Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/19pdf/18-1501_8n5a.pdf
Page Number: 16.0

Cite as:  591 U. S. ____ (2020) 

13 

Opinion of the Court 

to conform future requests for a defendant’s profits to the 
limits  outlined  in  common-law  cases  awarding  a  wrong-
doer’s net gains.

The Government, for its part, contends that the SEC’s in-
terpretation of the equitable disgorgement remedy has Con-
gress’ tacit support, even if it exceeds the bounds of equity 
practice.  Brief for Respondent 13–21.  It points to the fact
that Congress has enacted a number of other statutes refer-
ring to “disgorgement.”

That argument attaches undue significance to Congress’ 
use of the term.  It is true that Congress has authorized the
SEC to seek “disgorgement” in administrative actions.  15 
U. S. C. §77h–1(e) (“In any cease-and-desist proceeding un-
der subsection (a), the Commission may enter an order re-
quiring accounting and disgorgement”).  But it makes sense 
that Congress would expressly name the equitable powers
it grants to an agency for use in administrative proceedings. 
After all, agencies are unlike federal courts where, “[u]nless
otherwise  provided  by  statute,  all  . . .  inherent  equitable 
powers . . . are available for the proper and complete exer-
cise of that jurisdiction.”  Porter, 328 U. S., at 398. 

Congress  does  not  enlarge  the  breadth  of  an  equitable,
profit-based  remedy  simply  by  using  the  term  “disgorge-
ment” in various statutes.  The Government argues that un-
der  the  prior-construction  principle,  Congress  should  be 
presumed to have been aware of the scope of “disgorgement” 
as interpreted by lower courts and as having incorporated
the  (purportedly)  prevailing  meaning  of  the  term  into  its 
subsequent  enactments.  Brief  for  Respondent  24.  But 
“that canon has no application” where, among other things,
the  scope  of  disgorgement  was  “far  from  ‘settled.’ ”    Arm-
strong v. Exceptional Child Center, Inc., 575 U. S. 320, 330 
(2015).

At bottom, even if Congress employed “disgorgement” as 
a  shorthand  to  cross-reference  the  relief  permitted  by 
§78u(d)(5), it did not silently rewrite the scope of what the