diff --git a/Misc/NEWS b/Misc/NEWS
index 1f2687a12e1..874e12aea2e 100644
--- a/Misc/NEWS
+++ b/Misc/NEWS
@@ -10,6 +10,8 @@ What's New in Python 3.4.0 Alpha 1?
 Core and Builtins
 -----------------
 
+- Issue #16495: Remove extraneous NULL encoding check from bytes_decode().
+
 - Issue #16619: Create NameConstant AST class to represent None, True, and False
   literals. As a result, these constants are never loaded at runtime from
   builtins.
diff --git a/Objects/bytesobject.c b/Objects/bytesobject.c
index a1db7789f15..8d8cb05b113 100644
--- a/Objects/bytesobject.c
+++ b/Objects/bytesobject.c
@@ -2236,8 +2236,6 @@ bytes_decode(PyObject *self, PyObject *args, PyObject *kwargs)
 
     if (!PyArg_ParseTupleAndKeywords(args, kwargs, "|ss:decode", kwlist, &encoding, &errors))
         return NULL;
-    if (encoding == NULL)
-        encoding = PyUnicode_GetDefaultEncoding();
     return PyUnicode_FromEncodedObject(self, encoding, errors);
 }