Snyder v. United States

P R E L I M I N A R Y P R I N T
Volume 603 U. S. Part 1
Pages 1–42
OFFICIAL REPORTS
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T H E S U P R E M E C O U R T
June 26, 2024
REBECCA A. WOMELDORF
reporter of decisions
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CASES ADJUDGED
IN THE
SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES
AT
OCTOBER TERM, 2023
SNYDER v. UNITED STATES
certiorari to the united states court of appeals for
the seventh circuit
No. 23–108. Argued April 15, 2024—Decided June 26, 2024
Federal and state law distinguish between two kinds of payments to public
offcials—bribes and gratuities. Bribes are typically payments made or
agreed to before an offcial act in order to infuence the public offcial
with respect to that future offcial act. Gratuities are typically pay-
ments made to a public offcial after an offcial act as a reward or token
of appreciation. While American law generally treats bribes as inher-
ently corrupt and unlawful, the law's treatment of gratuities is more
nuanced. Some gratuities might be innocuous, and others may raise
ethical and appearance concerns. Federal, state, and local governments
have drawn different lines on which gratuities and gifts are acceptable
and which are not.
For example, Congress has established comprehensive prohibitions on
both bribes and gratuities to federal offcials. If a federal offcial ac-
cepts a bribe for an offcial act, federal bribery law provides for a 15-
year maximum prison sentence. See 18 U. S. C. § 201(b). By contrast,
if a federal offcial accepts a prohibited gratuity, federal gratuities law
sets a 2-year maximum prison sentence. See § 201(c).
In 1984, Congress passed and President Reagan signed a law now
codifed at 18 U. S. C. § 666 that, as relevant here, extended the gratui-
ties prohibition in § 201(c) to most state and local offcials. Congress
reversed course after two years and amended § 666 to avoid the law's
“possible application to acceptable commercial and business practices.”
1
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2 SNYDER
v. UNITED STATES
Syllabus
H. R. Rep. No. 99–797, p. 30 (1986). As amended, the text of § 666 now
closely
resembles the bribery provision for federal offcials, § 201(b), and
makes it a crime for most state and local offcials to “corruptly” solicit,
accept, or agree to accept “anything of value” “intending to be infu-
enced or rewarded in connection with” any offcial business or transac-
tion worth $5,000 or more. §§ 666(a)(1)(B), (b). That crime carries a
10-year maximum prison sentence. § 666(a).
This case involves James Snyder, who is the former mayor of Portage,
Indiana. In 2013, while Snyder was mayor, Portage awarded two con-
tracts to a local truck company, Great Lakes Peterbilt, and ultimately
purchased fve trash trucks from the company for about $1.1 million.
In 2014, Peterbilt cut a $13,000 check to Snyder. The FBI and federal
prosecutors suspected that the payment was a gratuity for the City's
trash truck contracts. But Snyder said that the payment was for his
consulting services as a contractor for Peterbilt. A federal jury ulti-
mately convicted Snyder of accepting an illegal gratuity in violation of
§ 666(a)(1)(B). The District Court sentenced Snyder to 1 year and 9
months in prison. On appeal, Snyder argued that § 666 criminalizes
only bribes, not gratuities. The Seventh Circuit affrmed Snyder's
conviction.
Held: Section 666 proscribes bribes to state and local offcials but does not
make it a crime for those offcials to accept gratuities for their past acts.
Pp. 10–20.
(a) Six reasons, taken together, lead the Court to conclude that § 666
is a bribery statute and not a gratuities statute—text, statutory history,
statutory structure, statutory punishments, federalism, and fair notice.
Pp. 10–18.
(1) The statutory text strongly suggests that § 666—like § 201(b)—
is a bribery statute, not a gratuities statute. The dividing line between
§ 201(b)'s bribery provision and § 201(c)'s gratuities provision is that
bribery requires an offcial to have a corrupt state of mind and to accept
(or agree to accept) a payment intending to be infuenced in an offcial
act. Section 666 shares the defning characteristics of § 201(b)'s bribery
provision. By contrast, § 666 bears little resemblance to § 201(c), which
contains no express mens rea requirement. Pp. 10–12.
(2) The statutory history reinforces that result. When enacted,
§ 666 borrowed language from § 201(c), the gratuities statute for federal
offcials. Two years later, Congress amended § 666 to model it instead
on § 201(b), the bribery statute. It would be strange to interpret § 666,
as the Government suggests, to mean the same thing now that it did
before the amendment. P. 12.
(3) Statutory structure reinforces that § 666 is a bribery statute,
not a two-for-one bribery-and-gratuities statute as the Government pos-
its. The Government identifes no other provision in the U. S. Code

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3
Syllabus
that prohibits bribes and gratuities in the same provision. And § 201
does
not do so. That is because bribery and gratuities are “two sepa-
rate crimes” with “two different sets of elements.” United States v.
Sun-Diamond Growers of Cal., 526 U. S. 398, 404. Pp. 12–13.
(4) For federal offcials, Congress has separated bribery and gratui-
ties into two distinct provisions of § 201 for good reason: The crimes
receive different punishments that “refect their relative seriousness.”
Sun-Diamond, 526 U. S., at 405. For example, accepting a bribe as a
federal offcial is punishable by up to 15 years in prison, while accept-
ing an illegal gratuity as a federal offcial is punishable by up to only
2 years. If the Government were correct that § 666 also covered gratui-
ties, Congress would have inexplicably authorized punishing gratuities
to state and local offcials fve times more severely than gratuities to
federal offcials—10 years for state and local offcials compared to 2
years for federal offcials. The Government cannot explain why Con-
gress would have created such subst antial sentenci ng dispar ities.
Pp. 13–14.
(5) Interpreting § 666 as a gratuities statute would signifcantly in-
fringe on bedrock federalism principles. Generally, States have the
“prerogative to regulate the permissible scope of interactions between
state offcials and their constituents.” McDonnell v. United States, 579
U. S. 550, 576. The differing approaches by the state and local govern-
ments refect policy judgments about when gifts expressing apprecia-
tion to public offcials for their past acts cross the line from the innocu-
ous to the problematic. Those carefully calibrated policy decisions
would be gutted if the Court were to accept the Government's interpre-
tation of § 666. Reading § 666 to create a federal prohibition on gratui-
ties would suddenly subject 19 million state and local offcials to a new
and different regulatory regime for gratuities. The Court should hesi-
tate before concluding that Congress prohibited gratuities that state
and local governments have allowed. After all, Congress does not
lightly override state and local governments on such core matters of
state and local governance. Pp. 14–15.
(6) The Government's interpretation of the statute would create
traps for unwary state and local offcials. Sun-Diamond, 526 U. S., at
411. The Government says that the statute would not cover “innocu-
ous” or “obviously benign” gratuities, but the Government does not
identify any remotely clear lines separating such a gratuity from a crimi-
nal gratuity. The Government simply opines that state and local off-
cials may not accept wrongful gratuities. The Government's so-called
guidance would leave state and local offcials entirely at sea to guess
about what gifts they are allowed to accept under federal law, with the
threat of up to 10 years in federal prison if they happen to guess wrong.
That is not how federal criminal law works. And the Court has re-

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4 SNYDER
v. UNITED STATES
Syllabus
jected the view that it should construe a criminal statute on the assump-
ti
on that the Government will use it responsibly. See McDonnell, 579
U. S., at 576. Pp. 15–18.
(b) Faced with the phalanx of diffculties with its interpretation of
§ 666, the Government's argument boils down to one main point—that
§ 666 uses the term “rewarded” as well as “infuenced.” The Govern-
ment says that Congress would not have added the term “rewarded” to
“infuenced” in § 666 if the statute were meant to cover only bribes and
not also gratuities. That argument is misconceived. Contrary to the
premise of the Government's argument, bribery statutes sometimes use
the term “reward.” See, e. g., 18 U. S. C. § 600; 33 U. S. C. § 447. More-
over, without the term “rewarded” in § 666, an offcial might try to de-
fend against a bribery charge by saying that the payment was received
only after the offcial act and therefore could not have “infuenced” the
act. By including the term “rewarded,” Congress made clear that the
timing of the agreement is the key, not the timing of payment. Al-
though a gratuity or reward offered and accepted by a state or local
offcial after the offcial act may be unethical or illegal under other fed-
eral, state, or local laws, the gratuity does not violate § 666. Pp. 18–19.
71 F. 4th 555, reversed and remanded.
Kavanaugh, J., delivered the opinion of the Court, in which Roberts,
C. J., and Thomas, Alito, Gorsuch, and Barrett, JJ., joined. Gorsuch,
J., fled a concurring opinion, post, p. 20. Jackson, J., fled a dissenting
opinion, in which Sotomayor and Kagan, JJ., joined, post, p. 21.
Lisa M. Blatt argued the cause for petitioner. With her
on the briefs were Amy Mason Saharia, Sarah M. Harris,
Aaro n Z. Ro pe r, Kar i M. L o ren t so n, and Andréa E.
Gambino.
Colleen E. Roh Sinzdak argued the cause for the United
States. With her on the brief were Solicitor General Pre-
logar, Acting Assistant Attorney General Argentieri, Dep-
uty Solicitor General Feigin, and Kevin J. Barber.*
*Briefs of amici curiae urging reversal were fled for the American
Center for Law and Justice by Jay Alan Sekulow, Stuart J. Roth, Jordan
A. Sekulow, Craig L. Parshall, and Laura B. Hernandez; for the Interna-
tional Union of Operating Engineers, Local 150, AFL–CIO, by Terence H.
Campbell and Dale D. Pierson; for the James Madison Center for Free
Speech by James Bopp, Jr.; for the Laborers' International Union of North
America by Bruce R. Lerner and Leon Dayan; for the National Associa-

