On June 26, 2024, the United States Supreme Court, in a 6-3 ruling, held that 18 U.S.C. § 666(a)(1)(B) (“§ 666”) does not prohibit gratuities made to state or local government officials for past official acts. Rather, the Court clarified that § 666 only forbids state or local officials from accepting or agreeing to accept bribes (i.e., future payments for future official acts). Justice Kavanaugh delivered the opinion of the Court. Snyder v. United States, No. 23- 108, 603 U.S. ____ (2024).
The case at issue involved James Snyder (“Snyder”), a former mayor who awarded contracts to a local company to purchase five trucks. A year later, the local company paid Snyder $13,000 for alleged consulting work. A federal jury convicted Snyder of accepting an illegal gratuity in violation of § 666(a)(1)(B) as a result of that payment. Section 666, in relevant part, makes unlawful if a state or local government official:
corruptly solicits or demands for the benefit of any person, or accepts or agrees to accept, anything of value from any person, intending to be influenced or rewarded in connection with any business, transaction, or series of transactions of such organization, government, or agency involving anything of value of $ 5,000 or more … .
On appeal, Snyder argued that § 666 applied to bribes only, not after-the-fact gratuities. The Seventh Circuit disagreed and affirmed Snyder’s conviction, exacerbating an existing circuit split on how to interpret § 666.
The Supreme Court granted certiorari on the issue of whether § 666 criminalizes gratuities without any quid pro quo agreement. The Court agreed with Snyder, holding that the statute does not criminalize gratuities. The Court drew a distinction between bribes and gratuities, explaining that a bribe is typically a quid pro quo exchange for which a payment is made or agreed to for future official acts by officials and has long been regarded in law as inherently corrupt; a gratuity is typically a payment made in recognition of past official acts, without any quid pro agreement to take those acts, and could—but does not necessarily—raise ethical concerns.
The Court’s analysis was primarily based on the text of § 666, its legislative history, and structural considerations, all of which the Court concluded made clear that Congress consciously intended to draw a clear distinction between bribes and gratuities. However, in a more interesting and potentially far-reaching section of its opinion, the Court also cited the fair notice doctrine and observed that interpreting § 666 to cover gratuities “would create traps for unwary state and local officials.” The Court explicitly rejected the government’s contention that any concerns about overbreadth could be resolved by interpreting § 666 to cover only “wrongful” gratuities, and stated that “the Government does not identify any remotely clear lines separating an innocuous or obviously benign gratuity from a criminal gratuity.” Citing its recent decisions in McDonnell v. United States, 579 U.S. 550 (2016), Percoco v. United States, 598 U.S. 319 (2023), Ciminelli v. United States, 598 U.S. 306 (2023), Kelly v. United States, 590 U.S. 391 (2020), and Skilling v. United States, 561 U.S. 358 (2010), the Court wrote that:
Responding to the legitimate concern that the federal lines are unknown and unknowable to state and local officials, the Government advances the familiar plea that federal prosecutors can be trusted not to enforce this statute against small-time violators. But as this Court has said time and again, the Court cannot construe a criminal statute on the assumption that the Government will use it responsibly.
Thus, while in some respects a narrow decision, resolving a circuit split as to a somewhat rarely used criminal statute, this case can perhaps best be seen as another in a line of cases narrowly interpreting statutes that criminalize conduct without clear mens rea requirements.
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