Docket 23-1095
Thompson
DecidedMar 21, 2025
9-0decision
Source: CourtListener.
Federal law banning "false statements" to the FDIC does not cover statements that are misleading but technically true
Impact3/10
What it does
The Court unanimously held that § 1014 covers only statements that are actually false — meaning "not true" — and does not extend to statements that are misleading but technically true. Because the lower courts convicted Thompson without deciding whether his statements were false (only that they were misleading), the Court vacated the conviction and sent the case back for that question to be answered. The ruling resolves a split between federal appeals courts that had disagreed on whether § 1014 requires literal falsity.
Who benefits
People charged with making false statements to federal financial regulators under § 1014 whose statements were technically true, even if incomplete or misleading. Criminal defendants generally benefit when courts require the government to prove the specific element written in the statute.
Who is affected
Federal prosecutors who bring § 1014 cases against borrowers or others who make incomplete or one-sided statements to the FDIC or other covered financial institutions — they must now prove the statement was actually false, not merely misleading.
Practical impact
Federal prosecutors charging someone under § 1014 must now prove the defendant's statement was actually false — not just that it created a misleading impression through omission or selective truth-telling. Courts in the Seventh Circuit, which had previously allowed § 1014 convictions based on misleading-but-true statements, must now apply the stricter "false" standard. On remand, the Seventh Circuit must determine whether a reasonable jury could find Thompson's specific statements were false when viewed in the full context of the conversations.
Majority — Roberts
Joined by: Thomas, Sotomayor, Kagan, Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, Barrett, Alito, Jackson
The Court reasoned that the plain text of § 1014 uses only the word "false" and never uses the word "misleading," and those two words describe different things — a statement can be misleading while still being true, and a true statement cannot be false. The Court noted that many other federal criminal statutes explicitly prohibit both "false" and "misleading" statements, so reading "false" in § 1014 to also cover "misleading" would make those extra words in other statutes pointless. The Court also looked at the history of § 1014's enactment in 1948: none of the eleven predecessor laws it replaced used the word "misleading," even though Congress was using "false or misleading" in other laws of the same era, showing Congress knew how to include that word when it wanted to. Prior Supreme Court decisions supported this reading — particularly Williams v. United States, which established that a § 1014 conviction requires a statement that can be characterized as "false" and not "true." The Court added that "false" must be judged in context, not just by the literal words in isolation, and sent the case back for the lower court to decide whether Thompson's statements were actually false in context.
Constitutional question
Does 18 U.S.C. § 1014, which makes it a crime to knowingly make a "false statement" to influence the FDIC's action on a loan, also criminalize statements that are misleading but not literally false?
Precedent changed
The ruling effectively overrules the Seventh Circuit's precedent in United States v. Freed, 921 F.3d 716 (CA7 2019), which had held that § 1014 criminalizes misleading representations. No Supreme Court precedent was overruled.