The Supreme Court just decided Abouammo v. United States, No. 25-5146 (U.S. June 11, 2026), which significantly narrows where venue may lie in the Second Circuit. A brief summary of the case is followed by its three key rulings.

Section 1519 of Title 18 makes it a crime to “knowingly… falsif[y]… any record, document, or tangible object with the intent to impede, obstruct, or influence” a federal investigation. The FBI was investigating a crime that occurred in San Francisco when agents travelled to Seattle to meet with Abouammo, who used to live in SF. While in Seattle, Abouammo fabricated an invoice and e-mailed it to the agent. They opened the email and false document in SF.

Abouammo was indicted and convicted in the Northern District of California, over venue objection. The Ninth Circuit affirmed, holding that § 1519’s intent element made the falsification’s “contemplated effects” part of the offense’s “essential conduct,” thus permitting trial where the targeted investigation was located.

A unanimous Supreme Court (Kagan, J.) reversed, reading the “essential conduct elements” test of United States v. Rodriguez-Moreno, 526 U.S. 275 (1999), strictly: “The venue for trying a §1519 offense is, and is only, where the defendant falsified a document, because that is the only conduct proscribed by the statute.” Slip op. at 3.

Abouammo is significant for Second Circuit practitioners because, like the Ninth, it has occasionally expanded venue to include places where an offense’s “contemplated or intended “effect” occurs, even if that effect is not an element of the offense. That is no good after today.

Here are its three critical rulings.

First, venue is proper only where a “conduct” element of the offense was committed. Courts “must initially identify the conduct constituting the offense — the things a defendant must do to violate the statute at issue” — and then locate where those acts occurred. Slip op. at 4 (quoting Rodriguez-Moreno, 526 U.S. at 279). “Because the only proscribed conduct is falsification, venue must be where falsification occurred.” Slip op. at 6.

Second, mens rea is irrelevant to venue. “This Court has never looked to a statute’s mens rea elements in considering venue. Nor would it make much sense to do so.” Slip op. at 6. A falsification with intent to obstruct “occurs wherever the falsification does”; the intent element “adds nothing to the conduct-focused analysis.” Id.

Finally, “essential conduct” does not include contemplated, intended, or even actual effects — unless an effect is itself an element. Section 1519’s “concern with effects is instead confined to the defendant’s mens rea.” Slip op. at 6. Thus “whatever obstructive effects Abouammo’s false invoice may have had in northern California, they were not elements of his crime” and “cannot figure in determining where Abouammo’s ‘crime [was] committed.'” Slip op. at 6–7. The Court contrasted statutes “barring actual obstruction,” e.g., 18 U.S.C. § 1512(c)(2), where an actual effect is an element. Slip op. at 6.

Two reservations going forward.

First, the Court expressly declined to address statutorily created venue provisions, such as 18 U.S.C. § 1512(i) (authorizing trial of § 1503 and § 1512 offenses in the district of the affected official proceeding): “Nothing we say today is meant to address that statutorily created venue scheme.” Slip op. at 5 n.3. But the same footnote observes that “Congress lacks the power to finally decide” what the constitutional venue rule means — so where the government invokes § 1512(i) to try a defendant in a district where no conduct occurred, an as-applied constitutional challenge remains open, and Abouammo‘s reasoning supplies the argument.

Second, the Court rejected the government’s characterization of § 1519 as an “inchoate offense,” holding that “venue for it must be based on the conduct that §1519 itself proscribes, not on the conduct another law does.” Slip op. at 9. In doing so, it left untouched the rule that true inchoate offenses — conspiracy chief among them — may be tried “wherever an overt act furthering the conspiracy has taken place.” Slip op. at 8 (citing Whitfield v. United States, 543 U.S. 209, 218 (2005)).

Expect the government to anchor venue with conspiracy counts if possible. But note the tension: Abouammo ties venue to what the government must prove, and overt acts are not elements of many conspiracies.