Supreme Court strikes anti-corruption law that bars officials from taking gifts
latimes.com
latimes.com
Once it's well known that I like giving politicians gratuities and that I always give gratuities, all it takes is a conversation and the ball is rolling. I never have to say any of the words or phrases during that conversation that magically turn things into a bribe; it's understood that once the deed is done the money will be on the way.
This ruling shreds the concept that even the appearance of impropriety is bad.
I feel like that is one of the bigger cultural shifts, particularly in politics, that has happened over the last decade. It used to be that the mere appearance of impropriety was enough to kill a political career. Now it seems like not only is the appearance irrelevant, actual evidence of impropriety is losing its effect too.
Good thing you don't have the money then, because you would be going to prison. Paying a gratuity to a federal official is still a 2 year prison sentence under 18 U.S. Code § 201(c), and there are state laws against paying them to state officials.
All the court did was decide that 18 U.S. Code § 666 applied only to bribes, not gratuities.
[1] https://www.cnbc.com/2024/06/06/supreme-court-justices-milli...
Which is why his disclosure of them was non-existent.
> 1. Home Hospitality. Gifts of hospitality including food, drink or occasional lodging that an official receives in an individual’s home when the individual or a member of their family is present. (Regulation 18942(a)(7).) Such hospitality provided by a lobbyist is a gift unless the home hospitality is related to another purpose unconnected with the lobbyist’s professional activities. Generally, this means functions like children’s birthday parties, soccer team parties, neighborhood barbeques, etc., where other guests attend who are not part of the lobbying process. (Regulation 18942.2.)
or if the friend were not present, it may fall under this one...
> 6. Long-Time Friend. Benefits received from a long-time personal friend where the gift is unrelated to the official’s duties. The exception does not apply if the individual providing the benefit to the official is involved in some manner with business before the official. (Regulation 18942(a)(18)(C).) This exception does not apply if the person providing the benefit to the official is an individual who otherwise has business before the official as set forth in Regulation 18942(a)(18)(D).
Note that long-time friend is more restrictive than home hospitality while a family member is present. I would interpret this to mean that if your family friend has business related to your official position, you wouldn't need to report the stay if they were there, but if you stayed at their ranch while they weren't there, you would. Either way, if they had business with your position, I'd avoid the stay --- but my spouse was in a very limited scope office, so other than neighbors, nobody we knew had any reason to be involved in official business.
[1] https://www.fppc.ca.gov/content/dam/fppc/NS-Documents/TAD/gi...
Friends giving gifts is usually fine and a positive aspect of friendship. But, in the case of Supreme Court justices, we've decided they need to record and publish these gifts. That way, Congress and the public can decide if their rulings were affected by "gifts." For example, South Korea's Supreme Court flew Ruth Bader Ginsberg over for $8000. That was probably more of a "professional networking and learning" gift. But if somebody with a connection to South Korea's government had a case before the court, then we could've pressured RBG to sit that case out.
I may not accept gifts from anyone that I (or my spouse) have business with, or might have business with, as part of my job. The dollar threshold used to be $10. They raised it a few years ago to $25. So now I can accept a coffee mug from SpaceX, but probably not a polo shirt.
If I have any questions, there is an ethics office that I can (must) talk to about whatever situation arises.
This setup is pretty common for people who are paid by the government, and it was instated for very good reasons that we’re all aware of.
I have nothing but contempt for this behavior on the part of Clarence Thomas. He is so far over the line. It’s outrageous.
Circuit judges, DAs, all kinds of folks lower on the ladder than him could tell you unequivocally they are. Far less counts.
Anyone in corporate America who’s done anti-corruption training could tell you. Millions and millions of people.
He had a staff he could ask to check for him if he were actually uncertain (and there’s zero chance he was sure they weren’t gifts). A staff he doesn’t even pay for. If he wasn’t sure and didn’t do that, guess what? He really knew the answer.
He didn’t “believe” they weren’t gifts.
