Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/14pdf/13-7451_m64o.pdf
Page Number: 42.0

Cite as:  574 U. S. ___ (2015) 

15 

KAGAN, J., dissenting 

phrase is not needed”).  And for good reason.  It is exactly
when  Congress  sets  out  to  draft  a  statute  broadly—to 
include every imaginable variation on a theme—that such 
mismatches will arise.  To respond by narrowing the law, 
as  the  plurality  does,  is  thus  to  flout  both  what  Congress 
wrote and what Congress wanted. 

Finally,  when  all  else  fails,  the  plurality  invokes  the
rule of lenity.  See ante, at 18.  But even in its most robust 
form,  that  rule  only  kicks  in  when,  “after  all  legitimate 
tools of interpretation have been exhausted, ‘a reasonable 
doubt persists’ regarding whether Congress has made the 
defendant’s conduct a federal crime.”  Abramski v. United 
States,  573  U. S.  ___,  ___  (2014)  (SCALIA, J.,  dissenting) 
(slip op., at 12) (quoting Moskal v. United States, 498 U. S. 
103, 108 (1990)).  No such doubt lingers here.  The plural-
ity  points  to  the  breadth  of  §1519,  see  ante,  at  18,  as 
though  breadth  were  equivalent  to  ambiguity.    It  is  not. 
Section  1519  is  very  broad.    It  is  also  very  clear.    Every
traditional  tool  of  statutory  interpretation  points  in  the 
same  direction,  toward  “object”  meaning  object.    Lenity 
offers  no  proper  refuge  from  that  straightforward  (even 
though capacious) construction.6 

—————— 

6 As  part  of  its  lenity  argument,  the  plurality  asserts  that  Yates  did
not have “fair warning” that his conduct amounted to a felony.  Ante, at 
18; see ante, at 17 (stating that “Yates would have had scant reason to
anticipate  a  felony  prosecution”  when  throwing  fish  overboard).  But 
even  under  the  plurality’s  view,  the  dumping  of  fish  is  potentially  a
federal felony—just under §1512(c)(1), rather than §1519.  See ante, at 
12–13.    In  any  event,  the  plurality  itself  acknowledges  that  the  ordi-
nary  meaning  of  §1519  covers  Yates’s  conduct,  see  ante,  at  7:  That 
provision,  no  less  than  §1512(c)(1),  announces  its  broad  scope  in  the
clearest possible terms.  And when an ordinary citizen seeks notice of a 
statute’s scope, he is more likely to focus on the plain text than (as the 
plurality  would  have  it)  on  the  section  number,  the  superfluity  princi-
ple, and the noscitur and ejusdem canons.