Medical Marijuana, Inc. v. Horn, 604 U.S. ___ (2025)

SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES

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No. 23–365

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MEDICAL MARIJUANA, INC., et al., PETITIONERS v. DOUGLAS J. HORN

on writ of certiorari to the united states court of appeals for the second circuit

[April 2, 2025]

Justice Jackson, concurring.

When Congress speaks, courts should listen. Congress has instructed that the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO) “shall be liberally construed to effectuate its remedial purposes.” §904(a), 84Stat. 947. That instruction applies with particular force to the remedial provision of RICO at issue in this case, 18 U. S. C. §1964(c), which creates “a private action for those injured by racketeering activity.” Sedima, S. P. R. L. v. Imrex Co., 473 U.S. 479, 498 (1985). In rejecting petitioners’ attempts to add atextual hurdles to §1964(c), today’s decision accords with Congress’s liberal-construction directive. In my view, that provides one more reason that the decision is right.

SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES

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No. 23–365

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MEDICAL MARIJUANA, INC., et al., PETITIONERS v. DOUGLAS J. HORN

on writ of certiorari to the united states court of appeals for the second circuit

[April 2, 2025]

Justice Thomas, dissenting.

The Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO) allows any person “injured in his business or property by reason of ” racketeering activity to bring a civil suit for damages. 18 U. S. C. §1964(c). All agree that this “civil RICO” statute forbids suits based on “personal injuries.” RJR Nabisco, Inc. v. European Community, 579 U.S. 325, 348, 350 (2016). We granted certiorari in this case to resolve a Circuit split on “[w]hether economic harms resulting from personal injuries” are “injuries to ‘business or property’ ” under civil RICO or are instead personal-injury damages. Pet. for Cert. i. But, this case has proved ill suited for deciding the question presented. The parties dispute an important threshold issue: whether the plaintiff here suffered a personal injury in the first place. And, they have inadequately briefed their views on the meaning of the key statutory phrase “injured in his business or property.” §1964(c). Perhaps due to these difficulties, the Court today issues a narrow opinion that elides the parties’ primary disputes. Rather than opine on ancillary issues, I would dismiss the writ of certiorari as improvidently granted. I respectfully dissent.

I

Plaintiff Douglas Horn lost his job as a commercial truck driver after a random drug test revealed tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) in his system. Horn asserts that the THC came from his ingestion of Dixie X, an over-the-counter medicinal product manufactured and sold by Medical Marijuana, Inc.[1] Medical Marijuana advertised Dixie X as THC-free, but a third-party laboratory detected THC in the product.

Horn sued Medical Marijuana in Federal District Court, alleging various state-law claims and a violation of civil RICO. To establish a civil RICO violation, a plaintiff must prove that a defendant engaged in a “pattern of racketeering activity” that caused the plaintiff to be “injured in his business or property.” §§1962, 1964(c). Horn alleged that Medical Marijuana engaged in mail and wire fraud—forms of racketeering activity under RICO—and that, as a result, he suffered a business or property injury in the form of lost employment.

Medical Marijuana moved for summary judgment on some of Horn’s state-law claims on the ground that Horn had not suffered a personal injury, an essential element of those claims. Specifically, Medical Marijuana asserted that Horn had “failed to produce any evidence or testimony that [he] suffered any bodily injury from ingesting Dixie X.” Memorandum of Law in Support of Defendants et al. in No. 15–cv–701 (WDNY, Aug. 30, 2018), ECF Doc. 62–1, p. 27. In Medical Marijuana’s view, “[t]he only loss” Horn even “attempted to establish through discovery” was that he lost his “jo[b] and . . . source of income.” Ibid.

The District Court accepted Medical Marijuana’s argument and rejected some of Horn’s state-law claims based on his failure to establish a personal injury. 383 F. Supp. 3d 114, 134 (WDNY 2019). The court explained that although Horn seeks damages for “economic losses,” he does “not claim that [he] suffered any personal injury . . . as a result of [Medical Marijuana’s] conduct.” Ibid.

The District Court’s summary judgment ruling left two claims for trial: a state-law fraudulent inducement claim and the civil RICO claim.

On the eve of trial, Medical Marijuana argued for the first time that Horn’s civil RICO claim failed as a matter of law because it was based on a “personal injury.” Memorandum of Law in Reply to Motion In Limine in No. 15–cv–701 (WDNY, Aug. 2, 2021), ECF Doc. 200, p. 4. It asserted that the only injury Horn alleged was the unwanted “ingest[ion]” of “trace amounts of THC,” and that this kind of injury “is, fundamentally, a type of ‘personal injury.’ ” Id., at 10, 12. Horn’s lost wages, according to Medical Marijuana, were merely “damages” that “derive from a personal injury,” and thus “are not recoverable under . . . civil RICO.” Id., at 5 (capitalization and boldface deleted).

Notwithstanding its earlier determination that Horn had not suffered a personal injury for purposes of the state-law claims, the District Court adopted Medical Marijuana’s new theory and held that Horn’s civil RICO claim was based on an impermissible “personal injury: the bodily invasion that [Horn] suffered when he unwittingly ingested THC.” 2021 WL 4173195, *3 (WDNY, Sept. 14, 2021). And, because civil RICO precludes suits based on personal injuries, the District Court determined that Horn’s civil RICO claim “fail[ed] as a matter of law.” Id., at *5. The District Court granted partial final judgment on the civil RICO claim to allow Horn to appeal.

Before the Second Circuit, Horn did not contest the District Court’s holding that civil RICO excludes suits based on economic harms resulting from personal injuries. Rather, he argued that he had not suffered a personal injury in the first place.

The Second Circuit declined to decide whether Horn had suffered a personal injury. Instead, the court resolved what it described as the “logically antecedent legal question”: whether civil RICO “bars a plaintiff from suing for injuries to business or property simply because they flow from, or are derivative of, a personal injury.” 80 F. 4th 130, 135, n. 2 (2023). Deepening a Circuit split, the Second Circuit held that civil RICO permits a plaintiff to sue for injuries to business or property that “flow from, or are derivative of, an antecedent personal injury.” Id., at 135.

Medical Marijuana petitioned this Court for certiorari, asking us to decide whether economic harms resulting from personal injuries are injuries to “business or property” under civil RICO. Pet. for Cert. i. It assured us that “[t]his case cleanly tees that circuit split up for resolution,” and that the case would “tur[n] on a narrow, dispositive, and discrete question of statutory interpretation that requires little analysis of the underlying facts.” Id., at 4 (internal quotation marks omitted). We granted certiorari. 601 U. S. ___ (2024).

II

I would dismiss the writ of certiorari as improvidently granted. The question presented has divided the Circuits and merits this Court’s attention. But, the parties dispute an important, factbound, threshold issue that the court below did not pass upon. And, the intertwined question of how to define a civil RICO injury is inadequately briefed.

