Court Opinion

ID: 9496004
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 16:15:15.47405+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:57:18.642275
License: Public Domain

BYE, Circuit Judge,
dissenting.
No one doubts the constitutional authority of Congress to enact criminal laws punishing behavior affecting tangible federal interests. However, when Congress seeks to punish conduct with no connection to federal interests, conduct traditionally punished only by state and local governments exercising their general police powers, Congress exceeds its constitutional authority. The statute we review today, 18 U.S.C. § 666(a)(2), punishes a broad swath of conduct bearing little relationship to any federal interest. It establishes federal criminal liability for those who bribe state and local government officials, provided only that the government receives $10,000 per year in federal program benefits. Id. § 666(a)(2), 666(b). A briber need not handle, manage, administer or supervise the receipt or disbursement of federal funds, and the purpose of the bribe need not relate to federal program benefits. It is therefore logically and legally untenable to assert a federal interest in punishing these bribers.
In my view, the majority’s decision to uphold § 666(a)(2) despite this infirmity swims against the tide of governing law. A wave of recent Supreme Court decisions emphasizes Congress’ limited ability to federalize criminal conduct, United States v. Morrison, 529 U.S. 598, 120 S.Ct. 1740, 146 L.Ed.2d 658 (2000), United States v. Lopez, 514 U.S. 549, 115 S.Ct. 1624, 131 L.Ed.2d 626 (1995), and to interfere in matters traditionally left to state governance, Alden v. Maine, 527 U.S. 706, 119 S.Ct. 2240, 144 L.Ed.2d 636 (1999), Printz v. United States, 521 U.S. 898, 117 S.Ct. 2365, 138 L.Ed.2d 914 (1997). These decisions guide my review of § 666(a)(2) and require my respectful dissent.
I
I do agree with the majority in one important respect: section 666(a)(2) cannot be justified solely as an exercise of Congress’ Spending Clause authority. The majority properly rests this holding upon the absence of any statutory link between the bribe and the state or local government’s receipt or use of federal benefits. Because § 666(a)(2) does not link the bribe to federal benefits, the statute encompasses and punishes conduct well beyond Congress’ ability to “provide for the ... general Welfare of the United States.” U.S. *954Const. Art. I, § 8, cl. 1. Indeed, the statute’s breadth leads to absurd results: only by injecting a new element into the statute can a court forestall the conviction of a person who bribes the city meat inspector while the city parks department receives $10,000 in federal benefits. See United States v. Santopietro, 166 F.3d 88, 93 (2d Cir.1999). The majority wisely rejects the supposed Spending Clause moorings of § 666(a)(2).
Had the majority stopped at this point, I would have joined its opinion. The majority continues onward, however, reaching beyond its Spending Clause analysis and “resort[ing] to the last, best hope of those who defend ultra vires congressional action, the Necessary and Proper Clause.” Printz, 521 U.S. at 923, 117 S.Ct. 2365. The majority apparently casts aside its earlier qualm that § 666(a)(2) requires no connection between the bribe and federal benefits. The majority instead perceives a bare, “rational relationship” between punishing bribers and maintaining the integrity of federal programs, and on that basis declares the Necessary and Proper Clause a proper font of congressional authority. This may be correct, but it answers only half the question we must decide.
II
In my view, the principal defect in the majority opinion is its inattention to the conjunctive “and” that separates the words “necessary and proper.” The majority advances several arguments suggesting § 666(a)(2) is “necessary,” in the sense envisioned in M’Culloch v. Maryland, 17 U.S. (4 Wheat.) 316, 420-21, 4 L.Ed. 579 (1819). But the majority fails to ask — let alone resolve — whether the statute is also “proper.” This is not merely a semantic dispute, for in Printz and Alden the Supreme Court advanced an interpretation of “proper” that calls into question the constitutionality of federal statutes that trespass upon the domain of state and local legislative power. Section 666(a)(2) is one such statute.
M’Culloch holds that Congress enjoys broad powers to select the means of enacting its objectives. Id. at 421. Thus, in determining whether a law is “necessary,” courts must review Congress’ law-making efforts with considerable deference. The majority describes this deference in terms of rationality: courts may not demand of Congress anything more than a rational relationship between its chosen means and ends. This reading of M’Culloch is, of course, received wisdom. Applying M’Culloch in this fashion, the majority makes a fairly convincing argument that the “fit” between § 666(a)(2) and Congress’ underlying objective to preserve the integrity of federal programs is rational. However, because there is a rational relationship between Congress’ aim and the law it enacted, under M’Culloch, the law is “necessary.” But M’Culloch says very little, if anything, about what makes a law “proper.” That specific question largely evaded the Court’s attention until Printz and Alden.
