Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/19pdf/17-1618_hfci.pdf
Page Number: 60.0

Cite as:  590 U. S. ____ (2020) 

23 

ALITO, J., dissenting 

discussed. 

II 
A 
So far, I have not looked beyond dictionary definitions of 
“sex,” but textualists like Justice Scalia do not confine their 
inquiry to the scrutiny of dictionaries.  See Manning, Tex-
tualism and the Equity of the Statute, 101 Colum. L. Rev. 
1, 109 (2001).  Dictionary definitions are valuable because 
they are evidence of what people at the time of a statute’s 
enactment would have understood its words to mean.  Ibid. 
But they are not the only source of relevant evidence, and
what matters in the end is the answer to the question that
the evidence is gathered to resolve: How would the terms of
a statute have been understood by ordinary people at the 
time of enactment? 

Justice  Scalia  was  perfectly  clear  on  this  point.    The 
words  of  a  law,  he  insisted,  “mean  what  they  conveyed  to 
reasonable people at the time.”  Reading Law, at 16 (empha-
sis added).20 

Leading proponents of Justice Scalia’s school of textual-
ism have expounded on this principle and explained that it 
is  grounded  on  an  understanding  of  the  way  language
works.  As Dean John F. Manning explains, “the meaning 
of  language  depends  on  the  way  a  linguistic  community 
uses words and phrases in context.”  What Divides Textu-
alists From Purposivists? 106 Colum. L. Rev. 70, 78 (2006).
“[O]ne  can  make  sense  of  others’  communications  only  by 
placing them in their appropriate social and linguistic con-
text,” id., at 79–80, and this is no less true of statutes than 
any  other  verbal  communications. 
“[S]tatutes  convey 
meaning  only  because  members  of  a  relevant  linguistic 

—————— 

20 See also Chisom v. Roemer, 501 U. S. 380, 405 (1991) (Scalia, J., dis-
senting) (“We are to read the words of [a statutory] text as any ordinary
Member of Congress would have read them . . . and apply the meaning
so determined”).