In June 2026, the Supreme Court held in a unanimous decision that a defendant falsifying a document in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 1519 must be tried in the district where the falsification occurred, not the district where the federal investigation was located.
In an opinion authored by Justice Elena Kagan, the Court reversed a judgment of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, which had upheld the conviction of Ahmad Abouammo for falsifying a record in a federal investigation under § 1519. The District Court for the Northern District of California erroneously found that venue was proper in the place where the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s (FBI) investigation was located, which was San Francisco, and the Ninth Circuit affirmed in December 2024.
The Supreme Court reversed the Ninth Circuit. “Because the only proscribed event is falsification, venue must be where falsification occurred,” Justice Kagan wrote for a 9-0 Court. “Here, that means venue must be in the district encompassing Seattle, where Abouammo created the false invoice. It could not be in the Northern District of California, hundreds of miles away from that prohibited conduct.”
Whatever “obstructive effects Abouammo’s false invoice may have had in Northern California, they were not elements of his crime,” the Court concluded. “And because that is so, those effects cannot figure in determining where Abouammo’s ‘crime [was] committed.’”
The decision has significant implications for white-collar cases, which routinely involve matters addressing not just specific conduct, but also the conduct’s effects on law enforcement or victims. The highest court in the country has now pushed back on the theory that venue may also exist where the effects of a crime may be felt. We discuss the opinion and some ramifications below.
The Case
A federal jury in San Francisco convicted Ahmad Abouammo for using his position as a Twitter employee to provide to a Saudi official confidential information, in exchange for $300,000, about two dissidents posting on Twitter (testimony during sentencing would reveal that at least one dissident was detained and tortured due to these posts). When two San Francisco-based FBI agents interviewed Abouammo at his home in Seattle in October 2018, he claimed the payment was for consulting work. When asked for verification, Abouammo disappeared upstairs to create a fake invoice, with conflicting metadata, that he emailed to the agents.
Abouammo was indicted and later convicted in San Francisco for multiple offenses including violation of 18 U.S.C. § 1519. The statute reads: “Whoever knowingly alters, destroys, mutilates, conceals, covers up, falsifies, or makes a false entry in any record, document, or tangible object with the intent to impede, obstruct, or influence the investigation or proper administration of any matter within the jurisdiction of any department or agency of the United States or any case filed under title 11, or in relation to or contemplation of any such matter or case, shall be fined under this title, imprisoned not more than 20 years, or both.” (emphasis added). At issue in the Abouammo case was whether the highlighted language in the criminal statute, “with the intent to impede, obstruct, or influence,” could create venue where the effects of the impeding, obstructing, or influencing were felt.
The Lower Courts
Although Abouammo moved to dismiss for improper venue, the District Court concluded that venue was proper in the place of the FBI investigation (San Francisco)—i.e., where the effects were felt—as well as the place where the alleged falsification occurred (Seattle).
The District Court concluded that venue for a charge under § 1519 was proper in the Northern District of California because “the crime is tied to the potentially adverse effect upon a specific (pending or contemplated) proceeding, transaction, etc., and venue may properly be based on the location of that effect.” Weighing the question, the Ninth Circuit noted that venue for a criminal prosecution may be available in more than one district; and that § 1519 lacked an express venue provision.
Yet the Ninth Circuit concluded that § 1519 “expressly contemplates the effect of influencing the action” of another. It was proper, the court held, “to conclude that the contemplated effects are part of the ‘essential conduct’ of the offense for venue purposes because the [statute expressly defines] the conduct in those terms.”
The Fortenberry Case
A similar case from 2023, United States v. Fortenberry, 89 F.4th 702, 705 (9th Cir. 2023), involved a former congressman tried for making false statements in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 1001(a)(2), which prohibits the making of “any materially false, fictitious, or fraudulent statement or representation.” In connection with the investigation, agents in California traveled to Nebraska and Washington, D.C., to interview Jeffrey Fortenberry, who made false statements in those locations. He was tried and convicted in California, where the agents worked.
In 2023, the Ninth Circuit reversed Fortenberry’s conviction, rejecting the government’s assertion of an effects test for venue of a § 1001 offense.
“This outlandish outcome cannot be squared with the Constitution,” Judge James Donato wrote, noting that the Venue and Vicinage Clauses command that a trial be held where the crime was committed. These clauses “may not be disregarded simply because it suits the convenience of federal prosecutors.” Donato, a district judge in the Northern District of California, sat by designation on the Ninth Circuit for this unanimous decision.
