By Steven C. Bradford
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Editor’s note: As many readers likely know by now, on August, 8, 2026, the three justice panel from the 9th Circuit of Appeals who heard the appeal from the legal team for Mark Ridley-Thomas had a ruling.
In their 30-page ruling, the 9th did not reverse the conviction of MRT as Mark Ridley-Thomas is frequently known. To the contrary, the trio of judges from the 9th who’d heard the plea from the team of lawyers from the defense, did the opposite. The panel upheld the conviction of Mark Ridley-Thomas.
Slammed by the ruling from the 9th, experienced California lawmaker, Steven Bradford, examined what collateral damage the ruling might bring with it. Bradford then describes that potential damage in the Op-Ed below:
So read on!
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The Lawmaker
I spent more than 25 years in elected office, on a city council and in both houses of the California’s State Legislature.
I know public service up close, warts and all.
I also know the rules. Years of working within California’s framework for ballot committee expenditures and charitable donations taught me what elected officials can and cannot do. That experience shapes my view of the Ninth Circuit’s recent ruling in United States v. Mark Ridley-Thomas.
What began as a devastating blow to the voters of a Los Angeles City Council district now raises a broader question: How far can federal criminal law reach into the ordinary workings of representative democracy?
Voters expect their representatives to listen, solve problems, bring resources home, work with nonprofits, build coalitions, and get things done. Officials who deliver earn their constituents’ confidence. That’s not corruption. That’s the job.
The Ninth Circuit nonetheless upheld Dr. Ridley-Thomas’s conviction even though he received no money and no personal financial enrichment. The panel rejected his challenge to the government’s “thing of value” theory and held that honest-services fraud does not require personal enrichment.
Lawyer talk?
Here’s why voters should care.
California extensively regulates how officials use political funds. The $100,000 donation at the center of the case was publicly disclosed. The former chair of California’s Fair Political Practices Commission testified at trial that the donation complied with state law. That lawful transaction still became the basis of a federal corruption case.
I’ve never heard of anything so preposterous.
If an official follows the rules when a transaction occurs, then later faces federal prison because a prosecutor decides it carried some intangible value to him, where exactly is the line? Officials need to know before they act, not years later.
Without clear boundaries, officials grow cautious. They will think twice before helping a nonprofit, steering resources home or joining lawful charitable efforts, unsure whether a prosecutor will someday call some intangible aspect of that work a crime.
Who pays for that caution? The community. The nonprofit. The voter who expects a vigorous advocate.
The threat isn’t theoretical. Thousands of voters elected Dr. Ridley-Thomas to represent Los Angeles’s Tenth District. His removal deprived them of the representative they chose and cost public service a senior colleague who mentored many of us as servant leaders.
Whatever your opinion of Mark Ridley-Thomas, the principle matters. The vote belongs to the voter. Representation belongs to the people.
Another part of the case should concern anyone who cares about equal justice: Who gets to sit in judgment?
The legal team for Dr. Ridley-Thomas challenged the prosecution’s removal of Black women from the jury pool on the combined basis of race and gender. The Ninth Circuit acknowledged the intersectional argument but declined to recognize an intersectional Batson claim because neither it nor the Supreme Court ever has. **
A Black woman does not enter a courtroom as half Black and half a woman. She enters as both. If discrimination can occur at that intersection, why can’t our legal system recognize it there?
The question is whether the accused receives a fair process and whether the public can trust our courts. The government investigates, indicts, prosecutes, and, upon conviction, takes away a person’s liberty. That power must have limits.
The two issues appear unrelated. One asks whether our system protects the bond between citizens and their chosen representatives. The other asks whether it protects a citizen facing the full force of government power. Both boil down to basics: Are the rules clear? Fair? Can ordinary people trust them?
Dr. Ridley-Thomas has asked a larger Ninth Circuit panel to rehear the case en banc. I filed an amicus brief supporting that petition. Not because I consider myself a constitutional scholar, but because I know what public service looks like.
After 25 years of working with nonprofits, businesses, agencies, and community leaders, and answering to voters for the results, I know something else: If we want honest people to serve, we owe them clear rules.
Conduct lawful today should not become a federal felony tomorrow because a prosecutor later spots some intangible benefit. No one can serve under that standard. “Trust us, prosecutors know corruption when they see it” won’t do. The law must define corruption plainly.
Prosecute real bribery. Nobody argues otherwise. Clear rules don’t protect corruption; they protect democracy. They protect officials who need to know what’s lawful, prosecutors who need boundaries, and defendants who deserve not to have those boundaries drawn after the fact. Above all, they protect the citizens that representative government exists to serve.
More than one official’s fate hangs in the balance: meaningful representation, a fair system of justice, and sensible limits on the government’s power to turn the ordinary workings of democracy into a federal crime.
Don’t take this case lightly. Representative democracy is at stake.
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Senator Steven C. Bradford is a former California elected official with more than twenty-five years of public service, including service in the California State Senate, California State Assembly and on the Gardena City Council.
Post Script: WitnessLA will have more on the ruling, and the en banc hearing….shortly