Johnson v. United States
Is it still good law? What later courts have actually done to this case.
Status
5,085 later cases cite Johnson v. United States; 483 of those citations sat close to treatment language and were flagged for reading, and all of them have been read. Citations that did not sit near treatment language were not flagged and were not read one by one, so a court that weakened this case without using any of that language would not appear here.
Relying on Johnson v. United States?
This page shows what later courts did to it. Ask about your specific facts and see whether it still carries your argument, with citations you can check.
Treatments
Limited
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The court declined to extend Johnson to § 924(c)(3)(B), distinguishing that provision's text, prior applications, and interpretive history from ACCA.
United States v. Dervishaj · E.D.N.Y. · filed
Collectively, the text, past case applications, and interpretive history of the firearms provision distinguish it from ACCA, such that it should not be invalidated as a result or in light of Johnson.
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The Supreme Court held that Johnson's ACCA vagueness rule does not extend to the advisory Sentencing Guidelines.
Beckles v. United States · Supreme Court of the United States · filed
In Johnson, we applied the vagueness rule to a statute fixing permissible sentences. The ACCA’s residual clause, where applicable, required sentencing courts to increase a defendant’s prison term from a statutory maximum of 10 years to a minimum of 15 years. That requirement thus fixed—in an impermissibly vague way—a higher range of sentences for certain defendants. … Unlike the ACCA, however, the advisory Guidelines do not fix the permissible range of sentences. To the contrary, they merely guide the exercise of a court’s discretion in choosing an appropriate sentence within the statutory range. Accordingly, the Guidelines are not subject to a vagueness challenge under the Due Process Clause.
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The Washington Court of Appeals declined to extend Johnson's vagueness holding to discretionary state sentencing aggravators.
State of Washington v. Michael Murray · Washington Court of Appeals · filed
Johnson does not require us to determine that Baldwin is no longer good law. The ACCA defined conduct that required a minimum of 15 years in prison. Id. at 2555. RCW 9.94A.535 does not require an exceptional sentence. Instead, the jury must find the alleged factor is satisfied based on the evidence. RCW 9.94A.537(6). Then,the trial court must still decide whether the aggravating factor is a substantial and compelling reason to justify an exceptional sentence. Id. Thus, the reasoning of Baldwin applies: RCW 9.94A.535 does not dictate the penalties associated with criminal conduct or force citizens to guess at the consequences that might occur when one engages in prohibited conduct.
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The Fourth Circuit held that Johnson did not recognize a right to challenge the mandatory Sentencing Guidelines' residual clause for purposes of collateral-review timeliness.
United States v. Thilo Brown · Fourth Circuit · filed
Johnson only recognized that ACCA’s residual clause was unconstitutionally vague, 135 S.Ct. at 2557; it did not touch upon the residual clause at issue here. Likewise, Beckles only recognized that the advisory Sentencing Guidelines are not amenable to vagueness challenges. 137 S.Ct. at 895. In a future case, the Supreme Court may agree with an argument similar to Petitioner’s that because the challenged residual clause looks like ACCA and operates like ACCA, it is void for vagueness like ACCA. See id. at 892 n.2 (noting former circuit split). But Beckles demonstrates that quacking like ACCA is not enough to bring a challenge within the purview of the right recognized by Johnson. Accordingly, at least for purposes of collateral review, we must wait for the Supreme Court to recognize the right urged by Petitioner.
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The Ninth Circuit declined to extend Johnson's vagueness reasoning to the crime-involving-moral-turpitude standard.
Rocio Martinez-De Ryan v. Matthew Whitaker · Ninth Circuit · filed
Second, Johnson and Dimaya interpret statutory “residual” clauses whose wording does not include the phrase “moral turpitude” and which are not tethered to recognized common law principles. In the circumstances, we remain bound by Jordan and Tseung Chu.
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The California Court of Appeal held that Johnson did not abrogate the rule barring a facial vagueness challenge when a statute clearly applies to the challenger's conduct.
People v. Superior Court (J.C. Penney Corp., Inc.) · California Court of Appeal · filed
We reject at the threshold their contention that a specific rule for evaluating facial challenges was abrogated in Johnson v. United States (2015) ___ U.S. ___ [135 S.Ct. 2551] (Johnson). Under that rule, as set forth in Village of Hoffman Estates v. Flipside, Hoffman Estates, Inc. (1982) 455 U.S. 489, 500 (Hoffman Estates) and Holder v. Humanitarian Law Project (2010) 561 U.S. 1, 18 (Holder), a facial challenge fails if the statute clearly applies to some or all the challenger’s conduct. We conclude that the rule retains its vitality post-Johnson and is properly employed here.
