Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/21pdf/20-1263diff_868c.pdf
Page Number: 30

Cite as:  596 U. S. ____ (2022) 

13 

SOTOMAYOR, J., dissenting 

Ultimately, “[s]tatutory construction . . . is a holistic en-
deavor.”  United  Sav.  Assn.  of  Tex.  v.  Timbers  of  Inwood 
Forest Associates, Ltd., 484 U. S. 365, 371 (1988).  Yet ra-
ther  than  reading  the  assignment  provision  in  a  manner
“compatible with the rest of the law,” ibid., the Court dis-
connects it from much of the Act.  The Court does not hold 
that the third-party liability provision extends as far as its
reading  of  the  assignment  provision.  See  ante,  at  10–11; 
see also supra, at 5–6.  The Court also agrees that the ac-
quisition  provision  is  “more  limited,”  meaning  that  the 
scope of that provision, too, “differ[s]” from that of the as-
signment provision.  Ante, at 9.  To justify these anomalies,
the Court asserts that Congress, in enacting the acquisition 
provision,  saw  fit  to  “provid[e]  a  more  targeted  statutory 
right for when the assignment might fail.”  Ibid.  The Court 
offers little explanation, however, for why Congress might 
have narrowed such a necessary backstop in this way.  The 
statutory hodgepodge the Court perceives contrasts sharply
with the reasonable scheme Congress actually crafted. 

B 
The  Court’s  reasoning  also  contradicts  precedent.    The 
Court  distinguishes  Ahlborn  because  that  case  did  not 
squarely hold that the relevant provisions “must” be inter-
preted in “lockstep,” and it reduces Ahlborn’s concern about 
fairness to a disfavored “policy argumen[t]” that must yield 
to text.  Ante, at 9, 11.  But Ahlborn’s analysis reflected the 
Court’s view of the text and context of the Act as a cohesive 
whole.  It is not only “our sense of fairness,” ante, at 11, but 
Congress’ sense of fairness, as codified in the Act’s anti-lien 
and  anti-recovery  provisions  and  recognized  in  Ahlborn, 
that demonstrates the Court’s error. 

The  Court  itself  appears  to  recognize  that  its  textual
analysis  leads  to  unfair  and  absurd  results,  leading  it  to
suggest an unpersuasive workaround.  The Court responds
to the lifetime-assignment quandary, see supra, at 9–10, by