Cite
as: 603 U. S. 1 (2024)
5
Opinion of the Court
Justice Kavanaugh delivered the opinion of the Court.
Sec
tion 666 of Title 18 makes it a crime for state and local
offcials to “corruptly” solicit, accept, or agree to accept “any-
thing of value from any person, intending to be infuenced or
rewarded” for an offcial act. § 666(a)(1)(B). That law pro-
hibits state and local offcials from accepting bribes that are
promised or given before the offcial act. Those bribes are
punishable by up to 10 years' imprisonment.
The question in this case is whether § 666 also makes it a
crime for state and local offcials to accept gratuities—for
example, gift cards, lunches, plaques, books, framed photos,
or the like—that may be given as a token of appreciation
after the offcial act. The answer is no. State and local
governments often regulate the gifts that state and local of-
fcials may accept. Section 666 does not supplement those
state and local rules by subjecting 19 million state and local
offcials to up to 10 years in federal prison for accepting even
commonplace gratuities. Rather, § 666 leaves it to state and
local governments to regulate gratuities to state and local
offcials.
I
A
Federal and state law distinguish between two kinds of
payments to public offcials—bribes and gratuities. As a
general matter, bribes are payments made or agreed to be-
fore an offcial act in order to infuence the offcial with re-
spect to that future offcial act. American law generally
treats bribes as inherently corrupt and unlawful.
But the law's treatment of gratuities is more nuanced.
Gratuities are typically payments made to an offcial after an
offcial act as a token of appreciation. Some gratuities can
tion of Criminal Defense Lawyers by Brent T. Murphy and Samir Deger-
Sen; for the Separation of Powers Clinic by R. Trent McCotter; and for
the Washington Legal Foundation et al. by Christopher D. Man and Abbe
David Lowell.
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6 SNYDER
v. UNITED STATES
Opinion of the Court
be problematic. Others are commonplace and might be in-
nocuous.
A family gives a holiday tip to the mail carrier.
Parents send an end-of-year gift basket to their child's public
school teacher. A college dean gives a college sweatshirt to
a city council member who comes to speak at an event. A
state legislator's neighbor drops off a bottle of wine to con-
gratulate her for her work on a new law.
As those examples suggest, gratuities after the offcial act
are not the same as bribes before the offcial act. After all,
unlike gratuities, bribes can corrupt the offcial act—mean-
ing that the offcial takes the act for private gain, not for the
public good. That said, gratuities can sometimes also raise
ethical and appearance concerns. For that reason, Con-
gress, States, and local governments have long regulated
gratuities to public offcials.
Not surprisingly, different governments draw lines in dif-
ferent places. For example, some States allow public off-
cials to accept gifts below certain threshold amounts. E. g.,
Colo. Const., Art. XXIX, § 3(6) (allowing gifts under $75);
Kan. Stat. Ann. § 46–237(a)(1) (2021) (allowing gifts under
$40 per year); Mass. Gen. Laws, ch. 268A, §§ 3(b), (f ), 23(b),
(f ) (2020) (allowing gifts under $50); W. Va. Code Ann. § 61–
5A–6(b) (Lexis 2020) (allowing “trivial” gifts that pose “no
substantial risk of affecting offcial impartiality”).
Some States bar accepting any gifts for specifc activities,
like certain speaking engagements. E. g., Ark. Code Ann.
§ 5–52–108 (2016). Some States make accepting gifts for of-
fcial conduct a misdemeanor. E. g., Del. Code Ann., Tit. 11,
§ 1206 (Cum. Supp. 2022); W. Va. Code Ann. § 61–5A–9(d).
Other States make it a felony. E. g., Ariz. Rev. Stat. Ann.
§§ 38–505(A), 38–510(A)(1) (2019).
Many States make exceptions for certain gifts, such as
gifts from friends or family, travel reimbursements, cam-
paign contributions, and ceremonial gifts like honorary de-
grees and plaques. E. g., Colo. Const., Art. XXIX, § 3(3);
Mass. Gen. Laws, ch. 268A, §§ 3(f ), 23(f ); N. Y. Legis. Law

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7
Opinion of the Court
Ann. § 1–c( j) (West Cum. Supp. 2024); W. Va. Code Ann. § 61–
5A–
6(b).
Like the States, the counties, cities, and towns of America
take various approaches to regulating gratuities to their of-
fcials. Just within the State of Indiana, where the current
case arose, some local governments set a gift limit of $50, or
$100, or $200, or $300. E. g., Butler, Ind., Code of Ordi-
nances § 30.27(G) (2019); Gary, Ind., Municipal Code § 2–
472( b)(1) (2021); Va lparaiso, Ind., Code of Ordi nances
§ 36.05(B)(6) (2024); Noblesville, Ind., Code of Ordinances
§ 36.05(B)(2) (2024).
Some prohibit gifts only from business entities currently
doing business with the local government. E. g., Carmel,
Ind., Code of Ordinances § 2–184(f )(3) (2024). Others re-
strict gifts from businesses bidding for government con-
tracts. E. g., Johnson County, Ind., Code of Ordinances § 4–
6–1–1 (2024).
With respect to gratuities to state and local offcials, many
of those offcials are part-time and are allowed to hold out-
side employment. That reality can create complications for
regulating gifts to those offcials, and the rules often refect
that reality.
Meanwhile, Congress has established federal standards for
federal offcials. In 1962, Congress passed and President
Kennedy signed into law 18 U. S. C. § 201, which contains
comprehensive prohibitions on bribes and gratuities to fed-
eral offcials. See 76 Stat. 1119. As to gratuities, that stat-
ute imposes criminal penalties on federal offcials who seek
or accept “anything of value” for “any offcial act.” 18
U. S. C. § 201(c)(1)(B).
The U. S. Offce of Government Ethics, or OGE, has imple-
mented § 201 and promulgated numerous gratuities rules and
exceptions. See 5 CFR § 2635.202(c) (2023). For example,
OGE has stated that federal offcials may accept gifts that
are “motivated by a family relationship or personal friend-
ship,” not by the “position of the employee.” § 2635.204(b).

8 SNYDER
v. UNITED STATES
Opinion of the Court
And OGE has also carved out exceptions for offcials to ac-
cept
gifts of $20 or less per occasion, awards and honorary
degrees, refreshments at social events, and the like. See
§ 2635.204.
Importantly, because bribery can corrupt the offcial act,
Congress treats bribery as a far more serious offense than
gratuities. For example, if a federal offcial accepts a bribe,
federal bribery law provides for a 15-year maximum prison
sentence. See 18 U. S. C. § 201(b). By contrast, if a federal
offcial accepts a prohibited gratuity, federal gratuities law
sets a 2-year maximum prison sentence. See § 201(c).
B
In the 1970s and early 1980s, confusion emerged in the
Courts of Appeals over whether the federal bribery and gra-
tuities laws in § 201(b) and § 201(c) applied not only to federal
offcials but also to state and local offcials. See Salinas v.
United States, 522 U. S. 52, 58 (1997). In response, Con-
gress passed and President Reagan signed a law now codifed
at 18 U. S. C. § 666. See 98 Stat. 2143.
As relevant here, § 666 originally extended the gratuities
prohibition in § 201(c) to most state and local offcials. See
Salinas, 522 U. S., at 58; 18 U. S. C. § 666(b) (1982 ed., Supp. II).
But after only two years, Congress reversed course. In
1986, Congress amended § 666 and thereby avoided the law's
“possible application to acceptable commercial and business
practices.” H. R. Rep. No. 99–797, p. 30 (1986); see 100 Stat.
3612–3613. As a result of its amendment in 1986, the text
of § 666 for state and local offcials now closely resembles the
bribery provision for federal offcials, § 201(b), rather than
the gratuities provision for federal offcials, § 201(c). As rel-
evant here, § 666 makes it a crime for most state and local
offcials to “corruptly” solicit, accept, or agree to accept “any-
thing of value” “intending to be infuenced or rewarded in
connection with” any offcial business or transaction worth
$5,000 or more. §§ 666(a)(1)(B), (b). That crime carries a
10-year maximum prison sentence. § 666(a).
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Opinion of the Court
C
Th
is case involves the former mayor of Portage, Indiana.
Portage is a city in northwest Indiana with a population of
about 38,000.
Like other States, Indiana criminalizes bribery committed
by state and local officials. See Ind. Code § 35 – 44.1–1–
2(a)(2) (2023). Indiana also prescribes civil penalties such as
fnes, reprimands, and disqualifcation from state employ-
ment if state offcials accept gratuities in violation of the
State's Code of Ethics. See Ind. Code § 4–2–6–12 (2021); 42
Ind. Admin. Code § 1–5–1 (2024).
But Indiana does not impose general criminal or civil pro-
hibitions on local offcials who accept gratuities, leaving such
regulation to the local governments themselves. As rele-
vant here, the City of Portage sets limits on the gifts that
local offcials can accept from contractors doing business with
the City. See Portage, Ind., Municipal Code of Ordinances
§§ 2–178(e)–(f ) (2024).
In 2013, the City of Portage awarded two contracts to a
local truck company, Great Lakes Peterbilt, to purchase
trash trucks. In total, the City paid about $1.1 million for
fve trucks.
In 2014, Peterbilt cut a $13,000 check to James Snyder,
who was the mayor of Portage (and had been at the time of
the contracts). The FBI and federal prosecutors suspected
that the payment was a gratuity for the City's trash truck
contracts. But Snyder said that he had also agreed to be
a contractor for Peterbilt, providing consulting services.
(Like many jurisdictions around the country, neither Indiana
nor Portage apparently prohibited local offcials from obtain-
ing outside employment.) Snyder said that the payment
was for his consulting services.
Snyder has never been charged by state prosecutors for
bribery. And he has never been charged or disciplined by
Portage for violating the City's gift rules. The Federal
Government charged and a federal jury convicted Snyder of
accepting an illegal gratuity (the $13,000 check from Peter-
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10 SNYDER
v. UNITED STATES
Opinion of the Court
bilt) in violation of 18 U. S. C. § 666(a)(1)(B). The Govern-
ment
asked for about a 4- to 5-year prison sentence. The
District Court sentenced Snyder to 1 year and 9 months in
prison. App. to Pet. for Cert. 47a.
On appeal, Snyder argued that § 666 criminalizes only
bribes, not gratuities. The U. S. Court of Appeals for the
Seventh Circuit disagreed based on that court's precedent
interpreting § 666 to cover both bribes and gratuities. 71
F. 4th 555, 578–580 (2023). So the Court of Appeals affrmed
the conviction.
In light of a split in the Courts of Appeals over whether
§ 666 criminalizes gratuities as well as bribes, this Court
granted certiorari. 601 U. S. ––– (2023). Compare United
States v. Hamilton, 46 F. 4th 389, 397 (CA5 2022); United
States v. Fernandez, 722 F. 3d 1, 26 (CA1 2013), with United
States v. Abbey, 560 F. 3d 513, 520 (CA6 2009); United States
v. Zimmermann, 509 F. 3d 920, 927 (CA8 2007); United
States v. Agostino, 132 F. 3d 1183, 1190 (CA7 1997); United
States v. Bonito, 57 F. 3d 167, 171 (CA2 1995).
II
A
The question in this case is whether 18 U. S. C. § 666(a)
(1)(B) makes it a federal crime for state and local offcials to
accept gratuities for their past offcial acts. The answer is
no. Six reasons, taken together, lead us to conclude that
§ 666 is a bribery statute and not a gratuities statute—text,
statutory history, statutory structure, statutory punish-
ments, federalism, and fair notice.
First is the text of § 666. Section 666(a)(1)(B) makes it a
crime for state and local offcials to “corruptly” accept a pay-
ment “intending to be infuenced or rewarded” for an offcial
act.
1
Congress modeled the text of § 666(a)(1)(B) for state
1
Section 666(a)(1)(B) provides:
“Whoever . . . being an agent of an organization, or of a State, local, or
Indian tribal government, or any agency thereof [that receives more than
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11
Opinion of the Court
and local offcials on § 201(b), the bribery provision for fed-
era
l offcials. Section 201(b) similarly makes it a crime for
federal offcials to “corruptly” accept a payment “in return
for” “being infuenced” in an offcial act.
2
By contrast, § 666
bears little resemblance to § 201(c), the gratuities provision
for federal offcials, which contains no express mens rea re-
quirements and simply makes it a crime for federal offcials
to accept a payment “for or because of any offcial act.”
3
Therefore, the dividing line between § 201(b)'s bribery pro-
vision and § 201(c)'s gratuities provision is that bribery re-
quires that the offcial have a corrupt state of mind and
accept (or agree to accept) the payment intending to be
infuenced in the offcial act. See United States v. Sun-
$10,000 in federal funds annually] corruptly solicits or demands for the
beneft of any person, or accepts or agrees to accept, anything of value
from any person, intending to be infuenced or rewarded in connection
with any business, transaction, or series of transactions of such organiza-
tion, government, or agency involving any thing of value of $5,000 or more;
. . . shall be fned under this title, imprisoned not more than 10 years,
or both.”
2
Section 201(b)(2)(A) provides:
“Whoever . . . being a public offcial or person selected to be a public
offcial, directly or indirectly, corruptly demands, seeks, receives, accepts,
or agrees to receive or accept anything of value personally or for any other
person or entity, in return for: being infuenced in the performance of any
offcial act; . . . shall be fned under this title or not more than three times
the monetary equivalent of the thing of value, whichever is greater, or
imprisoned for not more than ffteen years, or both, and may be disquali-
fed from holding any offce of honor, trust, or proft under the United
States.”
3
Section 201(c)(1)(B) provides:
“Whoever otherwise than as provided by law for the proper discharge
of offcial duty . . . being a public offcial, former public offcial, or person
selected to be a public offcial, otherwise than as provided by law for the
proper discharge of offcial duty, directly or indirectly demands, seeks,
receives, accepts, or agrees to receive or accept anything of value person-
ally for or because of any offcial act performed or to be performed by
such offcial or person . . . shall be fned under this title or imprisoned for
not more than two years, or both.”

