In a 6-3 vote along party lines, the Supreme Court ruled Wednesday that state officials can accept “tips” from people seeking to reward them for their official duties, even though a federal anti-corruption law appears to prohibit such rewards.
Judge Brett Kavanaugh wrote the opinion in Snyder v. United States for the court’s Republican-appointed majority. Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson wrote the dissent on behalf of the court’s three Democratic-appointed justices.
Snyder revolves around a distinction between “bribes” and “tips.” As Kavanaugh writes, “bribes are payments that Before an official act to influence the official with regard to that future official act.” In contrast, gratuities “are typically payments to an official after an official act of appreciation.” (Emphasis added.)
If this difference seems insignificant, the facts of this case are likely to only reinforce that view.
The case involves James Snyder, a former mayor who accepted a $13,000 bonus from a trucking company after the city bought five garbage trucks from the company for $1.1 million. Snyder claims the money was a consulting fee, but federal prosecutors charged him anyway with violating an anti-corruption law.
This law prohibits government officials from “corruptly” accepting “anything of value from anyone with the intent to influence or reward an official act.”
As Jackson writes in her dissent, the most natural reading of this law is that it targets both bribes (payments that “influenced” a future decision) and tips (payments that “rewarded” a past decision). As Jackson writes,
Everyone knows what a reward is. It’s a $20 bill pulled from a lost wallet when it’s returned to its grateful owner. A surprise ice cream stop after a report card with all A’s. The bar tab a manager collects to celebrate her team’s good work. A reward often says “thank you” or “good job” rather than “please.”
Jackson argues that the law must be understood to prohibit “government officials from corruptly accepting rewards that are functionally indistinguishable from accepting bribes,” as appears to be the case with the payment at issue in this case.
Kavanaugh’s majority opinion, however, relies heavily on political arguments and other claims that go beyond the text of the law. In fact, he attempts to make a textual argument – Kavanaugh points out that the law in question Snyderlike another law that deals only with bribes, uses the word “corrupt” – but its best arguments are not substantive.
Kavanaugh’s strongest argument is that the law makes the acceptance of bribes by a federal official a very serious crime punishable by up to 15 years in prison, while federal officials who accept tips face only two years in prison. Meanwhile, the law at issue in Snyderwhich applies only to federal officials, carries a blanket sentence of ten years in prison. Therefore, Kavanaugh argues that it would be odd to read the law as making a clear distinction between bribes and gratuities to federal officials, but not making a distinction when government officials accept a gift.
In any case, the decision in Snyder is narrowly drafted. It doesn’t say that Congress can’t ban tipping. It just says that this particular law only applies to bribes. However, the Court’s Republican majority also has a long history of imposing constitutional limits on government to combat corruption and restrict money in politics.
Also notable is that neither Justice Clarence Thomas nor Justice Samuel Alito, both of whom have accepted expensive gifts from politically active Republican billionaires, have recused themselves from the case. Thomas and Alito both joined Kavanaugh’s opinion, which narrowly interpreted anti-corruption law.