As a judge it's part of his responsibilities to know. "Judicial Conference Regulations on Gifts":
* https://www.uscourts.gov/rules-policies/judiciary-policies/c...
Overview:
* https://www.brookings.edu/articles/justice-thomas-gift-repor...
I'd like to think that that is so blatant that it might finally come with consequences.
I'd like to think that, but I don't.
If you were in the spotlight for your alleged corruption at the federal level, I would have a hard time considering you an objective judge of corruption at other levels of government.
Not here, but six Supreme Court Justices have done exactly that.
Justices are in the spotlight for improper and unreported gifts.
Anyone that's been in a large Corp knows a bit of bribing because of the yearly training you have to take.
The fact they brushed it off as nothing to worry about and now start to make changes that loose regulations is very concerning. Even if these changes don't affect them directly.
> The high court has long held that criminal laws restricting “illegal gratuities” to federal officials require proof that the gifts were given for a specific “official act,” not just because of the official’s position.
> Although a gratuity or reward offered and accepted by a state or local official after the official act may be unethical or illegal under other federal, state, or local laws, the gratuity does not violate §666
An artifact failing to correctly implement intended requirements should be familiar around here :)
The Americans better start using those rights they seem to wank off about, cuz if they don't they're about to get sold to the highest bidders
Campaign donations are limited to elected officials or to those standing in an election. Now it's anyone in government. Most government works are not elected, and now they could have free reign.
He has an estimated net worth of $3M. He is 82 years old and makes $174K a year. Even if he made substantially less than $174K (adjusted downward for inflation) before he became a representative in 1991, he can benefit from compound interest just like the rest of us. Hell, I have been investing for slightly less than 33 years myself and I have a substantially similar net worth, and for a good part my early career I definitely was not making the salary of a congressman. Hell, it hasn't even been all that many years since I started making more than a congressman made in 1992.
It's more surprising that $3M is all he's got. If I keep working until I'm 82, I should be deep into 8 digits of net worth. God I love compound interest. I hope my kids are listening enough of the time when I talk about it.
Now do his stepchildren, and exactly how much of their net worth came from Bernie's "campaign contributions".
The way the game is often played is to hire other family members as "consultants" at extremely high salaries (Bernie didn't invent this, by any means -- take a look at how many congresscritters have relatives on the campaign payroll) . In theory, you can't spend campaign money on yourself, but paying it to "consultants" is allowed. And if those "consultants" happen to be relatives, and they happen to use some of their "salaries" to buy luxuries for Dear Old Dad, that's perfectly fine.
Another good one is to set your relative, or even yourself, up in some ancillary business (e.g. advertising or printing). The late Oral Roberts (a TV preacher) was the innovator there. He was always crying about how he sent free Bibles and other religious stuff all over the world, and how many millions it cost. This was absolutely true.
What he never mentioned is that his non-profit ministry hired his very-much-for-profit printing company to print all this stuff.
As far as the government goes, there are pretty strict rules against paying actual government money out to relatives (though it does happen). The rules against paying out campaign contributions are a lot more lenient.
Moreover it's a moot point because every state has a law that bans these payments. The feds do not.
> Section 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.
As such, I see it applying to all government officials, whether elected or not.
Every country has at least some district in the capital city with fancy restaurants and rooftop bars and luxury shopping. If you go to such a place in a rich country and ask people what they do you'll get many answers, you'll find people who do technical work in specialized industries, managers, business owners, etc. In poor countries it is always the same answer, everyone you will meet in these places works for the government.
One thing that I think escapes many is that in corrupt countries, it isn't like the clerk who issues permits decides one day to be corrupt and gets rich. People already know these jobs offer opportunities to make a lot of money and compete fiercely for them. This is a high status job. The people who get them are usually capable and motivated and would serve their economy much better in some other role. It acts like a sort of internal brain drain.
I see no difference
vs.
I will donate $20k to your reelection campaign if you streamline the approval process.
