Indeed, a review of the Commission’s voting history from 2024 and 2023 shows that the Commission tends to vote unanimously. In both years, the Commission had seven voting members with four of them Democrats and three of them Republicans: (1) Chair Judge Carlton W. Reeves (Democrat), (2) Vice Chair Judge Luis Felipe Restrepo (Democrat), (3) Vice Chair Laura E. Mate (Democrat), (4) Vice Chair Claire Murray (Republican), (5) Commissioner Candice C. Wong (Republican), (6) Commissioner Judge John Gleeson (Democrat), and (7) Commissioner Judge Claria Horn Boom (Republican).4 In 2024, the Commission adopted six amendments all unanimously.5 Similarly, in 2023, it passed 11 amendments, of which 10 were unanimous. The eleventh was adopted with a vote along party lines.6 This voting history suggests that the Commissioners’ party affiliations are not a strong predictor of how they will vote.
Of the Commission’s seven voting members from 2024 and 2023, five of them remain on the Commission for this 2025 term: (1) Chair Reeves, (2) Vice Chair Restrepo, (3) Vice Chair Mate, (4) Vice Chair Murray, and (5) Commissioner Wong.7 In other words, the Commission’s current members are no strangers to working together and voting unanimously. Indeed, in 2023, on the one occasion that the Commission didn’t vote unanimously, the members effusively praised one another. Commissioner Wong “expressed her, Vice Chair Murray, and Commission[er] Boom’s enormous respect for their friends and colleagues on the Commission and for their good faith efforts to enact improvements to the criminal justice system,”8 while Vice Chair Murray “echoed Commissioner Wong’s remarks about the deep respect she and Commission[er] Boom had for their colleagues, who they also counted as friends, and for their efforts to improve the legal system.”9 Similarly, Vice Chair Mate stated that “it was an honor to work with this group of commissioners,” and Vice Chair Restrepo recounted that “he found himself persuaded by his colleagues to change his position on a given issue [and] was grateful to all of his colleagues for fostering an environment of collegiality and an open and robust exchange of ideas.”10
The two proposed amendments before the Commission in 2025 relate to supervised release and drug offenses.11 The amendment relating to supervised release has two parts – Part A and Part B – both of which have the goal of giving courts greater discretion in determining issues relating to supervised release.12 Part A would, among other things, “remove the requirement that a court impose a term of supervised release when a sentence of imprisonment of more than one year is imposed, so a court would be required to impose supervised release only when required by statute.”13 Part B would, among other things, separate the provisions addressing violations of probation from those addressing violations of supervised released by removing all references to supervised release from one part of the relevant chapter and creating a new part in the chapter to address supervised release violations only.14 By separating how courts should approach violations of probation, “which serves a punitive function,” versus supervised release, “a primary function of which is to fulfill rehabilitative ends[] distinct from those served by incarceration,” the Commission would identify “the need for more flexible, individualized responses” violations of supervised release.15
The amendment relating to drug offenses has five parts with a number of subparts.16 The five parts try to: reduce overreliance on drug type and quantity to determine offense culpability and sentencing;17 address disparate sentences for methamphetamine mixtures versus higher levels of purity of the drug;18 revise the enhancement for mispresenting or marketing a mixture or substance containing fentanyl;19 distinguish between machine guns and other weapons used in drug-related offenses;20 and expands the application of what is known as the “safety valve” provision of federal sentencing.21 Section 3553(f) of title 18, United States Code, “allows a court to impose a sentence without regard to any statutory minimum penalty if it finds that a defendant meets certain criteria” – this provision is often referred to as a safety valve.22 However, “[t]he safety valve applies only to offenses under 21 U.S.C. § 841, § 844, § 846, § 960, or § 963, or 46 U.S.C. § 70503 or § 70506, and to defendants who, among other things, ‘truthfully provided to the Government all information and evidence the defendant has concerning the offense or offenses that were part of the same course of conduct or of a common scheme or plan.’”23 The amendment clarifies that a defendant need not provide the information to the Government at an in-person meeting but may do so via written disclosure, thereby expanding access to the safety valve provision.24
In 2023, the Commission unanimously adopted an amendment expanding the safety valve provision,25 as well as another amendment to enhance offenses where the defendant represented or marketed as a legitimately manufactured drug another mixture or substance containing fentanyl.26 This recent voting history suggests that the Commission may now again in the 2025 term unanimously adopt at least the parts of the drug offenses amendment that expand safety valve sentencing and that revise the enhancement for the specific fentanyl-related offense, if not the entire drug offenses amendment.
