Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/19pdf/18-1059_e2p3.pdf
Page Number: 9.0

Cite as:  590 U. S. ____ (2020) 

7 

Opinion of the Court 

had to show not only that Baroni and Kelly engaged in de-
ception, but that an “object of the[ir] fraud [was] ‘property.’ ”  
Cleveland v. United States, 531 U. S. 12, 26 (2000).1 

That  requirement,  this  Court  has  made  clear,  prevents
these statutes from criminalizing all acts of dishonesty by
state  and  local  officials.    Some  decades  ago,  courts  of  ap-
peals often construed the federal fraud laws to “proscribe[]
schemes  to  defraud  citizens  of  their  intangible  rights  to
honest and impartial government.”  McNally, 483 U. S., at 
355.  This Court declined to go along.  The fraud statutes, 
we held in McNally, were “limited in scope to the protection 
of property rights.”  Id., at 360.  They did not authorize fed-
eral prosecutors to “set[ ] standards of disclosure and good 
government  for  local  and  state  officials.”    Ibid.  Congress
responded to that decision by enacting a law barring fraud-
ulent schemes “to deprive another of the intangible right of 
honest services”—regardless of whether the scheme sought 
to divest the victim of any property.  §1346.  But the vague-
ness  of  that  language  led  this  Court  to  adopt  “a  limiting
construction,”  confining  the  statute  to  schemes  involving 
bribes  or  kickbacks.  Skilling  v.  United  States,  561  U. S. 
358, 405, 410 (2010).  We specifically rejected a proposal to
construe  the  statute  as  encompassing  “undisclosed  self-
dealing by a public official,” even when he hid financial in-
terests.  Id., at 409.  The upshot is that federal fraud law 
leaves much public corruption to the States (or their elec-
torates)  to  rectify.    Cf.  N. J.  Stat.  Ann.  §2C:30–2  (West
2016) (prohibiting the unauthorized exercise of official func-
tions).  Save for bribes or kickbacks (not at issue here), a 
state or local official’s fraudulent schemes violate that law 
only  when,  again,  they  are  “for  obtaining  money  or  prop-
erty.”  18 U. S. C. §1343; see §666(a)(1)(A) (similar). 
—————— 

1 The conspiracy verdicts raise no separate issue.  None of the parties 
doubts that those convictions stand or fall with the substantive offenses. 
If there was property fraud here, there was also conspiracy to commit it. 
But if not, not.