A

We took this case to decide whether economic losses flowing from personal injuries are injuries to business or property for purposes of civil RICO, or merely damages. That question necessarily assumes the existence of a personal injury as the starting point.

Yet, in this case, the parties vigorously contest whether Horn suffered a personal injury at all. Despite its earlier theory that Horn had not suffered a personal injury, see supra, at 2–3, Medical Marijuana now argues that “Horn suffered a quintessential personal injury” by “ingesting an unwanted substance.” Brief for Petitioners 20. Horn, by contrast, contends that he “did not suffer any harm to his person,” and that his injuries were only economic in nature. Tr. of Oral Arg. 67; Brief for Respondent 29.

The Second Circuit expressly sidestepped the question whether Horn suffered a personal injury by ingesting Dixie X. 80 F. 4th, at 135, n. 2. The only court to have passed on the issue—the District Court—expressed different views at different points. See supra, at 2–3.

I would not decide whether losses flowing from personal injuries are injuries to business or property in a case where no one knows whether the plaintiff suffered a personal injury in the first place. If Horn did not suffer a personal injury, then our resolution of the question presented will have no bearing on this case. Because federal courts may not “render advisory opinions . . . advising what the law would be upon a hypothetical state of facts,” Preiser v. Newkirk, 422 U.S. 395, 401 (1975) (internal quotation marks omitted), we ordinarily do not decide matters unless we know that our decision will have some import for the parties before us. Given the lack of clarity on whether Horn suffered a personal injury, we cannot be assured that our resolution of the question presented would affect the parties here.

Even if resolving a question that might not affect these parties is “a permissible course, it does not strike me as the most sensible one.” Warner Chappell Music, Inc. v. Nealy, 601 U.S. 366, 376 (2024) (Gorsuch, J., dissenting). The question presented asks us to analyze the nature of losses that flow from a personal injury. It is difficult to analyze the nature of downstream losses when the nature of the initial event is unknown. Medical Marijuana asserts that the kind of loss at issue here—lost wages—can sometimes constitute an “injury,” depending on the circumstances and the event from which the lost wages flow. Reply Brief 15. That we do not know whether this case involves a personal injury severely “complicates our inquiry,” and thus counsels in favor of dismissing the writ of certiorari as improvidently granted. McDonough v. Smith, 588 U.S. 109, 125 (2019) (Thomas, J., dissenting); accord, Arizona v. City and County of San Francisco, 596 U.S. 763, 766 (2022) (Roberts, C. J., concurring) (concurring in the dismissal of the writ of certiorari as improvidently granted because other contested issues “could stand in the way of our reaching the question presented . . . or at the very least, complicate our resolution of that question”).

Of course, we could decide for ourselves whether Horn suffered a personal injury. But, “we are a court of review, not of first view.” Cutter v. Wilkinson, 544 U.S. 709, 718, n. 7 (2005). And, whether Horn suffered a personal injury is a case-specific factual finding. Such questions do not ordinarily merit our review. See this Court’s Rule 10.

Moreover, it is not clear to me that Medical Marijuana is even entitled to argue that Horn suffered a personal injury. The rule of judicial estoppel “ ‘generally prevents a party from prevailing in one phase of a case on an argument and then relying on a contradictory argument to prevail in another phase.’ ” New Hampshire v. Maine, 532 U.S. 742, 749 (2001). Medical Marijuana initially argued that Horn had not alleged a cognizable personal injury. See supra, at 2. The District Court agreed and dismissed some of Horn’s state-law tort claims on that ground. Then, shortly before trial, Medical Marijuana argued that the remaining civil RICO claim failed because Horn had based the claim on a personal injury. Horn has made a nonfrivolous argument that Medical Marijuana should be judicially estopped from arguing that he suffered a personal injury. Brief in Opposition 19–20. Depending on the outcome before this Court, the estoppel issue could be litigated on remand. This additional complication is yet another reason to dismiss the writ of certiorari as improvidently granted.

Resolving the question presented would be far more straightforward in a case where the personal injury is beyond dispute. For example, imagine a case in which racketeering activity inflicts a classic personal injury—such as a broken arm—and as a result, the plaintiff suffers economic loss in the form of medical expenses. Such a case would cleanly tee up the question dividing the Circuits: whether the economic loss flowing from a personal injury qualifies as an injury to business or property under civil RICO.

The question presented is important and merits our attention. But, we should save the question for a case where all agree that the plaintiff suffered a personal injury and where our resolution of the question will unambiguously matter.

B

The question presented is also bound up with a related question—that is, the definition of the phrase “injured in his business or property” in civil RICO. §1964(c). To understand whether Horn’s civil RICO claim is based on an “injur[y] in his business or property,” it would be helpful to understand the meaning of that phrase in the civil RICO statute. Ibid. But, I would not decide that weighty question here because the court below did not do so, and neither party offers a complete definition of the phrase.

The Second Circuit did not decide the meaning of “injured in his business or property.” Ibid. In its view, “[b]y using the disjunctive ‘or’ to separate ‘business’ from ‘property,’ Congress made clear that ‘business’ was not intended to modify ‘property,’ nor was ‘property’ intended to modify ‘business.’ ” 80 F. 4th, at 135–136. Thus, the Second Circuit evaluated the meaning of “business” without considering the meaning of “property.” Id., at 136.

Similarly, neither party offers a complete definition of “injured in his business or property.” §1964(c). Horn argues that an injury to “business” is any harm to one’s employment, and employment, in Horn’s view, “embraces everything about which a person can be employed.” Brief for Respondent 12 (internal quotation marks omitted). But, Horn says little about what it means to be “injured in his . . . property.” §1964(c). Medical Marijuana, for its part, argues that an injury to business or property is the invasion of a legal right that one holds in his business or property. Brief for Petitioners 11. But, nowhere does Medical Marijuana tell us exactly how it would define those legal rights. At times it has suggested that courts should look to state tort law, but, it says little about how courts should assess whether the plaintiff has suffered a qualifying tort. Given the state of the briefing on this matter, we are not well positioned to decide the meaning of “injured in his business or property” in this case. §1964(c).

In my view, the Court should interpret the meaning of “injured in his business or property” in its entirety. The ordinary rule is that “a word is known by the company it keeps.” Dubin v. United States, 599 U.S. 110, 124 (2023) (internal quotation marks omitted). Thus, the meaning of “property”—and the way that courts determine the meaning of that term—is likely to bear on the meaning of “business.” It may be important that a number of courts have held that “whether a particular interest amounts to property is quintessentially a question of state law.” Doe v. Roe, 958 F.2d 763, 768 (CA7 1992) (citing Logan v. Zimmerman Brush Co., 455 U.S. 422, 430 (1982)); see also Price v. Pinnacle Brands, Inc., 138 F.3d 602, 607 (CA5 1998) (per curiam) (explaining that courts “may look to state law to determine, for RICO purposes, whether a property interest exists”). Until we are prepared to define the entirety of the phrase “injured in his business or property,” my preference is to say nothing at all.

