Source: https://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/05-1508.ZD.html
Timestamp: 2018-01-24 08:00:32
Document Index: 110868318

Matched Legal Cases: ['§7701', '§7709', '§7709', '§7709', '§7709', '§1', '§596']

In Church of the Holy Trinity v. United States, 143 U. S. 457 (1892) , this Court conceded that a church’s act of contracting with a prospective rector fell within the plain meaning of a federal labor statute, but nevertheless did not apply the statute to the church: “It is a familiar rule,” the Court pronounced, “that a thing may be within the letter of the statute and yet not within the statute, because not within its spirit, nor within the intention of its makers.” Id., at 459. That is a judge-empowering proposition if there ever was one, and in the century since, the Court has wisely retreated from it, in words if not always in actions. But today Church of the Holy Trinity arises, Phoenix-like, from the ashes. The Court’s contrary assertions aside, today’s decision is nothing other than the elevation of judge-supposed legislative intent over clear statutory text. The plain language of the federal Impact Aid statute clearly and unambiguously forecloses the Secretary of Education’s preferred methodology for determining whether a State’s school-funding system is equalized. Her selection of that methodology is therefore entitled to zero deference under Chevron U. S. A. Inc. v. Natural Resources Defense Council, Inc., 467 U. S. 837 (1984) .
The very structure of the Court’s opinion provides an obvious clue as to what is afoot. The opinion purports to place a premium on the plain text of the Impact Aid statute, ante, at 11, but it first takes us instead on a roundabout tour of “[c]onsiderations other than language,” ante, at 7 (emphasis added)—page after page of unenacted congressional intent and judicially perceived statutory purpose, Part II–A, ante. Only after we are shown “why Zuni concentrates its argument upon language alone,” ante, at 7 (impliedly a shameful practice, or at least indication of a feeble case), are we informed how the statute’s plain text does not unambiguously preclude the interpretation the Court thinks best. Part II–B, ante (beginning “But what of the provision’s literal language? The matter is important . . . ”). This is a most suspicious order of proceeding, since our case law is full of statements such as “We begin, as always, with the language of the statute,” Duncan v. Walker, 533 U. S. 167, 172 (2001) , and replete with the affirmation that, when “[g]iven [a] straightforward statutory command, there is no reason to resort to legislative history,” United States v. Gonzales, 520 U. S. 1, 6 (1997) . Nor is this cart-before-the-horse approach justified by the Court’s excuse that the statute before us is, after all, a technical one, ante, at 7. This Court, charged with interpreting, among other things, the Internal Revenue Code, the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974, and the Clean Air Act, confronts technical language all the time, but we never see fit to pronounce upon what we think Congress meant a statute to say, and what we think sound policy would counsel it to say, before considering what it does say. As almost a majority of today’s majority worries, “[w]ere the inversion [of inquiry] to become systemic, it would create the impression that agency policy concerns, rather than the traditional tools of statutory construction, are shaping the judicial interpretation of statutes.” Ante, at 1 (Kennedy, J., joined by Alito, J., concurring). True enough—except I see no reason to wait for the distortion to become systemic before concluding that that is precisely what is happening in the present case. For some, policy-driven interpretation is apparently just fine. See ante, at 1–2 (Stevens, J., concurring). But for everyone else, let us return to Statutory Interpretation 101.
We must begin, as we always do, with the text. See, e.g., Gonzales, supra, at 4. Under the federal Impact Aid program, 20 U. S. C. §7701 et seq. (2000 ed. and Supp. IV), States distributing state aid to local school districts (referred to in the statute as “local educational agencies,” or “LEAs”1) may not take into account the amount of federal Impact Aid that its LEAs receive. See §7709(a). But the statute makes an exception if the Secretary of Education certifies that a State “has in effect a program of State aid that equalizes expenditures for free public education among local educational agencies in the State.” §7709(b)(1) (2000 ed., Supp. IV). Congress has specified a formula for the Secretary to use when making this equalization determination:
The sheer applesauce of this statutory interpretation should be obvious. It is of course true that every student in New Mexico causes an expenditure or produces a revenue that his LEA either enjoys (in the case of revenues) or is responsible for (in the case of expenditures). But it simply defies any semblance of normal English usage to say that every pupil has a “per-pupil expenditure or revenue.” The word “per” connotes that the expenditure or revenue is a single average figure assigned to a unit the composite members of which are individual pupils. And the only such unit mentioned in the statute is the local educational agency.2 See 20 U. S. C. §7709(b)(2)(B)(i). It is simply irrelevant that “[n]o dictionary definition . . . suggests that there is any single logical, mathematical, or statistical link between [per-pupil expenditures or revenues] and . . . the nature of the relevant population.” Ante, at 13–14. Of course there is not. It is the text at issue which must identify the relevant population, and it does so here quite unambiguously: “local educational agencies with per-pupil expenditures or revenues.” §7709(b)(2)(B)(i) (emphasis added). That same phrase shows the utter irrelevance of the Court’s excursus upon the meaning of the word “per.” See ante, at 15. It does indeed mean “ ‘for each or ‘for every’ ”—and when it is contained in a clause that reads “local educational agencies with per-pupil expenditures or revenues” it refers to (and can only refer to) the average expenditure or revenue “for each” or “for every” student out of the total expenditures or revenues of the LEA.
