The Supreme Court has agreed to review a case that involves whether the Supreme Court's general standards for agency deference in interpreting its own legislative rules apply to the U.S. Sentencing Commission's commentary in the Guidelines Manual in particular. In a pair of foundational decisions, Bowles v. Seminole Rock and Auer v. Robbins, the Court held that courts are to defer to an agency's interpretation of an ambiguous regulation unless "'plainly erroneous or inconsistent with the regulation.'" Subsequently, in Stinson v. United States, the Court determined that the Commission's "commentary in the Guidelines Manual that interprets or explains a guideline is authoritative," unless the commentary "violates the Constitution or a federal statute, or is inconsistent with, or a plainly erroneous reading of, that guideline." After Stinson, however, in Kisor v. Wilkie, the Court clarified that deference to agencies generally should be extended only if the regulation is "genuinely ambiguous, even after a court has resorted to all the standard tools of interpretation."
The federal appeals courts are presently divided as to the viability of Stinson after Kisor. Some circuits follow Stinson's holding that Commission commentary is entitled to "controlling weight," unless the commentary is unlawful, inconsistent with the corresponding guideline, or otherwise plainly erroneous. By contrast, other circuits abide by Kisor's limiting instruction that such deference is appropriate only when the applicable guideline is truly ambiguous.
This Sidebar previews the Beaird v. United States case that brings this split to the Supreme Court. It first provides an overview of federal sentencing, including information on commentary to the guidelines. It then covers the facts and procedural history of this case. It next summarizes the arguments made by the parties (neither of which defends Stinson as a stand-alone standard) and Court-appointed counsel (invited to argue that Stinson governs). The Sidebar closes with considerations for Congress.
In 1984, Congress responded to concerns about sentencing disparities by enacting the Sentencing Reform Act (SRA or the Act). This statute established the U.S. Sentencing Commission, an independent agency within the federal judiciary composed of seven voting members, at least three of whom must be federal judges. The SRA also directed the Commission to publish (1) mandatory guidelines that, when used by judges at sentencing, would promote greater uniformity in federal sentencing outcomes, and (2) policy statements on the proper application of the guidelines.
As the Supreme Court observed in Stinson, in addition to guideline provisions and policy statements, a "third variant of text [in the Guidelines Manual] is commentary." The Court explained that "both guidelines and policy statements are accompanied by extensive commentary" and that "[a]lthough the [SRA] does not in express terms authorize the issuance of commentary, the Act does refer to it." With respect to the role of commentary, the Commission wrote that commentary "may interpret the guideline or explain how it is to be applied," or "may provide background information, including factors considered in promulgating the guideline or reasons underlying promulgation of the guideline." Commentary also may include definitions of terms, as was the case in Stinson (defining "crime of violence") and is the case in Beaird (defining "large capacity magazine"). All three variants (the guidelines, policy statements, and commentary, which collectively make up the Guidelines Manual) must be voted on and approved by a majority of the Commission, but the commentary is not required to proceed through the notice-and-comment rulemaking process.
In 2005, the Supreme Court held that the mandatory guidelines system violated the Sixth Amendment right to a jury trial because the Guidelines Manual permitted a judge to enhance a sentence based on a judge's finding of a fact (other than a prior conviction) that was not found by the jury or admitted by the defendant. As a result, the Court construed the Guidelines Manual as advisory, which, in the Court's view, avoided the Sixth Amendment issue. Under the current advisory guidelines system, to determine a defendant's sentence, a federal judge must follow a two-step process. First, the judge will calculate the offense level (1 to 43) that is based on the crime of conviction and how the offense was committed, calculate the defendant's criminal history category (1 to 6), and then find the intersection of these two inputs on the 258-boxed-grid known as the Sentencing Table. Each box in the grid contains a range of months to which defendants are to be sentenced in typical cases. The Commission has cautioned that "[f]ailure to follow . . . commentary could constitute an incorrect application of the guidelines, subjecting the sentence to possible reversal on appeal." Second, the judge will ensure that the final sentence complies with the sentencing values memorialized in 18 U.S.C. § 3553(a), including the principle that the sentence should be "sufficient, but not greater than necessary" to effectuate the purposes of punishment.
Today, the Guidelines Manual serves as the starting point and anchor for every federal sentence imposed across the country.
