Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/boundvolumes/529bv.pdf
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Cite as: 529 U. S. 765 (2000)

781

Opinion of the Court

presumption is “particularly applicable where it is claimed
that Congress has subjected the States to liability to which
they had not been subject before.” Will v. Michigan Dept.
of State Police, 491 U. S. 58, 64 (1989); Wilson v. Omaha
Tribe, 442 U. S. 653, 667 (1979). The presumption is, of
course, not a “hard and fast rule of exclusion,” Cooper Corp.,
supra, at 604–605, but it may be disregarded only upon
some afﬁrmative showing of statutory intent to the contrary.
See International Primate Protection League v. Adminis-
trators of Tulane Ed. Fund, 500 U. S. 72, 83 (1991).

As the historical context makes clear, and as we have
often observed, the FCA was enacted in 1863 with the prin-
cipal goal of “stopping the massive frauds perpetrated by
large [private] contractors during the Civil War.” United
States v. Bornstein, 423 U. S. 303, 309 (1976); see also United
States ex rel. Marcus v. Hess, 317 U. S. 537, 547 (1943).10
Its

demand that something more than mere use of the word “person” demon-
strate the federal intent to authorize unconsented private suit against
In any event, Justice Stevens fought and lost this battle in Will
them.
v. Michigan Dept. of State Police, 491 U. S. 58 (1989), in which the Court
applied the presumption to a federal statute when the “person” at issue
was a State. See id., at 64; but see id., at 73 (Brennan, J., dissenting,
joined by Marshall, Blackmun, and Stevens, JJ.). Moreover, Justice
Stevens actually joined the Court’s opinion in Wilson v. Omaha Tribe,
442 U. S. 653 (1979), in which the Court likewise applied the presumption
to a federal statute in a case involving a State. See id., at 667.
(Wilson
is omitted from the dissent’s discussion of “[c]ases decided before 1986,”
which it claims “uniformly support” its reading of the statute. Post,
at 790.)

10 The dissent contends that the FCA was “intended to cover the full
range of fraudulent acts, including those perpetrated by States.” Post,
at 793, and n. 4 (quoting United States v. Neifert-White Co., 390 U. S. 228,
232 (1968); Rainwater v. United States, 356 U. S. 590, 592 (1958); H. R.
Rep. No. 99–660, p. 18 (1985)). The sources the dissent quotes, however,
support its contention only as far as the comma. They stand for the un-
objectionable proposition (codiﬁed in § 3729(c)) that the FCA was intended
to cover all types of fraud, not for the additional proposition that the FCA
was intended to cover all types of fraudsters, including States.