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12 SNYDER
v. UNITED STATES
Opinion of the Court
Diamond Growers of Cal., 526 U. S. 398, 404–405 (1999).
Sec
tion 666 shares the defning characteristics of § 201(b)'s
bribery provision: the corrupt state of mind and the intent
to be infuenced in the offcial act. The statutory text there-
fore strongly suggests that § 666—like § 201(b)—is a bribery
statute, not a gratuities statute.
Second is the statutory history, which reinforces that tex-
tual analysis. In 1984, when frst enacting § 666 for state
and local offcials, Congress borrowed language from the gra-
tuities statute for federal offcials, § 201(c). See 18 U. S. C.
§ 666(b) (1982 ed., Supp. II). But just two years later, in
1986, Congress overhauled § 666, eliminated the gratuities
language, and instead enacted the current language that re-
sembles the bribery provision for federal offcials, § 201(b).
Perhaps Congress in 1986 concluded that federally criminal-
izing state and local gratuities would signifcantly intrude on
federalism. Whatever the impetus, we know that Congress
decided in 1986 to change the law and to model § 666 on
§ 201(b), the bribery statute, and not on § 201(c), the gratui-
ties statute. It therefore would be strange to interpret
§ 666, as the Government suggests, to mean the same thing
now that it meant back in 1984, before the 1986 amendment.
We must respect Congress's choice in 1986.
Third is the statutory structure. The Government posits
that Congress prohibited bribes and gratuities to state and
local offcials in a single statutory provision, § 666(a)(1)(B).
Such a statute would be highly unusual, if not unique. The
Government identifes no other provision in the U. S. Code
that prohibits bribes and gratuities in the same provision.
4
4
At most, the Government points to 18 U. S. C. § 215(a)(2), which bars
employees of fnancial institutions from “corruptly” soliciting or accepting
“anything of value . . . intending to be infuenced or rewarded in connec-
tion with any business or transaction of such institution.” That language
simply mirrors § 666's language. But because this Court has never inter-
preted § 215 (and therefore has never said whether § 215 covers only brib-
ery), that statute is a null data point.

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13
Opinion of the Court
That is because bribery and gratuities are “two separate
c
r i mes” w ith “ two di fferent sets of elements. ” Sun-
Diamond, 526 U. S., at 404. Therefore, § 201(b) makes it a
crime for federal offcials to accept bribes, while a separate
provision, § 201(c), makes it a crime for federal offcials to
accept certain gratuities. The absence of a separate gra-
tuities provision in § 666 reinforces that § 666 is a bribery
statute for state and local offcials, not a two-for-one bribery-
and-gratuities statute.
Fourth are the statutory punishments. For federal off-
cials, Congress has separated bribery and gratuities into two
distinct provisions of § 201 for good reason: The crimes re-
ceive different punishments that “refect their relative seri-
ousness.” Sun-Diamond, 526 U. S., at 405. For example,
accepting a bribe as a federal offcial is punishable by up to
15 years in prison, while accepting an illegal gratuity as a
federal offcial is punishable by only up to 2 years. Compare
§ 201(b) with § 201(c).
If the Government were correct that § 666 also covered
gratuities, Congress would have created an entirely inexpli-
cable regime for state and local offcials. For one, even
though bribery has been treated as a far more serious of-
fense, Congress would have authorized the same 10-year
maximum sentences for (i) gratuities to state and local off-
cials and (ii) bribes to state and local offcials. See Sun-
Diamond, 526 U. S., at 405. In addition, Congress would
have authorized punishing gratuities to state and local off-
cials fve times more severely than gratuities to federal off-
cials—10 years for state and local offcials compared to 2
years for federal offcials.
The Government cannot explain why Congress would have
created such substantial sentencing disparities. We cannot
readily assume that Congress authorized a 2-year sentence
for, say, a Cabinet Secretary who accepts an unlawful gratu-
ity while authorizing a 10-year sentence on a local school
board member who accepts an identical gratuity. What
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14 SNYDER
v. UNITED STATES
Opinion of the Court
sense would that make? In short, the inexplicable anoma-
l
ies ushered in by the Government's approach powerfully
demonstrate that § 666 is a bribery statute.
Fifth is federalism. Interpreting § 666 as a gratuities
statute would signifcantly infringe on bedrock federalism
principles. As this Court has long recognized, a State “de-
fnes itself as a sovereign through the structure of its gov-
ernment, and the character of those who exercise govern-
ment authority.” McDonnell v. United States, 579 U. S. 550,
576 (2016) (quotation marks omitted). Therefore, as a gen-
eral matter, States have the “prerogative to regulate the
permissible scope of interactions between state offcials and
their constituents.” Ibid.; see United States v. Bass, 404
U. S. 336, 350 (1971).
As noted above, state and local governments have adopted
a variety of approaches to regulating state and local offcials'
acceptance of gratuities. See supra, at 6–7. Those differ-
ing approaches refect nuanced state and local policy judg-
ments about when gifts expressing appreciation to public
offcials for their past acts cross the line from the innocuous
to the problematic.
The carefully calibrated policy decisions that the States
and local governments have made about gratuities would be
gutted if we were to accept the Government's interpretation
of § 666. After all, § 666 covers virtually all state and local
offcials—about 19 million nationwide. So reading § 666 to
create a federal prohibition on gratuities would suddenly
subject 19 million state and local offcials to a new and dif-
ferent regulatory regime for gratuities. In other words, a
county offcial could meticulously comply with her county's
local gratuities rules—say, by declining a $200 gift card but
accepting a $100 gift card from a neighbor as thanks for her
diligent work on a new park—but still face up to 10 years
in federal prison because she accepted a thing of value in
connection with an offcial act.
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We should hesitate before concluding that Congress pro-
h
ibited gratuities that state and local governments have al-
lowed for their offcials. After all, Congress does not lightly
override state and local governments on such core matters
of state and local governance. And the principle articulated
by this Court in Sun-Diamond fts this case as well: A “nar-
row, rather than a sweeping, prohibition is more compatible
with the fact that” this statute “is merely one strand of
an intricate web of regulations, both administrative and
criminal, governing the acceptance of gifts and other self-
enriching actions by public offcials.” 526 U. S., at 409.
In short, federalism principles weigh heavily in favor of
reading § 666 as a bribery statute and not as a gratuities law.
Sixth is fair notice. The Government's interpretation of
the statute would create traps for unwary state and local
offcials. Sun-Diamond, 526 U. S., at 411.
The Government had to choose between two options for
how to read § 666. The Government could read § 666 to ban
all gratuities, no matter how trivial, in connection with cov-
ered offcial acts. That option might be clear enough. But
that draconian approach would border on the absurd and ex-
acerbate the already serious federalism problems with the
Government's reading of § 666.
Alternatively, the Government could recognize the irratio-
nality of reading § 666 to criminalize all such gratuities.
And to deal with the overbreadth problems, the Government
could make atextual exceptions on the fy.
The Government opted for the second approach, seeking
to soothe concerns about overbreadth by saying that the
statute, even under its view, would not cover “innocuous” or
“obviously benign” gratuities. Brief for United States 39;
Tr. of Oral Arg. 41, 45–49.
But that effort to address those overbreadth concerns has
simply moved the Government from one sinkhole to another.
The faw in the Government's approach—and it is a very seri-

