Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/20pdf/20-472_0pm1.pdf
Page Number: 24

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

5 

BARRETT, J., dissenting 

(emphasis deleted).  Now suppose the same guest returns
to  the  same  hotel  three  years  later  and,  upon  arrival,  re-
quests to “extend” her prior stay.  The hotel employee would 
no doubt “scratch her head.”  Tr. of Oral Arg. 26.  Why?  Be-
cause it is highly unnatural to speak of “extending” a stay 
that ended years before.

Similar examples spring readily to mind.  One would not 
normally ask to “extend” a newspaper subscription long af-
ter it expired.  Or request, after child number two, to “ex-
tend” the parental-leave period completed after child num-
ber  one.  Or  report  that  an  athlete  signed  a  contract 
“extension” with her first team after spending several sea-
sons with a rival squad.  These examples do not derive their 
force  by  superimposing  a  “continuity  requirement”  on  the 
word “extend.”  Cf. ante, at 6, 8, 9, 10, 12, 13, 16.  Instead, 
continuity  is  inherent  in  the  way  that  people  usually  use 
the word “extension”—namely, to reference something cur-
rently “in existence” such that  there is a “continuing con-
nection  with  the  thing  to  be  extended.”    Brief  for  Federal 
Respondent 21.  That is so, moreover, absent any additional
“modifying language” requiring the “extension” to be “ ‘con-
secutive’ ” or “ ‘successive.’ ”  Ante, at 8. 

By  dismissing  the  need  for  a  continuing  connection  be-
tween the first period and the second, the Court forgoes the
“far more natural” reading of extend.  Taniguchi v. Kan Pa-
cific Saipan, Ltd., 566 U. S. 560, 569 (2012).  The upshot?
A refinery could ask to “extend” an exemption it had in 2010 
in the year 2040, with no need to connect the two periods.
It defies ordinary usage to deem the second exemption “an 
extension” of the first, as opposed to a new, standalone ex-
emption.  HollyFrontier recognizes as much, seeking to de-
flect this example as “extreme” and “highly unlikely.”  Tr. 
of  Oral  Arg.  28.    Unlikely  or  not,  it  follows  logically  from
HollyFrontier’s  reading  of  “extension”—which  shows  just 
how far this interpretation strays from the term’s ordinary
meaning.