Court Opinion

ID: 9494341
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 15:35:57.754229+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:56:21.946326
License: Public Domain

REINHARDT, Circuit Judge,
dissenting:
The majority opinion adopts a harsh interpretation of the Child Support Recovery Act (“CSRA”) that fails to comport with the statutory language. It is important to note at the outset that the CSRA is a criminal statute. Given its proper construction, it does not permit the inclusion of accrued interest or any other item not referred to in the underlying court order when the sentence and order of restitution are being determined. Accordingly, Mr. Gill’s sentence, including the restitution order, should be reversed and his case remanded for further proceedings.
When defining the “support obligation” to be paid, the CSRA provides that it is “any amount determined under a court order ...” 18 U.S.C. § 228(f)(3) (emphasis added). This demonstrates that Congress intended that the determination be made pursuant to the terms of the court order awarding support payments and not pursuant to some other provision, statutory or otherwise, not specified or referred to in that order. In short, what is to be paid as a “support obligation” is what the state court order directs be paid' — no more, no less. The CSRA requires the state court issuing the order to establish *934what the support obligation is, to determine the amounts that will become due for purposes of the act. It does not permit that determination to be made post hoc by any other body; nor does it allow the determination to be made on the basis of factors external to the court order, whether provided for by statute or otherwise. To put it bluntly, the amount is to be determined “under the court order,” not “under the court order as supplemented by amounts provided for elsewhere.”
Contrary to the majority’s assertion, an interpretation of the CSRA that follows its plain language does not work any great hardship or create any unnecessary “obstacle[s] to compliance” with the statute. Maj. Op. at 933. Rather, it only requires that judges who issue child support orders provide in those orders for all payments that are to constitute support obligations. If interest payments are to be included, it is simple enough to do so. The judge issuing the order has the clear authority to define the obligation, and the concomitant scope of the remedy under the federal statute, by setting forth the amounts that constitute the “support obligation.” He can simply list interest among the amounts to be paid. Whether or not, in a particular case, the failure to keep current with interest on child support payments can result in federal criminal punishment can be determined only pursuant to the terms of the particular state court order, not by an examination of other sources which impose separate or additional financial obligations on the defendant.
The majority’s reliance on the phrase “pursuant to the law’ of a State” to justify its interpretation is unwarranted. My colleagues construe the “pursuant to the law of a State” language in section 228(f)(3) as modifying the “determin[ation]” of the amount to be paid. See Maj. Op. at 931. Using this construction, the majority argues that amounts provided for in state statutes, including California’s provision of interest payments, are included within the “support obligation” as well as amounts provided for in a “court order.” However, that is not what Congress said. Rather, a fair analysis of the statutory language demonstrates that “pursuant to the law of a State” modifies “court order or an order of an administrative process” and that its purpose and effect is to require that the order at issue be valid and enforceable under state law.1
Had it been Congress’s intention to have “pursuant to the law of a State” modify “determined,” it could simply have omitted the phrase “court order or an order of an administrative process” from the statute and defined the support obligation as “any amount determined pursuant to the law of a State.” Then the amounts provided for under both court orders and state statutes would have been covered. By providing instead that the support obligation amount is to be determined “under a court order or an order of an administrative process pursuant to the law of a State,” Congress was accomplishing two goals: it was limiting the amounts that constitute support obligations to those covered by the terms of the order and it was making it clear that the order, whether judicial or administrative, must be made pursuant to state law— in other words, it must be valid and legally enforceable. The majority’s interpretation *935ignores this Congressional directive and adopts instead an awkward and illogical construction of the statute that renders the “under a court order or an order of an administrative process” language superfluous in violation of well-established statutory construction principles. See, e.g., Ratzlaf v. United States, 510 U.S. 135, 140-41, 114 S.Ct. 655, 126 L.Ed.2d 615 (1994) (noting that statutory language should not be construed so as to render certain words or phrases mere surplusage).
Congress’s use of the phrase “pursuant to the law of a State” elsewhere in the statutory scheme also shows that the phrase was intended to modify “court order or an order of an administrative process” and not “amount determined.” When describing the sentencing options for failure-to-pay-child-support offenders in 18 U.S.C. § 3563(b)(20), Congress again uses “pursuant to the law of a State” immediately after “court order or order of an administrative process.”2 This time, however, there can be no question that the “pursuant to” phrase modifies the “court order” phrase that immediately precedes it, in part because neither “amount determined” nor anything remotely like it appears anywhere in the sentencing provision. In § 3563(b)(20), the phrase “pursuant to the law of a State” merely requires that the order at issue be a legal one — that the order itself be made pursuant to state law. Because “[a] term appearing in several places in a statutory text is generally read the same way each 'time it appears,” Ratzlaf, 510 U.S. at 143, 114 S.Ct. 655, the proper interpretation of the statutory language in section 228(f)(3) is that “pursuant to the law of a State” is intended to modify “court order or an order of an administrative process.” As such, it does not authorize the district court or this court to add to the terms of the state court order amounts provided for elsewhere and to redetermine the court-determined child “support obligation” accordingly.
Moreover, the cases cited by the majority fail to support a broader statutory interpretation. My colleagues’ reliance on United States v. Black, 125 F.3d 454 (7th Cir.1997), is misplaced. While Black does suggest that a state court need not specifically delineate the exact amount to be paid in its order, nowhere does the case suggest that new categories of payment — -such as interest — may be added to the child support order. United States v. Craig, 181 F.3d 1124 (9th Cir.1999), the other case upon which the majority relies, is similarly unhelpful. As the majority recognizes, see Maj. Op. at 12444, Craig concludes that a federal court should order restitution of “the entire past due child support obligation.” Craig, 181 F.3d at 1127. This reference to “support obligation” merely brings us back to the statutory definition in section 228(f)(3) and sheds no light on the question of how to interpret its language.3
*936Because the CSRA does not authorize criminal punishment for the failure to pay interest or other amounts not provided for in the state court order, I cannot join the majority’s opinion. However, even if one were persuaded that the majority’s reading of the CSRA had some merit, it is apparent that an interpretation of the statute that precludes the addition of such interest payments is also reasonable; accordingly, the rule of lenity should apply. See, e.g., People v. Materne, 72 F.3d 103, 106 (9th Cir.1995) (noting that the rule of lenity applies “where a criminal statute is vague enough to deem both the defendant’s and the government’s interpretations of it as reasonable”); United States v. LeCoe, 936 F.2d 398, 402 (9th Cir.1991) (“[T]he court [should] not interpret a federal criminal statute so as to increase the penalty that it places on an individual when such an interpretation can be based on no more than a guess as to what Congress intended.”).
For all these reasons, I would reverse Mr. Gill’s sentence, including the restitution order, and remand for further proceedings consistent with an interpretation of the statute that comports with its plain terms. Accordingly, I respectfully dissent.

