In United States v. Stuart, No. 25-599 (2d Cir. Sept. 3, 2026) (Lohier, Jacobs (writing), Sack), the panel upheld a special condition of supervised release authorizing the Probation Office “to notify third parties, to whom you may present a risk including employers and potential employers, of your criminal history and past criminal conduct.” Slip op. at 12. On its face, that condition looks like ones this Court has struck as impermissible delegations. E.g., United States v. Peterson, 248 F.3d 79, 86 (2d Cir. 2001); United States v. Boles, 914 F.3d 95, 110–12 (2d Cir. 2019). But two features of this record required a different result: the defendant’s lengthy and wide-ranging history of fraud, and what the district court said on the record about the condition’s reach — that it applies only to those Stuart may defraud or steal from, not to friends. Given those facts, the district court “adequately defined the risks Stuart poses and therefore gave the probation officer sufficient guidance to identify the people subject to them,” leaving Probation only “to identify instances where that risk materializes on the ground” — a task “more akin to ‘executing’ the condition than ‘imposing it.’” Slip op. at 25, 27 (quoting United States v. Kunz, 68 F.4th 748, 765 (2d Cir. 2023)).

Background

The opinion frames the problem at the outset: “Inevitably there is play in the joints as one distinguishes between [1] the permissible implementation by the Probation Office of a judicially imposed condition and [2] the impermissible imposition of a condition by the Probation Office itself.” Slip op. at 2. To remain on the permissible side, a district court cannot leave a condition’s implementation to a probation officer’s “unfettered discretion,” Peterson, 248 F.3d at 86; Slip op. at 22, and must equip the officer with “a standard of decision that constrains its discretion and avoids arbitrary use of its delegated authority,” Kunz, 68 F.4th at 766; Slip op. at 25.

Stuart announces no exception to that rule. It says only that this unusual record satisfied it.

The first feature is the defendant. Stuart’s frauds were so numerous, varied, and opportunistic that while the risk she posed could be defined, her potential victims could not be specified in advance. Her underlying convictions were for health care fraud: she held herself out as a Board-Certified Behavioral Analyst and “impersonated a real one, whose name and credentials she appropriated,” purporting to provide applied behavioral analysis services to autistic children. Slip op. at 5. At the original sentencing, the district judge located that conduct within a “pattern” of “fundamental dishonesty.” Slip op. at 6. There was also a bad rent check; forgery and larceny convictions after Stuart moved into an elderly dog-walking client’s home and took cash, jewelry, and a bank card while doctoring the client’s checks; and a separate larceny conviction for stealing from a roommate and the roommate’s mother. Slip op. at 7. On supervision, Stuart used a disabled resident’s food stamp card for “more than $1,600 in charges,” having obtained that job with “permutations of her name” and a misrepresented employment history, Slip op. at 8; she collected unemployment after starting work, and secured yet another position “by using a modification of her legal name to bypass a background check,” Slip op. at 9.

The second is that the court and the parties discussed the condition at length at sentencing, and the court narrowed and clarified its reach. Unusually, notification was not the government’s idea alone: Stuart’s own counsel floated an employer-notification condition to address her “further deception with employment.” Slip op. at 9. The disagreement that followed was over reach. Probation’s proposal to notify third parties of Stuart’s “personal history and characteristics” was dropped after counsel objected, for instance, and the government agreed that “the main thing is really her criminal history.” Slip op. at 10.

Counsel objected that “third parties” was “overly broad,” since it was unclear “what a third party would mean under that condition.” Slip op. at 10–11. At the court’s request, the probation officer answered on the record: third parties meant “only people in roles that would put them at risk of Stuart’s conduct: A vulnerable person who hired Stuart or let her into their home would be notified, while a friend of Stuart’s would not.” Slip op. at 11.

The court then rewrote the condition to add the words “to whom Ms. Stuart may present a risk.” Counsel asked it to go further and limit the condition to employers and people Stuart lives with, but the court declined, explaining that this would be underinclusive because it would not reach “children or other patients” if Stuart started her own business. Id. The court acknowledged “some ambiguity” in the phrase and said it “trust[ed] that the probation office will use good judgment in determining who those people are.” Slip op. at 12.

Ruling

First, the defendant’s history defines the risk. “In context, the ‘risk’ is that Stuart will engage in opportunistic fraud and larceny that fits no pattern, at the expense of anyone in her orbit to whose property she enjoys access.” Slip op. at 25. The panel catalogues the conduct — “impersonation, false credentials, misrepresentations of her history and name, doctored instruments, food stamp fraud and unemployment fraud, stealing a bank card, pilfering from hosts, and purloining a purse” — against victims running from “a landlord, her roommates, her roommates’ families, the government, large institutions, and vulnerable individuals alike.” Slip op. at 26. Because the conduct is that wide-ranging, the district court “gave the probation officer as much guidance as the defendant’s protean offenses allowed, without imposing parameters that create means of evasion,” and Probation is “free in these circumstances to identify new areas in which this judicially defined risk may materialize.” A judge “who is not in the field” could not “enumerate every opportunity for fraud and larceny that may present itself.” Slip op. at 26–27.

Second, the court’s narrowing defines the class. The panel does not treat “third parties” as open-ended. It reads Stuart’s criminal history as making “clear enough the wide categories of people endangered,” and identifies them — “as the district court explained” — as “employers and potential employers, people Stuart lives with, and people to whom Stuart may provide services if self-employed.” Slip op. at 26. Summarizing the colloquy, the panel concluded that the district court “determined that third-party notification was warranted and identified the class of vulnerable people requiring such notice,” leaving Probation the residual task of spotting instances. Slip op. at 27.

That is the contrast with Peterson, where the district court “provided no guidance to Probation as to what types of employment might require risk notification,” Slip op. at 24, and with Boles, where the condition turned entirely on whether “the probation officer determines that [he] pose[s] a risk to another person,” Slip op. at 23. It is the same move United States v. MacMillen, 544 F.3d 71, 77–78 (2d Cir. 2008), made in upholding a notification condition where the offense itself (possessing child pornography via the internet) told Probation what to look for, so that the officer would not “be operating in a vacuum.” Slip op. at 25.

Practitioner’s Notes

Peterson and Boles remain good law and remain the default. Stuart did not relax the delegation line; it found only that this condition fell on the permissible side of it, on unique facts.

The two features that put Stuart there are absent from most cases. Where the offense conduct is confined to a discrete setting, the first rationale does not apply — the court can specify the types of employment or categories of persons implicated, so Peterson requires that it do so. And where a court imposes a risk-notification condition off a form, with no colloquy and no articulated account of who is at risk or why, the second is missing entirely. A bare-record “third parties to whom you may present a risk” condition should still be vacated.