Kelly v. United States, 590 U.S. ___ (2020), was a United States Supreme Court case involving the 2013 Fort Lee lane closure scandal, also known as "Bridgegate". The case centered on whether Bridget Anne Kelly, the chief of staff to New Jersey Governor Chris Christie who was running for reelection at the time, and Bill Baroni, the Deputy Executive Director of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, improperly used lane closures on the George Washington Bridge to create traffic jams as a means of retaliation against Mark Sokolich, the mayor of Fort Lee, New Jersey, when he refused to support Christie's reelection campaign. While lower courts had convicted Kelly and Baroni on federal fraud, wire fraud and conspiracy charges, the Supreme Court unanimously overturned the convictions in its May 2020 ruling, stating that such charges could not apply as "the scheme here did not aim to obtain money or property", and remanded their cases back to the lower courts.^[1]

During New Jersey Governor's Chris Christie's 2013 reelection campaign, he sought support from the mayors of several New Jersey cities. While several backed the Republican governor for reelection, the mayor of Fort Lee, New Jersey, Mark Sokolich, a Democrat, refused to provide his support. As asserted by prosecutors in the legal cases that followed, Christie's deputy chief of staff Bridget Anne Kelly contacted through email Bill Baroni, the Deputy Executive Director of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, and David Wildstein, the director of interstate capital projects at the Port Authority, to suggest they create traffic problems for Fort Lee in retaliation for Sokolich's refusal and coerce his support. Over a period of four days starting on the first school day that year, September 9, 2013, the Port Authority shut down two of three lanes of traffic from Fort Lee onto the George Washington Bridge into New York City without any notice, causing major traffic jams, and later justified the lane closures as a traffic study. Local media began investigating the closure and discovered the email communications between Kelly, Baroni, and Wildstein that demonstrated the political collusion in the closures.^[2]

As the emails suggested there was a potential federal crime,^[3] several investigations were launched in 2014 by the New Jersey Legislature, the Port Authority, United States Attorney for the District of New Jersey Paul J. Fishman and the United States Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation. Fishman's investigation led to the indictments issued against Kelly and Baroni in May 2015 on charges of conspiracy and fraud; Wildstein, who had been convicted earlier, had agreed to testify against the two as part of a plea bargain.^[4] The jury trial concluded in November 2016 with Kelly and Baroni found guilty on all nine charges of fraud and conspiracy.^[5] Kelly was sentenced to 18 months of prison while Baroni to 24 months, with both serving 500 hours of community service.^[6] Wildstein, in a separate trial, was also convicted and sentenced to three years in prison and 500 hours of community service.^[7]

Both Baroni and Kelly appealed to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit. In November 2018, the Third Circuit upheld a majority of the convictions, through reversed the charge that they had violated the civil rights of travelers, which the Appeals Court ruled was not an established right.^[8] Both received reduced sentences; Baroni's to 18 months and Kelly's to 13 months, and Kelly additionally ordered to pay US$14,000 to New Jersey as restitution for the lost toll revenue.^[9]