The U.S. Supreme Court on Wednesday sided with a former Indiana mayor convicted of accepting a bribe from a business shortly after it was awarded municipal contracts, a ruling that one dissenting justice called “absurd” and critics said weakens public corruption laws.

Ruling 6-3 along ideological lines in Snyder v. United States, the justices overturned the bribery convictions of former Portage, Indiana Mayor James Snyder, a Republican who took $13,000 from a trucking company after helping it obtain more than $1 million in city contracts.

Snyder maintains that the payment was legal compensation for consulting work. His lawyers contended that prosecutors failed to prove any quid pro quo agreement prior to the awarding of contracts, and that the prosecution of public officials for gratuities given after the fact criminalizes legitimate gift-giving.

“State and local governments often regulate the gifts that state and local officials may accept,” Justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote for the court’s right-wing supermajority, adding that the anti-corruption law in question “does not supplement those state and local rules by subjecting 19 million state and local officials to up to 10 years in federal prison for accepting even commonplace gratuities. Rather, [it] leaves it to state and local governments to regulate gratuities to state and local officials.”

However, Justice........

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