Justice Scalia presents a constitutional challenge to RICO in Sedima, S.P.R.L. versus Imrex Co., Inc. (1985) and in H. J. Inc., versus Northwestern Bell Telephone Co. (1989). In the former case, the United States Supreme Court addresses for the first time the extraordinary application of civil RICO and criticizes the lower courts for a failure to develop meaningful concepts of the laws pattern of racketeering. In the latter, four Justices invite the lower courts to determine whether the vagueness of the pattern requirement renders RICO unconstitutional. The definition of a RICO pattern is not clearly presented in its continuity plus relationship test, and it lacks minimal guidelines. The government has stretched the scope of RICO by labeling alleged tax crimes as acts of mail fraud that combine to form a pattern. Imprecise language is particularly a problem when applied to legitimate business operations which may find that standard operations may constitute a pattern. The present status of the Court indicates that four sitting Justices have directly questioned RICO's constitutionality and two others have indirectly equated its pattern requirement with a concept that defies definition.