In 2022, an officer witnessed the defendant "pull a firearm from his waistband and point it at another person," and responding officers recovered from the defendant a firearm with an attached magazine that could hold seventeen rounds of ammunition. In 2023, the defendant was indicted on one count of violating 18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(1), which prohibits individuals convicted of a felony from possessing a firearm. The defendant pled guilty. In 2024, a federal judge, sitting in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas, sentenced the defendant to 72 months in prison.
A contributing factor in the sentence was a sentencing enhancement for the defendant possessing a firearm with a "large capacity magazine," a term that is not defined in a guideline provision. The commentary, however, defines a "large capacity magazine" to mean, in relevant part, a "magazine or similar device that could accept more than 15 rounds of ammunition." According to the defendant, the government determined that the firearm satisfied this definition and qualified for the associated enhancement "by counting a 17-round magazine attached to the [defendant's] firearm." The defendant claimed that the definition in the commentary "did not provide the most persuasive reading of the text," and that the term "large capacity magazine" means "a magazine larger than the industry standard, which [the defendant's] was not." At the sentencing hearing, the district court judge overruled the defendant's objection to the enhancement; the judge said,
Courts in the [U.S. Court of Appeals for the] Fifth Circuit are required to apply Stinson deference and consider the commentary to the guidelines…. And because the commentary does not violate the statute or federal – the Constitution or a federal statute, nor is inconsistent with or plainly erroneous – or a plainly erroneous reading of the guideline, the Court defers to the commentary[.]
The defendant appealed, and in 2025, the Fifth Circuit affirmed. The circuit court cited to circuit precedent holding that "Stinson remains good law despite Kisor" and as such rejected the defendant's argument against the application of Stinson deference, stating "his argument that the district court erred in relying on the Guidelines commentary to conclude that a 17-round magazine qualified as a 'large capacity magazine' for the purposes of the enhancement … is foreclosed."
The defendant sought review from the Supreme Court. In the petition, the defendant posited that Kisor "emphasized important limitations in Seminole Rock, casting doubt on Stinson." The defendant asserted that, if Kisor governs, the rules of statutory construction support his industry-standard definition of a "large capacity magazine." Under that definition, according to the defendant, the enhancement would not apply because "[a] 15-round magazine (and a 17-round magazine, at issue here) is a perfectly ordinary sized magazine in the contemporary consumer market." The defendant also pointed to the circuit split that emerged after Kisor: "the circuits have reached opposite conclusions as to whether Kisor upended Stinson." The defendant characterized the split as "balanced and widespread, and therefore unlikely to resolve spontaneously," adding that "the differing views about Kisor and Stinson can be expected to frustrate the goal of a uniform set of Sentencing Guidelines, and accordingly to frustrate the goal of sentencing uniformity generally."
The government took the same doctrinal side as the defendant, conceding that, "To the extent that [the defendant] argues that Kisor now governs the degree of deference owed to an agency's interpretation of its regulations, the government agrees." The government submitted that Supreme Court review was not needed, however, because the defendant "overstates" the circuit disagreement on deference to guidelines commentary; the Commission is "fully capable" of resolving any such disagreement through amending the commentary; and that review would not result in any relevant difference because circuits that have applied Kisor to the large capacity magazine commentary have found the definition to be ambiguous and deferred to that commentary.
The Supreme Court granted the petition on April 20, 2026, setting the question presented as, "Whether Stinson v. United States, 508 U. S. 36 (1993), still correctly states the rule for the deference that courts must give the commentary to the Sentencing Guidelines." Despite the Court's reference to commentary generally, the defendant views the issue before Court to be narrower, namely the possible deference owed to "interpretive" or "substantive" commentary—not "illustrative" or "operational" commentary. Oral argument in the case is scheduled for October 13, 2026.
The defendant primarily claims that no deference is owed to guideline commentary. For support, the defendant argues that a no-deference rule is consistent with the Court's recent decision in Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo, overruling judicial deference to administrative rules, notwithstanding any ambiguity; consistent generally with the role of the courts to exercise their own judgment and give independent meaning to the law; and consistent with the SRA, the text and structure of which do not dictate judicial deference to the Commission's commentary. The defendant also contends that no deference should be paid to the commentary for an additional reason: Deference is not appropriate in the criminal law context. If a court were to find through the use of tools of statutory construction that a guidelines provision is ambiguous, the court should apply the rule of lenity (i.e., the proposition that the interpretive tie goes to the defendant), the defendant continued.
The defendant offers a fallback position, that if the Court does not accept the proposition that the commentary should be afforded no judicial deference, the Court should make clear that the deference standard set forth in Kisor—not Stinson—applies. The defendant argues that Kisor refined Stinson, and that at a minimum the same rule applicable to executive agency interpretations of its regulations should govern the Commission's interpretations of its guidelines.
