Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/20pdf/19-508_l6gn.pdf
Page Number: 14.0

Cite as:  593 U. S. ____ (2021) 

11 

Opinion of the Court 

the statutory purposes.”  361 U. S., at 291–292.  The Com-
mission argues that these cases consequently support  the 
proposition  that  the  traditional  equitable  “authority  to
grant an ‘injunction’ includes the power to grant restorative 
monetary remedies.”  Brief for Respondent 21.

The  problem  for  the  Commission  is  that  we  did  not  in 
these two cases purport to set forth a universal rule of in-
terpretation.    And  both  cases  involved  different  statutes. 
See Porter, 328 U. S., at 397 (Emergency Price Control Act 
provision authorizing courts to issue “ ‘a permanent or tem-
porary  injunction,  restraining  order,  or  other  order’ ”); 
Mitchell, 361 U. S., at 289 (Fair Labor Standards Act provi-
sion authorizing courts to “ ‘restrain violations’ ” of the Act’s 
antiretaliation ban).  In both cases, we recognized that the 
text and structure of the statutory scheme at issue can, “in
so  many  words,  or  by  a  necessary  and  inescapable  infer-
ence,  restric[t]  the  court’s  jurisdiction  in  equity.”    Porter, 
328 U. S., at 398; Mitchell, 361 U. S., at 291.  Thus in Porter 
we  examined  “other  provision[s]  of  the  [Emergency  Price 
Control] Act” to determine whether they “expressly or im-
pliedly  preclud[e]  a  court  from  ordering  restitution  in  the
exercise of its equity jurisdiction.”  328 U. S., at 403.  And 
in Mitchell we examined other provisions of the Fair Labor 
Standards Act before concluding that there was “no indica-
tion in the language” that the statute precluded equitable 
relief in the form of lost wages.  361 U. S., at 294. 

Moreover,  more  recently,  we  have  held,  based  on  our 
reading of a statutory scheme as a whole, that a provision’s 
grant of an “injunction” or other equitable powers does not 
automatically authorize a court to provide monetary relief.
Rather,  we  have  said,  the  scope  of  equitable  relief  that  a 
provision authorizes “remains a question of interpretation 
in each case.”  Mertens v. Hewitt Associates, 508 U. S. 248, 
257 (1993).  Our decision in Meghrig v. KFC Western, Inc., 
516 U. S. 479 (1996), is instructive.  There, we considered a 
provision  in  the  Resource  Conservation  and  Recovery  Act