The Supreme Court recently overturned a former aide and campaign manager’s conviction for disgraced former governor of New York. Andrew Cuomo. The decision may have surprised those who follow Albany’s culture of corruption, but it was completely consistent with the Supreme Court’s recent history. The Roberts court has been deregulating corruption for more than a decade.

The courts’ own ethics have come under renewed scrutiny recently thanks to revelations about Judge Clarence Thomas, among others. What is less widely appreciated is that the courts have built a record of making political corruption easier and harder to prosecute.

Joseph Percoco’s conviction for corruption did not exactly come out of the blue. Cuomo was forced to resign from office in disgrace after being credibly accused of a longstanding pattern of sexual harassment, and he did not enjoy an excellent reputation beforehand. In 2014, he made the no-suspect decision to disband a commission investigating corruption in the state around the time it started getting too close to his friends.

While praising his father, the late Gov. Mario Cuomo, Andrew Cuomo called Percoco a brother; the New York press called him his enforcer. His official title in 2014 and 2015, around the time the Moreland Commission was investigating corruption in New York, was Deputy Secretary to the Governor.

In 2018, a jury of Percocos colleagues convicted him of taking $287,000 in bribes in exchange for helping an energy company win government business. In emails between Percoco and an advisor, the money was referred to as ziti, an apotheosis of The Sopranos. U.S. District Court Judge Valerie Caproni said she hoped Percoco’s six-year sentence would be heard in Albany.

Political corruption is a dual national problem. Alas, the Supreme Court under Chief Justice John

G.

Roberts

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has legalized corruption in cases involving both campaign finance and white-collar crime, well beyond the Percoco case.

This has been a big change. Under Robert’s predecessor as Chief Justice, William

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Rehnquist routinely upheld the Supreme Court’s reasonable campaign finance rules as a means of preventing corruption. And the Rehnquist court had a broad definition of corruption that included the power of wealthy donors to set the tone for elected officials.

The Roberts court has taken a markedly different course in cases such as McCutcheon v. Federal Election Commission (2014), which removed certain campaign contribution limits for individuals. Suddenly, wealthy donors could be expected to have extraordinary access to elected officials; it was no longer considered a facet of undermining and potentially corrupt relations between the donor class and elected officials.

In Davis vs. Federal Election Commission (2007), in fact Justice Samuel

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Alito

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claimed that campaign finance laws discriminate against the wealthy. This inverted view of the world emerged in a series of cases culminating in Citizens United, which allows companies to spend unlimited money on US elections. The Supreme Court no longer recognizes that corporate political spending can potentially corrupt candidates.

The Roberts court has also become the corrupt defendants’ best friend in a series of white-collar crime cases.

In Skilling vs. For example, in the United States (2010), the court drastically narrowed down the definition of fair service fraud, a federal offense that has been critical to prosecuting corruption. Jeffrey Skilling, the notorious crook who ran Enron, was sentenced to 10 years in prison as a result.

In McDonnell vs. United States (2016), the court saved the former governor of Virginia. Bob McDonnell of the Hoosegow, even though he took or borrowed money, clothes, a Rolex and a Ferrari, among other gifts, from a donor. And in Kelly vs. United States court spared the aides behind the former governor of New Jersey. Chris Christie’s Bridgegate scandal, the prison sentence a jury thought they richly deserved.

These opinions ranged from small majorities to unanimity, but Thomas was one of the most consistent voices for deregulation of corruption. Not only does he think most anti-corruption laws are unconstitutional; Hi

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Maintained the view, extreme even in Roberts court, that mere disclosure of the sources of money in politics somehow violates the First Amendment.

The recent revelations that a wealthy Republican donor gave Thomas, his wife, his mother and his great-nephew a host of valuable gifts further illustrates the judge’s enthusiasm for secret relations between the wealthy and those in power. And the entire court has effectively rejected any attempt at oversight by issuing a defiant response to the recent request by Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Dick Durbin for Roberts to answer questions about the court’s ethics.

In the New York case, meanwhile, the judges relied on the fine distinction that most of Percoco’s felony occurred during a brief interregnum between terms in state government as he worked toward Cuomo’s re-election campaign as a technically private citizen. The court wrote that the intangible right to honest service clearly does not extend the duty to the public to all private persons.

With the next presidential contest looming, the Percoco ruling could further embolden unscrupulous campaign managers and aides. After all, the front-runner for the Republican nomination has already seen two former campaign managers, Paul Manafort and Steve Bannon, charged with federal crimes and pardoned both of them. The Roberts courts’ ongoing campaign to excuse corruption in other ways is bad for our democracy.

Ciara Torres-Spelliscy is a Brennan Center fellow and professor of law at Stetson University College of Law. She is the author of Political Brands and the upcoming The Democracy Litmus Test, about political corruption.