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ChicagoHAI 19

566.US.2011_10-1211

Before passage of the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996 (IIRIRA), United States immigration law provided deportation hearings for excludable aliens who had already entered the United States and exclusion hearings for excludable aliens seeking entry into the United States. Lawful permanent residents were not regarded as making an “entry,” upon their return from “innocent, casual, and brief excursion[s] . . . outside this country’s borders.” Rosenberg v. Fleuti, 374 U.S. 449, 462. In IIRIRA, Congress abolished the distinction between exclusion and deportation procedures, creating a uniform “removal” proceeding. See 8 U. S. C. §§1229, 1229a. Congress made “admission” the key word, and defined “admission” to mean “the lawful entry of the alien into the United States after inspection and authorization by an immigration officer.” §1101(a)(13)(A). This alteration, the Board of Immigration Appeals (BIA) determined, superseded Fleuti. Thus, lawful permanent residents returning from a trip abroad are now regarded as seeking admission if they have “committed an offense identified in section 1182(a)(2),” §1101(a)(13)(C)(v), including, as relevant here, “a crime involving moral turpitude . . . or conspiracy to commit such a crime,” §1182(a)(2)(A)(i). Petitioner Vartelas, a lawful permanent resident of the United States since 1989, pleaded guilty to a felony (conspiring to make a counterfeit security) in 1994, and served a 4-month prison sentence. In the years after his conviction, and even after IIRIRA’s passage, Vartelas regularly traveled to Greece to visit his aging parents. In 2003, when Vartelas returned from a week-long trip to Greece, an immigration officer classified him as an alien seeking “admission” based on his 1994 conviction. At Vartelas’ removal proceedings, his attorneys conceded removability and requested discretionary relief under former §212(c) of the Immigration and Nationality Act. The Immigration Judge denied the request for relief, and ordered Vartelas removed to Greece. The BIA affirmed. In 2008, Vartelas filed with the BIA a timely motion to reopen the removal proceedings, alleging that his previous attorneys were ineffective for, among other lapses, conceding his removability. He sought to withdraw the concession of removability on the ground that IIRIRA’s new “admission” provision did not reach back to deprive him of lawful resident status based on his pre-IIRIRA conviction. The BIA denied the motion. The Second Circuit affirmed. Rejecting Vartelas’ argument that IIRIRA operated prospectively and therefore did not govern his case, the Second Circuit reasoned that he had not relied on the prior legal regime at the time he committed the disqualifying crime. Held: The impact of Vartelas’ brief travel abroad on his permanent resident status is determined not by IIRIRA, but by the legal regime in force at the time of his conviction. Pp. 7–17. (a) Under the principle against retroactive legislation invoked by Vartelas, courts read laws as prospective in application unless Congress has unambiguously instructed retroactivity. See Landgraf v. USI Film Products, 511 U.S. 244, 263. The presumption against retroactive legislation “embodies a legal doctrine centuries older than our Republic.” Id., at 265. Numerous decisions of this Court have invoked Justice Story’s formulation for determining when a law’s retrospective application would collide with the doctrine, namely, as relevant here, when such application would “attac[h] a new disability, in respect to transactions or considerations already past,” Society for Propagation of Gospel v. Wheeler, 22 F. Cas. 756, 767. See, e.g., INS v. St. Cyr, 533 U.S. 289, 321; Hughes Aircraft Co. v. United States ex rel. Schumer, 520 U.S. 939, 947; Landgraf, 511 U. S., at 283. Vartelas urges that applying IIRIRA to him would attach a “new disability,” effectively a ban on travel outside the United States, “in respect to” past events, specifically, his offense, guilty plea, conviction, and punishment, all occurring prior to IIRIRA’s passage. Congress did not expressly prescribe §1101(a)(13)’s temporal reach. The Court, therefore, proceeds to the dispositive question whether application of IIRIRA’s travel restraint to Vartelas “would have retroactive effect” Congress did not authorize. See id., at 280. Vartelas presents a firm case for application of the antiretroactivity principle. Beyond genuine doubt §1101(a)(13)(C)(v)’s restraint on lawful permanent residents like Vartelas ranks as a “new disability.” Once able to journey abroad to, e.g., fulfill religious obligations or respond to family emergencies, they now face potential banishment, a severe sanction. See, e.g., Padilla v. Kentucky, 559 U. S. ___, ___. The Government suggests that Vartelas could have avoided any adverse consequences if he simply stayed at home in the United States. But losing the ability to travel abroad is itself a harsh penalty, made all the more devastating if it means enduring separation from close family members. This Court has rejected arguments for retroactivity in similar cases, see Chew Heong v. United States, 112 U.S. 536, 559; St. Cyr, 533 U. S., at 321–323, and in cases in which the loss at stake was less momentous, see Landgraf, 511 U. S., at 280–286; Hughes Aircraft, 520 U. S., at 946–950. Pp. 7–11. (b) The Court finds disingenuous the Government’s argument that no retroactive effect is involved in this case because the relevant event is the alien’s post-IIRIRA return to the United States. Vartelas’ return occasioned his treatment as a new entrant, but the reason for his “new disability” was his pre-IIRIRA conviction. That past misconduct is the wrongful activity targeted by §1101(a)(13)(C)(v). Pp. 11–13. (c) In determining that the change IIRIRA wrought had no retroactive effect, the Second Circuit homed in on the words “committed an offense” in §1101(a)(13)(C)(v). It reasoned that reliance on the prior law is essential to application of the antiretroactivity principle, and that Vartelas did not commit his crime in reliance on immigration laws. This reasoning is doubly flawed. A party is not required to show reliance on the prior law in structuring his conduct. See, e.g., Landgraf, 511 U. S., at 282, n. 35. In any event, Vartelas likely relied on then-existing immigration law, and this likelihood strengthens the case for reading a newly enacted law prospectively. St. Cyr is illustrative. There, a lawful permanent resident pleaded guilty to a criminal charge that made him deportable. Under the immigration law in effect when he was convicted, he would have been eligible to apply for a waiver of deportation. But his removal proceeding was commenced after IIRIRA withdrew that dispensation. Disallowance of discretionary waivers attached a new disability to past conduct, 533 U. S., at 321. Aliens like St. Cyr “almost certainly relied upon th[e] likelihood [of receiving discretionary relief] in deciding [to plead guilty, thereby] forgo[ing] their right to a trial,” id., at 325. Because applying the IIRIRA withdrawal to St. Cyr would have an “obvious and severe retroactive effect,” ibid., and Congress made no such intention plain, ibid., n. 55, the prior law governed St. Cyr’s case. Vartelas’ case is at least as clear as St. Cyr’s for declining to apply a new law retroactively. St. Cyr could seek only the Attorney General’s discretionary dispensation, while Vartelas, under Fleuti, was free, without seeking an official’s permission, to make short trips to see and assist his parents in Greece. The Second Circuit compounded its initial misperception of the antiretroactivity principle by holding otherwise. Fleuti continues to govern Vartelas’ short-term travel. Pp. 14–17. 620 F.3d 108, reversed and remanded. Ginsburg, J., delivered the opinion of the Court, in which Roberts, C. J., and Kennedy, Breyer, Sotomayor, and Kagan, JJ., joined. Scalia, J., filed a dissenting opinion, in which Thomas and Alito, JJ., joined.

Panagis Vartelas, a native of Greece, became a lawful permanent resident of the United States in 1989. He pleaded guilty to a felony (conspiring to make a counterfeit security) in 1994, and served a prison sentence of four months for that offense. Vartelas traveled to Greece in 2003 to visit his parents. On his return to the United States a week later, he was treated as an inadmissible alien and placed in removal proceedings. Under the law governing at the time of Vartelas’ plea, an alien in his situation could travel abroad for brief periods without jeopardizing his resident alien status. See 8 U. S. C. §1101(a)(13) (1988 ed.), as construed in Rosenberg v. Fleuti, 374 U.S. 449 (1963). In 1996, Congress enacted the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act (IIRIRA), 110Stat. 3009–546. That Act effectively precluded foreign travel by lawful permanent residents who had a conviction like Vartelas’. Under IIRIRA, such aliens, on return from a sojourn abroad, however brief, may be permanently removed from the United States. See 8 U. S. C. §1101(a)(13)(C)(v); §1182(a)(2). This case presents a question of retroactivity not addressed by Congress: As to a lawful permanent resident convicted of a crime before the effective date of IIRIRA, which regime governs, the one in force at the time of the conviction, or IIRIRA? If the former, Vartelas’ brief trip abroad would not disturb his lawful permanent resident status. If the latter, he may be denied reentry. We conclude that the relevant provision of IIRIRA, §1101(a)(13)(C)(v), attached a new disability (denial of reentry) in respect to past events (Vartelas’ pre-IIRIRA offense, plea, and conviction). Guided by the deeply rooted presumption against retroactive legislation, we hold that §1101(a)(13)(C)(v) does not apply to Vartelas’ conviction. The impact of Vartelas’ brief travel abroad on his per- manent resident status is therefore determined not by IIRIRA, but by the legal regime in force at the time of his conviction. I A Before IIRIRA’s passage, United States immigration law established “two types of proceedings in which aliens can be denied the hospitality of the United States: deportation hearings and exclusion hearings.” Landon v. Plasencia, 459 U.S. 21, 25 (1982). Exclusion hearings were held for certain aliens seeking entry to the United States, and deportation hearings were held for certain aliens who had already entered this country. See ibid. Under this regime, “entry” into the United States was defined as “any coming of an alien into the United States, from a foreign port or place.” 8 U. S. C. §1101(a)(13) (1988 ed.). The statute, however, provided an exception for lawful permanent residents; aliens lawfully residing here were not regarded as making an “entry” if their “departure to a foreign port or place . . . was not intended or reasonably to be expected by [them] or [their] presence in a foreign port or place . . . was not voluntary.” Ibid. Interpreting this cryptic provision, we held in Fleuti, 374 U. S., at 461–462, that Congress did not intend to exclude aliens long resident in the United States upon their return from “innocent, casual, and brief excursion[s] . . . outside this country’s borders.” Instead, the Court determined, Congress meant to rank a once-permanent resident as a new entrant only when the foreign excursion “meaningfully interrupt[ed] . . . the alien’s [U. S.] residence.” Id., at 462. Absent such “disrupti[on]” of the alien’s residency, the alien would not be “subject . . . to the consequences of an ‘entry’ into the country on his return.” Ibid.[1] In IIRIRA, Congress abolished the distinction between exclusion and deportation procedures and created a uniform proceeding known as “removal.” See 8 U. S. C. §§1229, 1229a; Judulang v. Holder, 565 U. S. ___, ___ (2011) (slip op., at 1–2). Congress made “admission” the key word, and defined admission to mean “the lawful entry of the alien into the United States after inspec- tion and authorization by an immigration officer.” §1101(a)(13)(A). This alteration, the Board of Immigration Appeals (BIA) determined, superseded Fleuti. See In re Collado-Munoz, 21 I. & N. Dec. 1061, 1065–1066 (1998) (en banc).[2] Thus, lawful permanent residents returning post-IIRIRA, like Vartelas, may be required to “ ‘see[k] an admission’ into the United States, without regard to whether the alien’s departure from the United States might previously have been ranked as ‘brief, casual, and innocent’ under the Fleuti doctrine.” Id., at 1066. An alien seeking “admission” to the United States is subject to various requirements, see, e.g., §1181(a), and cannot gain entry if she is deemed “inadmissible” on any of the numerous grounds set out in the immigration stat- utes, see §1182. Under IIRIRA, lawful permanent residents are regarded as seeking admission into the United States if they fall into any of six enumerated categories. §1101(a)(13)(C). Relevant here, the fifth of these categories covers aliens who “ha[ve] committed an offense identified in section 1182(a)(2) of this title.” §1101(a)(13)(C)(v). Offenses in this category include “a crime involving moral turpitude (other than a purely political offense) or an attempt or conspiracy to commit such a crime.” §1182(a)(2)(A)(i). In sum, before IIRIRA, lawful permanent residents who had committed a crime of moral turpitude could, under the Fleuti doctrine, return from brief trips abroad with- out applying for admission to the United States. Under IIRIRA, such residents are subject to admission procedures, and, potentially, to removal from the United States on grounds of inadmissibility.[3] B Panagis Vartelas, born and raised in Greece, has resided in the United States for over 30 years. Originally admitted on a student visa issued in 1979, Vartelas became a lawful permanent resident in 1989. He currently lives in the New York area and works as a sales manager for a roofing company. In 1992, Vartelas opened an auto body shop in Queens, New York. One of his business partners used the shop’s photocopier to make counterfeit travelers’ checks. Vartelas helped his partner perforate the sheets into individual checks, but Vartelas did not sell the checks or receive any money from the venture. In 1994, he pleaded guilty to conspiracy to make or possess counterfeit securities, in violation of 18 U. S. C. §371. He was sentenced to four months’ incarceration, followed by two years’ supervised release. Vartelas regularly traveled to Greece to visit his aging parents in the years after his 1994 conviction; even after the passage of IIRIRA in 1996, his return to the United States from these visits remained uneventful. In January 2003, however, when Vartelas returned from a week-long trip to Greece, an immigration officer classified him as an alien seeking “admission.” The officer based this classi- fication on Vartelas’ 1994 conviction. See United States ex rel. Volpe v. Smith, 289 U.S. 422, 423 (1933) (counterfeiting ranks as a crime of moral turpitude). At Vartelas’ removal proceedings, his initial attorney conceded removability, and requested discretionary relief from removal under the former §212(c) of the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA). See 8 U. S. C. §1182(c) (1994 ed.) (repealed 1996). This attorney twice failed to appear for hearings and once failed to submit a requested brief. Vartelas engaged a new attorney, who continued to concede removability and to request discretionary relief. The Immigration Judge denied the request for relief, and ordered Vartelas removed to Greece. The BIA affirmed the Immigration Judge’s decision. In July 2008, Vartelas filed with the BIA a timely motion to reopen the removal proceedings, alleging that his previous attorneys were ineffective for, among other lapses, conceding his removability. He sought to withdraw the concession of removability on the ground that IIRIRA’s new “admission” provision, codified at §1101(a)(13), did not reach back to deprive him of lawful resident status based on his pre-IIRIRA conviction. The BIA denied the motion, declaring that Vartelas had not been prejudiced by his lawyers’ performance, for no legal authority prevented the application of IIRIRA to Vartelas’ pre-IIRIRA conduct. The U. S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit affirmed the BIA’s decision, agreeing that Vartelas had failed to show he was prejudiced by his attorneys’ allegedly ineffective performance. Rejecting Vartelas’ argument that IIRIRA operated prospectively and therefore did not govern his case, the Second Circuit reasoned that he had not relied on the prior legal regime at the time he committed the disqualifying crime. See 620 F.3d 108, 118–120 (2010). In so ruling, the Second Circuit created a split with two other Circuits. The Fourth and Ninth Circuits have held that the new §1101(a)(13) may not be applied to lawful permanent residents who committed crimes listed in §1182 (among them, crimes of moral turpitude) prior to IIRIRA’s enactment. See Olatunji v. Ashcroft, 387 F.3d 383 (CA4 2004); Camins v. Gonzales, 500 F.3d 872 (CA9 2007). We granted certiorari, 564 U. S. ___ (2011), to resolve the conflict among the Circuits. II As earlier explained, see supra, at 2–4, pre-IIRIRA, a resident alien who once committed a crime of moral turpitude could travel abroad for short durations without jeopardizing his status as a lawful permanent resident. Under IIRIRA, on return from foreign travel, such an alien is treated as a new arrival to our shores, and may be removed from the United States. Vartelas does not question Congress’ authority to restrict reentry in this manner. Nor does he contend that Congress could not do so retroactively. Instead, he invokes the principle against retro- active legislation, under which courts read laws as prospective in application unless Congress has unambiguously instructed retroactivity. See Landgraf v. USI Film Products, 511 U.S. 244, 263 (1994). The presumption against retroactive legislation, the Court recalled in Landgraf, “embodies a legal doctrine centuries older than our Republic.” Id., at 265. Several provisions of the Constitution, the Court noted, embrace the doctrine, among them, the Ex Post Facto Clause, the Contract Clause, and the Fifth Amendment’s Due Process Clause. Id., at 266. Numerous decisions of this Court repeat the classic formulation Justice Story penned for determining when retrospective application of a law would collide with the doctrine. It would do so, Story stated, when such application would “tak[e] away or impai[r] vested rights acquired under existing laws, or creat[e] a new obligation, impos[e] a new duty, or attac[h] a new disability, in respect to transactions or considerations already past.” Society for Propagation of Gospel v. Wheeler, 22 F. Cas. 756, 767 (No. 13,156) (CC NH 1814). See, e.g., INS v. St. Cyr, 533 U.S. 289, 321 (2001) (invoking Story’s formulation); Hughes Aircraft Co. v. United States ex rel. Schumer, 520 U.S. 939, 947 (1997); Landgraf, 511 U. S., at 283.[4] Vartelas urges that applying IIRIRA to him, rather than the law that existed at the time of his conviction, would attach a “new disability,” effectively a ban on travel outside the United States, “in respect to [events] . . . already past,” i.e., his offense, guilty plea, conviction, and punishment, all occurring prior to the passage of IIRIRA. In evaluating Vartelas’ argument, we note first a matter not disputed by the Government: Congress did not expressly prescribe the temporal reach of the IIRIRA provision in question, 8 U. S. C. §1101(a)(13). See Landgraf, 511 U. S., at 280 (Court asks first “whether Congress has expressly prescribed [new §1101(a)(13)’s] proper reach”); Brief for Respondent 11 (Court’s holding in INS v. St. Cyr, 533 U. S., at 317–320, “compels the conclusion that Congress has not ‘expressly prescribed the statute’s proper reach’ ” (quoting Landgraf, 511 U. S., at 280)).[5] Several other provisions of IIRIRA, in contrast to §1101(a)(13), expressly direct retroactive application, e.g., 8 U. S. C. §1101(a)(43) (IIRIRA’s amendment of the “aggravated felony” definition applies expressly to “conviction[s] . . . entered before, on, or after” the statute’s enactment date (internal quotation marks omitted)). See St. Cyr, 533 U. S., at 319–320, and n. 43 (setting out further examples). Accordingly, we proceed to the dispositive question whether, as Vartelas maintains, application of IIRIRA’s travel restraint to him “would have retroactive effect” Congress did not authorize. See Landgraf, 511 U. S., at 280. Vartelas presents a firm case for application of the antiretroactivity principle. Neither his sentence, nor the immigration law in effect when he was convicted and sentenced, blocked him from occasional visits to his parents in Greece. Current §1101(a)(13)(C)(v), if applied to him, would thus attach “a new disability” to conduct over and done well before the provision’s enactment. Beyond genuine doubt, we note, the restraint §1101(a)(13)(C)(v) places on lawful permanent residents like Vartelas ranks as a “new disability.” Once able to journey abroad to fulfill religious obligations, attend funerals and weddings of family members, tend to vital financial interests, or respond to family emergencies, permanent residents situated as Vartelas is now face potential banishment. We have several times recognized the severity of that sanction. See, e.g., Padilla v. Kentucky, 559 U. S. ___, ___ (2010) (slip op., at 8–9, 16). It is no answer to say, as the Government suggests, that Vartelas could have avoided any adverse consequences if he simply stayed at home in the United States, his residence for 24 years prior to his 2003 visit to his parents in Greece. See Brief in Opposition 13 (Vartelas “could have avoided the application of the statute . . . [by] refrain[ing] from departing from the United States (or from returning to the United States).”); post, at 3. Loss of the ability to travel abroad is itself a harsh penalty,[6] made all the more devastating if it means enduring separation from close family members living abroad. See Brief for Asian American Justice Center et al. as Amici Curiae 16–23 (describing illustrative cases). We have rejected arguments for retroactivity in similar cases, and in cases in which the loss at stake was less momentous. In Chew Heong v. United States, 112 U.S. 536 (1884), a pathmarking decision, the Court confronted the “Chinese Restriction Act,” which barred Chinese laborers from reentering the United States without a certificate issued on their departure. The Court held the reentry bar inapplicable to aliens who had left the country prior to the Act’s passage and tried to return afterward without a certificate. The Act’s text, the Court observed, was not “so clear and positive as to leave no room to doubt [retroactive application] was the intention of the legislature.” Id., at 559. In Landgraf, the question was whether an amendment to Title VII’s ban on employment discrimination authorizing compensatory and punitive damages applied to pre-enactment conduct. The Court held it did not. No doubt the complaint against the employer charged discrimination that violated the Act at the time it occurred. But compensatory and punitive damages were not then available remedies. The later provision for such damages, the Court determined, operated prospectively only, and did not apply to employers whose discriminatory conduct oc- curred prior to the amendment. See 511 U. S., at 280–286. And in Hughes Aircraft, the Court held that a provision removing an affirmative defense to qui tam suits did not apply to pre-enactment fraud. As in Landgraf, the provision attached “a new disability” to past wrongful conduct and therefore could not apply retrospectively unless Congress clearly manifested such an intention. Hughes Aircraft, 520 U. S., at 946–950. Most recently, in St. Cyr, the Court took up the case of an alien who had entered a plea to a deportable offense. At the time of the plea, the alien was eligible for discretionary relief from deportation. IIRIRA, enacted after entry of the plea, removed that eligibility. The Court held that the IIRIRA provision in point could not be applied to the alien, for it attached a “new disability” to the guilty plea and Congress had not instructed such a result. 533 U. S., at 321–323. III The Government, echoed in part by the dissent, argues that no retroactive effect is involved in this case, for the Legislature has not attached any disability to past conduct. Rather, it has made the relevant event the alien’s post-IIRIRA act of returning to the United States. See Brief for Respondent 19–20; post, at 3. We find this argument disingenuous. Vartelas’ return to the United States occasioned his treatment as a new entrant, but the reason for the “new disability” imposed on him was not his lawful foreign travel. It was, indeed, his conviction, pre-IIRIRA, of an offense qualifying as one of moral turpitude. That past misconduct, in other words, not present travel, is the wrongful activity Congress targeted in §1101(a)(13)(C)(v). The Government observes that lower courts have up- held Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act prosecutions that encompassed pre-enactment conduct. See Brief for Respondent 18 (citing United States v. Brown, 555 F.2d 407, 416–417 (CA5 1977), and United States v. Campanale, 518 F.2d 352, 364–365 (CA9 1975) (per curiam)). But those prosecutions depended on criminal activity, i.e., an act of racketeering occuring after the provision’s effective date. Section 1101(a)(13)(C)(v), in contrast, does not require any showing of criminal conduct postdating IIRIRA’s enactment. Fernandez-Vargas v. Gonzales, 548 U.S. 30 (2006), featured by the Government and the dissent, Brief for Respondent 17, 36–37; post, at 3, is similarly inapposite. That case involved 8 U. S. C. §1231(a)(5), an IIRIRA addition, which provides that an alien who reenters the United States after having been removed can be removed again under the same removal order. We held that the provision could be applied to an alien who reentered illegally before IIRIRA’s enactment. Explaining the Court’s decision, we said: “[T]he conduct of remaining in the country . . . is the predicate action; the statute applies to stop an indefinitely continuing violation . . . . It is therefore the alien’s choice to continue his illegal presence . . . after the effective date of the new la[w] that subjects him to the new . . . legal regime, not a past act that he is helpless to undo.” 548 U. S., at 44 (emphasis added). Vartelas, we have several times stressed, engaged in no criminal activity after IIRIRA’s passage. He simply took a brief trip to Greece, anticipating a return without incident as in past visits to his parents. No “indefinitely continuing” crime occurred; instead, Vartelas was apprehended because of a pre-IIRIRA crime he was “helpless to undo.” Ibid. The Government further refers to lower court decisions in cases involving 18 U. S. C. §922(g), which prohibits the possession of firearms by convicted felons. Brief for Respondent 18–19 (citing United States v. Pfeifer, 371 F.3d 430, 436 (CA8 2004), and United States v. Hemmings, 258 F.3d 587, 594 (CA7 2001)). “[L]ongstanding prohibitions on the possession of firearms by felons,” District of Columbia v. Heller, 554 U.S. 570, 626 (2008), however, target a present danger, i.e., the danger posed by felons who bear arms. See, e.g., Pfeifer, 371 F. 3d, at 436 (hazardous conduct that statute targets “occurred after enactment of the statute”); Omnibus Crime Control and Safe Streets Act of 1968, §1201, 82Stat. 236 (noting hazards involved when felons possess firearms).[7] Nor do recidivism sentencing enhancements support the Government’s position. Enhanced punishment imposed for the later offense “ ‘is not to be viewed as . . . [an] additional penalty for the earlier crimes,’ but instead, as a ‘stiffened penalty for the latest crime, which is considered to be an aggravated offense because [it is] a repetitive one.’ ” Witte v. United States, 515 U.S. 389, 400 (1995) (quoting Gryger v. Burke, 334 U.S. 728, 732 (1948)). In Vartelas’ case, however, there is no “aggravated . . . repetitive” offense. There is, in contrast, no post-IIRIRA criminal offense at all. Vartelas’ travel abroad and return are “innocent” acts, see Fleuti, 374 U. S., at 462, burdened only because of his pre-IIRIRA offense. In sum, Vartelas’ brief trip abroad post-IIRIRA involved no criminal infraction. IIRIRA disabled him from leaving the United States and returning as a lawful permanent resident. That new disability rested not on any continuing criminal activity, but on a single crime committed years before IIRIRA’s enactment. The antiretroactivity principle instructs against application of the new proscription to render Vartelas a first-time arrival at the country’s gateway. IV The Second Circuit homed in on the words “committed an offense” in §1101(a)(13)(C)(v) in determining that the change IIRIRA wrought had no retroactive effect. 620 F. 3d, at 119–121. It matters not that Vartelas may have relied on the prospect of continuing visits to Greece in deciding to plead guilty, the court reasoned. “[I]t would border on the absurd,” the court observed, “to suggest that Vartelas committed his counterfeiting crime in reliance on the immigration laws.” Id., at 120. This reasoning is doubly flawed. As the Government acknowledges, “th[is] Court has not required a party challenging the application of a statute to show [he relied on prior law] in structuring his conduct.” Brief for Respondent 25–26. In Landgraf, for example, the issue was the retroactivity of compensatory and punitive damages as remedies for employment discrimination. “[C]oncerns of . . . upsetting expectations are attenuated in the case of intentional employment discrimination,” the Court noted, for such discrimination “has been unlawful for more than a generation.” 511 U. S., at 282, n. 35. But “[e]ven when the conduct in question is morally reprehensible or illegal,” the Court added, “a degree of unfairness is inherent whenever the law imposes additional burdens based on conduct that occurred in the past.” Id., at 283, n. 35. And in Hughes Aircraft, the Court found that Congress’ 1986 removal of a defense to a qui tam action did not apply to pre-1986 conduct in light of the presumption against retroactivity. 520 U. S., at 941–942.[8] As in Landgraf, the relevant conduct (submitting a false claim) had been unlawful for decades. See 520 U. S., at 947. The operative presumption, after all, is that Congress intends its laws to govern prospectively only. See supra, at 7. “It is a strange ‘presumption,’ ” the Third Circuit commented, “that arises only on . . . a showing [of] actual reliance.” Ponnapula v. Ashcroft, 373 F.3d 480, 491 (2004). The essential inquiry, as stated in Landgraf, 511 U. S., at 269–270, is “whether the new provision attaches new legal consequences to events completed before its enactment.” That is just what occurred here. In any event, Vartelas likely relied on then-existing immigration law. While the presumption against retroactive application of statutes does not require a showing of detrimental reliance, see Olatunji, 387 F. 3d, at 389–395, reasonable reliance has been noted among the “familiar considerations” animating the presumption, see Landgraf, 511 U. S., at 270 (presumption reflects “familiar consid- erations of fair notice, reasonable reliance, and settled expectations”). Although not a necessary predicate for in- voking the antiretroactivity principle, the likelihood of reliance on prior law strengthens the case for reading a newly enacted law prospectively. See Olatunji, 387 F. 3d, at 393 (discussing St. Cyr). St. Cyr is illustrative. That case involved a lawful permanent resident who pleaded guilty to a criminal charge that made him deportable. Under the immigration law in effect when he was convicted, he would have been eligible to apply for a waiver of deportation. But his removal proceeding was commenced after Congress, in IIRIRA, withdrew that dispensation. Disallowance of discretionary waivers, the Court recognized, “attache[d] a new disability, in respect to transactions or considerations already past.” 533 U. S., at 321 (internal quotation marks omitted). Aliens like St. Cyr, the Court observed, “almost certainly relied upon th[e] likelihood [of receiving discretionary relief] in deciding [to plead guilty, thereby] forgo[ing] their right to a trial.” Id., at 325.[9] Hence, applying the IIRIRA withdrawal to St. Cyr would have an “obvious and severe retroactive effect.” Ibid. Because Congress made no such intention plain, ibid., n. 55, we held that the prior law, permitting relief from deportation, governed St. Cyr’s case. As to retroactivity, one might think Vartelas’ case even easier than St. Cyr’s. St. Cyr could seek the Attorney General’s discretionary dispensation. Vartelas, under Fleuti, was free, without seeking an official’s permission, to make trips of short duration to see and assist his parents in Greece.[10] The Second Circuit thought otherwise, compounding its initial misperception (treating reliance as essential to application of the antiretroactivity principle). The deportation provision involved in St. Cyr, 8 U. S. C. §1229b(a)(3), referred to the alien’s “convict[ion]” of a crime, while the statutory words sub judice in Vartelas’ case were “committed an offense.” §1101(a)(13)(C)(v); see supra, at 12–13.[11] The practical difference, so far as retroactivity is concerned, escapes from our grasp. Ordinarily, to determine whether there is clear and convincing evidence that an alien has committed a qualifying crime, the immigration officer at the border would check the alien’s records for a conviction. He would not call into session a piepowder court[12] to entertain a plea or conduct a trial. Satisfied that Vartelas’ case is at least as clear as St. Cyr’s for declining to apply a new law retroactively, we hold that Fleuti continues to govern Vartelas’ short-term travel. * * * For the reasons stated, the judgment of the Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit is reversed, and the case is remanded for further proceedings consistent with this opinion. It is so ordered. Notes 1 The dissent appears driven, in no small measure, by its dim view of the Court’s opinion in Fleuti. See post, at 6 (“same instinct” operative in Fleuti and this case). 2 The BIA determined that the Fleuti doctrine no longer held sway because it was rooted in the “no longer existent definition of ‘entry’ in [the INA].” 21 I. & N. Dec., at 1065. The Board also noted that “Congress . . . amended the law to expressly preserve some, but not all, of the Fleuti doctrine” when it provided that a lawful permanent resident absent from the United States for less than 180 days would not be regarded as seeking an admission except in certain enumerated circumstances, among them, prior commission of a crime of moral turpitude. See ibid. (citing 8 U. S. C. §1101(a)(13)(C)(ii)). Vartelas does not challenge the ruling in Collado-Munoz. We therefore assume, but do not decide, that IIRIRA’s amendments to §1101(a)(13)(A) abrogated Fleuti. 3 Although IIRIRA created a uniform removal procedure for both excludable and deportable aliens, the list of criminal offenses that subject aliens to exclusion remains separate from the list of offenses that render an alien deportable. These lists are “sometimes overlapping and sometimes divergent.” Judulang v. Holder, 565 U. S. ___, ___ (2011) (slip op., at 2). Pertinent here, although a single crime involving moral turpitude may render an alien inadmissible, it would not render her deportable. See 8 U. S. C. §1182(a)(2) (listing excludable crimes); §1227(a)(2) (listing deportable crimes). 4 The dissent asserts that Justice Story’s opinion “bear[s] no relation to the presumption against retroactivity.” Post, at 6. That is a bold statement in view of this Court’s many references to Justice Story’s formulation in cases involving the presumption that statutes operate only prospectively in the absence of a clear congressional statement to the contrary. 5 In St. Cyr, 533 U. S., at 317–320, we rejected the Government’s contention that Congress directed retroactive application of IIRIRA in its entirety. 6 See Kent v. Dulles, 357 U.S. 116, 126 (1958) (“Freedom of movement across frontiers . . . may be as close to the heart of the individual as the choice of what he eats, or wears, or reads.”); Aptheker v. Secretary of State, 378 U.S. 500, 519–520 (1964) (Douglas, J., concurring) (right to travel, “at home and abroad, is important for . . . business[,] . . . cul-tural, political, and social activities—for all the commingling which gre-garious man enjoys”). 7 The dissent, see post, at 6, notes two statutes of the same genre: laws prohibiting persons convicted of a sex crime against a victim under 16 years of age from working in jobs involving frequent contact with minors, and laws prohibiting a person “who has been adjudicated as a mental defective or who has been committed to a mental insti-tution” from possessing guns, 18 U. S. C. §922(g)(4). The dissent is correct that these statutes do not operate retroactively. Rather, they address dangers that arise postenactment: sex offenders with a history of child molestation working in close proximity to children, and men-tally unstable persons purchasing guns. The act of flying to Greece, in contrast, does not render a lawful permanent resident like Vartelas hazardous. Nor is it plausible that Congress’ solution to the problem of dangerous lawful permanent residents would be to pass a law that would deter such persons from ever leaving the United States. As for student loans, it is unlikely that the provision noted by the dissent, 20 U. S. C. §1091(r), would raise retroactivity questions in the first place. The statute has a prospective thrust. It concerns “[s]uspension of eligibility” when a student receiving a college loan commits a drug crime. The suspension runs “from the date of th[e] conviction” for specified periods, e.g., two years for a second offense of possession. Moreover, eligibility may be restored before the period of ineligibility ends if the student establishes, under prescribed criteria, his rehabilitation. 8 The deleted defense permitted qui tam defendants to escape liability if the information on which a private plaintiff (relator) relied was already in the Government’s possession. Detrimental reliance was hardly apparent, for the Government, both before and after the statu-tory change, could bring suit with that information, and “the monetary liability faced by [a False Claims Act] defendant is the same whether the action is brought by the Government or by a qui tam relator.” 520 U. S., at 948. 9 “There can be little doubt,” the Court noted in St. Cyr, “that, asa general matter, alien defendants considering whether to enter into a plea agreement are acutely aware of the immigration consequences of their convictions.” 533 U. S., at 322. Indeed, “[p]reserving [their] right to remain in the United States may be more important to [them] than any potential jail sentence.” Ibid. (internal quotation marks omitted). See Padilla v. Kentucky, 559 U. S. ___, ___ (2010) (slip op., at 9–11) (holding that counsel has a duty under the Sixth Amendment to inform a noncitizen defendant that his plea would make him eligible for deportation). 10 Armed with knowledge that a guilty plea would preclude travel abroad, aliens like Vartelas might endeavor to negotiate a plea to a nonexcludable offense—in Vartelas’ case, e.g., possession of counterfeit securities—or exercise a right to trial. 11 After the words “committed an offense,” §1101(a)(13)(C)(v)’s next words are “identified in section 1182(a)(2).” That section refers to “any alien convicted of, or who admits having committed,” inter alia, “a crime involving moral turpitude.” §1182(a)(2)(A)(i)(I) (emphasis added). The entire §1101(a)(13)(C)(v) phrase “committed an offense identified in section 1182(a)(2),” on straightforward reading, appears to advert to a lawful permanent resident who has been convicted of an offense under §1182(a)(2) (or admits to one). 12 Piepowder (“dusty feet”) courts were temporary mercantile courts held at trade fairs in Medieval Europe; local merchants and guild members would assemble to hear commercial disputes. These courts provided fast and informal resolution of trade conflicts, settling cases “while the merchants’ feet were still dusty.” Callahan, Medieval Church Norms and Fiduciary Duties in Partnership, 26 Cardozo L. Rev. 215, 235, and n. 99 (2004) (internal quotation marks omitted) (quoting H. Berman, Law and Revolution: The Formation of the Western Legal Tradition 347 (1983)).

567.US.2011_10-8505

At petitioner’s bench trial for rape, Sandra Lambatos, a forensic specialist at the Illinois State Police lab, testified that she matched a DNA profile produced by an outside laboratory, Cellmark, to a profile the state lab produced using a sample of petitioner’s blood. She testified that Cellmark was an accredited laboratory and that business records showed that vaginal swabs taken from the victim, L. J., were sent to Cellmark and returned. She offered no other statement for the purpose of identifying the sample used for Cellmark’s profile or establishing how Cellmark handled or tested the sample. Nor did she vouch for the accuracy of Cellmark’s profile. The defense moved to exclude, on Confrontation Clause grounds, Lambatos’ testimony insofar as it implicated events at Cellmark, but the prosecution said that petitioner’s confrontation rights were satisfied because he had the opportunity to cross-examine the expert who had testified as to the match. The prosecutor argued that Illinois Rule of Evidence 703 permitted an expert to disclose facts on which the expert’s opinion is based even if the expert is not competent to testify to those underlying facts, and that any deficiency went to the weight of the evidence, not its admissibility. The trial court admitted the evidence and found petitioner guilty. Both the Illinois Court of Appeals and the State Supreme Court affirmed, concluding that Lambatos’ testimony did not violate petitioner’s confrontation rights because Cellmark’s report was not offered into evidence to prove the truth of the matter asserted. Held: The judgment is affirmed. 238 Ill. 2d 125, 939 N.E.2d 268, affirmed. Justice Alito, joined by The Chief Justice, Justice Kennedy, and Justice Breyer, concluded that the form of expert testimony given in this case does not violate the Confrontation Clause. Pp. 10–33. (a) Before Crawford v. Washington, 541 U.S. 36 , this Court took the view that the Confrontation Clause did not bar the admission of out-of-court statements that fell within a firmly rooted exception to the hearsay rule. In Crawford, the Court held that such statements could be “admitted only where the declarant is unavailable, and only where the defendant has had a prior opportunity to cross-examine.” Id., at 59. In both Melendez-Diaz v. Massachusetts, 557 U.S. 305 , and Bullcoming v. New Mexico, 564 U. S. ___, two of the many cases that have arisen from Crawford, this Court ruled that scientific reports could not be used as substantive evidence against a defendant unless the analyst who prepared and certified the report was subject to confrontation. In each case, the report at issue “contain[ed] a testimonial certification, made in order to prove a fact at a criminal trial.” 564 U. S., at ___–___. Here, in contrast, the question is the constitutionality of allowing an expert witness to discuss others’ testimonial statements if those statements are not themselves admitted as evidence. Pp. 10–13. (b) An expert witness may voice an opinion based on facts concerning the events at issue even if the expert lacks first-hand knowledge of those facts. A long tradition in American courts permits an expert to testify in the form of a “hypothetical question,” where the expert assumes the truth of factual predicates and then offers testimony based on those assumptions. See Forsyth v. Doolittle, 120 U.S. 73 . Modern evidence rules dispense with the need for hypothetical questions and permit an expert to base an opinion on facts “made known to the expert at or before the hearing,” though such reliance does not constitute admissible evidence of the underlying information. Ill. Rule Evid. 703; Fed. Rule Evid. 703. Both Illinois and Federal Rules bar an expert from disclosing the inadmissible evidence in jury trials but not in bench trials. This is important because Crawford, while departing from prior Confrontation Clause precedent in other respects, reaffirmed the proposition that the Clause “does not bar the use of testimonial statements for purposes other than establishing the truth of the matter asserted.” 541 U. S., at 59, n. 9. Pp. 13–16. (c) For Confrontation Clause purposes, the references to Cellmark in the trial record either were not hearsay or were not offered for the truth of the matter asserted. Pp. 16–27. (1) Petitioner’s confrontation right was not violated when Lambatos answered “yes” to a question about whether there was a match between the DNA profile “found in semen from the vaginal swabs of [L. J.]” and the one identified as petitioner’s. Under Illinois law, this putatively offending phrase was not admissible for the purpose of proving the truth of the matter asserted—i.e., that the matching DNA profile was “found in semen from the vaginal swabs.” Rather, that fact was a mere premise of the prosecutor’s question, and Lambatos simply assumed it to be true in giving her answer. Because this was a bench trial, the Court assumes that the trial judge understood that the testimony was not admissible to prove the truth of the matter asserted. It is also unlikely that the judge took the testimony as providing chain-of-custody evidence. The record does not support such an understanding; no trial judge is likely to be so confused; and the admissible evidence left little room for argument that Cellmark’s sample came from any source but L. J.’s swabs, since the profile matched the very man she identified in a lineup and at trial as her attacker. Pp. 16–21. (2) Nor did the substance of Cellmark’s report need to be introduced in order to show that Cellmark’s profile was based on the semen in L. J.’s swabs or that its procedures were reliable. The issue here is whether petitioner’s confrontation right was violated, not whether the State offered sufficient foundational evidence to support the admission of Lambatos’ opinion. If there were no proof that Cellmark’s profile was accurate, Lambatos’ testimony would be irrelevant, but the Confrontation Clause bars not the admission of irrelevant evidence, but the admission of testimonial statements by declarants who are not subject to cross-examination. Here, the trial record does not lack admissible evidence with respect to the source of the sample tested by Cellmark or the reliability of its profile. The State offered conventional chain-of-custody evidence, and the match between Cellmark’s profile and petitioner’s was telling confirmation that Cellmark’s profile was deduced from the semen on L. J.’s swabs. The match also provided strong circumstantial evidence about the reliability of Cellmark’s work. Pp. 21–25. (3) This conclusion is consistent with Bullcoming and Melendez-Diaz, where forensic reports were introduced for the purpose of proving the truth of what they asserted. In contrast, Cellmark’s report was considered for the limited purpose of seeing whether it matched something else, and the relevance of that match was established by independent circumstantial evidence showing that the report was based on a sample from the crime scene. There are at least four safeguards to prevent abuses in such situations. First, trial courts can screen out experts who would act as conduits for hearsay by strictly enforcing the requirement that experts display genuine “scientific, technical, or other specialized knowledge” to help the trier of fact understand the evidence or determine a fact at issue. Fed. Rule Evid. 702(a). Second, experts are generally precluded from disclosing inadmissible evidence to a jury. Third, if such evidence is disclosed, a trial judge may instruct the jury that the statements cannot be accepted for their truth, and that an expert’s opinion is only as good as the independent evidence establishing its underlying premises. Fourth, if the prosecution cannot muster independent admissible evidence to prove foundational facts, the expert’s testimony cannot be given weight by the trier of fact. Pp. 25–27. (e) Even if Cellmark’s report had been introduced for its truth, there would have been no Confrontation Clause violation. The Clause refers to testimony by “witnesses against” an accused, prohibiting modern-day practices that are tantamount to the abuses that gave rise to the confrontation right, namely, (a) out-of-court statements having the primary purpose of accusing a targeted individual of engaging in criminal conduct, and (b) formalized statements such as affidavits, depositions, prior testimony, or confessions. These characteristics were present in every post-Crawford case in which a Confrontation Clause violation has been found, except for Hammon v. Indiana, 547 U.S. 813 . But, even in Hammon, the particular statement, elicited during police interrogation, had the primary purpose of accusing a targeted individual. A person who makes a statement to resolve an ongoing emergency is not like a trial witness because the declarant’s purpose is to bring an end to an ongoing threat. Michigan v. Bryant, 562 U. S. ___, ___. Such a statement’s admissibility “is the concern of . . . rules of evidence, not the Confrontation Clause. ” Id., ___–___ . The forensic reports in Melendez-Diaz and Bullcoming ran afoul of the Confrontation Clause because they were the equivalent of affidavits made for the purpose of proving a particular criminal defendant’s guilt. But the Cellmark report’s primary purpose was to catch a dangerous rapist who was still at large, not to obtain evidence for use against petitioner, who was neither in custody nor under suspicion at that time. Nor could anyone at Cellmark possibly know that the profile would inculpate petitioner. There was thus no “prospect of fabrication” and no incentive to produce anything other than a scientifically sound and reliable profile. Bryant, supra, at ___, ___. Lab technicians producing a DNA profile generally have no way of knowing whether it will turn out to be incriminating, exonerating, or both. And with numerous technicians working on a profile, it is likely that each technician’s sole purpose is to perform a task in accordance with accepted procedures. The knowledge that defects in a DNA profile may be detected from the profile itself provides a further safeguard. Pp. 28–33. Justice Thomas concluded that the disclosure of Cellmark’s out-of-court statements through Lambatos’ expert testimony did not violate the Confrontation Clause solely because Cellmark’s statements lacked the requisite “formality and solemnity” to be considered “ ‘testimonial,’ ” see Michigan v. Bryant, 562 U. S. ___, ___ (Thomas, J., concurring in judgment). Pp. 1–16. (a) There was no plausible reason for the introduction of Cellmark’s statements other than to establish their truth. Pp. 1–8. (1) Illinois Rule of Evidence 703 permits an expert to base his opinion on facts about which he lacks personal knowledge and to disclose those facts to the trier of fact. Under Illinois law, such facts are not admitted for their truth, but only to explain the basis of the expert’s opinion. See People v. Pasch, 152 Ill. 2d 133. But state evidence rules do not trump a defendant’s constitutional right to confrontation. This Court ensures that an out-of-court statement was introduced for a “legitimate, nonhearsay purpose” before relying on the not-for-its-truth rationale to dismiss the Confrontation Clause’s application. See Tennessee v. Street, 471 U.S. 409 . Statements introduced to explain the basis of an expert’s opinion are not introduced for a plausible nonhearsay purpose because, to use the basis testimony in evaluating the expert’s opinion, the factfinder must consider the truth of the basis testimony. This commonsense conclusion is not undermined by any historical practice exempting expert basis testimony from the rigors of the Confrontation Clause. Before the Federal Rules of Evidence were adopted in 1975, an expert could render an opinion based only on facts that the expert had personally perceived or learned at trial. In 1975, that universe of facts was expanded to include facts that the expert learned out of court by means other than his own perception. The disclosure of such facts raises Confrontation Clause concerns. Pp. 2–5. (2) Those concerns are fully applicable here. In concluding that petitioner’s DNA profile matched the profile derived from L. J.’s swabs, Lambatos relied on Cellmark’s out-of-court statements that its profile was in fact derived from those swabs, rather than from some other source. Thus, the validity of Lambatos’ opinion ultimately turned on the truth of Cellmark’s statements. Pp. 5–7. (b) These statements, however, were not “testimonial” for purposes of the Confrontation Clause, which “applies to ‘witnesses’ against the accused—in other words, those who ‘bear testimony.’ ” Crawford v. Washington, 541 U.S. 36 . “ ‘Testimony,’ ” in turn, is “ ‘[a] solemn declaration or affirmation made for the purpose of establishing or proving some fact.’ ” Ibid. In light of its text, the Confrontation Clause regulates only the use of statements bearing “indicia of solemnity.” Davis v. Washington, 547 U.S. 813 –837, 840 (opinion of Thomas, J.). This test comports with history because solemnity marked the practices that the Confrontation Clause was designed to eliminate, namely, the ex parte examination of witnesses under English bail and committal statutes. See id., at 835. Accordingly, the Clause reaches “formalized testimonial materials,” such as depositions, affidavits, and prior testimony, or statements resulting from “formalized dialogue,” such as custodial interrogation. Bryant, supra, at ___. Applying these principles, Cellmark’s report is not a statement by a “witnes[s]” under the Confrontation Clause. It lacks the solemnity of an affidavit or deposition, for it is neither a sworn nor a certified declaration of fact. And, although it was produced at the request of law enforcement, it was not the product of formalized dialogue resembling custodial interrogation. Melendez-Diaz, 557 U.S. 305 , and Bullcoming v. New Mexico, 564 U. S. ___, distinguished. Pp. 8–15. Alito, J., announced the judgment of the Court and delivered an opinion, in which Roberts, C. J., and Kennedy and Breyer, JJ., joined. Breyer, J., filed a concurring opinion. Thomas, J., filed an opinion concurring in the judgment. Kagan, J., filed a dissenting opinion, in which Scalia, Ginsburg, and Sotomayor, JJ., joined.