III

The Court’s opinion underscores why we should dismiss the writ of certiorari as improvidently granted. Perhaps due to the difficulties described above, the Court declines to resolve the question presented. It also declines to offer definitive guidance on what it means for a plaintiff to be “injured in his business or property.” §1964(c). Instead, as Justice Kavanaugh explains, “the Court charts an unusual middle way.” Post, at 3 (dissenting opinion). It affirms a component of the Second Circuit’s decision that no party seems to dispute. It then defines one word within the disputed statutory phrase, leaving the most critical and outcome-determinative issues for another day. If these limited holdings are the most we can offer, then our grant of certiorari was plainly improvident.

A

The Court affirms the Second Circuit’s conclusion that civil RICO “does not preclude recovery for all economic harms that result from personal injuries.” Ante, at 19. In other words, the Court affirms the Second Circuit’s determination that civil RICO does not contain a so-called “antecedent-personal-injury bar.” 80 F. 4th, at 137. But, as far as I can tell, no party has ever contested that point.

The “antecedent-personal-injury bar” appears to be a concept invented by the Second Circuit. The bar, if applied to civil RICO, would preclude a plaintiff from recovering for an injury to business or property simply because the injury happens to follow a personal injury in the causal chain. In other words, the theory goes, once the plaintiff suffers a personal injury, he may not recover for any subsequent injuries to his business or property that follow or flow from it.

In my view, the majority misunderstands Medical Marijuana to be advocating for that rule. See ante, at 14. The majority describes the “only question” before us as “whether civil RICO bars recovery for all business or property harms that derive from a personal injury.” Ante, at 5. But, that reformulation of the question presented miscasts Medical Marijuana’s argument. Medical Marijuana concedes that some harms to business or property are actionable under civil RICO, even if they follow or flow from a personal injury. See Brief for Petitioners 33–34. Its point is that not all harms to business or property are injuries to business or property under civil RICO. In its view, some economic harms—such as medical expenses, or, as relevant here, some forms of lost wages—are better conceived of as damages. Thus, the question squarely before us is whether the economic harms in this case—Horn’s lost wages—constitute a cognizable injury to business or property under civil RICO or are instead personal-injury damages.

I agree with the Court’s conclusion that civil RICO does not bar recovery for all economic harms that result from a personal injury. So do the other dissenters. Post, at 20–21 (opinion of Kavanaugh, J.). And, as far as I can tell, so do all the parties and the court below. See Brief for Petitioners 34; Brief for Respondent 18–21; 80 F. 4th, at 137. We do not ordinarily take a case to settle an issue on which there is no disagreement.

B

The Court’s other holding is that “injured” in civil RICO means “harmed.” Ante, at 5–6. But, defining one word within the phrase “injured in his business or property,” §1964(c), sidesteps the core of the parties’ disagreement.

The parties dispute the meaning of the phrase “injured in his business or property.” §1964(c). Although the parties would define “injured” in slightly different terms, their biggest disagreement concerns what is injured or harmed. According to Horn, a plaintiff can bring a civil RICO suit so long as his business—broadly defined to mean “everything” about employment—is harmed. Brief for Respondent 12 (internal quotation marks omitted). And, according to Medical Marijuana, a plaintiff can bring a civil RICO suit only if his legally protected right in his business or property is invaded (or, in other words, injured or harmed). See Brief for Petitioners 11. The modest conclusion that “injured” means “harmed” leaves the scope of the relevant harm unresolved.

The Court’s limited holding is bound to “leave substantial confusion and litigation in its wake.” Post, at 25 (opinion of Kavanaugh, J.). Notwithstanding its decision to affirm, the Court is unwilling to say that Horn has alleged a cognizable injury to his business under civil RICO. The Court makes clear that it is not deciding whether the Second Circuit correctly interpreted “business” to encompass “employment.” Ante, at 5. The Court also makes clear that it is not deciding the definition of “property.” Ibid. I appreciate the hesitation to define an entire phrase in a case where neither party offers a complete definition. But, rather than define one word in isolation, I would wait for a better case.

*  *  *

The decision below implicates a genuine Circuit split, but the parties dispute a factbound, threshold issue that directly bears on the question presented. And, the related issue of how to define “injured in his business or property,” §1964(c), was not decided below and is inadequately briefed. I would therefore dismiss the writ of certiorari as improvidently granted. I respectfully dissent.

SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES

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No. 23–365

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MEDICAL MARIJUANA, INC., et al., PETITIONERS v. DOUGLAS J. HORN

on writ of certiorari to the united states court of appeals for the second circuit

[April 2, 2025]

Justice Kavanaugh, with whom The Chief Justice and Justice Alito join, dissenting.

The Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, known as RICO, provides that any “person injured in his business or property by reason of a violation” of the Act “shall recover threefold the damages he sustains.” 18 U. S. C. §1964(c) (emphasis added). Under the text of RICO, therefore, a plaintiff may sue for “business or property” injuries, and he may seek recovery of the damages he sustains from those injuries. But a plaintiff may not sue for “personal injuries.” RJR Nabisco, Inc. v. European Community, 579 U.S. 325, 350 (2016).

Importantly, and key to my disagreement with the Court’s opinion in this case, the term “injured” is a tort-law term of art and therefore “should be given its established common-law meaning.” United States v. Castleman, 572 U.S. 157, 163 (2014) (quotation marks omitted). In tort law, the term “injured” means to have suffered “the invasion of any legally protected interest.” Restatement (Second) of Torts §7(1) (1964). Personal, property, and business injuries all have well-defined meanings in tort law: They mean the invasion of a legal right in one’s person, property, or business, respectively.

The dispute in this case arises because personal injuries in tort law, and thus also in RICO cases, often result in losses or damages that are related to the victim’s business or property. For example, personal injuries from defective products or car accidents often lead to lost wages (loss of “business” according to plaintiff Horn) and medical expenses (loss of “property” according to Horn).

So the fundamental question here is whether business or property losses from a personal injury transform a traditional personal-injury suit into a business-injury or property-injury suit that can be brought in federal court for treble damages under RICO. Plaintiff Horn and the Second Circuit say that the answer is yes. Defendant Medical Marijuana, as well as the Sixth, Seventh, and Eleventh Circuits, contend that the answer is no—that RICO does not authorize suits for personal injuries regardless of what losses or damages a victim sustains from a personal injury. I agree with defendant Medical Marijuana and the Sixth, Seventh, and Eleventh Circuits.