How then, if the text is so clear, are respondents managing to win this case? The answer can only be the return of that miraculous redeemer of lost causes, Church of the Holy Trinity. In order to contort the statute’s language beyond recognition, the Court must believe Congress’s intent so crystalline, the spirit of its legislation so glowingly bright, that the statutory text should simply not be read to say what it says. See Part II–A, ante. Justice Stevens is quite candid on the point: He is willing to contradict the text. See ante, at 2–3 (concurring opinion).3 But Justice Stevens’ candor should not make his philosophy seem unassuming. He maintains that it is “a correct performance of the judicial function” to “override a strict interpretation of the text” so long as policy-driven interpretation “is faithful to the intent of Congress.” Ante, at 1. But once one departs from “strict interpretation of the text” (by which Justice Stevens means the actual meaning of the text) fidelity to the intent of Congress is a chancy thing. The only thing we know for certain both Houses of Congress (and the President, if he signed the legislation) agreed upon is the text. Legislative history can never produce a “pellucidly clear” picture, ante, at 3 (Stevens, J., concurring), of what a law was “intended” to mean, for the simple reason that it is never voted upon—or ordinarily even seen or heard—by the “intending” lawgiving entity, which consists of both Houses of Congress and the President (if he did not veto the bill). See U. S. Const., Art. I, §§1, 7. Thus, what judges believe Congress “meant” (apart from the text) has a disturbing but entirely unsurprising tendency to be whatever judges think Congress must have meant, i.e., should have meant. In Church of the Holy Trinity, every Justice on this Court disregarded the plain language of a statute that forbade the hiring of a clergyman from abroad because, after all (they thought), “this is a Christian nation,” 143 U. S., at 471, so Congress could not have meant what it said. Is there any reason to believe that those Justices were lacking that “intellectua[l] honest[y]” that Justice Stevens “presume[s]” all our judges possess, ante, at 2? Intellectual honesty does not exclude a blinding intellectual bias. And even if it did, the system of judicial amendatory veto over texts duly adopted by Congress bears no resemblance to the system of lawmaking set forth in our Constitution.
Lest there be any confusion on the point, I must discuss briefly the two cases Justice Stevens puts forward, ante, at 1, as demonstrating this Court’s recent endorsement of his unorthodox views. They demonstrate just the opposite. Griffin v. Oceanic Contractors, Inc., 458 U. S. 564 (1982) , involved a maritime statute that required the master of a vessel to furnish unpaid wages to a seaman within a specified period after the seaman’s discharge, and further provided that a master who failed to do so without sufficient cause “ ‘shall pay to the seaman a sum equal to two days’ pay for each and every day during which payment is delayed.’ ” Id., at 570 (quoting 46 U. S. C. §596 (1976 ed.)). We explained that “Congress intended the statute to mean exactly what its plain language says,” 458 U. S., at 574, and held that the seaman was entitled to double wages for every day during which payment was delayed, even for the period in which he had obtained alternative employment. The result was that the seaman would receive approximately $300,000 for his master’s improper withholding of $412.50, id., at 575, even though “[i]t [was] probably true that Congress did not precisely envision the grossness of the difference . . . between the actual wages withheld and the amount of the award required by the statute,” id., at 576. We suggested in dicta that there might be a “rare cas[e]” in which the Court could relax its steadfastness to statutory text, id., at 571, but if Griffin itself did not qualify, it is hard to imagine what would. The principle Justice Stevens would ascribe to Griffin is in fact the one he advocated in dissent. “[T]his is one of the cases in which the exercise of judgment dictates a departure from the literal text in order to be faithful to the legislative will.” Id., at 586 (Stevens, J., dissenting).
The second case Justice Stevens relies upon, United States v. Ron Pair Enterprises, Inc., 489 U. S. 235 (1989) , is equally inapt. The Court’s opinion there (unlike the one here) explained that our analysis “must begin . . . with the language of the statute itself,” and concluded that that was “also where the inquiry should end, for where . . . the statute’s language is plain, ‘the sole function of the courts is to enforce it according to its terms.’ ” Id., at 241 (quoting Caminetti v. United States, 242 U. S. 470, 485 (1917) ). My “fifth vote” in Ron Pair was thus only “decisive,” ante, at 1 (Stevens, J., concurring), in reaffirming this Court’s adherence to statutory text, decisively preventing it from falling off the precipice it plunges over today.
1 The Court’s opinion has replaced the phrase “ ‘local educational agencies’ ” with “ ‘local school districts.’ ” See ante, at 19. While I have no objection to that terminology, I will instead use “local educational agencies” and “LEAs.”
2 The Court maintains that the phrase “per-pupil expenditures or revenues” may also be attributed to schools or grade levels. Ante, at 14. Standing alone and abstracted from the rest of the statute, indeed it may. But not when it appears in the phrase “local educational agencies with per-pupil expenditures or revenues.” (Emphasis added.) In any case, the fact that “per-pupil expenditures or revenues” could be applied to composite entities other than LEAs does not establish that speaking of the “per-pupil expenditure or revenue” of an individual student makes any sense (it does not).