The Supreme Court ruled in Hunter v. United States, No. 24-1063 (U.S. June 18, 2026), that appellate courts will not enforce an appellate waiver in a plea agreement when enforcing it “would result in a miscarriage of justice — meaning, when it would leave in place the kind of egregious error that would bring the judicial system into disrepute.” Slip op. at 1. Justice Kagan wrote for the 8-1 majority (Thomas alone dissented). The decision resolves a longstanding circuit split in favor of the majority rule (including the Second Circuit, see Slip op. 4–5 n.1) and remands for application of the standard to Hunter’s challenge to a mandatory-medication condition of supervised release.
Kagan grounds the holding not in contract law but in the judiciary’s institutional responsibility for maintaining the integrity of the judgments it approves and enforces. And two competing 3-justice concurrences by Gorsuch and Kavanaugh offer sharply different readings of the exception’s breadth, leaving open questions about what “miscarriage of justice” means in practice.
Background
Hunter was charged with ten counts of bank and wire fraud. He pled guilty to one count under a plea agreement that dismissed the remainder and contained a broad appellate waiver: Hunter “knowingly and voluntarily waive[d] the right to appeal” his conviction and sentence, retaining only the right to raise an IAC claim. The agreement required any modification to be “in writing and signed by all parties.”
At sentencing, the district court imposed a 51-month sentence with three years of supervised release, including a condition requiring Hunter (over objection) to take all mental-health medications prescribed by his physician. The court then told Hunter: “You have a right to appeal.” The prosecutor said nothing.
Hunter appealed to the Fifth Circuit, challenging that condition as infringing his due process liberty interest because he did not want to “be forced to medicate.” The circuit enforced the waiver and dismissed the appeal, holding that its only exceptions to waiver enforceability were IAC claims and sentences exceeding the statutory maximum.
Enforceability Depends on the Effect on Judicial Integrity
Kagan reverses, holding that “an agreement not to appeal a sentence is unenforceable when it would result in a miscarriage of justice — meaning, when it would leave in place the kind of egregious error that would bring the judicial system into disrepute.” Slip op. at 1. The Fifth Circuit’s rule, confined to IAC and stat max claims, was too narrow.
Kagan does not mention contract-law principles in justifying the holding. Instead, she grounds it in the judiciary’s institutional stake in the sentences it affirms. District courts must accept plea agreements before they take effect; courts of appeals have “exclusive control” over whether to enforce a waiver; and their enforcement “will, by eliminating judicial review, cement into place a district court’s sentence, whether or not lawful.” Slip op. at 9. Because courts are “in the middle of, and partly responsible for, appeal waivers and their results,” automatic enforcement “may ‘risk[] institutional harm.’” Id. at 10. The enforceability question is thus not whether the defendant got a bad deal. It is whether the judiciary’s own integrity would be compromised by insulating a particular sentence from review.
Three Illustrations
Kagan says the standard “sets a high bar” (but “a high bar is not the same as an insurmountable one”). It is “a safety valve for extreme cases — a way out of a waiver when the justice system’s basic integrity is at stake.” Slip op. at 12. Thus, “standard-fare errors in misapplying sentencing law cannot cancel an appeal waiver,” including errors in “the detailed calculation of a Sentencing Guidelines range and the mandatory consideration of multiple sentencing factors.” Id. at 11.
The Court declined to enumerate all situations satisfying the standard: “Extreme cases, after all, are hard to anticipate before they happen.” Slip op. at 12. But it offered three illustrative categories. The scope of these categories is disputed between the concurrences.
First, “a sentence exceeding what the relevant statute allows.” “Most commonly, a term of years above the maximum prescribed.” Slip op. at 12. The “most commonly” qualifier suggests this extends beyond exceeding the statutory cap to other forms of unauthorized punishment.
Second, “a sentence infected with a blatant constitutional error.” Two sub-types: “when a judge takes account of a constitutionally impermissible factor (like race)” and when a judge “imposes a constitutionally infirm condition of supervised release (like barring a defendant from becoming pregnant).” Slip op. at 12. The first addresses impermissible inputs to the sentencing decision; the second addresses unconstitutional outputs — conditions that independently violate established constitutional rights.
Third, “a sentence imposed without some minimum of civilized procedure.” This encompasses “the ‘twelve orangutans’ case — or less extravagantly, one in which the judge refused to hold a hearing consonant with basic principles of law.” Slip op. at 12. The “less extravagantly” qualifier indicates this category is not confined to absurdist hypotheticals.
Gorsuch’s Concurrence: Fleshing Out the Standard
Justice Gorsuch (joined by Sotomayor and Jackson) makes an elegant structural move: the majority “approve[s]” the miscarriage-of-justice standard “as many appellate courts have properly applied it,” see Slip op. at 11 & 4–5 n.1, so Gorsuch walks through what those courts have actually held. His framing is that he is not expanding the majority’s standard but merely explaining its already-established content. Practitioners should fit their cases within the majority holding to the maximum extent possible, but should also look to take advantage of Gorsuch’s framing. Be mindful, of course, that the government will argument that Gorsuch’s position is not controlling and was rejected by the Kavanaugh concurrence.
On the first category (statutory authorization), Gorsuch says it includes penalties “the law reserves for offenses different than those of which the defendant stands convicted” (citing Phillips, 124 F.4th 522 (CA8 2024)); unauthorized remedies like restitution (citing Yung, 37 F.4th 70 (CA3 2022)); and “perhaps mandatory minimum sentences for which the defendant does not qualify.” Gorsuch Concurrence at 10.