In contrast, the Commission’s voting record in 2024 and 2023 does not provide insight into its stance on supervised release and therefore how it may vote now on the supervised release amendment. Regardless, there is nothing in the Commission’s recent voting history to indicate that the Commission will split along party lines on the 2025 proposed amendments, as the only amendment that split the Commission back in 2023 was related to compassionate release.27
If the Commission follows the procedure it followed in the 2024 and 2023 terms, it will likely hold a public meeting to vote on the 2025 proposed amendments in April.28
1USSC, Proposed Amendments to the Sentencing Guidelines, January 24, 2025, https://www.ussc.gov/sites/default/files/pdf/amendment-process/reader-friendly-amendments/20250130_rf-proposed.pdf.
2USSC, Organization, https://www.ussc.gov/about/who-we-are/organization.
3USSC, About the Commissioners, https://www.ussc.gov/commissioners (listing the five current voting members: (1) Chair Judge Carlton W. Reeves, (2) Vice Chair Judge Luis Felipe Restrepo, (3) Vice Chair Laura E. Mate, (4) Vice Chair Claire Murray, and (5) Commissioner Candice C. Wong; ex officio members are nonvoting members); Nate Raymond, Biden’s sentencing panel noms vow to implement criminal justice reform law, Reuters, June 8, 2022, https://www.reuters.com/legal/government/bidens-sentencing-panel-noms-vow-implement-criminal-justice-reform-law-2022-06-08/ (noting that Chair Reeves, Vice Chair Restrepo, and Vice Chair Mate are Democrats, whereas Vice Chair Murray and Commissioner Wong are Republicans).
4USSC, Public Meeting Minutes, April 17, 2024, https://www.ussc.gov/sites/default/files/pdf/amendment-process/public-hearings-and-meetings/20240417/minutes.pdf; USSC, Public Meeting Minutes, April 5, 2023, https://www.ussc.gov/sites/default/files/pdf/amendment-process/public-hearings-and-meetings/20230405/20230405_minutes.pdf; Nate Raymond, Biden’s sentencing panel noms vow to implement criminal justice reform law, Reuters, June 8, 2022, https://www.reuters.com/legal/government/bidens-sentencing-panel-noms-vow-implement-criminal-justice-reform-law-2022-06-08/ (noting that Chair Reeves, Vice Chair Restrepo, Vice Chair Mate, and Commissioner Gleeson are Democrats, whereas Vice Chair Murray, Commissioner Wong, and Commissioner Boom are Republicans).
5USSC, Amendments to the Sentencing Guidelines, April 30, 2024, https://www.ussc.gov/sites/default/files/pdf/amendment-process/reader-friendly-amendments/202405_RF.pdf; USSC, Public Meeting Minutes, April 17, 2024, https://www.ussc.gov/sites/default/files/pdf/amendment-process/public-hearings-and-meetings/20240417/minutes.pdf, at 4-5 (amendment on acquitted conduct); at 3-4 (amendment on the rule for calculating loss); at 5-6 (amendment on Circuit conflicts); at 4 (amendment on youthful individuals); at 6-7 (amendment on miscellaneous issues); and at 7-8 (amendment on technical issues).
