On June 26, 2024, the US Supreme Court announced its decision in Snyder vs. United States, ruling that 18 USC §666 criminalizes quid pro quo bribery before an act, but does not apply to gifts given after the fact in appreciation of an act that has already been completed. The ruling is expected to limit the reach of federal bribery and anti-corruption laws and removes a tool prosecutors previously used in a wide range of public corruption cases. The Court’s decision is expected to result in fewer prosecutions of state and local officials on bribery charges.

Unpacking the Court’s Decision in Snyder v. United States

James Snyder, a former mayor of Portage, Indiana, accepted $13,000 from a garbage truck company after he helped it secure city contracts. In 2021, Snyder was convicted of accepting an illegal gratuity in violation of 18 USC §666 and sentenced to 21 months in prison.

Writing for the majority and overturning Snyder’s conviction, Justice Brett Kavanaugh noted that some states have civil or criminal laws that prohibit government officials from accepting gratuities, while others, including Indiana, do not. Justice Kavanaugh wrote that, "federalism principles weigh heavily in favor of reading §666 as a bribery statute and not as a gratuities law."

The majority opinion identified six reasons that led to the Court’s conclusion that 18 USC §666 does not criminalize gratuities to state and local officials for their past acts.

1. The text of §666 strongly suggests that it is a bribery statute, like 18 U.S.C. §201(b), rather than a gratuities statute. The reason is that §666, like §201(b) requires an official to have a corrupt state of mind and to accept (or agree to accept) a payment intending to be influenced in an official act. The text of §666 “bears little resemblance” to the law that makes it a crime for federal officials to accept gratuities for their past acts §201(c), which contains no express mens rea requirement.
2. When Congress first enacted 18 USC §666 in 1984, it used language from the gratuities statute, §201(c), for federal officials. But two years later, Congress changed §666 to more closely resemble the statute that applies to bribery for federal officials. According to Justice Kavanaugh, “It therefore would be strange to interpret [§666] to mean the same thing now that it meant back in 1984, before the 1986 amendment.”
3. No other statute criminalizes both bribery and gratuities in the same provision. It would be “highly unusual, if not unique” for Congress to draft a law that applies to both bribery and gratuities, which are “two separate crimes with two different sets of elements.”
4. For federal officials, accepting a bribe and accepting a gratuity are two separate crimes. Congress set different punishments for federal officials who violate these laws: up to 15 years for accepting a bribe, but only up to two years for accepting an illegal gratuity. Applying §666 to gratuities would create “an entirely inexplicable regime for state and local officials” by authorizing the same 10-year sentence for both crimes.
5. Applying §666 to gratuities would interfere with the right of state and local governments to regulate the acceptance of gratuities by their officials.
6. If §666 applied to gratuities, state and local officials would not have enough warning about when it applied because there is not enough distinction between “an innocuous or obviously benign gratuity” and a criminal gratuity.

The Court’s interpretation of 18 USC §666 establishes a clear dividing line between bribes and gratuities. As a general matter, bribes are payments made or agreed to before an official act in order to influence the official with respect to that future official act. But, the analysis becomes more complex from here. Gratuities are typically payments made to an official after an official act as a token of appreciation. The sticking point comes in situations where an official has a corrupt state of mind and accepts or agrees to accept payment, earlier, intending to be influenced in the official act and later accepts payment.

The Supreme Court clearly stated that “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.” And conversely, a violation of §666 occurs when a state or local official “accepts an up-front payment for a future official act or agrees to a reward for a future official act.”

Justices Ketanji Brown, Sonia Sotomayor, and Elena Kagan dissented, writing that the text of the statute leads easily to a conclusion that 18 USC §666 applies to gratuities paid to state or local officials after they had acted. Justice Brown emphasized that the statute made it a crime to accept “anything of value from any person, intending to be influenced or rewarded” and contended that “The term ‘rewarded’ easily covers the concept of gratuities paid to corrupt officials after the fact — no upfront agreement necessary.”

Implications of Snyder v. United States

In addition to resolving a circuit split, the Court’s decision in Snyder could have broader implications for prosecution under federal anti-corruption statutes. Federal prosecutors who wish to charge public officials with bribery will need to gather evidence to prove, beyond a reasonable doubt, that a government official agreed to a bribe before any official action was taken. Thus, the government will need to prove that though the payment was made after the act was taken, the actual agreement to take the official act in return for payment was made before. It could also mean that the federal government will work harder to develop evidence of a corrupt agreement before the fact by increasing pressure on cooperating witnesses or digging deeper to gather evidence to prove a corrupt agreement and when it was allegedly entered into. However, to the extent that the government can prove a corrupt state of mind before any payment was agreed to, federal prosecutors will characterize that as a “bribe.”

While the full implications of the decision in Snyder remain to be seen, it could also affect federal prosecutions under other anti-corruption statutes, honest services fraud and wire fraud statutes. For now, Snyder should be read as another in the Court’s line of decisions that limit a broad interpretation of federal anti-corruption statutes.

Hope Lefeber is a federal white-collar criminal defense attorney who serves people in Philadelphia and New York City. She began her career as an enforcement attorney with the SEC and has over 30 years of experience defending people accused of federal financial crimes.