. The full definition of "support obligation” set forth in the CSRA provides that:
[TJhe term "support obligation” means any amount determined under a court order ot-an order of an administrative process pursuant to the law of a State or of an Indian tribe to be due from a person for the support and maintenance of a child or of a child and the parent with whom the child is living.
18 U.S.C. § 228(f)(3) (emphasis added).

. Specifically, 18 U.S.C. § 3563 states:
(b) The court may provide ... that the defendant ... (20) comply with the terms of any court order or order of an administrative process pursuant to the law of a State, the District of Columbia, or any other possession or territory of the United States, requiring payments by the defendant for the support and maintenance of a child or of a child and the parent with whom the child is living....

. Equally unpersuasive is the majority’s reliance on the CSRA’s reference to 18 U.S.C. § 3663A. While 18 U.S.C. § 3664(f)(1)(A), referred to in section 3663A, does provide for restitution "in the full amount of each victim’s loss,” neither section 3663 nor section 3664 were incorporated into the CSRA to explain the amount of restitution to be awarded. Rather, section 228(d) of the CSRA already has a definition of the amount to be awarded and it is unreasonable to assume that Congress would provide a specific definí-*936lion of the amount to be awarded only to incorporate another section, which then incorporates a third section, which would impose a far broader definition than the highly specific definition in the original statute. See, e.g., Morton v. Mancari, 417 U.S. 535, 550-51, 94 S.Ct. 2474, 41 L.Ed.2d 290 (1974) ("Where there is no clear intention otherwise, a specific statute will not be controlled or nullified by a general one, regardless of the priority of enactment.”).