Opinion ID: 4556443
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: The Generic Federal Offense of Sexual

Text: Abuse of a Minor The term “sexual abuse of a minor,” 8 U.S.C. § 1101(a)(43)(A), is not defined in the Immigration and 7 Nationality Act (“INA”). See Restrepo v. Att’y Gen., 617 F.3d 787, 792 (3d Cir. 2010) (noting that the INA “contains no definition of this phrase”). The INA does define other aggravated felonies by expressly cross-referencing various criminal statutes. See, e.g., 8 U.S.C. § 1101(a)(43)(B) (stating that 21 U.S.C.§ 802 provides the definition of “illicit trafficking in a controlled substance”); id. § 1101(a)(43)(C) (stating that 18 U.S.C. § 921 provides the definition of “illicit trafficking in firearms or destructive devices”); id. § 1101(a)(43)(D) (making “laundering of monetary instruments[,]” at least past a monetary threshold and as defined in 18 U.S.C. § 1956, an aggravated felony). But no such cross-reference is provided to give precise content to the term “sexual abuse of a minor.” That, of course, leads to some uncertainty in discerning the elements of that generic federal crime. The BIA dealt with this uncertainty in its en banc decision in In re Rodriguez-Rodriguez, 22 I. & N. Dec. 991 (BIA 1999), by turning to 18 U.S.C. § 3509(a)(8), “a code section relating to the rights of child victims and witnesses in federal criminal cases.” Restrepo, 617 F.3d at 796. Section 3509(a)(8) defines sexual abuse to include “the employment, use, persuasion, inducement, enticement, or coercion of a child to engage in, or assist another person to engage in, sexually explicit conduct or the rape, molestation, prostitution, or other form of sexual exploitation of children, or incest with children.” 18 U.S.C. § 3509(a)(8). Later, applying the interpretive approach set forth in the Supreme Court’s landmark decision in Chevron U.S.A., Inc. v. Natural Resources Defense Council, Inc., 467 U.S. 837 (1984), we deferred to and adopted the BIA’s analysis in our opinion in Restrepo v. Attorney General. We reasoned that the absence 8 of a definition in the statute indicated that the meaning of “sexual abuse of a minor” is not clear and unambiguous. Restrepo, 617 F.3d at 795-97. We noted “that the BIA’s definition of sexual abuse of a minor [in RodriguezRodriguez] is a reasonable one and that it [was therefore] appropriate to exercise Chevron deference.” Id. at 796. Accordingly, in our Circuit and for purposes of applying the categorical approach in the context of an immigration case, an analysis of the generic crime of “sexual abuse of a minor” depends upon 18 U.S.C. § 3509(a)(8) for guidance. Despite that, at Cabeda’s urging, the BIA ruled that the Supreme Court decision in Esquivel-Quintana effectively overruled Restrepo and altered that prior approach. That was error. In Esquivel-Quintana, the Supreme Court considered the immigration ramifications of a conviction under a California law defining statutory rape to include “sexual intercourse with a minor who is more than three years younger than the perpetrator,” 137 S. Ct. at 1567 (quoting Cal. Penal Code § 261.5(c)). More specifically, the question was “whether a conviction under a state statute [thus] criminalizing consensual sexual intercourse between a 21year-old and a 17-year-old qualifies as sexual abuse of a minor under the INA.” Id. The Court began by reiterating the applicability of the categorical approach, saying that the pertinent section of the INA “makes aliens removable based on the nature of their convictions, not based on their actual conduct.” Id. (citing 8 U.S.C. § 1227(a)(2)(A)(iii) (“Any alien who is convicted of an aggravated felony at any time after admission is deportable.”)). The Court then focused on the precise question before it. 9 Noting again the parameters of the California statutory rape statute and California’s definition of a “minor” as anyone under 18, the Court observed that “the conduct criminalized under this provision would be, at a minimum, consensual sexual intercourse between a victim who is almost 18 and a perpetrator who just turned 21.” Id. at 1568. The categorical analysis required the presumption that the behavior at issue was the least culpable that could be prosecuted under the statute, so consensual sex between one partner a day shy of eighteen and another on his or her 21st birthday was the frame of reference the Court assumed for judging whether the offense of conviction constituted sexual abuse of a minor under the INA. Because the INA does not provide a definition of “sexual abuse of a minor,” the Court turned to “the normal tools of statutory interpretation[,]” beginning with the words of the statute itself. Id. at 1569. Since Congress added sexual abuse of a minor to the INA in 1996 as an aggravated felony triggering removal, the Supreme Court looked to a thencurrent dictionary for a definition of what constitutes “sexual abuse,” saying the ordinary meaning of those words “included ‘the engaging in sexual contact with a person who is below a specified age or who is incapable of giving consent because of age or mental or physical incapacity.’” Id. (quoting Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary of Law 454 (1996)). Because the INA requires that the abuse be “of a minor,” the Court decided the statutory focus is “on age, rather than mental or physical incapacity.” Id. Turning to the parties’ arguments, the Court said that the government wanted a federal law definition of “sexual abuse of a minor” requiring only that behavior “(1) is illegal, 10 (2) involves sexual activity, and (3) is directed at a person younger than 18 years old.” Id. (citation omitted). But, the Court observed, that “turns the categorical approach on its head by defining the generic federal offense of sexual abuse of a minor as whatever is illegal under the particular law of the State where the defendant was convicted.” Id. at 1570. That effectively means “there is no ‘generic’ definition at all.” Id. Instead of accepting the government’s unrestricted whatever-a-state-outlaws approach to defining the term, the Supreme Court agreed with the petitioner’s much narrower focus on the age of consent that is customary in many statutory rape laws across the country. It was noteworthy, the Court decided, that the word “aggravated” precedes the word “felony” in the INA’s listing of “sexual abuse of a minor” as a deportable crime, and that the crime is listed in the same subparagraph of the statute as murder and rape, two of the most heinous crimes. “The structure of the INA therefore suggests that sexual abuse of a minor encompasses only especially egregious felonies.” Id. Ultimately, after looking at other contextual clues in the INA and surveying several states’ policy choices on the age of consent for sexual activity, the Court said, “the general consensus from state criminal codes points to the same generic definition as dictionaries and federal law: Where sexual intercourse is abusive solely because of the ages of the participants, the victim must be younger than 16.” Id. at 1572. That ended the matter. The Court did not have to give a full definition of what constitutes sexual abuse of a minor, and it did not do so. In fact, it expressly resisted attempts to push it past the limits of what was required to answer the 11 specific question before it. There was no need to consider Chevron deference or any other issue that might bear more broadly on the interpretation of the term “sexual abuse of a minor,” “because the statute, read in context, unambiguously foreclose[d] the [BIA]’s interpretation[,]” which had treated the petitioner’s crime as an aggravated felony. Id. All that mattered was that the “petitioner was not convicted of an aggravated felony and [was] not, on that basis, removable.” Id. at 1568. While there is a lot to learn from the Supreme Court’s Esquivel-Quintana decision, the primary take-away for the present matter is that the Court very deliberately ruled narrowly. It did not purport to establish a full definition of “sexual abuse of a minor,” and it did not, in either purpose or effect, undermine our existing precedent in Restrepo in a way that would permit us to ignore that precedent. One may sense some tension between the statutory interpretation undertaken in Restrepo and the analytical approach employed in Esquivel-Quintana. Most notably, our opinion in Restrepo was premised heavily on the broad applicability of Chevron deference to the BIA’s expertise, see Restrepo, 617 F.3d at 793 (asserting that “Congress may have intended for the BIA to utilize its expertise to define the phrase” sexual abuse of a minor), while Esquivel-Quintana relied on ordinary tools of statutory interpretation and declined to resort to Chevron deference in answering the specific question confronted, see Esquivel-Quintana, 137 S. Ct. at 1572 (stating that “the statute, read in context, unambiguously forecloses the [BIA]’s interpretation” and thus Chevron did not apply). But the implication that Chevron deference is unnecessary in one specific instance does not “sufficiently undercut the decisional basis” of Restrepo to allow us to say that its “rule 12 no longer has any vitality[.]” West v. Keve, 721 F.2d 91, 93 (3d Cir. 1983) (citation omitted).3 In short, we are still bound by Restrepo. Esquivel-Quintana has not changed that.4 3 That is true even though the Supreme Court’s decision in another recent case, Kisor v. Wilkie, 139 S. Ct. 2400 (2019), casts doubt on the kind of broadly deferential approach taken in Restrepo. See id. at 2415 (considering the question of what judicial deference is owed to an agency’s interpretation of its own regulations – so-called Auer deference – and deciding that “Auer … gives agencies their due, while also allowing – indeed, obligating – courts to perform their reviewing and restraining functions”). 