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6  GOLDMAN SACHS GROUP, INC. v. ARKANSAS TEACHER 

RETIREMENT SYSTEM 
Opinion of GORSUCH, J. 

U. S., at 511. 

The Court disputes none of this.  It does not even try to
defend  on  the  merits  its  unusual  suggestion  that  the  de-
fendant carries some burden of persuasion in a plaintiff ’s 
claim for securities fraud.  Instead, the Court contends only
that precedent ties our hands. 

Primarily, the Court points to a single clause in a single 
sentence in Basic observing that a defendant may rebut the 
presumption of reliance with “[a]ny showing that severs the 
link between the alleged misrepresentation” and the stock
price.  See ante, at 10 (quoting Basic, 485 U. S., at 248) (em-
phasis deleted).  The Court then splices that clause together
with  another  clause  in  a  preceding  sentence  explaining
that, before Basic, lower courts had said a defendant rebuts 
the fraud on the market presumption by showing “that the 
misrepresentation  in  fact  did  not  lead  to  a  distortion  of 
price.”  Ante, at 10 (quoting Basic, 485 U. S., at 248; empha-
sis deleted).

But what does this prove?  Surely this language confirms
an important and by now familiar point:  Once a defendant 
produces evidence that, if believed, shows that fraud on the
market theory does not hold in its particular case because
its  alleged  misrepresentation  in  fact  failed  to  affect  the 
stock price, the presumption of reliance drops away.  On the 
Court’s reading today, however, this language doesn’t just
carry that obvious meaning.  We are told it also must mean 
that Basic intended to shift the “burden of persuasion” with 
respect to “price impact” to the defendant—at least “at class 
certification”—because  the  “mere  production  of  some  evi-
dence  relevant  to  price  impact  would  rarely  accomplish
th[e] feat” of “in fact” “ sever[ing] the link between a misrep-
resentation and the price paid” for the stock.  Ante, at 10– 
11 (internal quotation marks omitted; emphasis deleted).

That much does not follow.  Not only has this Court often 
said it is a mistake to parse terms in a judicial opinion with 
the kind of punctilious exactitude due statutory language.