Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/boundvolumes/529bv.pdf
Page Number: 865.0

529US3

Unit: $U59

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VERMONT AGENCY OF NATURAL RESOURCES v.
UNITED STATES ex rel. STEVENS
Stevens, J., dissenting

liability for violating federal laws.
It is through the lens of
those post-1986 cases that the Court has chosen to construe
the statute at issue in this case. To explain my disagree-
ment with the Court, I shall comment on pre-1986 cases, the
legislative history of the 1986 amendments, and the statutory
text of the FCA—all of which support the view that Con-
gress understood States to be included within the meaning
of the word “person” in § 3729.
I shall then brieﬂy explain
why the State’s constitutional defenses fail, even under the
Court’s post-1986 construction of the doctrine of sovereign
immunity.

I

Cases decided before 1986 uniformly support the proposi-
tion that the broad language used in the FCA means what it
says. Although general statutory references to “persons”
are not normally construed to apply to the enacting sover-
eign, United States v. Mine Workers, 330 U. S. 258, 275
(1947), when Congress uses that word in federal statutes en-
forceable by the Federal Government or by a federal agency,
it applies to States and state agencies as well as to private
individuals and corporations. Thus, for example, the word
“person” in the Sherman Act does not include the sovereign
that enacted the statute (the Federal Government), United
States v. Cooper Corp., 312 U. S. 600 (1941), but it does in-
clude the States, Georgia v. Evans, 316 U. S. 159 (1942).
Similarly, States are subject to regulation as a “person”
within the meaning of the Shipping Act of 1916, California
v. United States, 320 U. S. 577 (1944), and as a “common car-
rier” within the meaning of the Safety Appliance Act, United
States v. California, 297 U. S. 175 (1936).
In the latter case,
the State of California “invoke[d] the canon of construction
that a sovereign is presumptively not intended to be bound”
by a statute unless the Act expressly declares that to be
the case.
Id., at 186. We rejected the applicability of that
canon, stating: