Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/19pdf/17-1618_hfci.pdf
Page Number: 31.0

Cite as:  590 U. S. ____ (2020) 

27 

Opinion of the Court 

Why isn’t that enough to demonstrate that today’s result
isn’t totally unexpected?  How many people have to foresee
the application for it to qualify as “expected”?  Do we look 
only at the moment the statute was enacted, or do we allow 
some time for the implications of a new statute to be worked
out?  Should we consider the expectations of those who had 
no  reason  to  give  a  particular  application  any  thought  or 
only those with reason to think about the question?  How 
do we account for those who change their minds over time,
after learning new facts or hearing a new argument?  How 
specifically or generally should we frame the “application” 
at  issue?  None  of  these  questions  have  obvious  answers, 
and the employers don’t propose any.

One could also reasonably fear that objections about un-
expected applications will not be deployed neutrally.  Often 
lurking just behind such objections resides a cynicism that
Congress could not possibly have meant to protect a disfa-
vored group.  Take this Court’s encounter with the Ameri-
cans  with  Disabilities  Act’s  directive  that  no  “ ‘public  en-
tity’ ”  can  discriminate  against  any  “ ‘qualified  individual 
with  a  disability.’ ”    Pennsylvania  Dept.  of  Corrections  v. 
Yeskey,  524  U. S.  206,  208  (1998).    Congress,  of  course,
didn’t  list  every  public  entity  the  statute  would  apply  to.
And no one batted an eye at its application to, say, post of-
fices.  But  when  the  statute  was  applied  to  prisons,  curi-
ously, some demanded a closer look:  Pennsylvania argued
that  “Congress  did  not ‘envisio[n]  that  the  ADA  would  be
applied  to  state  prisoners.’ ”  Id.,  at  211–212.  This  Court 
emphatically  rejected  that  view,  explaining  that,  “in  the 
context of an unambiguous statutory text,” whether a spe-
cific  application  was  anticipated  by  Congress  “is  irrele-
vant.”  Id., at 212.  As Yeskey and today’s cases exemplify,
applying protective laws to groups that were politically un-
popular at the time of the law’s passage—whether prison-
ers in the 1990s or homosexual and transgender employees