The materiality of a falsehood is an element of—and thus a limit on— the federal fraud statutes. This Court has held that an investor’s behavior can be highly relevant to materiality.

The question presented is: Whether the Ninth Circuit’s “prophylactic” “bright-line rule” that precludes a defendant’s use of investor behavior evidence to prevent “victim blaming,’ even when such evidence is highly relevant to materiality and other elements of wire fraud, 1s inconsistent with this Court’s precedent, other circuits that follow the Court’s precedent, and the defendant’s due process rights.

in

In Maslenjak v. United States, 13878. Ct. 1918 (2017), this Court held that ina prosecution for procurement of naturalization based on a false statement, the government must prove that an accurate statement would have resulted in an investigation and “that the investigation ‘would predictably have disclosed’ some legal disqualification.” Jd. (emphasis added) (quoting Kungys v. United States, 485 U.S. 759, 774 (1988)). Additionally, in Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo, 603 U.S. 869 (2024), this Court held that it was an error for a federal court to defer to a legal interpretation, decision, or regulation of an administrative agency, and that the court must make those legal decisions independent of agency interpretation. Id. at 22738.

The Question Presented is:

Whether a court can defer to an immigration agency regulation that expands the circumstances under which a naturalization applicant fails to meet the good moral character requirement in 8 U.S.C. § 1101(f) in order to find a “legal disqualification” as required by Maslenjakthe or whether the term “legal disqualification” in Maslenjak requires proof of a statutory disqualification without deference to an agency regulation?

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