SCOTUS limits reach of aggravated identity theft two-year mandatory statutory add-on sentence

The Supreme Court this morning delivered yet another big win for a federal white-collar criminal defendant with 9-0 ruling limiting the reach of aggravated identity theft federal statute in Dubin v. US, No. 22-10 (S. Ct. June 8, 2023) (available here).  Justice Sotomayor authored the opinion for the Court, which starts this way:

There is no dispute that petitioner David Fox Dubin overbilled Medicaid for psychological testing.  The question is whether, in defrauding Medicaid, he also committed “[a]ggravated identity theft,” 18 U.S.C. § 1028A(a)(1), triggering a mandatory 2-year prison sentence.  The Fifth Circuit found that he did, based on a reading of the statute that covers defendants who fraudulently inflate the price of a service or good they actually provided.  On that sweeping reading, as long as a billing or payment method employs another person’s name or other identifying information, that is enough.  A lawyer who rounds up her hours from 2.9 to 3 and bills her client electronically has committed aggravated identity theft.  The same is true of a waiter who serves flank steak but charges for filet mignon using an electronic payment method.

The text and context of the statute do not support such a boundless interpretation.  Instead, § 1028A(a)(1) is violated when the defendant’s misuse of another person’s means of identification is at the crux of what makes the underlying offense criminal, rather than merely an ancillary feature of a billing method.  Here, the crux of petitioner’s overbilling was inflating the value of services actually provided, while the patient’s means of identification was an ancillary part of the Medicaid billing process.

Justice Gorsuch authored the only separate opinion, which is a notable concurring opinion starting this way:

Whoever among you is not an “aggravated identity thief,” let him cast the first stone.  The United States came to this Court with a view of 18 U.S.C. § 1028A(a)(1) that would affix that unfortunate label on almost every adult American. Every bill splitter who has overcharged a friend using a mobile-payment service like Venmo.  Every contractor who has rounded up his billed time by even a few minutes.  Every college hopeful who has overstated his involvement in the high school glee club.  All of those individuals, the United States says, engage in conduct that can invite a mandatory 2-year stint in federal prison.  The Court today rightly rejects that unserious position.  But in so holding, I worry the Court has stumbled upon a more fundamental problem with § 1028A(a)(1).  That provision is not much better than a Rorschach test. Depending on how you squint your eyes, you can stretch (or shrink) its meaning to convict (or exonerate) just about anyone.  Doubtless, creative prosecutors and receptive judges can do the same.  Truly, the statute fails to provide even rudimentary notice of what it does and does not criminalize.  We have a term for laws like that.  We call them vague.  And “[i]n our constitutional order, a vague law is no law at all.” United States v. Davis, 588 U. S. ___, ___ (2019) (slip op., at 1).