Printz began bridging this doctrinal gap by drawing upon a law review article that develops a legal and historical distinction between “necessary” laws and “proper” ones. Gary Lawson & Patricia B. Gran-ger, The “Proper ” Scope of Federal Power: A Jurisdictional Interpretation of the Sweeping Clause, 43 Duke L.J. 267 (1993). Printz rejected the argument that Congress could commandeer state officials to implement certain federal mandates by using its Necessary and Proper Clause power to effectuate its Commerce Clause authority. 521 U.S. at 923-24, 117 S.Ct. 2365. Relying solely on its understanding of what constitutes a “proper” law, the Court held the Necessary and Proper Clause forbids Congress from enacting *955legislation that intrudes on state sovereignty.
When a “La[w] ... for carrying into Execution” the Commerce Clause violates the principle of state sovereignty reflected in [the Constitution,] it is not a “La[w] ... proper for carrying into Execution the Commerce Clause,” and is thus, in the words of The Federalist, “merely [an] ac[t] of usurpation” which “deserve[s] to be treated as such.”
Id. (emphasis in original; internal citations omitted). Like Printz, Alden recognized the word “proper” restricts the scope of legislative power. Alden continued the Court’s analysis of “proper” laws by rejecting the argument that the Necessary and Proper Clause conferred authority on Congress to subject unconsenting states to suit in state court “as a means of achieving objectives otherwise within the scope of the enumerated powers.” 527 U.S. at 732, 119 S.Ct. 2240.
The Court’s analysis in Printz and Alden rested entirely upon the propriety of a statute, not whether that statute was necessary. A law is “proper,” the Court maintained, if it respects both the Constitution’s limits on federal power and its grants of power to the states and the people. Printz, 521 U.S. at 918-22, 923-24, 117 S.Ct. 2365. These cases teach us that a law is “proper” for the enforcement of an enumerated power only if it hews to constitutional principles of limited federal government and state sovereignty. Federal laws that usurp the traditional domain of state authority are therefore not “proper.”
I believe § 666(a)(2) lies outside the guideposts erected in Printz and Alden for assessing a “proper” law. The statute intrudes upon state and local concerns by federalizing anticorruption law, which is traditionally the domain of state and local legislation. See United States v. Bass, 404 U.S. 336, 349, 92 S.Ct. 515, 30 L.Ed.2d 488 (1971) (“Congress has traditionally been reluctant to define as a federal crime conduct readily denounced as criminal by the States. This congressional policy is rooted in the same concepts of American federalism that have provided the basis for judge-made doctrines.... [W]e will not be quick to assume that Congress has meant to effect a significant change in the sensitive relation between federal and state criminal jurisdiction.”) (internal citations omitted) (cited in Lopez, 514 U.S. at 561 n. 3, 115 S.Ct. 1624). Section 666(a)(2) thereby offends the Constitution’s basic Mutations on federal power. The only possible relationship between § 666(a)(2) and federal interests is the sum of $10,000 in federal benefits received each year by state or local governments. There is scarcely any limit to this relationship, however. Even under a narrow view of “federal benefits,” Fischer v. United States, 529 U.S. 667, 681, 120 S.Ct. 1780, 146 L.Ed.2d 707 (2000), it is beyond dispute that every state — and nearly every county, tribe and city — receives that sum in yearly federal benefits. Moreover, the statute requires no connection between those federal benefits and the bribe. The lack of any connection makes all too real the risk that federal anticor-ruption efforts will swamp state and local efforts to combat bribery.
The majority suggests the federal interest in punishing bribery of state and local government officials is at least as great as the federal interest in punishing those who misapply funds belonging to state banks. Westfall v. United States, 274 U.S. 256, 258-59, 47 S.Ct. 629, 71 L.Ed. 1036 (1927). But the statute in Westfall included an element establishing a federal interest in every prosecution — the state bank had to be a member of the Federal Reserve System. Misapplication of a bank’s funds weakened the entire membership of the Reserve, so the Supreme Court could easily identify the federal interest in protecting each bank’s assets. Westfall therefore *956adds nothing to the majority’s argument. If anything, Westfall proves my point: Congress cannot enact criminal laws absent a quantifiable federal interest in punishment.