. There is a “well-established presumption” that “the judge [has] adhered to basic rules of procedure,” when the judge is acting as a factfinder. Id., at 346–347 (emphasis added). See also Gentile v. State Bar of Nev., 501 U.S. 1030, 1078 (1991) (Rehnquist, C. J., dissenting). This feature of Illinois and federal law is important because Crawford, while departing from prior Confrontation Clause precedent in other respects, took pains to reaffirm the proposition that the Confrontation Clause “does not bar the use of testimonial statements for purposes other than establishing the truth of the matter asserted.” 541 U. S., at 59–60, n. 9 (citing Tennessee v. Street, 471 U.S. 409 ). In Street, the defendant claimed that the police had coerced him into adopting the confession of his alleged accomplice. The prosecution sought to rebut this claim by showing that the defendant’s confession differed significantly from the accomplice’s. Although the accomplice’s confession was clearly a testimonial statement, the Court held that the jurors could hear it as long as they were instructed to consider that confession not for its truth, but only for the “distinctive and limited purpose” of comparing it to the defendant’s confession, to see whether the two were identical. Id., at 417. III A In order to assess petitioner’s Confrontation Clause argument, it is helpful to inventory exactly what Lambatos said on the stand about Cellmark. She testified to the truth of the following matters: Cellmark was an accredited lab, App. 49; the ISP occasionally sent forensic samples to Cellmark for DNA testing, ibid.; according to shipping manifests admitted into evidence, the ISP lab sent vaginal swabs taken from the victim to Cellmark and later received those swabs back from Cellmark, id., at 52–55; and, finally, the Cellmark DNA profile matched a profile produced by the ISP lab from a sample of petitioner’s blood, id., at 55–56. Lambatos had personal knowledge of all of these matters, and therefore none of this testimony in- fringed petitioner’s confrontation right. Lambatos did not testify to the truth of any other matter concerning Cellmark. She made no other reference to the Cellmark report, which was not admitted into evidence and was not seen by the trier of fact. Nor did she testify to anything that was done at the Cellmark lab, and she did not vouch for the quality of Cellmark’s work. B The principal argument advanced to show a Confrontation Clause violation concerns the phrase that Lambatos used when she referred to the DNA profile that the ISP lab received from Cellmark. This argument is developed most fully in the dissenting opinion, and therefore we refer to the dissent’s discussion of this issue. In the view of the dissent, the following is the critical portion of Lambatos’ testimony, with the particular words that the dissent finds objectionable italicized: “Q Was there a computer match generated of the male DNA profile found in semen from the vaginal swabs of [L.J.] to a male DNA profile that had been identified as having originated from Sandy Williams? “A Yes, there was.” Post, at 7 (opinion of Kagan, J.) (quoting App. 56; emphasis added). According to the dissent, the italicized phrase violated petitioner’s confrontation right because Lambatos lacked personal knowledge that the profile produced by Cellmark was based on the vaginal swabs taken from the victim, L. J. As the dissent acknowledges, there would have been “nothing wrong with Lambatos’s testifying that two DNA profiles—the one shown in the Cellmark report and the one derived from Williams’s blood—matched each other; that was a straightforward application of Lambatos’s expertise.” Post, at 12. Thus, if Lambatos’ testimony had been slightly modified as follows, the dissent would see no problem: “Q Was there a computer match generated of the male DNA profile produced by Cellmark found in semen from the vaginal swabs of [L.J.] to a male DNA profile that had been identified as having originated from Sandy Williams? “A Yes, there was.” [ 3 ] The defect in this argument is that under Illinois law (like federal law) it is clear that the putatively offending phrase in Lambatos’ testimony was not admissible for the purpose of proving the truth of the matter asserted—i.e., that the matching DNA profile was “found in semen from the vaginal swabs.” Rather, that fact was a mere premise of the prosecutor’s question, and Lambatos simply assumed that premise to be true when she gave her answer indicating that there was a match between the two DNA profiles. There is no reason to think that the trier of fact took Lambatos’ answer as substantive evidence to establish where the DNA profiles came from. The dissent’s argument would have force if petitioner had elected to have a jury trial. In that event, there would have been a danger of the jury’s taking Lambatos’ testimony as proof that the Cellmark profile was derived from the sample obtained from the victim’s vaginal swabs. Absent an evaluation of the risk of juror confusion and careful jury instructions, the testimony could not have gone to the jury. This case, however, involves a bench trial and we must assume that the trial judge understood that the portion of Lambatos’ testimony to which the dissent objects was not admissible to prove the truth of the matter asserted. [ 4 ] The dissent, on the other hand, reaches the truly remarkable conclusion that the wording of Lambatos’ testimony confused the trial judge. Were it not for that wording, the argument goes, the judge might have found that the prosecution failed to introduce sufficient admissible evidence to show that the Cellmark profile was derived from the sample taken from the victim, and the judge might have disregarded the DNA evidence. This argument reflects a profound lack of respect for the acumen of the trial judge. [ 5 ] To begin, the dissent’s argument finds no support in the trial record. After defense counsel objected to Lambatos’ testimony, the prosecutor made clear that she was asking Lambatos only about “her own testing based on [DNA] information” that she had received from Cellmark. App. 56. Recognizing that Lambatos’ testimony would carry weight only if the underlying premises could be established, the judge noted that “the issue is . . . what weight do you give the test [performed by Lambatos], not do you exclude it.” Id., at 94. This echoes the old statement in Beckwith that an expert’s opinion based on disputed premises “might not go for much; but still it [is] admissible evidence.” 1 Camp., at 117, 170 Eng. Rep., at 897. Both the Illinois Appellate Court and the Illinois Supreme Court viewed the record in this way, and we see no ground for disagreement. [ 6 ] Second, it is extraordinarily unlikely that any trial judge would be confused in the way that the dissent posits. That Lambatos was not competent to testify to the chain of custody of the sample taken from the victim was a point that any trial judge or attorney would immediately understand. Lambatos, after all, had absolutely nothing to do with the collection of the sample from the victim, its subsequent handling or preservation by the police in Illinois, or its shipment to and receipt by Cellmark. No trial judge would take Lambatos’ testimony as furnishing “the missing link” in the State’s evidence regarding the identity of the sample that Cellmark tested. See post, at 6 (opinion of Kagan, J.). Third, the admissible evidence left little room for argument that the sample tested by Cellmark came from any source other than the victim’s vaginal swabs. [ 7 ] This is so because there is simply no plausible explanation for how Cellmark could have produced a DNA profile that matched Williams’ if Cellmark had tested any sample other than the one taken from the victim. If any other items that might have contained Williams’ DNA had been sent to Cellmark or were otherwise in Cellmark’s possession, there would have been a chance of a mix-up or of cross-contamination. See District Attorney’s Office for Third Judicial Dist. v. Osborne, 557 U.S. 52, 80 (2009) (Alito, J., concurring). But there is absolutely nothing to suggest that Cellmark had any such items. Thus, the fact that the Cellmark profile matched Williams—the very man whom the victim identified in a lineup and at trial as her at- tacker—was itself striking confirmation that the sample that Cellmark tested was the sample taken from the victim’s vaginal swabs. For these reasons, it is fanciful to suggest that the trial judge took Lambatos’ testimony as providing critical chain-of-custody evidence. C Other than the phrase that Lambatos used in referring to the Cellmark profile, no specific passage in the trial record has been identified as violating the Confrontation Clause, but it is nevertheless suggested that the State somehow introduced “the substance of Cellmark’s report into evidence.” Post, at 8 (Kagan, J., dissenting). The main impetus for this argument appears to be the (erroneous) view that unless the substance of the report was sneaked in, there would be insufficient evidence in the record on two critical points: first, that the Cellmark profile was based on the semen in the victim’s vaginal swabs and, second, that Cellmark’s procedures were reli- able. This argument is both legally irrelevant for present purposes and factually incorrect. As to legal relevance, the question before us is whether petitioner’s Sixth Amendment confrontation right was violated, not whether the State offered sufficient foundational evidence to support the admission of Lambatos’ opinion about the DNA match. In order to prove these underlying facts, the prosecution relied on circumstantial evidence, and the Illinois courts found that this evidence was sufficient to satisfy state-law requirements regarding proof of foundational facts. See 385 Ill. App. 3d, at 366–368, 895 N. E. 2d, at 967–968; 238 Ill. 2d, at 138, 939 N. E. 2d, at 275. We cannot review that interpretation and application of Illinois law. Thus, even if the record did not contain any evidence that could rationally support a finding that Cellmark produced a scientifically reliable DNA profile based on L. J.’s vaginal swab, that would not establish a Confrontation Clause violation. If there were no proof that Cellmark produced an accurate profile based on that sample, Lambatos’ testimony regarding the match would be irrelevant, but the Confrontation Clause, as interpreted in Crawford, does not bar the admission of irrelevant evidence, only testimonial statements by declarants who are not subject to cross-examination. [ 8 ] It is not correct, however, that the trial record lacks admissible evidence with respect to the source of the sam- ple that Cellmark tested or the reliability of the Cell- mark profile. As to the source of the sample, the State offered conventional chain-of-custody evidence, namely, the testimony of the physician who obtained the vaginal swabs, the testimony of the police employees who handled and kept custody of that evidence until it was sent to Cellmark, and the shipping manifests, which provided evidence that the swabs were sent to Cellmark and then returned to the ISP lab. In addition, as already discussed, the match between the Cellmark profile and petitioner’s profile was itself telling confirmation that the Cellmark profile was deduced from the semen on the vaginal swabs. This match also provided strong circumstantial evidence regarding the reliability of Cellmark’s work. Assuming (for the reasons discussed above) that the Cellmark profile was based on the semen on the vaginal swabs, how could shoddy or dishonest work in the Cellmark lab [ 9 ] have resulted in the production of a DNA profile that just so happened to match petitioner’s? If the semen found on the vaginal swabs was not petitioner’s and thus had an en- tirely different DNA profile, how could sloppy work in the Cellmark lab have transformed that entirely different profile into one that matched petitioner’s? And without access to any other sample of petitioner’s DNA (and recall that petitioner was not even under suspicion at this time), how could a dishonest lab technician have substituted pe- titioner’s DNA profile? Under the circumstances of this case, it was surely permissible for the trier of fact to infer that the odds of any of this were exceedingly low. This analysis reveals that much of the dissent’s argument rests on a very clear error. The dissent argues that Lambatos’ testimony could be “true” only if the predicate facts asserted in the Cellmark report were true, and therefore Lambatos’ reference to the report must have been used for the purpose of proving the truth of those facts. See post, at 10–11. But the truth of Lambatos’ testimony, properly understood, was not dependent on the truth of any predicate facts. Lambatos testified that two DNA profiles matched. The correctness of this expert opinion, which the defense was able to test on cross-examination, was not in any way dependent on the origin of the samples from which the profiles were derived. Of course, Lambatos’ opinion would have lacked probative value if the prosecution had not introduced other evidence to establish the provenance of the profiles, but that has nothing to do with the truth of her testimony. The dissent is similarly mistaken in its contention that the Cellmark report “was offered for its truth because that is all such ‘basis evidence’ can be offered for.” Post, at 13; see also post, at 3 (Thomas, J., concurring in judgment) (“[S]tatements introduced to explain the basis of an expert’s opinion are not introduced for a plausible nonhearsay purpose”). This view is directly contrary to the current version of Rule 703 of the Federal Rules of Evidence, which this Court approved and sent to Congress in 2000. Under that Rule, “basis evidence” that is not admissible for its truth may be disclosed even in a jury trial under appropriate circumstances. The purpose for allowing this disclosure is that it may “assis[t] the jury to evaluate the expert’s opinion.” Advisory Committee’s 2000 Notes on Fed. Rule Evid. 703, 28 U. S. C. App., p. 361. The Rule 703 approach, which was controversial when adopted, [ 10 ] is based on the idea that the disclosure of basis evidence can help the factfinder understand the expert’s thought process and determine what weight to give to the expert’s opinion. For example, if the factfinder were to suspect that the expert relied on factual premises with no support in the record, or that the expert drew an unwarranted inference from the premises on which the expert relied, then the probativeness or credibility of the expert’s opinion would be seriously undermined. The purpose of disclosing the facts on which the expert relied is to allay these fears—to show that the expert’s reasoning was not illogical, and that the weight of the expert’s opinion does not depend on factual premises unsupported by other evidence in the record—not to prove the truth of the underlying facts. Perhaps because it cannot seriously dispute the legit- imate nonhearsay purpose of illuminating the expert’s thought process, the dissent resorts to the last-ditch argument that, after all, it really does not matter whether Lambatos’ statement regarding the source of the Cellmark report was admitted for its truth. The dissent concedes that “the trial judge might have ignored Lambatos’s statement about the Cellmark report,” but nonetheless maintains that “the admission of that statement violated the Confrontation Clause even if the judge ultimately put it aside.” Post, at 15, n. 2. But in a bench trial, it is not necessary for the judge to stop and make a formal statement on the record regarding the limited reason for which the testimony is admitted. If the judge does not consider the testimony for its truth, the effect is precisely the same. Thus, if the trial judge in this case did not rely on the statement in question for its truth, there is simply no way around the proviso in Crawford that the Confrontation Clause applies only to out-of-court statements that are “use[d]” to “establis[h] the truth of the matter asserted.” 541 U. S., at 59–60, n. 9 (citing Street, 471 U.S. 409 ). For all these reasons, we conclude that petitioner’s Sixth Amendment confrontation right was not violated. D This conclusion is entirely consistent with Bullcoming and Melendez-Diaz. In those cases, the forensic reports were introduced into evidence, and there is no question that this was done for the purpose of proving the truth of what they asserted: in Bullcoming that the defendant’s blood alcohol level exceeded the legal limit and in Melendez- Diaz that the substance in question contained cocaine. Nothing comparable happened here. In this case, the Cellmark report was not introduced into evidence. An expert witness referred to the report not to prove the truth of the matter asserted in the report, i.e., that the report contained an accurate profile of the perpetrator’s DNA, but only to establish that the report contained a DNA profile that matched the DNA profile deduced from petitioner’s blood. Thus, just as in Street, the report was not to be considered for its truth but only for the “distinctive and limited purpose” of seeing whether it matched something else. 471 U. S., at 417. The relevance of the match was then established by independent circumstantial evidence showing that the Cellmark report was based on a forensic sample taken from the scene of the crime. Our conclusion will not open the door for the kind of abuses suggested by some of petitioner’s amici and the dissent. See post, at 10–11; Brief for Richard D. Friedman as Amicus Curiae 20–21. In the hypothetical situations posited, an expert expresses an opinion based on factual premises not supported by any admissible evidence, and may also reveal the out-of-court statements on which the expert relied. [ 11 ] There are at least four safeguards to prevent such abuses. First, trial courts can screen out experts who would act as mere conduits for hearsay by strictly enforcing the requirement that experts display some genuine “scientific, technical, or other specialized knowledge [that] will help the trier of fact to understand the evidence or to determine a fact in issue.” Fed. Rule Evid. 702(a). Second, experts are generally precluded from disclosing inadmissible evidence to a jury. See Fed. Rule Evid. 703; People v. Pasch, 152 Ill. 2d 133, 175–176, 604 N.E.2d 294, 310–311 (1992). Third, if such evidence is disclosed, the trial judges may and, under most circumstances, must, instruct the jury that out-of-court statements cannot be accepted for their truth, and that an expert’s opinion is only as good as the independent evidence that establishes its underlying premises. See Fed. Rules Evid. 105, 703; People v. Scott, 148 Ill. 2d 479, 527–528, 594 N.E.2d 217, 236–237 (1992). And fourth, if the prosecution cannot muster any independent admissible evidence to prove the foundational facts that are essential to the relevance of the expert’s testimony, then the expert’s testimony cannot be given any weight by the trier of fact. [ 12 ] IV A Even if the Cellmark report had been introduced for its truth, we would nevertheless conclude that there was no Confrontation Clause violation. The Confrontation Clause refers to testimony by “witnesses against” an accused. Both the noted evidence scholar James Henry Wigmore and Justice Harlan interpreted the Clause in a strictly literal sense as referring solely to persons who testify in court, but we have not adopted this narrow view. It has been said that “[t]he difficulty with the Wigmore-Harlan view in its purest form is its tension with much of the apparent history surrounding the evolution of the right of confrontation at common law.” White v. Illinois, 502 U.S. 346, 360 (1992) (Thomas, J., concurring). “[T]he principal evil at which the Confrontation Clause was directed,” the Court concluded in Crawford, “was the civil-law mode of criminal procedure, and particularly its use of ex parte examinations as evidence against the accused.” 541 U. S., at 50. “[I]n England, pretrial examinations of suspects and witnesses by government officials ‘were sometimes read in court in lieu of live testimony.’ ” Bryant, 562 U. S., at ___ (slip op., at 6) (quoting Crawford, supra, at 43). The Court has thus interpreted the Confrontation Clause as prohibiting modern-day practices that are tantamount to the abuses that gave rise to the recognition of the confrontation right. But any further expansion would strain the constitutional text. The abuses that the Court has identified as prompting the adoption of the Confrontation Clause shared the following two characteristics: (a) they involved out-of-court statements having the primary purpose of accusing a targeted individual of engaging in criminal conduct and (b) they involved formalized statements such as affidavits, depositions, prior testimony, or confessions. In all but one of the post-Crawford cases [ 13 ] in which a Confrontation Clause violation has been found, both of these characteristics were present. See Bullcoming, 564 U. S., at 308 (slip op., at 3–4) (certified lab report having purpose of showing that defendant’s blood-alcohol level exceeded legal limit); Melendez-Diaz, 557 U. S., at 308 (certified lab report having purpose of showing that substance connected to defendant contained cocaine); Crawford, supra, at 38 (custodial statement made after Miranda warnings that shifted blame from declarant to accused). [ 14 ] The one exception occurred in Hammon v. Indiana, 547 U.S. 813 –832 (2006), which was decided together with Davis v. Washington, but in Hammon and every other post-Crawford case in which the Court has found a violation of the confrontation right, the statement at issue had the primary purpose of accusing a targeted individual. B In Hammon, the one case in which an informal statement was held to violate the Confrontation Clause, we considered statements elicited in the course of police in- terrogation. We held that a statement does not fall within the ambit of the Clause when it is made “under circumstances objectively indicating that the primary purpose of the interrogation is to enable police assistance to meet an ongoing emergency.” 547 U. S., at 822. In Bryant, another police-interrogation case, we explained that a person who makes a statement to resolve an ongoing emergency is not acting like a trial witness because the declarant’s purpose is not to provide a solemn declaration for use at trial, but to bring an end to an ongoing threat. See 562 U. S., at ___, ___ (slip op., at 11, 14). We noted that “the prospect of fabrication . . . is presumably significantly diminished” when a statement is made under such circumstances, id., at ___ (slip op., at 14) and that reliability is a salient characteristic of a statement that falls outside the reach of the Confrontation Clause, id., at ___–___ (slip op., at 14–15). We emphasized that if a statement is not made for “the primary purpose of creating an out-of-court substitute for trial testimony,” its admissibility “is the concern of state and federal rules of evidence, not the Confrontation Clause.” Id., at ___–___ (slip op., at 11–12). In Melendez-Diaz and Bullcoming, the Court held that the particular forensic reports at issue qualified as testimonial statements, but the Court did not hold that all forensic reports fall into the same category. Introduction of the reports in those cases ran afoul of the Confrontation Clause because they were the equivalent of affidavits made for the purpose of proving the guilt of a particular criminal defendant at trial. There was nothing resembling an ongoing emergency, as the suspects in both cases had already been captured, and the tests in question were relatively simple and can generally be performed by a single analyst. In addition, the technicians who prepared the reports must have realized that their contents (which reported an elevated blood-alcohol level and the presence of an illegal drug) would be incriminating. C The Cellmark report is very different. It plainly was not prepared for the primary purpose of accusing a targeted individual. In identifying the primary purpose of an out-of-court statement, we apply an objective test. Bryant, 562 U. S., at ___ (slip op., at 13). We look for the primary purpose that a reasonable person would have ascribed to the statement, taking into account all of the surrounding circumstances. Ibid. Here, the primary purpose of the Cellmark report, viewed objectively, was not to accuse petitioner or to create evidence for use at trial. When the ISP lab sent the sample to Cellmark, its primary purpose was to catch a dangerous rapist who was still at large, not to obtain evidence for use against petitioner, who was neither in custody nor under suspicion at that time. Similarly, no one at Cellmark could have possibly known that the profile that it produced would turn out to inculpate petitioner—or for that matter, anyone else whose DNA profile was in a law enforcement database. Under these circumstances, there was no “prospect of fabrication” and no incentive to produce anything other than a scientifi- cally sound and reliable profile. Id., at ___ (slip op., at 14). The situation in which the Cellmark technicians found themselves was by no means unique. When lab technicians are asked to work on the production of a DNA profile, they often have no idea what the consequences of their work will be. In some cases, a DNA profile may provide powerful incriminating evidence against a person who is identified either before or after the profile is completed. But in others, the primary effect of the profile is to exonerate a suspect who has been charged or is under investigation. The technicians who prepare a DNA profile generally have no way of knowing whether it will turn out to be incriminating or exonerating—or both. It is also significant that in many labs, numerous technicians work on each DNA profile. See Brief for New York County District Attorney’s Office et al. as Amici Curiae 6 (New York lab uses at least 12 technicians for each case); People v. Johnson, 389 Ill. App. 3d 618, 627, 906 N.E.2d 70, 79 (2009) (“[A]pproximately 10 Cellmark analysts were involved in the laboratory work in this case”). When the work of a lab is divided up in such a way, it is likely that the sole purpose of each technician is simply to perform his or her task in accordance with accepted procedures. Finally, the knowledge that defects in a DNA profile may often be detected from the profile itself provides a further safeguard. In this case, for example, Lambatos testified that she would have been able to tell from the profile if the sample used by Cellmark had been degraded prior to testing. As noted above, moreover, there is no real chance that “sample contamination, sample switching, mislabeling, [or] fraud” could have led Cellmark to produce a DNA profile that falsely matched petitioner. Post, at 21 (Kagan, J., dissenting). At the time of the testing, petitioner had not yet been identified as a suspect, and there is no suggestion that anyone at Cellmark had a sample of his DNA to swap in by malice or mistake. And given the complexity of the DNA molecule, it is inconceivable that shoddy lab work would somehow produce a DNA profile that just so happened to have the precise genetic makeup of petitioner, who just so happened to be picked out of a lineup by the victim. The prospect is beyond fanciful. In short, the use at trial of a DNA report prepared by a modern, accredited laboratory “bears little if any resemblance to the historical practices that the Confrontation Clause aimed to eliminate.” Bryant, supra, at ___ (slip op., at 2) (Thomas, J., concurring). * * * For the two independent reasons explained above, we conclude that there was no Confrontation Clause violation in this case. Accordingly, the judgment of the Supreme Court of Illinois is Affirmed. Notes 1 Consistent with the Federal Rules, Illinois Rule of Evidence 703 provides as follows: “The facts or data in the particular case upon which an expert bases an opinion or inference may be those perceived by or made known to the expert at or before the hearing. If of a type reasonably relied upon by experts in the particular field in forming opinions or inferences upon the subject, the facts or data need not be admissible inevidence.” 2 But disclosure of these facts or data to the jury is permitted if the value of disclosure “substantially outweighs [any] prejudicial effect,” Fed. Rule Evid. 703, or “the probative value . . . outweighs the risk of unfair prejudice.” People v. Pasch, 152 Ill. 2d 133, 223, 604 N.E.2d 294, 333 (1992). When this disclosure occurs, “the underlying facts” are revealed to the jury “for the limited purpose of explaining the basis for [the expert’s] opinion” and not “for the truth of the matter asserted.” Id., at 176, 604 N. E. 2d, at 311. 3 The small difference between what Lambatos actually said on the stand and the slightly revised version that the dissent would find un-objectionable shows that, despite the dissent’s rhetoric, its narrow argument would have little practical effect in future cases. Prosecutors would be allowed to do exactly what the prosecution did in this case so long as their testifying experts’ testimony was slightly modified along the lines shown above. Following that course presumably would not constitute a “prosecutorial dodge,” “subterfuge,” “indirection,” the “neat trick” of “sneak[ing]” in evidence, or the countenancing of constitutional violations with “a wink and a nod.” See post, at 3, 16, 17, 12 (opinion of Kagan, J.). 4 We do not suggest that the Confrontation Clause applies differently depending on the identity of the factfinder. Cf. post, at 14–15 (opinion of Kagan, J.). Instead, our point is that the identity of the factfinder makes a big difference in evaluating the likelihood that the factfinder mistakenly based its decision on inadmissible evidence. 5 See post, at 14 (opinion of Kagan, J.) (“I do not doubt that a judge typically will do better than a jury in excluding such inadmissible evidence from his decisionmaking process. Perhaps the judge did so here” (emphasis added)). 6 The dissent finds evidence of the trial judge’s confusion in his statement that petitioner is “ ‘the guy whose DNA, according to the evidence from the experts, is in the semen recovered from the victim’s vagina.’ ” Post, at 14 (emphasis added). The dissent interprets the phrase “according to the evidence from the experts” as a reference to what one expert, Lambatos, said about the origin of the sample that Cellmark tested. In context, however, the judge’s statement is best understood as attributing to Lambatos nothing more than the conclusion that there was a match between the two DNA profiles that were compared. The foundational facts, that one of the profiles came from the defendant and that the other came from “ ‘the semen recovered from the victim’s vagina,’ ” were established not by expert testimony but by ordinary chain-of-custody evidence. 7 Our point is not that admissible evidence regarding the identity of the sample that Cellmark tested excuses the admission of testimonial hearsay on this matter. Compare post, at 5–6 (Thomas, J., concurring in judgment), with post, at 14 (Kagan, J., dissenting). Rather, our point is that, because there was substantial (albeit circumstantial) evidence on this matter, there is no reason to infer that the trier of fact must have taken Lambatos’ statement as providing “the missing link.” 8 Applying the Due Process Clause, we have held that a federal court may determine whether a rational trier of fact could have found the existence of all the elements needed for conviction for a state offense. Jackson v. Virginia, 443 U.S. 307, 314 (1979) , but petitioner has not raised a due process claim. And in any event, L. J.’s identification of petitioner as her assailant would be sufficient to defeat any such claim. 9 See post, at 18 (Kagan, J., dissenting). 10 See Advisory Committee’s 2000 Notes on Rule 703, at 361. 11 Both Justice Thomas and Justice Kagan quote statements in D. Kaye, D. Bernstein, & J. Mnookin, The New Wigmore: Expert Evidence §4.10.1, pp. 196–197 (2d ed. 2011) (hereinafter New Wigmore), that are critical of the theory that an expert, without violating the Confrontation Clause, may express an opinion that is based on testimonial hearsay and may, in some circumstances, disclose that testimonial hearsay to the trier of fact. The principal basis for this criticism seems to be the fear that juries, even if given limiting instructions, will view the disclosed hearsay as evidence of the truth of the matter asserted. See id., at 196, n. 36 (referring reader to the more detailed discussion in Mnookin, Expert Evidence and the Confrontation Clause After Crawford v. Washington, 15 J. L. & Pol’y 791 (2007)); New Wigmore 197,and n. 39 (citing jury cases); Mnookin, supra, at 802–804, 811–813. This argument plainly has no application in a case like this one, in which a judge sits as the trier of fact. In the 2012 Supplement of The New Wigmore, the authors discuss the present case and criticize the reasoning of the Illinois courts as follows: “The problem with [the not-for-the-truth-of-the-matter argument accepted by the Illinois courts] is that Lambatos had to rely on the truth of the statements in the Cellmark report to reach her own conclusion. The claim that evidence that the jury must credit in order to credit the conclusion of the expert is introduced for something other than its truth is sheer fiction.” New Wigmore §4.11.6, at 24 (2012 Supp.) (emphasis added). This discussion is flawed. It overlooks the fact that there was no jury in this case, and as we have explained, the trier of fact did not have to rely on any testimonial hearsay in order to find that Lambatos’ testimony about the DNA match was supported by adequate foundational evidence and was thus probative. 12 Our discussion of the first ground for our decision cannot conclude without commenting on the Kocak case, which dramatically appears at the beginning of the dissent. In that case, a Cellmark lab analyst realized while testifying at a pretrial hearing that there was an error in the lab’s report and that the DNA profile attributed to the accused was actually that of the victim. The lesson of this cautionary tale is nothing more than the truism that it is possible for an apparently incriminating DNA profile to be mistakenly attributed to an accused. But requiring that the lab analyst or analysts who produced the DNA profile be called as prosecution witnesses is neither sufficient nor necessary to prevent such errors. Since samples may be mixed up or contaminated at many points along the way from a crime scene to the lab, calling one or more lab analysts will not necessarily catch all such mistakes. For example, a mistake might be made by a clerical employee responsible for receiving shipments of samples and then providing them to the lab’s technicians. What is needed is for the trier of fact to make sure that the evidence, whether direct or circumstantial, rules out the possibility of such mistakes at every step along the way. And in the usual course of authentication, defense counsel will have access to sufficient information to inquire into, question, or challenge the procedures used by a laboratory if this seems to be a prudent and productive strategy. 13 Experience might yet show that the holdings in those cases should be reconsidered for the reasons, among others, expressed in the dissents the decisions produced. Those decisions are not challenged in this case and are to be deemed binding precedents, but they can and should be distinguished on the facts here. 14 With respect to Crawford, see Davis, 547 U. S., at 840 (Thomas, J., concurring in judgment in part and dissenting in part).

566.US.2011_10-9995

In 1987, petitioner Patrick Wood was convicted of murder and other crimes by a Colorado court and sentenced to life imprisonment. Wood filed a federal habeas petition in 2008. After receiving Wood’s petition, the U. S. District Court asked the State if it planned to argue that the petition was untimely. In response, the State twice informed the District Court that it would “not challenge, but [was] not conceding,” the timeliness of Wood’s petition. Thereafter, the District Court rejected Wood’s claims on the merits. On appeal, the Tenth Circuit ordered the parties to brief both the merits and the timeliness of Wood’s petition. After briefing, the court held the petition time barred, concluding that the court had authority to raise timeliness on its own motion, and that the State had not taken the issue off the table by declining to raise a statute of limitations defense in the District Court. Held: 1. Courts of appeals, like district courts, have the authority—though not the obligation—to raise a forfeited timeliness defense on their own initiative in exceptional cases. Pp. 4–9. (a) “Ordinarily in civil litigation, a statutory time limitation is forfeited if not raised in a defendant’s answer or in an amendment thereto.” Day v. McDonough, 547 U.S. 198, 202. An affirmative defense, once forfeited, is excluded from the case and, as a rule, cannot be asserted on appeal. In Granberry v. Greer, 481 U.S. 129, 133, this Court recognized a modest exception to the rule that a federal court will not consider a forfeited defense. There, the Seventh Circuit addressed a nonexhaustion defense the State raised for the first time on appeal. The exhaustion doctrine, this Court noted, is founded on concerns broader than those of the parties; in particular, the doctrine fosters respectful, harmonious relations between the state and federal judiciaries. Id., at 133–135. With that comity interest in mind, the Court held that federal appellate courts have discretion to consider a nonexhaustion argument inadvertently overlooked by the State in the district court. Id. at 132, 134. In Day, the Court affirmed a federal district court’s authority to consider a forfeited habeas defense when extraordinary circumstances so warrant. 547 U. S., at 201. The State in Day, having miscalculated a time span, erroneously informed the District Court that Day’s habeas petition was timely. Apprised of the error by a Magistrate Judge, the District Court, sua sponte, dismissed the petition as untimely. This Court affirmed, holding that “district courts are permitted, but not obliged, to consider, sua sponte, the timeliness of a state prisoner’s habeas petition.” Id., at 209. Such leeway was appropriate, the Court again reasoned, because AEDPA’s statute of limitations, like the exhaustion doctrine, “implicat[es] values beyond the concerns of the parties.” Id., at 205. The Court clarified, however, that a federal court does not have carte blanche to depart from the principle of party presentation. See Greenlaw v. United States, 554 U.S. 237, 243–244. It would be “an abuse of discretion” for a court “to override a State’s deliberate waiver of a limitations defense.” Day, 547 U. S., at 202. In Day itself, the State’s timeliness concession resulted from “inadvertent error,” id., at 211, not a deliberate decision to proceed to the merits. Pp. 6–9. (b) Consistent with Granberry and Day, the Court declines to adopt an absolute rule barring a court of appeals from raising, on its own motion, a forfeited timeliness defense. The institutional interests served by AEDPA’s statute of limitations are also present when a habeas case moves to the court of appeals, a point Granberry recognized with respect to a nonexhaustion defense. P. 9. 2. The Tenth Circuit abused its discretion when it dismissed Wood’s petition as untimely. In the District Court, the State was well aware of the statute of limitations defense available to it, and of the arguments that could be made in support of that defense. Yet, the State twice informed the District Court that it would not “challenge” the timeliness of Wood’s petition. In so doing, the State deliberately waived the statute of limitations defense. In light of that waiver, the Tenth Circuit should have followed the District Court’s lead and decided the merits of Wood’s petition. Pp. 9–11. 403 Fed. Appx. 335, reversed and remanded. Ginsburg, J., delivered the opinion of the Court, in which Roberts, C. J., and Kennedy, Breyer, Alito, Sotomayor, and Kagan, JJ., joined. Thomas, J., filed an opinion concurring in the judgment, in which Sca-lia, J., joined.

This case concerns the authority of a federal court to raise, on its own motion, a statute of limitations defense to a habeas corpus petition. After state prisoner Patrick Wood filed a federal habeas corpus petition, the State twice informed the U. S. District Court that it “[would] not challenge, but [is] not conceding, the timeliness of Wood’s habeas petition.” App. 70a; see id., at 87a. Thereafter, the District Court rejected Wood’s claims on the merits. On appeal, the Tenth Circuit directed the parties to brief the question whether Wood’s federal petition was timely. Post-briefing, the Court of Appeals affirmed the denial of Wood’s petition, but solely on the ground that it was untimely. Our precedent establishes that a court may consider a statute of limitations or other threshold bar the State failed to raise in answering a habeas petition. Granberry v. Greer, 481 U.S. 129, 134 (1987) (exhaustion defense); Day v. McDonough, 547 U.S. 198, 202 (2006) (statute of limitations defense). Does court discretion to take up timeliness hold when a State is aware of a limitations defense, and intelligently chooses not to rely on it in the court of first instance? The answer Day instructs is “no”: A court is not at liberty, we have cautioned, to bypass, override, or excuse a State’s deliberate waiver of a limitations defense. Id., at 202, 210, n. 11. The Tenth Circuit, we accordingly hold, abused its discretion by resurrecting the limitations issue instead of reviewing the District Court’s disposition on the merits of Wood’s claims. I In the course of a 1986 robbery at a pizza shop in a Colorado town, the shop’s assistant manager was shot and killed. Petitioner Patrick Wood was identified as the per-petrator. At a bench trial in January 1987, Wood was convicted of murder, robbery, and menacing, and sentenced to life imprisonment. The Colorado Court of Appeals affirmed Wood’s convictions and sentence on direct appeal in May 1989, and the Colorado Supreme Court denied Wood’s petition for certiorari five months later. Wood did not ask this Court to review his conviction in the 90 days he had to do so. Wood then pursued postconviction relief, asserting con-stitutional infirmities in his trial, conviction, and sentence. Prior to the federal petition at issue here, which was filed in 2008, Wood, proceeding pro se, twice sought relief in state court. First, in 1995, he filed a motion to vacate his conviction and sentence pursuant to Colorado Rule of Criminal Procedure 35(c) (1984).[1] He also asked the Colorado trial court to appoint counsel to aid him in pursuit of the motion. When some months passed with no responsive action, Wood filed a request for a ruling on his motion and accompanying request for counsel. The state court then granted Wood’s plea for the appointment of counsel, but the record is completely blank on any further action regarding the 1995 motion. Second, Wood filed a new pro se motion for postconviction relief in Colorado court in 2004. On the first page of his second motion, he indicated that “[n]o other postconviction proceedings [had been] filed.” Record in No. 08–cv–00247 (D Colo.), Doc. 15–5 (Exh. E), p. 1. The state court denied Wood’s motion four days after receiving it. Wood filed a federal habeas petition in 2008, which the District Court initially dismissed as untimely. App. 41a–46a. On reconsideration, the District Court vacated the dismissal and instructed the State to file a preanswer response “limited to addressing the affirmative defenses of timeliness . . . and/or exhaustion of state court remedies.” Id., at 64a–65a. On timeliness, the State represented in its preanswer response: “Respondents will not challenge, but are not conceding, the timeliness of Wood’s [federal] habeas petition.” Id., at 70a. Consistently, in its full an-swer to Wood’s federal petition, the State repeated: “Respondents are not challenging, but do not concede, the timeliness of the petition.” Id., at 87a. Disposing of Wood’s petition, the District Court dismissed certain claims for failure to exhaust state remedies, and denied on the merits Wood’s two remaining claims—one alleging a double jeopardy violation and one challenging the validity of Wood’s waiver of his Sixth Amendment right to a jury trial. Id., at 96a–111a. On appeal, the Tenth Circuit ordered the parties to brief, along with the merits of Wood’s double jeopardy and Sixth Amendment claims, “the timeliness of Wood’s application for [federal habeas relief].” Id., at 129a. After briefing, the Court of Appeals affirmed the denial of Wood’s petition without addressing the merits; instead, the Tenth Circuit held the petition time barred. 403 Fed. Appx. 335 (2010). In so ruling, the Court of Appeals concluded it had authority to raise timeliness on its own motion. Id., at 337, n. 2. It further ruled that the State had not taken that issue off the table by declining to interpose a statute of limitations defense in the District Court. Ibid. We granted review, 564 U. S. ___ (2011), to resolve two issues: first, whether a court of appeals has the author- ity to address the timeliness of a habeas petition on the court’s own initiative;[2] second, assuming a court of appeals has such authority, whether the State’s representations to the District Court in this case nonetheless precluded the Tenth Circuit from considering the timeliness of Wood’s petition. II A Under the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996 (AEDPA), 110Stat. 1214, a state prisoner has one year to file a federal petition for habeas corpus relief, starting from “the date on which the judgment became final by the conclusion of direct review or the expiration of the time for seeking such review.” 28 U. S. C. §2244(d)(1)(A). For a prisoner whose judgment became final before AEDPA was enacted, the one-year limitations period runs from the AEDPA’s effective date: April 24, 1996. See Serrano v. Williams, 383 F.3d 1181, 1183 (CA10 2004). “The one-year clock is stopped, however, during the time the petitioner’s ‘properly filed’ application for state postconviction relief ‘is pending.’ ” Day, 547 U. S., at 201 (quoting 28 U. S. C. §2244(d)(2)).[3] The state judgment against Wood became final on direct review in early 1990. See supra, at 2. Wood’s time for filing a federal petition therefore began to run on the date of AEDPA’s enactment, April 24, 1996, and expired on April 24, 1997, unless Wood had a “properly filed” application for state postconviction relief “pending” in Colorado state court during that period. Wood maintains he had such an application pending on April 24, 1996: the Rule 35(c) motion he filed in 1995. That motion, Wood asserts, remained pending (thus continuing to suspend the one-year clock) until at least August 2004, when he filed his second motion for postconviction relief in state court. The 2004 motion, the State does not contest, was “properly filed.” Wood argues that this second motion further tolled the limitations period until February 5, 2007, exactly one year before he filed the federal petition at issue here. If Wood is correct that his 1995 motion remained “pending” in state court from April 1996 until August 2004, his federal petition would be timely. In its preanswer response to Wood’s petition, the State set forth its comprehension of the statute of limitations issue. It noted that Wood’s “time for filing a habeas petition began to run on April 24, 1996, when the AEDPA became effective” and that Wood “had until April 24, 1997, plus any tolling periods, to timely file his habeas petition.” App. 69a–70a. The State next identified the crucial question: Did Wood’s 1995 state petition arrest the one-year statute of limitations period from 1996 until 2004? Id., at 70a. “[I]t is certainly arguable,” the State then asserted, “that the 1995 postconviction motion was abandoned before 1997 and thus did not toll the AEDPA statute of limitations at all.” Ibid. But rather than inviting a decision on the statute of limitations question, the State informed the District Court it would “not challenge” Wood’s petition on timeliness grounds; instead, the State simply defended against Wood’s double jeopardy and Sixth Amendment claims on the merits. B “Ordinarily in civil litigation, a statutory time limitation is forfeited if not raised in a defendant’s answer or in an amendment thereto.” Day, 547 U. S., at 202 (citing Fed. Rules Civ. Proc. 8(c), 12(b), and 15(a)). See also Habeas Corpus Rule 5(b) (requiring the State to plead a statute of limitations defense in its answer).[4] An affirmative defense, once forfeited, is “exclu[ded] from the case,” 5 C. Wright & A. Miller, Federal Practice and Procedure §1278, pp. 644–645 (3d ed. 2004), and, as a rule, cannot be asserted on appeal. See Day, 547 U. S., at 217 (Scalia, J., dissenting); Weinberger v. Salfi, 422 U.S. 749, 764 (1975); McCoy v. Massachusetts Inst. of Technology, 950 F.2d 13, 22 (CA1 1991) (“It is hornbook law that theories not raised squarely in the district court cannot be surfaced for the first time on appeal.”). In Granberry v. Greer, we recognized a modest exception to the rule that a federal court will not consider a forfeited affirmative defense. 481 U. S., at 134. The District Court in Granberry denied a federal habeas petition on the merits. Id., at 130. On appeal, the State argued for the first time that the petition should be dismissed because the petitioner had failed to exhaust relief available in state court. Ibid. See Habeas Corpus Rule 5(b) (list- ing “failure to exhaust state remedies” as a threshold bar to federal habeas relief). Despite the State’s failure to raise the nonexhaustion argument in the District Court, the Seventh Circuit accepted the argument and ruled for the State on that ground. We granted certiorari to decide whether a court of appeals has discretion to address a non-exhaustion defense that the State failed to raise in the district court. Id., at 130. Although “express[ing] our reluctance to adopt rules that allow a party to withhold raising a defense until after the ‘main event’ . . . is over,” id., at 132, we nonetheless concluded that the bar to court of appeals’ consideration of a forfeited habeas defense is not absolute. Id., at 133. The exhaustion doctrine, we noted, is founded on concerns broader than those of the parties; in particular, the doctrine fosters respectful, harmonious relations between the state and federal judiciaries. Id., at 133–135. With that comity interest in mind, we held that federal appellate courts have discretion, in “exceptional cases,” to consider a nonexhaustion argument “inadverten[tly]” overlooked by the State in the District Court. Id., at 132, 134.[5] In Day, we affirmed a federal district court’s authority to consider a forfeited habeas defense when extraordinary circumstances so warrant. 547 U. S., at 201. There, the State miscalculated a time span, specifically, the number of days running between the finality of Day’s state-court conviction and the filing of his federal habeas petition. Id., at 203. As a result, the State erroneously informed the District Court that Day’s petition was timely. Ibid. A Magistrate Judge caught the State’s computation error and recommended that the petition be dismissed as untimely, notwithstanding the State’s timeliness concession. Id., at 204. The District Court adopted the recommendation, and the Court of Appeals upheld the trial court’s sua sponte dismissal of the petition as untimely. Ibid. Concluding that it would make “scant sense” to treat AEDPA’s statute of limitations differently from other threshold constraints on federal habeas petitioners, we held “that district courts are permitted, but not obliged, to consider, sua sponte, the timeliness of a state prisoner’s habeas petition.” Id., at 209; ibid. (noting that Habeas Corpus Rule 5(b) places “ ‘a statute of limitations’ defense on a par with ‘failure to exhaust state remedies, a procedural bar, [and] non-retroactivity.’ ”). Affording federal courts leeway to consider a forfeited timeliness defense was appropriate, we again reasoned, because AEDPA’s statute of limitations, like the exhaustion doctrine, “implicat[es] values beyond the concerns of the parties.” Day, 547 U. S., at 205 (quoting Acosta v. Artuz, 221 F.3d 117, 123 (CA2 2000)); 547 U. S., at 205–206 (“The AEDPA statute of limitation promotes judicial efficiency and conservation of judicial resources, safeguards the accuracy of state court judgments by requiring resolution of constitutional questions while the record is fresh, and lends final-ity to state court judgments within a reasonable time.” (internal quotation marks omitted)). We clarified, however, that a federal court does not have carte blanche to depart from the principle of party presentation basic to our adversary system. See Greenlaw v. United States, 554 U.S. 237, 243–244 (2008). Only where the State does not “strategically withh[o]ld the [limitations] defense or cho[o]se to relinquish it,” and where the petitioner is accorded a fair opportunity to present his position, may a district court consider the defense on its own initiative and “ ‘determine whether the interests of justice would be better served’ by addressing the merits or by dismissing the petition as time barred.” Day, 547 U. S., at 210–211 (quoting Granberry, 481 U. S., at 136; internal quotation marks omitted). It would be “an abuse of discretion,” we observed, for a court “to override a State’s deliberate waiver of a limitations defense.” 547 U. S., at 202. In Day’s case itself, we emphasized, the State’s concession of timeliness resulted from “inadvertent error,” id., at 211, not from any deliberate decision to proceed straightaway to the merits. Consistent with Granberry and Day, we decline to adopt an absolute rule barring a court of appeals from rais- ing, on its own motion, a forfeited timeliness defense. The institutional interests served by AEDPA’s statute of limitations are also present when a habeas case moves to the court of appeals, a point Granberry recognized with respect to a nonexhaustion defense. We accordingly hold, in response to the first question presented, see supra, at 4, that courts of appeals, like district courts, have the authority—though not the obligation—to raise a forfeited timeliness defense on their own initiative. C We turn now to the second, case-specific, inquiry. See ibid. Although a court of appeals has discretion to address, sua sponte, the timeliness of a habeas petition, appellate courts should reserve that authority for use in exceptional cases. For good reason, appellate courts ordinarily abstain from entertaining issues that have not been raised and preserved in the court of first instance. See supra, at 6. That restraint is all the more appropriate when the appellate court itself spots an issue the parties did not air below, and therefore would not have antici-pated in developing their arguments on appeal. Due regard for the trial court’s processes and time investment is also a consideration appellate courts should not overlook. It typically takes a district court more time to decide a habeas case on the merits, than it does to resolve a petition on threshold procedural grounds. See Dept. of Justice, Bureau of Justice Statistics, R. Hanson & H. Daley, Federal Habeas Corpus Review: Challenging State Court Criminal Convictions 23 (NCJ–155504, 1995) (district courts spent an average of 477 days to decide a habeas petition on the merits, and 268 days to resolve a petition on procedural grounds). When a court of appeals raises a procedural impediment to disposition on the mer-its, and disposes of the case on that ground, the district court’s labor is discounted and the appellate court acts not as a court of review but as one of first view. In light of the foregoing discussion of the relevant considerations, we hold that the Tenth Circuit abused its discretion when it dismissed Wood’s petition as untimely. In the District Court, the State was well aware of the statute of limitations defense available to it and of the arguments that could be made in support of the defense. See supra, at 5–6. Yet the State twice informed the District Court that it “will not challenge, but [is] not conceding” the timeliness of Wood’s petition. See supra, at 3. Essentially, the District Court asked the State: Will you oppose the petition on statute of limitations grounds? The State answered: Such a challenge would be supportable, but we won’t make the challenge here. “[W]aiver is the ‘intentional relinquishment or abandonment of a known right.’ ” Kontrick v. Ryan, 540 U.S. 443, 458, n. 13 (2004) (quoting United States v. Olano, 507 U.S. 725, 733 (1993)). The State’s conduct in this case fits that description. Its decision not to contest the timeliness of Wood’s petition did not stem from an “inadvertent er-ror,” as did the State’s concession in Day. See 547 U. S., at 211. Rather, the State, after expressing its clear and accurate understanding of the timeliness issue, see supra, at 5–6, deliberately steered the District Court away from the question and towards the merits of Wood’s petition. In short, the State knew it had an “arguable” statute of limitations defense, see supra, at 5, yet it chose, in no uncertain terms, to refrain from interposing a timeliness “challenge” to Wood’s petition. The District Court therefore reached and decided the merits of the petition. The Tenth Circuit should have done so as well. * * * For the reasons stated, the judgment of the Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit is reversed, and the case is remanded for further proceedings consistent with this opinion. It is so ordered. Notes 1 Colorado Rule of Criminal Procedure 35(c) (1984) provides, in relevant part: “[E]very person convicted of a crime is entitled as a matter of right to make application for postconviction review upon the groun[d] . . . [t]hat the conviction was obtained or sentence imposed in violation of the Constitution or laws of the United States or the constitution or laws of this state.” 2 The Tenth Circuit’s conclusion that it had authority to raise an AEDPA statute of limitations defense sua sponte conflicts with the view of the Eighth Circuit. Compare 403 Fed. Appx. 335, 337, n. 2 (CA10 2010) (case below), with Sasser v. Norris, 553 F.3d 1121, 1128 (CA8 2009) (“The discretion to consider the statute of limitations defense sua sponte does not extend to the appellate level.”). 3 The one-year clock may also be stopped—or “tolled”—for equitable reasons, notably when an “extraordinary circumstance” prevents a prisoner from filing his federal petition on time. See Holland v. Flor-ida, 560 U. S. ___ (2010). Wood does not contend that the equitable tolling doctrine applies to his case. App. 144a, n. 5. 4 We note here the distinction between defenses that are “waived” and those that are “forfeited.” A waived claim or defense is one that a party has knowingly and intelligently relinquished; a forfeited plea is one that a party has merely failed to preserve. Kontrick v. Ryan, 540 U.S. 443, 458, n. 13 (2004); United States v. Olano, 507 U.S. 725, 733 (1993). That distinction is key to our decision in Wood’s case. 5 Although our decision in Granberry v. Greer, 481 U.S. 129 (1987), did not expressly distinguish between forfeited and waived defenses, we made clear in Day v. McDonough, 547 U.S. 198 (2006), that a federal court has the authority to resurrect only forfeited defenses. See infra, at 8–9.

566.US.2011_10-699

Petitioner Menachem Binyamin Zivotofsky was born in Jerusalem. His mother requested that Zivotofsky’s place of birth be listed as “Israel” on a consular report of birth abroad and on his passport, pursuant to §214(d) of the Foreign Relations Authorization Act, Fiscal Year 2003. That provision states: “For purposes of the registration of birth, certification of nationality, or issuance of a passport of a United States citizen born in the city of Jerusalem, the Secretary shall, upon the request of the citizen or the citizen’s legal guardian, record the place of birth as Israel.” U. S. officials refused the request, citing a State Department policy that prohibits recording “Israel” as the place of birth for those born in Jerusalem. Zivotofsky’s parents filed a suit on his behalf against the Secretary of State. The District Court dismissed the case, holding that it presented a nonjusticiable political question regarding Jerusalem’s political status. The D. C. Circuit affirmed, reasoning that the Constitution gives the Executive the exclusive power to recognize foreign sovereigns, and that the exercise of that power cannot be reviewed by the courts. Held: The political question doctrine does not bar judicial review of Zivotofsky’s claim. Pp. 5−12. (a) This Court has said that a controversy “involves a political question . . . where there is ‘a textually demonstrable constitutional commitment of the issue to a coordinate political department; or a lack of judicially discoverable and manageable standards for resolving it.’ ” Nixon v. United States, 506 U.S. 224, 228. The lower courts ruled that this case presents such a political question because they misunderstood the issue, assuming resolution of Zivotofsky’s claim would require the Judiciary to define U. S. policy regarding the status of Jerusalem. In fact, this case asks the courts to determine only whether Zivotofsky can vindicate his statutory right under §214(d) to choose to have Israel recorded as his place of birth on his passport. Making such determinations is a familiar judicial exercise. Moreover, because the parties do not dispute the interpretation of §214(d), the only real question for the courts is whether the statute is constitutional. There is no “textually demonstrable constitutional commitment” of that question to another branch: At least since Marbury v. Madison, 1 Cranch 137, this Court has recognized that it is “emphatically the province and duty” of the Judiciary to determine the constitutionality of a statute. Nor is there “a lack of judicially discoverable and manageable standards for resolving” the question: Both parties offer detailed legal arguments concerning whether the textual, structural, and historical evidence supports a determination that §214(d) is constitutional. Pp. 5–12. (b) Because the lower courts erroneously concluded that the case presents a political question, they did not reach the merits of Zivotofsky’s claim. This Court is “a court of final review and not first view,” Adarand Constructors, Inc. v. Mineta, 534 U.S. 103, 110, and ordinarily “do[es] not decide in the first instance issues not decided below,” National Collegiate Athletic Assn. v. Smith, 525 U.S. 459, 470. The merits of this case are therefore left to the lower courts to consider in the first instance. P. 12. 571 F.3d 1227, vacated and remanded. Roberts, C. J., delivered the opinion of the Court, in which Scalia, Kennedy, Thomas, Ginsburg, and Kagan, JJ., joined. Sotomayor, J., filed an opinion concurring in part and concurring in the judgment, in which Breyer, J., joined as to Part I. Alito, J., filed an opinion concurring in the judgment. Breyer, J., filed a dissenting opinion.