This sentiment would be echoed by Justice Kagan in her June 11, 2026, opinion in Abouammo, described below. On appeal, however, the Ninth Circuit in Abouammo reached a different result by distinguishing between statutes that “expressly contemplated” the effect of a defendant’s conduct and statutes that merely mention the effects of conduct. According to the Ninth Circuit, statutes falling into the former camp—that is, statutes expressly contemplating effects—can be tried where the effects are felt. The Ninth Circuit reasoned that Section 1519, at issue in Abouammo, fell into the category of statutes that “expressly contemplate” effects, and on that basis, held that Abouammo could be tried in San Francisco where the effects of his conduct, impeding an investigation, were felt.
“Abouammo’s act of making a false document ‘with the intent to impede, obstruct, or influence’ a federal investigation…continued until the document was “received by the person or persons whom it [was] intended to affect or influence,” the Ninth Circuit concluded. And because the document was received by FBI agents in San Francisco, “the offense was continued or completed in the Northern District [of California], making venue proper there.”
Supreme Court
In its opinion issued June 11, the Supreme Court soundly rejected the idea of an effects test and reversed the Ninth Circuit in Abouammo.
“Article III instructs that ‘Trial of all Crimes’ shall ‘be held in the State where the said Crimes shall have been committed,’” Kagan wrote. “And the Sixth Amendment reinforces that command, entitling criminal defendants to a jury ‘of the State and district wherein the crime shall have been committed.’”
To decide where that happened, courts generally look to the location of the “essential conduct elements” of the offense. While this could be single or multiple locations, Justice Kagan pointed out that the only prohibited act in § 1519 is the falsification of the document, which occurred in Seattle.
“Once a person has committed that act (with the requisite intent), he need do nothing more to violate the law,” the justice stated. “He need not, for example, transmit the document to anyone else, nor must he use it in any particular way. As both Abouammo and the Government agree, the crime is complete upon falsification…. And that fact makes the venue inquiry straightforward. Because the only proscribed conduct is falsification, venue must be where falsification occurred.”
Justice Kagan declined to find that the special intent provision/mens rea requirements of § 1519 could change that result: “This Court has never looked to a statute’s mens rea elements in considering venue. Nor would it make much sense to do so.”
The Court especially rejected the Ninth Circuit’s conclusion that the second mens rea requirement—that the falsification be done with the intent to obstruct an investigation—turned the falsification’s “contemplated effects” into “essential conduct.”
Takeaways
These cases demonstrate that venue is not a throwaway concept: constitutional rights to venue are not negotiable, and prosecutors cannot engineer a favorable forum by chasing the effects of a crime across state lines. Venue is an essential element of a case, and it dictates who ends up in the jury pool. For that reason, the founders enshrined in the Constitution a criminal defendant’s right to be tried where the crime occurred. Sixth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution; Article III, Section 2: The venue “clause[] equally ‘preclude[s] trial’ in a locale where the crime did not occur.” U.S. v. Fortenberry, 89 F.4th 702, 709 (2023) (quoting United States v. Smith, 599 U.S. 236, 243).
“Venue shopping” of course, is a genuine practice, and prosecutors, as well as plaintiffs in a civil setting, may strategically choose and favor one court over another. But if the chosen venue is improper, defendants may and should challenge it. The Court’s decision in Abouammo has wide-ranging implications because many white-collar statutes contain “effects” language (e.g., 18 U.S.C. § 1505; 18 U.S.C. § 1014; 26 U.S.C. § 7212). Of course, as the Supreme Court noted, some criminal statutes with effects-based language do have associated venue provisions setting venue where the effect of the conduct was aimed. (See, e.g., 18 U.S.C. § 1512(i)).
While the Venue Clause in the Constitution applies to criminal cases, litigating in a proper venue is a foundational principle in civil litigation as well. The criminal case law challenging venue discussed herein provides an important strategic reminder regarding venue selection, and the option to challenge it if improper. However, defendants may waive their argument that venue is improper if not raised in an initial motion to dismiss or fail to include it in a responsive pleading. See Fed. R. Civ. P. 12(g)(2)–(h)(1).
Justice Kagan warned that the holding in Abouammo “is ‘discrete’ and narrow, as our venue decisions usually are, because it is based on ‘the nature of the [specific] crime charged.’” For now, Abouammo is the law of the land.
Epstein Becker Green Staff Attorney Ann W. Parks contributed to the preparation of this post.
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