Cite as: 514 U. S. 499 (1995)
Stevens, J., dissenting
found an ex post facto violation in a statute that eliminated the opportunity to accumulate gain time for the first six months following parole revocation as applied to an inmate whose crime occurred before the statute's enactment).
These settled propositions make perfectly clear that the retroactive application of a simple statute that changed the frequency of a statutorily mandated annual parole suitability hearing would constrict an inmate's opportunity to earn early release and would thus constitute increased punishment in violation of the Ex Post Facto Clause. It is thus no surprise that nearly every Federal Court of Appeals and State Supreme Court to consider the issue has so held. See, e. g., 16 F. 3d 1001 (CA9 1994) (case below); Roller v. Cavanaugh, 984 F. 2d 120 (CA4), cert. dism'd, 510 U. S. 42 (1993); Akins v. Snow, 922 F. 2d 1558 (CA11), cert. denied, 501 U. S. 1260 (1991); Rodriguez v. United States Parole Commission, 594 F. 2d 170 (CA7 1979); State v. Reynolds, 642 A. 2d 1368 (N. H. 1994); Griffin v. State, 315 S. C. 285, 433 S. E. 2d 862 (1993), cert. denied, 510 U. S. 1093 (1994); Tiller v. Klincar, 138 Ill. 2d 1, 561 N. E. 2d 576 (1990), cert. denied, 498 U. S. 1031 (1991).3
The 1981 amendment at issue in this case, of course, is not such a simple statute. It is therefore necessary to consider whether the particular features of that amendment eliminate the ex post facto problems.
3 The two contrary decisions cited by the parties, see Bailey v. Garde-bring, 940 F. 2d 1150 (CA8 1991); In re Jackson, 39 Cal. 3d 464, 703 P. 2d 100 (1985), do not undermine my thesis. In Bailey v. Gardebring, a 2-to-1 decision, the Court of Appeals found no ex post facto violation when Minnesota failed to provide a prisoner with an annual parole hearing. However, one member of the majority premised his conclusion on the view that the Minnesota parole regulations were not "laws"; the other member of the majority concurred only in the result, but authored no opinion. In In re Jackson, the California Supreme Court upheld the very amendment at issue in this case and thus did not speak to the more general situation I have described in the text.
519
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