4 In the accompanying opinion concurring in part, our colleague Judge Krause says that the tension between Esquivel-Quintana and Restrepo is “irreconcilable[.]” (Concur. Op. at 4.) That is because, in her view, “[i]n multiple respects, the statutory analysis of Esquivel-Quintana is entirely inconsistent with that of Restrepo.” (Concur. Op. at 4.) She thus concludes that “Esquivel-Quintana has so undermined [Restrepo’s] analysis that … Restrepo is no longer good law.” (Concur. Op. at 4-5.) That is where we part company. As already acknowledged, it is true that EsquivelQuintana and Restrepo undertook the task of statutory interpretation on different methodological tracks. Our decision in Restrepo was written at a time when deference to agency decision making often proceeded as a matter of course, while the Supreme Court’s decision in EsquivelQuintana reflects what may be seen as a more searching and nuanced approach. But shifting interpretive methodologies are not usually viewed as carrying the force of stare decisis, at least not when the decisions employing them do not purport 13 to overrule past precedent. We have noted that the Supreme Court “typically avoids methodological stare decisis[,]” Am. Farm Bureau Fed’n v. U.S. E.P.A., 792 F.3d 281, 307 n.8 (3d Cir. 2015), while observing that “federal courts do not treat interpretive methodology as a traditional form of ‘law[.]’” Id. (quoting Evan J. Criddle & Glen Staszewski, Against Methodological Stare Decisis, 102 Geo. L.J. 1573, 1576 (2014)). See also Philip P. Frickey, Interpretive-Regime Change, 38 Loy. L.A. L. Rev. 1971, 1976 (2005) (noting that the Supreme Court’s methodological statements “are not binding on the Supreme Court or even on lower courts”). We certainly agree that cases like Esquivel-Quintana and Kisor provide an analytical approach we ought to follow now, but that does not mean the substantive conclusions reached in earlier cases have all been overruled. If Esquivel-Quintana did what our colleague claims for it – that is, if it meant that our prior precedential decisions were all being overruled to the extent they gave broad Chevron deference to the BIA’s interpretation of immigration statutes – we think there would have been more to signal so dramatic a step than the mere observation that, in the particular case then before it, the Supreme Court saw Chevron as having no application. See Esquivel-Quintana v. Sessions, 137 S. Ct. at 1572 (“We have no need to resolve whether the rule of lenity or Chevron receives priority in this case because the statute, read in context, unambiguously forecloses the Board's interpretation. Therefore, neither the rule of lenity nor Chevron applies.”). So we are not persuaded that Restrepo has been overruled by Esquivel-Quintana. That is not “turn[ing] vertical stare decisis on its head,” as our colleague says. 14 Indeed, we have already taken the position, at least implicitly, that Esquivel-Quintana speaks to the question of statutory rape, not more broadly to the definition of the generic offense of sexual abuse of a minor.5 See MondragonGonzalez v. Attorney General, 884 F.3d 155, 160 (3d Cir. 2018) (noting that Esquivel-Quintana clarified the meaning of “the generic offense of statutory rape”).6 And other circuits (Concur. Op. at 19.) It is giving necessary respect to our existing precedent, even when we ourselves might be inclined to decide things differently now. 5 In fact, on the topic of statutory rape, the opinion has the even narrower focus of the age of consent. See EsquivelQuintana, 137 S. Ct. at 1572-73 (“We hold that in the context of statutory rape offenses focused solely on the age of the participants, the generic federal definition of ‘sexual abuse of a minor’ under § 1101(a)(43)(A) requires the age of the victim to be less than 16.”). 6 It is notable that nowhere in Mondragon-Gonzalez did we suggest, much less embrace, the view that EsquivelQuintana enacted a sweeping change that will affect all matters in which we and the BIA have been called upon to interpret a statute. In fact, even though Mondragon-Gonzalez presented the question of whether to defer to the BIA’s definition of the crime of child abuse, we simply stated that “Esquivel-Quintana ha[d] no application … at all.” Mondragon-Gonzalez, 884 F.3d at 160. That pronouncement appears incompatible with the kind of sea change in our jurisprudence that our concurring colleague says has occurred. 