A plaintiff cannot circumvent RICO’s categorical exclusion of personal-injury suits simply by alleging that a personal injury resulted in losses of business or property, thereby converting otherwise excluded personal-injury suits into business- or property-injury suits. If the rule were otherwise, as plaintiff Horn advocates here, RICO would federalize many traditional personal-injury tort suits. When enacting civil RICO in 1970, Congress did not purport to usher in such a massive change to the American tort system. As the Eleventh Circuit rightly said, if “Congress intended to create a federal treble damages remedy for cases involving bodily injury, injury to reputation, mental or emotional anguish, or the like, all of which will cause some financial loss, it could have enacted a statute referring to injury generally, without any restrictive language.” Grogan v. Platt, 835 F.2d 844, 847 (1988) (quotation marks omitted). Congress did not enact such a statute. On the contrary, it excluded personal-injury suits. And it is not remotely plausible to conclude that Congress excluded personal-injury suits under RICO and then turned around and somehow still implicitly authorized most personal-injury suits under RICO.

For its part, the Court today neither fully agrees with plaintiff Horn and the Second Circuit, nor fully agrees with defendant Medical Marijuana and the Sixth, Seventh, and Eleventh Circuits. Instead, the Court charts an unusual middle way. The Court agrees with Horn that the term “injured” in RICO is not a tort-law term of art and therefore should be read according to its ordinary conversational meaning, rather than its longstanding legal meaning. Therefore, the Court agrees with Horn that personal-injury suits are not excluded by RICO so long as the personal injuries lead to “business or property loss.” Ante, at 6. But the Court then declines to decide whether lost wages and medical expenses (which are among the most common economic damages in personal-injury suits) qualify as business or property losses recoverable in those RICO suits.

By concluding that traditional personal-injury suits are not excluded by RICO and then punting on the critical questions of whether lost wages and medical expenses are recoverable losses of business or property in those RICO suits, the Court’s opinion both errs on the law and leaves substantial confusion in its wake. The aftermath of the Court’s opinion could be quite a mess, as courts grapple with RICO personal-injury cases where the question is what losses qualify as business or property losses.

Unlike the Court, I would heed the text of the statute, recognize that the term “injured” in RICO is a longstanding tort-law term of art, and keep things relatively simple: RICO excludes suits for personal injuries, regardless of what losses or damages ensue from those personal injuries.

I

For three reasons, I conclude that RICO does not authorize suits for personal injuries even when those personal injuries result in losses or damages related to one’s business or property: (1) the text of RICO excludes personal-injury suits and incorporates traditional tort-law principles about what injury means; (2) this Court’s antitrust precedents, which interpret the same “injured in his business or property” language on which RICO was deliberately modeled, confirm that RICO excludes all losses resulting solely from personal injuries; and (3) the federalism canon counsels against federalizing large swaths of ordinary state-court tort cases absent clear direction from Congress.

A

First is the statutory text. RICO expressly distinguishes among different kinds of injuries—personal injuries versus business or property injuries.

When it enacted RICO in 1970, Congress did not pluck the word “injured” out of thin air. Rather, Congress adopted language that comes straight from longstanding tort-law principles. And those longstanding tort-law principles matter when courts construe RICO: In interpreting statutory torts, this Court starts “from the premise that when Congress creates a federal tort it adopts the background of general tort law.” Staub v. Proctor Hospital, 562 U.S. 411, 417 (2011). Therefore, to define the scope of civil RICO’s cause of action, this Court has repeatedly looked to “general common-law” tort principles regarding “legal injury.” Bridge v. Phoenix Bond & Indemnity Co., 553 U.S. 639, 656 (2008); see Beck v. Prupis, 529 U.S. 494, 500–501 (2000).

Stated otherwise, “injured” is a “common-law term of art” that “should be given its established common-law meaning.” United States v. Castleman, 572 U.S. 157, 163 (2014) (quotation marks omitted). Here, as elsewhere, when “Congress transplants a common-law term, the ‘old soil’ comes with it.” United States v. Hansen, 599 U.S. 762, 778 (2023) (quotation marks omitted).

What constitutes injury as a matter of traditional tort law? For tort-law purposes, injury is the infringement of a legal right—“the invasion of any legally protected interest of another.” Restatement (Second) of Torts §7(1).

And with injury so defined, Congress’s “cabining RICO’s private cause of action to particular kinds of injury”—business or property injuries, not personal injuries—makes perfect sense. RJR Nabisco, Inc. v. European Community, 579 U.S. 325, 350 (2016). That is because tort law has long categorized different kinds of legal injuries along precisely those lines.

Personal injury includes “acts constituting a tort because intended or likely to cause bodily harm or emotional distress.” Restatement (Second) of Torts §924, Comment a (1977); see id., ch. 2, Introductory Note, at 22; Ballentine’s Law Dictionary 941 (3d ed. 1969). Typical personal-injury claims may involve, for example, car accidents or defective products.

Property injury—like trespass or conversion—is an act “materially affecting the capacity of particular property for ordinary use and enjoyment” or “the diminishing” of one’s “property” by tortious means. Ballentine’s, at 627; see Chattanooga Foundry & Pipe Works v. Atlanta, 203 U.S. 390, 396, 398–399 (1906).

Those categories are long and widely recognized. In detailing the “several injuries cognizable by the courts of common law,” Blackstone separated “wrongs or injuries that affected the rights of persons” from “such injuries as affect the rights of property.” 3 W. Blackstone, Commentaries on the Laws of England 115, 144 (1768). As one court phrased it 150 years later, actions “to recover damages caused by bodily injuries, or by injuries to property,” were “well known as distinct classes of actions” and “each separately treated in the text books of law”—and “so clearly distinguished” that “there is no difficulty in recognizing and classifying them.” Gridley v. Fellows, 166 Cal. 765, 769, 138 P. 355, 357 (1914); see Kelley v. Boyne, 239 Mich. 204, 213, 214 N.W. 316, 319 (1927).

Business injury such as unfair competition and tortious interference with contract eventually developed into its own standalone tort-law category, distinct from personal or property injury. By the late 19th and early 20th centuries, courts and commentators embraced the general principle that “to interfere with a man’s trade by a malicious act is actionable” because it violates “a concrete right as distinct as his right to his lands and chattels, one which imposes on his fellows a correlative duty, the breach of which is a tort.” E. McClennen, Some of the Rights of Traders and Laborers, 16 Harv. L. Rev. 237, 237–238, 241 (1903); cf. F. Cooke, The Law of Combinations, Monopolies and Labor Unions §7 (2d ed. 1909). And by 1938, the First Restatement included a division titled “Interference with Business Relations” that described trade-related wrongs like unfair competition and tortious interference with contract. See Restatement (First) of Torts, div. 9.

