Opinion ID: 421802
Heading Depth: 4
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: The 1981 Conference Committee report.

Text: 31 The Conference Committee report accompanying the 1981 amendment specifically addressed the new sentence: 32 The conferees believe that, while family involvement is not mandated, it is important that families participate in the activities authorized by this title as much as possible. It is the intent of the conferees that grantees will encourage participants in Title X programs to include their families in counseling and involve them in decisions about services. 33 H.R.Conf.Rep. No. 208, 97th Cong., 1st Sess. 799 (1981) (emphasis added). 34 We find this Conference Report statement to be a crystal-clear and unequivocal expression of congressional intent--an intent that controls the Secretary in the exercise of her or his rulemaking authority. 33 Several points emerge from the Conference Committee's explanation of the amendment. In enacting the amendment to encourage family participation, Congress most definitely did not intend to mandate family involvement. 34 It is impossible to conceive of a more intelligible way to convey that meaning than the comment made by the committee. Thus, to the extent that the parental notification requirement of the new regulations operates to require family involvement, it is inconsistent with Congress' intent. 35 35 Furthermore, the conferees quite plainly explicate the manner by which they intend the Title X grantees to fulfill their statutory obligation to encourage family participation: grantees will encourage participants    to include their families. The Title X family planning projects are thereby directed to communicate with and encourage those seeking services to make their contraceptive choices with the assistance of their families. There is simply no way, in light of the conferees' explanation, that the statute can be read as intending to permit the Title X projects to communicate directly with the parents as a means of fulfilling the statute's family participation directive. 36 36 Yet this is precisely the reading of the statute and the Conference Committee report that the Secretary would urge upon this court. Appellants seek to avoid the clear import of the Conference Committee report by arguing that enactment of the 1981 amendment represented a great change in Congress' existing policy vis-a-vis parental notification and family involvement--a change in policy that would be furthered by the new regulations. They contend that the 1981 amendment showed a clear shift in Congress' thinking.    Congress indicated that grantees, themselves, were henceforth to encourage family involvement, and not simply to rely on their teenage clientele to involve their parents. 37 According to appellants, Congress' shift in intent is supposedly manifest, not only in the express language of the statute, but in the Conference Committee report's introductory statement about Title X: 37 Three changes were made in Title X by the conferees. The first was a statement added to section 1001 that To the extent practical, recipients of grants shall encourage family participation.    38 H.R.Conf.Rep. No. 208, 97th Cong., 1st Sess. 799 (1981) (emphasis added). 38 39 Appellants' argument simply does not withstand close scrutiny. The conferees' use of this word changes certainly cannot stand alone as definitive proof of a fundamental shift in congressional intent. Assuredly, there was a change in Title X--an entirely new sentence was added to the section of the Act. Whether this change of statutory language evidences a change of congressional purpose, however, depends upon Congress' prior expressions of policy as to the issues of family involvement and parental notification. 39 40