16 SNYDER
v. UNITED STATES
Opinion of the Court
ous real-world problem—is that the Government does not
identi
fy any remotely clear lines separating an innocuous or
obviously benign gratuity from a criminal gratuity. The
Government simply opines that state and local offcials may
not accept “wrongful” gratuities. Brief for United States
39; Tr. of Oral Arg. 46.
That is no guidance at all. Is a $100 Dunkin' Donuts gift
card for a trash collector wrongful? What about a $200
Nike gift card for a county commissioner who voted to fund
new school athletic facilities? Could students take their col-
lege professor out to Chipotle for an end-of-term celebration?
And if so, would it somehow become criminal to take the
professor for a steak dinner? Or to treat her to a Hoosiers
game?
The Government offers no clear federal rules for state
and local offcials. So how are state legislators, city council
members, school board offcials, building code inspectors,
probation offcers, human resource directors, police offcers,
librarians, snow plow drivers, court clerks, prison guards,
high school basketball coaches, mayors, zoning board mem-
bers, animal control offcers, social workers, frefghters, city
planners, and the entire army of 19 million state and local
offcials to know what is acceptable and what is criminalized
by the Federal Government? They cannot. The Govern-
ment's so-called guidance would leave state and local offcials
entirely at sea to guess about what gifts they are allowed to
accept under federal law, with the threat of up to 10 years
in federal prison if they happen to guess wrong. That is not
how federal criminal law works.
5
5
The Government's interpretation seems all the more unbelievable be-
cause § 666 applies to the gift-givers as well as the state and local offcials
accepting the gifts. Specifcally, § 666(a)(2) makes it a crime punishable
by 10 years' imprisonment for someone to “corruptly” offer or give “any-
thing of value” to state and local offcials “with intent to infuence or re-
ward.” So under the Government's approach, families, students, constit-
uents, and other members of the public would be forced to guess whether
they could even offer (much less actually give) thank-you gift cards, steak
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Responding to the legitimate concern that the federal lines
are
unknown and unknowable to state and local offcials, the
Government advances the familiar plea that federal prosecu-
tors 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 assump-
tion that the Government will use it responsibly.” McDon-
nell, 579 U. S., at 576 (quotation marks omitted); see 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); Skilling v. United States, 561 U. S. 358 (2010).
The lack of fair notice for state and local offcials is high-
lighted by comparing the non-existent federal gratuities
guidance given to state and local offcials with the extensive
federal gratuities guidance given to federal workers. The
Offce of Government Ethics has promulgated comprehen-
sive and detailed regulatory guidelines specifying what gifts
are allowed and prohibited for federal workers. For in-
stance, the guidelines for federal offcials set forth cost
thresholds, exempt certain gifts from friends or family, clar-
ify what discounts are acceptable, and explain which social
invitations an offcial may accept—all with multiple examples
to guide federal offcials' conduct. See 5 CFR § 2635.204.
Nothing for state and local offcials. It is unfathomable
that Congress would authorize a 10-year criminal sentence
for gifts to 19 million state and local offcials without any
coherent federal guidance (or any federal guidance at all)
about how an offcial can distinguish the innocuous from the
criminal.
When construing a statute like this that regulates state
and local offcials, this Court's precedents caution against
leaving the statute's “outer boundaries ambiguous” and in-
volving the “Federal Government in setting standards of
good government for local and state offcials.” McDonnell,
dinners, or Fever tickets to their garbage collectors, professors, or school
board members, for example.

18 SNYDER
v. UNITED STATES
Opinion of the Court
579 U. S., at 577 (quotation marks omitted). And the Court
has
emphasized that a “statute in this feld that can linguisti-
cally be interpreted to be either a meat axe or a scalpel
shou ld reasonably be t aken to be the latter. ” Sun-
Diamond, 526 U. S., at 412. So it is here.
B
Faced with that phalanx of diffculties with its interpret-
ation of § 666, the Government offers little. The Govern-
ment's argument boils down to one main point—that § 666
uses the term “rewarded” as well as “infuenced.” And that,
too, is the dissent's main point. The Government (echoed by
the dissent) says that Congress would not have added the
term “rewarded” to “infuenced” in § 666 if the statute were
meant to cover only bribes and not also gratuities. That
argument is misconceived.
In isolation, the word “rewarded” could be part of a gratui-
ties statute or a bribery statute—either (i) a reward given
after the act with no agreement beforehand (gratuity) or (ii)
a reward given after the act pursuant to an agreement be-
forehand (bribe). But as noted above, the word “corruptly”
in the text of § 666 helps resolve the issue here. The bribery
statute for federal offcials, § 201(b), uses the term “cor-
ruptly.” But the gratuities statute for federal offcials,
§ 201(c), does not. The term “corruptly” therefore signals
that § 666 is a bribery statute. And statutory history, statu-
tory structure, statutory punishments, federalism, and fair
notice strongly reinforce that textual signal and together es-
tablish that § 666 is a bribery statute.
Contrary to the premise of the Government's argument,
moreover, bribery statutes sometimes use the term “re-
ward.” See, e. g., 18 U. S. C. § 600; 33 U. S. C. § 447. The
term “rewarded” closes off certain defenses that otherwise
might be raised in bribery cases. Consider a bribe where
the agreement was made before the act but the payment was
made after the act. An offcial might try to defend against
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Opinion of the Court
the bribery charge by saying that the payment was received
only
after the offcial act and therefore could not have “in-
fuenced” the act. By including the term “rewarded,” Con-
gress made clear that the timing of the agreement is the key,
not the timing of the payment, and thereby precluded such
a potential defense.
And think about the offcial who took a bribe before the
offcial act but asserts as a defense that he would have taken
the same act anyway and therefore was not “infuenced” by
the payment. To shut the door on that potential defense to
a § 666 bribery charge, Congress sensibly added the term
“rewarded.”
So even if “infuenced” alone might have covered the wa-
terfront of bribes, adding “rewarded” made good sense to
avoid potential ambiguities, gaps, or loopholes. Congress
commonly writes federal statutes, including bribery statutes,
in such a belt and suspenders manner. Here, the term “re-
warded” does not transform § 666 into a gratuities statute.
In sum, § 666 tracks § 201(b), the bribery provision for fed-
eral offcials. A state or local offcial can violate § 666 when
he accepts an up-front payment for a future offcial act or
agrees to a future reward for a future offcial act. See
United States v. Fernandez, 722 F. 3d 1, 23 (CA1 2013) (the
word “reward” “clarifes that a bribe can be promised before,
but paid after, the offcial's action” (quotation marks omit-
ted)). But a state or local offcial does not violate § 666 if
the offcial has taken the offcial act before any reward is
agreed to, much less given. Although a gratuity offered and
accepted after the offcial act may be unethical or illegal
under other federal, state, or local laws, the gratuity does
not violate § 666.
***
The Government asks this Court to adopt an interpreta-
tion of § 666 that would radically upend gratuities rules and
turn § 666 into a vague and unfair trap for 19 million state
and local offcials. We decline to do so. Section 666 is a

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v. UNITED STATES
Gorsuch, J., concurring
vital statute, but its focus is targeted: Section 666 proscribes
br
ibes to state and local offcials, while allowing state and
local governments to regulate gratuities to state and local
offcials. Within constitutional bounds, Congress can always
change the law if it wishes to do so. But since 1986, it has
not, presumably because Congress understands that state
and local governments may and often do regulate gratuities
to state and local offcials. We reverse the judgment of the
U. S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit and remand
the case for further proceedings consistent with this opinion.
It is so ordered.
Justice Gorsuch, concurring.
Call it what you will. The Court today speaks of infer-
ences from the word “corruptly,” the statute's history and
structure, and associated punishments. See ante, at 10. It
discusses concerns of fair notice and federalism. Ibid. But
the bottom line is that, for all those reasons, any fair reader
of this statute would be left with a reasonable doubt about
whether it covers the defendant's charged conduct. And
when that happens, judges are bound by the ancient rule of
lenity to decide the case as the Court does today, not for the
prosecutor but for the presumptively free individual. See
United States v. Davis, 588 U. S. 445, 464–465 (2019).
Lenity may sometimes, as it does today, go unnamed. It
may be deployed under other guises, too. “Fair notice” or
“fair warning ” are especially familiar masks. See, e. g.,
ante, at 10, 15, 17; Marinello v. United States, 584 U. S. 1, 6–
7, 9–10 (2018); McDonnell v. United States, 579 U. S. 550, 576
(2016). Cf. Wooden v. United States, 595 U. S. 360, 389
(2022) (Gorsuch, J., concurring in judgment) (“Lenity works
to enforce the fair notice requirement”); Yates v. United
States, 574 U. S. 528, 548 (2015) (plurality opinion) (same).
Other times, we clothe lenity in its corollary—that courts