Congress enacted a statute providing that Americans born in Jerusalem may elect to have “Israel” listed as the place of birth on their passports. The State Department declined to follow that law, citing its longstanding policy of not taking a position on the political status of Jerusalem. When sued by an American who invoked the statute, the Secretary of State argued that the courts lacked authority to decide the case because it presented a political question. The Court of Appeals so held. We disagree. The courts are fully capable of determining whether this statute may be given effect, or instead must be struck down in light of authority conferred on the Executive by the Constitution. I A In 2002, Congress enacted the Foreign Relations Authorization Act, Fiscal Year 2003, 116Stat. 1350. Section 214 of the Act is entitled “United States Policy with Respect to Jerusalem as the Capital of Israel.” Id., at 1365. The first two subsections express Congress’s “commitment” to relocating the United States Embassy in Israel to Jerusalem. Id., at 1365–1366. The third bars funding for the publication of official Government documents that do not list Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. Id., at 1366. The fourth and final provision, §214(d), is the only one at stake in this case. Entitled “Record of Place of Birth as Israel for Passport Purposes,” it provides that “[f]or purposes of the registration of birth, certification of national- ity, or issuance of a passport of a United States citizen born in the city of Jerusalem, the Secretary shall, upon the re- quest of the citizen or the citizen’s legal guardian, record the place of birth as Israel.” Ibid. The State Department’s Foreign Affairs Manual states that “[w]here the birthplace of the applicant is located in territory disputed by another country, the city or area of birth may be written in the passport.” 7 Foreign Affairs Manual §1383.5–2, App. 108. The manual specifically directs that passport officials should enter “JERUSALEM” and should “not write Israel or Jordan” when recording the birthplace of a person born in Jerusalem on a passport. Id., §1383, Exh. 1383.1, App. 127; see also id., §§1383.1, 1383.5–4, .5–5, .5–6, App. 106, 108–110. Section 214(d) sought to override this instruction by allowing citizens born in Jerusalem to have “Israel” recorded on their passports if they wish. In signing the Foreign Relations Authorization Act into law, President George W. Bush stated his belief that §214 “impermissibly interferes with the President’s constitutional authority to conduct the Nation’s foreign affairs and to supervise the unitary executive branch.” Statement on Signing the Foreign Relations Authorization Act, Fiscal Year 2003, Public Papers of the Presidents, George W. Bush, Vol. 2, Sept. 30, 2002, p. 1698 (2005). He added that if the section is “construed as mandatory,” then it would “interfere with the President’s constitutional authority to formulate the position of the United States, speak for the Nation in international affairs, and determine the terms on which recognition is given to foreign states.” Ibid. He concluded by emphasizing that “U. S. policy regarding Jerusalem has not changed.” Ibid. The President made no specific reference to the passport mandate in §214(d). B Petitioner Menachem Binyamin Zivotofsky was born in Jerusalem on October 17, 2002, shortly after §214(d) was enacted. Zivotofsky’s parents were American citizens and he accordingly was as well, by virtue of congressional enactment. 8 U. S. C. §1401(c); see Rogers v. Bellei, 401 U.S. 815, 835 (1971) (foreign-born children of American citizens acquire citizenship at birth through “congres- sional generosity”). Zivotofsky’s mother filed an application for a consular report of birth abroad and a United States passport. She requested that his place of birth be listed as “Jerusalem, Israel” on both documents. U. S. officials informed Zivotofsky’s mother that State Department policy prohibits recording “Israel” as Zivotofsky’s place of birth. Pursuant to that policy, Zivotofsky was issued a passport and consular report of birth abroad listing only “Jerusalem.” App. 19–20. Zivotofsky’s parents filed a complaint on his behalf against the Secretary of State. Zivotofsky sought a declaratory judgment and a permanent injunction ordering the Secretary to identify his place of birth as “Jerusalem, Israel” in the official documents. Id., at 17–18. The District Court granted the Secretary’s motion to dismiss the complaint on the grounds that Zivotofsky lacked standing and that his complaint presented a nonjusticiable political question. The Court of Appeals for the D. C. Circuit reversed, concluding that Zivotofsky did have standing. It then observed that while Zivotofsky had originally asked that “Jerusalem, Israel” be recorded on his passport, “[b]oth sides agree that the question now is whether §214(d) entitles [him] to have just ‘Israel’ listed as his place of birth.” 444 F.3d 614, 619 (2006). The D. C. Circuit determined that additional factual development might be helpful in deciding whether this question was justiciable, as the parties disagreed about the foreign policy implications of listing “Israel” alone as a birthplace on the passport. Id., at 619–620. It therefore remanded the case to the District Court. The District Court again found that the case was not justiciable. It explained that “[r]esolving [Zivotofsky’s] claim on the merits would necessarily require the Court to decide the political status of Jerusalem.” 511 F. Supp. 2d 97, 103 (2007). Concluding that the claim therefore presented a political question, the District Court dismissed the case for lack of subject matter jurisdiction. The D. C. Circuit affirmed. It reasoned that the Constitution gives the Executive the exclusive power to recognize foreign sovereigns, and that the exercise of this power cannot be reviewed by the courts. Therefore, “deciding whether the Secretary of State must mark a passport . . . as Zivotofsky requests would necessarily draw [the court] into an area of decisionmaking the Constitution leaves to the Executive alone.” 571 F.3d 1227, 1232–1233 (2009). The D. C. Circuit held that the political question doctrine prohibits such an intrusion by the courts, and rejected any suggestion that Congress’s decision to take “a position on the status of Jerusalem” could change the analysis. Id., at 1233. Judge Edwards concurred in the judgment, but wrote separately to express his view that the political question doctrine has no application to this case. He explained that the issue before the court was whether §214(d) “impermissibly intrude[s] on the President’s exclusive power to recognize foreign sovereigns.” Id., at 1234. That question, he observed, involves “commonplace issues of statutory and constitutional interpretation” plainly within the constitutional authority of the Judiciary to decide. Id., at 1235. Reaching the merits, Judge Edwards determined that designating Israel as a place of birth on a passport is a policy “in furtherance of the recognition power.” Id., at 1243. Because in his view the Constitution gives that power exclusively to the President, Judge Edwards found §214(d) unconstitutional. For this reason, he concluded that Zivotofsky had no viable cause of action, and concurred in affirming the dismissal of the complaint. Zivotofsky petitioned for certiorari, and we granted review. 563 U. S. ___ (2011). II The lower courts concluded that Zivotofsky’s claim presents a political question and therefore cannot be ad- judicated. We disagree. In general, the Judiciary has a responsibility to decide cases properly before it, even those it “would gladly avoid.” Cohens v. Virginia, 6 Wheat. 264, 404 (1821). Our precedents have identified a narrow exception to that rule, known as the “political question” doctrine. See, e.g., Japan Whaling Assn. v. American Cetacean Soc., 478 U.S. 221, 230 (1986). We have explained that a controversy “involves a political question . . . where there is ‘a textu- ally demonstrable constitutional commitment of the issue to a coordinate political department; or a lack of judicially discoverable and manageable standards for resolving it.’ ” Nixon v. United States, 506 U.S. 224, 228 (1993) (quoting Baker v. Carr, 369 U.S. 186, 217 (1962)). In such a case, we have held that a court lacks the authority to decide the dispute before it. The lower courts ruled that this case involves a political question because deciding Zivotofsky’s claim would force the Judicial Branch to interfere with the President’s exercise of constitutional power committed to him alone. The District Court understood Zivotofsky to ask the courts to “decide the political status of Jerusalem.” 511 F. Supp. 2d, at 103. This misunderstands the issue presented. Zivotofsky does not ask the courts to determine whether Jerusalem is the capital of Israel. He instead seeks to determine whether he may vindicate his statutory right, under §214(d), to choose to have Israel recorded on his passport as his place of birth. For its part, the D. C. Circuit treated the two questions as one and the same. That court concluded that “[o]nly the Executive—not Congress and not the courts—has the power to define U. S. policy regarding Israel’s sovereignty over Jerusalem,” and also to “decide how best to implement that policy.” 571 F. 3d, at 1232. Because the Department’s passport rule was adopted to implement the President’s “exclusive and unreviewable constitutional power to keep the United States out of the debate over the status of Jerusalem,” the validity of that rule was itself a “nonjusticiable political question” that “the Constitution leaves to the Executive alone.” Id., at 1231–1233. Indeed, the D. C. Circuit’s opinion does not even mention §214(d) until the fifth of its six paragraphs of analysis, and then only to dismiss it as irrelevant: “That Congress took a position on the status of Jerusalem and gave Zivotofsky a statutory cause of action . . . is of no moment to whether the judiciary has [the] authority to resolve this dispute . . . .” Id., at 1233. The existence of a statutory right, however, is certainly relevant to the Judiciary’s power to decide Zivotofsky’s claim. The federal courts are not being asked to supplant a foreign policy decision of the political branches with the courts’ own unmoored determination of what United States policy toward Jerusalem should be. Instead, Zivotofsky requests that the courts enforce a specific statutory right. To resolve his claim, the Judiciary must decide if Zivotofsky’s interpretation of the statute is correct, and whether the statute is constitutional. This is a familiar judicial exercise. Moreover, because the parties do not dispute the interpretation of §214(d), the only real question for the courts is whether the statute is constitutional. At least since Marbury v. Madison, 1 Cranch 137 (1803), we have recognized that when an Act of Congress is alleged to conflict with the Constitution, “[i]t is emphatically the province and duty of the judicial department to say what the law is.” Id., at 177. That duty will sometimes involve the “[r]esolution of litigation challenging the constitutional authority of one of the three branches,” but courts cannot avoid their responsibility merely “because the issues have political implications.” INS v. Chadha, 462 U.S. 919, 943 (1983). In this case, determining the constitutionality of §214(d) involves deciding whether the statute impermissibly intrudes upon Presidential powers under the Constitution. If so, the law must be invalidated and Zivotofsky’s case should be dismissed for failure to state a claim. If, on the other hand, the statute does not trench on the President’s powers, then the Secretary must be ordered to issue Zivotofsky a passport that complies with §214(d). Either way, the political question doctrine is not implicated. “No policy underlying the political question doctrine suggests that Congress or the Executive . . . can decide the constitutionality of a statute; that is a decision for the courts.” Id., at 941–942. The Secretary contends that “there is ‘a textually demonstrable constitutional commitment’ ” to the President of the sole power to recognize foreign sovereigns and, as a corollary, to determine whether an American born in Jerusalem may choose to have Israel listed as his place of birth on his passport. Nixon, 506 U. S., at 228 (quoting Baker, 369 U. S., at 217); see Brief for Respondent 49–50. Perhaps. But there is, of course, no exclusive commitment to the Executive of the power to determine the constitutionality of a statute. The Judicial Branch appropriately exercises that authority, including in a case such as this, where the question is whether Congress or the Executive is “aggrandizing its power at the expense of another branch.” Freytag v. Commissioner, 501 U.S. 868, 878 (1991); see, e.g., Myers v. United States, 272 U.S. 52, 176 (1926) (finding a statute unconstitutional because it encroached upon the President’s removal power); Bowsher v. Synar, 478 U.S. 714, 734 (1986) (finding a statute un- constitutional because it “intruded into the executive function”); Morrison v. Olson, 487 U.S. 654, 685 (1988) (upholding a statute’s constitutionality against a charge that it “impermissibly interfere[d] with the President’s exercise of his constitutionally appointed functions”). Our precedents have also found the political question doctrine implicated when there is “ ‘a lack of judicially discoverable and manageable standards for resolving’ ” the question before the court. Nixon, supra, at 228 (quoting Baker, supra, at 217). Framing the issue as the lower courts did, in terms of whether the Judiciary may decide the political status of Jerusalem, certainly raises those concerns. They dissipate, however, when the issue is recognized to be the more focused one of the constitutionality of §214(d). Indeed, both sides offer detailed legal arguments regarding whether §214(d) is constitutional in light of powers committed to the Executive, and whether Congress’s own powers with respect to passports must be weighed in analyzing this question. For example, the Secretary reprises on the merits her argument on the political question issue, claiming that the Constitution gives the Executive the exclusive power to formulate recognition policy. She roots her claim in the Constitution’s declaration that the President shall “receive Ambassadors and other public Ministers.” U. S. Const., Art. II, §3. According to the Secretary, “[c]enturies-long Executive Branch practice, congressional acquiescence, and decisions by this Court” confirm that the “receive Ambassadors” clause confers upon the Executive the exclusive power of recognition. Brief for Respondent 18. The Secretary observes that “President Washington and his cabinet unanimously decided that the President could receive the ambassador from the new government of France without first consulting Congress.” Id., at 19 (citing Letter from George Washington to the Cabinet (Apr. 18, 1793), reprinted in 25 Papers of Thomas Jefferson 568–569 (J. Catanzariti ed. 1992); Thomas Jefferson, Notes on Washington’s Questions on Neutrality and the Alliance with France (May 6, 1793), reprinted in id., at 665–666). She notes, too, that early attempts by the Legislature to affect recognition policy were regularly “re- jected in Congress as inappropriate incursions into the Executive Branch’s constitutional authority.” Brief for Respondent 21. And she cites precedents from this Court stating that “[p]olitical recognition is exclusively a function of the Executive.” Banco Nacional de Cuba v. Sabbatino, 376 U.S. 398, 410 (1964); see Brief for Respondent 24–27 (citing, e.g., United States v. Pink, 315 U.S. 203 (1942)). The Secretary further contends that §214(d) constitutes an impermissible exercise of the recognition power because “the decision as to how to describe the place of birth . . . operates as an official statement of whether the United States recognizes a state’s sovereignty over a territorial area.” Brief for Respondent 38. The Secretary will not “list[] as a place of birth a country whose sovereignty over the relevant territory the United States does not recognize.” Id., at 39. Therefore, she claims, “listing ‘Israel’ as the place of birth would constitute an official decision by the United States to begin to treat Jerusalem as a city located within Israel. ” Id., at 38–39 (some internal quotation marks omitted). For his part, Zivotofsky argues that, far from being an exercise of the recognition power, §214(d) is instead a “legitimate and permissible” exercise of Congress’s “authority to legislate on the form and content of a passport.” Brief for Petitioner 53. He points the Court to Professor Louis Henkin’s observation that “ ‘in the competition for power in foreign relations,’ Congress has ‘an impressive array of powers expressly enumerated in the Constitution.’ ” Id., at 45 (quoting L. Henkin, Foreign Affairs and the United States Constitution 63 (2d ed. 1996)). Zivotofsky suggests that Congress’s authority to enact §214(d) derives specifically from its powers over naturalization, U. S. Const., Art. I, §8, cl. 4, and foreign commerce, id., §8, cl. 3. According to Zivotofsky, Congress has used these powers to pass laws regulating the content and issuance of passports since 1856. See Brief for Petitioner 52 (citing Act of Aug. 18, 1856, §23, 11Stat. 60). Zivotofsky contends that §214(d) fits squarely within this tradition. He notes that the State Department’s designated representative stated in her deposition for this litigation that the “place of birth” entry is included only as “an element of identification.” App. 76 (Deposition of Catherine Barry, Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Overseas Citizens Services); see Brief for Petitioner 10. Moreover, Zivotofsky argues, the “place of birth” entry cannot be taken as a means for recognizing foreign sovereigns, because the State Department authorizes recording unrecognized territories—such as the Gaza Strip and the West Bank—as places of birth. Brief for Petitioner 43 (citing 7 Foreign Affairs Manual §1383.5–5, App. 109–110). Further, Zivotofsky claims that even if §214(d) does implicate the recognition power, that is not a power the Constitution commits exclusively to the Executive. Zivotofsky argues that the Secretary is overreading the authority granted to the President in the “receive Ambassadors” clause. He observes that in the Federalist Papers, Alexander Hamilton described the power conferred by this clause as “more a matter of dignity than of authority,” and called it “a circumstance, which will be without consequence in the administration of the government.” The Federalist No. 69, p. 468 (J. Cooke ed. 1961); see Brief for Petitioner 37. Zivotofsky also points to other clauses in the Constitution, such as Congress’s power to declare war, that suggest some congressional role in recognition. Reply Brief for Petitioner 23 (citing U. S. Const., Art. I, §8, cl. 11). He cites, for example, an 1836 message from President Jackson to Congress, acknowledging that it is unclear who holds the authority to recognize because it is a power “no where expressly dele- gated” in the Constitution, and one that is “necessarily involved in some of the great powers given to Congress.” Message from the President of the United States Upon the Subject of the Political, Military, and Civil Condition of Texas, H. R. Doc. No. 35, 24th Cong., 2d Sess., 2; see Reply Brief for Petitioner 11–12. Zivotofsky argues that language from this Court’s precedents suggesting the recognition power belongs exclusively to the President is inapplicable to his claim, because that language appeared in cases where the Court was asked to alter recognition policy developed by the Executive in the absence of congressional opposition. See Brief for Petitioner 44–46; Reply Brief for Petitioner 18–19. Finally, Zivotofsky contends that even if the “receive Ambassadors” clause confers some exclusive recognition power on the President, simply allowing a choice as to the “place of birth” entry on a passport does not significantly intrude on that power. Recitation of these arguments—which sound in familiar principles of constitutional interpretation—is enough to establish that this case does not “turn on standards that defy judicial application.” Baker, 369 U. S., at 211. Resolution of Zivotofksy’s claim demands careful examination of the textual, structural, and historical evidence put forward by the parties regarding the nature of the statute and of the passport and recognition powers. This is what courts do. The political question doctrine poses no bar to judicial review of this case. III To say that Zivotofsky’s claim presents issues the Judiciary is competent to resolve is not to say that reaching a decision in this case is simple. Because the District Court and the D. C. Circuit believed that review was barred by the political question doctrine, we are without the benefit of thorough lower court opinions to guide our analysis of the merits. Ours is “a court of final review and not first view.” Adarand Constructors, Inc. v. Mineta, 534 U.S. 103, 110 (2001) (per curiam) (internal quotation marks omitted). Ordinarily, “we do not decide in the first instance issues not decided below.” National Collegiate Athletic Assn. v. Smith, 525 U.S. 459, 470 (1999). In particular, when we reverse on a threshold question, we typically remand for resolution of any claims the lower courts’ error prevented them from addressing. See, e.g., Bond v. United States, 564 U. S. ___, ___ (2011) (slip op., at 1–2) (reversing the Court of Appeals’ determination on standing and remanding because the “merits of petitioner’s challenge to the statute’s validity are to be considered, in the first instance, by the Court of Appeals”). We see no reason to depart from this approach in this case. Having determined that this case is justiciable, we leave it to the lower courts to consider the merits in the first instance. The judgment of the Court of Appeals for the D. C. Circuit is vacated, and the case is remanded for further proceedings consistent with this opinion. It is so ordered.

570.US.637

The Indian Child Welfare Act of 1978 (ICWA), which establishes federal standards for state-court child custody proceedings involving Indian children, was enacted to address “the consequences . . . of abusive child welfare practices that [separated] Indian children from their families and tribes through adoption or foster care placement, usually in non-Indian homes,” Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians v. Holyfield, 490 U.S. 30, 32. As relevant here, the ICWA bars involuntary termination of a parent’s rights in the absence of a heightened showing that serious harm to the Indian child is likely to result from the parent’s “continued custody” of the child, 25 U. S. C. §1912(f); conditions involuntary termination of parental rights with respect to an Indian child on a showing that remedial efforts have been made to prevent the “breakup of the Indian family,” §1912(d); and provides placement preferences for the adoption of Indian children to members of the child’s extended family, other members of the Indian child’s tribe, and other Indian families, §1915(a). While Birth Mother was pregnant with Biological Father’s child, their relationship ended and Biological Father (a member of the Cherokee Nation) agreed to relinquish his parental rights. Birth Mother put Baby Girl up for adoption through a private adoption agency and selected Adoptive Couple, non-Indians living in South Carolina. For the duration of the pregnancy and the first four months after Baby Girl’s birth, Biological Father provided no financial assistance to Birth Mother or Baby Girl. About four months after Baby Girl’s birth, Adoptive Couple served Biological Father with notice of the pending adoption. In the adoption proceedings, Biological Father sought custody and stated that he did not consent to the adoption. Following a trial, which took place when Baby Girl was two years old, the South Carolina Family Court denied Adoptive Couple’s adoption petition and awarded custody to Biological Father. At the age of 27 months, Baby Girl was handed over to Biological Father, whom she had never met. The State Supreme Court affirmed, concluding that the ICWA applied because the child custody proceeding related to an Indian child; that Biological Father was a “parent” under the ICWA; that §§1912(d) and (f) barred the termination of his parental rights; and that had his rights been terminated, §1915(a)’s adoptionplacement preferences would have applied. Held: 1. Assuming for the sake of argument that Biological Father is a “parent” under the ICWA, neither §1912(f) nor §1912(d) bars the termination of his parental rights. Pp. 6–14. (a) Section 1912(f) conditions the involuntary termination of parental rights on a heightened showing regarding the merits of the parent’s “continued custody of the child.” The adjective “continued” plainly refers to a pre-existing state under ordinary dictionary definitions. The phrase “continued custody” thus refers to custody that a parent already has (or at least had at some point in the past). As a result, §1912(f) does not apply where the Indian parent never had custody of the Indian child. This reading comports with the statutory text, which demonstrates that the ICWA was designed primarily to counteract the unwarranted removal of Indian children from Indian families. See §1901(4). But the ICWA’s primary goal is not implicated when an Indian child’s adoption is voluntarily and lawfully initiated by a non-Indian parent with sole custodial rights. Nonbinding guidelines issued by the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) demonstrate that the BIA envisioned that §1912(f)’s standard would apply only to termination of a custodial parent’s rights. Under this reading, Biological Father should not have been able to invoke §1912(f) in this case because he had never had legal or physical custody of Baby Girl as of the time of the adoption proceedings. Pp. 7–11. (b) Section §1912(d) conditions an involuntary termination of parental rights with respect to an Indian child on a showing “that active efforts have been made to provide remedial services . . . designed to prevent the breakup of the Indian family and that these efforts have proved unsuccessful.” Consistent with this text, §1912(d) applies only when an Indian family’s “breakup” would be precipitated by terminating parental rights. The term “breakup” refers in this context to “[t]he discontinuance of a relationship,” American Heritage Dictionary 235 (3d ed. 1992), or “an ending as an effective entity,” Webster’s Third New International Dictionary 273 (1961). But when an Indian parent abandons an Indian child prior to birth and that child has never been in the Indian parent’s legal or physical custody, there is no “relationship” to be “discontinu[ed]” and no “effective entity” to be “end[ed]” by terminating the Indian parent’s rights. In such a situation, the “breakup of the Indian family” has long since occurred, and §1912(d) is inapplicable. This interpretation is consistent with the explicit congressional purpose of setting certain “standards for the removal of Indian children from their families,” §1902, and with BIA Guidelines. Section 1912(d)’s proximity to §§1912(e) and (f), which both condition the outcome of proceedings on the merits of an Indian child’s “continued custody” with his parent, strongly suggests that the phrase “breakup of the Indian family” should be read in harmony with the “continued custody” requirement. Pp. 11–14. 2. Section 1915(a)’s adoption-placement preferences are inapplicable in cases where no alternative party has formally sought to adopt the child. No party other than Adoptive Couple sought to adopt Baby Girl in the Family Court or the South Carolina Supreme Court. Biological Father is not covered by §1915(a) because he did not seek to adopt Baby Girl; instead, he argued that his parental rights should not be terminated in the first place. And custody was never sought by Baby Girl’s paternal grandparents, other members of the Cherokee Nation, or other Indian families. Pp. 14–16. 398 S. C. 625, 731 S.E.2d 550, reversed and remanded. Alito, J., delivered the opinion of the Court, in which Roberts, C. J., and Kennedy, Thomas, and Breyer, JJ., joined. Thomas, J., and Breyer, J., filed concurring opinions. Scalia, J., filed a dissenting opinion. Sotomayor, J., filed a dissenting opinion, in which Ginsburg and Kagan, JJ., joined, and in which Scalia, J., joined in part.

This case is about a little girl (Baby Girl) who is classified as an Indian because she is 1.2% (3/256) Cherokee. Because Baby Girl is classified in this way, the South Carolina Supreme Court held that certain provisions of the federal Indian Child Welfare Act of 1978 required her to be taken, at the age of 27 months, from the only parents she had ever known and handed over to her biological father, who had attempted to relinquish his parental rights and who had no prior contact with the child. The provisions of the federal statute at issue here do not demand this result. Contrary to the State Supreme Court’s ruling, we hold that 25 U. S. C. §1912(f)—which bars involuntary termination of a parent’s rights in the absence of a heightened showing that serious harm to the Indian child is likely to result from the parent’s “continued custody” of the child—does not apply when, as here, the relevant parent never had custody of the child. We further hold that §1912(d)—which conditions involuntary termination of parental rights with respect to an Indian child on a showing that remedial efforts have been made to prevent the “breakup of the Indian family”—is inapplicable when, as here, the parent abandoned the Indian child before birth and never had custody of the child. Finally, we clarify that §1915(a), which provides placement preferences for the adoption of Indian children, does not bar a non-Indian family like Adoptive Couple from adopting an Indian child when no other eligible candidates have sought to adopt the child. We accordingly reverse the South Carolina Supreme Court’s judgment and remand for further proceedings. I “The Indian Child Welfare Act of 1978 (ICWA), 92Stat. 3069, 25 U. S. C. §§1901–1963, was the product of rising concern in the mid-1970’s over the consequences to In- dian children, Indian families, and Indian tribes of abusive child welfare practices that resulted in the separation of large numbers of Indian children from their families and tribes through adoption or foster care placement, usually in non-Indian homes.” Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians v. Holyfield, 490 U. S. 30, 32 (1989) . Congress found that “an alarmingly high percentage of Indian families [were being] broken up by the removal, often unwarranted, of their children from them by nontribal public and private agencies.” §1901(4). This “wholesale removal of Indian children from their homes” prompted Congress to enact the ICWA, which establishes federal standards that govern state-court child custody proceedings involving Indian children. Id., at 32, 36 (internal quotation marks omitted); see also §1902 (declaring that the ICWA es- tablishes “minimum Federal standards for the removal of Indian children from their families”). [ 1 ] Three provisions of the ICWA are especially relevant to this case. First, “[a]ny party seeking” an involuntary termination of parental rights to an Indian child under state law must demonstrate that “active efforts have been made to provide remedial services and rehabilitative programs designed to prevent the breakup of the Indian family and that these efforts have proved unsuccessful.” §1912(d). Second, a state court may not involuntarily terminate parental rights to an Indian child “in the absence of a determination, supported by evidence beyond a reasonable doubt, including testimony of qualified expert witnesses, that the continued custody of the child by the parent or Indian custodian is likely to result in serious emotional or physical damage to the child.” §1912(f). Third, with respect to adoptive placements for an Indian child under state law, “a preference shall be given, in the absence of good cause to the contrary, to a placement with (1) a member of the child’s extended family; (2) other members of the Indian child’s tribe; or (3) other Indian families.” §1915(a). II In this case, Birth Mother (who is predominantly Hispanic) and Biological Father (who is a member of the Cherokee Nation) became engaged in December 2008. One month later, Birth Mother informed Biological Father, who lived about four hours away, that she was pregnant. After learning of the pregnancy, Biological Father asked Birth Mother to move up the date of the wedding. He also refused to provide any financial support until after the two had married. The couple’s relationship deteriorated, and Birth Mother broke off the engagement in May 2009. In June, Birth Mother sent Biological Father a text message asking if he would rather pay child support or re- linquish his parental rights. Biological Father responded via text message that he relinquished his rights. Birth Mother then decided to put Baby Girl up for adoption. Because Birth Mother believed that Biological Father had Cherokee Indian heritage, her attorney contacted the Cherokee Nation to determine whether Biological Father was formally enrolled. The inquiry letter misspelled Biological Father’s first name and incorrectly stated his birthday, and the Cherokee Nation responded that, based on the information provided, it could not verify Biological Father’s membership in the tribal records. Working through a private adoption agency, Birth Mother selected Adoptive Couple, non-Indians living in South Carolina, to adopt Baby Girl. Adoptive Couple supported Birth Mother both emotionally and financially throughout her pregnancy. Adoptive Couple was present at Baby Girl’s birth in Oklahoma on September 15, 2009, and Adoptive Father even cut the umbilical cord. The next morning, Birth Mother signed forms relinquishing her parental rights and consenting to the adoption. Adoptive Couple initiated adoption proceedings in South Carolina a few days later, and returned there with Baby Girl. After returning to South Carolina, Adoptive Couple allowed Birth Mother to visit and communicate with Baby Girl. It is undisputed that, for the duration of the pregnancy and the first four months after Baby Girl’s birth, Biological Father provided no financial assistance to Birth Mother or Baby Girl, even though he had the ability to do so. In- deed, Biological Father “made no meaningful attempts to assume his responsibility of parenthood” during this period. App. to Pet. for Cert. 122a (Sealed; internal quotation marks omitted). Approximately four months after Baby Girl’s birth, Adoptive Couple served Biological Father with notice of the pending adoption. (This was the first notification that they had provided to Biological Father regarding the adoption proceeding.) Biological Father signed papers stating that he accepted service and that he was “not contesting the adoption.” App. 37. But Biological Father later testified that, at the time he signed the papers, he thought that he was relinquishing his rights to Birth Mother, not to Adoptive Couple. Biological Father contacted a lawyer the day after signing the papers, and subsequently requested a stay of the adoption proceedings. [ 2 ] In the adoption proceedings, Biological Father sought custody and stated that he did not consent to Baby Girl’s adoption. Moreover, Biological Father took a paternity test, which verified that he was Baby Girl’s biological father. A trial took place in the South Carolina Family Court in September 2011, by which time Baby Girl was two years old. 398 S. C. 625, 634–635, 731 S. E. 2d 550, 555–556 (2012). The Family Court concluded that Adoptive Couple had not carried the heightened burden under §1912(f) of proving that Baby Girl would suffer serious emotional or physical damage if Biological Father had custody. See id., at 648–651, 731 S. E. 2d, at 562–564. The Family Court therefore denied Adoptive Couple’s petition for adoption and awarded custody to Biological Father. Id., at 629, 636, 731 S. E. 2d, at 552, 556. On December 31, 2011, at the age of 27 months, Baby Girl was handed over to Biological Father, whom she had never met. [ 3 ] The South Carolina Supreme Court affirmed the Family Court’s denial of the adoption and the award of custody to Biological Father. Id., at 629, 731 S. E. 2d, at 552. The State Supreme Court first determined that the ICWA applied because the case involved a child custody proceeding relating to an Indian child. Id., at 637, 643, n. 18, 731 S. E. 2d, at 556, 560, n. 18. It also concluded that Biological Father fell within the ICWA’s definition of a “ ‘parent.’ ” Id., at 644, 731 S. E. 2d, at 560. The court then held that two separate provisions of the ICWA barred the termination of Biological Father’s parental rights. First, the court held that Adoptive Couple had not shown that “active efforts ha[d] been made to provide remedial services and rehabilitative programs designed to prevent the breakup of the Indian family.” §1912(d); see also id., at 647–648, 731 S. E. 2d, at 562. Second, the court concluded that Adoptive Couple had not shown that Biological Father’s “custody of Baby Girl would result in serious emotional or physical harm to her beyond a reasonable doubt.” Id., at 648–649, 731 S. E. 2d, at 562–563 (citing §1912(f)). Finally, the court stated that, even if it had decided to terminate Biological Father’s parental rights, §1915(a)’s adoption- placement preferences would have applied. Id., at 655–657, 731 S. E. 2d, at 566–567. We granted certiorari. 568 U. S. ___ (2013). III It is undisputed that, had Baby Girl not been 3/256 Cherokee, Biological Father would have had no right to object to her adoption under South Carolina law. See Tr. of Oral Arg. 49; 398 S. C., at 644, n. 19, 731 S. E. 2d, at 560, n. 19 (“Under state law, [Biological] Father’s con- sent to the adoption would not have been required”). The South Carolina Supreme Court held, however, that Biological Father is a “parent” under the ICWA and that two statutory provisions—namely, §1912(f) and §1912(d)—bar the termination of his parental rights. In this Court, Adoptive Couple contends that Biological Father is not a “parent” and that §1912(f) and §1912(d) are inapplicable. We need not—and therefore do not—decide whether Biological Father is a “parent.” See §1903(9) (defining “parent”). [ 4 ] Rather, assuming for the sake of argument that he is a “parent,” we hold that neither §1912(f) nor §1912(d) bars the termination of his parental rights. A Section 1912(f) addresses the involuntary termination of parental rights with respect to an Indian child. Specifically, §1912(f) provides that “[n]o termination of parental rights may be ordered in such proceeding in the absence of a determination, supported by evidence beyond a reasonable doubt, . . . that the continued custody of the child by the parent or Indian custodian is likely to result in serious emotional or physical damage to the child.” (Emphasis added.) The South Carolina Supreme Court held that Adoptive Couple failed to satisfy §1912(f) because they did not make a heightened showing that Biological Father’s “prospective legal and physical custody” would likely result in serious damage to the child. 398 S. C., at 651, 731 S. E. 2d, at 564 (emphasis added). That holding was error. Section 1912(f) conditions the involuntary termination of parental rights on a showing regarding the merits of “continued custody of the child by the parent.” (Emphasis added.) The adjective “continued” plainly refers to a pre-existing state. As Justice Sotomayor concedes, post, at 11 (dissenting opinion) (hereinafter the dissent), “continued” means “[c]arried on or kept up without cessation” or “[e]xtended in space without interruption or breach of conne[ct]ion.” Compact Edition of the Oxford English Dictionary 909 (1981 reprint of 1971 ed.) (Compact OED); see also American Heritage Dictionary 288 (1981) (defining “continue” in the following manner: “1. To go on with a particular action or in a particular condition; persist. . . . 3. To remain in the same state, capacity, or place”); Webster’s Third New International Dictionary 493 (1961) (Webster’s) (defining “continued” as “stretching out in time or space esp. without interruption”); Aguilar v. FDIC, 63 F. 3d 1059, 1062 (CA11 1995) (per curiam) (suggesting that the phrase “continue an action” means “go on with . . . an action” that is “preexisting”). The term “continued” also can mean “resumed after interruption.” Webster’s 493; see American Heritage Dictionary 288. The phrase “continued custody” therefore refers to custody that a parent already has (or at least had at some point in the past). As a result, §1912(f) does not apply in cases where the Indian parent never had custody of the Indian child. [ 5 ] Biological Father’s contrary reading of §1912(f) is nonsensical. Pointing to the provision’s requirement that “[n]o termination of parental rights may be ordered . . . in the absence of a determination” relating to “the continued custody of the child by the parent,” Biological Father contends that if a determination relating to “continued custody” is inapposite in cases where there is no “custody,” the statutory text prohibits termination. See Brief for Respondent Birth Father 39. But it would be absurd to think that Congress enacted a provision that permits termination of a custodial parent’s rights, while simultaneously prohibiting termination of a noncustodial parent’s rights. If the statute draws any distinction between custodial and noncustodial parents, that distinction surely does not provide greater protection for noncustodial parents. [ 6 ] Our reading of §1912(f) comports with the statutory text demonstrating that the primary mischief the ICWA was designed to counteract was the unwarranted removal of Indian children from Indian families due to the cultural insensitivity and biases of social workers and state courts. The statutory text expressly highlights the primary problem that the statute was intended to solve: “an alarmingly high percentage of Indian families [were being] broken up by the removal, often unwarranted, of their children from them by nontribal public and private agencies.” §1901(4) (emphasis added); see also §1902 (explaining that the ICWA establishes “minimum Federal standards for the removal of Indian children from their families” (emphasis added)); Holyfield, 490 U. S., at 32–34. And if the legislative history of the ICWA is thought to be relevant, it further underscores that the Act was primarily intended to stem the unwarranted removal of Indian children from intact Indian families. See, e.g., H. R. Rep. No. 95–1386, p. 8 (1978) (explaining that, as relevant here, “[t]he purpose of [the ICWA] is to protect the best interests of Indian children and to promote the stability and security of Indian tribes and families by establishing minimum Federal standards for the removal of Indian children from their families and the placement of such children in foster or adoptive homes” (emphasis added)); id., at 9 (decrying the “wholesale separation of Indian children” from their Indian families); id., at 22 (discussing “the removal” of Indian children from their parents pursuant to §§1912(e) and (f)). In sum, when, as here, the adoption of an Indian child is voluntarily and lawfully initiated by a non-Indian parent with sole custodial rights, the ICWA’s primary goal of preventing the unwarranted removal of Indian children and the dissolution of Indian families is not implicated. The dissent fails to dispute that nonbinding guidelines issued by the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) shortly after the ICWA’s enactment demonstrate that the BIA envisioned that §1912(f)’s standard would apply only to termination of a custodial parent’s rights. Specifically, the BIA stated that, under §1912(f), “[a] child may not be removed simply because there is someone else willing to raise the child who is likely to do a better job”; instead, “[i]t must be shown that . . . it is dangerous for the child to remain with his or her present custodians.” Guidelines for State Courts; Indian Child Custody Proceedings, 44 Fed. Reg. 67593 (1979) (emphasis added) (hereinafter Guidelines). Indeed, the Guidelines recognized that §1912(f) applies only when there is pre-existing custody to evaluate. See ibid. (“[T]he issue on which qualified expert testimony is required is the question of whether or not serious damage to the child is likely to occur if the child is not removed”). Under our reading of §1912(f), Biological Father should not have been able to invoke §1912(f) in this case, because he had never had legal or physical custody of Baby Girl as of the time of the adoption proceedings. As an initial matter, it is undisputed that Biological Father never had physical custody of Baby Girl. And as a matter of both South Carolina and Oklahoma law, Biological Father never had legal custody either. See S. C. Code Ann. §63–17–20(B) (2010) (“Unless the court orders otherwise, the custody of an illegitimate child is solely in the natural mother unless the mother has relinquished her rights to the child”); Okla. Stat., Tit. 10, §7800 (West Cum. Supp. 2013) (“Except as otherwise provided by law, the mother of a child born out of wedlock has custody of the child until determined otherwise by a court of competent jurisdiction”). [ 7 ] In sum, the South Carolina Supreme Court erred in finding that §1912(f) barred termination of Biological Father’s parental rights. B Section 1912(d) provides that “[a]ny party” seeking to terminate parental rights to an Indian child under state law “shall satisfy the court that active efforts have been made to provide remedial services and rehabilitative programs designed to prevent the breakup of the Indian family and that these efforts have proved unsuccessful.” (Emphasis added.) The South Carolina Supreme Court found that Biological Father’s parental rights could not be terminated because Adoptive Couple had not demonstrated that Biological Father had been provided remedial services in accordance with §1912(d). 398 S. C., at 647–648, 731 S. E. 2d, at 562. We disagree. Consistent with the statutory text, we hold that §1912(d) applies only in cases where an Indian family’s “breakup” would be precipitated by the termination of the parent’s rights. The term “breakup” refers in this context to “[t]he discontinuance of a relationship,” American Heritage Dictionary 235 (3d ed. 1992), or “an ending as an effective entity,” Webster’s 273 (defining “breakup” as “a disruption or dissolution into component parts: an ending as an effective entity”). See also Compact OED 1076 (defining “break-up” as, inter alia, a “disruption, separation into parts, disintegration”). But when an Indian parent abandons an Indian child prior to birth and that child has never been in the Indian parent’s legal or physical custody, there is no “relationship” that would be “discontinu[ed]”—and no “effective entity” that would be “end[ed]”—by the termination of the Indian par- ent’s rights. In such a situation, the “breakup of the Indian family” has long since occurred, and §1912(d) is inapplicable. Our interpretation of §1912(d) is, like our interpretation of §1912(f), consistent with the explicit congressional purpose of providing certain “standards for the removal of Indian children from their families.” §1902 (emphasis added); see also, e.g., §1901(4); Holyfield, 490 U. S., at 32–34. In addition, the BIA’s Guidelines confirm that remedial services under §1912(d) are intended “to alleviate the need to remove the Indian child from his or her parents or Indian custodians,” not to facilitate a transfer of the child to an Indian parent. See 44 Fed. Reg., at 67592 (emphasis added). Our interpretation of §1912(d) is also confirmed by the provision’s placement next to §1912(e) and §1912(f), both of which condition the outcome of proceedings on the merits of an Indian child’s “continued custody” with his parent. That these three provisions appear adjacent to each other strongly suggests that the phrase “breakup of the Indian family” should be read in harmony with the “continued custody” requirement. See United Sav. Assn. of Tex. v. Timbers of Inwood Forest Associates, Ltd., 484 U. S. 365, 371 (1988) (explaining that statutory construction “is a holistic endeavor” and that “[a] provision that may seem ambiguous in isolation is often clarified by the remainder of the statutory scheme”). None of these three provisions creates parental rights for unwed fathers where no such rights would otherwise exist. Instead, Indian parents who are already part of an “Indian family” are provided with access to “remedial services and rehabilitative programs” under §1912(d) so that their “custody” might be “continued” in a way that avoids foster-care placement under §1912(e) or termination of parental rights under §1912(f). In other words, the provision of “remedial services and rehabilitative programs” under §1912(d) supports the “continued custody” that is protected by §1912(e) and §1912(f). [ 8 ] Section 1912(d) is a sensible requirement when applied to state social workers who might otherwise be too quick to remove Indian children from their Indian families. It would, however, be unusual to apply §1912(d) in the context of an Indian parent who abandoned a child prior to birth and who never had custody of the child. The decision below illustrates this point. The South Carolina Supreme Court held that §1912(d) mandated measures such as “attempting to stimulate [Biological] Father’s desire to be a parent.” 398 S. C., at 647, 731 S. E. 2d, at 562. But if prospective adoptive parents were required to engage in the bizarre undertaking of “stimulat[ing]” a biological father’s “desire to be a parent,” it would surely dissuade some of them from seeking to adopt Indian children. [ 9 ] And this would, in turn, unnecessarily place vulnerable Indian children at a unique disadvantage in finding a permanent and loving home, even in cases where neither an Indian parent nor the relevant tribe objects to the adoption. [ 10 ] In sum, the South Carolina Supreme Court erred in finding that §1912(d) barred termination of Biological Father’s parental rights. IV In the decision below, the South Carolina Supreme Court suggested that if it had terminated Biological Father’s rights, then §1915(a)’s preferences for the adoptive placement of an Indian child would have been applicable. 398 S. C., at 655–657, 731 S. E. 2d, at 566–567. In so doing, however, the court failed to recognize a critical lim- itation on the scope of §1915(a). Section 1915(a) provides that “[i]n any adoptive placement of an Indian child under State law, a preference shall be given, in the absence of good cause to the contrary, to a placement with (1) a member of the child’s extended family; (2) other members of the Indian child’s tribe; or (3) other Indian families.” Contrary to the South Carolina Supreme Court’s suggestion, §1915(a)’s preferences are inapplicable in cases where no alternative party has formally sought to adopt the child. This is because there simply is no “preference” to apply if no alternative party that is eligible to be preferred under §1915(a) has come forward. In this case, Adoptive Couple was the only party that sought to adopt Baby Girl in the Family Court or the South Carolina Supreme Court. See Brief for Petitioners 19, 55; Brief for Respondent Birth Father 48; Reply Brief for Petitioners 13. Biological Father is not covered by §1915(a) because he did not seek to adopt Baby Girl; instead, he argued that his parental rights should not be terminated in the first place. [ 11 ] Moreover, Baby Girl’s paternal grandparents never sought custody of Baby Girl. See Brief for Petitioners 55; Reply Brief for Petitioners 13; 398 S. C., at 699, 731 S. E. 2d, at 590 (Kittredge, J., dissenting) (noting that the “paternal grandparents are not parties to this action”). Nor did other members of the Cherokee Nation or “other Indian families” seek to adopt Baby Girl, even though the Cherokee Nation had notice of—and intervened in—the adoption proceedings. See Brief for Respondent Cherokee Nation 21–22; Reply Brief for Petitioners 13–14. [ 12 ] * * * The Indian Child Welfare Act was enacted to help preserve the cultural identity and heritage of Indian tribes, but under the State Supreme Court’s reading, the Act would put certain vulnerable children at a great disadvantage solely because an ancestor—even a remote one—was an Indian. As the State Supreme Court read §§1912(d) and (f), a biological Indian father could abandon his child in utero and refuse any support for the birth mother—perhaps contributing to the mother’s decision to put the child up for adoption—and then could play his ICWA trump card at the eleventh hour to override the mother’s decision and the child’s best interests. If this were possible, many prospective adoptive parents would surely pause before adopting any child who might possibly qualify as an Indian under the ICWA. Such an interpretation would raise equal protection concerns, but the plain text of §§1912(f) and (d) makes clear that neither provision applies in the present context. Nor do §1915(a)’s rebuttable adoption preferences apply when no alternative party has formally sought to adopt the child. We therefore reverse the judgment of the South Carolina Supreme Court and remand the case for further proceedings not inconsistent with this opinion. It is so ordered. Notes 1 It is undisputed that Baby Girl is an “Indian child” as defined by the ICWA because she is an unmarried minor who “is eligible for membership in an Indian tribe and is the biological child of a member of an Indian tribe,” §1903(4)(b). See Brief for Respondent Birth Father 1, 51, n. 22; Brief for Respondent Cherokee Nation 1; Brief for Petitioners 44 (“Baby Girl’s eligibility for membership in the Cherokee Nation depends solely upon a lineal blood relationship with a tribal ancestor”).It is also undisputed that the present case concerns a “child custody proceeding,” which the ICWA defines to include proceedings that involve “termination of parental rights” and “adoptive placement,” §1903(1). 2 Around the same time, the Cherokee Nation identified Biological Father as a registered member and concluded that Baby Girl was an “Indian child” as defined in the ICWA. The Cherokee Nation intervened in the litigation approximately three months later. 3 According to the guardian ad litem, Biological Father allowed Baby Girl to speak with Adoptive Couple by telephone the following day, but then cut off all communication between them. Moreover, according to Birth Mother, Biological Father has made no attempt to contact her since the time he took custody of Baby Girl. 4 If Biological Father is not a “parent” under the ICWA, then §1912(f) and §1912(d)—which relate to proceedings involving possible termination of “parental” rights—are inapplicable. Because we conclude that these provisions are inapplicable for other reasons, however, we need not decide whether Biological Father is a “parent.” 5 With a torrent of words, the dissent attempts to obscure the fact that its interpretation simply cannot be squared with the statutory text. A biological father’s “continued custody” of a child cannot be assessed if the father never had custody at all, and the use of a different phrase—“termination of parental rights”—cannot change that. In addition, the dissent’s reliance on subsection headings, post, at 9, overlooks the fact that those headings were not actually enacted by Congress. See –3072. 6 The dissent criticizes us for allegedly concluding that a biological father qualifies for “substantive” statutory protections “only when [he] has physical or state-recognized legal custody.” Post, at 2, 6–7. But the dissent undercuts its own point when it states that “numerous” ICWA provisions not at issue here afford “meaningful” protections to biological fathers regardless of whether they ever had custody. Post, at 4–7, and nn. 1, 2. 7 In an effort to rebut our supposed conclusion that “Congress could not possibly have intended” to require legal termination of Biological Father’s rights with respect to Baby Girl, the dissent asserts that a minority of States afford (or used to afford) protection to similarly situated biological fathers. See post, at 17–18, and n. 12 (emphasis added). This is entirely beside the point, because we merely conclude that, based on the statute’s text and structure, Congress did not extend the heightened protections of §1912(d) and §1912(f) to all biological fathers. The fact that state laws may provide certain protections to biological fathers who have abandoned their children and who have never had custody of their children in no way undermines our analysis of these two federal statutory provisions. 8 The dissent claims that our reasoning “necessarily extends to all Indian parents who have never had custody of their children,” even if those parents have visitation rights. Post, at 2–3, 13–14. As an initial matter, the dissent’s concern about the effect of our decision on individuals with visitation rights will be implicated, at most, in a relatively small class of cases. For example, our interpretation of §1912(d) would implicate the dissent’s concern only in the case of a parent who abandoned his or her child prior to birth and never had physical or legal custody, but did have some sort of visitation rights. Moreover, in cases where this concern is implicated, such parents might receive “comparable” protections under state law. See post, at 15. And in any event, it is the dissent’s interpretation that would have far-reaching consequences: Under the dissent’s reading, any biological parent—even a sperm donor—would enjoy the heightened protections of §1912(d) and§1912(f), even if he abandoned the mother and the child immediately after conception. Post, at 14, n. 8. 9 Biological Father and the Solicitor General argue that a tribeor state agency could provide the requisite remedial services under §1912(d). Brief for Respondent Birth Father 43; Brief for United States as Amicus Curiae 22. But what if they don’t? And if they don’t, would the adoptive parents have to undertake the task? 10 The dissent repeatedly mischaracterizes our opinion. As our detailed discussion of the terms of the ICWA makes clear, our decisionis not based on a “[p]olicy disagreement with Congress’ judgment.” Post, at 2; see also post, at 8, 21. 11 Section 1915(c) also provides that, in the case of an adoptive placement under §1915(a), “if the Indian child’s tribe shall establish a different order of preference by resolution, the agency or court effecting the placement shall follow such order so long as the placement is the least restrictive setting appropriate to the particular needs of the child, as provided in [§1915(b)].” Although we need not decide the issuehere, it may be the case that an Indian child’s tribe could alter §1915’s preferences in a way that includes a biological father whose rights were terminated, but who has now reformed. See §1915(c). If a tribe were to take such an approach, however, the court would still have the power to determine whether “good cause” exists to disregard the tribe’s order of preference. See §§1915(a), (c); In re Adoption of T. R. M., 525 N. E. 2d 298, 313 (Ind. 1988). 12 To be sure, an employee of the Cherokee Nation testified that the Cherokee Nation certifies families to be adoptive parents and that there are approximately 100 such families “that are ready to take children that want to be adopted.” Record 446. However, this testi-mony was only a general statement regarding the Cherokee Nation’s practices; it did not demonstrate that a specific Indian family was willing to adopt Baby Girl, let alone that such a family formally sought such adoption in the South Carolina courts. See Reply Brief for Petitioners 13–14; see also Brief for Respondent Cherokee Nation 21–22.

570.US.205

In the United States Leadership Against HIV/AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria Act of 2003 (Leadership Act), 22 U. S. C. §7601 et seq., Congress has authorized the appropriation of billions of dollars to fund efforts by nongovernmental organizations to combat HIV/AIDS worldwide. The Act imposes two related conditions: (1) No funds “may be used to promote or advocate the legalization or practice of prostitution,” §7631(e); and (2) no funds may be used by an organization “that does not have a policy explicitly opposing prostitution,” §7631(f). To enforce the second condition, known as the Policy Requirement, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) require funding recipients to agree in their award documents that they oppose prostitution. Respondents, recipients of Leadership Act funds who wish to remain neutral on prostitution, sought a declaratory judgment that the Policy Requirement violates their First Amendment rights. The District Court issued a preliminary injunction, barring the Government from cutting off respondents’ Leadership Act funding during the litigation or from otherwise taking action based on their privately funded speech. The Second Circuit affirmed, concluding that the Policy Requirement, as implemented by the agencies, violated respondents’ freedom of speech. Held: The Policy Requirement violates the First Amendment by compelling as a condition of federal funding the affirmation of a belief that by its nature cannot be confined within the scope of the Government program. Pp. 6–15. (a) The Policy Requirement mandates that recipients of federal funds explicitly agree with the Government’s policy to oppose prostitution. The First Amendment, however, “prohibits the government from telling people what they must say.” Rumsfeld v. Forum for Academic and Institutional Rights, Inc., 547 U.S. 47, 61. As a direct regulation, the Policy Requirement would plainly violate the First Amendment. The question is whether the Government may nonetheless impose that requirement as a condition of federal funding. Pp. 6–7. (b) The Spending Clause grants Congress broad discretion to fund private programs or activities for the “general Welfare,” Art. I, §8, cl. 1, including authority to impose limits on the use of such funds to ensure they are used in the manner Congress intends. Rust v. Sullivan, 500 U.S. 173, 195, n. 4. As a general matter, if a party objects to those limits, its recourse is to decline the funds. In some cases, however, a funding condition can result in an unconstitutional burden on First Amendment rights. The distinction that has emerged from this Court’s cases is between conditions that define the limits of the Government spending program—those that specify the activities Congress wants to subsidize—and conditions that seek to leverage funding to regulate speech outside the contours of the federal program itself. Rust illustrates the distinction. In that case, the Court considered Title X of the Public Health Service Act, which authorized grants to health-care organizations offering family planning services, but prohibited federal funds from being “used in programs where abortion is a method of family planning.” 500 U. S., at 178. To enforce the provision, HHS regulations barred Title X projects from advocating abortion and required grantees to keep their Title X projects separate from their other projects. The regulations were valid, the Court explained, because they governed only the scope of the grantee’s Title X projects, leaving the grantee free to engage in abortion advocacy through programs that were independent from its Title X projects. Because the regulations did not prohibit speech “outside the scope of the federally funded program,” they did not run afoul of the First Amendment. Id., at 197. Pp. 7–11. (c) The distinction between conditions that define a federal program and those that reach outside it is not always self-evident, but the Court is confident that the Policy Requirement falls on the unconstitutional side of the line. To begin, the Leadership Act’s other funding condition, which prohibits Leadership Act funds from being used “to promote or advocate the legalization or practice of prostitution or sex trafficking,” §7631(e), ensures that federal funds will not be used for prohibited purposes. The Policy Requirement thus must be doing something more—and it is. By demanding that funding recipients adopt and espouse, as their own, the Government’s view on an issue of public concern, the Policy Requirement by its very nature affects “protected conduct outside the scope of the federally funded program.” Rust, supra, at 197. A recipient cannot avow the belief dictated by the condition when spending Leadership Act funds, and assert a contrary belief when participating in activities on its own time and dime. The Government suggests that if funding recipients could promote or condone prostitution using private funds, “it would undermine the government’s program and confuse its message opposing prostitution.” Brief for Petitioners 37. But the Policy Requirement goes beyond preventing recipients from using private funds in a way that would undermine the federal program. It requires them to pledge allegiance to the Government’s policy of eradicating prostitution. That condition on funding violates the First Amendment. Pp. 11–15. 651 F.3d 218, affirmed. Roberts, C. J., delivered the opinion of the Court, in which Kennedy, Ginsburg, Breyer, Alito, and Sotomayor, JJ., joined. Scalia, J., filed a dissenting opinion, in which Thomas, J., joined. Kagan, J., took no part in the consideration or decision of the case.