At the same public meeting at which these amendments were passed, the Commission later split along party lines on some but not all votes on whether to prepare a retroactivity impact analysis for some of these amendments and on whether to publish some of these amendments in the Federal Register for comment on retroactivity. See USSC, Public Meeting Minutes, April 17, 2024, https://www.ussc.gov/sites/default/files/pdf/amendment-process/public-hearings-and-meetings/20240417/minutes.pdf, at 8 (4-3 vote on whether to prepare a retroactivity impact analysis on the acquitted conduct amendment); 8 (4-3 vote on whether to publish the acquitted conduct amendment in the Federal Register for comment on retroactivity); at 8-9 (4-3 vote on whether to prepare a retroactivity impact analysis on Part A of the Circuit conflict amendment); and at 9 (4-3 vote on whether to publish Part A of the Circuit conflict amendment in the Federal Register for comment on retroactivity); but see id. at 9 (voting unanimously to prepare a retroactivity impact analysis on Part B of the Circuit conflict amendment); at 10 (voting unanimously to publish Part B of the Circuit conflict amendment in the Federal Register for comment on retroactivity); at 10 (voting unanimously to prepare a retroactivity impact analysis on Part D of the miscellaneous issues amendment); and at 10-11 (voting unanimously to publish Part D of the miscellaneous issues amendment in the Federal Register for comment on retroactivity).
6USSC, Amendments to the Sentencing Guidelines, April 27, 2023, https://www.ussc.gov/sites/default/files/pdf/amendment-process/reader-friendly-amendments/202305_RF.pdf; USSC, Public Meeting Minutes, April 5, 2023, https://www.ussc.gov/sites/default/files/pdf/amendment-process/public-hearings-and-meetings/20230405/20230405_minutes.pdf, at 13-15 (amendment on crime legislation); at 11 (amendment on sexual abuse offenses); at 17-18 (amendment on First Step Act – Drug Offenses); at 10-11 (amendment on fake pills); at 15-17 (amendment on firearm offenses); at 15 (amendment on Circuit conflicts); at 11-12 (amendment on criminal history); at 12-13 (amendment on career offenders); at 9-10 (amendment on miscellaneous issues); at 9 (amendment on technical issues). The split vote was on amendment on the First Step Act – reduction in term of imprisonment under 18 U.S.C. § 3582(c)(1)(A). Id. at 18-27.
At the same public meeting at which these amendments were passed, the Commission later split along party lines with the four Democrats voting in favor and the three Republicans abstaining on two occasions: First on whether to prepare a retroactivity impact analysis on the criminal history amendment, and then on whether to publish that amendment in the Federal Register for comment on retroactivity. See USSC, Public Meeting Minutes, April 5, 2023, https://www.ussc.gov/sites/default/files/pdf/amendment-process/public-hearings-and-meetings/20230405/20230405_minutes.pdf, at 27-28.
7USSC, About the Commissioners, https://www.ussc.gov/commissioners.
8USSC, Public Meeting Minutes, April 5, 2023, https://www.ussc.gov/sites/default/files/pdf/amendment-process/public-hearings-and-meetings/20230405/20230405_minutes.pdf, at 19-20.
9Id., at 21.
10Id., at 30.
11USSC, Proposed Amendments to the Sentencing Guidelines, January 24, 2025, https://www.ussc.gov/sites/default/files/pdf/amendment-process/reader-friendly-amendments/20250130_rf-proposed.pdf.
12Id., at 1-2, 4, and 27.
13Id., at 4.
14Id., at 27-28.
15Id. at 27.
16Id., at 55.
17Id., at 57.
18Id., at 80.
19Id., at 104.
20Id., at 108.
21Id., at 110.
22Id.
23Id. (quoting 18 U.S.C. § 3553(f)).
24USSC, Proposed Amendments to the Sentencing Guidelines, January 24, 2025, https://www.ussc.gov/sites/default/files/pdf/amendment-process/reader-friendly-amendments/20250130_rf-proposed.pdf, at 110.
25USSC, Amendments to the Sentencing Guidelines, April 27, 2023, https://www.ussc.gov/sites/default/files/pdf/amendment-process/reader-friendly-amendments/202305_RF.pdf; at 35.
26Id., at 43.
27Id., at 1-2.
28In 2024, the Commission held a public meeting to vote on the 2024 amendments on April 17, 2024 after it held a public hearing to receive testimony on those amendments on March 6-7, 2024. In 2023, the Commission held a public meeting to vote on the 2023 amendments on April 5, 2023 after it held public hearings to receive testimony on those amendments on March 7-8, 2023 and February 23-24, 2023. The Commission recently held public hearings to receive testimony on the 2025 amendments on March 12-13, 2025 and February 12, 2025. See USSC, Public Meetings and Hearings, https://www.ussc.gov/policymaking/meetings-hearings.
