Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/boundvolumes/529bv.pdf
Page Number: 257

529US1

Unit: $U36

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FDA v. BROWN & WILLIAMSON TOBACCO CORP.

Breyer, J., dissenting

expressly has held that such subsequent views are not “con-
trolling.” Haynes v. United States, 390 U. S. 85, 87–88, n. 4
(1968); accord, Southwestern Cable Co., 392 U. S., at 170 (such
views have “ ‘very little, if any, signiﬁcance’ ”); see also Sul-
livan v. Finkelstein, 496 U. S. 617, 632 (1990) (Scalia, J.,
concurring) (“Arguments based on subsequent legislative
history .
. should not be taken seriously, not even in a
.
footnote”).

Regardless, the later statutes do not support the majori-
ty’s conclusion. That is because, whatever individual Mem-
bers of Congress after 1964 may have assumed about the
FDA’s jurisdiction, the laws they enacted did not embody
any such “no jurisdiction” assumption. And one cannot au-
tomatically infer an antijurisdiction intent, as the majority
does, for the later statutes are both (and similarly) consistent
with quite a different congressional desire, namely, the in-
tent to proceed without interfering with whatever authority
the FDA otherwise may have possessed. See, e. g., Ciga-
rette Labeling and Advertising—1965: Hearings on H. R.
2248 et al. before the House Committee on Interstate and
Foreign Commerce, 89th Cong., 1st Sess., 19 (1965) (herein-
after 1965 Hearings) (statement of Rep. Fino that the pro-
posed legislation would not “erode” agency authority). As
I demonstrate below, the subsequent legislative history is
critically ambivalent, for it can be read either as (a) “rati-
f[ying]” a no-jurisdiction assumption, see ante, at 158, or as
(b) leaving the jurisdictional question just where Congress
found it. And the fact that both inferences are “equally ten-
able,” Pension Beneﬁt Guaranty Corp., supra, at 650 (cita-
tion and internal quotation marks omitted); Johnson v.
Transportation Agency, Santa Clara Cty., 480 U. S. 616, 672
(1987) (Scalia, J., dissenting), prevents the majority from
drawing from the later statutes the ﬁrm, antijurisdiction im-
plication that it needs.

Consider, for example, Congress’ failure to provide the
FDA with express authority to regulate tobacco—a circum-