Sessions v. Dimaya
The Supreme Court struck down part of federal immigration law that made deportation automatic for anyone convicted of a "crime of violence," ruling that the law's catch-all definition was too vague to satisfy the Constitution's guarantee of fair notice.
The decision extends a 2015 ruling that struck down similar language in a criminal sentencing law, meaning immigration judges can no longer use the same guesswork-based method to decide which past convictions trigger automatic removal.
How it got here: Immigration judges and the Board of Immigration Appeals ordered Dimaya deportable; the Ninth Circuit ruled the underlying statute unconstitutionally vague, and the government asked the Supreme Court to review that decision.
The Case in Depth
What happened
James Dimaya, a lawful permanent resident from the Philippines who had lived in the U.S. since 1992, was twice convicted of first-degree burglary in California. After his second conviction, the government sought to deport him, arguing burglary counted as an "aggravated felony" crime of violence under immigration law, which makes removal from the country a near-certainty.
The question before the Court
Could the government deport a longtime legal resident by using a vague federal definition of "crime of violence" tied to his burglary convictions?
The Court's answer
No — the Court ruled that the government could not rely on this provision, because the law's catch-all definition of "crime of violence" was unconstitutionally vague. The provision required judges to imagine an imaginary "typical" version of a crime and then decide, using an equally fuzzy risk standard, whether that hypothetical version was violent enough to count. The Court had already struck down nearly identical language in a federal sentencing law three years earlier, and found the same two flaws here: no reliable way to picture a crime's ordinary case, and no clear line for how much risk is enough.
Because the law failed to give ordinary people fair notice of what would trigger deportation and left too much discretion to judges, the Court held it violated the Due Process Clause. Dimaya's deportation order based on this provision could not stand, though other, more specific parts of immigration law remain unaffected.
Curious how the Court got there? See the step-by-step legal reasoning →
Why it matters
Immigrants convicted of certain offenses can no longer be automatically deported under this vague provision, and immigration courts must look elsewhere in the law for grounds to remove them. The ruling also affects federal criminal sentencing and other statutes that borrow the same "crime of violence" language, since it applies both in immigration and criminal cases.
What changes now
The Ninth Circuit's ruling in Dimaya's favor stands, and this part of the immigration law can no longer be used to trigger automatic deportation. The decision is final on the merits, though Congress remains free to write a clearer replacement provision. Because the same "crime of violence" definition appears throughout the federal criminal code, the ruling's effects extend beyond immigration cases to other prosecutions that rely on the same language.
What this does not decide
The ruling strikes down only the residual "crime of violence" catch-all clause; it leaves untouched the separate list of specific crimes (like murder or rape) that also trigger deportation. Justice Gorsuch's concurrence stressed the decision does not resolve how courts should treat other statutes using similar language, leaving those questions for future cases.
Concurrences and dissents
Concurrence — Justice Gorsuch
Justice Gorsuch agreed the clause was unconstitutionally vague but grounded his vote in the historical due process and separation-of-powers roots of the vagueness doctrine rather than the plurality's civil/criminal distinction. He argued fair notice should apply equally to civil and criminal laws, rejected treating deportation as uniquely deserving special scrutiny, and emphasized the ruling's narrow scope, leaving alternative statutory readings open for another case.
Dissent — Justice Roberts
Chief Justice Roberts argued that the immigration law's residual clause differs meaningfully from the sentencing law struck down in Johnson: it has an explicit time limit on the relevant risk, focuses narrowly on the offender's own use of force, and is not tied to a confusing list of example crimes. He would have upheld the law and found Dimaya deportable.
Dissent — Justice Thomas
Justice Thomas questioned whether the vagueness doctrine itself has a sound constitutional basis, especially in immigration cases, and argued that even under existing precedent, courts should read the law as asking about a person's actual conduct rather than an imagined "ordinary case," which would have avoided the vagueness problem entirely and left Dimaya's convictions covered. Justices Kennedy and Alito joined him only as to specific portions of his opinion.
How the Court got there
The legal reasoning, step by step
- The Court used the categorical approach, which asks courts to imagine the "ordinary case" of a crime rather than looking at what the specific defendant actually did, to decide whether an offense counts as a "crime of violence."
- It compared the immigration law's wording to a nearly identical clause in a federal sentencing law that the Court had already struck down in Johnson v. United States, a 2015 decision finding that clause too vague because it combined an unworkable "ordinary case" guessing game with an imprecise risk threshold.
- Finding that the immigration statute shared both of those same problems — no reliable way to picture a crime's typical version, and a fuzzy "substantial risk" standard layered on top — the Court concluded the two laws suffered the identical constitutional defect.
- The Court rejected the government's three arguments that small wording differences (a phrase limiting the risk window, a focus on "force" rather than "injury," and the absence of a confusing list of example crimes) made the immigration law meaningfully clearer or more predictable.
- The Court also declined to reinterpret the law to focus on a defendant's actual conduct instead of a hypothetical "ordinary case," holding that the statute's text and years of precedent required the ordinary-case method even though that method could not be applied predictably.
- Because the law asked judges to guess at an imagined crime and then apply an equally imprecise risk standard to it, the Court held that it created the same unpredictable and arbitrary results forbidden by the Constitution's guarantee of fair notice.
Doctrinal impact
Cases affected by this decision
Reaffirms Johnson v. United States (576 U. S. ___)
The Court extends and applies Johnson's vagueness reasoning to a nearly identical immigration-law provision.
Reaffirms Taylor v. United States (495 U. S. 575)
The Court relies on Taylor's categorical approach as the correct way to read the statute's residual clause.