Title 49, United States Code, Section 46306 (b)(9), makes it a felony offense to knowingly "operat [e] an aircraft with a fuel tank or fuel system that has been installed or modified," in a manner that does not comply with F ederal Aviation Administration (FAA) regulations. Petition er Guy St. Amour, a licensed pil ot, was convicted of violating § 46306(b)(9) , after taxiing an aircraft with a modified fuel tank to a fueling station, in anticipation of take -off the following day . The FAA has never interpreted "operat [ing] an aircraft " to encompass conduct which is not temporally connected to immediate flight. Nor has any defendant previously been criminally prosecuted for violating the regulation at issue . The Eleventh Circuit discounted the absence of any judicial or administrative precedent and held that the r egulatory and statutory language was broad enough to encompass "any" use of an aircraft for the purpose of flight . In doing so, the court refused to apply the rule of lenity, finding that the operative language did " not create the grievous ambiguity necessary to trigger the rule." United States v. St. Amour, 886 F.3d 1009, 1016 n.11 (11th Cir. 2018). The question s presented are:

1. Did the Eleventh Circuit's novel interpretation of an FAA regulation in a criminal statute, to encompass conduct never before penalized by the FAA itself, deprive Mr. St. Amour of fair notice as to the conduct the law prohibited?

2. Whether this Court should grant certiorari to reconcile conflicting standards governing the threshold at which the rule of lenity applies to the construction of criminal statutes.

Whether the Eleventh Circuit's novel interpretation of an FAA regulation in a criminal statute, to encompass conduct never before penalized by the FAA itself, deprived Mr. St. Amour of fair notice as to the conduct the law prohibited