Episode description

Welcome to Supreme Court Opinions. In this episode, you’ll hear the Court’s opinion in Bittner v United States.

In this case, the court considered this issue: Is a “violation” under the Bank Secrecy Act the failure to file an annual Report of Foreign Bank and Financial Accounts (no matter the number of foreign accounts), or is there a separate violation for each individual account that was not properly reported?

The case was decided on February 28, 2023. The court held that The Bank Secrecy Act’s $10,000 maximum penalty for the nonwillful failure to file a compliant report accrues on a per-report, not a per-account, basis. Justice Neil Gorsuch authored the 5-4 majority opinion holding that Bittner was subject to a fine only for each report he failed to file, not for each account he failed to report over that five-year period.

The plain language of Section 5321 addresses the legal duty to file reports, not of individual accounts or their number. The penalty the statute prescribes for nonwillful violations must therefore be based on the number of reports, not on the number of accounts. In contrast, for willful violations, the statute expressly considers a penalty on a per-account basis. The government’s guidance as to these provisions, as well as the drafting history, further support this understanding.

Justice Amy Coney Barrett authored a dissenting opinion, in which Justices Clarence Thomas, Sonia Sotomayor, and Elena Kagan joined, arguing that “the most natural reading of the statute establishes that each failure to report a qualifying foreign account constitutes a separate reporting violation.”

The opinion is presented here in its entirety, but with citations omitted. If you appreciate this episode, please subscribe. Thank you.