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21
Jackson, J., dissenting
cannot “rely upon prosecutorial discretion to narrow the”
scope
of an “otherwise wide-ranging ” criminal law. Ma-
rinello, 584 U. S., at 11; see, e. g., ante, at 17; Dubin v. United
States, 599 U. S. 110, 131 (2023). And in still other in-
stances, we do much the same when we speak of the “re-
straint” necessary “in assessing the reach of a federal crimi-
nal statute.” Id., at 129 (internal quotation marks omitted);
accord, Marinello, 584 U. S., at 6–7, 11; Arthur Andersen
LLP v. United States, 544 U. S. 696, 703 (2005).
But make no mistake: Whatever the label, lenity is what's
at work behind today's decision, just as it is in so many oth-
ers. Rightly so. I am pleased to join.
Justice Jackson, with whom Justice Sotomayor and
Justice Kagan join, dissenting.
Offcials who use their public positions for private gain
threaten the integrity of our most important institutions.
Greed makes governments—at every level—less responsive,
less effcient, and less trustworthy from the perspective of
the communities they serve. Perhaps realizing this, Con-
gress used “expansive, unqualifed language” in 18 U. S. C.
§ 666 to criminalize graft involving state, local, and tribal
entities, as well as other organizations receiving federal
funds. Salinas v. United States, 522 U. S. 52, 56 (1997).
Section 666 imposes federal criminal penalties on agents of
those entities who “corruptly” solicit, accept, or agree to ac-
cept payments “intending to be infuenced or rewarded.”
§ 666(a)(1)(B).
Today's case involves one such person. James Snyder, a
former Indiana mayor, was convicted by a jury of violating
§ 666 after he steered more than $1 million in city contracts
to a local truck dealership, which turned around and cut him
a $13,000 check. He asks us to decide whether the language
of § 666 criminalizes both bribes and gratuities, or just
bribes. And he says the answer matters because bribes re-
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v. UNITED STATES
Jackson, J., dissenting
quire an upfront agreement to take offcial actions for pay-
ment,
and he never agreed beforehand to be paid the $13,000
from the dealership.
Snyder's absurd and atextual reading of the statute is one
only today's Court could love. Ignoring the plain text of
§ 666—which, again, expressly targets offcials who “cor-
ruptly” solicit, accept, or agree to accept payments “intend-
ing to be infuenced or rewarded”—the Court concludes that
the statute does not criminalize gratuities at all. This is
so, apparently, because “[s]tate and local governments often
regulate the gifts that state and local offcials may accept,”
ante, at 5, which, according to the majority, means that
§ 666 cannot.
The Court's reasoning elevates nonexistent federalism con-
cerns over the plain text of this statute and is a quintes-
sential example of the tail wagging the dog. Section 666's
regulation of state, local, and tribal governments refects
Congress's express choice to reach those and other entities
receiving federal funds. And Congress not only had good
reasons for doing so, it also had the authority to take such
legislative action, as this Court has already recognized. See
Sabri v. United States, 541 U. S. 600, 605, 608 (2004). We
have long held that when Congress has appropriated federal
money, it “does not have to sit by and accept the risk of
operations thwarted by local and state improbity.” Id., at
605.
Both the majority and Snyder suggest that interpreting
§ 666 to cover gratuities is problematic because it gives “fed-
eral prosecutors unwarranted power to allege crimes that
should be handled at the State level.” App. 14–15 (emphasis
added); see also ante, at 14–15. But woulds, coulds, and
shoulds of this nature must be addressed across the street
with Congress, not in the pages of the U. S. Reports. We
have previously and wisely declined “to express [a] view as
to [§ 666's] soundness as a policy matter.” Sabri, 541 U. S.,
at 608, n. But, today, the Court can stay silent no longer.
Its decision overrides the intent of Congress—and the policy

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23
Jackson, J., dissenting
preferences of the constituents that body represents—as un-
equivoca
lly expressed by the plain text of the statute. Re-
spectfully, I dissent.
I
Section 666 is a relatively recent solution to an old prob-
lem. It seeks to ensure that “taxpayer dollars . . . are in
fact spent for the general welfare, and not frittered away
in graft.” Id., at 605. Accordingly, the statute applies to
certain entities that receive a threshold amount of federal
funds. It covers any “agent of an organization, or of a State,
local, or Indian tribal government, or any agency thereof.”
§ 666(a)(1). The entity must “receiv[e], in any one year pe-
riod, benefts in excess of $10,000 under a Federal program
involving a . . . form of Federal assistance.” § 666(b).
If an entity meets that description, the statute imposes
federal criminal penalties on any agent who
“corruptly solicits or demands for the beneft of any per-
son, or accepts or agrees to accept, anything of value
from any person, intending to be infuenced or rewarded
in connection with any business, transaction, or series
of transactions of such organization, government, or
agency involving any thing of value of $5,000 or more.”
§ 666(a)(1)(B).
In short, § 666(a)(1)(B) makes it a federal crime for state,
local, or tribal offcials to corruptly solicit, accept, or agree
to accept certain payments in connection with business
worth $5,000 or more. A neighboring provision similarly
imposes penalties on the giver—i. e., anyone who “corruptly
gives, offers, or agrees to give” payments “with intent to
infuence or reward” these offcials. § 666(a)(2). For offend-
ers of either provision, the penalty is a fne, a maximum of
10 years in prison, or both. § 666(a).
There is no dispute that § 666 criminalizes bribes. See
ante, at 5. This Court has also been clear about what a
bribe requires: “a quid pro quo.” United States v. Sun-
Diamond Growers of Cal., 526 U. S. 398, 404 (1999). A quid
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Jackson, J., dissenting
pro quo means “a specifc intent to give or receive something
of
value in exchange for an offcial act.” Id., at 404–405.
So, for a payment to constitute a bribe, there must be an
upfront agreement to exchange the payment for taking an
offcial action. See ibid.
Legislatures have also considered it similarly wrongful for
government offcials to accept gratuities under certain cir-
cumstances, but unlike bribes, gratuities do not have a quid
pro quo requirement. Generally speaking, rather than an
actual agreement to take payment as the impetus for engag-
ing in an offcial act (a quid pro quo exchange), gratuities
“may constitute merely a reward for some future act that the
public offcial will take (and may already have determined
to take), or for a past act that he has already taken.” Id.,
at 405.
We took this case to resolve “[w]hether section 666 crimi-
nalizes gratuities, i. e., payments in recognition of actions the
offcial has already taken or committed to take, without any
quid pro quo agreement to take those actions.” Pet. for
Cert. I. The majority today answers no, when the answer
to that question should be an unequivocal yes.
II
A
To reach the right conclusion we need not march through
various auxiliary analyses: We can begin—and end—with
only the text. See National Assn. of Mfrs. v. Department
of Defense, 583 U. S. 109, 127 (2018). We “understan[d] that
Congress says in a statute what it means and means in a
statute what it says there.” Hartford Underwriters Ins. Co.
v. Union Planters Bank, N. A., 530 U. S. 1, 6 (2000) (internal
quotation marks omitted).
1
By its plain terms, § 666 imposes criminal penalties on
state, local, and tribal offcials who “corruptly” solicit, accept,
or agree to accept “anything of value from any person, in-