Clearly the former construction could not possibly construed as an implied bribe and we shouldn't punish those who want to reward our hard working civil servants for their honorable public service. /s
But that's not what is being compared here. The more accurate description would be:
"I am very happy that you streamlined the approval process for my project, so here is $20k."
Then again, if I had gone to Yale or Harvard like most of the SCOTUS justices in the majority, I'd see that as part-and-parcel of existence. There's blue-blood access to government, and then there's the access that you get if you didn't happen to come up in the upper crust of the Eastern seaboard of the US.
The law does:
"accepting a bribe as a federal official is punishable by up to 15 years in prison, while accepting an illegal gratuity as a federal official is punishable by up to only 2 years. If the Government were correct that §666 also covered gratuities, Congress would have inexplicably authorized punishing gratuities to state and local officials five times more severely than gratuities to federal officials—10 years for state and local officials compared to 2 years for federal officials. The Government cannot explain why Congress would have created such substantial sentencing disparities."
Unfortunately for us, the law routinely does see a substantial difference and treats them as such. Due to that, the SCOTUS sees them as different and judges that a law on one is not automatically a law on the other.
In other words, to ban a thing you actually need to specifically ban a thing and not just something that feels ethically like the thing you want to ban.
The Supreme Court is supposed to be the last-resort, the fail-safe, the watcher of the US legal system. But somehow it has become infected with partisan BS and now we have to wonder Who watches the watchers? How do we get out of this mess?
Neither the constitution or enacted laws are always in the best interest of the USA. If that is the case it isn’t the job of the Supreme Court to change them. That is the job of the people either directly or through their elected representatives.
The Supreme Court changes laws all the time. Where is the line between "interpreting what laws mean" and "deciding what laws mean", i.e. changing law and making new law? The Supreme Court has been in the business of changing and making new law for a long time; this sitting court is just the worst example of it.
There's a difference between "finding new constitutional rules," on the one hand, versus recognizing the logical implications of existing rules, on the other.
Mocking "emanations from penumbras" seems to hint at hostility to the Ninth Amendment's explicit rule that not every right and liberty must be explicitly spelled out in the Constitution.
For non-lawyer readers, the "emanations" quote is from Griswold v. Connecticut, recognizing a constitutionally-based privacy right to use contraception. The complete quote is:
<quote>
The foregoing cases suggest that specific guarantees in the Bill of Rights have penumbras, formed by emanations from those guarantees that help give them life and substance. Various guarantees create zones of privacy.
The right of association contained in the penumbra of the First Amendment is one, as we have seen.
The Third Amendment in its prohibition against the quartering of soldiers "in any house" in time of peace without the consent of the owner is another facet of that privacy.
The Fourth Amendment explicitly affirms the 'right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures.'
The Fifth Amendment in its Self-Incrimination Clause enables the citizen to create a zone of privacy which government may not force him to surrender to his detriment.
The Ninth Amendment provides: 'The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.'
</quote>
https://scholar.google.com/scholar_case?case=122769221450000... at 484 (cleaned up, extra paragraphing added).
A sweeping right to kill fetuses is not logically implied from a right to be secure against warrantless searches. Many legal systems have the latter protection, but the US is an aberration in interpreting it to create some right to bodily autonomy.
> Mocking "emanations from penumbras" seems to hint at hostility to the Ninth Amendment's explicit rule that not every right and liberty must be explicitly spelled out in the Constitution.
The Ninth Amendment is just a savings clause. It cannot support conjuring new rights into existence by spring boarding off enumerated ones. Put differently, the bill of rights isn’t a set of legal principles which can be invoked as the building blocks to divine previously non-existent rights to override democracy.
The quoted portion of Griswold is unpersuasive in the extreme. I’d call up and yell at any associate that handed me anything like that. People would be up in arms if the Court used similarly vacuous reasoning to, for example, divine a “right” that was economic or regulatory in nature.
