Sorich v. United States

Background

A group of city employees in Chicago were convicted for engaging in political-patronage hiring for local civil-service jobs. They asked the Supreme Court to review the Seventh Circuit’s ruling that upheld those convictions under the federal "honest services" fraud law, 18 U.S.C. §1346, which Congress added after the Court limited the statute in an earlier case.

Reasoning

The core issue is what conduct §1346 actually criminalizes and whether courts have set clear limits. Justice Scalia’s dissent explains that lower courts have reached different answers about whether the law requires a separate state-law violation or a defendant’s private gain. He warns the statute’s short text has been used to punish a wide variety of misconduct and that courts have struggled to devise a consistent limiting principle.

Real world impact

By denying review, the Supreme Court left the Seventh Circuit’s decision in place and left unresolved the split among appeals courts. That means prosecutors can continue using the "honest services" statute in a range of public-corruption cases while uncertainty persists about its scope. Because this was a denial of review and not a final decision on the law’s meaning, the issue could be revisited by the Court in a future case.

Dissents or concurrances

Justice Scalia dissented from the denial of review and would have granted the case to decide both what §1346 means and whether it is unconstitutionally vague, citing serious due-process and federalism concerns and confusion among the circuits.