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The Washington Court of Appeals confined Johnson to its categorical ACCA context and preserved traditional as-applied vagueness review elsewhere.
State of Washington v. Derek W. Schilling · Washington Court of Appeals · filed
Nothing in Johnson suggests that the “as applied” standard has been supplanted as the method for assessing vagueness challenges when First Amendment concerns are absent. The “as applied” standard was not discussed, let alone overruled or relegated to some constitutional backwater. It simply was not a relevant concern since the statute, as construed by the Supreme Court, precluded consideration of the facts of an individual case. Mr. Schilling reads too much into the Johnson opinion. It does not change vagueness analysis except to perhaps add an additional approach when legislation dictates that a statute be construed in a manner that precludes “as applied” consideration. It does no more than that.
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The Seventh Circuit held that Johnson did not alter the bar on a facial vagueness challenge by a defendant whose conduct is clearly prohibited.
United States v. Blair Cook · Seventh Circuit · filed
Johnson did not alter the general rule that a defendant whose conduct is clearly prohibited by a statute cannot be the one to make a facial vagueness challenge.
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The Sixth Circuit held that Johnson did not announce a retroactive rule invalidating the mandatory Sentencing Guidelines' residual clause.
Joshua Jones v. United States · Sixth Circuit · filed
This means that Johnson did not announce a new rule of constitutional law which would apply retroactively to Jones.
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The Ninth Circuit declined to extend Johnson to the identically worded residual clause of the mandatory Sentencing Guidelines.
Ralph Gambina v. United States · Ninth Circuit · filed
Gambina argues that the Supreme Court’s decision in Johnson v. United States, 576 U.S. 591 (2015), which struck down the residual clause of the Armed Career Criminal Act (ACCA), necessarily struck down U.S.S.G. § 4B1.2’s identical residual clause. Our court rejected this argument in Blackstone, 903 F.3d at 1026-28, and we are bound to our prior decision.
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The court confined Johnson to ACCA's categorical ordinary-case problem and declined to extend it to 18 U.S.C. § 1512(c)(2).
United States v. Williams · D.D.C. · filed
Since section 1512(c)(2) does not require a court or jury to make the sort of standard-free inquiry that troubled the majority in Johnson in order to determine the scope of the conduct prohibited, the use of the term “otherwise” does not render section 1512(c)(2) unconstitutionally vague. Moreover, the decision in Johnson arose out of the unique context of the ACCA.
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The Eleventh Circuit declined to extend Johnson to the INA's distinct crime-involving-moral-turpitude standard.
Everton Daye v. U.S. Attorney General · Eleventh Circuit · filed
Johnson and Dimaya addressed different federal statutes with different statutory phrases and therefore do not permit this Court to deviate from De George.
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The Veterans Court held that Johnson's questioning of the no-set-of-circumstances test did not extend beyond facial vagueness to a facial procedural-due-process challenge.
Eugene Costello v. Denis McDonough · U.S. Court of Appeals for Veterans Claims · filed
As the Federal Circuit noted in Bowling, the "no set of circumstances" standard for demonstrating that a statute or regulation is facially invalid has been recently questioned in facial-vagueness challenges in Johnson v. United States, 576 U.S. 591, 602 (2015), and Sessions v. Dimaya, 138 S. Ct. 1204, 1214 n.3 (2018). See Bowling, 38 F.4th at 1061 n.4. However, the standard has not been abrogated or overturned in a facial procedural due process challenge such as the one we have here.
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The court held that Johnson did not eliminate the as-applied threshold for a facial vagueness challenge.
United States v. AmerisourceBergen Corporation · E.D. Pa. · filed
Most courts, however, have disagreed. See United States v. Hasson, 26 F.4th 610, 620 (4th Cir. 2022) (“the Johnson Court did not silently overrule its precedents prohibiting vagueness challenges by those whose conduct a statute clearly prohibits”)
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The Ninth Circuit confined Johnson to its categorical ACCA context and rejected a facial challenge by a defendant whose conduct was clearly prohibited.
United States v. Stennerson · Ninth Circuit · filed
Stennerson’s argument that Johnson v. United States, 576 U.S. 591, 597–98 (2015), established that a facial vagueness can survive even if there are as-applied circumstances that do raise vagueness concerns is misplaced.
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