Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/boundvolumes/524bv.pdf
Page Number: 129.0

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GEISSAL v. MOORE MEDICAL CORP.

Opinion of the Court

That the plain reading does not conﬁne COBRA strictly to
guardianship of the status quo is, of course, perfectly true,
though it is much less certain whether this fact should count
against the plain reading (even assuming that the obvi-
ous reading would be vulnerable to such an objection, see
Ardestani v. INS, 502 U. S. 129, 135 (1991)). The statute
is neither cast expressly in terms of the status quo, nor does
it speak to the status quo on the date of the qualifying event
except with reference to the coverage subject to election.
Nor does a beneﬁciary’s decision to take advantage of an-
other group policy not previously in effect carry any indicia
of the sort of windfall Congress presumably would have
disapproved. Since the beneﬁciary has to pay for whatever
COBRA coverage he obtains, there is no reason to assume
that he will make an election for coverage he does not need,
whether he is covered by another policy in place before
the qualifying event or one obtained after it but before his
election.

Still, it is true that if during the interim between the quali-
fying event and election a beneﬁciary gets a new job, say,
with health coverage (having no exclusion or limitation for
his condition), he will have the beneﬁt of COBRA, whereas
he will not have it if his new job and coverage come after the
election date. Do we classify this as an anomaly or merely a
necessary consequence of the need to draw a line some-
where? For the sake of argument we might call it an anom-
aly, but that would only balance it against the anomaly of
Moore’s own position, which deﬁes not only normal language
usage but the expectations of common sense: since an elec-
tion to continue coverage is retroactive to the date of the
qualifying event, under Moore’s reading of § 1162(2)(D)(i) an
election that is ineffective to bring about continuation cover-
age for the roughly 18 (or 36) month statutory period would
nonetheless have the surprising effect of providing continua-
tion coverage for the period of weeks, or even days, between