KIRO - The Supreme Court overturned the bribery conviction of a former Indiana mayor on Wednesday, the latest in a series of decisions narrowing the scope of federal public corruption law. The high court's 6-3 opinion along ideological lines found the law criminalizes bribes given before an official act, not rewards handed out after. “Some gratuities can be problematic. Others are commonplace and might be innocuous,” Justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote. The lines aren't always clear, especially since many state and local officials have other jobs, he said. The high court sided with James Snyder, a Republican who was convicted of taking $13,000 from a trucking company after prosecutors said he steered about $1 million worth of city contracts to the company. In a sharply worded dissent joined by her liberal colleagues, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson said the distinction between bribes and gratuities ignores the wording of the law aimed at rooting out public corruption. “Snyder's absurd and atextual reading of the statute is one that only today's court could love,” she wrote... The decision also comes as the Supreme Court itself has faced sustained criticism over undisclosed trips and gifts from wealthy benefactors to some justices that led the high court to adopt its first code of ethics, though it lacks an enforcement mechanism.
AP News - The Supreme Court on Thursday stripped the Securities and Exchange Commission
of a major tool in fighting securities fraud in a decision that also
could have far-reaching effects on other regulatory agencies. The justices ruled
in a 6-3 vote that people accused of fraud by the SEC, which regulates
securities markets, have the right to a jury trial in federal court. The
in-house proceedings the SEC has used in some civil fraud complaints
violate the Constitution, the court said. The SEC was awarded more
than $5 billion in civil penalties in the 2023 government spending year
that ended Sept. 30, the agency said in a news release. It was unclear
how much of that money came through in-house proceedings or lawsuits in
federal court.
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