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25
Jackson, J., dissenting
tending to be infuenced or rewarded.” § 666(a)(1)(B). Use
of
the term “infuenced” captures quid pro quo bargains
struck before an offcial act is taken—and therefore bribes—
as everyone agrees. Brief for Petitioner 17; Brief for United
States 21; cf. Sun-Diamond, 526 U. S., at 404–405. The
term “rewarded” easily covers the concept of gratuities paid
to corrupt offcials after the fact—no upfront agreement
necessary.
As a general matter (and setting aside for the moment
that § 666 covers only offcials who act “corruptly”), 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 “thank you”
or “good job,” rather than “please.”
Dictionary defnitions confrm what common sense tells us
about what it means to be rewarded. A “reward” is “[t]hat
which is given in return for good or evil done or received,” in-
cluding “that which is offered or given for some service or at-
tainment.” 3 Webster's New International Dictionary 2136
(2d ed. 1957). The verb form of the word is no different.
To “reward” means “to . . . recompense.” Ibid. (defning “to
reward” as “[t]o make a return, or give a reward, to (a per-
son) or for (a service, etc.); to requite; recompense; repay”).
Both defnitions thus encompass payment in recognition of
an action that an offcial has already taken or committed to
taking. And neither requires there to be some beforehand
agreement about that exchange, i. e., a quid pro quo.
Snyder concedes that the term “rewarded” can encompass
the concept of gratuities. See Tr. of Oral Arg. 5; see also
Reply Brief 3 (quoting Sun-Diamond, 526 U. S., at 405).
The majority—which doesn't bother to interpret “rewarded”
until the end of its opinion—eventually admits the same.
See ante, at 18 (“[T]he word `rewarded' could be part of a
gratuities statute”). By that point in its analysis, however,
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the majority has already characterized § 666 as a bribery
st
atute. And then, because we typically seek to give effect
to each word of a statute, see TRW Inc. v. Andrews, 534 U. S.
19, 31 (2001), the majority must strain to make the word
“rewarded” as it appears in § 666 relevant, rather than mean-
ingless. It offers rank speculation as to why “rewarded” in
§ 666 might mean something other than what it ordinarily
does, ultimately assigning the word some busy work relating
to potential defenses to bribery charges. See ante, at 18–
19. But whatever the merits of the majority's assertions
involving waterfronts, belts, and suspenders, its interpreta-
tion of § 666 fnds little grounding in the actual text of the
statute. See Luna Perez v. Sturgis Public Schools, 598
U. S. 142, 150 (2023) (“ `[W]e cannot replace the actual text
with speculation as to Congress' intent' ”).
2
Speaking of text: The language of other statutes demon-
strates that Congress uses the word “reward” when it wants
to criminalize gratuities. For example, in 18 U. S. C. § 1912,
Congress imposed criminal penalties on any federal offcer
“engaged in inspection of vessels” who “receives any fee or
reward for his services, except what is allowed to him by
law.” (Emphasis added.) And in 22 U. S. C. § 4202, Con-
gress provided for the sanctioning of “any consular off-
cer . . . who demands or receives for any offcial services . . .
any fee or reward other than the fee provided by law for
such service.” (Emphasis added.) Snyder admits that
these statutes target gratuities by virtue of Congress's use
of the term “reward.” Brief for Petitioner 31.
But rather than simply calling a statute that penalizes ac-
cepting a “reward” for public business what it is—a wrongful
or illegal gratuities statute—the majority insists that, some-
times, when Congress uses “reward,” it is still just criminal-
izing quid pro quo bribery, mustering up examples to show
that “bribery statutes sometimes use the term `reward.' ”
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Ante, at 18. However, none of the majority's examples use
the
term “reward” in a way that is relevantly similar to § 666.
For one thing, the majority's examples do not use the phrase
“infuenced or rewarded” to delineate between bribes and
gratuities, while covering both, as § 666 does. In addition,
each of the statutes the majority points to explicitly links
the forbidden “reward” to an agreement to take some specifc
action; in other words, the majority's examples specify, by
their plain text, a quid pro quo. For example, 18 U. S. C.
§ 600 imposes federal criminal penalties on anyone who
“promises,” inter alia, jobs or benefts “provided for or made
possible in whole or in part by any Act of Congress” to an-
other person “as consideration, favor, or reward for” certain
political activity. That statute identifes both a forbidden
quid (a future job) and quo (political activity).
1
In contrast with those statutes, when § 666 uses “re-
warded,” it never connects that term to some upfront ex-
change. What the majority's examples actually show, then,
is that when Congress wants to use the term “reward” to
encompass only bribes, it knows just how to do so. See Hen-
son v. Santander Consumer USA Inc., 582 U. S. 79, 86 (2017)
(“[W]e presume differences in language like this convey dif-
ferences in meaning ”).
B
In an attempt to shore up its unnatural reading of § 666,
the majority turns to statutory and legislative history.
Ante, at 8, 12. Where appropriate, I, too, fnd statutory and
legislative history to be useful tools that this Court can and
should consult. See, e. g., Delaware v. Pennsylvania, 598
U. S. 115, 138–139 (2023). But resort to these tools is ques-
ti onable under cer t ai n circumst ances. See M i lne r v.
1
See also 33 U. S. C. § 447 (imposing penalties on “[e]very person who . . .
gives any sum of money or other bribe, present, or reward . . . to any . . .
employee of the offce of any supervisor of a harbor with intent to infuence
such . . . employee to permit or overlook any violation of the provisions of
this subchapter”).
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28 SNYDER
v. UNITED STATES
Jackson, J., dissenting
Department of Navy, 562 U. S. 562, 574 (2011) (“When pre-
sented,
on the one hand, with clear statutory language and,
on the other, with dueling committee reports, we must
choose the language”). In any event, here, the statutory
and legislative history only make matters worse for the ma-
jority's analysis.
Section 666 traces its lineage to 18 U. S. C. § 201, though
the kinship is more attenuated than the majority lets on.
Section 201 indeed “contains comprehensive prohibitions on
bribes and gratuities to federal offcials.” Ante, at 7–8 (dis-
cussing §§ 201(b)–(c)). But initially, it was not entirely clear
which offcials that federal statute covered. By its terms,
§ 201 applies broadly to “public offcials,” see § 201(a), and
confusion arose among some lower courts as to “whether
state and local employees could be considered `public off-
cials' ” under the statute. Salinas, 522 U. S., at 58. With-
out awaiting our resolution of the issue, Congress enacted
§ 666 in 1984. Ibid.; see also 98 Stat. 2143.
In § 666, Congress expressly sought to reach state and
local offcials “to protect the integrity of the vast sums of
money distributed through Federal programs.” S. Rep.
No. 98 – 225, p. 370 (1983). As or ig ina lly enacted, § 666
barred those offcials from soliciting, accepting, or agreeing
to accept “anything of value . . . for or because of the recipi-
ent's conduct,” § 666(b) (1982 ed., Supp. II), using language
similar to that in § 201(c), the federal-offcial gratuities provi-
sion. Crucially, no one disputes that when it was initially
enacted, § 666 prohibited both bribes and gratuities. Ante,
at 8. Similarly signifcant (though unmentioned by the ma-
jority), Congress imposed the same 10-year maximum term
of imprisonment for a violation then as it does now. See
§ 666(b) (1982 ed., Supp. II); cf. ante, at 17 (describing it as
“unfathomable that Congress would authorize a 10-year
criminal sentence for gifts to 19 million state and local off-
cials” without federal guidance).
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29
Jackson, J., dissenting
Starting with this historical disadvantage regarding the
scope
of the statute, the majority must show that Congress
made major changes to § 666 that might account for the sans-
gratuity interpretation the majority adopts today. But sev-
eral features of the statutory and legislative history convince
me of the opposite.
For one, Congress said that it was not making major
changes to the statute. The 1986 revisions to § 666 were
part of a package of changes that Congress specifcally
deemed “technical and minor.” H. R. Rep. No. 99–797, p. 16
(1986); see also Criminal Law and Procedure Technical
Amendments Act of 1986, 100 Stat. 3592. And the revisions
themselves are largely in keeping with this characterization.
Relevant here, Congress teased out a “corruptly” mens rea
requirement and swapped the previous “for or because of ”
language for the current “intending to be infuenced or re-
warded” phrasing. Id., at 3613. None of this, on its face,
evinces clear congressional intent to extract an entire cate-
gory of previously covered illicit payments from § 666.
Undeterred, the major ity says that when Congress
amended § 666, it was attempting to fashion that provision
after § 201(b)—the bribery statute that covers federal off-
cials. See ante, at 12.
2
Again, the statutory and legislative
record suggests otherwise: In fact, history establishes that
Congress had a different model statute in mind.
Congress had used a phrase identical to § 666's “intending
to be infuenced or rewarded” language just a few months
before when it amended 18 U. S. C. § 215, an anticorruption
statute that applies to bank employees. See 100 Stat. 779.
That provision imposes criminal penalties on any bank em-
ployee who “corruptly solicits or demands . . . or corruptly
2
Section 201(b)(2)(A) imposes federal criminal penalties on “[w]hoever
. . . being a public offcial . . . corruptly demands, seeks, receives, accepts,
or agrees to receive or accept anything of value . . . in return for . . . being
infuenced in the performance of any offcial act.”
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v. UNITED STATES
Jackson, J., dissenting
accepts or agrees to accept, anything of value from any per-
son,
intending to be infuenced or rewarded in connection
with any business or transaction.” Ibid. (emphasis added);
see also § 215(a)(2). And this similarity was no coincidence.
The House Report the majority quotes as explicating § 666
confrms that § 666 was meant to track § 215—not § 201(b), as
the majority claims. See H. R. Rep. No. 99–797, at 30, n. 9.
This means, of course, that if § 215 criminalizes gratuities,
it is likely § 666 does as well. But the majority labels § 215
“a null data point,” evidently because this Court has never
interpreted that statute. Ante, at 12, n. 4. Section 215's rel-
evance to § 666 does not come from any interpretation, how-
ever—it is plain on the face of that statute, which uses the
exact same “infuenced or rewarded” phrase. And the his-
tory of that model provision indicates that Congress meant
for § 215 to reach gratuities, too. For example, a House Re-
port directly speaks of § 215 as a statute criminalizing gratui-
ties: It says that, before 1986, § 215 made “it criminal for a
bank offcial to accept any gratuity, no matter how trivial,
after that offcial ha[d] taken offcial action on bank busi-
ness.” H. R. Rep. No. 99–335, p. 6, n. 25 (1985) (emphasis
added). Congress amended § 215 in 1986 to “narro[w]” the
statute, but not by carving out gratuities altogether. Ibid.
Rather it narrowed the “law by requiring that the accept-
ance of the gratuity be done corruptly.” Ibid. (emphasis
added).
3
Astute readers will recall that Congress made ex-
actly this same narrowing edit to § 666. See supra, at 29.
In short, Congress tailored § 215 in an effort to stem “ `cor-
ruption in the bank industry,' ” and it seemed to think that
both bribes and gratuities contributed to that problem.
3
Piling on, I note that the 1986 amendments to § 215 also required fed-
eral agencies with responsibility for regulating a fnancial institution to
“establish . . . guidelines” to help bank employees comply with the statute.
See 18 U. S. C. § 215(d) (1982 ed., Supp. IV). When those agencies fol-
lowed through, they too expressly assumed that § 215 covered gratuities.
See, e. g., 52 Fed. Reg. 46046 (1987); id., at 43940.