Both the majority and the Eleventh Circuit in United States v. Edgar, 304 F.3d 1320, 1326 (11th Cir.2002), sanction this federalization of anticorruption law. They all but admit that once the federal government provides $10,000 in yearly benefits to a state or local government, the federal government obtains an ongoing interest in the entire structure and operations of state and local governments, and in the credibility and integrity of their agents. Congress may, in effect, regulate (in this case, criminalize) many activities that tangentially threaten that structure, credibility or integrity. The real-world effects are truly startling. It is now a federal crime for an auto mechanic to induce a public high school principal to hire him to teach shop class by offering free car repair. This federalization of anticorruption law erodes the Constitution’s limits on federal power.
The majority’s sweeping view of the Necessary and Proper Clause calls to mind Congress’ unbounded deployment of its Commerce Clause authority before Lopez and Morrison. Both Lopez and Morrison curtailed federal power, forbidding Congress from piling “inference upon inference” to demonstrate a relationship between crimes and federal interests. Lopez, 514 U.S. at 566, 115 S.Ct. 1624; Morrison, 529 U.S. at 615, 120 S.Ct. 1740. I fear Congress relied upon similarly weak and attenuated inferences in enacting § 666(a)(2). For many of the same concerns articulated in Lopez and Morrison, I am troubled by the majority’s efforts to interpret the Necessary and Proper Clause to permit the federalization of criminal laws. “Were the Federal Government to take over the regulation of entire areas of traditional state concern, areas having nothing to do with the regulation of commercial activities, the boundaries between the spheres of federal and state authority would blur.” Lopez, 514 U.S. at 577, 115 S.Ct. 1624. This is precisely what makes § 666(a)(2) not “proper.”
I recognize, of course, § 666(a)(2) does not preempt state or local power to punish corruption. Even though § 666(a)(2) lacks preemptive effect, the sheer size and funding of the federal government’s criminal justice machinery suggests the possibility of state and local anticorruption efforts dwindling. It blinks at reality to believe § 666(a)(2) does no more than provide an additional weapon in the anticorruption arsenal. By inserting itself into a domain traditionally reserved for state and local prosecutions, the federal government treats state governments, for example, not with the respect and dignity due them as “residuary sovereigns and joint participants in the Nation’s governance,” Alden, 527 U.S. at 748-49, 119 S.Ct. 2240, but as untrustworthy organs incapable of policing their own. The development and enforcement of sound ethical standards, and of political accountability to citizens for failing to do so, lies at the very heart of sovereignty. See Printz, 521 U.S. at 920, 117 S.Ct. 2365 (“The Constitution thus contemplates that a State’s government will represent and remain accountable to its own citizens.”); New York v. United States, 505 U.S. 144, 168-69, 112 S.Ct. 2408, 120 L.Ed.2d 120 (1992).
Section 666(a)(2) upsets the delicate balance between federal and state authority that animates our Constitution. See id. at 921, 117 S.Ct. 2365; Alden, 527 U.S. at 751, 119 S.Ct. 2240. “Congress has no more power to punish theft from the beneficiaries of its largesse than it has to punish theft from anyone else.... The Constitution does not contemplate that federal regulatory power should tag along after *957federal money like a hungry dog.” United States v. Morgan, 230 F.3d 1067, 1074 (8th Cir.2000) (Bye, J., specially concurring) (quoting David E. Engdahl, The Spending Power, 44 Duke L.J. 1, 92 (1994)).
Ill
I do not believe § 666(a)(2) validly “carries] into [execution” Congress’ Spending Clause authority because the statute sweeps within its ambit a wide range of criminal activity bearing little or no relation to federal interests. I am not alone in this view. Even the government disavowed reliance on the Necessary and Proper Clause when the question first arose at oral argument. The government never urged our court to uphold § 666(a)(2) on the strength of Congress’ Necessary and Proper Clause power, and, when pressed, the government expressed considerable discomfort with such a notion. For the reasons expressed above, I share the government’s discomfort with this argument, and therefore respectfully dissent.