Justices to Consider Deference Courts Owe to Sentencing Guidance

The US Supreme Court agreed to consider a case that will test precedent that sets out a rule on when federal courts must defer to the US Sentencing Commission’s commentary on its sentencing guidelines.

The case granted Monday came in a challenge over a felon-in-possession conviction and the enhanced sentencing range used because of the defendant’s handgun included a 17-round magazine that was determined to be a “large capacity magazine.”

Kendrick Jarrell Beaird objected to that enhanced range, claiming that commentary in the Federal Sentencing Guidelines improperly expanded the scope of the actual guidance, and that courts should be free to make determinations that conflict with it.

The question for the justices is whether a court ruling from 1993 in Stinson v. US “still correctly states the rule for the deference that courts must give the commentary to the sentencing guidelines.

In that ruling, the court said that commentary explaining a guideline in the sentencing commission’s manual ”is authoritative unless it violates the Constitution or a federal statute, or is inconsistent with, or a plainly erroneous reading of, that guideline.”

Beaird claims that a subsequent decision from the court in 2019 limited the level of deference federal courts must give to agencies’ own interpretations of their regulations.

The petition also asked the justices to decide whether his felon-in-possession charge conflicted with the Second Amendment, however the court didn’t agree to take up that question.

The Department of Justice argued Beaird’s contentions regarding Stinson are incorrect, adding that the Sentencing Commission is more equipped to resolve disputes concerning the “application of particular commentary by amending the text of the guidelines.”

The case is Kendrick Jarrell Beaird v. US, U.S., 24-10764, 4/20/26.