The United States Leadership Against HIV/AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria Act of 2003 (Leadership Act), 117Stat. 711, as amended, 22 U. S. C. §7601 et seq., outlined a comprehensive strategy to combat the spread of HIV/AIDS around the world. As part of that strategy, Congress authorized the appropriation of billions of dollars to fund efforts by nongovernmental organizations to assist in the fight. The Act imposes two related conditions on that funding: First, no funds made available by the Act “may be used to promote or advocate the legalization or practice of prostitution or sex trafficking.” §7631(e). And second, no funds may be used by an organization “that does not have a policy explicitly opposing prostitution and sex trafficking.” §7631(f). This case concerns the second of these conditions, referred to as the Policy Requirement. The question is whether that funding condition violates a recipient’s First Amendment rights. I Congress passed the Leadership Act in 2003 after finding that HIV/AIDS had “assumed pandemic proportions, spreading from the most severely affected regions, sub-Saharan Africa and the Caribbean, to all corners of the world, and leaving an unprecedented path of death and devastation.” 22 U. S. C. §7601(1). According to congressional findings, more than 65 million people had been infected by HIV and more than 25 million had lost their lives, making HIV/AIDS the fourth highest cause of death worldwide. In sub-Saharan Africa alone, AIDS had claimed the lives of more than 19 million individuals and was projected to kill a full quarter of the population of that area over the next decade. The disease not only directly endangered those infected, but also increased the potential for social and political instability and economic devastation, posing a security issue for the entire international community. §§7601(2)–(10). In the Leadership Act, Congress directed the President to establish a “comprehensive, integrated” strategy to combat HIV/AIDS around the world. §7611(a). The Act sets out 29 different objectives the President’s strategy should seek to fulfill, reflecting a multitude of approaches to the problem. The strategy must include, among other things, plans to increase the availability of treatment for infected individuals, prevent new infections, support the care of those affected by the disease, promote training for physicians and other health care workers, and accelerate research on HIV/AIDS prevention methods, all while providing a framework for cooperation with international organizations and partner countries to further the goals of the program. §§7611(a)(1)–(29). The Act “make[s] the reduction of HIV/AIDS behavioral risks a priority of all prevention efforts.” §7611(a)(12); see also §7601(15) (“Successful strategies to stem the spread of the HIV/AIDS pandemic will require . . . measures to address the social and behavioral causes of the problem”). The Act’s approach to reducing behavioral risks is multifaceted. The President’s strategy for addressing such risks must, for example, promote abstinence, encourage monogamy, increase the availability of condoms, promote voluntary counseling and treatment for drug users, and, as relevant here, “educat[e] men and boys about the risks of procuring sex commercially” as well as “promote alternative livelihoods, safety, and social reintegration strategies for commercial sex workers.” §7611(a)(12). Congress found that the “sex industry, the trafficking of individ- uals into such industry, and sexual violence” were factors in the spread of the HIV/AIDS epidemic, and deter- mined that “it should be the policy of the United States to eradicate” prostitution and “other sexual victimization.” §7601(23). The United States has enlisted the assistance of nongovernmental organizations to help achieve the many goals of the program. Such organizations “with experience in health care and HIV/AIDS counseling,” Congress found, “have proven effective in combating the HIV/AIDS pandemic and can be a resource in . . . provid[ing] treatment and care for individuals infected with HIV/AIDS.” §7601(18). Since 2003, Congress has authorized the appropriation of billions of dollars for funding these organizations’ fight against HIV/AIDS around the world. §2151b–2(c); §7671. Those funds, however, come with two conditions: First, no funds made available to carry out the Leadership Act “may be used to promote or advocate the legalization or practice of prostitution or sex trafficking.” §7631(e). Second, no funds made available may “provide assistance to any group or organization that does not have a policy explicitly opposing prostitution and sex trafficking, except . . . to the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, the World Health Organization, the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative or to any United Nations agency.” §7631(f). It is this second condition—the Policy Requirement—that is at issue here. The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) are the federal agencies primarily responsible for overseeing implementation of the Leadership Act. To enforce the Policy Requirement, the agencies have directed that the recipient of any funding under the Act agree in the award document that it is opposed to “prostitution and sex trafficking because of the psychological and physical risks they pose for women, men, and children.” 45 CFR §89.1(b) (2012); USAID, Acquisition & Assistance Policy Directive 12–04, p. 6 (AAPD 12–04). II Respondents are a group of domestic organizations engaged in combating HIV/AIDS overseas. In addition to substantial private funding, they receive billions annually in financial assistance from the United States, including under the Leadership Act. Their work includes programs aimed at limiting injection drug use in Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, and Kyrgyzstan, preventing mother-to-child HIV transmission in Kenya, and promoting safer sex practices in India. Respondents fear that adopting a policy explicitly opposing prostitution may alienate certain host governments, and may diminish the effectiveness of some of their programs by making it more difficult to work with prostitutes in the fight against HIV/AIDS. They are also concerned that the Policy Requirement may require them to censor their privately funded discussions in publications, at conferences, and in other forums about how best to prevent the spread of HIV/AIDS among prostitutes. In 2005, respondents Alliance for Open Society International and Pathfinder International commenced this litigation, seeking a declaratory judgment that the Government’s implementation of the Policy Requirement violated their First Amendment rights. Respondents sought a pre- liminary injunction barring the Government from cut- ting off their funding under the Act for the duration of the litigation, from unilaterally terminating their cooperative agreements with the United States, or from otherwise taking action solely on the basis of respondents’ own privately funded speech. The District Court granted such a preliminary injunction, and the Government appealed. While the appeal was pending, HHS and USAID issued guidelines on how recipients of Leadership Act funds could retain funding while working with affiliated organizations not bound by the Policy Requirement. The guidelines per- mit funding recipients to work with affiliated organizations that “engage[] in activities inconsistent with the recipient’s opposition to the practices of prostitution and sex trafficking” as long as the recipients retain “objective integrity and independence from any affiliated organization.” 45 CFR §89.3; see also AAPD 12–04, at 6–7. Whether sufficient separation exists is determined by the totality of the circumstances, including “but not . . . limited to” (1) whether the organizations are legally separate; (2) whether they have separate personnel; (3) whether they keep separate accounting records; (4) the degree of separation in the organizations’ facilities; and (5) the extent to which signs and other forms of identification distinguish the organizations. 45 CFR §§89.3(b)(1)–(5); see also AAPD 12–04, at 6–7. The Court of Appeals summarily remanded the case to the District Court to consider whether the preliminary injunction was still appropriate in light of the new guidelines. On remand, the District Court issued a new preliminary injunction along the same lines as the first, and the Government renewed its appeal. The Court of Appeals affirmed, concluding that respondents had demonstrated a likelihood of success on the merits of their First Amendment challenge under this Court’s “unconstitutional conditions” doctrine. 651 F. 3d 218 (CA2 2011). Under this doctrine, the court reasoned, “the government may not place a condition on the receipt of a benefit or subsidy that infringes upon the recipient’s constitutionally protected rights, even if the government has no obligation to offer the benefit in the first instance.” Id., at 231 (citing Perry v. Sindermann, 408 U. S. 593, 597 (1972) ). And a condition that compels recipients “to espouse the government’s position” on a subject of international debate could not be squared with the First Amendment. 651 F. 3d, at 234. The court concluded that “the Policy Requirement, as implemented by the Agencies, falls well beyond what the Supreme Court . . . ha[s] upheld as permissible funding conditions.” Ibid. Judge Straub dissented, expressing his view that the Policy Requirement was an “entirely rational exercise of Congress’s powers pursuant to the Spending Clause.” Id., at 240. We granted certiorari. 568 U. S. ___ (2013). III The Policy Requirement mandates that recipients of Leadership Act funds explicitly agree with the Government’s policy to oppose prostitution and sex trafficking. It is, however, a basic First Amendment principle that “freedom of speech prohibits the government from telling people what they must say.” Rumsfeld v. Forum for Academic and Institutional Rights, Inc., 547 U. S. 47, 61 (2006) (citing West Virginia Bd. of Ed. v. Barnette, 319 U. S. 624, 642 (1943) , and Wooley v. Maynard, 430 U. S. 705, 717 (1977) ). “At the heart of the First Amendment lies the principle that each person should decide for himself or herself the ideas and beliefs deserving of expression, consideration, and adherence.” Turner Broadcasting System, Inc. v. FCC, 512 U. S. 622, 641 (1994) ; see Knox v. Service Employees, 567 U. S. ___, ___–___ (2012) (slip op., at 8–9) (“The government may not . . . compel the endorsement of ideas that it approves.”). Were it enacted as a direct regulation of speech, the Policy Requirement would plainly violate the First Amendment. The question is whether the Government may nonetheless impose that requirement as a condition on the receipt of federal funds. A The Spending Clause of the Federal Constitution grants Congress the power “[t]o lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States.” Art. I, §8, cl. 1. The Clause provides Congress broad discretion to tax and spend for the “general Welfare,” including by funding particular state or private programs or activities. That power includes the authority to impose limits on the use of such funds to ensure they are used in the manner Congress intends. Rust v. Sullivan, 500 U. S. 173 , n. 4 (1991) (“Congress’ power to allocate funds for public purposes includes an ancillary power to ensure that those funds are properly applied to the prescribed use.”). As a general matter, if a party objects to a condition on the receipt of federal funding, its recourse is to decline the funds. This remains true when the objection is that a condition may affect the recipient’s exercise of its First Amendment rights. See, e.g., United States v. American Library Assn., Inc., 539 U. S. 194, 212 (2003) (plurality opinion) (rejecting a claim by public libraries that conditioning funds for Internet access on the libraries’ installing filtering software violated their First Amendment rights, explaining that “[t]o the extent that libraries wish to offer unfiltered access, they are free to do so without federal assistance”); Regan v. Taxation With Representation of Wash., 461 U. S. 540, 546 (1983) (dismissing “the notion that First Amendment rights are somehow not fully realized unless they are subsidized by the State” (internal quotation marks omitted)). At the same time, however, we have held that the Government “ ‘may not deny a benefit to a person on a basis that infringes his constitutionally protected . . . freedom of speech even if he has no entitlement to that benefit.’ ” Forum for Academic and Institutional Rights, supra, at 59 (quoting American Library Assn., supra, at 210). In some cases, a funding condition can result in an unconstitutional burden on First Amendment rights. See Forum for Academic and Institutional Rights, supra, at 59 (the First Amendment supplies “a limit on Congress’ ability to place conditions on the receipt of funds”). The dissent thinks that can only be true when the condition is not relevant to the objectives of the program (al- though it has its doubts about that), or when the condition is actually coercive, in the sense of an offer that cannot be refused. See post, at 2–3 (opinion of Scalia, J.). Our precedents, however, are not so limited. In the present context, the relevant distinction that has emerged from our cases is between conditions that define the limits of the government spending program—those that specify the activities Congress wants to subsidize—and conditions that seek to leverage funding to regulate speech outside the contours of the program itself. The line is hardly clear, in part because the definition of a particular program can always be manipulated to subsume the challenged condition. We have held, however, that “Congress cannot recast a condition on funding as a mere definition of its program in every case, lest the First Amendment be reduced to a simple semantic exercise.” Legal Services Corporation v. Velazquez, 531 U. S. 533, 547 (2001) . A comparison of two cases helps illustrate the distinction: In Regan v. Taxation With Representation of Washington, the Court upheld a requirement that nonprofit organizations seeking tax-exempt status under 26 U. S. C. §501(c)(3) not engage in substantial efforts to influence legislation. The tax-exempt status, we explained, “ha[d] much the same effect as a cash grant to the organization.” 461 U. S., at 544. And by limiting §501(c)(3) status to organizations that did not attempt to influence legislation, Congress had merely “chose[n] not to subsidize lobbying.” Ibid. In rejecting the nonprofit’s First Amendment claim, the Court highlighted—in the text of its opinion, but see post, at 5—the fact that the condition did not prohibit that organization from lobbying Congress altogether. By returning to a “dual structure” it had used in the past—separately incorporating as a §501(c)(3) organization and §501(c)(4) organization—the nonprofit could continue to claim §501(c)(3) status for its nonlobbying activities, while attempting to influence legislation in its §501(c)(4) capac- ity with separate funds. Ibid. Maintaining such a structure, the Court noted, was not “unduly burdensome.” Id., at 545, n. 6. The condition thus did not deny the organization a government benefit “on account of its intention to lobby.” Id., at 545. In FCC v. League of Women Voters of California, by contrast, the Court struck down a condition on federal financial assistance to noncommercial broadcast television and radio stations that prohibited all editorializing, including with private funds. 468 U. S. 364 –401 (1984). Even a station receiving only one percent of its overall budget from the Federal Government, the Court explained, was “barred absolutely from all editorializing.” Id., at 400. Unlike the situation in Regan, the law provided no way for a station to limit its use of federal funds to noneditorializing activities, while using private funds “to make known its views on matters of public importance.” 468 U. S., at 400. The prohibition thus went beyond ensuring that federal funds not be used to subsidize “public broadcasting station editorials,” and instead leveraged the federal funding to regulate the stations’ speech outside the scope of the program. Id., at 399 (internal quotation marks omitted). Our decision in Rust v. Sullivan elaborated on the approach reflected in Regan and League of Women Voters. In Rust, we considered Title X of the Public Health Service Act, a Spending Clause program that issued grants to nonprofit health-care organizations “to assist in the establishment and operation of voluntary family planning projects [to] offer a broad range of acceptable and effective family planning methods and services.” 500 U. S., at 178 (internal quotation marks omitted). The organizations received funds from a variety of sources other than the Federal Government for a variety of purposes. The Act, however, prohibited the Title X federal funds from being “used in programs where abortion is a method of family planning.” Ibid. (internal quotation marks omitted). To enforce this provision, HHS regulations barred Title X projects from advocating abortion as a method of family planning, and required grantees to ensure that their Title X projects were “ ‘physically and financially separate’ ” from their other projects that engaged in the prohibited activities. Id., at 180–181 (quoting 42 CFR §59.9 (1989)). A group of Title X funding recipients brought suit, claiming the regulations imposed an unconstitutional condition on their First Amendment rights. We rejected their claim. We explained that Congress can, without offending the Constitution, selectively fund certain programs to address an issue of public concern, without funding alterna- tive ways of addressing the same problem. In Title X, Congress had defined the federal program to encourage only particular family planning methods. The challenged regulations were simply “designed to ensure that the limits of the federal program are observed,” and “that public funds [are] spent for the purposes for which they were authorized.” Rust, 500 U. S., at 193, 196. In making this determination, the Court stressed that “Title X expressly distinguishes between a Title X grantee and a Title X project.” Id., at 196. The regulations governed only the scope of the grantee’s Title X projects, leaving it “unfettered in its other activities.” Ibid. “The Title X grantee can continue to . . . engage in abortion advocacy; it simply is required to conduct those activities through programs that are separate and independent from the project that receives Title X funds.” Ibid. Because the regulations did not “prohibit[ ] the recipient from engaging in the protected conduct outside the scope of the federally funded program,” they did not run afoul of the First Amendment. Id., at 197. B As noted, the distinction drawn in these cases—between conditions that define the federal program and those that reach outside it—is not always self-evident. As Justice Cardozo put it in a related context, “Definition more precise must abide the wisdom of the future.” Steward Machine Co. v. Davis, 301 U. S. 548, 591 (1937) . Here, however, we are confident that the Policy Requirement falls on the unconstitutional side of the line. To begin, it is important to recall that the Leader- ship Act has two conditions relevant here. The first—unchallenged in this litigation—prohibits Leadership Act funds from being used “to promote or advocate the legalization or practice of prostitution or sex trafficking.” 22 U. S. C. §7631(e). The Government concedes that §7631(e) by itself ensures that federal funds will not be used for the prohibited purposes. Brief for Petitioners 26–27. The Policy Requirement therefore must be doing something more—and it is. The dissent views the Requirement as simply a selection criterion by which the Government identifies organizations “who believe in its ideas to carry them to fruition.” Post, at 1. As an initial matter, whatever purpose the Policy Requirement serves in selecting funding recipients, its effects go beyond selection. The Policy Requirement is an ongoing condition on recipients’ speech and activities, a ground for terminating a grant after selection is complete. See AAPD 12–04, at 12. In any event, as the Government acknowledges, it is not simply seeking organizations that oppose prostitution. Reply Brief 5. Rather, it explains, “Congress has expressed its purpose ‘to eradicate’ prostitution and sex trafficking, 22 U. S. C. §7601(23), and it wants recipients to adopt a similar stance.” Brief for Petitioners 32 (emphasis added). This case is not about the Government’s ability to enlist the assistance of those with whom it already agrees. It is about compelling a grant recipient to adopt a particular belief as a condition of funding. By demanding that funding recipients adopt—as their own—the Government’s view on an issue of public concern, the condition by its very nature affects “protected conduct outside the scope of the federally funded program.” Rust, 500 U. S., at 197. A recipient cannot avow the belief dictated by the Policy Requirement when spending Leadership Act funds, and then turn around and assert a contrary belief, or claim neutrality, when participating in activities on its own time and dime. By requiring recipients to profess a specific belief, the Policy Requirement goes beyond defining the limits of the federally funded program to defining the recipient. See ibid. (“our ‘unconstitutional conditions’ cases involve situations in which the Government has placed a condition on the recipient of the subsidy rather than on a particular program or service, thus effectively prohibiting the recipient from engaging in the protected conduct outside the scope of the federally funded program”). The Government contends that the affiliate guidelines, established while this litigation was pending, save the program. Under those guidelines, funding recipients are permitted to work with affiliated organizations that do not abide by the condition, as long as the recipients retain “objective integrity and independence” from the unfettered affiliates. 45 CFR §89.3. The Government suggests the guidelines alleviate any unconstitutional burden on the respondents’ First Amendment rights by allowing them to either: (1) accept Leadership Act funding and comply with Policy Requirement, but establish affiliates to communicate contrary views on prostitution; or (2) decline funding themselves (thus remaining free to express their own views or remain neutral), while creating affiliates whose sole purpose is to receive and administer Leadership Act funds, thereby “cabin[ing] the effects” of the Policy Requirement within the scope of the federal program. Brief for Petitioners 38–39, 44–49. Neither approach is sufficient. When we have noted the importance of affiliates in this context, it has been because they allow an organization bound by a funding condition to exercise its First Amendment rights outside the scope of the federal program. See Rust, supra, at 197–198. Affiliates cannot serve that purpose when the condition is that a funding recipient espouse a specific belief as its own. If the affiliate is distinct from the recipient, the arrangement does not afford a means for the recipient to express its beliefs. If the affiliate is more clearly identified with the recipient, the recipient can express those beliefs only at the price of evident hypocrisy. The guidelines themselves make that clear. See 45 CFR §89.3 (allowing funding recipients to work with affiliates whose conduct is “inconsistent with the recipient’s opposition to the practices of prostitution and sex trafficking” (emphasis added)). The Government suggests that the Policy Requirement is necessary because, without it, the grant of federal funds could free a recipient’s private funds “to be used to promote prostitution or sex trafficking.” Brief for Petitioners 27 (citing Holder v. Humanitarian Law Project, 561 U. S. 1 , ___–___ (2010) (slip op., at 25–26)). That argument assumes that federal funding will simply supplant private funding, rather than pay for new programs or expand existing ones. The Government offers no support for that assumption as a general matter, or any reason to believe it is true here. And if the Government’s argument were correct, League of Women Voters would have come out differently, and much of the reasoning of Regan and Rust would have been beside the point. The Government cites but one case to support that argument, Holder v. Humanitarian Law Project. That case concerned the quite different context of a ban on providing material support to terrorist organizations, where the record indicated that support for those organizations’ nonviolent operations was funneled to support their violent activities. 561 U. S., at ___ (slip op., at 26). Pressing its argument further, the Government contends that “if organizations awarded federal funds to implement Leadership Act programs could at the same time promote or affirmatively condone prostitution or sex trafficking, whether using public or private funds, it would undermine the government’s program and confuse its message opposing prostitution and sex trafficking.” Brief for Petitioners 37 (emphasis added). But the Policy Requirement goes beyond preventing recipients from using private funds in a way that would undermine the federal program. It requires them to pledge allegiance to the Government’s policy of eradicating prostitution. As to that, we cannot improve upon what Justice Jackson wrote for the Court 70 years ago: “If there is any fixed star in our constitutional constellation, it is that no official, high or petty, can prescribe what shall be orthodox in politics, nationalism, religion, or other matters of opinion or force citizens to confess by word or act their faith therein.” Barnette, 319 U. S., at 642. * * * The Policy Requirement compels as a condition of fed- eral funding the affirmation of a belief that by its nature cannot be confined within the scope of the Government program. In so doing, it violates the First Amendment and cannot be sustained. The judgment of the Court of Appeals is affirmed. It is so ordered. Kagan, J., took no part in the consideration or decision of this case.

570.US.99

Petitioner Alleyne was charged, as relevant here, with using or carrying a firearm in relation to a crime of violence, 18 U. S. C. §924(c)(1)(A), which carries a 5-year mandatory minimum sentence, §924(c)(1)(A)(i), that increases to a 7-year minimum “if the firearm is brandished,” §924(c)(1)(A)(ii), and to a 10-year minimum “if the firearm is discharged,” §924(c)(1)(A)(iii). In convicting Alleyne, the jury form indicated that he had “[u]sed or carried a firearm during and in relation to a crime of violence,” but not that the firearm was “[b]randished.” When the presentence report recommended a 7-year sentence on the §924(c) count, Alleyne objected, arguing that the verdict form clearly indicated that the jury did not find brandishing beyond a reasonable doubt and that raising his mandatory minimum sentence based on a sentencing judge’s finding of brandishing would violate his Sixth Amendment right to a jury trial. The District Court overruled his objection, relying on this Court’s holding in Harris v. United States, 536 U.S. 545, that judicial factfinding that increases the mandatory minimum sentence for a crime is permissible under the Sixth Amendment. The Fourth Circuit affirmed, agreeing that Alleyne’s objection was foreclosed by Harris. Held: The judgment is vacated, and the case is remanded. Pp. 10–17. 457 Fed. Appx. 348, vacated and remanded. Justice Thomas delivered the opinion of the Court with respect to Parts I, III–B, III–C, and IV, concluding: 1. Because mandatory minimum sentences increase the penalty for a crime, any fact that increases the mandatory minimum is an “element” that must be submitted to the jury. Accordingly, Harris is overruled. Pp. 10–16. (a) Apprendi v. New Jersey, 530 U.S. 466, concluded that any “ ‘facts that increase the prescribed range of penalties to which a criminal defendant is exposed’ ” are elements of the crime, id., at 490, and thus the Sixth Amendment provides defendants with the right to have a jury find those facts beyond a reasonable doubt, id., at 484. Apprendi’s principle applies with equal force to facts increasing the mandatory minimum, for a fact triggering a mandatory minimum alters the prescribed range of sentences to which a criminal defendant is exposed. Id., at 490. Because the legally prescribed range is the penalty affixed to the crime, it follows that a fact increasing either end of the range produces a new penalty and constitutes an ingredient of the offense. It is impossible to dissociate the floor of a sentencing range from the penalty affixed to the crime. The fact that criminal statutes have long specified both the floor and ceiling of sentence ranges is evidence that both define the legally prescribed penalty. It is also impossible to dispute that the facts increasing the legally prescribed floor aggravate the punishment, heightening the loss of liberty associated with the crime. Defining facts that increase a mandatory minimum to be part of the substantive offense enables the defendant to predict the legally applicable penalty from the face of the indictment, see id., at 478–479, and preserves the jury’s historic role as an intermediary between the State and criminal defendants, see United States v. Gaudin, 515 U.S. 506, 510–511. In reaching a contrary conclusion, Harris relied on the fact that the 7-year minimum sentence could have been imposed with or without a judicial finding of brandishing, because the jury’s finding authorized a sentence of five years to life, 536 U. S., at 561, but that fact is beside the point. The essential Sixth Amendment inquiry is whether a fact is an element of the crime. Because the fact of brandishing aggravates the legally prescribed range of allowable sentences, it constitutes an element of a separate, aggravated offense that must be found by the jury, regardless of what sentence the defendant might have received had a different range been applicable. There is no basis in principle or logic to distinguish facts that raise the maximum from those that increase the minimum. Pp. 10–15. (b) This ruling does not mean that any fact that influences judicial discretion must be found by a jury. This Court has long recognized that broad sentencing discretion, informed by judicial factfinding, does not violate the Sixth Amendment. See, e.g., Dillon v. United States, 560 U. S. ___, ___. Pp. 15–16. 2. Here, the sentencing range supported by the jury’s verdict was five years’ imprisonment to life, but the judge, rather than the jury, found brandishing. This increased the penalty to which Alleyne was subjected and violated his Sixth Amendment rights. Pp. 16–17. Justice Thomas, joined by Justice Ginsburg, Justice Sotomayor, and Justice Kagan, concluded in Parts II and III–A: 1. The Sixth Amendment right to trial “by an impartial jury,” in conjunction with the Due Process Clause, requires that each element of a crime be proved to the jury beyond a reasonable doubt. Gaudin, 515 U. S., at 510. Several divided opinions of this Court have addressed the constitutional status of a “sentencing factor.” In McMillan v. Pennsylvania, 477 U.S. 79, 86, the Court held that facts found to increase a mandatory minimum sentence are sentencing factors that a judge could find by a preponderance of the evidence. In Apprendi, however, the Court declined to extend McMillan to a New Jersey statute that increased the maximum term of imprisonment if the trial judge found that the crime was committed with racial bias, 530 U. S., at 470, finding that any fact that increased the prescribed statutory maximum sentence must be an “element” of the offense to be found by the jury. Id., at 483, n. 10, 490. Two years later in Harris, the Court declined to apply Apprendi to facts that increased the mandatory minimum sentence but not the maximum sentence. 536 U. S., at 557. Pp. 3–6. 2. The touchstone for determining whether a fact must be found by a jury beyond a reasonable doubt is whether the fact constitutes an “element” of the charged offense. United States v. O’Brien, 560 U.S. 218, ___. Apprendi’s definition necessarily includes not only facts that increase the ceiling, but also those that increase the floor. At common law, the relationship between crime and punishment was clear. A sentence was prescribed for each offense, leaving judges with little sentencing discretion. If a fact was by law essential to the penalty, it was an element of the offense. There was a well-established practice of including in the indictment, and submitting to the jury, every fact that was a basis for imposing or increasing punishment. And this understanding was reflected in contemporaneous court decisions and treatises. Pp. 6–10. Justice Breyer, agreeing that Harris v. United States, 536 U.S. 545, should be overruled, concluded that he continues to disagree with Apprendi v. New Jersey, 530 U.S. 466, because it fails to recognize the law’s traditional distinction between elements of a crime and sentencing facts, but finds it highly anomalous to read Apprendi as insisting that juries find sentencing facts that permit a judge to impose a higher sentence while not insisting that juries find sentencing facts that require a judge to impose a higher sentence. Overruling Harris and applying Apprendi’s basic jury-determination rule to mandatory minimum sentences would erase that anomaly. Where a maximum sentence is at issue, Apprendi means that a judge who wishes to impose a higher sentence cannot do so unless a jury finds the requisite statutory factual predicate. Where a mandatory minimum sentence is at issue, Apprendi would mean that the government cannot force a judge who does not wish to impose a higher sentence to do so unless a jury finds the requisite statutory factual predicate. Pp. 1–3. Thomas, J., announced the judgment of the Court and delivered the opinion of the Court with respect to Parts I, III–B, III–C, and IV, in which Ginsburg, Breyer, Sotomayor, and Kagan, JJ., joined, and an opinion with respect to Parts II and III–A, in which Ginsburg, Sotomayor, and Kagan, JJ., joined. Sotomayor, J., filed a concurring in opinion, in which Ginsburg and Kagan, JJ., joined. Breyer, J., filed an opinion concurring in part and concurring in the judgment. Roberts, C. J., filed a dissenting opinion, in which Scalia and Kennedy, JJ., joined. Alito, J., filed a dissenting opinion.

. II The Sixth Amendment provides that those “accused” of a “crime” have the right to a trial “by an impartial jury.” This right, in conjunction with the Due Process Clause, requires that each element of a crime be proved to the jury beyond a reasonable doubt. United States v. Gaudin, 515 U. S. 506, 510 (1995) ; In re Winship, 397 U. S. 358, 364 (1970) . The substance and scope of this right depend upon the proper designation of the facts that are elements of the crime. A The question of how to define a “crime”—and, thus, how to determine what facts must be submitted to the jury—has generated a number of divided opinions from this Court. The principal source of disagreement is the constitutional status of a special sort of fact known as a “sentencing factor.” This term was first used in McMillan v. Pennsylvania, 477 U. S. 79, 86 (1986) , to refer to facts that are not found by a jury but that can still increase the defendant’s punishment. Following McMillan’s introduction of this term, this Court has made a number of efforts to delimit its boundaries. McMillan initially invoked the distinction between “elements” and “sentencing factors” to reject a constitutional challenge to Pennsylvania’s Mandatory Minimum Sentencing Act, 42 Pa. Cons. Stat. §9712 (1982). That law provided that anyone convicted of certain felonies would be subject to a mandatory minimum sentence if the judge found, by a preponderance of evidence, that the person “ ‘visibly possessed a firearm’ ” in the course of committing specified crimes. 477 U. S., at 81, n. 1. While the Court acknowledged that there were constitutional limits to the State’s ability to “defin[e] crimes and prescrib[e] penalties,” it found that the Commonwealth had permissi- bly defined visible possession as a sentencing factor, rather than an element. Id., at 86. In the Court’s view, this allowed the judge, rather than the jury, to find this fact by a preponderance of evidence without violating the Constitution. McMillan did not address whether legislatures’ freedom to define facts as sentencing factors extended to findings that increased the maximum term of imprisonment for an offense. We foreshadowed an answer to this question in Jones v. United States, 526 U. S. 227 , n. 6 (1999), but did not resolve the issue until Apprendi. There, we identified a concrete limit on the types of facts that legislatures may designate as sentencing factors. In Apprendi, the defendant was sentenced to 12 years’ imprisonment under a New Jersey statute that increased the maximum term of imprisonment from 10 years to 20 years if the trial judge found that the defendant committed his crime with racial bias. 530 U. S., at 470. In defending its sentencing scheme, the State of New Jersey argued that, under McMillan, the legislature could define racial bias as a sentencing factor to be found by the judge. We declined to extend McMillan that far. We explained that there was no “principled basis for treating” a fact increasing the maximum term of imprisonment differently than the facts constituting the base offense. 530 U. S., at 476. The historic link between crime and punishment, instead, led us to conclude that any fact that increased the prescribed statutory maximum sentence must be an “element” of the offense to be found by the jury. Id., at 483, n. 10, 490. We, thus, found that Apprendi’s sentence had been unconstitutionally enhanced by the judge’s finding of racial bias by a preponderance of evidence. Id., at 491–492. B While Apprendi only concerned a judicial finding that increased the statutory maximum, the logic of Apprendi prompted questions about the continuing vitality, if not validity, of McMillan’s holding that facts found to increase the mandatory minimum sentence are sentencing factors and not elements of the crime. We responded two years later in Harris v. United States, 536 U. S. 545 , where we considered the same statutory provision and the same question before us today. In Harris, the defendant was charged, under §924(c) (1)(A), with carrying a firearm in the course of committing a drug trafficking crime. The mandatory minimum sentence based on the jury’s verdict alone was five years, but the District Court imposed a 7-year mandatory minimum sentence based on its finding, by a preponderance of evidence, that the defendant also brandished the firearm. As in this case, Harris challenged his sentence on the ground that the 7-year mandatory minimum sentence was unconstitutional under Apprendi, even though the judge’s finding did not alter the maximum sentence to which he was exposed. Harris, supra, at 551. The Court declined to apply Apprendi to facts that increased the mandatory minimum sentence but not the maximum sentence. 536 U. S., at 557. In the Court’s view, judicial factfinding that increased the mandatory minimum did not implicate the Sixth Amendment. Because the jury’s verdict “authorized the judge to impose the minimum with or without the finding,” ibid., the Court was of the view that the factual basis for increasing the minimum sentence was not “ ‘essential’ ” to the defendant’s punishment. Id., at 560–561 (plurality opinion). Instead, it merely limited the judge’s “choices within the authorized range.” Id., at 567. From this, the Court drew a distinction between “facts increasing the defendant’s minimum sentence and facts extending the sentence beyond the statutory maximum,” id., at 566. The Court limited Apprendi’s holding to instances where the factual finding increases the statutory maximum sentence. III Alleyne contends that Harris was wrongly decided and that it cannot be reconciled with our reasoning in Apprendi. We agree. A The touchstone for determining whether a fact must be found by a jury beyond a reasonable doubt is whether the fact constitutes an “element” or “ingredient” of the charged offense. United States v. O’Brien, 560 U. S. 218 , ___ (2010) (slip op., at 5); Apprendi, supra, at 483, n. 10; J. Archbold, Pleading and Evidence in Criminal Cases 52 (5th Am. ed. 1846) (hereinafter Archbold). In Apprendi, we held that a fact is by definition an element of the offense and must be submitted to the jury if it increases the punishment above what is otherwise legally prescribed. 530 U. S., at 483, n. 10. While Harris declined to extend this principle to facts increasing mandatory minimum sentences, Apprendi’s definition of “elements” necessarily includes not only facts that increase the ceiling, but also those that increase the floor. Both kinds of facts alter the prescribed range of sentences to which a defendant is exposed and do so in a manner that aggravates the punishment. 530 U. S., at 483, n. 10; Harris, supra, at 579 (Thomas, J., dissenting). Facts that increase the mandatory minimum sentence are therefore elements and must be submitted to the jury and found beyond a reasonable doubt. 1 At common law, the relationship between crime and punishment was clear. As discussed in Apprendi, “[t]he substantive criminal law tended to be sanction-specific,” meaning “it prescribed a particular sentence for each offense.” Langbein, The English Criminal Trial Jury on the Eve of the French Revolution, in The Trial Jury in England, France, Germany 1700–1900, p. 36 (A. Schioppa ed. 1987) (quoted in Apprendi, supra, at 479). The system left judges with little sentencing discretion: once the facts of the offense were determined by the jury, the “judge was meant simply to impose [the prescribed] sentence.” Langbein, supra, at 36–37; see also 3 W. Blackstone, Commentaries on the Laws of England 396 (1768) (“The judgment, though pronounced or awarded by the judges, is not their determination or sentence, but the determination and sentence of the law” (emphasis deleted)). This Court has recognized that the same was true, in many instances, early on in this country. United States v. Grayson, 438 U. S. 41, 45 (1978) ; see, e.g., Commonwealth v. Smith, 1 Mass. 245 (1804) (describing state law that specified a punishment for larceny of damages three times the value of the stolen goods). While some early American statutes provided ranges of permissible sentences, K. Stith & J. Cabranes, Fear of Judging: Sentencing Guidelines in the Federal Courts 9 (1998), the ranges themselves were linked to particular facts constituting the elements of the crime. E.g., Lacy v. State, 15 Wis. 13 (1862) (discussing arson statute that provided for a sentence of 7 to 14 years where the house was occupied at the time of the offense, but a sentence of 3 to 10 if it was not); Ga. Penal Code §§4324–4325 (1867) (robbery “by open force or violence” was punishable by 4 to 20 years’ imprisonment, while “[r]obbery by intimidation, or without using force and violence,” was punishable by 2 to 5 years’ imprisonment). This linkage of facts with particular sentence ranges (defined by both the minimum and the maximum) reflects the intimate connection between crime and punishment. Consistent with this connection between crime and punishment, various treatises defined “crime” as consisting of every fact which “is in law essential to the punishment sought to be inflicted,” 1 J. Bishop, Criminal Procedure 50 (2d ed. 1872) (hereinafter Bishop), or the whole of the wrong “to which the law affixes . . . punishment,” id., §80, at 51. See also 1 J. Bishop, New Criminal Procedure §84, p. 49 (4th ed. 1895) (defining crime as “that wrongful aggregation [of elements] out of which the punishment proceeds”); Archbold 128 (defining crime to include any fact that “annexes a higher degree of punishment”). Numerous high courts agreed that this formulation “accurately captured the common-law understanding of what facts are elements of a crime.” Apprendi, 530 U. S., at 511–512 (Thomas, J., concurring) (collecting cases). If a fact was by law essential to the penalty, it was an element of the offense. 2 From these widely recognized principles followed a well-established practice of including in the indictment, and submitting to the jury, every fact that was a basis for imposing or increasing punishment. While an exhaustive history need not be recounted here, see id., at 501–509 (Thomas, J., concurring) (detailing practices of American courts from the 1840’s onward), a few particularly salient examples illustrate the point. In Hope v. Commonwealth, 50 Mass. 134 (1845), the defendant was indicted for (and convicted of) larceny. The larceny statute established two levels of sentencing based on whether the value of the stolen property exceeded $100. Because punishment varied with value, the state high court found that value was an element of the offense: “Our statutes, it will be remembered, prescribe the punishment for larceny, with reference to the value of the property stolen; and for this reason, as well as because it is in conformity with long established practice, the court are of [the] opinion that the value of the property alleged to be stolen must be set forth in the indictment.” Id., at 137. Numerous other contemporaneous court decisions reflect this same understanding. See, e.g., Ritchey v. State, 7 Blackf. 168, 169 (Ind. 1844) (holding that indictment for arson must allege value of property destroyed, because statute set punishment based on value); United States v. Fisher, 25 F. Cas. 1086 (No. 15,102) (CC Ohio 1849) (McLean, J.) (“A carrier of the mail is subject to a higher penalty where he steals a letter out of the mail, which contains an article of value. And when this offense is committed, the indictment must allege the letter contained an article of value, which aggravates the offense and incurs a higher penalty”). A number of contemporaneous treatises similarly took the view that a fact that increased punishment must be charged in the indictment. As one 19th-century commentator explained: “Where a statute annexes a higher degree of punishment to a common-law felony, if committed under particular circumstances, an indictment for the offence, in order to bring the defendant within that higher degree of punishment, must expressly charge it to have been committed under those circumstances, and must state the circumstances with certainty and precision. [2 M. Hale, Pleas of the Crown *170].” Archbold 51 (15th ed. 1862). Another explained that “the indictment must contain an allegation of every fact which is legally essential to the punishment to be inflicted.” Bishop §81, at 51. This rule “enabled [the defendant] to determine the species of offence” with which he was charged “in order that he may prepare his defence accordingly . . . and that there may be no doubt as to the judgment which should be given, if the defendant be convicted.” Archbold 44 (emphasis added). As the Court noted in Apprendi, “[t]he defendant’s ability to predict with certainty the judgment from the face of the felony indictment flowed from the invariable linkage of punishment with crime.” 530 U. S., at 478. B Consistent with common-law and early American practice, Apprendi concluded that any “facts that increase the prescribed range of penalties to which a criminal defendant is exposed” are elements of the crime. Id., at 490 (internal quotation marks omitted); id., at 483, n. 10 (“[F]acts that expose a defendant to a punishment greater than that otherwise legally prescribed were by definition ‘elements’ of a separate legal offense”). [ 1 ] We held that the Sixth Amendment provides defendants with the right to have a jury find those facts beyond a reasonable doubt. Id., at 484. While Harris limited Apprendi to facts increasing the statutory maximum, the principle applied in Apprendi applies with equal force to facts increasing the mandatory minimum. It is indisputable that a fact triggering a mandatory minimum alters the prescribed range of sentences to which a criminal defendant is exposed. Apprendi, supra, at 490; Harris, 536 U. S., at 575, 582 (Thomas, J., dissenting). But for a finding of brandishing, the penalty is five years to life in prison; with a finding of brandishing, the penalty becomes seven years to life. Just as the maximum of life marks the outer boundary of the range, so seven years marks its floor. And because the legally prescribed range is the penalty affixed to the crime, infra, this page, it follows that a fact increasing either end of the range produces a new penalty and constitutes an ingredient of the offense. Apprendi, supra, at 501 (Thomas, J., concurring); see also Bishop §598, at 360–361 (if “a statute prescribes a particular punishment to be inflicted on those who commit it under special circumstances which it mentions, or with particular aggravations,” then those special circumstances must be specified in the indictment (emphasis added)); 1 F. Wharton, Criminal Law §371, p. 291 (rev. 7th ed. 1874) (similar). It is impossible to dissociate the floor of a sentencing range from the penalty affixed to the crime. See Harris, supra, at 569 (Breyer, J., concurring in part and concurring in judgment) (facts increasing the minimum and facts increasing the maximum cannot be distinguished “in terms of logic”). Indeed, criminal statutes have long specified both the floor and ceiling of sentence ranges, which is evidence that both define the legally prescribed penalty. See, e.g., supra, at 7–8; N. Y. Penal Code §§231–232, p. 70 (1882) (punishment for first-degree robbery was 10 to 20 years’ imprisonment; second-degree robbery was 5 to 15 years); Va. Code ch. 192, §§1–2, p. 787 (2d ed. 1860) (arson committed at night was punishable by 5 to 10 years; arson committed during the day was 3 to 10 years). This historical practice allowed those who violated the law to know, ex ante, the contours of the penalty that the legislature affixed to the crime—and comports with the obvious truth that the floor of a mandatory range is as relevant to wrongdoers as the ceiling. A fact that increases a sen- tencing floor, thus, forms an essential ingredient of the offense. Moreover, it is impossible to dispute that facts increasing the legally prescribed floor aggravate the punishment. Harris, supra, at 579 (Thomas, J., dissenting); O’Brien, 560 U. S., at ___ (Thomas, J., concurring in judgment) (slip op., at 2). Elevating the low-end of a sentenc- ing range heightens the loss of liberty associated with the crime: the defendant’s “expected punishment has increased as a result of the narrowed range” and “the prosecution is empowered, by invoking the mandatory minimum, to require the judge to impose a higher punishment than he might wish.” Apprendi, supra, at 522 (Thomas, J., concurring). Why else would Congress link an increased mandatory minimum to a particular aggravating fact other than to heighten the consequences for that behavior? See McMillan, 477 U. S., at 88, 89 (twice noting that a mandatory minimum “ ‘ups the ante’ ” for a criminal defendant); Harris, supra, at 580 (Thomas, J., dissenting). This reality demonstrates that the core crime and the fact triggering the mandatory minimum sentence together constitute a new, aggravated crime, each element of which must be submitted to the jury. [ 2 ] Defining facts that increase a mandatory statutory minimum to be part of the substantive offense enables the defendant to predict the legally applicable penalty from the face of the indictment. See Apprendi, 530 U. S., at 478–479. It also preserves the historic role of the jury as an intermediary between the State and criminal defendants. See United States v. Gaudin, 515 U. S., at 510–511 (“This right was designed ‘to guard against a spirit of oppression and tyranny on the part of rulers,’ and ‘was from very early times insisted on by our ancestors in the parent country, as the great bulwark of their civil and political liberties’ ” (quoting 2 J. Story, Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States §§1779, 1780, pp. 540–541 (4th ed. 1873))); Williams v. Florida, 399 U. S. 78, 100 (1970) (“[T]he essential feature of a jury obviously lies in [its] interposition between the accused and his accuser”); Duncan v. Louisiana, 391 U. S. 145, 155 (1968) (“A right to jury trial is granted to criminal defendants in order to prevent oppression by the Government”). In adopting a contrary conclusion, Harris relied on the fact that the 7-year minimum sentence could have been imposed with or without a judicial finding of brandishing, because the jury’s finding already authorized a sentence of five years to life. 536 U. S., at 561. The dissent repeats this argument today. See post, at 5 (opinion of Roberts, C. J.) (“The jury’s verdict authorized the judge to impose the precise sentence he imposed for the precise factual reason he imposed it”). While undoubtedly true, this fact is beside the point. [ 3 ] As noted, the essential Sixth Amendment inquiry is whether a fact is an element of the crime. When a finding of fact alters the legally prescribed punishment so as to aggravate it, the fact necessarily forms a constituent part of a new offense and must be submitted to the jury. It is no answer to say that the defendant could have received the same sentence with or without that fact. It is obvious, for example, that a defendant could not be convicted and sentenced for assault, if the jury only finds the facts for larceny, even if the punishments prescribed for each crime are identical. One reason is that each crime has different elements and a defendant can be convicted only if the jury has found each element of the crime of conviction. Similarly, because the fact of brandishing aggravates the legally prescribed range of allowable sentences, it constitutes an element of a separate, aggravated offense that must be found by the jury, regardless of what sentence the defendant might have received if a different range had been applicable. Indeed, if a judge were to find a fact that increased the statutory maximum sentence, such a finding would violate the Sixth Amendment, even if the defendant ultimately received a sentence falling within the original sentencing range (i.e., the range applicable without that aggravating fact). Cf. Hobbs v. State, 44 Tex. 353 (1875) (reversing conviction where the defendant was indicted for a crime punishable by 2 to 5 years and sentenced to 3 years because the trial court improperly instructed the jury to sentence the defendant between 2 to 10 years if it found a particular aggravating fact); State v. Callahan, 109 La. 946, 33 So. 931 (1903) (finding ex post facto violation where a newly enacted law increased the range of punishment, even though defendant was sentenced within the range established by the prior law). [ 4 ] The essential point is that the aggravating fact produced a higher range, which, in turn, conclusively indicates that the fact is an element of a distinct and aggravated crime. It must, therefore, be submitted to the jury and found beyond a reasonable doubt. Because there is no basis in principle or logic to dis- tinguish facts that raise the maximum from those that increase the minimum, Harris was inconsistent with Ap-prendi. It is, accordingly, overruled. [ 5 ] C In holding that facts that increase mandatory minimum sentences must be submitted to the jury, we take care to note what our holding does not entail. Our ruling today does not mean that any fact that influences judicial discretion must be found by a jury. We have long recognized that broad sentencing discretion, informed by judicial factfinding, does not violate the Sixth Amendment. See, e.g., Dillon v. United States, 560 U. S. ___, ___ (2010) (slip op., at 11) (“[W]ithin established limits[,] . . . the exercise of [sentencing] discretion does not contravene the Sixth Amendment even if it is informed by judge-found facts” (emphasis deleted and internal quotation marks omitted)); Apprendi, 530 U. S., at 481 (“[N]othing in this history suggests that it is impermissible for judges to exercise discretion—taking into consideration various factors relating both to offense and offender—in imposing a judgment within the range prescribed by statute”). [ 6 ] This position has firm historical roots as well. As Bishop explained: “[W]ithin the limits of any discretion as to the punishment which the law may have allowed, the judge, when he pronounces sentence, may suffer his discretion to be influenced by matter shown in aggravation or mitigation, not covered by the allegations of the indictment.” Bishop §85, at 54. “[E]stablishing what punishment is available by law and setting a specific punishment within the bounds that the law has prescribed are two different things.” Apprendi, supra, at 519 (Thomas, J., concurring). Our decision today is wholly consistent with the broad discretion of judges to select a sentence within the range authorized by law. IV Here, the sentencing range supported by the jury’s verdict was five years’ imprisonment to life. The District Court imposed the 7-year mandatory minimum sentence based on its finding by a preponderance of evidence that the firearm was “brandished.” Because the finding of brandishing increased the penalty to which the defendant was subjected, it was an element, which had to be found by the jury beyond a reasonable doubt. The judge, rather than the jury, found brandishing, thus violating petitioner’s Sixth Amendment rights. Accordingly, we vacate the Sixth Circuit’s judgment with respect to Alleyne’s sentence on the §924(c)(1)(A) conviction and remand the case for resentencing consistent with the jury’s verdict. It is so ordered. Notes 1 In Almendarez-Torres v. United States, , we recognized a narrow exception to this general rule for the fact of a prior conviction. Because the parties do not contest that decision’s vitality, we do not revisit it for purposes of our decision today. 2 Juries must find any facts that increase either the statutory maximum or minimum because the applies where a finding of fact both alters the legally prescribed range and does so in a way that aggravates the penalty. Importantly, this is distinct from factfinding used to guide judicial discretion in selecting a punishment “within limits fixed by law.” Williams v. New York, . While such findings of fact may lead judges to select sentences that are more severe than the ones they would have selected without those facts, the does not govern that element of sentencing. Infra, at 15–17, and n. 6. 3 Apprendi rejected an argument similar to the one advanced in Harris. In Apprendi, the State of New Jersey argued that increasing the defendant’s statutory maximum on the challenged count did not violate the because “the judge could have imposed consecutive sentences,” in conjunction with other counts, to produce the sentence that the defendant actually received on the count at issue. 530 U. S., at 474. We found that this possibility did not preclude a violation. Ibid. 4 Many criminal statutes allow for this possibility. For example, an Illinois law provides for a sentence of 2 to 10 years’ imprisonment for intimidation, Ill. Comp. Stat., ch. 720, §5/12–6(b) (West 2010), and 3 to 14 years for aggravated intimidation, §5/12–6.2(b). The elements of aggravated intimidation include all the elements of intimidation plus one enumerated aggravating fact. Under this statute, if a jury found each element of intimidation, but the judge purported to find a fact that elevated the offense to aggravated intimidation, the would most certainly be violated, even if the defendant received a sentence that fell within both ranges. See also La. Rev. Stat. Ann. §§14:51, 14:52 (West 2007) (sentencing range for simple arson is 2 to 15 years; sentencing range for aggravated arson is 6 to 20 years); Mont. Code Ann. §§45–5–302(2), 5–303(2) (2011) (sentencing range for kidnapping is 2 to 10 years, but 2 to life for aggravated kidnapping). 5 The force of stare decisis is at its nadir in cases concerning procedural rules that implicate fundamental constitutional protections. Because Harris is irreconcilable with the reasoning of Apprendi and the original meaning of the , we follow the latter. 6 See also United States v. Tucker, (judges may exercise sentencing discretion through “an inquiry broad in scope, largely unlimited either as to the kind of information [they] may consider, or the source from which it may come”); Williams v. New York, (“[B]oth before and since the American colonies became a nation, courts in this country and in England practiced a policy under which a sentencing judge could exercise a wide discretion in the sources and types of evidence used to assist him in determining the kind and extent of punishment to be imposed within limits fixed by law”).

568.US.85

Nike filed this suit, alleging that two of Already’s athletic shoes violated Nike’s Air Force 1 trademark. Already denied the allegations and filed a counterclaim challenging the validity of Nike’s Air Force 1 trademark. While the suit was pending, Nike issued a “Covenant Not to Sue,” promising not to raise any trademark or unfair competition claims against Already or any affiliated entity based on Already’s existing footwear designs, or any future Already designs that constituted a “colorable imitation” of Already’s current products. Nike then moved to dismiss its claims with prejudice, and to dismiss Already’s counterclaim without prejudice on the ground that the covenant had extinguished the case or controversy. Already opposed dismissal of its counterclaim, contending that Nike had not established that its covenant had mooted the case. In support, Already presented an affidavit from its president, stating that Already planned to introduce new versions of its lines into the market; affidavits from three potential investors, asserting that they would not consider investing in Already until Nike’s trademark was invalidated; and an affidavit from an Already executive, stating that Nike had intimidated retailers into refusing to carry Already’s shoes. The District Court dismissed Already’s counterclaim, concluding that there was no longer a justiciable controversy. The Second Circuit affirmed. It explained that the covenant was broadly drafted; that the court could not conceive of a shoe that would infringe Nike’s trademark yet not fall within the covenant; and that Already had not asserted any intent to market such a shoe. Held: This case is moot. Pp. 3–15. (a) A case becomes moot—and therefore no longer a “Case” or “Controversy” for Article III purposes—“when the issues presented are no longer ‘live’ or the parties lack a legally cognizable interest in the outcome.” Murphy v. Hunt, 455 U.S. 478, 481. A defendant cannot, however, automatically moot a case simply by ending its unlawful conduct once sued. City of Mesquite v. Aladdin’s Castle, Inc., 455 U.S. 283, 289. Instead, “a defendant claiming that its voluntary compliance moots a case bears the formidable burden of showing that it is absolutely clear the allegedly wrongful behavior could not reasonably be expected to recur.” Friends of the Earth, Inc. v. Laidlaw Environmental Services (TOC), Inc., 528 U.S. 167, 190. Pp. 3–4. (b) Nike has the burden to show that it “could not reasonably be expected” to resume its enforcement efforts against Already. The voluntary cessation doctrine was not disavowed in Deakins v. Monaghan, 484 U.S. 193. There, the Court employed precisely the analysis the test requires, finding a case moot because the challenged action—pursuing a claim in court—could not be resumed in “this or any subsequent action” and because it was entirely “ ‘speculative’ ” that any similar claim would arise in the future. Id., at 201, n. 4. Pp. 5–6. (c) Application of the voluntary cessation doctrine shows that this case is moot. Pp. 6–14. (1) The breadth of the covenant suffices to meet the burden imposed by the doctrine. The covenant is unconditional and irrevocable. It prohibits Nike from filing suit or making any claim or demand; protects both Already and Already’s distributors and customers; and covers not just current or previous designs, but also colorable imitations. Once Nike demonstrated that the covenant encompasses all of Already’s allegedly unlawful conduct, it became incumbent on Already to indicate that it engages in or has sufficiently concrete plans to engage in activities that would arguably infringe Nike’s trademark yet not be covered by the covenant. But Already failed to do so in the courts below or in this Court. The case is thus moot because the challenged conduct cannot reasonably be expected to recur. Cardinal Chemical Co. v. Morton Int’l, Inc., 508 U.S. 83, and Altvater v. Freeman, 319 U.S. 359, distinguished. Pp. 6–9. (2) Already’s alternative theories of Article III injuries do not save the case from mootness, because none of those injuries suffices to support Article III standing in the first place. Already argues that as long as Nike is free to assert its trademark, investors will hesitate to invest in Already. But once it is “absolutely clear” that challenged conduct cannot “reasonably be expected to recur,” Friends of the Earth, supra, at 190, the fact that some individuals may base decisions on conjectural or hypothetical speculation does not give rise to the sort of concrete and actual injury necessary to establish Article III standing, Lujan v. Defenders of Wildlife, 504 U.S. 555, 560. Already worries about its retailers, but even if a plaintiff may bring an invalidity claim based on a reasonable expectation that a trademark holder will take action against the plaintiff’s retailers, the covenant here extends protection to Already’s distributors and customers. Already also complains that Nike’s decision to sue in the first place has led Already to fear another suit. But, since Nike has met its burden to demonstrate that there is no reasonable risk of such a suit, this concern is unfounded. Already falls back on the sweeping argument that, as one of Nike’s competitors, it inherently has standing because no covenant can eradicate the effects of a registered but invalid trademark. The logical conclusion of this theory seems to be that a market participant is injured for Article III purposes whenever a competitor benefits from something allegedly unlawful—e.g., a trademark or the awarding of a contract—but this Court has never accepted such a boundless theory of standing. Already’s policy objection that dismissing this case allows Nike to bully small innovators does not support adoption of this broad theory. Granting covenants not to sue may be a risky long-term strategy for a trademark holder. And while accepting Already’s theory may benefit the small competitor in this case, it also lowers the gates for larger companies with more resources, who may challenge the intellectual property portfolios of more humble rivals simply because they are competitors in the same market. This would further encourage parties to employ litigation as a weapon against their competitors rather than as a last resort for settling disputes. Pp. 9–14. (d) No purpose would be served by remanding the case. Already has had every opportunity and incentive to submit evidence in the proceedings below. It has refused, at every stage of the proceedings, to suggest that it has any plans to design a shoe that violates the Air Force 1 trademark yet falls outside the covenant. And while the courts below did not expressly invoke the voluntary cessation standard, their analysis addressed the same questions this Court addresses here under that standard. Pp. 14–15. 663 F.3d 89, affirmed. Roberts, C. J., delivered the opinion for a unanimous Court. Kennedy, J., filed a concurring opinion, in which Thomas, Alito, and Sotomayor, JJ., joined.

