Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/13pdf/12-158_6579.pdf
Page Number: 3.0

Cite as:  572 U. S. ____ (2014) 

3 

Syllabus 

the  ordinary  meaning  of  the  term  being  defined  (here,  “chemical
weapon”) in settling on a fair reading of the statute.  See Johnson v. 
United States, 559 U. S. 133. 

The Government’s reading of section 229 would transform a statute
concerned with acts of war, assassination, and terrorism into a mas-
sive  federal  anti-poisoning  regime  that  reaches  the  simplest  of  as-
saults.  In light of the principle that Congress does not normally in-
trude  upon  the  States’  police  power,  this  Court  is  reluctant  to 
conclude that Congress meant to punish Bond’s crime with a federal
prosecution for a chemical weapons attack.  In fact, only a handful of
prosecutions have been brought under section 229, and most of those
involved crimes not traditionally within the States’ purview, e.g., ter-
rorist plots.

Pennsylvania’s  laws  are  sufficient  to  prosecute  assaults  like 
Bond’s,  and  there  is  no  indication  in  section  229  that  Congress  in-
tended to  abandon its traditional  “reluctan[ce] to define as a federal
crime  conduct  readily  denounced  as  criminal  by  the  States,”  Bass, 
supra, at 349.  That principle goes to the very structure of the Consti-
tution, and “protects the liberty of the individual from arbitrary pow-
er.”  Bond  v.  United  States,  564  U. S.  ___,  ___.    The  global  need  to
prevent  chemical  warfare  does  not  require  the  Federal  Government
to reach into the kitchen cupboard.  Pp. 15–21. 

681 F. 3d 149, reversed and remanded. 

ROBERTS, C. J., delivered the opinion of the Court, in which KENNEDY, 
GINSBURG,  BREYER,  SOTOMAYOR,  and  KAGAN,  JJ.,  joined.    SCALIA,  J., 
filed  an  opinion  concurring  in  the  judgment,  in  which  THOMAS,  J., 
joined, and in which ALITO, J., joined as to Part I.  THOMAS, J., filed an 
opinion concurring in the judgment, in which SCALIA, J., joined, and in 
which ALITO, J., joined as to Parts I, II, and III.  ALITO, J., filed an opin-
ion concurring in the judgment.