The Supreme Court overturned the bribery conviction of a former Indiana mayor on Wednesday in an opinion that narrows the scope of public corruption law.

The high court’s 6-3 opinion along ideological lines sided with James Snyder, who was convicted of taking $13,000 from a trucking company after prosecutors said he steered about $1 million worth of city contracts the company’s way.

The decision continues a pattern in recent years of the court restricting the government’s ability to use broad federal laws to prosecute public corruption cases. The justices also overturned the bribery conviction of former Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell in 2016, and the court sharply curbed prosecutors’ use of an anti-fraud law in the case of ex-Enron CEO Jeffrey Skilling in 2010.

Snyder, a Republican, has maintained his innocence, saying the money was payment for consulting work. His attorneys argued before the high court that prosecutors hadn’t proved there was a “quid pro quo” exchange agreement before the contracts were awarded and that prosecuting officials for gratuities given after the fact unfairly criminalizes normal gift giving.

The Justice Department countered that the law was clearly meant to cover gifts “corruptly” given to public officials as rewards for favored treatment.

But Justice Brett Kavanaugh, writing for the conservative majority, said “the government’s interpretation of the statue would create traps for unwary state and local officials.”

A gratuity or reward could be unethical or illegal under other laws, but it doesn’t violate the law Snyder was charged with breaking, he said.

In a sharply worded dissent joined by her liberal colleagues, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson said that that reading ignores the plain text of the law. She said Snyder’s argument was an “absurd” reading of the law that “only today’s court could love.”

Snyder was elected mayor of the small Indiana city of Portage, located near Lake Michigan, in 2011 and was reelected four years later. He was indicted and removed from office when he was first convicted in 2019.

A unanimous Supreme Court on Thursday threw out the convictions of two political insiders involved in the “Bridgegate”  scandal that ultimately derailed the 2016 president bid of their ally, then-New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie.

The justices said there was evidence of deception, corruption, and abuse of power in the political payback saga that involved four days of traffic jams on the world’s busiest motor-vehicle bridge, the George Washington Bridge spanning the Hudson River between New York and New Jersey. But “not every corrupt act by state or local officials is a federal crime,” Justice Elena Kagan wrote for the court.

In the end, the justices concluded that the government had overreached in prosecuting Bridget Kelly and Bill Baroni for their roles in the scheme. Kelly was a deputy chief of staff to Christie. Baroni was a top Christie appointee to the Port Authority, the bridge’s operator.

The court’s decision to side with Kelly and Baroni continues a pattern from recent years of restricting the government’s ability to use broad federal laws to prosecute public corruption cases. In 2016, the court overturned the bribery conviction of former Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell. In 2010, the court sharply curbed prosecutors’ use of an anti-fraud law in the case of ex-Enron CEO Jeffrey Skilling.

Kagan wrote for the court that Kelly and Baroni had acted for “no reason other than political payback.” In devising the traffic jam, they were seeking to punish the Democratic mayor of Fort Lee, New Jersey, Mark Sokolich, after he declined to support the reelection bid of Christie, the GOP governor.

To create chaos, on the traffic-heavy first day of school in 2013, Kelly and Baroni schemed to reduce from three to one the number of dedicated lanes onto the bridge from Fort Lee. They created a traffic study as a cover story for their actions.

Kagan said that Kelly and Baroni ”jeopardized the safety of the town’s residents,” and she repeated some of their gleeful plotting in the decision. At one point, Kelly wrote what Kagan called “an admirably concise e-mail” about the plan. It read: “Time for some traffic problems in Fort Lee.” Later, after the traffic snarls began, Kelly wrote in a text, “Is it wrong that I am smiling?” Kagan noted that they then “merrily kept the lane realignment in place for another three days.”

The Supreme Court says whistleblower protections in a federal law passed in response to the Enron financial scandal apply broadly to employees of publicly traded companies and contractors hired by the companies.

The justices ruled 6-3 Tuesday in favor of two former employees of companies that administer the Fidelity family of mutual funds. The workers claimed they faced retaliation after they reported allegations of fraud affecting Fidelity funds.

The case involved the reach of a provision of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, passed in 2002 in response to the Enron scandal, that protects whistleblower activity. The measure was intended to protect people who expose the kind of corporate misdeeds that arose at Enron.