The question is whether a covenant not to enforce a trademark against a competitor’s existing products and any future “colorable imitations” moots the competitor’s action to have the trademark declared invalid. I Respondent Nike designs, manufactures, and sells ath- letic footwear, including a line of shoes known as Air Force 1s. Petitioner Already also designs and markets athletic footwear, including shoe lines known as “Sugars” and “Soulja Boys.” Nike, alleging that the Soulja Boys in- fringed and diluted the Air Force 1 trademark, demanded that Already cease and desist its sale of those shoes. When Already refused, Nike filed suit in federal court alleging that the Soulja Boys as well as the Sugars infringed and diluted its Air Force 1 trademark. Already denied these allegations and filed a counterclaim contending that the Air Force 1 trademark is invalid. In March 2010, eight months after Nike filed its complaint, and four months after Already counterclaimed, Nike issued a “Covenant Not to Sue.” Its preamble stated that “Already’s actions . . . no longer infringe or dilute the NIKE Mark at a level sufficient to warrant the substantial time and expense of continued litigation.” App. 96a. The covenant promised that Nike would not raise against Already or any affiliated entity any trademark or unfair competition claim based on any of Already’s existing footwear designs, or any future Already designs that constituted a “colorable imitation” of Already’s current products. Id., at 96a–97a. After issuing this covenant, Nike moved to dismiss its claims with prejudice, and to dismiss Already’s invalid- ity counterclaim without prejudice on the ground that the covenant had extinguished the case or controversy. Already opposed dismissal of its counterclaim, arguing that Nike had not established that its voluntary cessation had mooted the case. In support, Already presented an affi- davit from its president, stating that Already had plans to introduce new versions of its shoe lines into the market; affidavits from three potential investors, asserting that they would not consider investing in Already until Nike’s trademark was invalidated; and an affidavit from one of Already’s executives, stating that Nike had intimidated retailers into refusing to carry Already’s shoes. The District Court dismissed Already’s counterclaim, stating that because Already sought “to invoke the Court’s declaratory judgment jurisdiction, it bears the burden of demonstrating that the Court has subject matter jurisdiction over its counterclaim[ ].” Civ. No. 09–6366 (SDNY, Jan. 20, 2011), App. to Pet. for Cert. 25a. The Court read the covenant “broad[ly],” concluding that “any of [Al- ready’s] future products that arguably infringed the Nike Mark would be ‘colorable imitations’ ” of Already’s current footwear and therefore protected by the covenant. Id., at 29a, n. 2. Finding no evidence that Already sought to develop any shoes not covered by the covenant, the Court held there was no longer “a substantial controversy . . . of sufficient immediacy and reality to warrant the issuance of a declaratory judgment.” Id., at 34a (quoting Med- Immune, Inc. v. Genentech, Inc., 549 U.S. 118, 127 (2007) (internal quotation marks omitted)). The Second Circuit affirmed. It held that in determining whether a covenant not to sue “eliminates a justiciable case or controversy,” courts should look to the totality of the circumstances, including “(1) the language of the covenant, (2) whether the covenant covers future, as well as past, activity and products, and (3) evidence of intention . . . on the part of the party asserting jurisdiction” to engage in conduct not covered by the covenant. 663 F.3d 89, 96 (2011) (footnote omitted). Noting that the covenant covers “both past sales and future sales of both existing products and colorable imitations,” the Second Circuit found it hard to conceive of a shoe that would infringe the Air Force 1 trademark yet not fall within the covenant. Id., at 97. Given that Already “ha[d] not asserted any intention to market any such shoe,” the court concluded that Already could not show any continuing injury, and that therefore no justiciable controversy remained. Ibid. We granted certiorari. 567 U. S. ___ (2012). II Article III of the Constitution grants the Judicial Branch authority to adjudicate “Cases” and “Controversies.” In our system of government, courts have “no business” deciding legal disputes or expounding on law in the absence of such a case or controversy. DaimlerChrysler Corp. v. Cuno, 547 U.S. 332, 341 (2006). That limitation requires those who invoke the power of a federal court to demonstrate standing—a “personal injury fairly traceable to the defendant’s allegedly unlawful conduct and likely to be redressed by the requested relief.” Allen v. Wright, 468 U.S. 737, 751 (1984). We have repeatedly held that an “actual controversy” must exist not only “at the time the complaint is filed,” but through “all stages” of the litigation. Alvarez v. Smith, 558 U.S. 87, 92 (2009) (internal quotation marks omitted); Arizonans for Official English v. Arizona, 520 U.S. 43, 67 (1997) (“To qualify as a case fit for federal-court adjudication, ‘an actual controversy must be extant at all stages of review, not merely at the time the complaint is filed’ ” (quoting Preiser v. Newkirk, 422 U.S. 395, 401 (1975))). A case becomes moot—and therefore no longer a “Case” or “Controversy” for purposes of Article III—“when the issues presented are no longer ‘live’ or the parties lack a legally cognizable interest in the outcome.” Murphy v. Hunt, 455 U.S. 478, 481 (1982) (per curiam) (some in- ternal quotation marks omitted). No matter how vehemently the parties continue to dispute the lawfulness of the conduct that precipitated the lawsuit, the case is moot if the dispute “is no longer embedded in any actual controversy about the plaintiffs’ particular legal rights.” Alvarez, supra, at 93. We have recognized, however, that a defendant cannot automatically moot a case simply by ending its unlawful conduct once sued. City of Mesquite v. Aladdin’s Castle, Inc., 455 U.S. 283, 289 (1982). Otherwise, a defendant could engage in unlawful conduct, stop when sued to have the case declared moot, then pick up where he left off, repeating this cycle until he achieves all his unlawful ends. Given this concern, our cases have explained that “a defendant claiming that its voluntary compliance moots a case bears the formidable burden of showing that it is absolutely clear the allegedly wrongful behavior could not reasonably be expected to recur.” Friends of the Earth, Inc. v. Laidlaw Environmental Services (TOC), Inc., 528 U.S. 167, 190 (2000). III At the outset of this litigation, both parties had standing to pursue their competing claims in court. Nike had standing to sue because Already’s activity was allegedly infringing its rights under trademark law. Already had standing to file its counterclaim because Nike was alleg- edly pressing an invalid trademark to halt Already’s le- gitimate business activity. See MedImmune, supra, at 126–137 (a genuine threat of enforcement of intellectual prop- erty rights that inhibits commercial activity may support standing). But then Nike dismissed its claims with prejudice and issued its covenant, calling into question the existence of any continuing case or controversy. Under our precedents, it was Nike’s burden to show that it “could not reasonably be expected” to resume its enforcement efforts against Already. Friends of the Earth, supra, at 190. Nike makes a halfhearted effort to avoid this test. Relying on Deakins v. Monaghan, 484 U.S. 193 (1988), it argues that “when a defendant makes a judicially enforceable commitment to avoid the conduct that forms the basis for an Article III controversy, there is no reason to apply a special rule premised on the defendant’s unfettered ability to ‘return to [its] old ways.’ ” Brief for Respondent 42. Nike’s reliance on Deakins is misplaced. In Deakins, the Court did not disavow the voluntary cessation doctrine; the Court employed precisely the analysis required by that test. It found the case was moot because the challenged action—pursuing a claim in court—could not be resumed in “this or any subsequent action” and because it was entirely “speculative” that any similar claim would arise in the future. 484 U. S., at 201, n. 4 (internal quotation marks omitted). It distinguished that situation from one in which a defendant is “free to return to his old ways.” Ibid. (internal quotation marks omitted). That is the question the voluntary cessation doctrine poses: Could the allegedly wrongful behavior reasonably be expected to re- cur? Nike cannot avoid its “formidable burden” by as- suming the answer to that question. Friends of the Earth, supra, at 190. IV A Having determined that the voluntary cessation doctrine applies, we begin our analysis with the terms of the covenant: “[Nike] unconditionally and irrevocably covenants to refrain from making any claim(s) or demand(s) . . . against Already or any of its . . . related business entities . . . [including] distributors . . . and employees of such entities and all customers . . . on account of any possible cause of action based on or involving trademark infringement, unfair competition, or dilution, under state or federal law . . . relating to the NIKE Mark based on the appearance of any of Already’s current and/or previous footwear product designs, and any colorable imitations thereof, regardless of whether that footwear is produced . . . or otherwise used in commerce before or after the Effective Date of this Covenant.” App. 96a–97a (emphasis added). The breadth of this covenant suffices to meet the burden imposed by the voluntary cessation test. The covenant is unconditional and irrevocable. Beyond simply prohibiting Nike from filing suit, it prohibits Nike from making any claim or any demand. It reaches beyond Already to protect Already’s distributors and customers. And it covers not just current or previous designs, but any colorable imitations. In addition, Nike originally argued that the Sugars and Soulja Boys infringed its trademark; in other words, Nike believed those shoes were “colorable imitations” of the Air Force 1s. See Trademark Act of 1946 (Lanham Act), §32, 60Stat. 437, as amended, 15 U. S. C. §1114. Nike’s cov- enant now allows Already to produce all of its existing footwear designs—including the Sugar and Soulja Boy—and any “colorable imitation” of those designs. We agree with the Court of Appeals that “it is hard to imagine a scenario that would potentially infringe [Nike’s trademark] and yet not fall under the Covenant.”[1]* 663 F. 3d, at 97. Nike, having taken the position in court that there is no prospect of such a shoe, would be hard pressed to as- sert the contrary down the road. See New Hampshire v. Maine, 532 U.S. 742, 749 (2001) (“ ‘[W]here a party assumes a certain position in a legal proceeding, and succeeds in maintaining that position, he may not thereafter, simply because his interests have changed, assume a contrary position, especially if it be to the prejudice of the party who has acquiesced in the position formerly taken by him’ ” (quoting Davis v. Wakelee, 156 U.S. 680, 689 (1895))). If such a shoe exists, the parties have not pointed to it, there is no evidence that Already has dreamt of it, and we cannot conceive of it. It sits, as far as we can tell, on a shelf between Dorothy’s ruby slippers and Perseus’s winged sandals. Given Nike’s demonstration that the covenant encompasses all of its allegedly unlawful conduct, it was incumbent on Already to indicate that it engages in or has sufficiently concrete plans to engage in activities not covered by the covenant. After all, information about Already’s business activities and plans is uniquely within its possession. The case is moot if the court, considering the covenant’s language and the plaintiff’s anticipated future activities, is satisfied that it is “absolutely clear” that the allegedly unlawful activity cannot reasonably be expected to recur. But when given the opportunity before the District Court, Already did not assert any intent to design or market a shoe that would expose it to any prospect of in- fringement liability. See App. to Pet. for Cert. 31a (find- ing that there was “no indication” of any such intent); 663 F. 3d, at 97, n. 5 (noting the “absence of record evidence that [Already] intends to make any arguably infringing shoe that is not unambiguously covered by the Covenant”). The only affidavit it submitted to the District Court on that question was from its president, saying little more than that Already currently has plans to introduce new shoe lines and make modifications to existing shoe lines. It never stated that these shoes would arguably infringe Nike’s trademark yet fall outside the scope of the covenant. Nor did it do so on appeal to the Second Circuit. And again, it failed to do so here, even when counsel for Already was asked at oral argument whether his client had any intention to design or market a shoe that would even arguably fall outside the covenant. Tr. of Oral Arg. 6–8. Given the covenant’s broad language, and given that Already has asserted no concrete plans to engage in conduct not covered by the covenant, we can conclude the case is moot because the challenged conduct cannot reasonably be expected to recur. The authorities on which Already relies are not on point. In Cardinal Chemical Co. v. Morton Int’l, Inc., we affirmed the unremarkable proposition that a court’s “decision to rely on one of two possible alternative grounds (noninfringement rather than invalidity) did not strip it of power to decide the second question, particularly when its decree was subject to review by this Court.” 508 U.S. 83, 98 (1993). In essence, when a court has jurisdiction to review a case, and decides the issue on two independent grounds, the first half of its opinion does not moot the second half, or vice versa. Here the issue is whether the District Court had jurisdiction to consider the claim in the first place. This case is also unlike Altvater v. Freeman, 319 U.S. 359 (1943). There, patent holders brought suit against licensees for specific performance of a license. The licensees counterclaimed, seeking a declaratory judgment that the patents were invalid. The Court of Appeals, after finding that the license was no longer in force and the devices at issue did not infringe, dismissed the licensees’ counterclaim as moot. We reversed, finding the contro- versy still live because the licensees continued to “manufactur[e] and sell[ ] additional articles claimed to fall under the patents,” and the patent holders continued to “demand[ ] . . . royalties” for those products. Id., at 364–365. Here of course the whole point is that Already is free to sell its shoes without any fear of a trademark claim. B Already argues, however, that there are alternative theories of Article III injuries that save the case from mootness. First, it argues that so long as Nike remains free to assert its trademark, investors will be apprehensive about investing in Already. Second, it argues that given Nike’s decision to sue in the first place, Nike’s trademarks will now hang over Already’s operations like a Damoclean sword. Finally, and relatedly, Already argues that, as one of Nike’s competitors, it inherently has standing to challenge Nike’s intellectual property. The problem for Already is that none of these injuries suffices to support Article III standing. Although the voluntary cessation standard requires the defendant to show that the challenged behavior cannot reasonably be expected to recur, we have never held that the doctrine—by imposing this burden on the defendant—allows the plaintiff to rely on theories of Article III injury that would fail to establish standing in the first place. We begin with Already’s argument that Nike’s trademark registration “gives false color to state and federal trademark claims which expose [Already’s] business to substantial and unpredictable risks,” deterring investors. Brief for Petitioner 31. To demonstrate this, Already presented affidavits from potential investors stating that Nike’s lawsuit dissuaded them from investing in Already or prompted them to withdraw prior investments, and that they would “consider” investing in Already only if Nike’s trademark were struck down. App. to Pet. for Cert. 33a. Already argues that like the plaintiffs in Village of Euclid v. Ambler Realty Co., 272 U.S. 365 (1926)— who had standing to challenge an ordinance because it re- duced their property value—Already should have standing to challenge the trademark because its mere existence hampers its ability to attract capital. But once it is “absolutely clear” that challenged conduct cannot “reasonably be expected to recur,” Friends of the Earth, 528 U. S., at 190, the fact that some individuals may base decisions on “conjectural or hypothetical” speculation does not give rise to the sort of “concrete” and “ac- tual” injury necessary to establish Article III standing, Lujan v. Defenders of Wildlife, 504 U.S. 555, 560 (1992) (internal quotation marks omitted). In Euclid, we reasoned that, assuming the merits of plaintiff’s claim, “the ordinance, in effect, constitutes a present invasion of [plaintiff’s] property rights.” 272 U. S., at 386. Here there is no such present invasion; in fact there is a covenant promising no invasion. In addition, unlike the plaintiffs in Euclid, Already does not claim that Nike’s Air Force 1 infringes any of its property rights. Already has also pointed to an affidavit from a vice president stating that Nike has “suggested” to Already’s retailers that they refrain from carrying Already’s shoes, lest “Nike . . . cancel its account or take other actions against the retailer, e.g., delay shipment of the retailer’s Nike order or ‘lose’ the retailer’s Nike order.” App. 177a. Even if a plaintiff may bring an invalidity claim based on a reasonable expectation that a trademark holder will take action against the plaintiff’s retailers, the covenant here extends protection to Already’s distributors and customers. And even if Nike were engaging in harassment or unfair trade practices, Already has not explained how invalidating Nike’s trademark would do anything to stop it. Already also complains that it can no longer “just blithely go about its shoe business as if there were no risk of being sued again.” Reply Brief 14. As counsel told us at oral argument: “once bitten, twice shy.” Tr. of Oral Arg. 8. But we have never held that a plaintiff has standing to pursue declaratory relief merely on the basis of being “once bitten.” Quite the opposite. See, e.g., Los Angeles v. Lyons, 461 U.S. 95, 109 (1983) (holding there is no justiciable controversy where plaintiff had once been subjected to a chokehold). Given our conclusion that Nike has met its burden of demonstrating there is no reasonable risk that Already will be sued again, there is no reason for Already to be so shy. It is the only one of Nike’s competitors with a judicially enforceable covenant protecting it from litigation relating to the Air Force 1 trademark. Insofar as the injury is a threat of Air Force 1 trademark litigation, Already is Nike’s least injured competitor. Already falls back on a sweeping argument: In the context of registered trademarks, “[n]o covenant, no matter how broad, can eradicate the effects” of a registered but invalid trademark. Brief for Petitioner 33–34. According to Already, allowing Nike to unilaterally moot the case “subverts” the important role federal courts play in the administration of federal patent and trademark law. Id., at 40. It allows companies like Nike to register and brandish invalid trademarks to intimidate smaller competitors, avoiding judicial review by issuing covenants in the rare case where the little guy fights back. Already and its amici thus contend that Already, “[a]s a company engaged in the business of designing and marketing athletic shoes,” has standing to challenge Nike’s trademark. See id., at 21; see also Brief for Intellectual Property Pro- fessors as Amici Curiae 3 (suggesting that standing extends to all “participants in that field”); Brief for Public Patent Foundation as Amici Curiae 12 (“[T]he public has standing to challenge the validity of any issued patent or registered trademark in court”). Under this approach, Nike need not even have threatened to sue first. Already, even with no plans to make anything resembling the Air Force 1, could sue to invalidate the trademark simply because Already and Nike both compete in the athletic footwear market. Taken to its logical conclusion, the theory seems to be that a market participant is injured for Article III purposes whenever a competitor benefits from something allegedly unlawful—whether a trademark, the awarding of a contract, a landlord-tenant arrangement, or so on. We have never accepted such a boundless theory of standing. The cases Already cites for this remarkable proposition stand for no such thing. In each of those cases, standing was based on an injury more particularized and more concrete than the mere assertion that something unlawful benefited the plaintiff’s competitor. Northeastern Fla. Chapter, Associated Gen. Contractors of America v. Jacksonville, 508 U.S. 656 (1993); Super Tire Engineering Co. v. McCorkle, 416 U.S. 115 (1974). Already’s arguments boil down to a basic policy objection that dismissing this case allows Nike to bully small innovators lawfully operating in the public domain. This concern cannot compel us to adopt Already’s broad theory of standing. First of all, granting covenants not to sue may be a risky long-term strategy for a trademark holder. See, e.g., 3 J. McCarthy, Trademarks & Unfair Competition §18:48, p. 18–112 (4th ed. 2012) (“[U]ncontrolled and ‘naked’ licensing can result in such a loss of significance of a trademark that a federal registration should be cancelled”); Sun Banks of Fla., Inc. v. Sun Fed. Sav. & Loan Assn., 651 F.2d 311, 316 (CA5 1981) (finding that “extensive third-party use of the [mark was] impressive evidence that there would be no likelihood of confusion”). In addition, the Lanham Act provides some check on abusive litigation practices by providing for an award of attorney’s fees in “exceptional cases.” 15 U. S. C. §1117(a); cf., e.g., Gwaltney of Smithfield, Ltd. v. Chesapeake Bay Foundation, Inc., 484 U.S. 49, 67, n. 6 (1987) (explaining that an award of litigation costs can protect “from the suddenly repentant defendant”). Accepting Already’s theory may benefit the small competitor in this case. But lowering the gates for one party lowers the gates for all. As a result, larger companies with more resources will have standing to challenge the intellectual property portfolios of their more humble rivals—not because they are threatened by any particular patent or trademark, but simply because they are competitors in the same market. This would further encourage parties to employ litigation as a weapon against their competitors rather than as a last resort for settling disputes. Already’s only legally cognizable injury—the fact that Nike took steps to enforce its trademark—is now gone and, given the breadth of the covenant, cannot reasonably be expected to recur. There being no other basis on which to find a live controversy, the case is clearly moot. V The Solicitor General asks us to “remand the case for further proceedings in which the parties can develop the record on both the scope of the covenant and petitioner’s business activities, and the courts below can apply the proper standard to the record.” Brief for United States as Amicus Curiae 28. Such a remand would serve no purpose. The scope of the covenant is clear. Already’s argument is not that the covenant could be drafted more broadly, but instead that no covenant would ever do. See Tr. of Oral Arg. 12–13. As for business activities, it is plain that Already has said all it has to say. The District Court held a hearing on whether the case was mooted by the covenant. There, and at every stage of the proceedings thereafter, Already steadfastly refused to suggest that it has any plans to create any arguably infringing shoe that does not unambiguously fall within the scope of the covenant—this despite every incentive, opportunity, and invitation to do so. As noted, the District Court expressly found “no indication” that Already had any such plans, App. to Pet. for Cert. 31a, and Already never challenged this finding. It did not challenge that finding on appeal to the Second Circuit, even though its significance was clear. The Court of Appeals expressly found that Already “has not asserted any intention to market any such shoe.” 663 F. 3d, at 97. Already declined to challenge these conclusions before us, despite questions from the bench addressing that particular issue. Tr. of Oral Arg. 7–8. The courts below did not expressly invoke the voluntary cessation standard, as articulated in our cases. But the analysis in their opinions addressed the same questions we have addressed today under that standard. In determining the case was moot, they relied, as we have, on the breadth of the covenant and the absence of any indication that Already would produce an infringing shoe. The District Court explained that “[w]hether a covenant not to sue will divest the trial court of jurisdiction depends on what is covered by the covenant.” App. to Pet. for Cert. 29a (internal quotation marks omitted). It read the covenant “broadly,” id., at 34a, and found “no indication that any of [Already’s] forthcoming models would extend beyond this broad language,” id., at 31a. It even concluded that from Already’s perspective, there was “little difference” between invalidating the trademark and the scope of protection al- ready afforded by the covenant. Id., at 34a. Likewise, the Court of Appeals asked “whether the covenant covers future, as well as past, activity and products,” and inquired into “evidence of intention or lack of intention, on the part of the party asserting jurisdiction, to engage in new activity or to develop new potentially infringing products that arguably are not covered by the covenant.” 663 F. 3d, at 96. It concluded that “[t]he breadth of the Covenant renders the threat of litigation remote or nonexistent” because it could not envision a shoe that would be within Nike’s trademark yet not protected by the covenant, noting that Already “has not asserted any intention to market any such shoe.” Id., at 97. Under such circumstances, a remand would serve no purpose. Cf., e.g., Global-Tech Appliances, Inc. v. SEB S. A., 563 U. S. ___, ___ (2011) (slip op., at 13–16) (announcing new standard and directly applying standard to affirm the jury verdict); Thornburg v. Gingles, 478 U.S. 30 (1986) (announcing and applying new standard). The uncon- tested findings made by the District Court, and confirmed by the Second Circuit, make it “absolutely clear” this case is moot. The judgment of the Court of Appeals is affirmed. It is so ordered. Notes 1 * Nike has “acknowledged that if [Already] were to manufacture an exact copy of the Air Force 1 shoe . . . Nike could claim that the Cov-enant permits an infringement suit on the ground that a counterfeit differs from a colorable imitation under the Lanham Act.” 663 F. 3d, at 97, n. 5. Already, however, has never asserted any intent to make counterfeit Air Force 1s. Ibid. Moreover, because a counterfeit would presumably include Nike’s swoosh, an independently registered trademark not at issue here, invalidating the Air Force 1 trademark maynot be sufficient to allow Already to proceed to make counterfeits. See 15 U. S. C. §1127 (defining a counterfeit as a “spurious mark which is identical with, or substantially indistinguishable from, a registered mark”).

570.US.228

An agreement between petitioners, American Express and a subsidiary, and respondents, merchants who accept American Express cards, requires all of their disputes to be resolved by arbitration and provides that there “shall be no right or authority for any Claims to be arbitrated on a class action basis.” Respondents nonetheless filed a class action, claiming that petitioners violated §1 of the Sherman Act and seeking treble damages for the class under §4 of the Clayton Act. Petitioners moved to compel individual arbitration under the Federal Arbitration Act (FAA), but respondents countered that the cost of expert analysis necessary to prove the antitrust claims would greatly exceed the maximum recovery for an individual plaintiff. The District Court granted the motion and dismissed the lawsuits. The Second Circuit reversed and remanded, holding that because of the prohibitive costs respondents would face if they had to arbitrate, the class-action waiver was unenforceable and arbitration could not proceed. The Circuit stood by its reversal when this Court remanded in light of Stolt-Nielsen S. A. v. AnimalFeeds International Corp., 559 U.S. 662, which held that a party may not be compelled to submit to class arbitration absent an agreement to do so. Held: The FAA does not permit courts to invalidate a contractual waiver of class arbitration on the ground that the plaintiff’s cost of individually arbitrating a federal statutory claim exceeds the potential recovery. Pp. 3–10. (a) The FAA reflects the overarching principle that arbitration is a matter of contract. See Rent-A-Center, West, Inc. v. Jackson, 561 U. S. ___, ___. Courts must “rigorously enforce” arbitration agreements according to their terms, Dean Witter Reynolds, Inc. v. Byrd, 470 U.S. 213, 221, even for claims alleging a violation of a federal statute, unless the FAA’s mandate has been “ ‘overridden by a contrary congressional command,’ ” CompuCredit Corp. v. Greenwood, 565 U. S. ___, ___. Pp. 3–4. (b) No contrary congressional command requires rejection of the class-arbitration waiver here. The antitrust laws do not guarantee an affordable procedural path to the vindication of every claim, see Rodriguez v. United States, 480 U.S. 522, 525–526, or “evince an intention to preclude a waiver” of class-action procedure, Mitsubishi Motors Corp. v. Soler-Chrysler-Plymouth, Inc., 473 U.S. 614, 628. Nor does congressional approval of Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 23 establish an entitlement to class proceedings for the vindication of statutory rights. The Rule imposes stringent requirements for certification that exclude most claims, and this Court has rejected the assertion that the class-notice requirement must be dispensed with because the “prohibitively high cost” of compliance would “frustrate [plaintiff’s] attempt to vindicate the policies underlying the antitrust” laws, Eisen v. Carlisle & Jacquelin, 417 U.S. 156, 167–168, 175–176. Pp. 4–5. (c) The “effective vindication” exception that originated as dictum in Mitsubishi Motors Corp. v. Soler Chrysler-Plymouth, Inc., 473 U.S. 614, also does not invalidate the instant arbitration agreement. The exception comes from a desire to prevent “prospective waiver of a party’s right to pursue statutory remedies,” id., at 637, n. 19; but the fact that it is not worth the expense involved in proving a statutory remedy does not constitute the elimination of the right to pursue that remedy. Cf. Gilmer v. Interstate/Johnson Lane Corp., 500 U.S. 20, 32; Vimar Seguros y Reaseguros, S. A. v. M/V Sky Reefer, 515 U.S. 528, 530, 534. AT&T Mobility LLC v. Concepcion, 563 U. S. ___, all but resolves this case. There, in finding that a law that conditioned enforcement of arbitration on the availability of class procedure interfered with fundamental arbitration attributes, id., at ___, the Court specifically rejected the argument that class arbitration was necessary to prosecute claims “that might otherwise slip through the legal system,” id., at ___. Pp. 5–9. 667 F.3d 204, reversed. Scalia, J., delivered the opinion of the Court, in which Roberts, C. J., and Kennedy, Thomas, and Alito, JJ., joined. Thomas, J., filed a concurring opinion. Kagan, J., filed a dissenting opinion, in which Ginsburg and Breyer, JJ., joined. Sotomayor, J., took no part in the consideration or decision of the case.

We consider whether a contractual waiver of class arbitration is enforceable under the Federal Arbitration Act when the plaintiff’s cost of individually arbitrating a federal statutory claim exceeds the potential recovery. I Respondents are merchants who accept American Express cards. Their agreement with petitioners—American Express and a wholly owned subsidiary—contains a clause that requires all disputes between the parties to be resolved by arbitration. The agreement also provides that “[t]here shall be no right or authority for any Claims to be arbitrated on a class action basis.” In re American Express Merchants’ Litigation, 667 F. 3d 204, 209 (CA2 2012). Respondents brought a class action against petitioners for violations of the federal antitrust laws. According to respondents, American Express used its monopoly power in the market for charge cards to force merchants to accept credit cards at rates approximately 30% higher than the fees for competing credit cards. [ 1 ] This tying arrangement, respondents said, violated §1 of the Sherman Act. They sought treble damages for the class under §4 of the Clayton Act. Petitioners moved to compel individual arbitration under the Federal Arbitration Act (FAA), 9 U. S. C. §1 et seq. In resisting the motion, respondents submitted a declaration from an economist who estimated that the cost of an expert analysis necessary to prove the antitrust claims would be “at least several hundred thousand dollars, and might exceed $1 million,” while the maximum recovery for an individual plaintiff would be $12,850, or $38,549 when trebled. App. 93. The District Court granted the motion and dismissed the lawsuits. The Court of Appeals reversed and remanded for further proceedings. It held that because respondents had established that “they would incur prohibitive costs if compelled to arbitrate under the class action waiver,” the waiver was un- enforceable and the arbitration could not proceed. In re American Express Merchants’ Litigation, 554 F. 3d 300, 315–316 (CA2 2009). We granted certiorari, vacated the judgment, and remanded for further consideration in light of Stolt-Nielsen S. A. v. AnimalFeeds Int’l Corp., 559 U. S. 662 (2010) , which held that a party may not be compelled to submit to class arbitration absent an agreement to do so. American Express Co. v. Italian Colors Restaurant, 559 U. S. 1103 (2010) . The Court of Appeals stood by its reversal, stating that its earlier ruling did not compel class arbitration. In re American Express Merchants’ Litigation, 634 F. 3d 187, 200 (CA2 2011). It then sua sponte reconsidered its ruling in light of AT&T Mobility LLC v. Concepcion, 563 U. S. ___ (2011), which held that the FAA pre-empted a state law barring enforcement of a class-arbitration waiver. Finding AT&T Mobility inapplicable because it addressed pre-emption, the Court of Appeals reversed for the third time. 667 F. 3d, at 213. It then denied rehearing en banc with five judges dissenting. In re American Express Merchants’ Litigation, 681 F. 3d 139 (CA2 2012). We granted certiorari, 568 U. S. ___ (2012), to consider the question “[w]hether the Federal Arbitration Act permits courts . . . to invalidate arbitration agreements on the ground that they do not permit class arbitration of a federal-law claim,” Pet. for Cert. i. II Congress enacted the FAA in response to widespread judicial hostility to arbitration. See AT&T Mobility, supra, at ___ (slip op., at 4). As relevant here, the Act provides: “A written provision in any maritime transaction or contract evidencing a transaction involving commerce to settle by arbitration a controversy thereafter arising out of such contract or transaction . . . shall be valid, irrevocable, and enforceable, save upon such grounds as exist at law or in equity for the revocation of any contract.” 9 U. S. C. §2. This text reflects the overarching principle that arbitration is a matter of contract. See Rent-A-Center, West, Inc. v. Jackson, 561 U. S. ___, ___ (2010) (slip op., at 3). And consistent with that text, courts must “rigorously enforce” arbitration agreements according to their terms, Dean Witter Reynolds Inc. v. Byrd, 470 U. S. 213, 221 (1985) , including terms that “specify with whom [the parties] choose to arbitrate their disputes,” Stolt-Nielsen, supra, at 683, and “the rules under which that arbitration will be conducted,” Volt Information Sciences, Inc. v. Board of Trustees of Leland Stanford Junior Univ., 489 U. S. 468, 479 (1989) . That holds true for claims that allege a violation of a federal statute, unless the FAA’s mandate has been “ ‘overridden by a contrary congressional command.’ ” CompuCredit Corp. v. Greenwood, 565 U. S. ___, ___ (2012) (slip op., at 2–3) (quoting Shearson/American Express Inc. v. McMahon, 482 U. S. 220, 226 (1987) ). III No contrary congressional command requires us to reject the waiver of class arbitration here. Respondents argue that requiring them to litigate their claims individually—as they contracted to do—would contravene the policies of the antitrust laws. But the antitrust laws do not guarantee an affordable procedural path to the vindi- cation of every claim. Congress has taken some measures to facilitate the litigation of antitrust claims—for example, it enacted a multiplied-damages remedy. See 15 U. S. C. §15 (treble damages). In enacting such measures, Congress has told us that it is willing to go, in certain respects, beyond the normal limits of law in advancing its goals of deterring and remedying unlawful trade practice. But to say that Congress must have intended whatever departures from those normal limits advance antitrust goals is simply irrational. “[N]o legislation pursues its purposes at all costs.” Rodriguez v. United States, 480 U. S. 522 –526 (1987) (per curiam). The antitrust laws do not “evinc[e] an intention to preclude a waiver” of class-action procedure. Mitsubishi Motors Corp. v. Soler Chrysler-Plymouth, Inc., 473 U. S. 614, 628 (1985) . The Sherman and Clayton Acts make no mention of class actions. In fact, they were enacted decades before the advent of Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 23, which was “designed to allow an exception to the usual rule that litigation is conducted by and on behalf of the individual named parties only.” Califano v. Yamasaki, 442 U. S. 682 –701 (1979). The parties here agreed to arbitrate pursuant to that “usual rule,” and it would be remarkable for a court to erase that expectation. Nor does congressional approval of Rule 23 establish an entitlement to class proceedings for the vindication of statutory rights. To begin with, it is likely that such an entitlement, invalidating private arbitration agreements denying class adjudication, would be an “abridg[ment]” or modif[ication]” of a “substantive right” forbidden to the Rules, see 28 U. S. C. §2072(b). But there is no evidence of such an entitlement in any event. The Rule imposes stringent requirements for certification that in practice exclude most claims. And we have specifically rejected the assertion that one of those requirements (the class-notice requirement) must be dispensed with because the “prohibitively high cost” of compliance would “frustrate [plain- tiff’s] attempt to vindicate the policies underlying the antitrust” laws. Eisen v. Carlisle & Jacquelin, 417 U. S. 156 –168, 175–176 (1974). One might respond, perhaps, that federal law secures a nonwaivable opportunity to vindicate federal policies by satisfying the procedural strictures of Rule 23 or invoking some other informal class mechanism in arbitration. But we have already rejected that proposition in AT&T Mobility, 563 U. S., at ___ (slip op., at 9). IV Our finding of no “contrary congressional command” does not end the case. Respondents invoke a judge-made exception to the FAA which, they say, serves to harmonize competing federal policies by allowing courts to invalidate agreements that prevent the “effective vindication” of a federal statutory right. Enforcing the waiver of class arbitration bars effective vindication, respondents contend, because they have no economic incentive to pursue their antitrust claims individually in arbitration. The “effective vindication” exception to which respondents allude originated as dictum in Mitsubishi Motors, where we expressed a willingness to invalidate, on “public policy” grounds, arbitration agreements that “operat[e] . . . as a prospective waiver of a party’s right to pursue statutory remedies.” 473 U. S., at 637, n. 19 (emphasis added). Dismissing concerns that the arbitral forum was inadequate, we said that “so long as the prospective litigant effectively may vindicate its statutory cause of action in the arbitral forum, the statute will continue to serve both its remedial and deterrent function.” Id., at 637. Subsequent cases have similarly asserted the existence of an “effective vindication” exception, see, e.g., 14 Penn Plaza LLC v. Pyett, 556 U. S. 247 –274 (2009); Gilmer v. Interstate/Johnson Lane Corp., 500 U. S. 20, 28 (1991) , but have similarly declined to apply it to invalidate the arbitration agreement at issue. [ 2 ] And we do so again here. As we have described, the exception finds its origin in the desire to prevent “prospective waiver of a party’s right to pursue statutory remedies,” Mitsubishi Motors, supra, at 637, n. 19 (emphasis added). That would certainly cover a provision in an arbitration agreement forbidding the assertion of certain statutory rights. And it would perhaps cover filing and administrative fees attached to arbitration that are so high as to make access to the forum impracticable. See Green Tree Financial Corp.-Ala. v. Randolph, 531 U. S. 79, 90 (2000) (“It may well be that the existence of large arbitration costs could preclude a litigant . . . from effectively vindicating her federal statutory rights”). But the fact that it is not worth the expense involved in proving a statutory remedy does not constitute the elimination of the right to pursue that remedy. See 681 F. 3d, at 147 (Jacobs, C. J., dissenting from denial of rehearing en banc). [ 3 ] The class-action waiver merely limits arbitration to the two contracting parties. It no more eliminates those parties’ right to pursue their statutory remedy than did federal law before its adoption of the class action for legal relief in 1938, see Fed. Rule Civ. Proc. 23, 28 U. S. C., p. 864 (1938 ed., Supp V); 7A C. Wright, A. Miller, & M. Kane, Federal Practice and Procedure §1752, p. 18 (3d ed. 2005). Or, to put it differently, the individual suit that was considered adequate to assure “effective vindication” of a federal right before adoption of class-action procedures did not suddenly become “ineffective vindication” upon their adoption. [ 4 ] A pair of our cases brings home the point. In Gilmer, supra, we had no qualms in enforcing a class waiver in an arbitration agreement even though the federal statute at issue, the Age Discrimination in Employment Act, ex- pressly permitted collective actions. We said that statutory permission did “ ‘not mean that individual attempts at conciliation were intended to be barred.’ ” Id., at 32. And in Vimar Seguros y Reaseguros, S. A. v. M/V Sky Reefer, 515 U. S. 528 (1995) , we held that requiring arbitration in a foreign country was compatible with the federal Carriage of Goods by Sea Act. That legislation prohibited any agreement “ ‘relieving’ ” or “ ‘lessening’ ” the liability of a carrier for damaged goods, id., at 530, 534 (quoting 46 U. S. C. App. §1303(8) (1988 ed.))—which is close to codification of an “effective vindication” exception. The Court rejected the argument that the “inconvenience and costs of proceeding” abroad “lessen[ed]” the defendants’ liability, stating that “[i]t would be unwieldy and unsupported by the terms or policy of the statute to require courts to proceed case by case to tally the costs and burdens to particular plaintiffs in light of their means, the size of their claims, and the relative burden on the carrier.” 515 U. S., at 532, 536. Such a “tally[ing] [of] the costs and burdens” is precisely what the dissent would impose upon federal courts here. Truth to tell, our decision in AT&T Mobility all but resolves this case. There we invalidated a law conditioning enforcement of arbitration on the availability of class procedure because that law “interfere[d] with fundamental attributes of arbitration.” 563 U. S., at ___ (slip op., at 9). “[T]he switch from bilateral to class arbitration,” we said, “sacrifices the principal advantage of arbitration—its informality—and makes the process slower, more costly, and more likely to generate procedural morass than final judgment.” Id., at ___ (slip op., at 14). We specifically rejected the argument that class arbitration was necessary to prosecute claims “that might otherwise slip through the legal system.” Id., at ___ (slip op., at 17). [ 5 ] * * * The regime established by the Court of Appeals’ decision would require—before a plaintiff can be held to contractually agreed bilateral arbitration—that a federal court determine (and the parties litigate) the legal requirements for success on the merits claim-by-claim and theory-by-theory, the evidence necessary to meet those requirements, the cost of developing that evidence, and the damages that would be recovered in the event of success. Such a preliminary litigating hurdle would undoubtedly destroy the prospect of speedy resolution that arbitration in general and bilateral arbitration in particular was meant to secure. The FAA does not sanction such a judicially created superstructure. The judgment of the Court of Appeals is reversed. It is so ordered. Justice Sotomayor took no part in the consideration or decision of this case. Notes 1 A charge card requires its holder to pay the full outstanding balance at the end of a billing cycle; a credit card requires payment of only a portion, with the balance subject to interest. 2 Contrary to the dissent’s claim, post, at 8–9, and n. 3 (opinion of Kagan, J.), the Court in Mitsubishi Motors did not hold that federal statutory claims are subject to arbitration so long as the claimant may effectively vindicate his rights in the arbitral forum. The Court expressly stated that, “at this stage in the proceedings,” it had “no occasion to speculate” on whether the arbitration agreement’s potential deprivation of a claimant’s right to pursue federal remedies may render that agreement unenforceable. 473 U. S., at 637, n. 19. Even the Court of Appeals in this case recognized the relevant language in Mitsubishi Motors as dicta. In re American Express Merchants’ Litigation, 667 F. 3d 204, 214 (CA2 2012). 3 The dissent contends that a class-action waiver may deny a party’s right to pursue statutory remedies in the same way as a clause that bars a party from presenting economic testimony. See post, at 3, 9. That is a false comparison for several reasons: To begin with, it is not a given that such a clause would constitute an impermissible waiver; we have never considered the point. But more importantly, such a clause, assuming it makes vindication of the claim impossible, makes it impossible not just as a class action but even as an individual claim. 4 Who can disagree with the dissent’s assertion that “the effective-vindication rule asks about the world today, not the world as it might have looked when Congress passed a given statute”? Post, at 12. But time does not change the meaning of effectiveness, making ineffective vindication today what was effective vindication in the past. The dissent also says that the agreement bars other forms of cost sharing—existing before the Sherman Act—that could provide effective vindication. See post, at 11–12, and n. 5. Petitioners denied that, and that is not what the Court of Appeals decision under review here held. It held that, because other forms of cost sharing were not economically feasible (“the only economically feasible means for . . . enforcing [respondents’] statutory rights is via a class action”), the class-action waiver was unenforceable. 667 F. 3d, at 218 (emphasis added). (The dissent’s assertion to the contrary cites not the opinion on appeal here, but an earlier opinion that was vacated. See In re American Express Merchants’ Litigation, 554 F. 3d 300 (CA2 2009), vacated and remanded, .) That is the conclusion we reject. 5 In dismissing AT&T Mobility as a case involving pre-emption and not the effective-vindication exception, the dissent ignores what that case established—that the FAA’s command to enforce arbitration agreements trumps any interest in ensuring the prosecution of low-value claims. The latter interest, we said, is “unrelated” to the FAA. 563 U. S., at ___ (slip op., at 17). Accordingly, the FAA does, contrary to the dissent’s assertion, see post, at 5, favor the absence of litigation when that is the consequence of a class-action waiver, since its “ ‘principal purpose’ ” is the enforcement of arbitration agreements according to their terms. 563 U. S., at ___ (slip op., at 9–10) (quoting Volt Information Sciences, Inc. v. Board of Trustees of Leland Stanford Junior Univ., ).

569.US.641

The Port of Los Angeles, a division of the City of Los Angeles, is run by a Board of Harbor Commissioners pursuant to a municipal ordinance known as a tariff. The Port leases marine terminal facilities to operators that load cargo onto and unload it from docking ships. Federally licensed short-haul trucks, called “drayage trucks,” assist in those operations by moving cargo into and out of the Port. In 2007, in response to community concerns over the impact of a proposed port expansion on traffic, the environment, and safety, the Board implemented a Clean Truck Program. As part of that program, the Board devised a standard-form “concession agreement” to govern the relationship between the Port and drayage companies. The agreement requires a company to affix a placard on each truck with a phone number for reporting concerns, and to submit a plan listing off-street parking locations for each truck. Other requirements relate to a company’s financial capacity, its maintenance of trucks, and its employment of drivers. The concession agreement sets out penalties for violations, including possible suspension or revocation of the right to provide drayage services. The Board also amended the Port’s tariff to ensure that every drayage company would enter into the agreement. The amended tariff makes it a misdemeanor, punishable by fine or imprisonment, for a terminal operator to grant access to an unregistered drayage truck. Petitioner American Trucking Associations, Inc. (ATA), whose members include many of the drayage companies at the Port, sued the Port and City, seeking an injunction against the concession agreement’s requirements. ATA principally contended that the requirements are expressly preempted by the Federal Aviation Administration Authorization Act of 1994 (FAAAA), see 49 U. S. C. §14501(c)(1). ATA also argued that even if the requirements are valid, Castle v. Hayes Freight Lines, Inc., 348 U.S. 61, prevents the Port from enforcing the requirements by withdrawing a defaulting company’s right to operate at the Port. The District Court held that neither §14501(c)(1) nor Castle prevented the Port from proceeding with its program. The Ninth Circuit mainly affirmed, finding only the driver-employment provision preempted and rejecting petitioner’s Castle claim. Held: 1. The FAAAA expressly preempts the concession agreement’s placard and parking requirements. Section 14501(c)(1) preempts a state “law, regulation, or other provision having the force and effect of law related to a price, route, or service of any motor carrier . . . with respect to the transportation of property.” 49 U. S. C. §14501(c)(1). Because the parties agree that the Port’s placard and parking requirements relate to a motor carrier’s price, route, or service with respect to transporting property, the only disputed question is whether those requirements “hav[e] the force and effect of law.” Section 14501(c)(1) draws a line between a government’s exercise of regulatory authority and its own contract-based participation in a market. The statute’s “force and effect of law” language excludes from the clause’s scope contractual arrangements made by a State when it acts as a market participant, not as a regulator. See, e.g., American Airlines, Inc. v. Wolens, 513 U.S. 219, 229. But here, the Port exercised classic regulatory authority in imposing the placard and parking requirements. It forced terminal operators—and through them, trucking companies—to alter their conduct by implementing a criminal prohibition punishable by imprisonment. That counts as action “having the force and effect of law” if anything does. The Port’s primary argument to the contrary focuses on motives rather than means. But the Port’s proprietary intentions do not control. When the government employs a coercive mechanism, available to no private party, it acts with the force and effect of law, whether or not it does so to turn a profit. Only if it forgoes the (distinctively governmental) exercise of legal authority may it escape §14501(c)(1)’s preemptive scope. That the criminal sanctions fall on terminal operators, not directly on the trucking companies, also makes no difference. See, e.g., Rowe v. New Hampshire Motor Transp. Assn., 552 U.S. 364, 371–373. Pp. 6−10. 2. This Court declines to decide in the case’s present, pre-enforcement posture whether Castle limits the way the Port can enforce the financial-capacity and truck-maintenance requirements upheld by the Ninth Circuit. Castle rebuffed a State’s attempt to bar a federally licensed motor carrier from its highways for past infringements of state safety regulations. But Castle does not prevent a State from taking off the road a vehicle that is contemporaneously out of compliance with such regulations. And at this juncture, there is no basis for finding that the Port will actually use the concession agreement’s penalty provision as Castle proscribes. Pp. 10−12. 660 F.3d 384, reversed in part and remanded. Kagan, J., delivered the opinion for a unanimous Court. Thomas, J., filed a concurring opinion.

