Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/14pdf/13-1034_3dq4.pdf
Page Number: 12.0

Cite as:  575 U. S. ____ (2015) 

9 

Opinion of the Court 

huana.”  Id., at 275.  California controlled certain “narcot-
ics,”  such  as  peyote,  not  listed  as  “narcotic  drugs”  under
federal  law. 
Ibid.  The  BIA  concluded  that  an  alien’s 
California  conviction  for  offering  to  sell  an  unidentified 
“narcotic” was not a deportable offense, for it was possible 
that  the  conviction  involved  a  substance,  such  as  peyote,
controlled  only  under  California  law.    Id.,  at  275–276. 
Because  the  alien’s  conviction  was  not  necessarily  predi-
cated upon a federally controlled “narcotic drug,” the BIA
concluded that the conviction did not establish the alien’s 
deportability.  Id., at 276. 
  Under  the  Paulus  analysis,  adhered  to  as  recently  as 
2014  in  Matter  of  Ferreira,  26  I.  &  N.  Dec.  415  (BIA 
2014),8 Mellouli would not be deportable.  Mellouli pleaded
guilty to concealing unnamed pills in his sock.  At the time 
of  Mellouli’s  conviction,  Kansas’  schedules  of  controlled 
substances  included  at  least  nine  substances—e.g.,  salvia 
and  jimson  weed—not  defined  in  §802.  See  Kan.  Stat. 
Ann.  §65–4105(d)(30),  (31).  The  state  law  involved  in 
Mellouli’s conviction, therefore, like the California statute 
in  Paulus,  was  not  confined  to  federally  controlled  sub-
stances;  it  required  no  proof  by  the  prosecutor  that
Mellouli used his sock to conceal a substance listed under 
§802,  as  opposed  to  a  substance  controlled  only  under 
Kansas  law.  Under  the  categorical  approach  applied  in 
Paulus,  Mellouli’s  drug-paraphernalia  conviction  does  not 
render  him  deportable. 
In  short,  the  state  law  under 
which  he  was  charged  categorically  “relat[ed]  to  a  con-
trolled  substance,”  but  was  not  limited  to  substances 
“defined in [§802].”9 

—————— 

8 The Government acknowledges that Ferreira “assumed the applica-
bility  of  [the  Paulus]  framework.”    Brief  for  Respondent  49.    Whether 
Ferreira applied that framework correctly is not a matter this case calls
upon us to decide. 

9 The  dissent  maintains  that  it  is  simply  following  “the  statutory
text.”  Post, at 1.  It is evident, however, that the dissent shrinks to the