Opinion of the Court
Far from distinguishing, the Government’s reading collapses the enhancement into the enhanced. Here, the Government claims that because petitioner’s overbilling was facilitated by the patient’s Medicaid reimbursement number, §1028A(a)(1) automatically applies. Patient names or other identifiers will, of course, be involved in the great majority of healthcare billing, whether Medicare for massages, Hong, 938 F. 3d, at 1051, or for ambulance stretcher services, Medlock, 792 F. 3d, at 706. Patient names will be on prescriptions, Berroa, 856 F. 3d, at 148, 155–156, and patients committing fraud on their own behalf will often have to include the names of others on their forms, such as doctors or employers. Under the Government’s own reading, such cases are “automatically identity theft,” Tr. of Oral Arg. 82, independent of whether the name itself had anything to do with the fraudulent aspect of the offense.
Nor are these implications confined to healthcare. Section 1028A(a)(1)’s predicates include a vast array of offenses, including wire fraud and mail fraud. §1028A(c)(5). The Government’s boundless reading of “uses” and “in relation to” would cover facilitating mail fraud by using another person’s name to address a letter to them.[1] Even beyond
- ↑ To avoid this, the Government has advanced a medley of shifting and inconsistent readings of “without lawful authority,” another element of §1028A(a)(1). Sometimes the Government has claimed that a defendant would not violate §1028A(a)(1) if they had permission to use a means of identification to commit a crime. See Brief for United States 32 (“everyone is presumed to have permission to use other people’s names” in certain ways to facilitate crimes, such as addressing a letter); id., at 31–32 (a defendant can have “lawful authority” to use a co-conspirator’s name to commit bank fraud). Other times the Government has argued that no one ever has permission to commit a crime. App. 32 (a person “can’t give someone [else] permission” to use their name to facilitate a crime); Tr. of Oral Arg. 91–92 (doctor would violate §1028A(a)(1) even if patient granted permission to use his name in the fraud). The Court need not, and does not, reach the proper interpretation of “without lawful authority.” Suffice it to say, these attempts to rein in §1028A(a)(1) through
