Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/20pdf/20-472_0pm1.pdf
Page Number: 26

Cite as:  594 U. S. ____ (2021) 

7 

BARRETT, J., dissenting 

  Problems likewise plague the Court’s other hypotheticals 
involving  delay  in  “seek[ing]  an  ‘extension,’ ”  such  as  the 
tenant who asks to “extend” her lease after overstaying it 
or parties who negotiate to “extend” a contract after it ex-
pires.  Ante, at 6.  These examples confuse the time at which 
one may permissibly request an extension with what is be-
ing extended.  It may be that the tenant could request an 
“extension”  of  the  year-one  lease  at  some  point  after  the 
start of year two.  But, if approved, the tenant’s lease would 
still  be  continuous—running  from  year  one  to  year  two—
and the tenant would no doubt owe rent for the intervening 
period.  By contrast, the Court’s reading of “extend” would 
capture a tenant who moves out in year one and returns in 
year five.  In that scenario, no one would say that the tenant 
sought an “extension” of her lease—nor would anyone ex-
pect the tenant to pay back-rent for the intervening years. 
  The  Court  next  reaches  for  recent  congressional  enact-
ments—or more specifically, for their captions.  The title of 
two COVID–19 relief provisions, the Court notes, purported 
to provide an “extension” of certain unemployment benefits 
that had previously lapsed.  See ante, at 7 (quoting Pub. L. 
116–260, §203, 134 Stat. 1182; Pub. L. 116–136, §2114, 134 
Stat.  281).    I  will  start  with  the  obvious:  Invoking  cap- 
tions  from  “different  statute[s]  altogether,”  passed  in  an 
emergency context over a decade after the RFP, “does not 
have much force.”  A. Scalia & B. Garner, Reading Law: The 
Interpretation of Legal Texts 172 (2012).  The argument is 
made  weaker  still  by  the  fact  that  Congress  used  “exten-
sion” the other way in the RFP statute itself.  See infra, at 
8.    And  it  is  telling  that  apart  from  the  COVID–19  relief 
provisions,  HollyFrontier  could  identify  no  other  instance 
in which Congress used “extension” in the way that Holly-
Frontier proposes. 
  At the very most, the Court’s COVID–19 examples show 
that “extend” does not “always includ[e] a strict continuity 
requirement.”  Ante, at 8 (emphasis added).  But “[t]hat a