Decision Alert: Supreme Court Holds That Federal Anti-Corruption Statute Does Not Extend to Gratuities for State and Local Officials

On June 26, 2024, the Supreme Court held in Snyder v. United States that 18 U.S.C. § 666(a)(1)(B), an anti-corruption statute criminalizing bribes to state and local officials, does not extend to gratuities. Justice Kavanaugh authored the majority opinion. Justice Jackson wrote a dissent, joined by two other justices.

As summarized in Dykema’s May 2024 edition, Petitioner James Snyder was a mayor who, while in office, accepted $13,000 from a truck dealership that had previously been awarded government contracts. While Snyder alleged that the payment was for consulting services, the federal government argued that he corruptly solicited and accepted a $13,000 reward in return for the truck contracts. Two juries convicted Snyder under Section 666, among other laws. At both trials, the government argued that the $13,000 payment represented a gratuity for the past action of awarding the truck contracts. The Seventh Circuit affirmed the conviction, finding that while Section 666(a)(1)(B) does not specifically include the terms bribe or gratuity, it does prohibit payments intended to “influence[]” or “reward[]” and thus encompasses both bribes and gratuities.

Reversing and remanding, the Supreme Court disagreed for six interrelated reasons. First, the current text of Section 666 is modeled after other bribery statutes, such as 18 U.S.C. § 201(b), rather than statutes mentioning gratuities such as 18 U.S.C. § 201(c). Second, the statutory history reinforces this understanding, as Section 666 originally borrowed language from the gratuities statute but Congress specifically amended it in 1986 to more closely resemble bribery statutes like Section 201(b). Third, no other provision in the U.S. Code prohibits both bribes and gratuities in the same provision. Fourth, the separation of violations for bribery and gratuities traces back to the separate punishments for each. Fifth, a contrary reading of Section 666 would gut the states’ ability to regulate the permissible scope of interactions between state officials and their constituents. Sixth, the government failed to identify clear lines between a gratuity and a criminal gratuity.

In a concurring opinion, Justice Gorsuch discussed what he calls the “ancient rule of lenity” that favors Snyder based on uncertainty in the scope of Section 666. In a lengthy dissenting opinion, Justice Jackson, joined by Justices Sotomayor and Kagan, took aim at what she calls an “absurd and atextual reading… only today’s Court could love.” The dissenting opinion points to the majority’s concern about overregulation as the real driver behind the Court’s holding and notes that the inherent guardrails in Section 666 already prevent the type of overbreadth that the majority is wary of.

Takeaway

• 18 U.S.C. § 666(a)(1)(B) does not extend to gratuities accepted by state and local officials. This will likely result in fewer federal prosecutions of state and local officials as the criminality of gratuities is instead redressable by the individual states.

For more information, please contact Chantel Febus, James Azadian, Cory Webster, Christopher Sakauye, Monika Harris, Puja Valera, or A. Joseph Duffy, IV.