Juan Pablo Price v. United States

Under 18 U.S.C. § 2244(b), it is a federal crime to “knowingly engage[] in sexual contact with another person without that other person’s permission.” Petitioner argued in the district court and on appeal that the knowledge requirement applied both to the conduct of engaging in sexual contact with another and to the lack of consent. The Ninth Circuit panel majority concluded that the term “knowingly” modifies only the verb phrase “engages in sexual contact with another person” and does not modify the adverbial prepositional phrase “without that other person’s permission,” even though engaging in sexual contact with another person is not itself unlawful. As the judges who disagreed with the panel majority found, the majority’s decision violated several canons of statutory construction and was contrary to the holdings of several decisions of this Court— including Flores-Figueroa v. United States, 556 U.S. 646 (2009), and Rehaif v. United States, 139 S. Ct. 2191 (2019), among others—and of the en banc Eighth Circuit when it reviewed a related, nearly-identical statute. Accordingly, the question presented here is: Whether the knowledge requirement in 18 U.S.C. § 2244(b) applies to all elements of the offense, such that the government must prove both that the defendant knowing engaged in sexual contact with another person and that defendant knew he lacked that other person’s permission.