15 apparently agree. See Acevedo v. Barr, 943 F.3d 619, 623 (2d Cir. 2019) (holding that Esquivel-Quintana “did not foreclose the BIA’s use of [§ 3509(a)(8)] in other instances” and thus prior circuit decisions to grant deference to that approach were still binding); Correa-Diaz v. Sessions, 881 F.3d 523, 527 (7th Cir. 2018) (noting that the Supreme Court “declined to rule more broadly on the generic federal definition” and decided only “one precise question: the definition of ‘minor’ under § 1101(a)(43)(A) in the context of statutory rape offenses focused solely on the age of the participants”). Pursuant to Restrepo, then, we will continue to defer to the BIA’s use of 18 U.S.C. § 3509(a)(8) as the primary guide to defining the generic federal crime of sexual abuse of a minor. That, however, does not end our task. Section 3509(a)(8) does not specify a mens rea requirement, and we cannot defer to a nullity, so we must look elsewhere to discern the mens rea required to establish the generic federal crime. Following the analytical pattern laid out in EsquivelQuintana, we thus “consider the structure of the INA, the inherent egregious nature of an aggravated felony, and closely-related statutes.” Acevedo, 943 F.3d at 624. Those sign posts all lead us to the conclusion that sexual abuse of a minor is a crime that requires, at a minimum, a knowing state of mind. First, “[t]he structure of the INA … suggests that sexual abuse of a minor encompasses only especially egregious felonies.” Esquivel-Quintana, 137 S. Ct. at 1570. Again, “the INA lists sexual abuse of a minor in the same subparagraph as ‘murder’ and ‘rape,’” and the “[s]urrounding 16 provisions” of the law, listing extremely serious offenses, “guide our interpretation[.]” Id. “When considering the mens rea required for a crime to serve as ‘sexual abuse of a minor,’ the court must keep in mind this categorization.” Acevedo, 943 F.3d at 624. The Supreme Court’s suggestion that sexual abuse of a minor is an “especially egregious felon[y]” indicates that a mens rea of lower culpability such as recklessness will not suffice as an element of the generic crime. Second, the term “aggravated felony” itself implies a certain “inherent seriousness[.]” Id. After all, a conviction for such an offense “carries significant immigration consequences, including providing a basis for the removal from the United States of a lawfully present immigrant, or, as in this case, disqualifying a removable immigrant alien from discretionary relief from removal.” Rangel-Perez v. Lynch, 816 F.3d 591, 601-02 (10th Cir. 2016) (citation omitted). An aggravated felony conviction, then, “must be for conduct that Congress has determined warrants such significant and serious treatment.” Id. at 602. And that too signals that a knowing mens rea is a requirement. Third and finally, our consideration of a closely related statute, 18 U.S.C. § 2243, confirms that, to prove sexual abuse of a minor, the prosecution must show that the perpetrator acted knowingly. Section 2243, titled “[s]exual abuse of a minor or ward[,]” is a helpful analog to section 3509(a)(8). The Supreme Court reached for it when clarifying a different part of the definition of sexual abuse of a minor. See Esquivel-Quintana, 137 S. Ct. at 1570-71 (turning to 18 U.S.C. § 2243 to determine the age of consent for the generic federal definition of sexual abuse of a minor). 17 Other courts, too, have looked to it when defining the mens rea for sexual abuse of a minor. See, e.g., Acevedo, 943 F.3d at 624 (importing mens rea from 18 U.S.C § 2243); RangelPerez, 816 F.3d at 604 (same). Section 2243 actually incorporates two distinct mens rea requirements. First, it requires knowing conduct as to the sexual act in question. 18 U.S.C. § 2243(a). 7 Second, it establishes that no knowledge at all is required with respect to the victim’s age; in that respect, it is a strict liability statute. Id. § 2243(d)(1). We hold that the generic federal crime of sexual abuse of a minor includes at least the first of those mens rea requirements; we have no cause today to address whether it also includes the second.8 7 Our concurring colleague claims that turning to § 2243 for guidance while declining to overrule Restrepo lacks “logical coherence.” (Concur. Op. at 31.) But Restrepo itself acknowledged that Rodriguez-Rodriguez only treated section 3509(a)(8) as a “guide” and not “as a restrictive or limiting definition[.]” Restrepo, 617 F.3d at 796 n.10. It is thus consistent to both continue to adhere to binding precedent calling for us to defer to the BIA’s reliance on § 3509(a)(8), and, at the same time, to turn to other statutory aids when § 3509(a)(8) fails to provide the necessary guidance. 8 With respect to the mens rea regarding the age of the victim, the Fifth Circuit has held that a state statute requiring only recklessness is a categorical match for the generic federal offense of sexual abuse of a minor. United States v. Rivas, 836 F.3d 514, 515 & n.2 (5th Cir. 2016) (citing Contreras v. Holder, 754 F.3d 286, 295 (5th Cir. 2014)). As just noted, however, there is no need for us to reach that issue. 18 In summary, section 3509(a)(8) continues to provide the contours of the substance of the offense, but section 2243 sets forth the necessary mental state. With the generic crime thus sufficiently outlined, we turn next to the relevant Pennsylvania statutes to see whether, by comparison, the least culpable conduct for which a conviction could be had under them would likewise fit the definition of the generic crime.