“On a 6-3 party-line vote, the Supreme Court ruled..that state officials may accept \u201cgratuities\u201d from people who wish to reward them for their official actions, despite a federal anti-corruption statute that appears to ban such rewards.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote the opinion in Snyder v. United States<\/em><\/a> for the Court\u2019s Republican-appointed majority. Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson wrote the dissent on behalf of the Court\u2019s three Democratic appointees.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Snyder<\/em> turns on a distinction between \u201cbribes\u201d and \u201cgratuities.\u201d As Kavanaugh writes, \u201cbribes are payments made or agreed to before<\/em> an official act in order to influence the official with respect to that future official act.\u201d Gratuities, by contrast, \u201care typically payments made to an official after<\/em> an official act as a token of appreciation.\u201d (Emphasis added.)”<\/p>\n\n\n\n …<\/p>\n\n\n\n ” As Jackson writes in her dissent, the most natural reading of this statute is that it targets both bribes (payments that \u201cinfluenced\u201d a future decision) and gratuities (payments that \u201crewarded\u201d a past decision). As Jackson writes,<\/p>\n\n\n\n “everyone knows what a reward is. It is a $20 bill pulled from a lost wallet at the time of its return to its grateful owner. A surprise ice cream outing after a report card with straight As. The bar tab picked up by a supervisor celebrating a job well done by her team. A reward often says \u201cthank you\u201d or \u201cgood job,\u201d rather than \u201cplease.\u201d”<\/p>\n\n\n\n Jackson argues that the statute should be read to prohibit \u201crewards corruptly accepted by government officials in ways that are functionally indistinguishable from taking a bribe,\u201d much like the payment at issue in this case appears to be.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n …<\/p>\n\n\n\n “Kavanaugh\u2019s strongest argument is that the law makes it a very serious crime, punishable by up to 15 years in prison, for a federal official to accept a bribe, but federal officials who accept gratuities only risk two years in prison. Meanwhile, the statute at issue in Snyder<\/em>, which only applies to state officials, applies a 10-year sentence across the board. So Kavanaugh argues that it would be odd to read the law to draw a sharp distinction between bribes and gratuities given to federal officials but to make no distinction when state officials accept a gift.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In any event, the decision in Snyder <\/em>is narrow. It does not rule that Congress could not ban gratuities. It simply rules that this particular statute only reaches bribes. That said, the Court\u2019s Republican majority also has a long history of imposing constitutional limits<\/a> on the government\u2019s ability to fight corruption and restrict money in politics.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n