In short, tort law has long distinguished personal-injury suits from business-injury or property-injury suits. And RICO incorporated that traditional distinction into the statutory text. Like some of the States, Congress could have decided to authorize RICO suits for any person who has been “injured,” period, which would have covered personal-injury suits as well as business- or property-injury suits. See Ga. Code Ann. §16–14–6(c) (2024); Fla. Stat. §772.104(1) (2023). But Congress instead decided to limit civil RICO suits to plaintiffs who have been “injured in” their “business or property.”

More specifically, RICO’s private right of action is available to a person who has suffered a business or property injury “by reason of a violation” of RICO. §1964(c). And a RICO violation generally requires the defendant to have engaged in a “pattern of racketeering activity,” where “racketeering activity” includes conduct chargeable as any of a host of state- and federal-law crimes, such as money laundering, extortion, and mail or wire fraud, to take some common examples. §1962; see §§1961(1), (5). The question for a court under civil RICO is simply whether the plaintiff was “injured in his business or property by reason of ” whatever the defendant did to violate RICO. §1964(c).

One further important point: Under tort law, injury is distinct from the losses or damages that result from an injury. Since before the Founding, courts have distinguished “injury” from “damage.” Uzuegbunam v. Preczewski, 592 U.S. 279, 286 (2021) (citing Cable v. Rogers, 3 Bulst. 311, 312, 81 Eng. Rep. 259 (K. B. 1625)). Stated simply, injury is “the illegal invasion of a legal right; damage is the loss, hurt, or harm which results from the injury.” Ballentine’s, at 303; see Black’s Law Dictionary 466 (rev. 4th ed. 1968).

For example, negligently driving a car into a pedestrian inflicts a legal injury on the pedestrian—wrongful invasion of the pedestrian’s physical safety. The pedestrian’s losses or damages resulting from the injury typically will include his lost wages and medical expenses, among other things like pain and suffering. The injury (the hit from the negligently driven car) gives the pedestrian a right to sue; the lost wages, medical expenses, and pain and suffering that follow are damages that a plaintiff may be able to recover for the injury. See Restatement (Second) of Torts §§910, 912, Comment a.

All of that means that when a victim suffers only a personal injury (such as from a car accident or defective product), his lost wages and medical expenses are merely the losses or damages that result from that personal injury, not themselves a separate business or property injury—that is, not a distinct infringement of a legal right in one’s business or property.

Therefore, a victim who suffers only a personal injury “by reason of ” a RICO violation has not been “injured” in his “business or property,” even if that personal injury leads him to lose wages or incur medical expenses. That victim may not sue under RICO.

B

This Court’s antitrust precedents further confirm that RICO’s exclusion of personal-injury suits means what it says and cannot be circumvented by recharacterizing personal-injury losses or damages (such as lost wages or medical expenses) as their own standalone business or property injuries.

By the time Congress enacted RICO in 1970, this Court had already interpreted identical text in the antitrust laws—“injured in his business or property”—to adhere to the traditional tort-law understanding of business or property injuries as distinct from personal injuries. Those prior antitrust holdings interpreting that same statutory language carry weight both as a matter of precedent and because this Court presumes that in enacting RICO, Congress adopted “the interpretation federal courts had given the words earlier Congresses had used” in the antitrust laws. Holmes v. Securities Investor Protection Corporation, 503 U.S. 258, 268 (1992); see, e.g., Agency Holding Corp. v. Malley-Duff & Associates, Inc., 483 U.S. 143, 151 (1987).

Enacted long before RICO, the Sherman and Clayton Acts provided that any “person who shall be injured in his business or property . . . by reason of ” an antitrust violation may “sue therefor” and “shall recover three fold the damages by him sustained.” Sherman Act, §7, 26Stat. 210 (1890) (emphasis added); see Clayton Act, §4, 38Stat. 731 (1914), as amended, 15 U. S. C. §15(a). And in applying that statutory text, the Court opined that “injured in his business or property” had its traditional tort-law meaning.

The Court expressly said so in an antitrust price-fixing case, Keogh v. Chicago & Northwestern R. Co., 260 U.S. 156 (1922). There, the Court accepted that the plaintiff “was damaged” directly by the defendants’ illegal conduct—he “lost the benefit of rates” that “he would have enjoyed” “but for the conspiracy.” Id., at 160, 162. But being “damaged”—suffering a loss—was not what the statutory text demanded. The Sherman Act required legal injury. As the Court put it, “Section 7 of the Anti-Trust Act” gave “a right of action” only to “one who has been ‘injured in his business or property.’ Injury implies violation of a legal right.” Id., at 163 (emphasis added).

In other words, the Keogh Court ruled that “injured” referred to the violation of a legal right, not to the harm or damage resulting from the violation of a legal right. And so the Court went on to determine whether the plaintiff had been legally “injured”—which, in Keogh, he had not.[1]

Therefore, for an antitrust plaintiff to be “injured in his business or property,” this Court and others have required that the plaintiff be legally wronged in a business or property interest as traditionally understood. See Chattanooga Foundry, 203 U. S., at 396, 399; Gerli v. Silk Assn. of Am., 36 F.2d 959, 960 (SDNY 1929). The question is whether the plaintiff ’s business or property rights were legally violated—not whether the plaintiff suffered some sort of business or property loss or damage from an injury.

In Reiter v. Sonotone Corp., the Court applied those basic principles to hold that the antitrust laws “exclude personal injuries.” 442 U.S. 330, 339 (1979). That is true, the Court suggested, even when the personal injuries led to losses or damages related to the plaintiff ’s business or property. As its example of excluded personal injuries, the Court cited Hamman v. United States, 267 F. Supp. 420 (Mont. 1967). In Hamman, the plaintiffs had tried to evade the personal-injury exclusion by contending that their property damage from a personal injury itself qualified as a distinct property injury for purposes of the antitrust laws. Id., at 429, 432. Under the antitrust laws, however, that argument does not suffice, which is presumably why the Reiter Court cited Hamman as exactly the kind of personal-injury suit that the antitrust laws exclude. 442 U. S., at 339. The Reiter Court’s citation to Hamman supports the conclusion that damages to one’s business or property from personal injuries do not somehow magically transform those personal injuries into distinct business or property injuries that can be alleged in an antitrust suit.

