OPINION: This article may contain commentary which reflects the author's opinion.
The U.S. Supreme Court ruled on Wednesday in favor of a former mayor of an Indiana city convicted of accepting a bribe, in a decision that might make it more difficult for federal prosecutors to bring corruption charges against state and local leaders.
The justices ruled 6-3 to overturn a lower court judgment that maintained former Portage mayor James Snyder’s corruption conviction for collecting $13,000 from a truck company that received more than $1 million in contracts while in office.
The court’s conservative justices voted in favor of the verdict penned by Justice Brett Kavanaugh, while the liberal members dissented, Newsmax reported.
Federal prosecutors accused Snyder of corruptly soliciting a payment related to government contracts, a crime punishable by up to ten years in jail. A jury found him guilty, and the court sentenced him to one year and nine months in prison.
“The question in this case is whether (federal law) makes it a crime for state and local officials 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 official act,” said Kavanaugh. “The answer is no.”
While Snyder was mayor, Portage granted two contracts to Great Lakes Peterbilt for the purchase of five trash trucks worth approximately $1.1 million.
The following year, while Snyder was still in office, Peterbilt paid him $13,000, which Snyder said was a consultancy fee for his work for the company. According to Kavanaugh, Portage, a city in northwest Indiana with approximately 38,000 citizens, appears to allow local public officials to seek outside employment.
The 7th United States Circuit Court of Appeals in Chicago rejected Snyder’s argument that the federal felony at issue forbids bribery but not gratuities. Snyder then filed an appeal with the Supreme Court.
In Wednesday’s opinion, Kavanaugh stated that the federal corruption legislation “leaves it to state and local governments to regulate gratuities to state and local officials.”
“The legislation does not enhance those state and local rules by subjecting 19 million state and local officials to up to 10 years in federal prison for receiving even routine gratuities,” Kavanaugh said.
In a dissent penned by Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, the court’s liberal justices voiced alarm about how the decision could weaken efforts to prosecute public corruption.
The government has not used the statute as a dragnet against permissible behavior, but rather to prosecute serious cases involving “exactly the type of palm greasing that the statute covers and that one might reasonably expect Congress to care about when targeting graft in state, local, and tribal governments,” Jackson wrote.
“After today, however, the ability of the federal government to prosecute such wrongful conduct is left in doubt,” Jackson said.
Last year, the court reversed the bribery conviction of an ex-aide to Democratic former New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, limiting federal prosecutors’ authority to pursue corruption prosecutions.
The Supreme Court made headlines recently when the justices turned down a challenge to Texas voting rules that let seniors automatically vote by mail but not younger people.
Older voters can ask for an absentee ballot for any reason in Texas, Indiana, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina, and Tennessee. In other states, older voters can only do this in certain situations.
Just as it rejected a similar challenge to Indiana’s voting laws in 2021, the court on Monday declined to hear an appeal from three Texas voters. Additionally, it twice declined to hear earlier versions of the Texas lawsuit that the Texas Democratic Party had filed during the COVID-19 pandemic.
The challengers argued that the 26th Amendment forbids age-based discrimination, which is what the unequal treatment of voters amounts to.
Ratified in 1971 to lower the voting age to 18, the amendment says the right to vote “shall not be denied or abridged … on account of age.”
“Whatever voting rights a state grants to people aged 65 and over, it must also grant to people under 65,” the Texas voters told the Supreme Court in their unsuccessful appeal.
They wanted the court to reverse an appeals court’s decision that Texas’ rules are legal since making it easier for some people to vote doesn’t make it harder for others.
Also, the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans said that the right to vote did not include the right to vote by mail when the 26th Amendment was made law.
Most states either mail ballots to all voters or let any resident ask for an absentee ballot.
Yet, Texas said it has taken a different approach to safeguarding the integrity of voting. It also acknowledges that older voters may have limited mobility or other issues that make it more difficult for them to vote in person.
Anyone could ask for a mail-in ballot, but the state said that would make voter fraud more likely.
The 2022 midterm elections saw about one-third of voters send in their ballots.
The voters who challenged Texas’ voting rules cited numerous barriers young voters face when trying to vote in person, including lack of transportation, long lines, difficulty finding or accessing polling places, and limited time off from work.
Mail-in voting has been a major topic going into November’s presidential election, with several key rulings coming down in courts across the country.