You don't need the "for anything ...." part of your sentence: The Exceptions and Regulations Clause is part of Article III and explicitly gives Congress the power to limit the Supreme Court's appellate jurisdiction in pretty much all (federal) cases:
<quote>
In all Cases affecting Ambassadors, other public Ministers and Consuls, and those in which a State shall be Party, the supreme Court shall have original Jurisdiction. [That is, the Supreme Court is the trial court; in those cases, SCOTUS practice is to appoint a "special master" — typically, a former SCOTUS clerk — to hear the case and submit findings of fact and conclusions of law for the Court's consideration.]
In all the other Cases before mentioned [i.e., all cases where federal courts have any jurisdiction at all], the supreme Court shall have appellate Jurisdiction, both as to Law and Fact, with such Exceptions, and under such Regulations as the Congress shall make.
</quote>
(Emphasis and extra paragraphing added.)
Moreover, because all lower (federal) courts are creatures of Congress from the get-go, there's no reason to think Congress can't limit the jurisdiction of those courts. Congress has repeatedly done this in the past by creating specialty courts, e.g., the Court of Federal Claims and the former Court of Customs and Patent Appeals (merged into the Federal Circuit in 1982).
An excellent question. Marbury isn't itself so much a problem as how courts — and the All-Writs Act — have implemented the basic principle. But people have gone along with expansive judicial review for two centuries now, so it's pretty much locked in as "how things are done."
Congress could still limit the reach of Marbury without a constitutional amendment, I think: Under the Exceptions and Regulations Clause, Congress could pass a law saying, for example, some or all of the following:
1. Only SCOTUS has the power to declare an act of Congress (and/or a federal regulation) unconstitutional; a lower court's declaration of unconstitutionality is simply an advisory opinion that has the effect of putting the case in question on hold. (The latter part would need more thought as to the operational details.)
2. A SCOTUS declaration of unconstitutionality has no effect unless agreed to by at least a 7-2 vote.
3. A SCOTUS declaration of unconstitutionality can be overridden by, say, a 3/5 vote of each of the House and Senate, subject to the usual rules about presidential vetoes and pocket vetoes.
Is Congress likely to do any of the foregoing? Probably not — but there might be at least some bipartisan support for cautiously shifting more power back to the elected political branches.
For its internal purposes the Court can certainly make any voting rules it wants. But I'd submit that Congress has the power (under the Exceptions and Regulations Clause) to limit what external effect is to be given to Court votes that don't rise to a congressionally-specified threshold.
Without the Warren Court's decisions in Brown v. Board or Cooper v. Aaron ("separate but equal" schools), we likely would have had even more race-related social upheaval in the 60s than we actually did. Robert Caro's books on LBJ recount how he (LBJ) had to work very hard and skillfully to get civil- and voting-rights legislation past decades-long Southern congressional blockades — Southern committee chairman, plus Senate filibusters — and even then it was a near-run thing.
Without SCOTUS- and Fifth-Circuit intervention — back then, the "Mighty Fifth" was far more liberal than today — desegregation would have taken years longer, maybe even decades. The race riots and other violence we saw in the 60s (which I remember very well from childhood, including living in a Washington D.C. suburb during the riots after MLK's assassination) would likely have been even worse.
That’s completely different from “emanations from penumbras”—which is just pulling stuff out of your butt. Nothing in the Constitution makes the Supreme Court an Iran-style Guardian Council, the final arbiter on social and moral issues.
It’s no different than any other written legal document. I have a lease agreement with Toyota. That document can be interpreted—it doesn’t need to expressly enumerate everything. But that doesn’t mean you can read it to govern say how I raise my children. Just because everything doesn’t need to be enumerated doesn’t mean that some things aren’t outside the scope of the document.
The non-delegation cases are about whether the elaborate and explicit separation of powers in the Constitution even means anything at all. The notion that you can have executive agencies making “regulations” with the force of law, and adjudicating cases through administrative judges, is already inconsistent with the idea of having three separate branches of government with clearly differentiated powers. The only question is whether that constitutional separation is mostly meaningless, or completely meaningless.
