Supreme Court Rules Bribery Statute Doesn’t Criminalize Gratuities for Past Acts

In Snyder v. United States, 603 U.S. ____ (2024), the U.S. Supreme Court held that 18 U.S.C. §666, a federal law that makes it a crime for state and local officials to “corruptly” solicit, accept, or agree to accept “anything of value from any person, intending to be influenced or rewarded” for an official act, proscribes bribes to state and local officials but does not make it a crime for those officials to accept gratuities for their past acts.

Facts of the Case

As the Court explained in its opinion, Federal and state law distinguish between two kinds of payments to public officials—bribes and gratuities. Bribes are typically payments made or agreed to before an official act in order to influence the public official with respect to that future official act. Gratuities are typically payments made to a public official after an official act as a reward or token of appreciation.

“While American law generally treats bribes as inherently corrupt and unlawful, the law’s treatment of gratuities is more nuanced,” Justice Brett Kavanaugh explained. “Some gratuities might be innocuous, and others may raise ethical and appearance concerns.”

Under 18 U.S.C. §201(b), federal officials face a 15-year maximum prison sentence if they accept a bribe for an official act. By contrast, if a federal official accepts a prohibited gratuity, federal gratuities law sets a 2-year maximum prison sentence pursuant to §201(c).

As enacted in 1984, the statute at issue in the case, 18 U.S.C. §666, extended the gratuities prohibition in §201(c) to most state and local officials. Two years later, Congress amended §666 to avoid the law’s “possible application to acceptable commercial and business practices.”

The current version of §666 closely resembles the bribery provision for federal officials, §201(b), and makes it a crime for most state and local officials to “corruptly” solicit, accept, or agree to accept “anything of value” “intending to be influenced or rewarded in connection with” any official business or transaction worth $5,000 or more.

The case before the Court involves James Snyder, who is the former mayor of Portage, Indiana. In 2013, while Snyder was mayor, Portage awarded two contracts to a local truck company, Great Lakes Peterbilt, and ultimately purchased five 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; however, Snyder maintained that the payment was for his consulting services as a contractor for Peterbilt. A federal jury ultimately 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 Court of Appeals affirmed Snyder’s conviction.

Supreme Court’s Decision

The Supreme Court reversed by a vote of 6-3. According to the majority, §666 proscribes bribes to state and local officials but does not make it a crime for those officials to accept gratuities for their past acts.

“In sum, §666 tracks §201(b), the bribery provision for federal officials. A state or local official can violate §666 when he accepts an up-front payment for a future official act or agrees to a future reward for a future official act,” Justice Kavanaugh wrote on behalf of the majority. “But a state or local official does not violate §666 if the official has taken the official act before any reward is agreed to, much less given. Although a gratuity offered and accepted after the official act may be unethical or illegal under other federal, state, or local laws, the gratuity does not violate §666.”

Justice Kavanaugh cited that six reasons that, taken together, led 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.”

First, the majority found that the statutory text strongly suggests that §666—like §201(b)— is a bribery statute, not a gratuities statute. Justice Kavanaugh wrote:

The bribery statute for federal officials, §201(b), uses the term “corruptly.” But the gratuities statute for federal officials, §201(c), does not. The term “corruptly” therefore signals that §666 is a bribery statute. And statutory history, statutory structure, statutory punishments, federalism, and fair notice strongly reinforce that textual signal and together establish that §666 is a bribery statute.

Justice Kavanaugh further emphasized that when enacted, §666 borrowed language from §201(c), the gratuities statute for federal officials, but two years later, Congress amended it to model §201(b), the bribery 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,” he wrote. “We must respect Congress’s choice in 1986.”

In further discussing the Court’s reasoning, Justice Kavanaugh noted that federalism principles weigh heavily in favor of reading §666 as a bribery statute and not as a gratuities law. He wrote:

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 officials—about 19 million nationwide. So reading §666 to create a federal prohibition on gratuities would suddenly subject 19 million state and local officials to a new and different regulatory regime for gratuities. In other words, a county official 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 official act.

With regard to the Government’s argument that Congress would not have added the term “rewarded” to “influenced” in §666 if the statute were meant to cover only bribes and not also gratuities, Justice Kavanaugh said the argument is “misconceived.”

“In isolation, the word ‘rewarded’ could be part of a gratuities 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 beforehand (bribe). But as noted above, the word ‘corruptly’ in the text of §666 helps resolve the issue here,” he explained. “The bribery statute for federal officials, §201(b), uses the term ‘corruptly.’ But the gratuities statute for federal officials, §201(c), does not.”