Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/20pdf/19-357_6k47.pdf
Page Number: 7

Cite as:  592 U. S. ____ (2021) 

5 

Opinion of the Court 

See §§542(c), (d).  Reading §362(a)(3) to cover mere reten-
tion of property, as respondents advocate, would create at
least two serious problems.

First,  it  would  render  the  central  command  of  §542
largely  superfluous. 
“The  canon  against  surplusage  is
strongest when an interpretation would render superfluous 
another  part  of  the  same  statutory  scheme.”  Yates  v. 
United States, 574 U. S. 528, 543 (2015) (plurality opinion;
internal quotation marks and brackets omitted).  Reading 
“any  act  . . .  to  exercise  control”  in  §362(a)(3)  to  include
merely  retaining  possession  of  a  debtor’s  property  would
make  that  section  a  blanket  turnover  provision.    But  as 
noted, §542 expressly governs “[t]urnover of property to the 
estate,”  and  subsection  (a)  describes  the  broad  range  of 
property that an entity “shall deliver to the trustee.”  That 
mandate would be surplusage if §362(a)(3) already required 
an entity affirmatively to relinquish control of the debtor’s
property at the moment a bankruptcy petition is filed.

Respondents and their amici contend that §542(a) would 
still perform some work by specifying the party to whom the 
property in question must be turned over and by requiring
that  an  entity  “account  for  . . .  the  value  of ”  the  debtor’s 
property if the property is damaged or lost.  But that is a 
small amount of work for a large amount of text in a section 
that  appears  to  be  the  Code  provision  that  is  designed  to
govern the turnover of estate property.  Under this alterna-
tive interpretation, §362(a)(3), not §542, would be the chief 
provision governing turnover—even though §362(a)(3) says
nothing expressly on that question.  And §542 would be re-
duced to a footnote—even though it appears on its face to 
be the governing provision.  The better account of the two 
provisions is that §362(a)(3) prohibits collection efforts out-
side the bankruptcy proceeding that would change the sta-
tus quo, while §542(a) works within the bankruptcy process 
to draw far-flung estate property back into the hands of the 
debtor or trustee.