Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/22pdf/22-179_o75q.pdf
Page Number: 43.0

Cite as:  599 U. S. ____ (2023) 

11 

JACKSON, J., dissenting 

the majority now reads back into the statute.4 
  The majority brushes off Congress’s revision by speculat-
ing  that  Congress  was  merely  “engaged  in  a  cleanup  pro-
ject” and was just “streamlin[ing]” the statutory language.  
Ibid.    This  contention,  however,  gets  our  ordinary  pre-
sumption in statutory interpretation cases precisely back-
wards.    We  “usually  presume  differences  in  language  . . . 
convey  differences  in  meaning,”  absent  some  indication 
from Congress to the contrary.  BNSF R. Co. v. Loos, 586 
U. S.  ___,  ___  (2019)  (slip  op.,  at  10)  (internal  quotation 
marks  omitted).    Thus,  we  have  found  the  presumption 
overcome  where,  for  example,  Congress  has  expressly 
“billed” the changes as “effect[ing] only ‘[t]echnical [a]mend-
ments.’ ”  Id., at ___ (slip op., at 9). 
  Here, the majority points to no signal from Congress that 
it sought to change the encouragement provision’s language 
without changing its meaning.  It seems that the only sup-
port the majority can muster for its “cleanup project” theory 
is a 1947 Supreme Court case that at several points refers 
to  the  statute  as  a  prohibition  on  “encourag[ing]”  or  “in-
duc[ing]” certain unlawful immigration.  Ante, at 13 (citing 
United States v. Lem Hoy, 330 U. S. 724 (1947)).  From this, 
the  majority  infers that, when  Congress  amended the  en-
couragement provision five years later to remove the words 
“solicit” and “assist,” it must have been adopting Lem Hoy’s 
shorthand characterization of the statute.  But the majority 

—————— 

4 This revealing revision also sets apart the encouragement provision’s 
unadorned use of “encourages” and “induces” from the majority’s long list 
of state solicitation and facilitation laws.  Ante, at 8.  The majority in-
cludes  that  list  in  its  effort  to  demonstrate  that  “encourages”  and  “in-
duces” in the encouragement provision actually mean “solicits” or “aids 
and abets.”  But in the vast majority of the cited statutes, classic narrow-
ing  terms—like  “aided,”  “abetted,”  “solicits,”  “commands,”  “hires,”  “co-
erces,” or “compels”—appear alongside “encourages” or “induces.”  Ibid.; 
see App. to Brief for State of Montana et al. as Amici Curiae 1–44.  Thus, 
unlike  the  one  before  us,  such  statutes  might  well  be  susceptible  of  a 
narrower reading.