And the “emanations and penumbras” has nothing to do with “multiple protected rights.” If you are carrying a gun while protesting, that’s covered by the second and first amendments and you don’t need anything on top of that. “Emanations and penumbras” is a way to pull “rights” out of your ass that aren’t in the document. It’s classic mid-20th century white guy pontificating.
If Congress is in deadlock, that means that Americans cannot agree on the rules. In that case, yes... no rules ought to be made, because it's not going to represent American's interests writ large.
You are actually arguing that rules should be made up by unelected bureaucrats while admitting that the representatives substantially disagree on those rules and would not be able to legislate them themselves.
That means you are asking bureaucrats to go against the collective will of democratically elected representatives.
And if your argument is 'congress is in deadlock so no rules ought to be made' then fine. Except the Supreme Court is continuing to make up rules during that deadlock, many of which have a direct and measurable impact on my daily quality of life.
So what happens when the Supreme Court steps in and says that delegated authority is no longer valid? The answer is that we become more nonfunctional and the intention is clear, because the court has partisan objectives.
Given that the overwhelming majority of government workers are themselves partisan in one direction (DC is by far majority democrat, and government workers the same), one can easily argue the opposite: that allowing bureaucratic rule making is itself partisan.
by determining whether a law is constitutional or not, they are indeed changing laws
That's a lot of words for "the court doesn't lean my way, so let us act like the entire system has failed". Extremely low quality bait.
It's not partisan BS, it's blatant corruption
An astoundingly stupid ruling, but one that makes sense when you look at some of the 'gratuity' the current justices have received.
The basic idea, AFAICT, is that _federal_ law should not punish _state_ crimes under this specific section of the law (§666). As noted elsewhere, there might be other laws on the books for bribes, but §666 doesn't apply here.
The distinction between "gratuities"/ "gifts" and "bribes" is artificial to me, as a normal person, but I understand that the law makes a distinction.
I'm sympathetic to the federalism argument (every state should have anti-bribery laws so that _states_ themselves can take them to court instead of waiting for the feds!).
But I don't understand why someone would explicitly write a law that tries to draw a fat line between bribes and gifts. Is that the legal equivalent of a bug? A bad law?
If you want to be the kind of change you'd like to see in the world then you could find a way to filter them out. Most of us just read the title and skip over them. Others feel it necessary to click into the comments so they can complain about them.
What an utter farce.
https://www.amazon.com/Road-Unfreedom-Russia-Europe-America/...
Is it only bad to give campaign contributions if I'm rich? What if I don't contribute to his campaign at all, but I just find (or create) a superpac that says alot of the same things he says, so that anyone who is influenced by the superpac is likely to vote for him?
If instead you insist on no private funding for campaigns, then it becomes the issue that anyone allowed to campaign is chosen by the government through its public funding qualification process. My preferred candidate may be, in practice, barred from campaigning at all.
Equating money with free speech is a mistake in my view. It is explicitly saying we believe each person's value to society is strictly their net worth. For political purposes I think everyone should have an equally powerful vote, and I include campaign contributions in that.
This is a first amendment violation. If the PAC can make the case that it is not campaigning for a particular candidate, then it's simply people exercising freedom of speech to tell others what is important to them.
> Equating money with free speech is a mistake in my view.
In your view, but from a scientific perspective, you're objectively wrong. Everything's fungible. Especially when we're talking about speech that occurs over mass media, which costs money to access.
> For political purposes I think everyone should have an equally powerful vote
When things like strategic voting are possible, it's impossible for everyone to have equally powerful votes because that would require everyone to be equally intelligent. Anyone more intelligent than you has at least the potential of voting more strategically than you do, and their interests will then dominate yours.
The only time punishment should happen is if a gift/bribe/whatever is not reported. Clarence Thomas's BS about not thinking it was a gift and didn't need reporting should subject him to significant legal penalties.
[edit] Last minute thought: whenever a public official takes a bribe, they should be required to wear a sticker on their suit with the logo of the bribing organization just like Formula One racers have on their suits and cars.