To summarize: Antitrust law has long required plaintiffs to allege business or property injuries, and has long excluded suits for personal injuries. And critically, antitrust law has defined “injured” as traditionally understood under tort law—that is, as an invasion of a legal right and distinct from the losses or damages that ensue.[2]

RICO aims “to compensate the same type of injury” as the antitrust laws; “each requires that a plaintiff show injury ‘in his business or property by reason of ’ a violation.” Agency Holding, 483 U. S., at 151. Those antitrust precedents therefore strongly buttress the conclusion that RICO excludes personal-injury torts, regardless of what kinds of losses or damages ensue. See, e.g., Gause v. Philip Morris, 2000 WL 34016343, *4–*5 (EDNY, Aug. 8, 2000) (rejecting an attempt to reframe loss of income from emphysema as a property injury under RICO).

In RICO, Congress surely did not copy verbatim antitrust law’s well-established business or property requirement in order to silently convert ordinary personal-injury tort cases into federal RICO lawsuits with treble damages available.

C

Third, even if the above textual and precedential points do not themselves clinch the matter, the federalism canon weighs heavily against reading RICO to encompass traditional personal-injury suits.

The federalism canon directs courts not to significantly alter the federal-state balance absent “exceedingly clear language” from Congress. Sackett v. EPA, 598 U.S. 651, 679 (2023) (quotation marks omitted); see, e.g., Gregory v. Ashcroft, 501 U.S. 452, 460 (1991). If RICO covered personal injuries that lead to lost wages and medical expenses, as Horn advocates, then civil RICO would federalize huge swaths of state tort law in a manner that Congress never contemplated or authorized.

That reading would eviscerate the careful balance that Congress struck when enacting RICO.[3] Again, most personal-injury torts lead to damages involving a loss of employment or income (such as lost wages) or loss of money (such as medical expenses). Horn characterizes those damages as lost business or lost property. So if Horn’s argument were accepted and RICO’s exclusion of personal injuries did not actually exclude most personal-injury tort suits, then RICO would suddenly authorize a vast new category of personal-injury suits seeking treble damages in federal court. For example, plaintiffs could easily plead everyday product liability claims as federal RICO claims, at least so long as there were two or more instances of fraud that a plaintiff could cast as a “pattern” of racketeering activity. 18 U. S. C. §1961(5); see Brief for Petitioners 25–29; Brief for Chamber of Commerce of the United States of America et al. as Amici Curiae 19–21.

Most state tort suits are personal-injury suits. And the States assume an especially active role regarding the rules of personal-injury cases, exercising their “traditional authority to regulate tort actions.” Wos v. E. M. A., 568 U.S. 627, 639 (2013).

Interpreting civil RICO to allow plaintiffs to bypass those state-law limits—and to triple their damages in federal court—would supplant vast “areas of traditional state responsibility.” Bond v. United States, 572 U.S. 844, 858 (2014). In the antitrust context, this Court has emphasized that the “maintenance in our federal system of a proper distribution between state and national governments” is “of far-reaching importance,” and an “intention to disturb the balance is not lightly to be imputed to Congress.” Hunt v. Crumboch, 325 U.S. 821, 826 (1945) (quotation marks omitted).

So too with RICO. Indeed, the federalism concerns are even greater with RICO than with antitrust. Few antitrust violations are likely to inflict personal injury on a plaintiff—anticompetitive acts break laws, not legs. But “the breadth of the predicate offenses” in RICO practically covers the waterfront of personal-injury tort law. Sedima, S. P. R. L. v. Imrex Co., 473 U.S. 479, 500 (1985). So if RICO were interpreted as Horn suggests, RICO suits for treble damages in federal court could supplant many everyday tort suits in state court. Avoiding such seismic shifts in the federal-state balance, Congress drew the critical RICO boundary at issue here—“cabining RICO’s private cause of action to particular kinds of injury” and “excluding” “personal injuries.” RJR Nabisco, 579 U. S., at 350.

II

To sum up so far: When civil RICO employed the language “injured in his business or property,” it broke no new ground. It incorporated well-established tort-law principles and antitrust precedents in a straightforward way. If the only injury (that is, invasion of a legal right) that a plaintiff suffers is a personal injury, the plaintiff cannot recover under civil RICO. And RICO does not allow access to its treble-damages remedy by silently green-lighting personal-injury suits that have downstream financial consequences like lost wages or medical expenses. After all, most personal injuries generate those downstream financial consequences. So if RICO were interpreted in that way, it would federalize significant swaths of state tort law, and substantially alter the federal-state balance.

Despite all of that, the Court today agrees in part (with some important caveats as discussed below) with plaintiff Horn on this basic statutory issue and thereby circumvents RICO’s exclusion of personal injuries—letting in through the back door at least some of the personal-injury suits that RICO’s text bars at the threshold.

The Court’s key mistake, in my view, is to employ an ordinary-meaning definition of the term “injured” rather than its longstanding meaning as a term of art in American tort law. As the Court sees it, the ordinary meaning of “injured” simply is to have suffered harm or losses or damages. Therefore, when a personal injury leads to harm or losses or damages related to one’s business or property, those downstream harms to business or property are actually their own distinct business or property injuries for purposes of RICO. So under that reasoning, many personal-injury suits seeking treble damages can in fact be brought under RICO in federal court. Voila.

A

To navigate around RICO’s distinction between personal-injury suits and business- or property-injury suits, and the key point that injury is a longstanding tort-law term of art, the Court stresses that RICO uses the term “injured” instead of “injury.” That single piece of “context,” says the Court, means that we should look to the ordinary meaning of “injured” and that the traditional tort-law understanding of injury does not carry over to RICO. Ante, at 7–8. I am mystified by the Court’s attempt to hang its analytical hat on such a thin distinction between “injured” and “injury.” After all, a person “injured” is a person who has suffered an “[i]njury,” a “violation of a legal right”—that is, the victim of a tort or wrong. Keogh v. Chicago & Northwestern R. Co., 260 U.S. 156, 163 (1922) (quotation marks omitted); see, e.g., Chattanooga Foundry & Pipe Works v. Atlanta, 203 U.S. 390, 398–399 (1906); Ziglar v. Abbasi, 582 U.S. 120, 130 (2017); Alabama Power Co. v. Ickes, 302 U.S. 464, 479 (1938); Taylor v. Carryl, 20 How. 583, 599 (1858).

After reviewing a single dictionary definition of “injured,” the Court concludes that the term “injured,” as distinct from “injury,” has no specialized legal meaning. From there, the Court says that it “is hard to make a term-of-art argument without the term of art.” Ante, at 8. But the Court’s nifty turn of phrase has no substance behind it. Every one of the Court’s dictionaries—its legal dictionaries, and even its generalist ones—includes the rights-violation definition of “injure” or “injured,” not just of “injury.” See Ballentine’s, at 627 (“injured party”); Black’s, at 924 (to “injure”); Webster’s New International Dictionary 1111 (1913) (“injured”); American Heritage Dictionary 676 (1969) (to “injure”); Webster’s Third New International Dictionary 1164 (1971) (“injured”). Those sources do not draw the distinction that the Court creates in order to avoid RICO’s exclusion of personal injuries.[4]

Simply put, the Court’s attempt to find a key difference between “injured” and “injury” rings hollow. And the Court’s textual gymnastics do not end there. If the Court were correct that injured simply means having suffered harm or losses or damages, then the statutory term “injured” would refer to the same thing as the statutory term “damages.” But the statute distinguishes “injured” from “damages” and makes clear they are not the same thing. See §1964(c) (“Any person injured in his business or property by reason of a violation” of RICO “shall recover threefold the damages he sustains” (emphasis added)). The text instead makes clear that damages are the losses that a victim sustains from an injury.

