In his dissent in Hunter v. United States, No. 24-1063 (June 18, 2026), Justice Thomas cited Restatement Second of Contracts § 265, Comment a, which discusses the contractual doctrine of frustration of purpose.
Section 265 provides that a party’s duties under a contract can be discharged when a change in circumstances makes one party’s performance virtually worthless to the other, frustrating the party’s purpose in entering the contract.
In the case, a defendant who was charged with 10 counts of bank and wire fraud entered a written plea agreement in which he agreed to plead guilty to one count of aiding and abetting wire fraud and to waive his right to appeal his sentence in exchange for the government’s agreement to dismiss the remaining charges. The U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas, finding that the defendant knowingly and voluntarily agreed to the terms of the agreement, accepted the defendant’s plea, and, at a subsequent hearing, imposed a sentence that included, among other things, a release condition requiring him to “take all mental-health medications” that were prescribed by his treating physician, a requirement to which he had previously objected.
The defendant appealed the mandatory-medication condition, arguing that the condition and his appeal waiver were unenforceable because the condition would infringe his fundamental constitutional interest in being free from unwanted mental-health medication. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit dismissed, concluding that the appeal waiver controlled even if the district court had imposed an unconstitutional sentence.
Noting that the U.S. Courts of Appeals had differed regarding when appeal waivers were unenforceable in the sentencing context, the U.S. Supreme Court granted certiorari. In a majority opinion authored by Justice Kagan, the Court adopted the “miscarriage of justice” approach, under which an appeal waiver could not be enforced if doing so would result in a miscarriage of justice, by leaving in place the kind of error that would bring the judicial system into disrepute. The Court remanded to the Fifth Circuit for consideration as to whether, under that standard, the defendant’s appeal should still be dismissed.
In the dissent, Justice Thomas maintained that the defendant knowingly and voluntarily agreed to waive his appeal rights, and that none of the exceptions to the enforceability of appeal waivers applied. Justice Thomas rejected the defendant’s argument that the appeal waiver was unenforceable under the doctrine of frustration of purpose, noting that, under Restatement Second of Contracts § 265, Comment a, a contract could only be voided under the frustration-of-purpose doctrine if post-agreement developments rendered the contract “virtually worthless,” and the defendant’s plea agreement was not rendered worthless when the district court included the mental-health treatment supervised-release condition, because it still achieved a crucial purpose for the defendant, specifically, it reduced his maximum potential sentence from 300 years for 10 counts to 30 years for one count.
The full opinion is available on the U.S. Supreme Court's website.