Opinion ID: 3021849
Heading Depth: 4
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: The Legislative Reenactment Doctrine

Text: Even if Revenue Ruling 79-404 is not entitled to deference under Chevron and Mead, the Government contends that the Ruling is nevertheless entitled to “especially great weight” under the legislative reenactment doctrine, because Congress has reenacted the statute several times since the Revenue Ruling was issued in 1979. Appellant’s Br. at 50. Pursuant to the legislative re-enactment doctrine, Congress is “presumed to be aware of an administrative or judicial interpretation of a statute and to adopt that interpretation when it re-enacts a statute without change.” Lorillard v. Pon, 434 U.S. 575, 580 (1978) (citations omitted). As the Court recognized in United States v. Rutherford, 442 U.S. 544, 554 n.10 (1979)), however, “it may not always be realistic to infer approval of judicial or administrative interpretation from congressional silence alone.” Nevertheless, “once an agency's statutory construction has been ‘fully brought to the attention of the public and the Congress,’ and the latter has not sought to alter that interpretation although it has amended the statute in other respects, then presumably the legislative intent has been correctly discerned.” Id.; see also North Haven Bd. of Educ. v. Bell, 456 U.S. 512, 535 (1982). In this case, the Government points to legislative history in which the Congress seems to equate “toll telephone service” with “long-distance,” but fails to 17 identify any evidence that Congress was aware of Revenue Ruling 79-404. We therefore cannot find that the construction has been “fully brought to the attention” of Congress. Moreover, even if we presume that Congress was aware of Revenue Ruling 79-404, the Supreme Court has held that “where the law is plain, subsequent reenactment does not constitute an adoption of a previous administrative construction.” Brown v. Gardner, 513 U.S. 115, 121 (1994). Given the ordinary meaning of the word “and” and the structure and context of § 4252, we view the law as “plain” and conclude that the legislative re-enactment doctrine does not apply in this case.