Snyder v. United States: Does Federal Bribery Law Criminalize Gratuities?

April 2024

Update: Since this article was written, there have been newer developments in the law. For more on that, you can read our analysis of the Supreme Court’s decision in Snyder v. United States.

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On April 15, 2024, the Supreme Court heard argument in Snyder v. United States, No. 23-108, regarding whether one federal bribery statute, 18 U.S.C. § 666(a)(1)(B), criminalizes mere gratuities that do not involve a quid pro quo exchange.  The stakes are significant because Section 666 is the Justice Department’s most-used tool for prosecuting official corruption cases,[1] and in most cases, it is much harder for the Government to prove a quid pro quo agreement than a gratuity. 

To begin, we should frame the difference between a bribe and a gratuity.  Years ago, the Supreme Court explained that “for bribery there must be a quid pro quo—a specific intent to give or receive something of value in exchange for an official act.  An illegal gratuity, on the other hand, may constitute merely a reward for some future act that the public official will take (and may already have determined to take), or for a past act that he has already taken.”[2]  Until now, however, the Supreme Court had not explicitly determined whether § 666 covers gratuities or only quid pro quo bribes.

The lower courts have split on that question.  In United States v. Hamilton, the Fifth Circuit held that § 666 requires a quid pro quo bribery and does not criminalize mere gratuities.  But only the First Circuit agrees.  Five circuit courts (the Second, Sixth, Seventh, Eighth, and Eleventh) have disagreed and ruled that § 666 does extend to gratuities.  The Supreme Court took up Snyder to address that circuit split.

I.             Statute

In relevant part, 18 U.S.C. § 666(a)(1)(B) prohibits state and local government employees, and employees of entities receiving federal funds, from “corruptly” receiving “anything of value” while “intending to be influenced or rewarded in connection with” business or transactions involving more than $5,000.

II.          Factual Background

In 2016, Mayor James Snyder of Portage, Indiana was indicted for accepting $13,000 from a company that had, in the preceding year, received two contracts from the city of Portage.  Snyder argued that he received the money as payment for consulting services, not based on the two city contracts.  (The state of Indiana does not prohibit local officials from outside employment, and Snyder took on outside consulting work while in office.  Snyder’s salary as mayor was only $62,000.)  In other words, there was no quid pro quo because he never made an agreement to trade city contracts for the $13,000. 

At trial, the Government disagreed with Snyder’s view and characterized the $13,000 payment as “a gratuity in recognition of Mayor Snyder’s past conduct.”[3] The company was not paying for consulting, the Government said — it was rewarding the mayor for the two contracts he had given the company. 

The jury agreed with the Government and convicted Snyder of bribery.  On appeal, the Seventh Circuit affirmed the conviction and held that § 666(a)(1)(B) prohibits gratuities, which it defined as rewards for actions the payee already took or has already committed to take.

III.       Legal Question

The text of 18 U.S.C. § 666(a)(1)(B) appears to criminalize only bribery, but the Government and several federal circuit courts interpret the statute to also cover gratuities.  As the Government wrote in opposing Snyder’s petition for certiorari, “[t]he corrupt acceptance of a gratuity plainly qualifies as the acceptance of something of value “intending to be … rewarded in connection with” official business.[4]

In past cases, the Supreme Court has itself described an “illegal gratuity” as “a reward for some future act that the public official will take (and may already have determined to take), or for a past act that he has already taken.”[5]  And the Government argues that our nation has a long history of criminalizing the corrupt receipt of gratuities.

 Snyder, however, argues that the text of § 666 plainly refers to payments exchanged for official conduct, i.e., bribes.  In his view, Congress used the phrase “intending to be influenced or rewarded” in the statute to foreclose any argument that the public official was not “influenced” because they would have taken the same action even without the bribe — regardless, they intended to be rewarded.  Snyder argues that “[a]ll bribes can be recast as gratuities,” which would relieve the Government from ever needing to prove the more stringent bribery element of a quid pro quo; in effect, the Government’s reading would render the bribery portion of § 666 superfluous.  Moreover, a broad reading could “turn[] all thank-you gifts into potential federal crimes.”

IV.        Oral Argument

During a sometimes-heated oral argument, the Government maintained that the statute’s text, which covers an intent to be rewarded, clearly covers gratuities.  Snyder’s counsel, in turn, described those arguments as “preposterous,” “gibberish,” and something the Government “cooked up” while mooting its oral argument.

For more than an hour, the Court and the parties presented a wide variety of hypothetical gratuities, including an Uber ride, escort services, and meals at the Cheesecake Factory.  Some justices also focused on § 666’s use of the word “corruptly” and whether it should change the Court’s analysis of gratuities.

Several justices appeared concerned by the breadth of the Government’s interpretation, but it remains to be seen whether the Court will narrow the statute’s scope.

[1] Modest Increase in Official Corruption Convictions in 2023 (Jan. 31, 2024), Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, https://trac.syr.edu/reports/737/.

[2] United States v. Sun-Diamond Growers, 526 U.S. 398, 404–05 (1999) (emphasis omitted).

[3] Brief of Pet. James Snyder at 7.

[4] U.S. Br. in Opp. at 9.

[5] Sun-Diamond Growers, 526 U.S. at 404–05.

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