Court Opinion

ID: 9842041
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-22 20:12:28.405809+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:09:14.247009
License: Public Domain

Justice Stevens,
concurring in the judgment.
The legislative history of the Unemployment Compensation Amendments of 1976, 90 Stat. 2667, persuades me that Congress did intend the repeal of 26 U. S. C. § 3309 (b)(3) to remove the exemption from coverage under the Federal Unemployment Tax Act (FUTA) for all employees of private, nonprofit elementary and secondary schools. Not only do the Senate and House Committee Beports expressly so *789state,1 but also the estimate contained in the Senate Report of the number of additional employees that would be covered by the FUTA as a result of the repeal of § 3309 (b) (3) confirms the contemporaneous understanding of the draftsmen of the 1976 Amendments.2 Nothing in the 1976 Amendments *790or the corresponding legislative history suggests that Congress believed the extension of FUTA coverage to nonprofit, private schools applied only to nonprofit, private, nonparochial schools.3
Despite this legislative history, I agree with the Court’s conclusion that FUTA coverage does not extend to persons employed in petitioners’ schools. Although Congress’ intention to cover such employees was, in my judgment, clear, the 1976 Amendments simply failed to give effect to that intention. By repealing §3309 (b)(3), Congress removed only one of the two statutory exemptions that, by their terms, applied to employees of parochial elementary and secondary schools. Congress left in place and did not qualify the scope of the separate exemption granted by §3309 (b)(1). The clear expressions of congressional intent that appear in the legislative history of the Act that repealed § 3309 (b) (3) *791cannot alter the clear statutory language of § 3309 (b)(1). I agree with the Court that these church employees are exempt under the plain language of that provision. See also Alabama v. Marshall, 626 F. 2d 366 (CA5 1980), cert. pending, No. 80-922.
When the Court is confronted with the task of construing legislation of this character, there is special force to the rule that the plain statutory language should control and that resort to legislative history is appropriate only when the statute itself is ambiguous. Congress has a special duty to choose its words carefully when it is drafting technical and complex laws; we facilitate our work as well as that of Congress when we adhere closely to the statutory text in cases like this.4 Failure to follow that approach led this Court into what I regard as manifest error in its recent summary, per curiam affirmance in HCSC-Laundry v. United States, 450 U. S. 1, a case in which the taxpayer’s claim for exemption had equally strong support in the statutory text and, in my opinion, greater support in the legislative history than is true here. See id., at 19-23 (Stevens, J., dissenting). Today, although 1 agree that the Court reaches the result required by the text of the FUTA, I write this separate statement to emphasize that this result is not supported by the legislative history of the 1976 Amendments, nor is it consistent with the Court’s contrary resolution of the parallel tax exemption issue in HCSC-Laundry.
Accordingly, I concur in the Court’s judgment.

 The House Report states:
“Section 115 (b) also has the effect of requiring the State to pay unemployment compensation on the basis of services performed for all educational institutions. Under existing law, the State is only required to provide coverage of services performed for institutions of higher education.” H. R. Rep. No. 94-755, p. 56 (1975).
See also id., at 2, 6, 41. Similarly, the Senate Report provides:
“The bill would require the States to extend the coverage of their unemployment compensation programs to employees of nonprofit elementary and secondary schools (present law requires coverage for employees of institutions of higher education).” S. Rep. No. 94-1265, p. 2 (1976).
See also id., at 7, 9-11.
In addition, the legislative history contains several references to the general congressional intention to extend the coverage of the FUTA to substantially all of the Nation’s wage earners. See, e. g., H. R. Rep. No. 94-755, supra, at 1-2; 122 Cong. Ree. 22518-22519 (1976); id., at 22899-22900. While such general statements of legislative purpose cannot override plain statutory language, see ante, at 786, n. 19, they are nonetheless consistent with the more specific statements of purpose quoted above.

 The Senate Report estimated that 242,000 additional employees of nonprofit organizations would be covered under the FUTA as a result of the repeal of §3309 (b)(3). See S. Rep. No. 94A1265, supra, at 8. This figure approximated the number of full-time teachers in all private, nonprofit elementary and secondary schools in 1975. See ante, at 787, n. 20. Because well over one-half of these teachers were employed in parochial schools, respondent argues that this statistic, although perhaps slightly inaccurate, indicates that Congress intended to extend coverage to employees of parochial elementary and secondary schools. As the Court notes, the South Dakota Supreme Court accepted this argument. See ante, at 787; 290 N. W. 2d 845, 849, and n. 5 (1980).
The Court finds that respondent’s reliance upon this statistic is misplaced because, “in repealing §3309 (b)(3), Congress intended to include not just full-time teachers, but all employees of the newly covered nonprofit private elementary and secondary schools.” Ante, at 787 (emphasis in original). The Court’s observation, however, indicates only that the *790statistic was factually inaccurate; it does not undercut respondent’s reliance upon that statistic as a guide to congressional intent. Whether Congress believed that the figure 242,000 was an estimate of the number of additional teachers that would be covered 'by the Act as a result of the repeal of §3309 (b)(3), or an estimate of the number of additional employees that would be so covered, the estimate would have had meaning only if at least some parochial school employees were represented among the 242,000 newly covered individuals.
It also should be noted that the Secretary of Labor, in his order declining to certify the unemployment compensation programs of the States of Alabama and Nevada under the FUTA, stated that the statistic had been supplied to Congress by the Department of Labor as the then-available best estimate of the total number of employees in all nonprofit, private elementary and secondary schools. See 44 Fed. Reg. 64378, 64380-64382, and n. 16 (1979). The Secretary also expressly stated that the estimate included employees of church-related elementary and secondary schools. See ibid.

 In light of the fact that approximately 86% of the students, see Rice, Conscientious Objection to Public Education: The Grievance and the Remedies, 1978 B. Y. U. L. Rev. 847, and over 50% of the teachers in private, nonprofit elementary and secondary schools are in parochial schools, Congress’ failure to mention any exception for such schools is surely significant.

 The Court of Appeals in Alabama v. Marshall accurately characterized the judicial function in eases such as this:
“If Congress desires to change the established exemption of unemployment compensation coverage for elementary and secondary parochial school employees, it is well within its ability to amend the law to reflect that desire by drafting a clear statement to that effect. But, it is not the responsibility or function of this court to perform linguistic gymnastics in order to upset the plain language of Congress as it exists today.” 626 F. 2d, at 369.