Sessions v. Dimaya
The Court struck down the part of federal immigration law that makes a lawful permanent resident deportable for committing a "crime of violence," ruling that its open-ended "ordinary case" standard is too vague to satisfy due process.
The decision extends the Court's 2015 ruling in Johnson v. United States, which struck down nearly identical language in a criminal sentencing law, and calls into question other federal statutes that use the same wording to define violent crimes.
How it got here: An immigration judge and the Board of Immigration Appeals ordered Dimaya's removal; the Ninth Circuit found the residual clause unconstitutionally vague; the government asked the Supreme Court to review that ruling.
The Case in Depth
What happened
James Dimaya, a lawful permanent resident of the United States, was ordered removed from the country after two convictions for first-degree residential burglary in California. Immigration officials classified those convictions as "crimes of violence" under a provision of federal law covering offenses that, by their nature, involve a substantial risk that physical force will be used. Dimaya challenged that provision as unconstitutionally vague.
The question before the Court
Could the government deport a lawful permanent resident using a law that asks judges to imagine the "ordinary case" of his crime and guess whether it typically risks violence?
The Court's answer
No — the Court ruled that the residual "crime of violence" definition used to make lawful permanent residents deportable is unconstitutionally vague. The law forced judges to imagine the "ordinary case" of a crime like burglary and then guess whether that hypothetical case involves a substantial risk that physical force would be used, without giving judges any real tools to answer either question.
Because a nearly identical open-ended standard had already been struck down in a criminal sentencing law in Johnson v. United States, the Court concluded the same flaw infected this immigration provision, leaving too much discretion to judges and immigration officials. The ruling is narrow in one respect: it leaves untouched the statute's separate list of specific crimes, like murder and rape, that automatically make someone deportable.
Curious how the Court got there? See the step-by-step legal reasoning →
Why it matters
Immigration judges can no longer rely on this residual "crime of violence" clause to order removal based on guesswork about how a crime typically plays out. People facing deportation for offenses like burglary may now avoid removal on that ground, and the ruling's reasoning threatens similarly worded federal laws, including one used to add years to sentences for using a gun during a violent crime.
What changes now
With the residual clause struck down, Dimaya's removal order based on that provision cannot stand, though the government may pursue removal under other grounds if available. Congress remains free to rewrite the residual clause more precisely or add specific crimes to the statute's existing list of deportable offenses, as it has done in other laws. The decision's reasoning also raises questions about other federal statutes using nearly identical "crime of violence" language, including a gun-crime sentencing provision, which courts will need to sort out in future cases.
What this does not decide
The ruling addresses only the statute's catch-all "residual clause," not the separate list of specific crimes -- such as murder, rape, and sexual abuse of a minor -- that Congress named directly as grounds for removal. It also does not resolve, for a future case, whether "ordinary case" or "underlying conduct" is the better reading of similarly worded laws, leaving that question open.
Concurrences and dissents
Concurrence — Justice Gorsuch
“Vague laws invite arbitrary power.”The opening line explaining why unclear laws risk letting officials make up the rules as they go.
Justice Gorsuch agreed the residual clause is unconstitutionally vague, but grounded his conclusion in an independent historical account tracing vagueness doctrine to due process and separation-of-powers principles predating the Constitution. He argued the same fair-notice standard should apply to civil and criminal laws alike, rejected a weaker standard for immigration cases, and stressed his holding was narrow: it leaves the statute's specific list of deportable crimes untouched and doesn't decide alternative readings of similar statutes.
Dissent — Justice Roberts
“The Court holds that the same provision we had no trouble applying in Leocal is in fact incapable of reasoned application.”Roberts's objection that the majority abandoned a workable standard it had applied without difficulty before.
Chief Justice Roberts argued that the immigration statute's language differs meaningfully from the sentencing law struck down in Johnson: it asks only about a familiar "risk" rather than a "potential risk," focuses on the offender's own use of force rather than any injury, and requires the risk to arise "in the course of committing" the crime. He would have upheld the statute as sufficiently clear under the criminal vagueness standard.
Dissent — Justice Thomas
Justice Thomas questioned whether the vagueness doctrine has any legitimate basis in the Constitution's original meaning, and argued that even if it does, it should apply only to as-applied challenges, which would fail here since burglary was long recognized as a crime of violence. He also argued the Court should abandon the "ordinary case" categorical approach for this statute in favor of asking about the alien's actual underlying conduct, avoiding the vagueness problem altogether.
How the Court got there
The legal reasoning, step by step
- The Court applied the void-for-vagueness doctrine, which requires laws to give ordinary people fair notice of what conduct triggers a legal consequence and to keep lawmaking power with elected legislators rather than judges or prosecutors.
- Because the immigration statute's definition of a deportable "crime of violence" used language almost identical to the residual clause of a federal sentencing law already struck down as vague in Johnson v. United States, the Court treated that precedent as controlling unless meaningful differences distinguished the two provisions.
- Applying an "ordinary case" analysis, judges would have to imagine a hypothetical typical version of a crime like California burglary -- which covers everything from armed home invasions to peddling questionable products door-to-door -- and then decide whether that hypothetical case carries a substantial risk that physical force will be used.
- The Court found no reliable method, whether through statutory text, common experience, or evidence, for answering either the ordinary-case question or the risk-of-force question, leaving the outcome to unguided judicial intuition rather than legal analysis.
- Because this combination of an indeterminate ordinary-case inquiry and an imprecise risk threshold left the law's meaning to arbitrary guesswork, the Court concluded the residual clause fails to give fair notice and improperly hands lawmaking authority to judges.
Doctrinal impact
Cases affected by this decision
Reaffirms Johnson v. United States (576 U.S. ----)
The Court relies on and extends Johnson's vagueness reasoning to strike down a similarly worded immigration statute.
Limits Leocal v. Ashcroft
The Court's approach to § 16(b) departs from how Leocal had applied the same provision to a DUI offense.