In this case, we consider whether federal law preempts certain provisions of an agreement that trucking companies must sign before they can transport cargo at the Port of Los Angeles. We hold that the Federal Aviation Administration Authorization Act of 1994 (FAAAA) expressly preempts two of the contract’s provisions, which require such a company to develop an off-street parking plan and display designated placards on its vehicles. We decline to decide in the case’s present, pre-enforcement posture whether, under Castle v. Hayes Freight Lines, Inc., 348 U.S. 61 (1954), federal law governing licenses for interstate motor carriers prevents the Port from using the agreement’s penalty clause to punish violations of other, non-preempted provisions. I A The Port of Los Angeles, a division of the City of Los Angeles, is the largest port in the country. The Port owns marine terminal facilities, which it leases to “terminal operators” (such as shipping lines and stevedoring companies) that load cargo onto and unload it from docking ships. Short-haul trucks, called “drayage trucks,” move the cargo into and out of the Port. The trucking companies providing those drayage services are all federally licensed motor carriers. Before the events giving rise to this case, they contracted with terminal operators to transport cargo, but did not enter into agreements with the Port itself. The City’s Board of Harbor Commissioners runs the Port pursuant to a municipal ordinance known as a tariff, which sets out various regulations and charges. In the late 1990’s, the Board decided to enlarge the Port’s facilities to accommodate more ships. Neighborhood and environmental groups objected to the proposed expansion, arguing that it would increase congestion and air pollution and decrease safety in the surrounding area. A lawsuit they brought, and another they threatened, stymied the Board’s development project for almost 10 years. To address the community’s concerns, the Board implemented a Clean Truck Program beginning in 2007. Among other actions, the Board devised a standard-form “concession agreement” to govern the relationship between the Port and any trucking company seeking to operate on the premises. Under that contract, a company may transport cargo at the Port in exchange for complying with various requirements. The two directly at issue here compel the company to (1) affix a placard on each truck with a phone number for reporting environmental or safety concerns (You’ve seen the type: “How am I driving? 213–867–5309”) and (2) submit a plan listing off-street parking locations for each truck when not in service. Three other provisions in the agreement, formerly dis- puted in this litigation, relate to the company’s financial capacity, its maintenance of trucks, and its employment of drivers. The Board then amended the Port’s tariff to ensure that every company providing drayage services at the facility would enter into the concession agreement. The mechanism the Board employed is a criminal prohibition on terminal operators. The amended tariff provides that “no Terminal Operator shall permit access into any Terminal in the Port of Los Angeles to any Drayage Truck unless such Drayage Truck is registered under a Concession [Agreement].” App. 105. A violation of that provision—which occurs “each and every day” a terminal operator provides access to an unregistered truck—is a misdemeanor. Id., at 86. It is punishable by a fine of up to $500 or a prison sentence of up to six months. Id., at 85–86. The concession agreement itself spells out penalties for any signatory trucking company that violates its requirements. When a company commits a “Minor Default,” the Port may issue a warning letter or order the company to undertake “corrective action,” complete a “course of . . . training,” or pay the costs of the Port’s investigation. Id., at 81–82. When a company commits a “Major Default,” the Port may also suspend or revoke the company’s right to provide drayage services at the Port. Id., at 82. The agreement, however, does not specify which breaches of the contract qualify as “Major,” rather than “Minor.” And the parties agree that the Port has never suspended or revoked a trucking company’s license to operate at the Port for a prior violation of one of the contract provisions involved in this case. See Tr. of Oral Arg. 42–43, 49–51. B Petitioner American Trucking Associations, Inc. (ATA), is a national trade association representing the trucking industry, including drayage companies that operate at the Port. ATA filed suit against the Port and City, seeking an injunction against the five provisions of the concession agreement discussed above. The complaint principally contended that §14501(c)(1) of the FAAAA expressly preempts those requirements. That statutory section states: “[A] State [or local government] may not enact or enforce a law, regulation, or other provision having the force and effect of law related to a price, route, or service of any motor carrier . . . with respect to the transportation of property.” 49 U. S. C. §14501(c)(1).[1] ATA also offered a back-up argument: Even if the requirements are valid, ATA claimed, the Port may not enforce them by withdrawing a defaulting company’s right to operate at the Port. That argument rested on Castle v. Hayes Freight Lines, Inc., 348 U.S. 61 (1954), which held that Illinois could not bar a federally licensed motor car- rier from its highways for prior violations of state safety regulations. We reasoned in Castle that the State’s action conflicted with federal law providing for certification of motor carriers; and ATA argued here that a similar conflict would inhere in applying the concession agreement to suspend or revoke a trucking company’s privileges. Following a bench trial, the District Court held that neither §14501(c)(1) nor Castle prevents the Port from proceeding with any part of its Clean Truck Program. The Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit mainly affirmed. Most important for our purposes, the court held that §14501(c)(1) does not preempt the agreement’s placard and parking requirements because they do not “ ‘ ha[ve] the force and effect of law.’ ” 660 F.3d 384, 395 (2011) (quoting §14501(c)(1)). The court reasoned that those requirements, rather than regulating the drayage market, advance the Port’s own “business interest” in “managing its facilities.” Id., at 401. Both provisions were “designed to address [a] specific proprietary problem[ ]”—the need to “increase the community good-will necessary to facilitate Port expansion.” Id., at 406–407; see id., at 409. The Ninth Circuit also held the agreement’s financial-capacity and truck-maintenance provisions not preempted, for reasons not relevant here.[2] Section 14501(c)(1), the court decided, preempts only the contract’s employment provision. Finally, the Ninth Circuit rejected ATA’s claim that Castle bars the Port from applying the agreement’s penalty clause to withdraw a trucking company’s right to operate at the facility. The court thought Castle inapplicable because of the narrower exclusion in this case: “Unlike a ban on using all of a State’s freeways,” the court reasoned, “a limitation on access to a single Port does not prohibit motor carriers” from generally participating in interstate commerce. 660 F. 3d, at 403. We granted certiorari to resolve two questions: first, whether §14501(c)(1) of the FAAAA preempts the concession agreement’s placard and parking provisions; and second, whether Castle precludes reliance on the agreement’s penalty clause to suspend or revoke a trucking company’s privileges. See 568 U. S. ___ (2013). Contrary to the Ninth Circuit, we hold that the placard and parking requirements are preempted as “provision[s] having the force and effect of law.” That determination does not obviate the enforcement issue arising from Castle because the Ninth Circuit’s rulings upholding the agreement’s financial-capacity and truck-maintenance provisions have now become final;[3] accordingly, the Port could try to apply its penalty provision to trucking companies that have violated those surviving requirements. But we nonetheless decline to address the Castle question because the case’s pre-enforcement posture obscures the nature of the agreement’s remedial scheme, rendering any decision at this point a shot in the dark. II Section 14501(c)(1), once again, preempts a state “law, regulation, or other provision having the force and effect of law related to a price, route, or service of any motor car- rier . . . with respect to the transportation of property.” All parties agree that the Port’s placard and parking requirements relate to a motor carrier’s price, route, or service with respect to transporting property. The only disputed question is whether those requirements “hav[e] the force and effect of law.” The Port claims that they do not, because the “concession contract is just [like] a private agreement,” made to advance the Port’s commercial and “proprietary interests.” Brief for Respondent City of Los Angeles et al. 19 (Brief for City of Los Angeles) (internal quotation marks omitted).[4] We can agree with the Port on this premise: Section 14501(c)(1) draws a rough line between a government’s exercise of regulatory authority and its own contract-based participation in a market. We recognized that distinction in American Airlines, Inc. v. Wolens, 513 U.S. 219 (1995), when we construed another statute’s near-identical “force and effect of law” language. That phrase, we stated, “connotes official, government-imposed policies” prescribing “binding standards of conduct.” Id., at 229, n. 5 (internal quotation marks omitted). And we contrasted that quintessential regulatory action to “contractual commitment[s] voluntarily undertaken.” Id., at 229 (internal quotation marks omitted). In Wolens, we addressed a State’s enforcement of an agreement between two private parties. But the same reasoning holds if the government enters into a contract just as a private party would—for example, if a State (or City or Port) signs an agreement with a trucking company to transport goods at a specified price. See, e.g., Building & Constr. Trades Council v. Associated Builders & Contractors of Mass./R. I., Inc., 507 U.S. 218, 233 (1993) (When a State acts as a purchaser of services, “it does not ‘regulate’ the workings of the market . . . ; it exemplifies them” (some internal quotation marks omitted)). The “force and effect of law” language in §14501(c)(1) excludes such everyday contractual arrangements from the clause’s scope. That phrasing targets the State acting as a State, not as any market actor—or other- wise said, the State acting in a regulatory rather than proprietary mode. But that statutory reading gets the Port nothing, because it exercised classic regulatory authority—complete with the use of criminal penalties—in imposing the placard and parking requirements at issue here. Consider again how those requirements work. They are, to be sure, contained in contracts between the Port and trucking companies. But those contracts do not stand alone, as the result merely of the parties’ voluntary commitments. The Board of Harbor Commissioners aimed to “require parties who access Port land and terminals for purposes of pro- viding drayage services” to enter into concession agreements with the Port. App. 108 (Board’s “Findings”). And it accomplished that objective by amending the Port’s tariff—a form of municipal ordinance—to provide that “no Terminal Operator shall permit” a drayage truck to gain “access into any Terminal in the Port” unless the truck is “registered under” such a concession agreement. Id., at 105. A violation of that tariff provision is a violation of criminal law. And it is punishable by a fine or a prison sentence of up to six months. Id., at 85–86. So the contract here functions as part and parcel of a governmental program wielding coercive power over private parties, backed by the threat of criminal punishment. That counts as action “having the force and effect of law” if anything does. The Port here has not acted as a private party, contracting in a way that the owner of an ordinary commercial enterprise could mimic. Rather, it has forced terminal operators—and through them, trucking companies—to alter their conduct by implementing a criminal prohibition punishable by time in prison. In some cases, the question whether governmental action has the force of law may pose difficulties; the line between regulatory and proprietary conduct has soft edges. But this case takes us nowhere near those uncertain boundaries. Contractual commitments resulting not from ordinary bargaining (as in Wolens), but instead from the threat of criminal sanctions manifest the government qua government, performing its prototypical regulatory role. The Port’s primary argument to the contrary, like the Ninth Circuit’s, focuses on motive rather than means. The Court of Appeals related how community opposition had frustrated the Port’s expansion, and concluded that the Clean Truck Program “respon[ded] to perceived business necessity.” 660 F. 3d, at 407. The Port tells the identical story, emphasizing that private companies have similar business incentives to “adopt[ ] ‘green growth’ plans like the Port’s.” Brief for City of Los Angeles 30. We have no reason to doubt that account of events; we can assume the Port acted to enhance goodwill and improve the odds of achieving its business plan—just as a private company might. But the Port’s intentions are not what matters. That is because, as we just described, the Port chose a tool to fulfill those goals which only a government can wield: the hammer of the criminal law. See United Haulers Assn., Inc. v. Oneida-Herkimer Solid Waste Mgmt. Auth., 438 F.3d 150, 157 (CA2 2006), aff’d, 550 U.S. 330 (2007). And when the government employs such a coercive mechanism, available to no private party, it acts with the force and effect of law, whether or not it does so to turn a profit. Only if it forgoes the (distinctively governmental) exercise of legal authority may it escape §14501(c)(1)’s preemptive scope. The Port also tries another tack, reminding us that the criminal sanctions here fall on terminal operators alone, not on the trucking companies subject to the agreement’s requirements; hence, the Port maintains, the matter of “criminal penalties is a red herring.” Tr. of Oral Arg. 31; see Brief for City of Los Angeles 39–40. But we fail to see why the target of the sanctions makes any difference. The Port selected an indirect but wholly effective means of “requir[ing] parties . . . providing drayage services” to display placards and submit parking plans: To wit, the Port required terminal operators, on pain of criminal penalties, to insist that the truckers make those commitments. App. 108; see supra, at 3, 8. We have often rejected efforts by States to avoid preemption by shifting their regulatory focus from one company to another in the same supply chain. See, e.g., Rowe v. New Hampshire Motor Transp. Assn., 552 U.S. 364, 371–373 (2008) (finding preemption under the FAAAA although the State’s requirements directly targeted retailers rather than motor carriers); Engine Mfrs. Assn. v. South Coast Air Quality Management Dist., 541 U.S. 246, 255 (2004) (finding preemption under the Clean Air Act although the requirements directly targeted car buyers rather than sellers). The same goes here. The Port made its regulation of drayage trucks mandatory by imposing criminal penalties on the entities hiring all such trucks at the facility. Slice it or dice it any which way, the Port thus acted with the “force of law.” III Our rejection of the concession agreement’s placard and parking requirements does not conclude this case. Two other provisions of the agreement are now in effect: As noted earlier, the Ninth Circuit upheld the financial-capacity and truck-maintenance requirements, and that part of its decision has become final. See supra, at 5, and n. 2. ATA argues that our holding in Castle limits the way the Port can enforce those remaining requirements. According to ATA, the Port may not rely on the agreement’s penalty provision to suspend or revoke the right of non-complying trucking companies to operate on the premises. As we have described, Castle rebuffed a State’s attempt to bar a federally licensed motor carrier from its highways for past infringements of state safety regulations. A federal statute, we explained, gave a federal agency the authority to license interstate motor carriers, as well as a carefully circumscribed power to suspend or terminate those licenses for violations of law. That statute, we held, implicitly prohibited a State from “tak[ing] action”—like a ban on the use of its highways—“amounting to a suspension or revocation of an interstate carrier’s [federally] granted right to operate.” 348 U. S., at 63–64. The parties here dispute whether Castle restricts the Port’s remedial authority. The Port echoes the Ninth Circuit’s view that banning a truck from “all of a State’s freeways” is meaningfully different from denying it “access to a single Port.” 660 F. 3d, at 403; see Brief for City of Los Angeles 49. ATA responds that because the Port is a “crucial channel of interstate commerce,” Castle applies to it just as much as to roads. Brief for Petitioner 18. But we see another question here: Does the Port’s enforcement scheme involve curtailing drayage trucks’ operations in the way Castle prohibits, even assuming that decision applies to facilities like this one? As just indicated, Castle puts limits on how a State or locality can punish an interstate motor carrier for prior violations of truck- ing regulations (like the concession agreement’s requirements). Nothing we said there, however, prevents a State from taking off the road a vehicle that is contemporaneously out of compliance with such regulations. Indeed, ATA filed an amicus brief in Castle explaining that a vehicle “that fails to comply with the state’s regulations may be barred from the state’s highways.” Brief for ATA, O. T 1954, No. 44, p. 12; see Brief for Respondent, id., p. 23 (A State may “stop and prevent from continuing on the highway any motor vehicle which it finds not to be in compliance”). And ATA reiterates that view here, as does the United States as amicus curiae. See Reply Brief 22; Brief for United States 29–30. So the Port would not violate Castle if it barred a truck from operating at its facilities to prevent an ongoing violation of the agreement’s requirements. And at this juncture, we have no basis for finding that the Port will ever use the agreement’s penalty provision for anything more than that. That provision, to be sure, might be read to give the Port broader authority: As noted earlier, the relevant text enables the Port to suspend or revoke a trucking company’s right to provide dray- age services at the facility as a “[r]emedy” for a “Major Default.” App. 82; see supra, at 3. But the agreement nowhere states what counts as a “Major Default”—and specifically, whether a company’s breach of the financial-capacity or truck-maintenance requirements would qual-ify. And the Port has in fact never used its suspension or revocation power to penalize a past violation of those requirements. See Tr. of Oral Arg. 43, 50–51. Indeed, the Port’s brief states that “it does not claim[ ] the authority to punish past, cured violations of the requirements challenged here through suspension or revocation.” Brief for City of Los Angeles 62 (internal quotation marks omitted). So the kind of enforcement ATA fears, and believes inconsistent with Castle, might never come to pass at all. In these circumstances, we decide not to decide ATA’s Castle-based challenge. That claim, by its nature, attacks the Port’s enforcement scheme. But given the pre-enforcement posture of this case, we cannot tell what that scheme entails. It might look like the one forbidden in Castle (as ATA anticipates), or else it might not (as the Port assures us). We see no reason to take a guess now about what the Port will do later. There will be time enough to address the Castle question when, if ever, the Port enforces its agreement in a way arguably violating that decision. IV Section 14501(c)(1) of the FAAAA preempts the placard and parking provisions of the Port’s concession agreement. We decline to decide on the present record ATA’s separate challenge, based on Castle, to that agreement’s penalty provision. Accordingly, the judgment of the Ninth Circuit is reversed in part, and the case is remanded for further proceedings consistent with this opinion. It is so ordered. Notes 1 ATA also contended that a separate provision, 49 U. S. C. §14506(a), preempts the agreement’s placard requirement. That section bars state and local governments from enacting or enforcing “any law, rule, regulation[,] standard, or other provision having the force and effect of law” that obligates a motor carrier to display any form of identification other than those the Secretary of Transportation has required. Ibid. The just-quoted language is the only part of §14506(a) disputed here, and it is materially identical to language in §14501(c)(1). We focus on §14501(c)(1) for ease of reference, but everything we say about that provision also applies to §14506(a). 2 For those curious, the court held that the financial-capacity requirement is not “ ‘related to a [motor carrier’s] price, route, or service,’ ” and that the truck-maintenance requirement falls within a statutory exception for safety regulation. 660 F. 3d, at 395, 403–406 (quoting §14501(c)(1)); see §14501(c)(2)(A) (safety exception). 3 ATA’s petition for certiorari did not seek review of the Ninth Circuit’s determination that the truck-maintenance provision is valid. The petition did ask us to consider the court’s ruling on the financial-capacity provision, but we declined to do so. 4 The Port’s brief occasionally frames the issue differently—as whether a freestanding “market-participant exception” limits §14501(c)(1)’s express terms. See Brief for City of Los Angeles 24. But at oral argument, the Port emphasized that the supposed exception it invoked in fact derives from §14501(c)(1)’s “force and effect of law” language. See Tr. of Oral Arg. 31 (“[W]hat we are calling the market participant exception . . . is generally congruent with[ ] what is meant by Congress by the term ‘force and effect of law’ ”); id., at 39–40 (“I’m . . . relying on the language . . . force and effect of law,” which “invites a market participant analysis”). We therefore have no occasion to consider whether or when a preemption clause lacking such language would except a state or local government’s proprietary actions.

568.US.455

To recover damages in a private securities-fraud action under §10(b) of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 and Securities and Exchange Commission Rule 10b–5, a plaintiff must prove, among other things, reliance on a material misrepresentation or omission made by the defendant. Matrixx Initiatives, Inc. v. Siracusano, 563 U. S. ___, ___. Requiring proof of direct reliance “would place an unnecessarily unrealistic evidentiary burden on [a] plaintiff who has traded on an impersonal market.” Basic Inc. v. Levinson, 485 U.S. 224, 245. Thus, this Court has endorsed a “fraud-on-the-market” theory, which permits securities-fraud plaintiffs to invoke a rebuttable presumption of reliance on public, material misrepresentations regarding securities traded in an efficient market. Id., at 241–249. The fraud-on-the-market theory facilitates the certification of securities-fraud class actions by permitting reliance to be proved on a classwide basis. Invoking the fraud-on-the-market theory, respondent Connecticut Retirement Plans and Trust Funds (Connecticut Retirement) sought certification of a securities-fraud class action under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 23(b)(3) against biotechnology company Amgen Inc. and several of its officers (collectively, Amgen). The District Court certified the class, and the Ninth Circuit affirmed. The Ninth Circuit rejected Amgen’s argument that Connecticut Retirement was required to prove the materiality of Amgen’s alleged misrepresentations and omissions before class certification in order to satisfy Rule 23(b)(3)’s requirement that “questions of law or fact common to class members predominate over any questions affecting only individual members.” The Ninth Circuit also held that the District Court did not err in refusing to consider rebuttal evidence that Amgen had presented on the issue of materiality at the class-certification stage. Held: Proof of materiality is not a prerequisite to certification of a securities-fraud class action seeking money damages for alleged violations of §10(b) and Rule 10b–5. Pp. 9–26. (a) The pivotal inquiry in this case is whether proof of materiality is needed to ensure that the questions of law or fact common to the class will “predominate over any questions affecting only individual members” as the litigation progresses. For two reasons, the answer to this question is “no.” First, because materiality is judged according to an objective standard, it can be proved through evidence common to the class. TSC Industries, Inc. v. Northway, Inc., 426 U.S. 438, 445. Thus, it is a common question for Rule 23(b)(3) purposes. Second, a failure of proof on the common question of materiality would not result in individual questions predominating. Instead, it would end the case, for materiality is an essential element of a securities-fraud claim. Pp. 9–14. (b) Amgen’s arguments to the contrary are unpersuasive. Pp. 14–24. (1) Amgen points to the Court’s statement in Erica P. John Fund, Inc. v. Halliburton Co., 563 U. S. ___, ___, that “securities fraud plaintiffs must prove certain things in order to invoke Basic’s rebuttable presumption of reliance,” including “that the alleged misrepresentations were publicly known . . . , that the stock traded in an efficient market, and that the relevant transaction took place ‘between the time the misrepresentations were made and the time the truth was revealed.’ ” If these fraud-on-the-market predicates must be proved before class certification, Amgen contends, materiality—another fraud-on-the-market predicate—should be treated no differently. The Court disagrees. The requirement that a putative class representative establish that it executed trades “between the time the misrepresentations were made and the time the truth was revealed” relates primarily to the Rule 23(a)(3) and (a)(4) inquiries into typicality and adequacy of representation, not to the Rule 23(b)(3) predominance inquiry. And unlike materiality, market efficiency and the public nature of the alleged misrepresentations are not indispensable elements of a Rule 10–5 claim. While the failure of common, classwide proof of market efficiency or publicity leaves open the prospect of individualized proof of reliance, the failure of common proof on the issue of materiality ends the case for all class members. Pp. 15–18. (2) Amgen also contends that “policy considerations” militate in favor of requiring precertification proof of materiality. Because class certification can exert substantial pressure on the defendant to settle rather than risk ruinous liability, Amgen asserts, materiality may never be addressed by a court if it is not required to be evaluated at the class-certification stage. In this regard, however, materiality does not differ from other essential elements of a Rule 10b–5 claim, notably, the requirements that the statements or omissions on which the plaintiff’s claims are based were false or misleading and that the alleged statements or omissions caused the plaintiff to suffer economic loss. Significantly, while addressing the settlement pressures associated with securities-fraud class actions, Congress has rejected calls to undo the fraud-on-the-market theory. And contrary to Amgen’s argument that requiring proof of materiality before class certification would conserve judicial resources, Amgen’s position would necessitate time and resource intensive mini-trials on materiality at the class-certification stage. Pp. 18–22. (c) Also unavailing is Amgen’s claim that the District Court erred by refusing to consider the rebuttal evidence Amgen proffered in opposing Connecticut Retirement’s class-certification motion. The Ninth Circuit concluded, and Amgen does not contest, that Amgen’s rebuttal evidence aimed to prove that the misrepresentations and omissions alleged in Connecticut Retirement’s complaint were immaterial. The potential immateriality of Amgen’s alleged misrepresentations and omissions, however, is no barrier to finding that common questions predominate. Just as a plaintiff class’s inability to prove materiality creates no risk that individual questions will predominate, a definitive rebuttal on the issue of materiality would not undermine the predominance of questions common to the class. Pp. 24–26. 660 F.3d 1170, affirmed. Ginsburg, J., delivered the opinion of the Court, in which Roberts, C. J., and Breyer, Alito, Sotomayor, and Kagan, JJ., joined. Alito, J., filed a concurring opinion. Scalia, J., filed a dissenting opinion. Thomas, J., filed a dissenting opinion, in which Kennedy, J., joined, and in which Scalia, J., joined except for Part I–B.

This case involves a securities-fraud complaint filed by Connecticut Retirement Plans and Trust Funds (Connecticut Retirement) against biotechnology company Amgen Inc. and several of its officers (collectively, Amgen). Seeking class-action certification under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 23, Connecticut Retirement invoked the “fraud-on-the-market” presumption endorsed by this Court in Basic Inc. v. Levinson, 485 U.S. 224 (1988), and recog- nized most recently in Erica P. John Fund, Inc. v. Halliburton Co., 563 U. S. ___ (2011). The fraud-on-the-market premise is that the price of a security traded in an efficient market will reflect all publicly available information about a company; accordingly, a buyer of the security may be presumed to have relied on that information in purchasing the security. Amgen has conceded the efficiency of the market for the securities at issue and has not contested the public character of the allegedly fraudulent statements on which Connecticut Retirement’s complaint is based. Nor does Amgen here dispute that Connecticut Retirement meets all of the class-action prerequisites stated in Rule 23(a): (1) the alleged class “is so numerous that joinder of all members is impracticable”; (2) “there are questions of law or fact common to the class”; (3) Connecticut Retirement’s claims are “typical of the claims . . . of the class”; and (4) Connecticut Retirement will “fairly and adequately protect the interests of the class.” The issue presented concerns the requirement stated in Rule 23(b)(3) that “the questions of law or fact common to class members predominate over any questions affecting only individual members.” Amgen contends that to meet the predominance requirement, Connecticut Retirement must do more than plausibly plead that Amgen’s alleged misrepresentations and misleading omissions materially affected Amgen’s stock price. According to Amgen, certification must be denied unless Connecticut Retirement proves materiality, for immaterial misrepresentations or omissions, by definition, would have no impact on Amgen’s stock price in an efficient market. While Connecticut Retirement certainly must prove materiality to prevail on the merits, we hold that such proof is not a prerequisite to class certification. Rule 23(b)(3) requires a showing that questions common to the class predominate, not that those questions will be answered, on the merits, in favor of the class. Because materiality is judged according to an objective standard, the materiality of Amgen’s alleged misrepresentations and omissions is a question common to all members of the class Connecticut Retirement would represent. The alleged misrepresentations and omissions, whether material or immaterial, would be so equally for all investors composing the class. As vital, the plaintiff class’s inability to prove materiality would not result in individual questions predominating. Instead, a failure of proof on the issue of materiality would end the case, given that materiality is an essential element of the class members’ securities-fraud claims. As to materiality, therefore, the class is entirely cohesive: It will prevail or fail in unison. In no event will the individual circumstances of particular class members bear on the inquiry. Essentially, Amgen, also the dissenters from today’s decision, would have us put the cart before the horse. To gain certification under Rule 23(b)(3), Amgen and the dissenters urge, Connecticut Retirement must first establish that it will win the fray. But the office of a Rule 23(b)(3) certification ruling is not to adjudicate the case; rather, it is to select the “metho[d]” best suited to adjudication of the controversy “fairly and efficiently.” I A This case involves the interaction between federal securities-fraud laws and Rule 23’s requirements for class certification. To obtain certification of a class ac- tion for money damages under Rule 23(b)(3), a plaintiff must satisfy Rule 23(a)’s above-mentioned prerequisites of numerosity, commonality, typicality, and adequacy of representation, see supra, at 1–2, and must also establish that “the questions of law or fact common to class members predominate over any questions affecting only individual members, and that a class action is superior to other available methods for fairly and efficiently adjudicating the controversy.” To recover damages in a private securities-fraud action under §10(b) of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, 48Stat. 891, as amended, 15 U. S. C. §78j(b) (2006 ed., Supp. V), and Securities and Exchange Commission Rule 10b–5, 17 CFR §240.10b–5 (2011), a plaintiff must prove “(1) a material misrepresentation or omission by the defendant; (2) scienter; (3) a connection between the misrepresentation or omission and the purchase or sale of a security; (4) reliance upon the misrepresentation or omission; (5) economic loss; and (6) loss causation.” Matrixx Initiatives, Inc. v. Siracusano, 563 U. S. ___, ___ (2011) (slip op., at 9) (internal quotation marks omitted). “Reliance,” we have explained, “is an essential element of the §10(b) private cause of action” because “proof of reliance ensures that there is a proper connection between a defendant’s misrepresentation and a plaintiff’s injury.” Halliburton, 563 U. S., at ___ (slip op., at 4) (internal quotation marks omitted). “The traditional (and most direct) way” for a plaintiff to demonstrate reliance “is by showing that he was aware of a company’s statement and engaged in a relevant transaction . . . based on that specific misrepresentation.” Ibid. We have recognized, however, that requiring proof of direct reliance “would place an unnecessarily unrealistic evidentiary burden on [a] plaintiff who has traded on an impersonal market.” Basic, 485 U. S., at 245. Accordingly, in Basic the Court endorsed the “fraud-on-the-market” theory, which permits certain Rule 10b–5 plaintiffs to invoke a rebuttable presumption of reliance on material misrepresentations aired to the general public. Id., at 241–249.[1] The fraud-on-the-market theory rests on the premise that certain well developed markets are efficient processors of public information. In such markets, the “market price of shares” will “reflec[t] all publicly available information.” Id., at 246. Few investors in such markets, if any, can consistently achieve above-market returns by trading based on publicly available information alone, for if such above-market returns were readily attainable, it would mean that market prices were not efficiently incorporating the full supply of public information. See R. Brealey, S. Myers, & F. Allen, Principles of Corporate Finance 330 (10th ed. 2011) (“[I]n an efficient market, there is no way for most investors to achieve consistently superior rates of return.”). In Basic, we held that if a market is shown to be efficient, courts may presume that investors who traded securities in that market relied on public, material misrepresentations regarding those securities. See 485 U. S., at 245–247. This presumption springs from the very concept of market efficiency. If a market is generally efficient in incorporating publicly available information into a security’s market price, it is reasonable to presume that a particular public, material misrepresentation will be reflected in the security’s price. Furthermore, it is reasonable to presume that most investors—knowing that they have little hope of outperforming the market in the long run based solely on their analysis of publicly available information—will rely on the security’s market price as an unbiased assessment of the security’s value in light of all public information. Thus, courts may presume that investors trading in efficient markets indirectly rely on public, material misrepresentations through their “reliance on the integrity of the price set by the market.” Id., at 245. “[T]he presumption,” however, is “just that, and [can] be rebutted by appropriate evidence.” Halliburton, 563 U. S., at ___ (slip op., at 5). See also Basic, 485 U. S., at 248–249 (providing examples of showings that would rebut the fraud-on-the-market presumption). Although fraud on the market is a substantive doctrine of federal securities-fraud law that can be invoked by any Rule 10b–5 plaintiff, see, e.g., Black v. Finantra Capital, Inc., 418 F.3d 203, 209 (CA2 2005); Blackie v. Barrack, 524 F.2d 891, 908 (CA9 1975), the doctrine has particular significance in securities-fraud class actions. Absent the fraud-on-the-market theory, the requirement that Rule 10b–5 plaintiffs establish reliance would ordinarily preclude certification of a class action seeking money dam- ages because individual reliance issues would overwhelm questions common to the class. See Basic, 485 U. S., at 242. The fraud-on-the-market theory, however, facilitates class certification by recognizing a rebuttable presumption of classwide reliance on public, material misrepresentations when shares are traded in an efficient market. Ibid.[2] B In its complaint, Connecticut Retirement alleges that Amgen violated §10(b) and Rule 10b–5 through certain misrepresentations and misleading omissions regarding the safety, efficacy, and marketing of two of its flagship drugs.[3] According to Connecticut Retirement, these misrepresentations and omissions artificially inflated the price of Amgen’s stock at the time Connecticut Retirement and numerous other securities buyers purchased the stock. When the truth came to light, Connecticut Retirement asserts, Amgen’s stock price declined, resulting in financial losses to those who purchased the stock at the inflated price. In its answer to Connecticut Retirement’s complaint, Amgen conceded that “[a]t all relevant times, the market for [its] securities,” which are traded on the NASDAQ stock exchange, “was an efficient market”; thus, “the market for Amgen’s securities promptly digested current information regarding Amgen from all publicly available sources and reflected such information in Amgen’s stock price.” Consolidated Amended Class Action Complaint ¶¶199–200 in No. CV–07–2536 (CD Cal.); Answer ¶¶199–200. The District Court granted Connecticut Retirement’s motion to certify a class action under Rule 23(b)(3) on behalf of all investors who purchased Amgen stock between the date of the first alleged misrepresentation and the date of the last alleged corrective disclosure. After granting Amgen’s request to take an interlocutory appeal from the District Court’s class-certification order, see Fed. Rule Civ. Proc. 23(f), the Court of Appeals affirmed. See 660 F.3d 1170 (CA9 2011). Amgen raised two arguments on appeal. First, Amgen contended that the District Court erred by certifying the proposed class without first requiring Connecticut Retirement to prove that Amgen’s alleged misrepresentations and omissions were material. Second, Amgen argued that the District Court erred by refusing to consider certain rebuttal evidence that Amgen had proffered in opposition to Connecticut Retirement’s class-certification motion. This evidence, in Amgen’s view, demonstrated that the market was well aware of the truth regarding its alleged misrepresentations and omissions at the time the class members purchased their shares. The Court of Appeals rejected both contentions. Amgen’s first argument, the Court of Appeals noted, made the uncontroversial point that immaterial misrepresentations and omissions “by definition [do] not affect . . . stock price[s] in an efficient market.” Id., at 1175. Thus, where misrepresentations and omissions are not material, there is no basis for presuming classwide reliance on those misrepresentations and omissions through the information-processing mechanism of the market price. “The problem with that argument,” the Court of Appeals ob-served, is evident: “[B]ecause materiality is an element of the merits of their securities fraud claim, the plaintiffs cannot both fail to prove materiality yet still have a viable claim for which they would need to prove reliance individually.” Ibid. The Court of Appeals thus concluded that “proof of materiality is not necessary” to ensure compliance with Rule 23(b)(3)’s requirement that common questions predominate. Id., at 1177. With respect to Amgen’s second argument, the Court of Appeals determined that Amgen’s proffered rebuttal evidence was merely “a method of refuting [the] materi- ality” of the misrepresentations and omissions alleged in Connecticut Retirement’s complaint. Ibid. Having al- ready concluded that a securities-fraud plaintiff does not need to prove materiality before class certification, the court similarly held that “the district court correctly refused to consider” Amgen’s rebuttal evidence “at the class certification stage.” Ibid. We granted Amgen’s petition for certiorari, 567 U. S. ___ (2012), to resolve a conflict among the Courts of Appeals over whether district courts must require plaintiffs to prove, and must allow defendants to present evidence rebutting, the element of materiality before certifying a class action under §10(b) and Rule 10b–5. Compare 660 F.3d 1170 (case below); and Schleicher v. Wendt, 618 F.3d 679, 687 (CA7 2010) (materiality need not be proved at the class-certification stage), with In re Salomon Analyst Metromedia Litigation, 544 F.3d 474, 484–485, 486, n. 9 (CA2 2008) (plaintiff must prove, and defendant may present evidence rebutting, materiality before class certification). See also In re DVI, Inc. Securities Litigation, 639 F.3d 623, 631–632, 637–638 (CA3 2011) (plaintiff need not prove materiality before class certification, but defendant may present rebuttal evidence on the issue). II A The only issue before us in this case is whether Connecticut Retirement has satisfied Rule 23(b)(3)’s requirement that “questions of law or fact common to class members predominate over any questions affecting only individual members.” Although we have cautioned that a court’s class-certification analysis must be “rigorous” and may “entail some overlap with the merits of the plaintiff’s underlying claim,” Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. v. Dukes, 564 U. S. ___, ___ (2011) (slip op., at 10) (internal quotation marks omitted), Rule 23 grants courts no license to engage in free-ranging merits inquiries at the certification stage. Merits questions may be considered to the extent—but only to the extent—that they are relevant to determining whether the Rule 23 prerequisites for class certification are satisfied. See id., at ___, n. 6 (slip op., at 10, n. 6) (a district court has no “ ‘authority to conduct a preliminary inquiry into the merits of a suit’ ” at class certification unless it is necessary “to determine the propriety of certification” (quoting Eisen v. Carlisle & Jacquelin, 417 U.S. 156, 177 (1974))); Advisory Committee’s 2003 Note on subd. (c)(1) of Fed. Rule Civ. Proc. 23, 28 U. S. C. App., p. 144 (“[A]n evaluation of the probable outcome on the merits is not properly part of the certification decision.”). Bearing firmly in mind that the focus of Rule 23(b)(3) is on the predominance of common questions, we turn to Amgen’s contention that the courts below erred by failing to require Connecticut Retirement to prove the material- ity of Amgen’s alleged misrepresentations and omissions before certifying Connecticut Retirement’s proposed class. As Amgen notes, materiality is not only an element of the Rule 10b–5 cause of action; it is also an essential predicate of the fraud-on-the-market theory. See Basic, 485 U. S., at 247 (“[W]here materially misleading statements have been disseminated into an impersonal, well-developed market for securities, the reliance of individual plaintiffs on the integrity of the market price may be presumed.” (emphasis added)). That theory, Amgen correctly observes, is premised on the understanding that in an efficient market, all publicly available information is rapidly incorporated into, and thus transmitted to investors through, the market price. See id., at 246–247. Because immaterial in- formation, by definition, does not affect market price, it cannot be relied upon indirectly by investors who, as the fraud-on-the-market theory presumes, rely on the mar- ket price’s integrity. Therefore, the fraud-on-the-market theory cannot apply absent a material misrepresentation or omission. And without the fraud-on-the-market theory, the element of reliance cannot be proved on a classwide basis through evidence common to the class. See id., at 242. It thus follows, Amgen contends, that materiality must be proved before a securities-fraud class action can be certified. Contrary to Amgen’s argument, the key question in this case is not whether materiality is an essential predicate of the fraud-on-the-market theory; indisputably it is.[4] Instead, the pivotal inquiry is whether proof of materiality is needed to ensure that the questions of law or fact common to the class will “predominate over any questions affecting only individual members” as the litigation progresses. Fed. Rule Civ. Proc. 23(b)(3). For two reasons, the answer to this question is clearly “no.” First, because “[t]he question of materiality . . . is an objective one, involving the significance of an omitted or misrepresented fact to a reasonable investor,” materiality can be proved through evidence common to the class. TSC Industries, Inc. v. Northway, Inc., 426 U.S. 438, 445 (1976). Consequently, materiality is a “common questio[n]” for purposes of Rule 23(b)(3). Basic, 485 U. S., at 242 (listing “materiality” as one of the questions common to the Basic class members). Second, there is no risk whatever that a failure of proof on the common question of materiality will result in individual questions predominating. Because materiality is an essential element of a Rule 10b–5 claim, see Matrixx Initiatives, 563 U. S., at ___ (slip op., at 9), Connecticut Retirement’s failure to present sufficient evidence of materiality to defeat a summary-judgment motion or to prevail at trial would not cause individual reliance questions to overwhelm the questions common to the class. Instead, the failure of proof on the element of materiality would end the case for one and for all; no claim would re- main in which individual reliance issues could potentially predominate. Totally misapprehending our essential point, Justice Thomas’ dissent asserts that our “entire argument is based on the assumption that the fraud-on-the-market presumption need not be shown at certification because it will be proved later on the merits.” Post, at 11, n. 9. Our position is not so based. We rest, instead, entirely on the text of Rule 23(b)(3), which provides for class certification if “the questions of law or fact common to class members predominate over any questions affecting only individual members.” A failure of proof on the common question of materiality ends the litigation and thus will never cause individual questions of reliance or anything else to overwhelm questions common to the class. Therefore, under the plain language of Rule 23(b)(3), plaintiffs are not required to prove materiality at the class-certification stage. In other words, they need not, at that threshold, prove that the predominating question will be answered in their favor. Justice Thomas urges that a plaintiff seeking class certification “must show that the elements of [her] claim are susceptible to classwide proof.” Post, at 7. See also post, at 11 (criticizing the Court for failing to focus its analysis on “whether the element of reliance is susceptible to classwide proof”). From this premise, Justice Thomas concludes that Rule 10b–5 plaintiffs must prove material- ity before class certification because (1) “materiality is a necessary component of fraud on the market,” and (2) without fraud on the market, the Rule 10b–5 element of reliance is not “susceptible of a classwide answer.” Post, at 6, 10–11. See also post, at 12 (“[I]f a plaintiff wishes to use Basic’s presumption to prove that reliance is a common question, he must establish the entire presumption, including materiality, at the class certification stage.”). Rule 23(b)(3), however, does not require a plaintiff seeking class certification to prove that each “elemen[t] of [her] claim [is] susceptible to classwide proof.” Post, at 7. What the rule does require is that common questions “predominate over any questions affecting only individual [class] members.” Fed. Rule Civ. Proc. 23(b)(3) (emphasis added). Nowhere does Justice Thomas explain how, in an action invoking the Basic presumption, a plaintiff class’s failure to prove an essential element of its claim for relief will result in individual questions predominating over common ones. Absent proof of materiality, the claim of the Rule 10b–5 class will fail in its entirety; there will be no remaining individual questions to adjudicate. Consequently, proof of materiality is not required to establish that a proposed class is “sufficiently cohesive to warrant adjudication by representation”—the focus of the predominance inquiry under Rule 23(b)(3). Amchem Products, Inc. v. Windsor, 521 U.S. 591, 623 (1997). No doubt a clever mind could conjure up fantastic scenarios in which an individual investor might rely on immaterial information (think of the superstitious investor who sells her securities based on a CEO’s statement that a black cat crossed the CEO’s path that morning). But such objectively unreasonable reliance does not give rise to a Rule 10b–5 claim. See TSC Industries, 426 U. S., at 445 (materiality is judged by an objective standard). Thus, “the individualized questions of reliance,” post, at 9, n. 8, that hypothetically might arise when a failure of proof on the issue of materiality dooms the fraud-on-the-market class are far more imaginative than real. Such “individualized questions” do not undermine class cohesion and thus cannot be said to “predominate” for purposes of Rule 23(b)(3).[5] Because the question of materiality is common to the class, and because a failure of proof on that issue would not result in questions “affecting only individual members” predominating, Fed. Rule Civ. Proc. 23(b)(3), Connecticut Retirement was not required to prove the materiality of Amgen’s alleged misrepresentations and omissions at the class-certification stage. This is not a case in which the asserted problem—i.e., that the plaintiff class cannot prove materiality—“exhibits some fatal dissimilarity” among class members that would make use of the class-action device inefficient or unfair. Nagareda, Class Certification in the Age of Aggregate Proof, 84 N. Y. U. L. Rev. 97, 107 (2009). Instead, what Amgen alleges is “a fatal similarity—[an alleged] failure of proof as to an element of the plaintiffs’ cause of action.” Ibid. Such a contention is properly addressed at trial or in a ruling on a summary-judgment motion. The allegation should not be resolved in deciding whether to certify a proposed class. Ibid. See also Schleicher, 618 F. 3d, at 687 (“[W]hether a statement is materially false is a question common to all class members and therefore may be resolved on a class-wide basis after certification.”). B Insisting that materiality must be proved at the class-certification stage, Amgen relies chiefly on two arguments, neither of which we find persuasive.[6] 1 Amgen points first to our statement in Halliburton that “securities fraud plaintiffs must prove certain things in order to invoke Basic’s rebuttable presumption of reliance,” including “that the alleged misrepresentations were publicly known . . . , that the stock traded in an efficient market, and that the relevant transaction took place ‘between the time the misrepresentations were made and the time the truth was revealed.’ ” 563 U. S., at ___ (slip op., at 5–6) (quoting Basic, 485 U. S., at 248, n. 27). See also Dukes, 564 U. S., at ___, n. 6 (slip op., at 11, n. 6) (“[P]laintiffs seeking 23(b)(3) certification [of a securities-fraud class action] must prove that their shares were traded on an efficient market.”). If these fraud-on-the-market predicates must be proved before class certification, Amgen contends, materiality—another fraud-on-the-market predicate—should be treated no differently. We disagree. As an initial matter, the requirement that a putative class representative establish that it executed trades “between the time the misrepresentations were made and the time the truth was revealed” relates primarily to the Rule 23(a)(3) and (a)(4) inquiries into typicality and adequacy of representation, not to the Rule 23(b)(3) predominance inquiry. Basic, 485 U. S., at 248, n. 27.[7] A security’s market price cannot be affected by a misrepresentation not yet made, and in an efficient market, a misrepresentation’s impact on market price is quickly nullified once the truth comes to light. Thus, a plaintiff whose relevant transactions were not executed between the time the misrepresentation was made and the time the truth was revealed cannot be said to have indirectly relied on the misrepresentation through its reliance on the integrity of the market price.[8] Such a plaintiff’s claims, therefore, would not be “typical” of the claims of investors who did trade during the window between misrepresentation and truth revelation. Fed. Rule Civ. Proc. 23(a)(3). Nor could a court confidently conclude that such a plaintiff would “fairly and adequately protect the interests” of investors who traded during the relevant window. Rule 23(a)(4). The requirement that the fraud-on-the-market theory’s trade-timing predicate be established before class certification thus sheds little light on the question whether materiality must also be proved at the class-certification stage. Amgen is not aided by Halliburton’s statement that market efficiency and the public nature of the alleged misrepresentations must be proved before a securities-fraud class action can be certified. As Amgen notes, market efficiency, publicity, and materiality can all be proved on a classwide basis. Furthermore, they are all essential predicates of the fraud-on-the-market theory. Unless those predicates are established, there is no basis for presuming that the defendant’s alleged misrepresentations were reflected in the security’s market price, and hence no grounding for any contention that investors indirectly relied on those misrepresentations through their reliance on the integrity of the market price. But unlike materiality, market efficiency and publicity are not indispensable elements of a Rule 10b–5 claim. See Matrixx Initiatives, 563 U. S., at ___ (slip op., at 9) (listing elements of a Rule 10b–5 claim). Thus, where the market for a security is inefficient or the defendant’s alleged misrepresentations were not aired publicly, a plaintiff cannot invoke the fraud-on-the-market presumption. She can, however, attempt to establish reliance through the “traditional” mode of demonstrating that she was personally “aware of [the defendant’s] statement and engaged in a relevant transaction . . . based on that specific misrepresentation.” Halliburton, 563 U. S., at ___ (slip op., at 4). Individualized reliance issues would predominate in such a lawsuit. See Basic, 485 U. S., at 242. The litigation, therefore, could not be certified under Rule 23(b)(3) as a class action, but the initiating plaintiff’s claim would remain live; it would not be “dead on arrival.” 660 F. 3d, at 1175. A failure of proof on the issue of materiality, in contrast, not only precludes a plaintiff from invoking the fraud-on-the-market presumption of classwide reliance; it also establishes as a matter of law that the plaintiff cannot prevail on the merits of her Rule 10b–5 claim. Materiality thus differs from the market-efficiency and publicity predicates in this critical respect: While the failure of common, classwide proof on the issues of market efficiency and publicity leaves open the prospect of individualized proof of reliance, the failure of common proof on the issue of materiality ends the case for the class and for all indi- viduals alleged to compose the class. See Brief for United States as Amicus Curiae 20 (“Unless the failure of common proof gives rise to a need for individualized proof, it does not cast doubt on the propriety of class certification.”). In short, there can be no actionable reliance, individually or collectively, on immaterial information. Be- cause a failure of proof on the issue of materiality, unlike the issues of market efficiency and publicity, does not give rise to any prospect of individual questions overwhelming common ones, materiality need not be proved prior to Rule 23(b)(3) class certification. 2 Amgen also contends that certain “policy considerations” militate in favor of requiring precertification proof of materiality. Brief for Petitioners 28. An order granting class certification, Amgen observes, can exert substantial pressure on a defendant “to settle rather than incur the costs of defending a class action and run the risk of potentially ruinous liability.” Advisory Committee’s 1998 Note on subd. (f) of Fed. Rule Civ. Proc. 23, 28 U. S. C. App., p. 143. See also AT&T Mobility LLC v. Concepcion, 563 U. S. ___, ___ (2011) (slip op., at 16) (class actions can entail a “risk of ‘in terrorem’ settlements”). Absent a requirement to evaluate materiality at the class-certification stage, Amgen contends, the issue may never be addressed by a court, for the defendant will surrender and settle soon after a class is certified. Insistence on proof of materiality before certifying a securities-fraud class action, Amgen thus urges, ensures that the issue will be adjudicated and not forgone. See also post, at 4 (Scalia, J., dissenting) (expressing the same concerns). In this regard, however, materiality does not differ from other essential elements of a Rule 10b–5 claim, notably, the requirements that the statements or omissions on which the plaintiff’s claims are based were false or misleading and that the alleged statements or omissions caused the plaintiff to suffer economic loss. See Matrixx Initiatives, 563 U. S., at ___ (slip op., at 9). Settlement pressure exerted by class certification may prevent judicial resolution of these issues. Yet this Court has held that loss causation and the falsity or misleading nature of the defendant’s alleged statements or omissions are common questions that need not be adjudicated before a class is certified. See Halliburton, 563 U. S., at ___ (slip op., at 3) (loss causation need not be proved at the class-certification stage); Basic, 485 U. S., at 242 (“the falsity or misleading nature of the . . . public statements” allegedly made by the defendant is a “common questio[n]”). See also Schleicher, 618 F. 3d, at 685 (falsity of alleged mis- statements need not be proved before certification of a securities-fraud class action). Congress, we count it significant, has addressed the settlement pressures associated with securities-fraud class actions through means other than requiring proof of materiality at the class-certification stage. In enacting the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 (PSLRA), 109Stat. 737, Congress recognized that although private securities-fraud litigation furthers important public-policy interests, prime among them, deterring wrongdoing and providing restitution to defrauded investors, such law- suits have also been subject to abuse, including the “extract[ion]” of “extortionate ‘settlements’ ” of frivolous claims. H. R. Conf. Rep. No. 104–369, pp. 31–32 (1995). The PSLRA’s response to the perceived abuses was, inter alia, to “impos[e] heightened pleading requirements” for securities-fraud actions, “limit recoverable damages and attorney’s fees, provide a ‘safe harbor’ for forward-looking statements, impose new restrictions on the selection of (and compensation awarded to) lead plaintiffs, mandate imposition of sanctions for frivolous litigation, and authorize a stay of discovery pending resolution of any motion to dismiss.” Merrill Lynch, Pierce, Fenner & Smith Inc. v. Dabit, 547 U.S. 71, 81–82 (2006). See also 15 U. S. C. §78u–4 (2006 ed. and Supp. V). Congress later fortified the PSLRA by enacting the Securities Litigation Uniform Standards Act of 1998, 112Stat. 3227, which curtailed plaintiffs’ ability to evade the PSLRA’s limitations on federal securities-fraud litigation by bringing class-action suits under state rather than federal law. See 15 U. S. C. §78bb(f)(1) (2006 ed.). While taking these steps to curb abusive securities-fraud lawsuits, Congress rejected calls to undo the fraud-on-the-market presumption of classwide reliance endorsed in Basic. See Langevoort, Basic at Twenty: Rethinking Fraud on the Market, 2009 Wis. L. Rev. 151, 153, and n. 8 (noting that the initial version of H. R. 10, 104th Cong., 1st Sess. (1995), an unenacted bill that, like the PSLRA, was designed to curtail abuses in private securities litigation, “would have undone Basic”). See also Common Sense Legal Reform Act: Hearings before the Subcommittee on Telecommunications and Finance of the House Committee on Commerce, 104th Cong., 1st Sess., 92, 236–237, 251–252, 272 (1995) (witnesses criticized the fraud-on-the-market presumption and expressed support for H. R. 10’s requirement that securities-fraud plaintiffs prove direct reliance). Nor did Congress decree that securities-fraud plaintiffs prove each element of their claim before obtaining class certification. Because Congress has homed in on the precise policy concerns raised in Amgen’s brief, “[w]e do not think it appropriate for the judiciary to make its own further adjustments by reinterpreting Rule 23 to make likely success on the merits essential to class certification in securities-fraud suits.” Schleicher, 618 F. 3d, at 686; cf. Smith v. Bayer Corp., 564 U. S. ___, ___ (2011) (slip op., at 17–18) (“Congress’s decision to address the relitigation concerns associated with class actions through the mechanism of removal provides yet another reason for federal courts to adhere in this context to longstanding principles of preclusion.”). In addition to seeking our aid in warding off “in terrorem” settlements, Amgen also argues that requiring proof of materiality before class certification would conserve judicial resources by sparing judges the task of overseeing large class proceedings in which the essential element of reliance cannot be proved on a classwide basis. In reality, however, it is Amgen’s position, not the judgments of the lower courts in this case, that would waste judicial resources. Amgen’s argument, if embraced, would necessitate a mini-trial on the issue of materiality at the class-certification stage. Such preliminary adjudications would entail considerable expenditures of judicial time and resources, costs scarcely anticipated by Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 23(c)(1)(A), which instructs that the decision whether to certify a class action be made “[a]t an early practicable time.” If the class is certified, materiality might have to be shown all over again at trial. And if certification is denied for failure to prove materiality, nonnamed class members would not be bound by that determination. See Smith, 564 U. S., at ___ (slip op., at 12–18). They would be free to renew the fray, perhaps in another forum, perhaps with a stronger showing of materiality. Given the tenuousness of Amgen’s judicial-economy argument, Amgen’s policy arguments ultimately return to the contention that private securities-fraud actions should be hemmed in to mitigate their potentially “vexatiou[s]” character. Blue Chip Stamps v. Manor Drug Stores, 421 U.S. 723, 739 (1975). We have already noted what Congress has done to control exorbitant securities-fraud actions. See supra, at 19–20. Congress, the Executive Branch, and this Court, moreover, have “recognized that meritorious private actions to enforce federal antifraud securities laws are an essential supplement to criminal prosecutions and civil enforcement actions brought, respectively, by the Department of Justice and the Securities and Exchange Commission.” Tellabs, Inc. v. Makor Issues & Rights, Ltd., 551 U.S. 308, 313 (2007); see H. R. Conf. Rep. No. 104–369, at 31; Brief for United States as Amicus Curiae 1. See also Amchem, 521 U. S., at 617 (“ ‘The policy at the very core of the class action mechanism is to overcome the problem that small recoveries do not provide the incentive for any individual to bring a solo action prosecuting his or her rights.’ ” (quoting Mace v. Van Ru Credit Corp., 109 F.3d 338, 344 (CA7 1997))). We have no warrant to encumber securities-fraud litigation by adopting an atextual requirement of precertification proof of materiality that Congress, despite its extensive in- volvement in the securities field, has not sanctioned. C Justice Scalia acknowledges that proof of materiality is not required to satisfy Rule 23(b)(3)’s predominance requirement. See post, at 1. Nevertheless, he maintains that full satisfaction of Rule 23’s requirements is insufficient to obtain class certification under Basic. In Justice Scalia’s view, the Court’s decision in Basic established a special rule: A securities-fraud class action cannot be certified unless all of the prerequisites of the fraud-on-the-market presumption of reliance, including materiality, have first been established. Post, at 2. The purported rule is Justice Scalia’s invention. It cannot be attributed to anything the Court said in Basic. That decision is best known for its endorsement of the fraud-on-the-market theory. But the opinion also established something more. It stated the proper standard for judging the materiality of misleading statements regarding the existence and status of preliminary merger discussions. See 485 U. S., at 230–241, 250 (“Materiality in the merger context depends on the probability that the transaction will be consummated, and its significance to the issuer of the securities.”). The District Court in Basic certified a class of investors whose share prices were allegedly depressed by misleading statements that disguised ongoing merger negotiations. Id., at 228. Postcertification, the court granted summary judgment to the defendants on the ground that the alleged misstatements were immaterial as a matter of law. Id., at 228–229. The Court of Appeals affirmed the class certification but reversed the grant of summary judgment. Id., at 229. This Court, in turn, vacated the Court of Appeals’ judgment and remanded for further proceedings on the defendants’ summary-judgment motion in light of the materiality standard set forth in the Court’s opinion. Id., at 240–241, 250. Notably, however, we did not disturb the District Court’s class-certification order, which we stated “was appropriate when made.” Id., at 250.[9] If Justice Scalia were correct that our decision in Basic demands proof of materiality before class certification, the Court in Basic should have ordered the lower courts to reconsider on remand both the defendants’ entitlement to summary judgment and the propriety of class certification. Instead, the Court expressly endorsed the District Court’s class-certification order while at the same time recognizing that further proceedings were necessary to determine whether the plaintiffs had mustered sufficient evidence to satisfy the relatively lenient standard for avoiding summary judgment. See Anderson v. Liberty Lobby, Inc., 477 U.S. 242, 248 (1986) (“[S]ummary judgment will not lie if . . . the evidence is such that a reasonable jury could return a verdict for the nonmoving party.”). Unlike Justice Scalia, we are unwilling to presume that Basic announced a rule requiring precertification proof of materiality when Basic failed to apply any such rule to the very case before it.[10] III Amgen also argues that the District Court erred by refusing to consider the rebuttal evidence Amgen proffered in opposing Connecticut Retirement’s class-certification motion. This evidence, Amgen contends, showed that “in light of all the information available to the market,” its alleged misrepresentations and misleading omissions “could not be presumed to have altered the market price because they would not have ‘significantly altered the total mix of information made available.’ ” Brief for Petitioners 40–41 (quoting Basic, 485 U. S., at 232). For example, Connecticut Retirement’s complaint alleges that an Amgen executive misleadingly downplayed the significance of an upcoming Food and Drug Administration advisory committee meeting by incorrectly stating that the meeting would not focus on one of Amgen’s leading drugs. See App. to Pet. for Cert. 17a. Amgen responded to this allegation by presenting public documents—including the committee’s meeting agenda, which was published in the Federal Register more than a month before the meeting—stating that safety concerns associated with Amgen’s drug would be discussed at the meeting. See id., at 41a–42a. See also 69 Fed. Reg. 16582 (2004). The District Court did not err, we agree with the Court of Appeals, by disregarding Amgen’s rebuttal evidence in deciding whether Connecticut Retirement’s proposed class satisfied Rule 23(b)(3)’s predominance requirement. The Court of Appeals concluded, and Amgen does not contest, that Amgen’s rebuttal evidence aimed to prove that the misrepresentations and omissions alleged in Connecticut Retirement’s complaint were immaterial. 660 F. 3d, at 1177 (characterizing Amgen’s rebuttal evidence as an attempt to present a “ ‘truth-on-the-market’ defense,” which the Court of Appeals explained “is a method of refuting an alleged misrepresentation’s materiality”). See also Reply Brief 17 (Amgen’s evidence was offered to rebut the “materiality predicate” of the fraud-on-the-market theory). As explained above, however, the potential immateriality of Amgen’s alleged misrepresentations and omissions is no barrier to finding that common questions predominate. See Part II, supra. If the alleged misrepresentations and omissions are ultimately found immaterial, the fraud-on-the-market presumption of classwide reliance will collapse. But again, as earlier explained, see supra, at 10–13, individual reliance questions will not overwhelm questions common to the class, for the class members’ claims will have failed on their merits, thus bringing the litigation to a close. Therefore, just as a plaintiff class’s inability to prove materiality creates no risk that individual questions will predominate, so even a definitive rebuttal on the issue of materiality would not undermine the predominance of questions common to the class. We recognized as much in Basic itself. A defendant could “rebut the [fraud-on-the-market] presumption of reliance,” we observed in Basic, by demonstrating that “news of the [truth] credibly entered the market and dissipated the effects of [prior] misstatements.” 485 U. S., at 248–249. We emphasized, however, that “[p]roof of that sort is a matter for trial” (and presumably also for a summary-judgment motion under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 56). Id., at 249, n. 29.[11] The District Court thus correctly reserved consideration of Amgen’s rebuttal evidence for summary judgment or trial. It was not required to consider the evidence in determining whether common questions predominated under Rule 23(b)(3). * * * For the reasons stated, the judgment of the Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit is affirmed. It is so ordered. Notes 1 Part IV of Justice Blackmun’s opinion in Basic—the part endors-ing the fraud-on-the-market theory—was joined by Justices Brennan, Marshall, and Stevens. Together, these Justices composed a majority of the quorum of six Justices who participated in the case. See 28 U. S. C. §1 (“The Supreme Court of the United States shall consist of a Chief Justice of the United States and eight associate justices, any six of whom shall constitute a quorum.”). 2 Although describing Basic’s adoption of the fraud-on-the-market presumption of reliance as “questionable,” Justice Thomas’ dissent acknowledges that “the Court has not been asked to revisit” that issue. Post, at 4–5, n. 4. See also post, p. 1 (Alito, J., concurring). 3 Amgen’s allegedly improper marketing practices have sparked federal and state investigations and several whistleblower lawsuits. See Dye, Amgen to pay $762 million in drug-marketing case, Washington Post, Dec. 19, 2012, p. A17. 4 We agree with Justice Thomas that “[m]ateriality was central to the development, analysis, and adoption of the fraud-on-the-market theory both before Basic and in Basic itself.” Post, at 18. We disagree, however, that the history of the fraud-on-the-market theory’s development “confirms that materiality must be proved at the time that the theory is invoked—i.e., at certification.” Ibid. As explained below, see infra this page and 11–13, proof of materiality is not required prior to class certification because such proof is not necessary to ensure satisfaction of Rule 23(b)(3)’s predominance requirement. 5 Justice Thomas is also wrong in arguing that a failure of proof on the issue of materiality would demonstrate that a Rule 10b–5 class action “should not have been certified in the first place.” Post, at 2. Quite the contrary. The fact that such a failure of proof resolves all class members’ claims once and for all, leaving no individual issues to be adjudicated, confirms that the original certification decision was proper. 6 Amgen advances a third argument founded on modern economic research tending to show that market efficiency is not “ ‘a binary, yes or no question.’ ” Brief for Petitioners 32 (quoting Langevoort, Basic at Twenty: Rethinking Fraud on the Market, 2009 Wis. L. Rev. 151, 167). Instead, this research suggests, differences in efficiency can exist within a single market. For example, a market may more readily process certain forms of widely disseminated and easily digestible information, such as public merger announcements, than information more difficult to acquire and understand, such as obscure technical data buried in a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. See, e.g., Macey & Miller, Good Finance, Bad Economics: An Analysis of the Fraud-on-the-Market Theory, 42 Stan. L. Rev. 1059, 1083–1087 (1990); Stout, The Mechanisms of Market Inefficiency: An Introduction to the New Finance, 28 J. Corp. L. 635, 653–656 (2003). Amgen, however, never clearly explains how this research on market efficiency bolsters its argument that courts should require precertification proof of materiality. In any event, this case is a poor vehicle for exploring whatever implications the research Amgen cites may have for the fraud-on-the-market presumption recognized in Basic. As noted above, see supra, at 6–7, Amgen conceded in its answer that the market for its securities is “efficient” and thus “promptly digest[s] current information regarding Amgen from all publicly available sources and reflect[s] such information in Amgen’s stock price.” Consolidated Amended Class Action Complaint ¶¶199–200; Answer ¶¶199–200. See also App. to Pet. for Cert. 40a (relying on the admission in Amgen’s answer and an unchallenged expert report submitted by Connecticut Retirement, the District Court expressly found that the market for Amgen’s stock was efficient). Amgen remains bound by that concession. See American Title Ins. Co. v. Lacelaw Corp., 861 F.2d 224, 226 (CA9 1988) (“Factual assertions in pleadings and pretrial orders, unless amended, are considered judicial admissions conclusively binding on the party who made them.”); cf. Christian Legal Soc. Chapter of Univ. of Cal., Hastings College of Law v. Martinez, 561 U. S. ___, ___ (2010) (slip op., at 10) (“This Court has . . . refused to consider a party’s argument that contradicted a joint ‘stipulation [entered] at the outset of th[e] litigation.’ ” (quoting Board of Regents of Univ. of Wis. System v. Southworth, 529 U.S. 217, 226 (2000))). We thus find nothing in the cited research that would support requiring precertification proof of materiality in this case. 7 As earlier noted, see supra, at 1–2, Amgen does not here contest Connecticut Retirement’s satisfaction of Rule 23(a)’s requirements. 8 Accordingly, “the timing of the relevant stock trades” is indeed an “element” of the fraud-on-the-market theory. Post, at 6, n. 6 (opinion of Thomas, J.). Unlike Justice Thomas, however, see ibid., we do not understand the United States as amicus curiae to take a different view. See Brief for United States 15, n. 2 (“Precise identification of the times when the alleged misrepresentation was made and the truth was subsequently revealed is . . . important to ensure that the named plaintiff has traded stock during the time the stock price allegedly was distorted by the defendant’s misrepresentations.”). 9 Scouring the Court’s decision in Basic for some semblance of support for his position, Justice Scalia attaches portentous significance to Basic’s statement that the District Court’s class-certification order, although “ ‘appropriate when made,’ ” was “ ‘subject on remand to such adjustment, if any, as developing circumstances demand[ed].’ ” Post, at 2 (quoting Basic, 485 U. S., at 250). This statement, however, merely reminds that certifications are not frozen once made. Rule 23 empowers district courts to “alte[r] or amen[d]” class-certification orders based on circumstances developing as the case unfolds. Fed. Rule Civ. Proc. 23(c)(1) (1988). See also Rule 23(c)(1)(C) (2013). 10 Justice Scalia suggests that the Court’s approach in Basic might have been influenced by the obsolete view that “ ‘Rule 23 . . . set[s] forth a mere pleading standard.’ ” Post, at 3 (quoting Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. v. Dukes, 564 U. S. ___, ___ (2011) (slip op., at 10)). The opinion in Basic, however, provides no indication that the Court perceived any issue before it to turn on the question whether a plaintiff must merely plead, rather than “affirmatively demonstrate,” her satisfaction of Rule 23’s certification requirements. Dukes, 564 U. S., at ___ (slip op., at 10). 11 Amgen attempts to minimize the import of this statement by noting that it was made prior to a 2003 amendment to Rule 23 that eliminated district courts’ authority to conditionally certify class actions. See Advisory Committee’s 2003 Note on subd. (c)(1) of Fed. Rule Civ. Proc. 23, 28 U. S. C. App., p. 144. Nothing in our opinion in Basic, however, suggests that the statement relied in any way on district courts’ conditional-certification authority. To the contrary, the Court in Basic stated: “Proof of that sort [i.e., that news of the truth had entered the market and dissipated the effects of prior misstatements] is a matter for trial, throughout which the District Court retains the authority to amend the certification order as may be appropriate.” 485 U. S., at 249, n. 29 (emphasis added). Rule 23(c)(1)(C) continues to provide that a class-certification order “may be altered or amended before final judgment.”

