Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/boundvolumes/529bv.pdf
Page Number: 872

529US3

Unit: $U59

[09-26-01 12:32:42] PAGES PGT: OPIN

Cite as: 529 U. S. 765 (2000)

797

Stevens, J., dissenting

that § 3730(a) does not make any distinction between possible
defendants against whom the Attorney General may bring
an action, the most normal inference to draw is that qui
tam actions may be brought by relators against the same
category of “persons” that may be sued by the Attorney
General.

To recapitulate, it is undisputed that (under the CID pro-
vision) a State is a “person” who may violate § 3729; that a
State is a “person” who may be named as a defendant in an
action brought by the Attorney General; and that a State
is a “person” who may bring a qui tam action on behalf of
the United States.
It therefore seems most natural to read
the adjacent uses of the term “person” in §§ 3729, 3730(a),
3730(b), and 3733 to cover the same category of defendants.
See United States v. Cooper Corp., 312 U. S., at 606 (“It is
hardly credible that Congress used the term ‘person’
in
different senses in the same sentence”). And it seems even
more natural to read the single word “person” (describing
who may commit a violation under § 3729) to have one con-
sistent meaning regardless of whether the action against
that violator is brought under § 3730(a) or under § 3730(b).
See Ratzlaf v. United States, 510 U. S. 135, 143 (1994)
(“A term appearing in several places in a statutory text is
generally read the same way each time it appears. We have
even stronger cause to construe a single formulation . . . the
same way each time it is called into play” (citation omitted)).
Absent powerful arguments to the contrary, it should follow
that a State may be named as a defendant in an action
brought by an assignee of the United States. Rather than
pointing to any such powerful arguments, however, the
Court comes to a contrary conclusion on the basis of an inap-
plicable presumption and rather strained inferences drawn
from three different statutory provisions.

The Court’s principal argument relies on “our longstand-
ing interpretive presumption that ‘person’ does not include
the sovereign.” Ante, at 780. As discussed earlier, that