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Jackson, J., dissenting
H. R. Rep. No. 99–335, at 5. So, too, with § 666 and public
corr
uption.
III
To recap what we know thus far: The question in this
case is whether § 666 criminalizes gratuities in addition to
bribes. The text and purpose of § 666 alone provide an easy
answer. The word “rewarded” means to have been given
a reward for some action taken. So gratuities are plainly
covered. To be sure, if the Court had given that straight-
forward answer, we might eventually have confronted a fol-
lowup question: Are all gratuities covered? Said differ-
ently: Even if gratuities generally are criminalized by § 666,
are there circumstances in which certain gratuities are not
criminalized?
The case in front of us does not require us to reach that
question. We have not been asked to settle, once and for
all, which gratuities are corrupt and which are quotidian.
Snyder did not argue that his $13,000 check was part of some
subset of noncriminalized gratuities. Rather (and this is im-
portant to note), Snyder has taken an all-or-nothing ap-
proach to the argument he makes in this case. He insists
that all gratuities—every type in the entire class—are ex-
cluded from § 666. Because the statute's plain text says oth-
erwise, that should have been the end of this case, even if a
future petitioner might have asked us to do a more nuanced
analysis.
But, no matter—the majority today skips ahead, complain-
ing that the Government has “not identif[ied] any remotely
clear lines separating an innocuous or obviously benign gra-
tuity from a criminal gratuity.” Ante, at 16. This omission
is a huge problem, the majority says, because without those
lines, “19 million state and local offcials” could be imprisoned
“for accepting even commonplace gratuities.” Ante, at 5.
The majority's fretting falls fat, especially in the context
of this case. There is no question that state, local, and tribal
offcials deserve “clear lines,” but we were not asked to pro-
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32 SNYDER
v. UNITED STATES
Jackson, J., dissenting
vide all of them at this moment.
4
And,
perhaps even more
important, nothing about the facts of this case even remotely
implicates a reasonable concern about the criminalization of
innocuous conduct on the part of an unwary offcial. Fur-
thermore, most of the clear lines the majority seeks already
exist—they come from the text of the statute. Limits
within the text of § 666 provide “fair notice” that common-
place gratuities are typically not within the statute's reach,
contra, ante, at 15, and they suffce to prevent prosecution of
the gift cards, burrito bowls, and steak dinners that derail
today's decision.
5
A
If one simply accepts what the statute says it covers—
local offcials who corruptly solicit, accept, or agree to accept
rewards in connection with offcial business worth over a cer-
tain amount—Snyder's case is an easy one. Perhaps that is
why the majority spends so little time describing it.
Snyder took offce as mayor of the city of Portage, Indiana,
in January 2012. As mayor, Snyder and his appointees sat
on the Portage Board of Works and Public Safety, the entity
that managed public bidding on city contracts. Snyder put
one of his friends, Randy Reeder, in charge of the bidding
process, despite Reeder's lack of experience in administering
public bids. Evidence presented at Snyder's trial showed
that Reeder tailored bid specifcations for two different city
contracts to favor Great Lakes Peterbilt, a truck dealership
4
Given the question presented, the majority's demand for a comprehen-
sive interpretation of § 666, for all purposes, is both striking and inconsist-
ent with our usual incremental approach. See St. Amant v. Thompson,
390 U. S. 727, 730–731 (1968) (observing that the “outer limits” of “many
legal standards”—whether they be “provided by the Constitution, stat-
utes, or case law”—are “marked out through case-by-case adjudication”).
5
Notably, I am not the only Justice who has viewed § 666 in this way.
See Sorich v. United States, 555 U. S. 1204, 1207 (2009) (Scalia, J., dissent-
ing from denial of certiorari) (describing § 666(a) as providing a “clear
rul[e]” prohibiting “bribes and gratuities to public offcials”).
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33
Jackson, J., dissenting
owned by brothers Robert Buha and Stephen Buha. Evi-
dence
also showed that during the bidding process, Snyder
was in contact with the Buha brothers, but no other bidders.
Snyder had campaigned on a platform that included auto-
mating trash collection, and by December 2012, the city was
looking to buy three garbage trucks. It issued an invitation
to bid on the contract, listing specifc requirements for the
trucks. Reeder testifed that he crafted some specifcations,
including delivery within 150 days, knowing they would
favor Great Lakes Peterbilt. The board of works voted to
award Great Lakes Peterbilt the contract. Evidence at trial
showed that the city could have saved about $60,000 had it
not prioritized expedited delivery.
In January 2013, the manager of Great Lakes Peterbilt
asked Reeder whether the city might want to buy another
truck—an unused, 2012 model that had been sitting outside
on the dealership's lot over two winters. Snyder frst tried
to buy the truck outright, but Portage's city attorney in-
formed him he had to go through the public bidding process.
So the board of works issued another invitation to bid in
November 2013. This invitation sought two more garbage
trucks. Reeder again tweaked certain specifications to
favor Great Lakes Peterbilt—this time to help it move the
older truck sitting on its lot. The board of works voted to
award Great Lakes Peterbilt this contract too. Together,
the two contracts that Great Lakes Peterbilt “won” totaled
some $1.125 million.
Shortly after the second contract was awarded, Snyder
paid the Buha brothers a visit at their dealership. “I need
money,” he said. App. 72. He asked for $15,000; the deal-
ership gave him $13,000. When federal investigators heard
about the payment and came calling, Snyder told them the
check was for information technology and health insurance
consulting services that he had provided to the dealership.
He gave different explanations for the money to Reeder and
a different city employee.

34 SNYDER
v. UNITED STATES
Jackson, J., dissenting
Employees at Great Lakes Peterbilt testifed that Snyder
ne
ver performed any consulting work for the dealership.
And during the federal investigation, no written agreements,
work product, evidence of meetings, invoices, or other docu-
mentation was ever produced relating to any consulting
work performed by Snyder. All of this confrmed testimony
from the dealership's controller, who had cut the check to
Snyder: Snyder had instead been paid for an “ `inside track.' ”
App. to Pet. for Cert. 60a–61a.
A federal grand jury charged Snyder with violating 18
U. S. C. § 666(a)(1)(B). App. 2–3. The indictment alleged
that Snyder “did corruptly solicit, demand, accept, and agree
to accept a bank check in the amount of $13,000, intending
to be infuenced and rewarded.” Id., at 3. A jury found
him guilty of violating § 666 in connection with the garbage
truck contracts. It is not diffcult to see why the jury
reached that conclusion, having been instructed that the
Government needed to prove that Snyder “acted corruptly,
with the intent to be infuenced or rewarded.” Id., at 27.
6
B
One thing is clear from the Court's opinion in this case—
the majority isn't much worried about what happens to Sny-
der under § 666. It pivots to the other 18,999,999 state,
local, and tribal offcials at work throughout the country and
6
Even after its decision to construe § 666 as a bribery-only statute, the
Court's decision to reverse Snyder's conviction, rather than vacate and
remand, is perplexing. The District Court specifcally found that, “even
if ” § 666 were construed to penalize bribes alone, “there was ample evi-
dence permitting a rational jury to fnd, from the circumstantial evidence,
that there was an up-front agreement to reward Snyder for making sure
[Great Lakes Peterbilt] won the contract award(s).” App. to Pet. for
Cert. 63a. Thus, the Seventh Circuit should have been permitted to as-
sess in the frst instance whether any instructional error was prejudicial.
Under our current precedent, Snyder is not entitled to automatic relief
due to a mere instructional error. See, e. g., Greer v. United States, 593
U. S. 503, 507, 513 (2021).
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Jackson, J., dissenting
laments that there are “no clear federal rules” for them.
An
te, at 16. But § 666 was not designed to apply to teachers
accepting fruit baskets, soccer coaches getting gift cards, or
newspaper delivery guys who get a tip at Christmas. See
ibid. (reciting similar examples). We know this because, be-
yond requiring acceptance of a reward, § 666 weaves to-
gether multiple other elements (that the Government must
prove beyond a reasonable doubt), which collectively do the
nuanced work of sifting illegal gratuities from inoffensive
ones.
Those limits are clear on the face of the statute; when con-
strued as a whole, the text of § 666 provides more than ade-
quate notice to those this statute covers. Now, for a list of
my own: First, § 666 applies only when a state, local, tribal,
or private entity “receives, in any one year period, benefts
in excess of $10,000 under a Federal program involving ”
some “form of Federal assistance.” § 666(b). Second, the
statute requires that the criminalized payment be “in con-
nection with any business, transaction, or series of transac-
tions” of the covered entity. §§ 666(a)(1)(B), (a)(2). Third,
that “business, transaction, or series of transactions” must
involve “ [some]thing of value of $5,000 or more. ” Ib id.
Fourth, § 666 expressly “does not apply to bona fde salary,
wages, fees, or other compensation paid . . . in the usual
course of business.” § 666(c). Nor does it apply to “ex-
penses paid or reimbursed . . . in the usual course of busi-
ness.” Ibid. Last, and perhaps most important, the stat-
ute specifcally requires that the offcial who solicits, accepts,
or agrees to accept the payment do so “corruptly” (the mens
rea). § 666(a)(1)(B). This series of carefully delineated cir-
cumstances—all of which appear in the text of § 666—means
that payments or gifts to offcials will not always be captured
by § 666 under any and all circumstances, but only if the vio-
lator acts in the ways described and with the required intent.
Notably, the majority takes the last statutory check I de-
scribe—the “corruptly” mens rea requirement—and trans-
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36 SNYDER
v. UNITED STATES
Jackson, J., dissenting
forms it into a reason to read the statute to cover only
br
ibes. See ante, at 10–12, 18. The majority maintains that
“corruptly” signals that § 666 is a bribery statute because
§ 201(b), the federal-offcial bribery statute, uses that term.
Ibid. But, as I have already explained, the bribery statute
for federal offcials is not the blueprint the majority makes it
out to be. See Part II–B, supra. And while the majority
suggests that “corruptly” just means quid pro quo, see ante, at
11–12, it can give no reason why that must be so in this statute.
Instead, the majority gives a practical justifcation for its
preferred interpretation. It suggests that if § 666 is read
generally to apply to gratuities, and “corruptly” is read as a
narrowing mens rea element, then the statute still might
sweep in all sorts of innocuous gifts. See ante, at 15–16.
Maybe. Maybe not. Again, the precise meaning of the
term “corruptly” is not the question before us today. Nor
does it really matter here because, whatever “corruptly”
means, Snyder's behavior clearly fts the bill, making this
case a poor one to explore the contours of that term. See
Part III–A, supra.
In any event, any uncertainty we might have about “cor-
ruptly” seems unwarranted considering the Court's previous
defi niti ons of that word. In Ar thur Ande rsen LLP v.
United States, 544 U. S. 696 (2005), we wrote that the term
“ `corruptly' ” is “normally associated with wrongful, im-
moral, depraved, or evil” conduct. Id., at 705. We there-
fore related the term with “consciousness of wrongdoing.”
Id., at 706. Applying that standard defnition to § 666's
mens rea requirement appears to heave an imposing burden
onto the Government. Prosecutors must prove not only
that a state, local, or tribal offcial did, in fact, act wrongfully
when accepting the gift or payment, but also that she knew
that accepting the gift or payment was wrongful.
7
The ma-
7
At oral argument, the Government acknowledged that “consciousness
of wrongdoing ” roughly translates to knowledge of unlawfulness. Tr. of
Oral Arg. 74–76.

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37
Jackson, J., dissenting
jority worries that it may be unclear to an offcial whether
accepti
ng a gift is, in fact, “wrongful.” See ante, at 16.
But if “corruptly” is read to require knowledge of wrongful-
ness, any lack of clarity benefts the offcial. In such circum-
stances, a prosecutor is almost certain to be unable to meet
her burden of proof—as the Government acknowledges.
See, e. g., Tr. of Oral Arg. 59–60, 107.
8
The bottom line is that § 666 is not unique or special. Like
other criminal statutes—and especially other anti-public-
corruption statutes—§ 666 has various elements, some of
which may beneft from further clarifcation. Down the
road, this Court could have had that opportunity with re-
spect to § 666 if it had chosen to engage in our usual method
of parsing statutes. See, e. g., Fischer v. United States, 529
U. S. 667, 677, 681 (2000) (clarifying the meaning of federal
“benefts” under § 666); Sun-Diamond, 526 U. S., at 414
(holding that to establish a violation of § 201(c), “the Govern-
ment must prove a link between a thing of value conferred
upon a public offcial and a specifc `offcial act' for or because
of which it was given” (emphasis added)); McDonnell v.
United States, 579 U. S. 550, 571–572 (2016) (clarifying the
“offcial act” requirement in § 201(a)(3)). Instead, the major-
ity washes its hands of this anticorruption provision, an-
nouncing that certain wrongful conduct the statute plainly
covers just cannot be included. The majority throws in the
towel too soon.
C
As I said earlier, § 666 already provides meaningful guard-
rails that protect against the “overbreadth” that the major-
ity decries. Ante, at 15. But you don't have to take my
8
Thus, defning “corruptly” in the same way we have in the past would
not rely on a prosecutor's discretion to limit the scope of the statute. See
ante, at 17; cf. Marinello v. United States, 584 U. S. 1, 11 (2018). Indeed,
though the Government could attempt to launch unwarranted prosecu-
tions under § 666, that is as true for § 666 as it is for any other federal
criminal statute.

