Court Opinion

ID: 9486488
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 11:49:42.235922+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:51:45.017329
License: Public Domain

SENTELLE, Circuit Judge,
concurring:
As I remain of the view expressed in my dissent in the original version of this case, Sweet Home Chapter v. Babbitt, 1 F.3d 1, 11 (D.C.Cir.1993) (Sentelle, J., dissenting), that the word “harm” in the context of the definition of “taking” in the Endangered Species Act of 1973 cannot reasonably be defined to include the broadly prohibited habitat modification encompassed in the challenged regulation, I am most pleased to concur in the decision of the Court. Now as then I find the words and structure of the Act sufficiently clear as to require no resort to legislative history. I therefore join with enthusiasm those portions of Judge Williams’s opinion that rely on the structure of the Act and on the maxim of noscitur a sociis. I further note, as I did in my earlier dissent, that to define “harm” as broadly as does the Secretary is to render all other words in the statutory definition of “taking” superfluous in violation of the presumption against surplus-age: “[W]e are hesitant to adopt an interpretation of a congressional enactment which renders superfluous another portion of that same law.” 1 F.3d at 13 (quoting Mackey v. Lanier Collection Agency & Serv., 486 U.S. 825, 837, 108 S.Ct. 2182, 2189, 100 L.Ed.2d 836 (1988)).
In view of the language and structure of the Act, and the principles of construction applied by Judge Williams and in my earlier dissent, I do not find it necessary to rely on the legislative history incorporated in Judge Williams’s opinion. “[AJppeals to statutory *1473history are well taken only to resolve statutory ambiguity.” Barnhill v. Johnson, — U.S. -, -, 112 S.Ct. 1386, 1391, 118 L.Ed.2d 39 (1992) (internal quotation omitted). As the Supreme Court recently observed, “we do not resort to legislative history to cloud a statutory text that is clear.” Ratzlaf v. United States, — U.S. -, -, 114 S.Ct. 656, 662, 126 L.Ed.2d 615 (1994). Because I find the meaning of “take” in the statute to be sufficiently clear that “I cannot cram the agency’s huge regulatory definition” into any “tiny crack of ambiguity Congress left,” 1 F.3d at 12. I concur in the decision to reverse the District Court judgment in part, but I would do so without resort to the legislative history.