On the second category (constitutional error), Gorsuch says “a miscarriage of justice [would be] all but certain to arise whenever a sentence infringes a constitutional right that was ‘firmly established at the time of sentencing.’” Id. at 10 (quoting Carter, 87 F.4th 217, 225 (CA4 2023)). This is broader than Kagan’s “blatant” formulation — it would cover any established constitutional right, not just the paradigmatic cases.
On the third category (procedural minimum), Gorsuch goes furthest. He cites courts declining to enforce waivers when district courts fail “to give reasons for [the] sentence or address a defendant’s non-frivolous arguments” (citing Smith, 134 F.4th 248, 261–63 (CA4 2025); Woltmann, 610 F.3d 37, 39–40 (CA2 2010)). He adds: “plain and nonharmless error in calculating an advisory guidelines range” (citing Rosales-Mireles, 585 U.S. 129, 145 (2018)); substantive unreasonableness that would fail even under Gall’s deferential abuse-of-discretion standard; and conditions “wholly unrelated to legitimate sentencing purposes” or “lacking in rationality” (quoting Boudreau, 58 F.4th 26, 33 (CA1 2023)). Gorsuch Concurrence at 11–12.
Kavanaugh’s Concurrence
Justice Kavanaugh (joined by Alito and Barrett) wrote a one-page concurrence targeting Gorsuch: “I respectfully disagree with [Justice Gorsuch’s] understanding of the miscarriage-of-justice exception. As I read it, his concurring opinion would set a lower bar for the miscarriage-of-justice exception than the Court’s opinion does.” Kavanaugh Concurrence at 1.
But Kavanaugh does not identify which of Gorsuch’s specific applications he considers inconsistent with the majority, nor does he offer an alternative reading of the three categories. Gorsuch responds that Kavanaugh’s “unexplained disagreement lies not with me, but with what many lower courts and this Court have said in the past about what kinds of errors represent miscarriages of justice.” Gorsuch Concurrence at 12 n.1.
Open Questions after Hunter
Are contract principles still relevant?
Yes — for scope arguments. Hunter answered whether a court will enforce a valid waiver, not whether a particular claim falls within the waiver’s scope. The Second Circuit’s narrow-construction canon — construing ambiguous waiver language against the government — survives Hunter untouched.
Indeed, Kagan applied contract principles to resolve the second question presented: whether the judge’s misstatement about appeal rights, combined with the prosecutor’s silence, negated the waiver. The Court held it did not. The plea agreement required modifications to be “in writing and signed by all parties,” and “nothing that happened in the sentencing hearing shows the mutual agreement between parties needed to accomplish a modification.” Slip op. at 5–6. Contract-construction principles thus remain available for interpreting waiver scope, even as the miscarriage-of-justice exception rests on a different foundation.
Is Second Circuit precedent still relevant?
Yes. Kagan cited the Second Circuit’s Riggi decision as “adopting a differently framed but substantively similar exception” to the miscarriage of justice standard used by “the majority” of circuits and adopted in Hunter. Slip op. 4–5 n.1 (citing United States v. Riggi, 649 F.3d 143, 148 (CA2 2011)). Following Gorsuch’s framing, most of the Circuit’s existing exceptions can be mapped onto Hunter’s three categories. For instance, Jacobson (constitutionally impermissible factors) tracks Category 2; Yemitan (abdication of judicial responsibility) and Lajeunesse (failure to afford allocution) track Category 3; Woltmann (failure to address non-frivolous arguments) sits in Gorsuch’s expanded Category 3.
Two Circuit rationales fall somewhat outside Hunter’s categories but remain viable. First, Lutchman, 910 F.3d 33 (2d Cir. 2018): an appellate waiver unsupported by consideration is invalid as a matter of contract formation, regardless of the miscarriage-of-justice standard. Second, the Riggi/Liriano-Blanco “parties did not anticipate” rationale: a waiver may not cover a claim when the sentence “was reached in a manner that the plea agreement did not anticipate.” Liriano-Blanco, 510 F.3d 168, 174 (2d Cir. 2007); see also Lajeunesse, 85 F.4th at 692–94. (applying same framework). This is another scope-oriented argument that avoids Hunter’s “high bar” entirely.
Hunter in a Nutshell
Claims barred by an appellate waiver:
- Guidelines calculation errors
- Misapplication of the § 3553(a) factors
- Substantive reasonableness challenges
- Disputes about the weight assigned to mitigating or aggravating factors
- Any sentencing error that is “uncertain or ordinary” or “standard-fare”
Claims that cannot be barred by an appellate waiver:
- Any error constituting “the kind of egregious error that would bring the judicial system into disrepute” (general Hunter standard)
- Ineffective assistance of counsel in entering the plea agreement, and any claim going to the knowing or voluntary character of the waiver itself (unchanged pre-Hunter law)
- Sentences exceeding the statutory maximum or otherwise unauthorized by statute (Hunter Category 1)
- Sentences infected with a “blatant constitutional error” — reliance on a constitutionally impermissible factor (such as race or religion), or imposition of a constitutionally infirm condition of supervised release (Hunter Category 2)
- Sentences imposed without “some minimum of civilized procedure” — including proceedings in which the judge “refused to hold a hearing consonant with basic principles of law” (Hunter Category 3)
Claims in the contested middle (Gorsuch says yes, Kavanaugh says no, majority silent):
- Plain and nonharmless Guidelines calculation errors (Gorsuch cites Rosales-Mireles)
- Failure to give reasons for the sentence or address non-frivolous defense arguments (Woltmann, Smith)
- Conditions of supervised release “wholly unrelated to legitimate sentencing purposes” or “lacking in rationality” (Boudreau)
- Substantive unreasonableness so extreme it would fail even under deferential abuse-of-discretion review (Gall)