570.US.1

The National Voter Registration Act of 1993 (NVRA) requires States to “accept and use” a uniform federal form to register voters for federal elections. 42 U. S. C. §1973gg–4(a)(1). That “Federal Form,” developed by the federal Election Assistance Commission (EAC), requires only that an applicant aver, under penalty of perjury, that he is a citizen. Arizona law, however, requires voter-registration officials to “reject” any application for registration, including a Federal Form, that is not accompanied by documentary evidence of citizenship. Respondents, a group of individual Arizona residents and a group of nonprofit organizations, sought to enjoin that Arizona law. Ultimately, the District Court granted Arizona summary judgment on respondents’ claim that the NVRA pre-empts Arizona’s requirement. The Ninth Circuit affirmed in part but reversed as relevant here, holding that the state law’s documentary-proof-of-citizenship requirement is pre-empted by the NVRA. Held: Arizona’s evidence-of-citizenship requirement, as applied to Federal Form applicants, is pre-empted by the NVRA’s mandate that States “accept and use” the Federal Form. Pp. 4–18. (a) The Elections Clause imposes on States the duty to prescribe the time, place, and manner of electing Representatives and Senators, but it confers on Congress the power to alter those regulations or supplant them altogether. See U. S. Term Limits, Inc. v. Thornton, 514 U.S. 779, 804–805. This Court has said that the terms “Times, Places, and Manner” “embrace authority to provide a complete code for congressional elections,” including regulations relating to “registration.” Smiley v. Holm, 285 U.S. 355, 366. Pp. 4–6. (b) Because “accept and use” are words “that can have more than one meaning,” they “are given content . . . by their surroundings.” Whitman v. American Trucking Assns., Inc., 531 U.S. 457, 466. Reading “accept” merely to denote willing receipt seems out of place in the context of an official mandate to accept and use something for a given purpose. The implication of such a mandate is that its object is to be accepted as sufficient for the requirement it is meant to satisfy. Arizona’s reading is also difficult to reconcile with neighboring NVRA provisions, such as §1973gg–6(a)(1)(B) and §1973gg–4(a)(2). Arizona’s appeal to the presumption against pre-emption invoked in this Court’s Supremacy Clause cases is inapposite. The power the Elections Clause confers is none other than the power to pre-empt. Because Congress, when it acts under this Clause, is always on notice that its legislation will displace some element of a pre-existing legal regime erected by the States, the reasonable assumption is that the text of Elections Clause legislation accurately communicates the scope of Congress’s pre-emptive intent. Nonetheless, while the NVRA forbids States to demand that an applicant submit additional information beyond that required by the Federal Form, it does not preclude States from “deny[ing] registration based on information in their possession establishing the applicant’s ineligibility.” Pp. 6–13. (c) Arizona is correct that the Elections Clause empowers Congress to regulate how federal elections are held, but not who may vote in them. The latter is the province of the States. See U. S. Const., Art. I, §2, cl. 1; Amdt. 17. It would raise serious constitutional doubts if a federal statute precluded a State from obtaining the information necessary to enforce its voter qualifications. The NVRA can be read to avoid such a conflict, however. Section 1973gg–7(b)(1) permits the EAC to include on the Federal Form information “necessary to enable the appropriate State election official to assess the eligibility of the applicant.” That validly conferred discretionary executive authority is properly exercised (as the Government has proposed) to require the inclusion of Arizona’s concrete-evidence requirement if such evidence is necessary to enable Arizona to enforce its citizenship qualification. The NVRA permits a State to request the EAC to include state-specific instructions on the Federal Form, see 42 U. S. C. §1973gg–7(a)(2), and a State may challenge the EAC’s rejection of that request (or failure to act on it) in a suit under the Administrative Procedure Act. That alternative means of enforcing its constitutional power to determine voting qualifications remains open to Arizona here. Should the EAC reject or decline to act on a renewed request, Arizona would have the opportunity to establish in a reviewing court that a mere oath will not suffice to effectuate its citizenship requirement and that the EAC is therefore under a nondiscretionary duty to include Arizona’s concrete-evidence requirement on the Federal Form. Pp. 13–17. 677 F.3d 383, affirmed. Scalia, J., delivered the opinion of the Court, in which Roberts, C. J., and Ginsburg, Breyer, Sotomayor, and Kagan, JJ., joined, and in which Kennedy, J., joined in part. Kennedy, J., filed an opinion concurring in part and concurring in the judgment. Thomas, J., and Alito, J., filed dissenting opinions.

The National Voter Registration Act requires States to “accept and use” a uniform federal form to register voters for federal elections. The contents of that form (colloquially known as the Federal Form) are prescribed by a federal agency, the Election Assistance Commission. The Federal Form developed by the EAC does not require documentary evidence of citizenship; rather, it requires only that an applicant aver, under penalty of perjury, that he is a citizen. Arizona law requires voter-registration officials to “reject” any application for registration, including a Federal Form, that is not accompanied by concrete evidence of citizenship. The question is whether Arizona’s evidence-of-citizenship requirement, as applied to Federal Form applicants, is pre-empted by the Act’s mandate that States “accept and use” the Federal Form. I Over the past two decades, Congress has erected a complex superstructure of federal regulation atop state voter-registration systems. The National Voter Registration Act of 1993 (NVRA), 107Stat. 77, as amended, 42 U. S. C. §1973gg et seq., “requires States to provide simplified systems for registering to vote in federal elections.” Young v. Fordice, 520 U. S. 273, 275 (1997) . The Act requires each State to permit prospective voters to “register to vote in elections for Federal office” by any of three methods: simultaneously with a driver’s license application, in person, or by mail. §1973gg–2(a). This case concerns registration by mail. Section 1973gg–2(a)(2) of the Act requires a State to establish procedures for registering to vote in federal elections “by mail application pursuant to section 1973gg–4 of this title.” Section 1973gg–4, in turn, requires States to “accept and use” a standard federal registration form. §1973gg–4(a)(1). The Election Assistance Commission is invested with rulemaking authority to prescribe the contents of that Federal Form. §1973gg–7(a)(1); see §15329. [ 1 ] The EAC is explicitly instructed, however, to develop the Federal Form “in consultation with the chief election officers of the States.” §1973gg–7(a)(2). The Federal Form thus contains a number of state-specific instructions, which tell residents of each State what additional information they must provide and where they must submit the form. See National Mail Voter Registration Form, pp. 3–20, online at http://www.eac.gov (all Internet materials as visited June 11, 2013, and available in Clerk of Court’s case file); 11 CFR §9428.3 (2012). Each state-specific instruction must be approved by the EAC before it is included on the Federal Form. To be eligible to vote under Arizona law, a person must be a citizen of the United States. Ariz. Const., Art. VII, §2; Ariz. Rev. Stat. Ann. §16–101(A) (West 2006). This case concerns Arizona’s efforts to enforce that qualification. In 2004, Arizona voters adopted Proposition 200, a ballot initiative designed in part “to combat voter fraud by requiring voters to present proof of citizenship when they register to vote and to present identification when they vote on election day.” Purcell v. Gonzalez, 549 U. S. 1, 2 (2006) (per curiam). [ 2 ] Proposition 200 amended the State’s election code to require county recorders to “reject any application for registration that is not accompanied by satisfactory evidence of United States citizenship.” Ariz. Rev. Stat. Ann. §16–166(F) (West Supp. 2012). The proof-of-citizenship requirement is satisfied by (1) a photocopy of the applicant’s passport or birth certificate, (2) a driver’s license number, if the license states that the issuing authority verified the holder’s U. S. citizenship, (3) evidence of naturalization, (4) tribal identification, or (5) “[o]ther documents or methods of proof . . . established pursuant to the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986.” Ibid. The EAC did not grant Arizona’s request to include this new requirement among the state-specific instructions for Arizona on the Federal Form. App. 225. Conse-quently, the Federal Form includes a statutorily required attestation, subscribed to under penalty of perjury, that an Arizona applicant meets the State’s voting requirements (including the citizenship requirement), see §1973gg–7(b)(2), but does not require concrete evidence of citizenship. The two groups of plaintiffs represented here—a group of individual Arizona residents (dubbed the Gonzalez plaintiffs, after lead plaintiff Jesus Gonzalez) and a group of nonprofit organizations led by the Inter Tribal Council of Arizona (ITCA)—filed separate suits seeking to enjoin the voting provisions of Proposition 200. The District Court consolidated the cases and denied the plaintiffs’ motions for a preliminary injunction. App. to Pet. for Cert. 1g. A two-judge motions panel of the Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit then enjoined Proposition 200 pending appeal. Purcell, 549 U. S., at 3. We vacated that order and allowed the impending 2006 election to proceed with the new rules in place. Id., at 5–6. On remand, the Court of Appeals affirmed the District Court’s initial denial of a preliminary injunction as to respondents’ claim that the NVRA pre-empts Proposition 200’s registration rules. Gonzales v. Arizona, 485 F. 3d 1041, 1050–1051 (2007). The District Court then granted Arizona’s motion for summary judgment as to that claim. App. to Pet. for Cert. 1e, 3e. A panel of the Ninth Circuit affirmed in part but reversed as relevant here, holding that “Proposition 200’s documentary proof of citizenship requirement conflicts with the NVRA’s text, structure, and purpose.” Gonzales v. Arizona, 624 F. 3d 1162, 1181 (2010). The en banc Court of Appeals agreed. Gonzalez v. Arizona, 677 F. 3d 383, 403 (2012). We granted certiorari. 568 U. S. ___ (2012). II The Elections Clause, Art. I, §4, cl. 1, provides: “The Times, Places and Manner of holding Elections for Senators and Representatives, shall be prescribed in each State by the Legislature thereof; but the Congress may at any time by Law make or alter such Regulations, except as to the places of chusing Senators.” The Clause empowers Congress to pre-empt state regulations governing the “Times, Places and Manner” of holding congressional elections. The question here is whether the federal statutory requirement that States “accept and use” the Federal Form pre-empts Arizona’s state-law requirement that officials “reject” the application of a prospective voter who submits a completed Federal Form unaccompanied by documentary evidence of citizenship. A The Elections Clause has two functions. Upon the States it imposes the duty (“shall be prescribed”) to prescribe the time, place, and manner of electing Representatives and Senators; upon Congress it confers the power to alter those regulations or supplant them altogether. See U. S. Term Limits, Inc. v. Thornton, 514 U. S. 779 –805 (1995); id., at 862 (Thomas, J., dissenting). This grant of congressional power was the Framers’ insurance against the possibility that a State would refuse to provide for the election of representatives to the Federal Congress. “[E]very government ought to contain in itself the means of its own preservation,” and “an exclusive power of regulating elections for the national government, in the hands of the State legislatures, would leave the existence of the Union entirely at their mercy. They could at any moment annihilate it by neglecting to provide for the choice of persons to administer its affairs.” The Federalist No. 59, pp. 362–363 (C. Rossiter ed. 1961) (A. Hamilton) (emphasis deleted). That prospect seems fanciful today, but the widespread, vociferous opposition to the proposed Constitution made it a very real concern in the founding era. The Clause’s substantive scope is broad. “Times, Places, and Manner,” we have written, are “comprehensive words,” which “embrace authority to provide a complete code for congressional elections,” including, as relevant here and as petitioners do not contest, regulations relat-ing to “registration.” Smiley v. Holm, 285 U. S. 355, 366 (1932) ; see also Roudebush v. Hartke, 405 U. S. 15 –25 (1972) (recounts); United States v. Classic, 313 U. S. 299, 320 (1941) (primaries). In practice, the Clause functions as “a default provision; it invests the States with responsibility for the mechanics of congressional elections, but only so far as Congress declines to pre-empt state legislative choices.” Foster v. Love, 522 U. S. 67, 69 (1997) (citation omitted). The power of Congress over the “Times, Places and Manner” of congressional elections “is paramount, and may be exercised at any time, and to any extent which it deems expedient; and so far as it is exercised, and no farther, the regulations effected supersede those of the State which are inconsistent therewith.” Ex parte Siebold, 100 U. S. 371, 392 (1880) . B The straightforward textual question here is whether Ariz. Rev. Stat. Ann. §16–166(F), which requires state officials to “reject” a Federal Form unaccompanied by documentary evidence of citizenship, conflicts with the NVRA’s mandate that Arizona “accept and use” the Federal Form. If so, the state law, “so far as the conflict extends, ceases to be operative.” Siebold, supra, at 384. In Arizona’s view, these seemingly incompatible obligations can be read to operate harmoniously: The NVRA, it contends, requires merely that a State receive the Federal Form willingly and use that form as one element in its (perhaps lengthy) transaction with a prospective voter. Taken in isolation, the mandate that a State “accept and use” the Federal Form is fairly susceptible of two inter-pretations. It might mean that a State must accept the Federal Form as a complete and sufficient registration ap-plication; or it might mean that the State is merely required to receive the form willingly and use it somehow in its voter registration process. Both readings—“receive willingly” and “accept as sufficient”—are compatible with the plain meaning of the word “accept.” See 1 Oxford English Dictionary 70 (2d ed. 1989) (“To take or receive (a thing offered) willingly”; “To receive as sufficient or adequate”); Webster’s New International Dictionary 14 (2d ed. 1954) (“To receive (a thing offered to or thrust upon one) with a consenting mind”; “To receive with favor; to approve”). And we take it as self-evident that the “elastic” verb “use,” read in isolation, is broad enough to encompass Arizona’s preferred construction. Smith v. United States, 508 U. S. 223, 241 (1993) (Scalia, J., dissenting). In common parlance, one might say that a restaurant accepts and uses credit cards even though it requires customers to show matching identification when making a purchase. See also Brief for State Petitioners 40 (“An airline may advertise that it ‘accepts and uses’ e-tickets . . . , yet may still require photo identification before one could board the airplane”). “Words that can have more than one meaning are given content, however, by their surroundings.” Whitman v. American Trucking Assns., Inc., 531 U. S. 457, 466 (2001) ; see also Smith, supra, at 241 (Scalia, J., dissenting). And reading “accept” merely to denote willing receipt seems out of place in the context of an official mandate to accept and use something for a given purpose. The implication of such a mandate is that its object is to be accepted as sufficient for the requirement it is meant to satisfy. For example, a government diktat that “civil servants shall accept government IOUs for payment of salaries” does not invite the response, “sure, we’ll accept IOUs—if you pay us a ten percent down payment in cash.” Many federal statutes contain similarly phrased commands, and they contemplate more than mere willing receipt. See, e.g., 5 U. S. C. §8332(b), (m)(3) (“The Office [of Personnel Management] shall accept the certification of” various officials concerning creditable service toward civilian-employee retirement); 12 U. S. C. A. §2605(l)(2) (Supp. 2013) (“A servicer of a federally related mortgage shall accept any reasonable form of written confirmation from a borrower of existing insurance coverage”); 16 U. S. C. §1536(p) (Endangered Species Committee “shall accept the determinations of the President” with respect to whether a major disaster warrants an exception to the Endangered Species Act’s requirements); §4026(b)(2), 118Stat. 3725, note following 22 U. S. C. §2751, p. 925 (FAA Administrator “shall accept the certification of the Department of Homeland Security that a missile defense system is effective and functional to defend commercial aircraft against” man-portable surface-to-air missiles); 25 U. S. C. §1300h–6(a) (“For the purpose of proceeding with the per capita distribution” of certain funds, “the Secretary of the Interior shall accept the tribe’s certification of enrolled membership”); 30 U. S. C. §923(b) (the Secretary of Labor “shall accept a board certified or board eligible radiologist’s interpretation” of a chest X ray used to diagnose black lung disease); 42 U. S. C. §1395w–21(e)(6)(A) (“[A] Medicare+Choice organization . . . shall accept elections or changes to elections during” specified periods). [ 3 ] Arizona’s reading is also difficult to reconcile with neighboring provisions of the NVRA. Section 1973gg–6(a)(1)(B) provides that a State shall “ensure that any eligible applicant is registered to vote in an election . . . if the valid voter registration form of the applicant is postmarked” not later than a specified number of days before the election. (Emphasis added.) Yet Arizona reads the phrase “accept and use” in §1973gg–4(a)(1) as permitting it to reject a completed Federal Form if the applicant does not submit additional information required by state law. That reading can be squared with Arizona’s obligation under §1973gg–6(a)(1) only if a completed Federal Form is not a “valid voter registration form,” which seems unlikely. The statute empowers the EAC to create the Federal Form, §1973gg–7(a), requires the EAC to prescribe its contents within specified limits, §1973gg–7(b), and requires States to “accept and use” it, §1973gg–4(a)(1). It is improbable that the statute envisions a completed copy of the form it takes such pains to create as being anything less than “valid.” The Act also authorizes States, “[i]n addition to accepting and using the” Federal Form, to create their own, state-specific voter-registration forms, which can be used to register voters in both state and federal elections. §1973gg–4(a)(2) (emphasis added). These state-developed forms may require information the Federal Form does not. (For example, unlike the Federal Form, Arizona’s registration form includes Proposition 200’s proof-of-citizenship requirement. See Arizona Voter Registration Form, p. 1, online at http://www.azsos.gov.) This permission works in tandem with the requirement that States “accept and use” the Federal Form. States retain the flexibility to design and use their own registration forms, but the Federal Form provides a backstop: No matter what procedural hurdles a State’s own form imposes, the Federal Form guarantees that a simple means of registering to vote in federal elections will be available. [ 4 ] Arizona’s reading would permit a State to demand of Federal Form applicants every additional piece of information the State requires on its state-specific form. If that is so, the Fed-eral Form ceases to perform any meaningful function, and would be a feeble means of “increas[ing] the number of eligible citizens who register to vote in elections for Federal office.” §1973gg(b). Finally, Arizona appeals to the presumption against pre-emption sometimes invoked in our Supremacy Clause cases. See, e.g., Gregory v. Ashcroft, 501 U. S. 452 –461 (1991). Where it applies, “we start with the assumption that the historic police powers of the States were not to be superseded by the Federal Act unless that was the clear and manifest purpose of Congress.” Rice v. Santa Fe Elevator Corp., 331 U. S. 218, 230 (1947) . That rule of construction rests on an assumption about congressional intent: that “Congress does not exercise lightly” the “extraordinary power” to “legislate in areas traditionally regulated by the States.” Gregory, supra, at 460. We have never mentioned such a principle in our Elections Clause cases. [ 5 ] Siebold, for example, simply said that Elections Clause legislation, “so far as it extends and conflicts with the regulations of the State, necessarily supersedes them.” 100 U. S., at 384. There is good reason for treating Elections Clause legislation differently: The assumption that Congress is reluctant to pre-empt does not hold when Congress acts under that constitutional provision, which empowers Congress to “make or alter” state election regulations. Art. I, §4, cl. 1. When Congress legislates with respect to the “Times, Places and Manner” of holding congressional elections, it necessarily displaces some element of a pre-existing legal regime erected by the States. [ 6 ] Because the power the Elections Clause confers is none other than the power to pre-empt, the reasonable assumption is that the statutory text accurately communicates the scope of Congress’s pre-emptive intent. More-over, the federalism concerns underlying the presumption in the Supremacy Clause context are somewhat weaker here. Unlike the States’ “historic police powers,” Rice, supra, at 230, the States’ role in regulating congressional elections—while weighty and worthy of respect—has always existed subject to the express qualification that it “terminates according to federal law.” Buckman Co. v. Plaintiffs’ Legal Comm., 531 U. S. 341, 347 (2001) . In sum, there is no compelling reason not to read Elections Clause legislation simply to mean what it says. We conclude that the fairest reading of the statute is that a state-imposed requirement of evidence of citizenship not required by the Federal Form is “inconsistent with” the NVRA’s mandate that States “accept and use” the Federal Form. Siebold, supra, at 397. If this reading prevails, the Elections Clause requires that Arizona’s rule give way. We note, however, that while the NVRA forbids States to demand that an applicant submit additional information beyond that required by the Federal Form, it does not preclude States from “deny[ing] registration based on information in their possession establishing the applicant’s ineligibility.” [ 7 ] Brief for United States as Amicus Curiae 24. The NVRA clearly contemplates that not every submitted Federal Form will result in registration. See §1973gg–7(b)(1) (Federal Form “may require only” information “necessary to enable the appropriate State election official to assess the eligibility of the applicant” (emphasis added)); §1973gg–6(a)(2) (States must require election officials to “send notice to each applicant of the disposition of the application”). III Arizona contends, however, that its construction of the phrase “accept and use” is necessary to avoid a conflict between the NVRA and Arizona’s constitutional authority to establish qualifications (such as citizenship) for voting. Arizona is correct that the Elections Clause empowers Congress to regulate how federal elections are held, but not who may vote in them. The Constitution prescribes a straightforward rule for the composition of the federal electorate. Article I, §2, cl. 1, provides that electors in each State for the House of Representatives “shall have the Qualifications requisite for Electors of the most numerous Branch of the State Legislature,” and the Seventeenth Amendment adopts the same criterion for senatorial elections. Cf. also Art. II, §1, cl. 2 (“Each State shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct,” presidential electors). One cannot read the Elections Clause as treating implicitly what these other constitutional provisions regulate explicitly. “It is difficult to see how words could be clearer in stating what Congress can control and what it cannot control. Surely nothing in these provisions lends itself to the view that voting qualifications in federal elections are to be set by Congress.” Oregon v. Mitchell, 400 U. S. 112, 210 (1970) (Harlan, J., concurring in part and dissenting in part); see also U. S. Term Limits, 514 U. S., at 833–834; Tashjian v. Republican Party of Conn., 479 U. S. 208 –232 (1986) (Stevens, J., dissenting). [ 8 ] Prescribing voting qualifications, therefore, “forms no part of the power to be conferred upon the national government” by the Elections Clause, which is “expressly restricted to the regulation of the times, the places, and the manner of elections.” The Federalist No. 60, at 371 (A. Hamilton); see also id., No. 52, at 326 (J. Madison). This allocation of authority sprang from the Framers’ aversion to concentrated power. A Congress empowered to regulate the qualifications of its own electorate, Madison warned, could “by degrees subvert the Constitution.” 2 Records of the Federal Convention of 1787, p. 250 (M. Farrand rev. 1966). At the same time, by tying the federal franchise to the state franchise instead of simply placing it within the unfettered discretion of state legislatures, the Framers avoided “render[ing] too dependent on the State governments that branch of the federal government which ought to be dependent on the people alone.” The Federalist No. 52, at 326 (J. Madison). Since the power to establish voting requirements is of little value without the power to enforce those requirements, Arizona is correct that it would raise serious constitutional doubts if a federal statute precluded a State from obtaining the information necessary to enforce its voter qualifications. [ 9 ] If, but for Arizona’s interpretation of the “accept and use” provision, the State would be precluded from obtaining information necessary for enforcement, we would have to determine whether Arizona’s interpretation, though plainly not the best reading, is at least a possible one. Cf. Crowell v. Benson, 285 U. S. 22, 62 (1932) (the Court will “ascertain whether a construction of the statute is fairly possible by which the [constitutional] question may be avoided” (emphasis added)). Happily, we are spared that necessity, since the statute provides another means by which Arizona may obtain information needed for enforcement. Section 1973gg–7(b)(1) of the Act provides that the Federal Form “may require only such identifying information (including the signature of the applicant) and other information (including data relating to previous registration by the applicant), as is necessary to enable the appropriate State election official to assess the eligibility of the applicant and to administer voter registration and other parts of the election process.” At oral argument, the United States expressed the view that the phrase “may require only” in §1973gg–7(b)(1) means that the EAC “shall require information that’s necessary, but may only require that information.” Tr. of Oral Arg. 52 (emphasis added); see also Brief for ITCA Respondents 46; Tr. of Oral Arg. 37–39 (ITCA Respondents’ counsel). That is to say, §1973gg–7(b)(1) acts as both a ceiling and a floor with respect to the contents of the Federal Form. We need not consider the Government’s contention that despite the statute’s statement that the EAC “may” require on the Federal Form information “necessary to enable the appropriate State election official to assess the eligibility of the applicant,” other provisions of the Act indicate that such action is statutorily required. That is because we think that—by analogy to the rule of statutory interpretation that avoids questionable constitutionality—validly conferred discretionary executive authority is properly exercised (as the Government has proposed) to avoid serious constitutional doubt. That is to say, it is surely permissible if not requisite for the Government to say that necessary information which may be required will be required. Since, pursuant to the Government’s concession, a State may request that the EAC alter the Federal Form to include information the State deems necessary to determine eligibility, see §1973gg–7(a)(2); Tr. of Oral Arg. 55 (United States), and may challenge the EAC’s rejection of that request in a suit under the Administrative Procedure Act, see 5 U. S. C. §701–706, no constitutional doubt is raised by giving the “accept and use” provision of the NVRA its fairest reading. That alternative means of enforcing its constitutional power to determine voting qualifications remains open to Arizona here. In 2005, the EAC divided 2-to-2 on the request by Arizona to include the evidence-of-citizenship requirement among the state-specific instructions on the Federal Form, App. 225, which meant that no action could be taken, see 42 U. S. C. §15328 (“Any action which the Commission is authorized to carry out under this chapter may be carried out only with the approval of at least three of its members”). Arizona did not challenge that agency action (or rather inaction) by seeking APA review in federal court, see Tr. of Oral Arg. 11–12 (Ari-zona), but we are aware of nothing that prevents Arizona from renewing its request. [ 10 ] Should the EAC’s inaction persist, Arizona would have the opportunity to establish in a reviewing court that a mere oath will not suffice to effectuate its citizenship requirement and that the EAC is therefore under a nondiscretionary duty to include Ari-zona’s concrete evidence requirement on the Federal Form. See 5 U. S. C. §706(1). Arizona might also assert (as it has argued here) that it would be arbitrary for the EAC to refuse to include Arizona’s instruction when it has accepted a similar instruction requested by Louisiana. [ 11 ] * * * We hold that 42 U. S. C. §1973gg–4 precludes Arizona from requiring a Federal Form applicant to submit information beyond that required by the form itself. Arizona may, however, request anew that the EAC include such a requirement among the Federal Form’s state-specific instructions, and may seek judicial review of the EAC’s decision under the Administrative Procedure Act. The judgment of the Court of Appeals is affirmed. It is so ordered. Notes 1 The Help America Vote Act of 2002 transferred this function from the Federal Election Commission to the EAC. See §802, , codified at 42 U. S. C. §§15532, 1973gg–7(a). 2 In May 2005, the United States Attorney General precleared under §5 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 the procedures Arizona adopted to implement Proposition 200. Purcell, 549 U. S., at 3. 3 The dissent accepts that a State may not impose additional requirements that render the Federal Form entirely superfluous; it would require that the State “us[e] the form as a meaningful part of the registration process.” Post, at 7 (opinion of Alito, J.). The dissent does not tell us precisely how large a role for the Federal Form suffices to make it “meaningful”: One step out of two? Three? Ten? There is no easy answer, for the dissent’s “meaningful part” standard is as indeterminate as it is atextual. 4 In the face of this straightforward explanation, the dissent maintains that it would be “nonsensical” for a less demanding federal form to exist alongside a more demanding state form. Post, at 9 (opinion of Alito, J.). But it is the dissent’s alternative explanation for §1973gg–4(a)(2) that makes no sense. The “purpose” of the Federal Form, it claims, is “to facilitate interstate voter registration drives. Thanks to the federal form, volunteers distributing voter registration materials at a shopping mall in Yuma can give a copy of the same form to every person they meet without attempting to distinguish between residents of Arizona and California.” Post, at 9. But in the dissent’s world, a volunteer in Yuma would have to give every prospective voter not only a Federal Form, but also a separate set of either Arizona- or California-specific instructions detailing the additional information the applicant must submit to the State. In ours, every eligible voter can be assured that if he does what the Federal Form says, he will be registered. The dissent therefore provides yet another compelling reason to interpret the statute our way. 5 United States v. Gradwell, , on which the dissent relies, see post, at 3–4 (opinion of Alito, J.), is not to the contrary—indeed, it was not even a pre-emption case. In Gradwell, we held thata statute making it a federal crime “to defraud the United States”did not reach election fraud. 243 U. S., at 480, 483. The Court noted that the provision at issue was adopted in a tax-enforcement bill, and that Congress had enacted but then repealed other criminal statutes specifically covering election fraud. Id., at 481–483. The dissent cherry-picks some language from a sentence in Gradwell, see post, at 3–4, but the full sentence reveals its irrelevance to our case: “With it thus clearly established that the policy of Congress for so great a part of our constitutional life has been, and now is, to leave the conduct of the election of its members to state laws, administered by state officers, and that whenever it has assumed to regulate such elections it has done so by positive and clear statutes, such as were enacted in 1870, it would be a strained andunreasonable construction to apply to such elections this §37, originally a law for the protection of the revenue and for now fifty years confined in its application to ‘Offenses against the Operations of the Government’ as distinguished from the processes by which men are selected to conduct such operations.” 243 U. S., at 485. Gradwell says nothing at all about pre-emption, or about how to construe statutes (like the NVRA) in which Congress has indisputably undertaken “to regulate such elections.” Ibid. 6 The dissent counters that this is so “whenever Congress legislates in an area of concurrent state and federal power.” Post, at 5 (opinion of Alito, J.). True, but irrelevant: Elections Clause legislation is unique precisely because it always falls within an area of concurrent state and federal power. Put differently, all action under the Elections Clause displaces some element of a pre-existing state regulatory regime, because the text of the Clause confers the power to do exactly (and only) that. By contrast, even laws enacted under the Commerce Clause (arguably the other enumerated power whose exercise is most likely to trench on state regulatory authority) will not always implicate concurrent state power—a prohibition on the interstate transport of a commodity, for example. 7 The dissent seems to think this position of ours incompatible with our reading of §1973gg–6(a)(1)(B), which requires a State to “ensure that any eligible applicant is registered to vote in an election . . . if the valid voter registration form of the applicant is postmarked” by a certain date. See post, at 9–10 (opinion of Alito, J.). What the dissent overlooks is that §1973gg–6(a)(1)(B) only requires a State to register an “eligible applicant” who submits a timely Federal Form. (Emphasis added.) 8 In Mitchell, the judgment of the Court was that Congress could compel the States to permit 18-year-olds to vote in federal elections. Of the five Justices who concurred in that outcome, only Justice Black was of the view that congressional power to prescribe this age qualification derived from the Elections Clause, 400 U. S., at 119–125, while four Justices relied on the , id., at 144 (opinion of Douglas, J.), 231 (joint opinion of Brennan, White, and Marshall, JJ.). That result, which lacked a majority rationale, is of minimal precedential value here. See Seminole Tribe of Fla. v. Florida, ; Nichols v. United States, ; H. Black, Handbook on the Law of Judicial Precedents 135–136 (1912). Five Justices took the position that the Elections Clause did not confer upon Congress the power to regulate voter qualifications in federal elections. Mitchell, supra, at 143 (opinion of Douglas, J.), 210 (opinion of Harlan, J.), 288 (opinion of Stewart, J., joined by Burger, C. J., and Blackmun, J.). (Justices Brennan, White, and Marshall did not address the Elections Clause.) This last view, which commanded a majority in Mitchell, underlies our analysis here. See also U. S. Term Limits, 514 U. S., at 833. Five Justices also agreed that the did not empower Congress to impose the 18-year-old-voting mandate. See Mitchell, supra, at 124–130 (opinion of Black, J.), 155 (opinion of Harlan, J.), 293–294 (opinion of Stewart, J.). 9 In their reply brief, petitioners suggest for the first time that “registration is itself a qualification to vote.” Reply Brief for State Petitioners 24 (emphasis deleted); see also post, at 1, 16 (opinion of Thomas, J.); cf. Voting Rights Coalition v. Wilson, 60 F. 3d 1411, 1413, and n. 1 (CA9 1995), cert. denied, ; Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) v. Edgar, 56 F. 3d 791, 793 (CA7 1995). We resolve this case on the theory on which it has hitherto been litigated: that citizenship (not registration) is the voter qualification Arizona seeks to enforce. See Brief for State Petitioners 50. 10 We are aware of no rule promulgated by the EAC preventing a renewed request. Indeed, the whole request process appears to be entirely informal, Arizona’s prior request having been submitted bye-mail. See App. 181. The EAC currently lacks a quorum—indeed, the Commission has not a single active Commissioner. If the EAC proves unable to act on a renewed request, Arizona would be free to seek a writ of mandamus to “compel agency action unlawfully withheld or unreasonably delayed.” . It is a nice point, which we need not resolve here, whether a court can compel agency action that the agency itself, for lack of the statutorily required quorum, is incapable of taking. If the answer to that is no, Arizona might then be in a position to assert a constitutional right to demand concrete evidence of citizenship apart from the Federal Form. 11 The EAC recently approved a state-specific instruction for Louisiana requiring applicants who lack a Louisiana driver’s license, ID card, or Social Security number to attach additional documentation to the completed Federal Form. See National Mail Voter Registration Form, p. 9; Tr. of Oral Arg. 57 (United States).

568.US.2012_11-597

482 U.S. 304, in which the Court first homed in on the matter of compensation for temporary takings. There is no suggestion in Sanguinetti that flooding cases should be set apart from the mine run of takings claims. The Court thus finds no solid grounding in precedent for setting flooding apart from other government intrusions on property. And the Government has presented no other persuasive reason to do so. Its primary argument is that reversing the Federal Circuit’s decision risks disrupting public works dedicated to flood control. While the public interests here are important, they are not categorically different from the interests at stake in myriad other Takings Clause cases in which this Court has rejected similar arguments when deployed to urge blanket exemptions from the Fifth Amendment’s instruction. The Government argues in the alternative that damage to downstream property, however foreseeable, is collateral or incidental; it is not aimed at any particular landowner and therefore is not compensable under the Takings Clause. The Court expresses no opinion on this claim, which was first tendered at oral argument and not aired in the courts below. For the same reason, the Court declines to address the bearing, if any, of Arkansas water-rights law on this case. Pp. 9–13. (c) When regulation or temporary physical invasion by government interferes with private property, time is a factor in determining the existence vel non of a compensable taking. See, e.g., Loretto v. Teleprompter Manhattan CATV Corp., 458 U.S. 419, 435, n. 12. Also relevant to the takings inquiry is the degree to which the invasion is intended or is the foreseeable result of authorized government action. See, e.g., John Horstmann Co. v. United States, 257 U.S. 138, 146. So, too, are the character of the land at issue and the owner’s “reasonable investment-backed expectations” regarding the land’s use, Palazzolo v. Rhode Island, 533 U.S. 606, 618, as well as the severity of the interference, see, e.g., Penn Central, 438 U. S., at 130–131. In concluding that the flooding was foreseeable in this case, the Court of Federal Claims noted the Commission’s repeated complaints to the Corps about the destructive impact of the successive planned deviations and determined that the interference with the Commission’s property was severe. The Government, however, challenged several of the trial court’s factfindings, including those relating to causation, foreseeability, substantiality, and the amount of damages. Because the Federal Circuit rested its decision entirely on the temporary duration of the flooding, it did not address those challenges, which remain open for consideration on remand. Pp. 14–15. 637 F.3d 1366, reversed and remanded. Ginsburg, J., delivered the opinion of the Court, in which all other Members joined, except Kagan, J., who took no part in the consideration or decision of the case.