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Jackson, J., dissenting
word for that. Other prosecutions of gratuities that the
Gover
nment has brought under § 666—successfully or unsuc-
cessfully—do not remotely resemble the holiday tips, gift
baskets, and sweatshirts around which the majority crafts
its decision.
9
That is, even as the Government has consist-
ently maintained that § 666 covers gratuities, its actual prior
prosecutions under § 666 were not the dragnet for public
school teachers, soccer coaches, or trash collectors that the
majority conjures. Rather, the real cases in which the Gov-
ernment has invoked this law involve exactly the type of
palm greasing that the statute plainly covers and that one
might reasonably expect Congress to care about when tar-
geting graft in state, local, and tribal governments. After
today, however, the ability of the Federal Government to
prosecute such obviously wrongful conduct is left in doubt.
It is also noteworthy that the prosecutions that Snyder
describes as proof of the Government's “not reassuring ”
track record, Reply Brief 18–19, look nothing like the acts of
gratitude that worry the majority. The “city building in-
spector [who] solicit[ed] donations for his favorite youth
sports league”? Id., at 18. Well, he admitted to receiving
illegal gratuities from an engineer who worked with clients
9
See, e. g., Scarantino v. Public School Employees' Retirement Bd., 68
A. 3d 375, 376–377 (Pa. Commw. 2013) (describing a defendant prosecuted
under § 666 for receiving a $5,000 cash gratuity in connection with school
district contracts); United States v. Musto, 2012 WL 5879609, *2, n. 2 (MD
Pa., Nov. 21, 2012) (defendant prosecuted under § 666 for accepting $1,000
in connection with a municipality's multimillion dollar loan application to
a state agency and prior offcial advocacy); United States v. Bahel, 662
F. 3d 610, 620–621, 638 (CA2 2011) (defendant prosecuted under § 666 after
receiving fnancial benefts including years of near-monthly cash payments
of thousands of dollars, a laptop, frst-class plane tickets to India, seats to
the U. S. Open tennis tournament, a reduced-rent apartment, and the
eventual purchase of that apartment for below-market value in connection
with United Nations contracts); United States v. Zimmermann, 509 F. 3d
920, 926–927 (CA8 2007) (defendant prosecuted for accepting gratuities of
$5,000, $1,200, and $1,000 in connection with real-estate development
projects).

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Jackson, J., dissenting
seeking building permits in San Francisco. The engineer
knew
that the inspector was a volunteer coach and supporter
of “a San Francisco non-proft adult and youth athletic orga-
nization,” and the engineer arranged for his clients to donate
to that organization in connection with inspections of their
properties. Press Release, U. S. Attorney's Offce, ND Cal.,
San Francisco Senior Building Inspector Pleads Guilty to Ac-
cepting Illegal Gratuities (Dec. 9, 2022). “[I]n several in-
stances, the engineer advised [the inspector] of a client's
donation while asking for a fnal permit or inspection on
the client's property.” Ibid. That same inspector also ac-
cepted $30,000 in debt forgiveness from a longtime San Fran-
cisco real-estate developer and friend. Ibid.
And the “county contractor [who] donat[ed] $2,000 for
plaques and food at a luncheon honoring female judges”?
Reply Brief 18. He was the owner of a debt collection com-
pany that had a nonexclusive contract with Cook County,
Illinois, to perform debt collection work. A signifcant part
of the contract was the chance to collect fnes owed on unpaid
traffc tickets. An offcial in the Circuit Court of Cook
County Clerk's Offce—the entity responsible for doling out
the traffc debt work—gave his frm half of those collections.
The owner then underwrote nearly $2,000 in expenses for
the court's Women's History Month Celebration. Why did
he cover these expenses? “We gotta stay ahead of [the com-
petition],” the owner told his staff. United States v. Do-
nagher, No. 1:19–cr–00240 (ND Ill.), ECF Doc. 98, pp. 2–5.
10
10
Snyder's invocation of United States v. Hamilton, 46 F. 4th 389 (CA5
2022), is neither persuasive nor relevant here. Snyder says Hamilton
shows that the Government “has prosecuted campaign contributions.”
Reply Brief 19. The defendant in Hamilton was a Dallas real-estate de-
veloper who “supported” local politicians. 46 F. 4th, at 391. He gave
money to a nonproft owned and operated by the campaign manager of one
such politician, a Dallas City Council member. “Some of those donations
were used for [the nonproft's] legitimate purposes; others were purport-
edly given to [the nonproft], cashed by [the campaign manager], then given
to [the politician] personally.” Ibid. Around an election cycle, “[the de-
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40 SNYDER
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None of this means that courts should trust the Govern-
ment
when it says that it does and will continue to enforce
a statute with care. That is not how we do statutory inter-
pretation, and for good reason. See Marinello v. United
States, 584 U. S. 1, 11 (2018). But what these examples do
show is that § 666's built-in bulwarks seem to be working.
Thus, there is simply no reason to think that decades after
the courts of appeals frst interpreted § 666 to cover gratui-
ties, reading the statute to do so now will “suddenly subject
19 million state and local offcials to a new and different reg-
ulatory regime.” Ante, at 14.
IV
Ultimately, it appears that the real bone the majority has
to pick with § 666 is its concern about overregulation—a con-
cern born of the relationship between federal and state gov-
ernance. The majority's pages of citations to state and local
gratuities laws, ante, at 6–7, thus belie its ranking so-called
“federalism” interests merely “[f]ifth” on its list of reasons
for construing § 666 as a bribery-only statute, ante, at 14 (em-
phasis deleted). More than anything, it seems that the ma-
jority itself harbors the belief it repeatedly ascribes to Con-
veloper] was trying to secure some low-income-housing tax credits for one
of his real-estate ventures, the Royal Crest project,” and that City Council
member “lobbied to have the Royal Crest project included.” Ibid. “A
few years later, [the developer] needed to get a paid-sick-leave ordinance
on the ballot in the upcoming election.” Ibid. So he wrote a $7,000
check to a different member of the Dallas City Council, who made clear
that the check “was not a loan” and “had nothing to do with the campaign.”
Id., at 392. A jury convicted the developer on two § 666 counts, but the
Fifth Circuit later vacated the convictions because, in its view, § 666 did
not criminalize gratuities. Id., at 393, 399.
On these facts, it is far from clear that Hamilton involved legitimate
campaign contributions. But it is abundantly clear that Snyder's case
does not. If a § 666 conviction involving real campaign contributions had
reached us, it might have been appropriate to read a quid pro quo require-
ment into the statute for that particular context. See McCormick v.
United States, 500 U. S. 257, 273–274 (1991).
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as: 603 U. S. 1 (2024)
41
Jackson, J., dissenting
gress: that regulation of gratuities is better left to state,
loca
l, and tribal governments, rather than the Federal Gov-
ernment. See, e. g., ante, at 15, 20. (No word on why the
same could not be said for bribes.)
If Congress shared those policy concerns, however, it
chose not to act upon them in this statute. Instead, Con-
gress reached out to regulate state, local, and tribal entities
as well as other organizations that receive federal funds, de-
spite the fact that those governments do have their own eth-
ics regulations, as the majority is quick to point out. And,
of course, if the majority is correct about Congress's commit-
ment to federalism principles in this area, one wonders why
Congress didn't just leave state, local, and tribal entities
alone.
Quite to the contrary, Congress chose to enact § 666 “to
ensure the integrity of organizations participating in federal
assistance programs.” Fischer, 529 U. S., at 678. And that
choice was intentional—Congress acted to “addres[s] a legiti-
mate federal concern by licensing federal prosecution in an
area historically of state concern.” Sabri, 541 U. S., at 608,
n. Snyder apparently objects to this policy choice, and fur-
ther complained below that “Congress ha[d] yet to take up”
any invitation “to consider rewriting the provision.” App. 15.
Fortunately for him, today's decision by this Court accom-
plishes exactly that result.
***
State, local, and tribal governments have an important
role to play in combating public corruption, and, of course,
their regulations should refect the values of the communities
they serve. I wholeheartedly agree with the majority's sug-
gestion that, because employees of those governments are
our neighbors, friends, and hometown heroes, federal law
ought not be read to subject them to prosecution when grate-
ful members of the community show their thanks. See ante,
at 5.
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42 SNYDER
v. UNITED STATES
Jackson, J., dissenting
But nothing about the facts of this case implicates any of
that
kind of conduct. And the text of § 666 clearly covers
the kind of corrupt (albeit perhaps non-quid pro quo) pay-
ment Snyder solicited after steering the city contracts to the
dealership. Because reading § 666 to prohibit gratuities—
just as it always has—poses no genuine threat to common
gift giving, but does honor Congress's intent to punish re-
wards corruptly accepted by government offcials in ways
that are functionally indistinguishable from taking a bribe, I
respectfully dissent.
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Reporter’s Note
The attached opinion has been revised to refect the usual publication
and citation style of the United States Reports. The revised pagination
makes available the offcial United States Reports citation in advance of
publication. The syllabus has been prepared by the Reporter of Decisions
for the convenience of the reader and constitutes no part of the opinion of
the Court. A list of counsel who argued or fled briefs in this case, and
who were members of the bar of this Court at the time this case was
argued, has been inserted following the syllabus. Other revisions may
include adjustments to formatting, captions, citation form, and any errant
punctuation. The following additional edits were made:
None