Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/20pdf/20-222_2c83.pdf
Page Number: 26.0

Cite as:  594 U. S. ____ (2021) 

7 

Opinion of GORSUCH, J. 

See  Reiter  v.  Sonotone  Corp.,  442  U. S.  330,  341  (1979).
Even read for all they are worth, the handful of words on
which the Court rests its entire holding today—a “showing”
that “in fact” “sever[s] the link”—cannot begin to carry the 
weight the Court assigns them.  See ante, at 10 (emphasis 
deleted).  These terms do not even appear together in Basic: 
The Court has to pluck the phrase “in fact” from one sen-
tence and the phrase “[a] showing that severs the link” from
another, and then combine them to create a new clause that 
appears nowhere in the U. S. Reports—a “showing” that “in 
fact  sever[s]  the  link.”  Ante,  at  10  (internal  quotation
marks omitted).  Even then, the Court’s newly handcrafted 
phrase does not so much as mention the terms “burden of 
persuasion” or “price impact.”

The  hard  truth  is  that  in  the  30-plus  years  since  Basic 
this Court has never (before) suggested that plaintiffs are 
relieved from carrying the burden of persuasion on any as-
pect of their own causes of action.  To the contrary, when
discussing the presumption it created, Basic expressly ref-
erenced  Rule  301  and  invoked  its  normal  order  of  opera-
tions.  And this Court has long explained that presumptions
“properly used” refer only to devices “for allocating the pro-
duction  burden,”  and  not  the  burden  of  persuasion.    Bur-
dine, 450 U. S., at 255, n. 8 (internal quotation marks omit-
ted).  Are we really to believe that Basic—while referencing 
traditional understandings embodied in Rule 301 and just
seven years after Burdine—secretly meant to depart from
traditional  and  “proper”  understandings  about  how  pre-
sumptions  work?    Thanks  to  spliced  clauses  found  in  two
sentences this Court has never before read that way?  All 
while using words that carry another and much more natu-
ral meaning?  To state the theory is to refute it. 

If Basic doesn’t command today’s result, the Court offers
a backup theory.  Separately, it insists, Halliburton II re-
quires us to shift a burden of persuasion to the defendant.
Specifically, the Court points to the fact that Halliburton II