evidence, ineffective assistance, and sentence reductions while remaining silent on constitutional challenges to the statute of conviction.20
Precedents establish that a guilty plea waives only independent claims of antecedent constitutional violations such as grand jury composition rather than claims going to the power of the government to bring the prosecution at all.21
A guilty plea does not bar a federal criminal defendant from challenging the constitutionality of the statute of conviction on direct appeal.
Related opinions on this issue
Joined by Justice Kennedy And Justice Thomas
Justice Alito dissented.22 He argued that the majority's holding contradicts longstanding precedent and undermines the finality of guilty pleas.23 Guilty pleas resolve roughly 95 percent of felony cases.24
A claim that the statute of conviction is unconstitutional is no less independent than the grand jury selection claim barred in Tollett v. Henderson.25 Both challenge the validity of the prosecution without questioning the defendant's factual guilt.26 Allowing such post-plea challenges would expose countless convictions to collateral attack and place a heavy burden on the courts.27