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VERMONT AGENCY OF NATURAL RESOURCES v.
UNITED STATES ex rel. STEVENS
Opinion of the Court

contains a provision expressly deﬁning “person,” “[f]or pur-
poses of this section,” to include States, § 3733(l)(4).13 The
presence of such a deﬁnitional provision in § 3733, together
with the absence of such a provision from the deﬁnitional
provisions contained in § 3729, see §§ 3729(b)–(c), suggests
that States are not “persons” for purposes of qui tam lia-
bility under § 3729.14

Second, the current version of the FCA imposes damages
that are essentially punitive in nature, which would be in-

13 The dissent points out that the deﬁnition of “person” in § 3733(l)(4)
also applies to § 3733(l)(2), a deﬁnitional provision which deﬁnes the
phrase “false claims law investigation” as “any inquiry conducted by any
false claims law investigator for the purpose of ascertaining whether
any person is or has been engaged in any violation of a false claims law.”
See post, at 789, 795. But the effect of assuming a State to be a “person”
for purposes of that deﬁnitional section is not to embrace investigations
of States within the deﬁnition. A “false claims investigation” will still
not include an investigation of a State, since whether a “person” (however
broadly deﬁned) “is or has been engaged in any violation of a false claims
law” depends on whether that person is subject to the “false claims law,”
which refers us back to § 3729, to which § 3733(l)(4)’s deﬁnition of “person”
is explicitly made inapplicable. What the application of § 3733(l)(4) to
§ 3733(l)(2) does achieve is to subject States, not to qui tam liability, but
to civil investigative demands. That is entirely appropriate, since States
will often be able to provide useful evidence in investigations of private
contractors.

14 The dissent contends that our argument “prove[s] too much,” since
the deﬁnition of “person” in § 3733(l)(4) includes not just States, but also
“any natural person, partnership, corporation, association, or other legal
entity”; under our reasoning, it contends, all of those entities would also
be excluded from the deﬁnition of “person” under § 3729. Post, at 799.
That is not so. Unlike States, all of those entities are presumptively
covered by the term “person.” See 1 U. S. C. § 1. The addition of States
to 31 U. S. C. § 3733, and the failure to add States to § 3729, suggests that
States are not subject to qui tam liability under § 3729.

The dissent attempts to explain the absence of a deﬁnitional pro-
vision in § 3729 by suggesting that Congress “simply saw no need to
add a deﬁnition of ‘person’ in § 3729 because . . . the meaning of the term
‘person’ was already well understood.” Post, at 799.
If that were so, and
if the “understanding” included States, there would have been no need
to include a deﬁnition of “person” in § 3733.