In a unanimous decision, the Court held that "property" for the purposes of federal law did not include state video poker licences because such transactions were not a vested right or expectation.

The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed the conviction and sentence, holding that "property" did in fact include video poker licenses in the "hands of the state".

Justice Ginsburg delivered the unanimous decision of the Supreme Court which reversed the Fifth Circuit and vacated Cleveland's sentence.

The basis for the decision was two-fold: first, the Court had held in a previous case that the federal mail fraud statute is "limited in scope to the protection of property rights".

[3] This meant that, taken in context of the purpose of the law, there was no intangible right for honest services in terms of the video poker licenses; therefore, there was no "property" interest.