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Page Number: 22.0

18 

DUBIN v. UNITED STATES 

Opinion of the Court 

Time and again, this Court has prudently avoided read-
ing incongruous breadth into opaque language in criminal 
statutes.  In  Van  Buren  v.  United  States,  593  U. S.  ___ 
(2021),  the  “far-reaching  consequences”  of  the  Govern-
ment’s reading “underscore[d] the implausibility of the Gov-
ernment’s interpretation.”  Id., at ___ (slip op., at 17).  In 
Marinello, the Court rejected the Government’s reading of 
a statute about obstructing administration of the Tax Code 
that would have swept in the “person who pays a babysitter 
$41 per week in cash without withholding taxes,” as well as 
someone who “leaves a large cash tip in a restaurant, fails 
to keep donation receipts from every charity to which he or 
she  contributes,  or  fails  to  provide  every  record  to  an  ac-
countant.”  584 U. S., at ___ (slip op., at 7).  Nor was all such 
conduct innocent, as the statute required an individual to 
act “ ‘corruptly.’ ”  Id., at ___ (slip op., at 8).  Even still, “[h]ad 
Congress intended” to sweep so far, “it would have spoken 
with more clarity than it did.”  Id., at ___ (slip op., at 7).  In 
Yates, the Court held that the Government’s “unrestrained” 
reading would have turned a provision focused on “records” 
and “documents” into “an all-encompassing ban on the spo-
liation  of  evidence”  that  would  “sweep  within  its  reach 
physical objects of every kind,” including a fish.  574 U. S., 
at 536, 540 (plurality opinion).  Had Congress set out to do 
so, “one would have expected a clearer indication of that in-
tent.”  Ibid. 

So too here.  The Government’s reading would sweep in 
the  hour-inflating  lawyer,  the  steak-switching  waiter,  the 
building contractor who tacks an extra $10 onto the price of 
the paint he purchased.  So long as they used various com-
mon billing methods, they would all be subject to a manda-
tory two years in federal prison.  To say that such a result