Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/21pdf/20-1650_3dq3.pdf
Page Number: 16.0

Cite as:  597 U. S. ____ (2022) 

11 

Opinion of the Court 

For those proceedings, Congress expressly cabined district 
courts’ discretion by requiring courts to abide by the Sen-
tencing  Commission’s  policy  statements. 
See  also 
§3582(c)(1)(A) (permitting district courts to grant compas-
sionate release in certain circumstances if “such a reduction 
is  consistent  with  applicable  policy  statements  issued  by
the Sentencing Commission”).4 

III 
A 
Congress in the First Step Act simply did not contravene
this  well-established  sentencing  practice.    Nothing  in  the 
text and structure of the First Step Act expressly, or even 
implicitly,  overcomes  the  established  tradition  of  district
courts’ sentencing discretion. 

The first section of the First Step  Act, §404(a), sets out 

who is eligible for relief:  

“In  this  section,  the  term  ‘covered  offense’  means  a 
violation  of  a  Federal  criminal  statute,  the  statutory 
penalties for which were modified by section 2 or 3 of 
the Fair Sentencing Act of 2010 . . . that was committed 
before August 3, 2010.”  132 Stat. 5222. 

The second section, §404(b), describes what relief is avail-

able for the parties who meet §404(a)’s criteria: 

“A  court  that  imposed  a  sentence  for  a  covered  of-
fense may, on motion of the defendant, the Director of 
the  Bureau  of  Prisons,  the  attorney  for  the  Govern-
ment, or the court, impose a reduced sentence as if sec-
tions  2  and  3  of  the  Fair  Sentencing  Act  of  2010  . . . 

—————— 

4 The  dissent  brushes  aside  this  venerable  tradition  of  discretion  by 
emphasizing  the  differences  between  initial  sentencings  and  sentence
modification proceedings.  See post, at 2–3.  Of course there are differ-
ences between the two, but the feature common to both is that only Con-
gress and the Constitution limit the historic scope of district courts’ dis-
cretion.