Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/17pdf/17-459_1o13.pdf
Page Number: 39

12 

PEREIRA v. SESSIONS 

ALITO, J., dissenting 

signature  line  on  a  notice  of  appeal  as  a  “trivial,  ministe-
rial defect,” ante, at 14, the Court gives the game away by 
once  again  assuming  its  own  conclusion.    Whether  the 
omission of the date and time certain on a notice to appear
is essential for present purposes is the central issue in this
case,  and  the  Court  gives  no  textually  based  reason  to
think  that  it  is.    The  Government  could  reasonably  con-
clude that a notice to appear that omits the date and time 
of a proceeding is still a notice to appear (albeit a defective 
one), much in the same way that a complaint without the
e-mail  address  of  the  signer  is  still  a  complaint  (albeit  a 
defective one, see Rule 11(a)), or a clock missing the num-
ber “8” is still a clock (albeit a defective one).

Pereira and the Court are right that §1229(a)(1) sets out 
the  substantive  requirements  for  notices  to  appear,  but 
that  fact  alone  does  not  control  whether  an  incomplete 
notice to appear triggers the stop-time rule.5 

B 
With the text of both the stop-time rule and §1229(a)(1)
irreducibly  ambiguous,  the  Court  must  next  look  to  two 
neighboring  provisions  to  support  its  conclusion  that  its
interpretation  is  the  only  reasonable  one.    Neither  provi-
sion is sufficient. 

The  Court  first  observes  that  the  second  paragraph  of
§1229(a)  allows  the  Government  to  move  or  reschedule  a
removal  proceeding  unilaterally  and  then  to  inform  the
alien  of  “the  new  time  or  place  of  the  proceedings.” 

—————— 

5 Of  course,  courts  should  still  demand  that  the  Government  justify
why  whatever  is  left  off  a  notice  to  appear  does  not  deprive  it  of  its 
essential character as a “notice to appear.”  As the Government rightly
concedes,  for  example,  a  blank  sheet  of  paper  would  not  constitute  a 
“notice to appear.”  Tr. of Oral Arg. 39; see Brief for Respondent 35–36.
But for all the reasons the Government gives, omission of the date and
time  of  a  future  removal  proceeding  is  not,  by  itself,  enough  to  turn  a
notice to appear into something else.