When a statute makes it a crime to travel in commerce or across state lines with an improper purpose or intent, can the government manufacture federal jurisdiction over local criminal activity by splitting a round trip taken for a wholly innocent purpose into two parts as to permit an inference that travel home was for an illegal purpose (as the Ninth Circuit held), or is that prohibited by Mortensen (as other circuits have held)?

Questions Presented In Mortensen v. United States, the Court held that an innocent round trip cannot be split into two parts as to permit an inference that interstate travel home was for an illegal purpose, even if prohibited conduct occurred there before the trip and was expected to resume after the trip. 322 U.S. 369 (1944). In the decades thereafter, this Court and the courts of appeals followed that rule. In this case, however, the Ninth Circuit—contrary to stare decisis—dismissed Mortensen as a narrow and fact-bound decision, so it refused to acknowledge and apply the innocent-round-trip doctrine, under which the petitioner’s convictions cannot stand. The questions presented are: 1. When a statute makes it a crime to travel in commerce or across state lines with an improper purpose or intent, can the government manufacture federal jurisdiction over local criminal activity by splitting a round trip taken for a wholly innocent purpose into two parts as to permit an inference that travel home was for an illegal purpose (as the Ninth Circuit held), or is that prohibited by Mortensen (as other circuits have held)? 2. When a statute criminalizes travel in commerce or across state lines with an improper purpose or intent, must that be the “dominant motive” of the travel (as Mortensen required), or is it enough that it was “a motivating purpose” (as the Ninth Circuit held)? ii