20
Opinion of the Court
protected under § 1341 prior to McNally: "the intangible right of honest services." Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1988, § 7603(a), 18 U. S. C. § 1346. Significantly, Congress covered only the intangible right of honest services even though federal courts, relying on McNally, had dismissed, for want of monetary loss to any victim, prosecutions under § 1341 for diverse forms of public corruption, including licensing fraud.3
III
In this case, there is no assertion that Louisiana's video poker licensing scheme implicates the intangible right of honest services. The question presented is whether, for purposes of the federal mail fraud statute, a government regulator parts with "property" when it issues a license. For the reasons we now set out, we hold that § 1341 does not reach fraud in obtaining a state or municipal license of the kind here involved, for such a license is not "property" in the government regulator's hands. Again, as we said in McNally, "[i]f Congress desires to go further, it must speak more clearly than it has." 483 U. S., at 360.
To begin with, we think it beyond genuine dispute that whatever interests Louisiana might be said to have in its video poker licenses, the State's core concern is regulatory. Louisiana recognizes the importance of "public confidence and trust that gaming activities . . . are conducted honestly
3 For example, in United States v. Murphy, 836 F. 2d 248, 254 (CA6 1988), the court overturned the mail fraud conviction of a state official charged with using false information to help a charitable organization obtain a state bingo license. Acknowledging "the McNally limitations" on § 1341, the court said that the issue "distills to a consideration of whether Tennessee's 'right to control or object' with respect to the issuance of a bingo permit to a charitable organization constitutes 'property.' " Id., at 253. It then held that "the certificate of registration or the bingo license may well be 'property' once issued, insofar as the charitable organization is concerned, but certainly an unissued certificate of registration is not property of the State of Tennessee and once issued, it is not the property of the State of Tennessee." Id., at 253-254.
Page: Index Previous 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 NextLast modified: October 4, 2007