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Unit: $U59

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

783

Opinion of the Court

armed force of the United States” with the current “[a]ny
person.”

31 U. S. C. § 3729(a).12

Several features of the current statutory scheme further
support the conclusion that States are not subject to qui
tam liability. First, another section of the FCA, 31 U. S. C.
§ 3733, which enables the Attorney General to issue civil in-
vestigative demands to “any person . . . possessi[ng] informa-
tion relevant to a false claims law investigation,” § 3733(a)(1),

12 The dissent claims that “[t]he term ‘person’ in § 3729(a) that we are
interpreting today was enacted by the 1986 Congress, not by the 1863
Congress.” Post, at 794, n. 5. But the term “person” has remained in
the statute unchanged since 1863; the 1986 amendment merely changed
the modiﬁer “[a]” to “[a]ny.” This no more caused the word “person” to
include States than did the replacement of the word “any” with “[a]” four
years earlier. The dissent’s sole basis for giving the change from “[a]” to
“[a]ny” this precise and unusual consequence is a single sentence of leg-
islative history from the 1986 Congress. That would be unequal to the
task in any event, but as it happens the sentence was not even describing
the consequence of the proposed revision, but was setting forth a Senate
Committee’s (erroneous) understanding of the meaning of the statutory
term enacted some 123 years earlier. The paragraph in which the sen-
tence appears discusses the FCA “[i]n its present,” i. e., pre-1986, “form.”
S. Rep. No. 99–345, p. 8 (1986).

The dissent contradicts its contention that the “intent” of the 1986
Congress, rather than that of the 1863 Congress, controls here, by rely-
ing heavily on a House Committee Report from 1862. Post, at 791–792
(citing H. R. Rep. No. 2, 37th Cong., 2d Sess., pt. ii–a, pp. xxxviii–xxxix
(1862)). Even for those disposed to allow the meaning of a statute to be
determined by a single committee, that Report is utterly irrelevant, since
it was not prepared in connection with the 1863 Act, or indeed in connec-
In repeating the Second
tion with any proposed false claims legislation.
Circuit’s unsupported assertion that Congress must have had this Report
in mind a year later when it enacted the FCA, the dissent asks us to
indulge even a greater suspension of disbelief than legislative history nor-
mally requires. And ﬁnally, this irrelevant committee Report does not
provide the promised support for the view that “[t]he False Claims Act
is . . . as capable of being violated by state as by individual action,” post,
at 791. The cited portion details a single incident of fraud by a state
ofﬁcial against a State, not an incident of fraud by a State against the
Federal Government.