Ellingburg v. United States
The Court holds that restitution imposed under the Mandatory Victims Restitution Act of 1996 is criminal punishment for purposes of the Ex Post Facto Clause. The statute's text and structure — it labels restitution a penalty for an offense, is codified in the criminal code, and is imposed at sentencing alongside imprisonment and fines — make that conclusion plain, even though Congress also intended restitution to compensate victims.
Case background
The Mandatory Victims Restitution Act of 1996 requires defendants convicted of certain federal crimes to pay monetary restitution to their victims. The MVRA became law on April 24, 1996. Petitioner Ellingburg committed his crime before the MVRA’s enactment, but he was sentenced later in 1996 under the Act and ordered to pay $7,567.25 in restitution, an obligation he has not yet satisfied. Ellingburg raised an Ex Post Facto Clause challenge to his continued restitution obligation, which turns in part on the threshold question whether MVRA restitution is criminal punishment. Applying Circuit precedent, the Eighth Circuit concluded that restitution under the MVRA is not criminal punishment subject to the Ex Post Facto Clause. In this Court, Ellingburg and the United States agreed that the Eighth Circuit erred, so the Court appointed John F. Bash as amicus curiae to defend the judgment below.
Questions Presented
(1) Whether criminal restitution under the Mandatory Victim Restitution Act (MVRA) is penal for purposes of the Ex Post Facto Clause.
Holding
Restitution under the MVRA is plainly criminal punishment for purposes of the Ex Post Facto Clause. Whether a law violates that Clause requires evaluating whether the law imposes a criminal or penal sanction as opposed to a civil remedy — a question “of statutory construction” that requires the Court to “consider the statute’s text and its structure.” Smith v. Doe, 538 U. S. 84, 92. Viewed as a whole, the MVRA makes abundantly clear that restitution is criminal punishment: it labels restitution a “penalty” for a criminal “offense,” 18 U. S. C. § 3663A(a)(1); only a criminal defendant convicted of a qualifying crime may be ordered to pay it; it is imposed at sentencing together with other criminal punishments such as imprisonment and fines; and at that proceeding the Government, not the victim, is the party adverse to the defendant. The regime is codified in Title 18, “Crimes and Criminal Procedure,” with the authorizing provisions in Chapter 232, “Miscellaneous Sentencing Provisions,” and a district court imposing restitution must follow the procedures applicable to other criminal penalties. Although Congress intended restitution under the Act both to punish offenders and to compensate victims, victims cannot initiate or settle the restitution process as they could in a civil proceeding. 113 F. 4th 839, reversed and remanded.
The Court
Justice Kavanaugh delivered the opinion for a unanimous Court. Justice Thomas filed a concurring opinion, in which Justice Gorsuch joined.
What this episode contains
This episode is an AI-narrated reading of the majority opinion in Ellingburg v. United States, written by Justice Kavanaugh.
AI disclosure: The voice in this episode is AI-generated, using a machine learning model styled to loosely resemble the authoring justice. Tone, inflection, pacing, and emphasis are artifacts of the model and should not be attributed to Justice Kavanaugh. The text being read is the Court’s published majority opinion, lightly adapted to improve readability for the spoken format.