As to Stinson itself, the defendant asserts that Stinson's justifications for deference do not apply to the Commission, suggesting that the Commission's expertise is in developing sentencing policy and not interpreting ambiguous terms in criminal law, a role traditionally reserved for and routinely performed by the courts; that Stinson may be read to support deference for commentary on how to apply the guidelines, not substantive interpretive commentary; that the commentary may not reflect the objective intent of the associated guideline, as the commentary may be added well after the original guideline was promulgated; that, in any case, it is the guidelines (the first variant of guideline text) that may best demonstrate that intent because these guidelines (not the commentary) must proceed through the notice-and-comment process and pass congressional review; and that promoting uniformity in law by deferring to agency responses to disparate judicial interpretations of regulations would at most justify judicial deference to amendments to the guidelines. "Anything the Commission can say clearly in the commentary, it can say clearly in the text of the Guidelines itself," and the defendant claimed that there are consequences for choosing the commentary route over the amendments process.
The defendant urges the Court to vacate the ruling below and allow the district court to consider the commentary without any deference. Doing so, the defendant argues, will permit the district court to determine that the seventeen-round magazine is not a large capacity magazine within the meaning of the guidelines because that term is designed to capture "unusually dangerous" firearms, not a "ubiquitous" firearm such as the defendant's firearm.
The Department of Justice also supports the vacatur of the Fifth Circuit opinion. The government's brief reasons that the Fifth Circuit "reached the untenable conclusion that 'under Stinson, the commentary controls even unambiguous guidelines.'" Put differently, the government faults the Fifth Circuit for "offer[ing] no sound basis for singling out Stinson" as the basis for its analysis.
The government objects to the defendant's frontline theory that no deference is to be extended to guidelines commentary. Rather, according the government's understanding of Supreme Court jurisprudence on judicial deference to administrative interpretations of their own rules, "Seminole Rock provides the correct standard for [such] deference." The government contends that Kisor clarified Seminole Rock's "classic formulation" by expressly identifying "limits inherent" in that standard—limits that the Fifth Circuit "completely disregard[ed]" and that Stinson merely "incorporat[ed]" the Seminole Rock standard. In seeking to harmonize these rulings into a specific rule, the government posits that where "there is 'genuine ambiguity' in how guideline text should apply, the commentary will typically supply a 'reasonable' interpretation that warrants deference." In other words, the government states that deference is owed when two conditions are present: The regulation is "genuinely ambiguous" and the agency interpretation of that regulation is "reasonable"; if, however, only "'one reasonable construction of a regulation' remains after employing 'all the traditional tools of construction,'" there is no need for deference. The government concedes that it was unlikely that applying the correct standard would lead to a different sentence for the defendant, but nonetheless suggests that the prudent course of action would be to vacate the ruling below and allow the district court to apply the proper standard in the first instance.
Because neither party argues that Stinson supplies the operative standard for judicial deference to the commentary, the Supreme Court invited counsel, Anthony J. Dick, "to brief and argue this case, as amicus curiae, in support of the position that Stinson v. United States . . . still correctly states the rule for the deference that courts must give the commentary to the Sentencing Guidelines." Counsel makes two primary arguments. First, counsel argues that Stinson applies because in that case Congress expressly authorized the Commission to promulgate "general policy statements regarding application of the guidelines," and commentary from the Commission is a "proper exercise" of that authority, whereas in Kisor, the Court inferred that Congress intended for judicial deference to apply to an agency's interpretation of its own regulation. Second, counsel contends that Loper Bright "dismantled" Kisor in that Loper Bright repudiated the presumption that legal ambiguity means both that Congress delegated interpretive authority to agencies and that courts are to defer to such agency interpretations, a presumption that Loper Bright characterized as "misguided" and "unworkable." In any case, counsel stresses, "the Kisor apparatus for divining implied authority is wholly inapplicable" because Congress expressly granted the Commission authority to promulgate commentary.
The Supreme Court has acknowledged that, "Our deference decisions are 'balls tossed into Congress's court, for acceptance or not as that branch elects.'" This recognition reflects Congress's role in determining the scope of agency discretion and, in turn, the extent to which the courts defer to any corresponding agency action. Should the Court adopt the amicus curiae's argument, Congress may evaluate the use of express delegation to maximize such deference to an agency. Congress also remains free to leave discretion and deference questions to the judicial system for further development.