Faced with the problem that its definition of injured refers to the same thing as damages in this statute, the Court simply redefines “damages” not to mean losses, but rather to mean only “monetary redress” to be paid for the losses. Ante, at 8–9.

The Court is surely correct that “damages” can mean (i) losses suffered or (ii) monetary redress from a lawsuit for those losses. In fact, the term “damages” is often used in both ways. But in this statutory context, only the former definition—losses—makes any sense. As used in the RICO statute, “damages” are something that a victim “sustains.” And the term “sustains” means to “experience or suffer (loss or injury).” American Heritage, at 1296. A plaintiff cannot suffer or sustain “monetary redress,” as the Court seems to think. But he can sustain losses.

So the term “damages” in RICO means losses, but that is exactly what the Court says the term “injured” means. The Court affords the same meaning to those different terms. In this context, that is another clue that the Court’s analysis of the term “injured” has gone off track.[5]

In short, to reach its conclusion that RICO allows personal-injury suits involving losses or damages to business or property, the Court reasons that “injured” means something different from “injury.” And it changes the statutory definition of “damages” to avoid that word carrying the same meaning as the Court’s reading of “injured.” Neither of those efforts is persuasive or permissible as an interpretation of RICO’s text, in my view.

The correct reading is instead the textually straightforward one: A person “injured in his business or property” is a person who has suffered injury in a business or property right as traditionally defined—the violation of a legal right in his business or property. Keogh, 260 U. S., at 163. Civil RICO allows a person to “recover damages” if the damages result from a business or property injury, but not if the damages result from a personal injury. Id., at 162.[6]

B

The Court also contends that precedent compels us to read “injured” as meaning “harmed or damaged,” not as a tort-law term of art meaning invasion of a legal right. Ante, at 6; see ante, at 9–11. But the Court does not cite any cases actually holding as much. Instead, the Court offers out-of-context citations of isolated mentions of “harm” in other cases.

In relying on passages pulled out of context from judicial opinions, the Court makes the mistake of parsing “the language of an opinion” “as though we were dealing with language of a statute.” Reiter v. Sonotone Corp., 442 U.S. 330, 341 (1979). The Court seizes in particular on the word “harm,” which is not in the RICO statute. The Court says that injury simply means harm as ordinarily understood. So any harm to business or property is its own distinct business or property injury, the Court says. But that is wrong as a matter of elementary tort law. As the Restatement plainly says, “harm, which is merely personal loss or detriment, gives rise to a cause of action only when it results from the invasion of a legally protected interest, which is to say an injury.” Restatement (Second) of Torts §7, Comment d.[7]

Moreover, contrary to the Court’s telling, multiple civil RICO precedents confirm that to be “injured” in civil RICO means to have suffered “legal injury,” not merely to have suffered harm or loss or damage of some kind. Bridge v. Phoenix Bond & Indemnity Co., 553 U.S. 639, 656 (2008). In Bridge, for example, the Court explained that whether an element is required in order to state a civil RICO claim turns on whether that element is necessary to show “legally cognizable injury” under “general common-law principle[s].” Ibid.[8] In Beck v. Prupis, the Court likewise held that when civil RICO says that anyone “injured” by reason of a “violation” may sue, it means that a plaintiff may recover only if “injured” by a “violation” under “well-established common law” principles. 529 U.S. 494, 500–501, 506 (2000).[9]

Those Bridge and Beck precedents directly contradict the Court’s test today that RICO’s private right of action “requires nothing more” than that a plaintiff ’s “business or property has been harmed or damaged.” Ante, at 6. Under this Court’s precedents, more is certainly required. Specifically, the plaintiff must have suffered a business or property injury as those terms are understood under general tort principles—meaning an invasion of a legal right in his business or property.

C

The Court further says that distinguishing personal injuries from business or property injuries, as the text of RICO requires, would be difficult at times. To be sure, as with almost everything in the law, there may be close calls at the margins—here, about whether a plaintiff plausibly alleges a business or property injury as distinct from a personal injury. But that inquiry is at least a familiar judicial exercise. Cf. United States v. Burke, 504 U.S. 229, 239 (1992); see also, e.g., Willard v. Moneta Bldg. Supply, Inc., 262 Va. 473, 482, 551 S.E.2d 596, 600 (2001) (“applicable statute of limitations” turns on “the type of injury alleged”). And the commonplace reality of some close calls does not mean that we can or should disregard Congress’s textual limitation on the kinds of injury that a plaintiff must allege—and ultimately prove—in order to recover under RICO.

The Court also focuses incessantly on a scenario where, as sometimes happens, a single episode results in injuries both to one’s person and to one’s business or property. Some kinds of wrongful acts can cause the invasion of multiple legal rights—for example, a car accident might damage the car (property injury) and physically harm the driver (personal injury). See generally W. Loyd, Actions Arising Out of Injury to Both Person and Property, 60 U. Pa. L. Rev. 531 (1912); contra, ante, at 14, n. 9 (resisting dividing negligence actions along these lines). In those scenarios, civil RICO allows recovery for the business or property injury (assuming RICO’s other requirements are met), but not the personal injury.

I therefore agree with the Court—and so does defendant Medical Marijuana—that civil RICO allows for recovery any time a defendant has “invaded the plaintiff ’s business or property rights,” “even if the plaintiff also suffered a personal injury.” Brief for Petitioners 34–35; see Reply Brief 7. As defendant Medical Marijuana acknowledges, and I too agree, if a defendant’s act causes both personal and property injuries to another, then civil RICO “allows suit for the” “property injury” but not the “personal injury,” no matter which came first. Reply Brief 8.

In other words, neither Medical Marijuana nor I actually adopt the position the Court today labels as the “antecedent-personal-injury bar.” Ante, at 4, 14. Under that supposed bar, RICO would “implicitly” exclude any business or property injuries whenever they follow a personal injury. Ante, at 4. But by repeatedly criticizing that supposed rule, the Court invents and knocks down a straw man. So just to be crystal clear, I agree with the Court (as does defendant Medical Marijuana) that if the plaintiff at some point also suffered a personal injury in addition to a business or property injury, the plaintiff can still recover damages for the business or property injury.

