Legal Docket: The scene of the crime

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MARY REICHARD, HOST: It’s The World and Everything in It for this 15th day of June, 2026. We’re so glad you’ve joined us today. 

Good morning! I’m Mary Reichard.

NICK EICHER, HOST: And I’m Nick Eicher. Time now for Legal Docket.

The Supreme Court still has some of the term’s biggest decisions waiting in the wings—a total of 20 are remaining. But last week the justices continued working through the docket, issuing three opinions on criminal procedure, bankruptcy, and securities law. 

We’ll take them one at a time, and begin with a case about where the government may prosecute a crime.

That case is Abouammo v U.S., a unanimous opinion that is a win for criminal defendants.

REICHARD: Here’s a refresher on the facts: In 2013, Ahmad Abouammo lived in Seattle and worked for Twitter handling accounts in the Middle East. Federal prosecutors say he accepted luxury gifts from associates of the Saudi royal family in exchange for private user information. Those associates in turn used that to target people critical of the royal family.

EICHER: While FBI agents interviewed him in his house in Seattle, Aboaummo fabricated a fake consulting invoice on his computer and then emailed it to them.

The Department of Justice indicted him for several things, including obstruction. But they did that in San Francisco where it had an office, and not in Seattle.

Abouammo argued the Constitution guarantees him a trial in Seattle, where he created that fake invoice.

REICHARD: During oral argument, the government tried to frame digital action as a form of travel. Prosecutors argued Aboaummo’s fake invoice aimed to influence the investigation in San Francisco, so venue could attach there.

Government lawyer Andrew Yang gave it his best shot:

YANG: He knew the agents were conducting an investigation there and that is where they're from. It's no different than pointing a gun and shooting. He shot the e-mail and he hit Northern California.

But he was the one shot down:

ROBERTS: It just seems very bizarre to me.

Roberts seeming unconvinced that an email aimed at California was enough to put the case there.

I spoke to Michael Fox with the Cato Institute who filed a friend of the court brief in support of Abouammo.

FOX: The court just simply said that venue is what it was always understood to be, which is the place where the crime occurs, right? If you read the Constitution, in Article III it makes very clear that the proper venue is the jurisdiction where the crime was committed. And the Sixth Amendment underscores that command, where it says the accused have a right to a public impartial jury trial in the state or district where the crime was committed….

They have to follow the Constitution. They don't get to create loopholes to rig the system in their favor.

EICHER: Abouammo has already served time on other convictions. But if the government wants another shot at the obstruction charge, it's going to have to bring it in the right place.

The next case involves a different kind of procedural rule—this one from bankruptcy court. It, too, was unanimous at the Supreme Court.

REICHARD: Thomas Keathley filed for Chapter 13 bankruptcy; that’s a process where debtors work out a plan to repay what they owe over time.

Around the same time of that bankruptcy filing he was hurt in an accident and sued the construction company responsible. But Keathley did not list that personal injury lawsuit on his bankruptcy forms.

EICHER: So when the construction company found out, it asked the court to toss his personal injury claim under a legal doctrine called “judicial estoppel.”

REICHARD: To explain that, I called Professor Bob Lawless, who teaches bankruptcy law at the University of Illinois:

LAWLESS: It's a fancy word, but it just basically means you can't say something or do something, cause somebody to react in reliance on that, and then do something else.

By omitting mention of his personal injury lawsuit, the construction company argued Keathley said one thing there (I’m entitled to compensation) and another thing in bankruptcy (I’m broke). The pending claim in the personal injury case was an asset, the company argued, and he should not be permitted to take two different positions in court. “Judicial estoppel” would put an estop to that.

EICHER: But all nine justices said “no” to applying that doctrine to these facts. Here is Chief Justice Roberts during oral argument:

ROBERTS: In terms of the courts' integrity, it does seem a little much that the one person who's getting off is the one who--whose truck hit the other guy.

REICHARD: In practical terms, Professor Lawless told me it’s not uncommon for a debtor to make a mistake among the many forms required to file for bankruptcy:

LAWLESS: The question that gets asked is…what assets do you have? And a lot of people might not think about the lawsuit as an asset, right? “Oh yeah, that's right, you know, somebody hit me last month and I'm gonna sue them.” Well, technically that's an asset in the eyes of the law, but in everyday parlance we don't think of it that way. So I think very often this is inadvertence.

EICHER: He says bankruptcy is a lot more common than you might think:

LAWLESS: So statistically the estimate is about one in eleven Americans file bankruptcy at some point in…their lifetime….It's more widespread than people imagine.

REICHARD: Despite what many think, Lawless refutes the idea that people use bankruptcy to rip off creditors.

LAWLESS: Most people are in bankruptcy through no fault of their own, right? Medical problems, whether it's the medical debt or the job loss that comes from medical problems. divorce, those are the reasons that people often end up in bankruptcy court. 

And bankruptcy is not a free ride. The law is designed that if you have income or you have assets, you will pay as much as you can to your creditors. So most people who file bankruptcy have very, very few assets and very little income…. A lot of people think of it as walking away, it's not at all….It's really something people turn to as a last resort.

Lawless says this decision means bankruptcy courts will focus more on the totality of the circumstances to figure out whether an omission (like Keathley’s) was an innocent error or the actual intent to mislead.

EICHER: Alright, well, in just a moment we'll talk with David Bahnsen about markets, investing, and that big SpaceX IPO, making this final case especially timely.

FS Credit Opportunities Corporation v. Saba Capital Master Fund—we’ll call it FSCO and Saba. Here, the Supreme Court considered a basic question of market regulation: Who gets to enforce the rules?

REICHARD: Saba is an activist investment firm. It buys large stakes in investment funds and pushes for changes it believes will strengthen the company and increase shareholder value.

In this case, Saba challenged voting restrictions adopted by several investment funds. Saba argued those restrictions violated federal law.

But before the Court could decide whether Saba was right, it had to answer a more basic question: Did Congress authorize private investors like Saba to bring this kind of lawsuit?

EICHER: Or put another way: when an investment fund allegedly breaks the rules, can shareholders take it to court themselves—or is that a job specifically for the government?

FSCO’s lawyer Shay Dvoretzky had the winning argument when he made this simple point:

DVORETZKY: The Court should leave private rights of action to Congress…

In other words, if Congress wanted private lawsuits, it would have said so. And that’s how the case came down. During oral argument, Justice Neil Gorsuch hinted at the majority’s thinking:

GORSUCH: The people are supposed to write the laws that govern them, not judges.

REICHARD: In a 6–3 decision, the Court agreed.

Justice Amy Coney Barrett wrote that Congress—not the courts—decides who may enforce federal law. Because Congress never authorized this kind of shareholder lawsuit, Saba could not bring it.

Now that doesn’t mean that the law is unenforceable—the Securities and Exchange Commission still can.

But if lawmakers want private investors to have that power too, then they're gonna have to say so, specifically.

And that’s this week’s Legal Docket.

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