The Supreme Court looked back Tuesday at the collapse of energy giant Enron to determine who is protected from retaliation after blowing the whistle on a company's misdeeds.

The justices heard arguments in an appeal brought by two former employees of companies that run the Fidelity family of mutual funds. The workers claimed they faced retaliation after they reported allegations of fraud affecting Fidelity funds.

They argue that a provision of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, passed in 2002 in response to the Enron scandal, protects their whistle-blower activity.

But the court spent most of an hour Tuesday discussing Enron's bankruptcy in 2001 amid startling revelations that its top executives manipulated the company's earnings and stock price by lying to employees and investors about Enron's financial health.

The scandal also took down the Arthur Andersen accounting firm that failed to uncover efforts by Enron to hide its debts among spinoffs it created with "Star Wars"-inspired names like Chewco and Jedi.

Andersen was convicted of obstruction of justice for shredding documents relating to its audit of Enron, though the Supreme Court overturned the conviction in 2005.

In 2002, Congress responded to scandals at Enron and other companies by passing the Sarbanes-Oxley law.

A federal appeals court has tossed out the conviction of a former Republican leader of the New York Senate.

The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals rejected the conviction of Joseph Bruno.

He was convicted in 2009 of denying taxpayers honest services by concealing a deal with a business associate who paid him as a consultant.

It was expected that the 2nd Circuit would reverse the conviction after the U.S. Supreme Court last year ruled in the case of former Enron CEO Jeffrey Skilling. The Supreme Court found that federal statutes used to fight white-collar and public official fraud only criminalize schemes with proof of bribes or kickbacks.

The 2nd Circuit agreed to return the case to the lower court in Albany, where prosecutors can seek a superseding indictment.

The husband of a former fugitive who spent more than two years in Mexico following her conviction in Ohio in a $1.9 billion corporate fraud has agreed to plead guilty to lying to investigators about her whereabouts, according to documents made public Friday.

U.S. marshals say their search for Rebecca Parrett was hurt by false information they received from Gary Green in 2008 and 2009.

Green is expected to receive a five-month prison sentence followed by five months of house arrest, federal public defender Steve Nolder said Friday.

"Obviously the statements he made were false and had direct impact on the government's case," Nolder said. "In that regard, there's no getting around the charge."

But Nolder said Green, now living with his daughter in Los Angeles, eventually cooperated with investigators after he was charged and gave them information that allowed them to seize assets of Parrett.

The tentative sentence is on par with the six-month sentence that Parrett's sister, Linda Case, received in July 2010 for lying to federal investigators searching for Parrett.

Parrett was arrested in Mexico last year, more than two years after she fled the country rather than appear for her sentencing in a corporate fraud case investigators likened to the Enron or WorldCom scandals.

Parrett had disappeared in March 2008 after she was convicted of securities fraud, wire fraud and other charges in a scheme at health care financing company National Century Financial Enterprises.

President Barack Obama's top lawyer at the White House is resigning to return to private practice and represent Obama as his personal attorney and as general counsel to Obama's re-election campaign.

Bob Bauer will be replaced by his top deputy, Kathy Ruemmler, a former assistant U.S. attorney best known as lead prosecutor in the Enron fraud case.

The move means that Bauer, 59, will still play a central but outside role in advising a president who is seeking re-election in a time of divided government.

Meanwhile, the 40-year-old Ruemmler will take over the job as Obama's top in-house counsel and manager of a White House law office charged with juggling the domestic, national security and congressional oversight challenges confronting the president.

In a statement, Obama praised Bauer as a friend with exceptional judgment who will remain a close advisor. As to his new White House-based counsel, Obama said: "Kathy is an outstanding lawyer with impeccable judgment. Together, Bob and Kathy have led the White House Counsel's office, and Kathy will assure that it continues to successfully manage its wide variety of responsibilities."

Bauer has been part of Obama's circle since Obama was a freshmen senator in Washington, and now returns to the campaign counsel role he had when Obama ran in 2008. He has long been a go-to lawyer for Democrats on matters of political law and is married to Anita Dunn, a Democratic communications operative who formerly worked in Obama's White House.

Bauer will leave his White House post at the end of June. In a style typifying the low-key nature of transitions in the counsel's office, the news came in the form of a press release.