Consider the Court’s hypotheticals. They are supposed to show that the so-called “antecedent-personal-injury bar” would bar recovery and lead to untenable results in certain cases. But in almost all of them, the rule that defendant Medical Marijuana proposes (and I agree with) would allow recovery, not bar it. Indeed, they are not close calls. Why does Tony Soprano “injure” a victim in his property by extracting a computer password through violence and then using it to drain a bank account? Because he has committed at least two traditional wrongs: battery on the password holder and conversion of the money. Restatement (Second) of Torts §§13, 222. A mobster who assaults a carwash owner in order to force him to do business with the mob “intentionally and improperly interferes” with the owner’s right to do business with whom he pleases. Id., §§766A, 766B; cf. id., §§766C, 912, Comment d (no business injury from lost profits after a personal injury “unless the harm to the business was intended”); contra, ante, at 6. And when a fraudster or a kidnapper uses deceit or extortion to obtain money, the victim parts with it because he “has been defrauded or subjected to duress, or whatever it may be”—in other words, “injured in his property.” Chattanooga Foundry, 203 U. S., at 399.

The correct rule therefore remains the one that civil RICO expressly provides: In a RICO suit, a plaintiff can recover “damages” from a “business or property” injury, but not damages from a personal injury.

III

Now, we get to the important juncture where the Court diverges from plaintiff Horn in terms of what RICO plaintiffs may recover in personal-injury suits.

Plaintiff Horn seeks a rule that would blatantly circumvent RICO’s exclusion of personal-injury suits. In Horn’s world, plaintiffs could routinely bring RICO claims for personal injuries from drug mislabeling, dangerous products, medical malpractice, car accidents, and health consequences from pollution, to name a few. As Horn sees it, “injured” means to have experienced a loss, and losing money via lost wages or medical expenses always entails being “injured” in one’s business or property. See Reiter v. Sonotone Corp., 442 U.S. 330, 338 (1979) (“Money, of course, is a form of property”). Therefore, plaintiffs could routinely repackage many state personal-injury suits as RICO suits (so long as the defendant committed two or more predicate acts) and obtain treble recovery for medical expenses, lost wages, and other pecuniary losses. The only kind of damages that Horn would exclude are non-economic damages like pain and suffering.[10]

Plaintiff Horn’s approach would dramatically expand civil RICO and allow plaintiffs to seize on RICO to replace ordinary state-law tort suits. Plaintiffs could convert, for example, everyday product liability claims into RICO mass-tort class actions and multi-district litigation where plaintiffs might now seek recovery of triple their lost wages and triple their medical expenses.

Horn’s game-changing rule would likely produce significant cascading effects on the American economy and federal and state court systems. American businesses facing novel RICO suits with treble damages would incur significantly increased litigation exposure and corresponding settlement pressure. Their insurance premiums would rise. And all of those costs would mean higher prices for consumers, and fewer jobs and lower wages for workers. In short, the effects of Horn’s rule would likely be dramatic, as Medical Marijuana and its amici explain. See Brief for DRI Center for Law and Public Policy et al. as Amici Curiae 20–22; Brief for Chamber of Commerce of the United States of America et al. as Amici Curiae 22–23.

Where is the Court on all of this? Having accepted plaintiff Horn’s basic statutory argument, the Court declines to accept all the implications of that position. Instead, the Court stops short and does not (yet) go as far as Horn would. After agreeing with Horn that RICO does not exclude what are traditional personal-injury suits, the Court does not (for now) adopt Horn’s view that lost wages and medical expenses are “necessarily” recoverable. Ante, at 18. The Court instead suggests that lost wages (as distinct from lost profits) may not necessarily be a business loss, and pecuniary losses such as medical expenses may not necessarily be a property loss.

It is good that the Court pulls back from the precipice and does not adopt Horn’s argument in full. In particular, the Court seems to recognize that it would border on the absurd to adopt Horn’s position in full and interpret RICO to federalize (and allow treble damages for) such a large number of otherwise standard personal-injury tort suits.

But instead of simply interpreting RICO not to authorize suits for personal injuries, as the statutory text says and as I would do, the Court still sticks partway with Horn and his overly broad interpretation of the statutory text. The Court then backfills to avoid some of the absurd implications of that position by emphasizing certain statutory limitations on RICO suits and then leaving other questions unanswered for now.

For example, the Court stresses that proximate cause is strictly cabined in the RICO context, requiring a direct relationship, not mere foreseeability. Ante, at 17; see Hemi Group, LLC v. City of New York, 559 U.S. 1, 12 (2010); Anza v. Ideal Steel Supply Corp., 547 U.S. 451, 457 (2006); Holmes v. Securities Investor Protection Corporation, 503 U.S. 258, 266–267 (1992). The Court helpfully suggests, moreover, that Horn’s suit will not clear that direct-relationship bar, saying that it may pose an “insurmountable obstacle” to Horn’s continuing this suit. Ante, at 17. And the Court notes that RICO does not allow suits for a single tort, but requires a “pattern of racketeering activity.” Ante, at 18.

I welcome those limits, and I appreciate that they may mitigate some of the potential consequences of the Court’s overbroad statutory interpretation.

But the Court then does not answer a significant real-world question spawned by its expansive statutory interpretation: Can civil RICO plaintiffs claim lost wages and medical expenses as business or property injuries? Lower courts will have to resolve the question that the Court’s opinion does not answer. All of the above text, context, and history should counsel against interpreting RICO to cover classic damages like lost wages and medical expenses resulting solely from personal injuries. But at least until the Court squarely holds that lost wages and medical expenses are not recoverable, the Court’s opinion will leave a good deal of uncertainty for the lower courts to address. The Court’s opinion will generate far more confusion and litigation than simply reading the statute as written—as the Sixth, Seventh, and Eleventh Circuits have done—in light of the basic tort-law principles regarding injury that Congress incorporated into civil RICO.

The Court says: “You can’t replace something with nothing.” Ante, at 13. But the Court does not heed its own admonition. Today, the Court replaces a statutory limit derived from centuries of tort law with a punt that will leave substantial confusion and litigation in its wake.

*  *  *

This case should have been reasonably straightforward. RICO does not authorize personal-injury suits—period. That is true even when a personal injury leads to losses related to one’s business or property, as personal injuries often do. The Court’s decision to allow personal-injury suits under RICO is mistaken as a matter of statutory text and context. And the Court’s failure to decide the lost-wages and medical-expenses questions will undoubtedly produce significant confusion and litigation in the lower courts, all of which is wasteful and unnecessary—and contrary to Congress’s decision to categorically exclude personal-injury suits from civil RICO. I respectfully dissent.