Periodically from 1993 until 2000, the U. S. Army Corps of Engineers (Corps) authorized flooding that extended into the peak growing season for timber on forest land owned and managed by petitioner, Arkansas Game and Fish Commission (Commission). Cumulative in effect, the repeated flooding damaged or destroyed more than 18 million board feet of timber and disrupted the ordinary use and enjoyment of the Commission’s property. The Commission sought compensation from the United States pursuant to the Fifth Amendment’s instruction: “[N]or shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.” The question presented is whether a taking may occur, within the meaning of the Takings Clause, when government-induced flood invasions, al- though repetitive, are temporary. Ordinarily, this Court’s decisions confirm, if government action would qualify as a taking when permanently continued, temporary actions of the same character may also qualify as a taking. In the instant case, the parties and the courts below divided on the appropriate classification of temporary flooding. Reversing the judgment of the Court of Federal Claims, which awarded compensation to the Commission, the Federal Circuit held, 2 to 1, that compensation may be sought only when flooding is “a per- manent or inevitably recurring condition, rather than an inherently temporary situation.” 637 F.3d 1366, 1378 (2011). We disagree and conclude that recurrent floodings, even if of finite duration, are not categorically exempt from Takings Clause liability. I A The Commission owns the Dave Donaldson Black River Wildlife Management Area (Management Area or Area), which comprises 23,000 acres along both banks of the Black River in northeast Arkansas. The Management Area is forested with multiple hardwood timber species that support a variety of wildlife habitats. The Commission operates the Management Area as a wildlife and hunting preserve, and also uses it as a timber resource, conducting regular harvests of timber as part of its forest-management efforts. Three types of hardwood oak species—nuttall, overcup, and willow—account for 80 percent of the trees in the Management Area. The presence of these hardwood oaks is essential to the Area’s character as a habitat for migratory birds and as a venue for recreation and hunting. The Clearwater Dam (Dam) is located 115 miles upstream from the Management Area. The Corps constructed the Dam in 1948, and shortly thereafter adopted a plan known as the Water Control Manual (Manual) to determine the rates at which water would be released from the Dam. The Manual sets seasonally varying release rates, but permits planned deviations from the prescribed rates for agricultural, recreational, and other purposes. In 1993, the Corps approved a planned deviation in response to requests from farmers. From September to December 1993, the Corps released water from the Dam at a slower rate than usual, providing downstream farmers with a longer harvest time. As a result, more water than usual accumulated in Clearwater Lake behind the Dam. To reduce the accumulation, the Corps extended the pe- riod in which a high amount of water would be released. The Commission maintained this extension yielded downstream flooding in the Management Area, above historical norms, during the tree-growing season, which runs from April to October. If the Corps had released the water more rapidly in the fall of 1993, in accordance with the Manual and with past practice, there would have been short-term waves of flooding which would have receded quickly. The lower rate of release in the fall, however, extended the period of flooding well into the following spring and summer. While the deviation benefited farmers, it interfered with the Management Area’s tree-growing season. The Corps adopted similar deviations each year from 1994 through 2000. The record indicates that the decision to deviate from the Manual was made independently in each year and that the amount of deviation varied over the span of years. Nevertheless, the result was an unbroken string of annual deviations from the Manual. Each deviation lowered the rate at which water was released during the fall, which necessitated extension of the release period into the following spring and summer. During this span of years the Corps proposed Manual revisions that would have made its temporary deviations part of the permanent water-release plan. On multiple occasions between 1993 and 2000, the Commission objected to the temporary deviations and opposed any permanent revision to the Manual, on the ground that the departures from the traditional water-release plan adversely impacted the Management Area. Ultimately, the Corps tested the effect of the deviations on the Management Area. It thereupon abandoned the proposal to permanently revise the Manual and, in 2001, ceased its temporary deviations. B In 2005, the Commission filed the instant lawsuit against the United States, claiming that the temporary deviations from the Manual constituted a taking of property that entitled the Commission to compensation. The Commission maintained that the deviations caused sustained flooding of its land during the tree-growing season. The cumulative impact of this flooding over a six-year period between 1993 and 1999, the Commission alleged, resulted in the destruction of timber in the Management Area and a substantial change in the character of the terrain, which necessitated costly reclamation measures. Following a trial, the Court of Federal Claims ruled in favor of the Commission and issued an opinion and order containing detailed findings of fact. 87 Fed. Cl. 594 (2009). The Court of Federal Claims found that the forests in the Management Area were healthy and flourishing before the flooding that occurred in the 1990’s, and that the forests had been sustainably managed for decades under the water-release plan contained in the Manual. Id., at 631. It further found that the Commission repeatedly objected to the deviations from the Manual and alerted the Corps to the detrimental effect the longer period of flooding would have on the hardwood timber in the Management Area. Id., at 604. As found by the Court of Federal Claims, the flooding caused by the deviations contrasted markedly with historical flooding patterns. Between 1949 and 1992, the river level near the Management Area reached six feet an average of 64.7 days per year during the growing season; the number of such days had been even lower on average before the Clearwater Dam was built. Between 1993 and 1999, however, the river reached the same level an average of 91.14 days per year, an increase of more than 40 percent over the historic average. Although the Management Area lies in a floodplain, in no previously recorded time span did comparable flooding patterns occur. Id., at 607–608. Evidence at trial indicated that half of the nuttall oaks in the Management Area were saturated with water when the river level was at six feet, id., at 608; the evidence further indicated that the saturation of the soil around the trees’ root systems could persist for weeks even after the flooding had receded. Id., at 627. The court concluded that the Corps’ deviations caused six consecutive years of substantially increased flooding, which constituted an appropriation of the Commission’s property, albeit a temporary rather than a permanent one. Important to this conclusion, the court emphasized the deviations’ cumulative effect. The trees were subject to prolonged periods of flooding year after year, which reduced the oxygen level in the soil and considerably weak- ened the trees’ root systems. The repeated annual flooding for six years altered the character of the property to a much greater extent than would have been shown if the harm caused by one year of flooding were simply multi- plied by six. When a moderate drought occurred in 1999 and 2000, the trees did not have the root systems necessary to sustain themselves; the result, in the court’s words, was “catastrophic mortality.” Id., at 632. More than 18 million board feet of timber were destroyed or degraded. Id., at 638–640. This damage altered the character of the Management Area. The destruction of the trees led to the invasion of undesirable plant species, making natural regeneration of the forests improbable in the absence of reclamation efforts. Id., at 643. To determine the measure of just compensation, the Court of Federal Claims calculated the value of the lost timber and the projected cost of the reclamation and awarded the Commission $5.7 million. The Federal Circuit reversed. It acknowledged that in general, temporary government action may give rise to a takings claim if permanent action of the same character would constitute a taking. But it held that “cases involving flooding and [flowage] easements are different.” 637 F. 3d, at 1374. Government-induced flooding can give rise to a taking claim, the Federal Circuit concluded, only if the flooding is “permanent or inevitably recurring.” Id., at 1378. The Court of Appeals understood this conclusion to be dictated by this Court’s decisions in Sanguinetti v. United States, 264 U.S. 146, 150 (1924), and United States v. Cress, 243 U.S. 316, 328 (1917). We granted certiorari to resolve the question whether government actions that cause repeated floodings must be permanent or inevitably recurring to constitute a taking of property. 566 U. S. ___ (2012). II The Takings Clause is “designed to bar Government from forcing some people alone to bear public burdens which, in all fairness and justice, should be borne by the public as a whole.” Armstrong v. United States, 364 U.S. 40, 49 (1960). See also First English Evangelical Lutheran Church of Glendale v. County of Los Angeles, 482 U.S. 304, 318–319 (1987); Penn Central Transp. Co. v. New York City, 438 U.S. 104, 123–125 (1978). And “[w]hen the government physically takes possession of an interest in property for some public purpose, it has a categorical duty to compensate the former owner.” Tahoe-Sierra Preservation Council, Inc. v. Tahoe Regional Planning Agency, 535 U.S. 302, 322 (2002) (citing United States v. Pewee Coal Co., 341 U.S. 114, 115 (1951)). These guides are fundamental in our Takings Clause jurisprudence. We have recognized, however, that no magic formula enables a court to judge, in every case, whether a given government interference with property is a taking. In view of the nearly infinite variety of ways in which government actions or regulations can affect property interests, the Court has recognized few invariable rules in this area. True, we have drawn some bright lines, notably, the rule that a permanent physical occupation of property authorized by government is a taking. Loretto v. Teleprompter Manhattan CATV Corp., 458 U.S. 419, 426 (1982). So, too, is a regulation that permanently requires a property owner to sacrifice all economically beneficial uses of his or her land. Lucas v. South Carolina Coastal Council, 505 U.S. 1003, 1019 (1992). But aside from the cases attended by rules of this order, most takings claims turn on situation-specific factual inquiries. See Penn Central, 438 U. S., at 124. With this in mind, we turn to the question presented here—whether temporary flooding can ever give rise to a takings claim. The Court first ruled that government-induced flooding can constitute a taking in Pumpelly v. Green Bay Co., 13 Wall. 166 (1872). The Wisconsin Legislature had authorized the defendant to build a dam which led to the creation of a lake, permanently submerging the plaintiff’s land. The defendant argued that the land had not been taken because the government did not exercise the right of eminent domain to acquire title to the affected property. Moreover, the defendant urged, the damage was merely “a consequential result” of the dam’s construction near the plaintiff’s property. Id., at 177. Rejecting that crabbed reading of the Takings Clause, the Court held that “where real estate is actually invaded by superinduced additions of water, earth, sand, or other material . . . so as to effectually destroy or impair its usefulness, it is a taking, within the meaning of the Constitution.” Id., at 181. Following Pumpelly, the Court recognized that season- ally recurring flooding could constitute a taking. United States v. Cress, 243 U.S. 316 (1917), involved the Government’s construction of a lock and dam, which subjected the plaintiff’s land to “intermittent but inevitably recurring overflows.” Id., at 328. The Court held that the regularly recurring flooding gave rise to a takings claim no less valid than the claim of an owner whose land was continuously kept under water. Id., at 328–329. Furthermore, our decisions confirm that takings tem- porary in duration can be compensable. This principle was solidly established in the World War II era, when “[c]ondemnation for indefinite periods of occupancy [took hold as] a practical response to the uncertainties of the Government’s needs in wartime.” United States v. Westinghouse Elec. & Mfg. Co., 339 U.S. 261, 267 (1950). In support of the war effort, the Government took temporary possession of many properties. These exercises of government authority, the Court recognized, qualified as compensable temporary takings. See Pewee Coal Co., 341 U.S. 114; Kimball Laundry Co. v. United States, 338 U.S. 1 (1949); United States v. General Motors Corp., 323 U.S. 373 (1945). Notably in relation to the question before us, the takings claims approved in these cases were not confined to instances in which the Government took outright physical possession of the property involved. A temporary takings claim could be maintained as well when government action occurring outside the property gave rise to “a direct and immediate interference with the enjoyment and use of the land.” United States v. Causby, 328 U.S. 256, 266 (1946) (frequent overflights from a nearby airport resulted in a taking, for the flights deprived the property owner of the customary use of his property as a chicken farm); cf. United States v. Dickinson, 331 U.S. 745, 751 (1947) (flooding of claimant’s land was a taking even though claimant successfully “reclaimed most of his land which the Government originally took by flooding”). Ever since, we have rejected the argument that government action must be permanent to qualify as a taking. Once the government’s actions have worked a taking of property, “no subsequent action by the government can re- lieve it of the duty to provide compensation for the pe- riod during which the taking was effective.” First English, 482 U. S., at 321. See also Tahoe-Sierra, 535 U. S., at 337 (“[W]e do not hold that the temporary nature of a land-use restriction precludes finding that it effects a taking; we simply recognize that it should not be given exclusive significance one way or the other.”). Because government-induced flooding can constitute a taking of property, and because a taking need not be permanent to be compensable, our precedent indicates that government-induced flooding of limited duration may be compensable. No decision of this Court authorizes a blanket temporary-flooding exception to our Takings Clause jurisprudence, and we decline to create such an exception in this case. III In advocating a temporary-flooding exception, the Government relies primarily on Sanguinetti, 264 U.S. 146. That case involved a canal constructed by the Government connecting a slough and a river. The claimant’s land was positioned between the slough and the river above the canal. The year after the canal’s construction, a “flood of unprecedented severity” caused the canal to overflow onto the claimant’s land; less severe flooding and overflow occurred in later years. Id., at 147. The Court held there was no taking on these facts. This outcome rested on settled principles of foreseeability and causation. The Court emphasized that the Government did not intend to flood the land or have “any reason to expect that such [a] result would follow” from construction of the canal. Id., at 148. Moreover, the property was subject to seasonal flooding prior to the construction of the canal, and the landowner failed to show a causal connection between the canal and the increased flooding, which may well have been occasioned by changes in weather patterns. See id., at 149 (characterizing the causal relationship asserted by the landowner as “purely conjec- tural”). These case-specific features were more than sufficient to dispose of the property owner’s claim. In the course of the Sanguinetti decision, however, the Court summarized prior flooding cases as standing for the proposition that “in order to create an enforceable liability against the Government, it is, at least, necessary that the overflow be the direct result of the structure, and constitute an actual, permanent invasion of the land.” Ibid. The Government would have us extract from this statement a definitive rule that there can be no temporary taking caused by floods. We do not read so much into the word “permanent” as it appears in a nondispositive sentence in Sanguinetti. That case, we note, was decided in 1924, well before the World War II-era cases and First English, in which the Court first homed in on the matter of compensation for temporary takings. That time factor, we think, renders understandable the Court’s passing reference to permanence. If the Court indeed meant to express a general limitation on the Takings Clause, that limitation has been superseded by subsequent developments in our jurisprudence. There is certainly no suggestion in Sanguinetti that flooding cases should be set apart from the mine run of takings claims. The sentence in question was composed to summarize the flooding cases the Court had encountered up to that point, which had unexceptionally involved permanent, rather than temporary, government-induced flooding. 264 U. S., at 149. See Cress, 243 U. S., at 328; United States v. Lynah, 188 U.S. 445, 469 (1903). But as just explained, no distinction between permanent and temporary flooding was material to the result in Sanguinetti. We resist reading a single sentence unnecessary to the decision as having done so much work. In this re- gard, we recall Chief Justice Marshall’s sage observation that “general expressions, in every opinion, are to be taken in connection with the case in which those expressions are used. If they go beyond the case, they may be respected, but ought not to control the judgment in a subsequent suit when the very point is presented for decision.” Cohens v. Virginia, 6 Wheat. 264, 399 (1821). The Government also asserts that the Court in Loretto interpreted Sanguinetti the same way the Federal Circuit did in this case. That assertion bears careful inspection. A section of the Court’s opinion in Loretto discussing permanent physical occupations parenthetically quotes Sanguinetti’s statement that flooding is a taking if it constitutes an “actual, permanent invasion of the land.” 458 U. S., at 428. But the first rule of case law as well as statutory interpretation is: Read on. Later in the Loretto opinion, the Court clarified that it scarcely intended to adopt a “flooding-is-different” rule by the obscure means of quoting parenthetically a fragment from a 1924 opinion. The Court distinguished permanent physical occupations from temporary invasions of property, expressly including flooding cases, and said that “temporary limitations are subject to a more complex balancing process to determine whether they are a taking.” Id., at 435, n. 12. There is thus no solid grounding in precedent for set- ting flooding apart from all other government intrusions on property. And the Government has presented no other persuasive reason to do so. Its primary argument is of the in for a penny, in for a pound genre: reversing the decision below, the Government worries, risks disruption of pub- lic works dedicated to flood control. “[E]very passing flood attributable to the government’s operation of a flood-control project, no matter how brief,” the Government hypothesizes, might qualify as a compensable taking. Brief for United States 29. To reject a categorical bar to temporary-flooding takings claims, however, is scarcely to credit all, or even many, such claims. It is of course in- cumbent on courts to weigh carefully the relevant factors and circumstances in each case, as instructed by our decisions. See infra, at 14. The slippery slope argument, we note, is hardly novel or unique to flooding cases. Time and again in Takings Clause cases, the Court has heard the prophecy that recognizing a just compensation claim would unduly impede the government’s ability to act in the public interest. Causby, 328 U. S., at 275 (Black, J., dissenting); Loretto, 458 U. S., at 455 (Blackmun, J., dissenting). We have rejected this argument when deployed to urge blanket exemptions from the Fifth Amendment’s instruction. While we recognize the importance of the public interests the Government advances in this case, we do not see them as categorically different from the interests at stake in myriad other Takings Clause cases. The sky did not fall after Causby, and today’s modest decision augurs no deluge of takings liability. Tellingly, the Government qualifies its defense of the Federal Circuit’s exclusion of flood invasions from temporary takings analysis. It sensibly acknowledges that a taking might be found where there is a “sufficiently prolonged series of nominally temporary but substantively identical deviations.” Brief for United States 21. This concession is in some tension with the categorical rule adopted by the Court of Appeals. Indeed, once it is recognized that at least some repeated nonpermanent flooding can amount to a taking of property, the question presented to us has been essentially answered. Flooding cases, like other takings cases, should be assessed with reference to the “particular circumstances of each case,” and not by resorting to blanket exclusionary rules. United States v. Central Eureka Mining Co., 357 U.S. 155, 168 (1958) (citing Pennsylvania Coal Co. v. Mahon, 260 U.S. 393, 416 (1922)). See Penn Central, 438 U. S., at 124. At oral argument, the Government tendered a different justification for the Federal Circuit’s judgment, one not aired in the courts below, and barely hinted at in the brief the Government filed in this Court: Whether the damage is permanent or temporary, damage to downstream property, however foreseeable, is collateral or incidental; it is not aimed at any particular landowner and therefore does not qualify as an occupation compensable under the Takings Clause. Tr. of Oral Arg. 30–39; Brief for United States 26–27. “[M]indful that we are a court of review, not of first view,” Cutter v. Wilkinson, 544 U.S. 709, 718, n. 7 (2005), we express no opinion on the proposed upstream/downstream distinction and confine our opinion to the issue explored and decided by the Federal Circuit. For the same reason, we are not equipped to address the bearing, if any, of Arkansas water-rights law on this case.[1] The determination whether a taking has occurred includes consideration of the property owner’s distinct investment-backed expectations, a matter often informed by the law in force in the State in which the property is located. Lucas, 505 U. S., at 1027–1029; Phillips v. Washington Legal Foundation, 524 U.S. 156, 164 (1998). But Arkansas law was not examined by the Federal Circuit, and therefore is not properly pursued in this Court. Whether arguments for an upstream/downstream distinction and on the relevance of Arkansas law have been preserved and, if so, whether they have merit, are questions appropriately addressed to the Court of Appeals on remand. See Glover v. United States, 531 U.S. 198, 205 (2001). IV We rule today, simply and only, that government-induced flooding temporary in duration gains no auto- matic exemption from Takings Clause inspection. When regulation or temporary physical invasion by government interferes with private property, our decisions recognize, time is indeed a factor in determining the existence vel non of a compensable taking. See Loretto, 458 U. S., at 435, n. 12 (temporary physical invasions should be as- sessed by case-specific factual inquiry); Tahoe-Sierra, 535 U. S., at 342 (duration of regulatory restriction is a factor for court to consider); National Bd. of YMCA v. United States, 395 U.S. 85, 93 (1969) (“temporary, unplanned occupation” of building by troops under exigent circumstances is not a taking). Also relevant to the takings inquiry is the degree to which the invasion is intended or is the foreseeable result of authorized government action. See supra, at 9; John Horstmann Co. v. United States, 257 U.S. 138, 146 (1921) (no takings liability when damage caused by government action could not have been foreseen). See also Ridge Line, Inc. v. United States, 346 F.3d 1346, 1355–1356 (CA Fed. 2003); In re Chicago, Milwaukee, St. Paul & Pacific R. Co., 799 F.2d 317, 325–326 (CA7 1986). So, too, are the character of the land at issue and the owner’s “reasonable investment-backed expectations” regarding the land’s use. Palazzolo v. Rhode Island, 533 U.S. 606, 618 (2001). For example, the Management Area lies in a floodplain below a dam, and had experienced flooding in the past. But the trial court found the Area had not been exposed to flooding comparable to the 1990’s accumulations in any other time span either prior to or after the construction of the Dam. See supra, at 4–5. Severity of the interference figures in the calculus as well. See Penn Central, 438 U. S., at 130–131; Portsmouth Harbor Land & Hotel Co. v. United States, 260 U.S. 327, 329–330 (1922) (“[W]hile a single act may not be enough, a continuance of them in sufficient number and for a sufficient time may prove [a taking]. Every successive trespass adds to the force of the evidence.”). The Court of Federal Claims found that the flooding the Commission assails was foreseeable. In this regard, the court noted the Commission’s repeated complaints to the Corps about the destructive impact of the successive planned deviations from the Water Control Manual. Further, the court determined that the interference with the Commission’s property was severe: The Commission had been deprived of the customary use of the Management Area as a forest and wildlife preserve, as the bottomland hardwood forest turned, over time, into a “headwater swamp.” 87 Fed. Cl., at 610 (internal quotation marks omitted); see supra, at 5.[2] The Government, however, challenged several of the trial court’s factfindings, including those relating to causation, foreseeability, substantiality, and the amount of damages. Because the Federal Circuit rested its decision entirely on the temporary duration of the flooding, it did not address those challenges. As earlier noted, see supra, at 13, preserved issues remain open for consideration on remand. * * * For the reasons stated, the judgment of the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit is reversed, and the case is remanded for further proceedings consistent with this opinion. It is so ordered. Justice Kagan took no part in the consideration or decision of this case. Notes 1 Arkansas water law is barely discussed in the parties’ briefs, see Brief for United States 43, but has been urged at length in a brief amicus curiae filed by Professors of Law Teaching in the Property Law and Water Rights Fields. 2 The Commission is endeavoring to reclaim the land through a restoration program. The prospect of reclamation, however, does not disqualify a landowner from receipt of just compensation for a taking. United States v. Dickinson, 331 U.S. 745, 751 (1947).

569.US.576

Each human gene is encoded as deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA), which takes the shape of a “double helix.” Each “cross-bar” in that helix consists of two chemically joined nucleotides. Sequences of DNA nucleotides contain the information necessary to create strings of amino acids used to build proteins in the body. The nucleotides that code for amino acids are “exons,” and those that do not are “introns.” Scientists can extract DNA from cells to isolate specific segments for study. They can also synthetically create exons-only strands of nucleotides known as composite DNA (cDNA). cDNA contains only the exons that occur in DNA, omitting the intervening introns. Respondent Myriad Genetics, Inc. (Myriad), obtained several patents after discovering the precise location and sequence of the BRCA1 and BRCA2 genes, mutations of which can dramatically increase the risk of breast and ovarian cancer. This knowledge allowed Myriad to determine the genes’ typical nucleotide sequence, which, in turn, enabled it to develop medical tests useful for detecting mutations in these genes in a particular patient to assess the patient’s cancer risk. If valid, Myriad’s patents would give it the exclusive right to isolate an individual’s BRCA1 and BRCA2 genes, and would give Myriad the exclusive right to synthetically create BRCA cDNA. Petitioners filed suit, seeking a declaration that Myriad’s patents are invalid under 35 U. S. C. §101. As relevant here, the District Court granted summary judgment to petitioners, concluding that Myriad’s claims were invalid because they covered products of nature. The Federal Circuit initially reversed, but on remand in light of Mayo Collaborative Services v. Prometheus Laboratories, Inc., 566 U. S. ___, the Circuit found both isolated DNA and cDNA patent eligible. Held: A naturally occurring DNA segment is a product of nature and not patent eligible merely because it has been isolated, but cDNA is patent eligible because it is not naturally occurring. Pp. 10–18. (a) The Patent Act permits patents to be issued to “[w]hoever invents or discovers any new and useful . . . composition of matter,” §101, but “laws of nature, natural phenomena, and abstract ideas” “ ‘are basic tools of scientific and technological work’ ” that lie beyond the domain of patent protection, Mayo, supra, at ___. The rule against patents on naturally occurring things has limits, however. Patent protection strikes a delicate balance between creating “incentives that lead to creation, invention, and discovery” and “imped[ing] the flow of information that might permit, indeed spur, invention.” Id., at ___. This standard is used to determine whether Myriad’s patents claim a “new and useful . . . composition of matter,” §101, or claim naturally occurring phenomena. Pp. 10–11. (b) Myriad’s DNA claim falls within the law of nature exception. Myriad’s principal contribution was uncovering the precise location and genetic sequence of the BRCA1 and BRCA2 genes. Diamond v. Chakrabarty, 447 U.S. 303, is central to the patent-eligibility inquiry whether such action was new “with markedly different characteristics from any found in nature,” id., at 310. Myriad did not create or alter either the genetic information encoded in the BCRA1 and BCRA2 genes or the genetic structure of the DNA. It found an important and useful gene, but groundbreaking, innovative, or even brilliant discovery does not by itself satisfy the §101 inquiry. See Funk Brothers Seed Co. v. Kalo Inoculant Co., 333 U.S. 127. Finding the location of the BRCA1 and BRCA2 genes does not render the genes patent eligible “new . . . composition[s] of matter,” §101. Myriad’s patent descriptions highlight the problem with its claims: They detail the extensive process of discovery, but extensive effort alone is insufficient to satisfy §101’s demands. Myriad’s claims are not saved by the fact that isolating DNA from the human genome severs the chemical bonds that bind gene molecules together. The claims are not expressed in terms of chemical composition, nor do they rely on the chemical changes resulting from the isolation of a particular DNA section. Instead, they focus on the genetic information encoded in the BRCA1 and BRCA2 genes. Finally, Myriad argues that the Patent and Trademark Office’s past practice of awarding gene patents is entitled to deference, citing J. E. M. Ag Supply, Inc. v. Pioneer Hi-Bred Int’l, Inc., 534 U.S. 124, a case where Congress had endorsed a PTO practice in subsequent legislation. There has been no such endorsement here, and the United States argued in the Federal Circuit and in this Court that isolated DNA was not patent eligible under §101. Pp. 12–16. (c) cDNA is not a “product of nature,” so it is patent eligible under §101. cDNA does not present the same obstacles to patentability as naturally occurring, isolated DNA segments. Its creation results in an exons-only molecule, which is not naturally occurring. Its order of the exons may be dictated by nature, but the lab technician unquestionably creates something new when introns are removed from a DNA sequence to make cDNA. Pp. 16–17. (d) This case, it is important to note, does not involve method claims, patents on new applications of knowledge about the BRCA1 and BRCA2 genes, or the patentability of DNA in which the order of the naturally occurring nucleotides has been altered. Pp. 17–18. 689 F.3d 1303, affirmed in part and reversed in part. Thomas, J., delivered the opinion of the Court, in which Roberts, C. J., and Kennedy, Ginsburg, Breyer, Alito, Sotomayor, and Kagan, JJ., joined, and in which Scalia, J., joined in part. Scalia, J., filed an opinion concurring in part and concurring in the judgment.

Respondent Myriad Genetics, Inc. (Myriad), discovered the precise location and sequence of two human genes, mutations of which can substantially increase the risks of breast and ovarian cancer. Myriad obtained a number of patents based upon its discovery. This case involves claims from three of them and requires us to resolve whether a naturally occurring segment of deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) is patent eligible under 35 U. S. C. §101 by virtue of its isolation from the rest of the human genome. We also address the patent eligibility of synthetically created DNA known as complementary DNA (cDNA), which contains the same protein-coding information found in a segment of natural DNA but omits portions within the DNA segment that do not code for proteins. For the reasons that follow, we hold that a naturally occurring DNA segment is a product of nature and not patent eligible merely because it has been isolated, but that cDNA is patent eligible because it is not naturally occurring. We, therefore, affirm in part and reverse in part the decision of the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit. I A Genes form the basis for hereditary traits in living organisms. See generally Association for Molecular Pathology v. United States Patent and Trademark Office, 702 F. Supp. 2d 181, 192–211 (SDNY 2010). The human ge- nome consists of approximately 22,000 genes packed into 23 pairs of chromosomes. Each gene is encoded as DNA, which takes the shape of the familiar “double helix” that Doctors James Watson and Francis Crick first described in 1953. Each “cross-bar” in the DNA helix consists of two chemically joined nucleotides. The possible nucleotides are adenine (A), thymine (T), cytosine (C), and guanine (G), each of which binds naturally with another nucleotide: A pairs with T; C pairs with G. The nucleotide cross-bars are chemically connected to a sugar-phosphate backbone that forms the outside framework of the DNA helix. Sequences of DNA nucleotides contain the information necessary to create strings of amino acids, which in turn are used in the body to build proteins. Only some DNA nucleotides, however, code for amino acids; these nucleotides are known as “exons.” Nucleotides that do not code for amino acids, in contrast, are known as “introns.” Creation of proteins from DNA involves two principal steps, known as transcription and translation. In transcription, the bonds between DNA nucleotides separate, and the DNA helix unwinds into two single strands. A single strand is used as a template to create a complementary ribonucleic acid (RNA) strand. The nucleotides on the DNA strand pair naturally with their counterparts, with the exception that RNA uses the nucleotide base uracil (U) instead of thymine (T). Transcription results in a single strand RNA molecule, known as pre-RNA, whose nucleotides form an inverse image of the DNA strand from which it was created. Pre-RNA still contains nucleotides corresponding to both the exons and introns in the DNA molecule. The pre-RNA is then naturally “spliced” by the physical removal of the introns. The resulting product is a strand of RNA that contains nucleotides corresponding only to the exons from the original DNA strand. The exons-only strand is known as messenger RNA (mRNA), which creates amino acids through translation. In translation, cellular structures known as ribosomes read each set of three nucleotides, known as codons, in the mRNA. Each codon either tells the ribosomes which of the 20 possible amino acids to synthesize or provides a stop signal that ends amino acid production. DNA’s informational sequences and the processes that create mRNA, amino acids, and proteins occur naturally within cells. Scientists can, however, extract DNA from cells using well known laboratory methods. These methods allow scientists to isolate specific segments of DNA—for instance, a particular gene or part of a gene—which can then be further studied, manipulated, or used. It is also possible to create DNA synthetically through processes similarly well known in the field of genetics. One such method begins with an mRNA molecule and uses the natural bonding properties of nucleotides to create a new, synthetic DNA molecule. The result is the inverse of the mRNA’s inverse image of the original DNA, with one important distinction: Because the natural creation of mRNA involves splicing that removes introns, the synthetic DNA created from mRNA also contains only the exon sequences. This synthetic DNA created in the laboratory from mRNA is known as complementary DNA (cDNA). Changes in the genetic sequence are called mutations. Mutations can be as small as the alteration of a single nucleotide—a change affecting only one letter in the genetic code. Such small-scale changes can produce an entirely different amino acid or can end protein production altogether. Large changes, involving the deletion, rearrangement, or duplication of hundreds or even millions of nu- cleotides, can result in the elimination, misplacement, or duplication of entire genes. Some mutations are harmless, but others can cause disease or increase the risk of disease. As a result, the study of genetics can lead to valu- able medical breakthroughs. B This case involves patents filed by Myriad after it made one such medical breakthrough. Myriad discovered the precise location and sequence of what are now known as the BRCA1 and BRCA2 genes. Mutations in these genes can dramatically increase an individual’s risk of developing breast and ovarian cancer. The average American woman has a 12- to 13-percent risk of developing breast cancer, but for women with certain genetic mutations, the risk can range between 50 and 80 percent for breast cancer and between 20 and 50 percent for ovarian cancer. Before Myriad’s discovery of the BRCA1 and BRCA2 genes, scientists knew that heredity played a role in establishing a woman’s risk of developing breast and ovarian cancer, but they did not know which genes were associated with those cancers. Myriad identified the exact location of the BRCA1 and BRCA2 genes on chromosomes 17 and 13. Chromosome 17 has approximately 80 million nucleotides, and chro- mosome 13 has approximately 114 million. Association for Molecular Pathology v. United States Patent and Trademark Office, 689 F.3d 1303, 1328 (CA Fed. 2012). Within those chromosomes, the BRCA1 and BRCA2 genes are each about 80,000 nucleotides long. If just exons are counted, the BRCA1 gene is only about 5,500 nucleotides long; for the BRCA2 gene, that number is about 10,200. Ibid. Knowledge of the location of the BRCA1 and BRCA2 genes allowed Myriad to determine their typical nucleotide sequence.[1] That information, in turn, enabled Myriad to develop medical tests that are useful for detecting mutations in a patient’s BRCA1 and BRCA2 genes and thereby assessing whether the patient has an increased risk of cancer. Once it found the location and sequence of the BRCA1 and BRCA2 genes, Myriad sought and obtained a number of patents. Nine composition claims from three of those patents are at issue in this case.[2] See id., at 1309, and n. 1 (noting composition claims). Claims 1, 2, 5, and 6 from the ’282 patent are representative. The first claim asserts a patent on “[a]n isolated DNA coding for a BRCA1 polypeptide,” which has “the amino acid sequence set forth in SEQ ID NO:2.” App. 822. SEQ ID NO:2 sets forth a list of 1,863 amino acids that the typical BRCA1 gene encodes. See id., at 785–790. Put differently, claim 1 asserts a patent claim on the DNA code that tells a cell to produce the string of BRCA1 amino acids listed in SEQ ID NO:2. Claim 2 of the ’282 patent operates similarly. It claims “[t]he isolated DNA of claim 1, wherein said DNA has the nucleotide sequence set forth in SEQ ID NO:1.” Id., at 822. Like SEQ ID NO:2, SEQ ID NO:1 sets forth a long list of data, in this instance the sequence of cDNA that codes for the BRCA1 amino acids listed in claim 1. Importantly, SEQ ID NO:1 lists only the cDNA exons in the BRCA1 gene, rather than a full DNA sequence contain- ing both exons and introns. See id., at 779 (stating that SEQ ID NO:1’s “MOLECULE TYPE:” is “cDNA”). As a re- sult, the Federal Circuit recognized that claim 2 asserts a patent on the cDNA nucleotide sequence listed in SEQ ID NO:1, which codes for the typical BRCA1 gene. 689 F. 3d, at 1326, n. 9; id., at 1337 (Moore, J., concurring in part); id., at 1356 (Bryson, J., concurring in part and dissenting in part). Claim 5 of the ’282 patent claims a subset of the data in claim 1. In particular, it claims “[a]n isolated DNA having at least 15 nucleotides of the DNA of claim 1.” App. 822. The practical effect of claim 5 is to assert a patent on any series of 15 nucleotides that exist in the typical BRCA1 gene. Because the BRCA1 gene is thousands of nucleotides long, even BRCA1 genes with substantial mutations are likely to contain at least one segment of 15 nucleotides that correspond to the typical BRCA1 gene. Similarly, claim 6 of the ’282 patent claims “[a]n isolated DNA having at least 15 nucleotides of the DNA of claim 2.” Ibid. This claim operates similarly to claim 5, except that it references the cDNA-based claim 2. The remaining claims at issue are similar, though several list common mutations rather than typical BRCA1 and BRCA2 sequences. See ibid. (claim 7 of the ’282 patent); id., at 930 (claim 1 of the ’473 patent); id., at 1028 (claims 1, 6, and 7 of the ’492 patent). C Myriad’s patents would, if valid, give it the exclusive right to isolate an individual’s BRCA1 and BRCA2 genes (or any strand of 15 or more nucleotides within the genes) by breaking the covalent bonds that connect the DNA to the rest of the individual’s genome. The patents would also give Myriad the exclusive right to synthetically create BRCA cDNA. In Myriad’s view, manipulating BRCA DNA in either of these fashions triggers its “right to exclude others from making” its patented composition of matter under the Patent Act. 35 U. S. C. §154(a)(1); see also §271(a) (“[W]hoever without authority makes . . . any patented invention . . . infringes the patent”). But isolation is necessary to conduct genetic testing, and Myriad was not the only entity to offer BRCA testing after it discovered the genes. The University of Pennsylvania’s Genetic Diagnostic Laboratory (GDL) and others provided genetic testing services to women. Petitioner Dr. Harry Ostrer, then a researcher at New York University School of Medicine, routinely sent his patients’ DNA samples to GDL for testing. After learning of GDL’s testing and Ostrer’s activities, Myriad sent letters to them asserting that the genetic testing infringed Myriad’s patents. App. 94–95 (Ostrer letter). In response, GDL agreed to stop testing and informed Ostrer that it would no longer accept patient samples. Myriad also filed patent infringement suits against other entities that performed BRCA testing, resulting in settlements in which the defendants agreed to cease all allegedly infringing activity. 689 F. 3d, at 1315. Myriad, thus, solidified its position as the only entity providing BRCA testing. Some years later, petitioner Ostrer, along with medical patients, advocacy groups, and other doctors, filed this lawsuit seeking a declaration that Myriad’s patents are invalid under 35 U. S. C. §101. 702 F. Supp. 2d, at 186. Citing this Court’s decision in MedImmune, Inc. v. Genentech, Inc., 549 U.S. 118 (2007), the District Court denied Myriad’s motion to dismiss for lack of standing. Association for Molecular Pathology v. United States Patent and Trademark Office, 669 F. Supp. 2d 365, 385–392 (SDNY 2009). The District Court then granted summary judgment to petitioners on the composition claims at issue in this case based on its conclusion that Myriad’s claims, including claims related to cDNA, were invalid because they covered products of nature. 702 F. Supp. 2d, at 220–237. The Federal Circuit reversed, Association for Molecular Pathology v. United States Patent and Trademark Office, 653 F.3d 1329 (2011), and this Court granted the petition for certiorari, vacated the judgment, and re- manded the case in light of Mayo Collaborative Services v. Prometheus Laboratories, Inc., 566 U. S. ___ (2012). See Association for Molecular Pathology v. Myriad Genetics, Inc., 566 U. S. ___ (2012). On remand, the Federal Circuit affirmed the District Court in part and reversed in part, with each member of the panel writing separately. All three judges agreed that only petitioner Ostrer had standing. They reasoned that Myriad’s actions against him and his stated ability and willingness to begin BRCA1 and BRCA2 testing if Myr- iad’s patents were invalidated were sufficient for Article III standing. 689 F. 3d, at 1323; id., at 1337 (opinion of Moore, J.); id., at 1348 (opinion of Bryson, J.). With respect to the merits, the court held that both isolated DNA and cDNA were patent eligible under §101. The central dispute among the panel members was whether the act of isolating DNA—separating a specific gene or sequence of nucleotides from the rest of the chromosome—is an inventive act that entitles the individual who first isolates it to a patent. Each of the judges on the panel had a different view on that question. Judges Lourie and Moore agreed that Myriad’s claims were patent eligible under §101 but disagreed on the rationale. Judge Lourie relied on the fact that the entire DNA molecule is held together by chemical bonds and that the covalent bonds at both ends of the segment must be severed in order to isolate segments of DNA. This process technically creates new molecules with unique chemical compositions. See id., at 1328 (“Isolated DNA . . . is a free-standing portion of a larger, natural DNA molecule. Isolated DNA has been cleaved (i.e., had covalent bonds in its backbone chemically severed) or synthesized to consist of just a fraction of a naturally occurring DNA molecule”). Judge Lourie found this chemical alteration to be dispositive, because isolating a particular strand of DNA creates a nonnaturally occurring molecule, even though the chemical alteration does not change the information-transmitting quality of the DNA. See id., at 1330 (“The claimed isolated DNA molecules are distinct from their natural existence as portions of larger entities, and their informational content is irrelevant to that fact. We recognize that biologists may think of molecules in terms of their uses, but genes are in fact materials having a chemical nature”). Accordingly, he rejected petitioners’ argument that isolated DNA was ineligible for patent protection as a product of nature. Judge Moore concurred in part but did not rely exclusively on Judge Lourie’s conclusion that chemically breaking covalent bonds was sufficient to render isolated DNA patent eligible. Id., at 1341 (“To the extent the majority rests its conclusion on the chemical differences between [naturally occurring] and isolated DNA (breaking the covalent bonds), I cannot agree that this is sufficient to hold that the claims to human genes are directed to patentable subject matter”). Instead, Judge Moore also relied on the United States Patent and Trademark Office’s (PTO) practice of granting such patents and on the reliance interests of patent holders. Id., at 1343. However, she acknowledged that her vote might have come out differently if she “were deciding this case on a blank canvas.” Ibid. Finally, Judge Bryson concurred in part and dissented in part, concluding that isolated DNA is not patent eli- gible. As an initial matter, he emphasized that the breaking of chemical bonds was not dispositive: “[T]here is no magic to a chemical bond that requires us to recognize a new prod- uct when a chemical bond is created or broken.” Id., at 1351. Instead, he relied on the fact that “[t]he nucleotide sequences of the claimed molecules are the same as the nucleotide sequences found in naturally occurring human genes.” Id., at 1355. Judge Bryson then concluded that genetic “structural similarity dwarfs the significance of the structural differences between isolated DNA and naturally occurring DNA, especially where the structural differences are merely ancillary to the breaking of covalent bonds, a process that is itself not inventive.” Ibid. More- over, Judge Bryson gave no weight to the PTO’s position on patentability because of the Federal Circuit’s position that “the PTO lacks substantive rulemaking authority as to issues such as patentability.” Id., at 1357. Although the judges expressed different views concerning the patentability of isolated DNA, all three agreed that patent claims relating to cDNA met the patent eligibility requirements of §101. Id., at 1326, and n. 9 (recognizing that some patent claims are limited to cDNA and that such claims are patent eligible under §101); id., at 1337 (Moore, J., concurring in part); id., at 1356 (Bryson, J., concurring in part and dissenting in part) (“cDNA cannot be isolated from nature, but instead must be created in the laboratory . . . because the introns that are found in the native gene are removed from the cDNA segment”).[3] We granted certiorari. 568 U. S. ___ (2012). II A Section 101 of the Patent Act provides: “Whoever invents or discovers any new and useful . . . composition of matter, or any new and useful improvement thereof, may obtain a patent therefor, subject to the conditions and requirements of this title.” 35 U. S. C. §101. We have “long held that this provision contains an important implicit exception[:] Laws of nature, natural phenomena, and abstract ideas are not patentable.” Mayo, 566 U. S., at ___ (slip op., at 1) (internal quotation marks and brackets omitted). Rather, “ ‘they are the basic tools of scientific and technological work’ ” that lie beyond the domain of patent protection. Id., at ___ (slip op., at 2). As the Court has explained, without this exception, there would be considerable danger that the grant of patents would “tie up” the use of such tools and thereby “inhibit future innovation premised upon them.” Id., at ___ (slip op., at 17). This would be at odds with the very point of patents, which exist to promote creation. Diamond v. Chakrabarty, 447 U.S. 303, 309 (1980) (Products of nature are not created, and “ ‘manifestations . . . of nature [are] free to all men and reserved exclusively to none’ ”). The rule against patents on naturally occurring things is not without limits, however, for “all inventions at some level embody, use, reflect, rest upon, or apply laws of nature, natural phenomena, or abstract ideas,” and “too broad an interpretation of this exclusionary principle could eviscerate patent law.” 566 U. S., at ___ (slip op., at 2). As we have recognized before, patent protection strikes a delicate balance between creating “incentives that lead to creation, invention, and discovery” and “imped[ing] the flow of information that might permit, indeed spur, in- vention.” Id., at ___ (slip op., at 23). We must apply this well-established standard to determine whether Myr- iad’s patents claim any “new and useful . . . composition of matter,” §101, or instead claim naturally occurring phenomena. B It is undisputed that Myriad did not create or alter any of the genetic information encoded in the BRCA1 and BRCA2 genes. The location and order of the nucleotides existed in nature before Myriad found them. Nor did Myr- iad create or alter the genetic structure of DNA. In- stead, Myriad’s principal contribution was uncovering the precise location and genetic sequence of the BRCA1 and BRCA2 genes within chromosomes 17 and 13. The question is whether this renders the genes patentable. Myriad recognizes that our decision in Chakrabarty is central to this inquiry. Brief for Respondents 14, 23–27. In Chakrabarty, scientists added four plasmids to a bacterium, which enabled it to break down various components of crude oil. 447 U. S., at 305, and n. 1. The Court held that the modified bacterium was patentable. It explained that the patent claim was “not to a hitherto unknown natural phenomenon, but to a nonnaturally occurring manufacture or composition of matter—a product of human ingenuity ‘having a distinctive name, character [and] use.’ ” Id., at 309–310 (quoting Hartranft v. Wiegmann, 121 U.S. 609, 615 (1887); alteration in original). The Chakrabarty bacterium was new “with markedly different characteristics from any found in nature,” 447 U. S., at 310, due to the additional plasmids and resultant “capac- ity for degrading oil.” Id., at 305, n. 1. In this case, by contrast, Myriad did not create anything. To be sure, it found an important and useful gene, but separating that gene from its surrounding genetic material is not an act of invention. Groundbreaking, innovative, or even brilliant discovery does not by itself satisfy the §101 inquiry. In Funk Brothers Seed Co. v. Kalo Inoculant Co., 333 U.S. 127 (1948), this Court considered a composition patent that claimed a mixture of naturally occurring strains of bacteria that helped leguminous plants take nitrogen from the air and fix it in the soil. Id., at 128–129. The ability of the bacteria to fix nitrogen was well known, and farmers commonly “inoculated” their crops with them to improve soil nitrogen levels. But farmers could not use the same inoculant for all crops, both because plants use different bacteria and because certain bacteria inhibit each other. Id., at 129–130. Upon learning that several nitrogen-fixing bacteria did not inhibit each other, however, the patent applicant combined them into a single inoculant and obtained a patent. Id., at 130. The Court held that the composition was not patent eligible because the patent holder did not alter the bacteria in any way. Id., at 132 (“There is no way in which we could call [the bacteria mixture a product of invention] unless we borrowed invention from the discovery of the natural principle itself”). His patent claim thus fell squarely within the law of nature exception. So do Myriad’s. Myriad found the location of the BRCA1 and BRCA2 genes, but that discovery, by itself, does not render the BRCA genes “new . . . composition[s] of matter,” §101, that are patent eligible. Indeed, Myriad’s patent descriptions highlight the problem with its claims. For example, a section of the ’282 patent’s Detailed Description of the Invention indicates that Myriad found the location of a gene associated with increased risk of breast cancer and identified mutations of that gene that increase the risk. See App. 748–749.[4] In subsequent language Myriad explains that the location of the gene was unknown until Myriad found it among the approximately eight million nucleotide pairs contained in a subpart of chromosome 17. See Ibid.[5] The ’473 and ’492 patents contain similar language as well. See id., at 854, 947. Many of Myriad’s patent descriptions simply detail the “iterative process” of discovery by which Myriad narrowed the possible locations for the gene sequences that it sought.[6] See, e.g., id., at 750. Myriad seeks to import these extensive research efforts into the §101 patent-eligibility inquiry. Brief for Respondents 8–10, 34. But extensive effort alone is insufficient to satisfy the demands of §101. Nor are Myriad’s claims saved by the fact that isolating DNA from the human genome severs chemical bonds and thereby creates a nonnaturally occurring molecule. Myr- iad’s claims are simply not expressed in terms of chemical composition, nor do they rely in any way on the chemi- cal changes that result from the isolation of a particular section of DNA. Instead, the claims understandably focus on the genetic information encoded in the BRCA1 and BRCA2 genes. If the patents depended upon the creation of a unique molecule, then a would-be infringer could arguably avoid at least Myriad’s patent claims on entire genes (such as claims 1 and 2 of the ’282 patent) by isolating a DNA sequence that included both the BRCA1 or BRCA2 gene and one additional nucleotide pair. Such a molecule would not be chemically identical to the molecule “invented” by Myriad. But Myriad obviously would resist that outcome because its claim is concerned primarily with the information contained in the genetic sequence, not with the specific chemical composition of a particular molecule. Finally, Myriad argues that the PTO’s past practice of awarding gene patents is entitled to deference, citing J. E. M. Ag Supply, Inc. v. Pioneer Hi-Bred Int’l, Inc., 534 U.S. 124 (2001). See Brief for Respondents 35–39, 49–50. We disagree. J. E. M. held that new plant breeds were eligible for utility patents under §101 notwithstanding separate statutes providing special protections for plants, see 7 U. S. C. §2321 et seq. (Plant Variety Protection Act); 35 U. S. C. §§161–164 (Plant Patent Act of 1930). After analyzing the text and structure of the relevant statutes, the Court mentioned that the Board of Patent Appeals and Interferences had determined that new plant breeds were patent eligible under §101 and that Congress had recognized and endorsed that position in a subsequent Patent Act amendment. 534 U. S., at 144–145 (citing In re Hibberd, 227 USPQ 443 (1985) and 35 U. S. C. §119(f)). In this case, however, Congress has not endorsed the views of the PTO in subsequent legislation. While Myriad relies on Judge Moore’s view that Congress endorsed the PTO’s position in a single sentence in the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2004, see Brief for Respondents 31, n. 8; 689 F. 3d, at 1346, that Act does not even mention genes, much less isolated DNA. §634, 118Stat. 101 (“None of the funds appropriated or otherwise made available under this Act may be used to issue patents on claims directed to or encompassing a human organism”). Further undercutting the PTO’s practice, the United States argued in the Federal Circuit and in this Court that isolated DNA was not patent eligible under §101, Brief for United States as Amicus Curiae 20–33, and that the PTO’s practice was not “a sufficient reason to hold that isolated DNA is patent-eligible.” Id., at 26. See also id., at 28–29. These concessions weigh against deferring to the PTO’s determination.[7] C cDNA does not present the same obstacles to patentability as naturally occurring, isolated DNA segments. As already explained, creation of a cDNA sequence from mRNA results in an exons-only molecule that is not naturally occurring.[8] Petitioners concede that cDNA differs from natural DNA in that “the non-coding regions have been removed.” Brief for Petitioners 49. They nevertheless argue that cDNA is not patent eligible because “[t]he nucleotide sequence of cDNA is dictated by nature, not by the lab technician.” Id., at 51. That may be so, but the lab technician unquestionably creates something new when cDNA is made. cDNA retains the naturally occurring exons of DNA, but it is distinct from the DNA from which it was derived. As a result, cDNA is not a “product of nature” and is patent eligible under §101, except insofar as very short series of DNA may have no intervening introns to remove when creating cDNA. In that situation, a short strand of cDNA may be indistinguishable from natural DNA.[9] III It is important to note what is not implicated by this decision. First, there are no method claims before this Court. Had Myriad created an innovative method of manipulating genes while searching for the BRCA1 and BRCA2 genes, it could possibly have sought a method pat- ent. But the processes used by Myriad to isolate DNA were well understood by geneticists at the time of Myriad’s patents “were well understood, widely used, and fairly uniform insofar as any scientist engaged in the search for a gene would likely have utilized a similar approach,” 702 F. Supp. 2d, at 202–203, and are not at issue in this case. Similarly, this case does not involve patents on new applications of knowledge about the BRCA1 and BRCA2 genes. Judge Bryson aptly noted that, “[a]s the first party with knowledge of the [BRCA1 and BRCA2] sequences, Myriad was in an excellent position to claim applications of that knowledge. Many of its unchallenged claims are limited to such applications.” 689 F. 3d, at 1349. Nor do we consider the patentability of DNA in which the order of the naturally occurring nucleotides has been altered. Scientific alteration of the genetic code presents a different inquiry, and we express no opinion about the application of §101 to such endeavors. We merely hold that genes and the information they encode are not patent eligible under §101 simply because they have been isolated from the surrounding genetic material. * * * For the foregoing reasons, the judgment of the Federal Circuit is affirmed in part and reversed in part. It is so ordered. Notes 1 Technically, there is no “typical” gene because nucleotide sequences vary between individuals, sometimes dramatically. Geneticists refer to the most common variations of genes as “wild types.” 2 At issue are claims 1, 2, 5, 6, and 7 of U. S. Patent 5,747,282 (the ’282 patent), claim 1 of U. S. Patent 5,693,473 (the ’473 patent), and claims 1, 6, and 7 of U. S. Patent 5,837,492 (the ’492 patent). 3 Myriad continues to challenge Dr. Ostrer’s Declaratory Judgment Act standing in this Court. Brief for Respondents 17–22. But we find that, under the Court’s decision in MedImmune, Inc. v. Genentech, Inc., Dr. Ostrer has alleged sufficient facts “under all the circumstances, [to] show that there is a substantial controversy, between parties having adverse legal interests, of sufficient immediacy and reality to warrant the issuance of a declaratory judgment.” 549 U.S. 118, 127 (2007) (internal quotation marks omitted). 4 The full relevant text of the Detailed Description of the Patent is as follows: “It is a discovery of the present invention that the BRCA1 locus which predisposes individuals to breast cancer and ovarian cancer, is a gene encoding a BRCA1 protein, which has been found to have no significant homology with known protein or DNA sequences. . . . It is a discovery of the present invention that mutations in the BRCA1 locus in the germline are indicative of a predisposition to breast cancer and ovarian cancer. Finally, it is a discovery of the present invention that somatic mutations in the BRCA1 locus are also associated with breast cancer, ovarian cancer and other cancers, which represents an indicator of these cancers or of the prognosis of these cancers. The mutational events of the BRCA1 locus can involve deletions, insertions and point mutations.” App. 749. Notwithstanding Myriad’s repeated use of the phrase “present invention,” it is clear from the text of the patent that the various discoveries are the “invention.” 5 “Starting from a region on the long arm of human chromosome 17 of the human genome, 17q, which has a size estimated at about 8 million base pairs, a region which contains a genetic locus, BRCA1, which causes susceptibility to cancer, including breast and ovarian cancer, has been identified.” Ibid. 6 Myriad first identified groups of relatives with a history of breast cancer (some of whom also had developed ovarian cancer); because these individuals were related, scientists knew that it was more likely that their diseases were the result of genetic predisposition rather than other factors. Myriad compared sections of their chromosomes, looking for shared genetic abnormalities not found in the general population. It was that process which eventually enabled Myriad to determine where in the genetic sequence the BRCA1 and BRCA2 genes reside. See, e.g., id., at 749, 763–775. 7 Myriad also argues that we should uphold its patents so as not to disturb the reliance interests of patent holders like itself. Brief for Respondents 38–39. Concerns about reliance interests arising from PTO determinations, insofar as they are relevant, are better directed to Congress. See Mayo Collaborative Services v. Prometheus Laboratories, Inc., 566 U. S. ___, ___ (2012) (slip op., at 22–24). 8 Some viruses rely on an enzyme called reverse transcriptase to reproduce by copying RNA into cDNA. In rare instances, a side effect ofa viral infection of a cell can be the random incorporation of fragments of the resulting cDNA, known as a pseudogene, into the genome. Such pseudogenes serve no purpose; they are not expressed in protein creation because they lack genetic sequences to direct protein expression. See J. Watson et al., Molecular Biology of the Gene 142, 144, fig. 7–5 (6th ed. 2008). Perhaps not surprisingly, given pseudogenes’ apparently random origins, petitioners “have failed to demonstrate that the pseudogene consists of the same sequence as the BRCA1 cDNA.” Association for Molecular Pathology v. United States Patent and Trademark Office, 689 F.3d 1303, 1356, n. 5 (CA Fed. 2012). The possibility that an unusual and rare phenomenon might randomly create a molecule similar to one created synthetically through human ingenuity does not render a composition of matter nonpatentable. 9 We express no opinion whether cDNA satisfies the other statutory requirements of patentability. See, e.g., 35 U. S. C. §§102, 103, and 112; Brief for United States as Amicus Curiae 19, n. 5.

568.US.186

While police were preparing to execute a warrant to search a basement apartment for a handgun, detectives conducting surveillance in an unmarked car outside the apartment saw two men―later identified as petitioner Chunon Bailey and Bryant Middleton―leave the gated area above the apartment, get in a car, and drive away. The detectives waited for the men to leave and then followed the car approximately a mile before stopping it. They found keys during a patdown search of Bailey, who initially said that he resided in the apartment but later denied it when informed of the search. Both men were handcuffed and driven in a patrol car to the apartment, where the search team had already found a gun and illicit drugs. After arresting the men, police discovered that one of Bailey’s keys unlocked the apartment’s door. At trial, the District Court denied Bailey’s motion to suppress the apartment key and the statements he made to the detectives when stopped, holding that Bailey’s detention was justified under Michigan v. Summers, 452 U.S. 692, as a detention incident to the execution of a search warrant, and, in the alternative, that the detention was supported by reasonable suspicion under Terry v. Ohio, 392 U.S. 1. Bailey was convicted. The Second Circuit affirmed denial of the suppression motion. Finding that Summers authorized Bailey’s detention, it did not address the alternative Terry holding. Held: The rule in Summers is limited to the immediate vicinity of the premises to be searched and does not apply here, where Bailey was detained at a point beyond any reasonable understanding of the immediate vicinity of the premises in question. Pp. 4−15. (a) The Summers rule permits officers executing a search warrant “to detain the occupants of the premises while a proper search is conducted,” 452 U. S., at 705, even when there is no particular suspicion that an individual is involved in criminal activity or poses a specific danger to the officers, Muehler v. Mena, 544 U.S. 93. Detention is permitted “because the character of the additional intrusion caused by detention is slight and because the justifications for detention are substantial.” Id., at 98. In Summers and later cases the detained occupants were found within or immediately outside the residence being searched. Here, however, petitioner left the apartment before the search began and was detained nearly a mile away. Pp. 4−6. (b) In Summers, the Court recognized three important law enforcement interests that, taken together, justify detaining an occupant who is on the premises during the search warrant’s execution, 452 U. S., at 702−703. The first, officer safety, requires officers to secure the premises, which may include detaining current occupants so the officers can search without fear that the occupants will become disruptive, dangerous, or otherwise frustrate the search. If an occupant returns home during the search, officers can mitigate the risk by taking routine precautions. Here, however, Bailey posed little risk to the officers at the scene after he left the premises, apparently without knowledge of the search. Had he returned, he could have been apprehended and detained under Summers. Were police to have the authority to detain persons away from the premises, the authority to detain incident to the execution of a search warrant would reach beyond the rationale of ensuring the integrity of the search by detaining those who are on the scene. As for the Second Circuit’s additional concerns, if officers believe that it would be dangerous to detain a departing individual in front of a residence, they are not required to stop him; and if officers have reasonable suspicion of criminal activity, they can instead rely on Terry. The risk that a departing occupant might alert those still inside the residence is also an insufficient safety rationale for expanding the detention authority beyond the immediate vicinity of the premises to be searched. The second law enforcement interest is the facilitation of the completion of the search. Unrestrained occupants can hide or destroy evidence, seek to distract the officers, or simply get in the way. But a general interest in avoiding obstruction of a search cannot justify detention beyond the vicinity of the premises. Occupants who are kept from leaving may assist the officers by opening locked doors or containers in order to avoid the use of force that can damage property or delay completion of the search. But this justification must be confined to persons on site as the search warrant is executed and so in a position to observe the progression of the search. The third interest is the interest in preventing flight, which also serves to preserve the integrity of the search. If officers are concerned about flight in the event incriminating evidence is found, they might rush the search, causing unnecessary damage or compromising its careful execution. The need to prevent flight, however, if unbounded, might be used to argue for detention of any regular occupant regardless of his or her location at the time of the search, e.g., detaining a suspect 10 miles away, ready to board a plane. Even if the detention of a former occupant away from the premises could facilitate a later arrest if incriminating evidence is discovered, “the mere fact that law enforcement may be made more efficient can never by itself justify disregard of the Fourth Amendment.” Mincey v. Arizona, 437 U.S. 385, 393. In sum, none of the three law enforcement interests identified in Summers applies with the same or similar force to the detention of recent occupants beyond the immediate vicinity of the premises to be searched. And each is also insufficient, on its own, to justify an expansion of the rule in Summers to permit the detention of a former occupant, wherever he may be found away from the scene of the search. Pp. 6–12. (c) As recognized in Summers, the detention of a current occupant “represents only an incremental intrusion on personal liberty when the search of a home has been authorized by a valid warrant,” 452 U. S., at 703, but an arrest of an individual away from his home involves an additional level of intrusiveness. A public detention, even if merely incident to a search, will resemble a full-fledged arrest and can involve the indignity of a compelled transfer back to the premises. P. 12. (d) Limiting the rule in Summers to the area within which an occupant poses a real threat to the safe and efficient execution of a search warrant ensures that the scope of the detention incident to a search is confined to its underlying justification. Because petitioner was detained at a point beyond any reasonable understanding of immediate vicinity, there is no need to further define that term here. Since detention is justified by the interests in executing a safe and efficient search, the decision to detain must be acted upon at the scene of the search and not at a later time in a more remote place. Pp. 13−15. (e) The question whether stopping petitioner was lawful under Terry remains open on remand. P. 15. 652 F.3d 197, reversed and remanded. Kennedy, J., delivered the opinion of the Court, in which Roberts, C. J., and Scalia, Ginsburg, Sotomayor, and Kagan, JJ., joined. Sca- lia, J., filed a concurring opinion, in which Ginsburg and Kagan, JJ., joined. Breyer, J., filed a dissenting opinion, in which Thomas and Alito, JJ., joined.

The Fourth Amendment guarantees the right to be free from unreasonable searches and seizures. A search may be of a person, a thing, or a place. So too a seizure may be of a person, a thing, or even a place. A search or a seizure may occur singly or in combination, and in differing sequence. In some cases the validity of one determines the validity of the other. The instant case involves the search of a place (an apartment dwelling) and the seizure of a person. But here, though it is acknowledged that the search was lawful, it does not follow that the seizure was lawful as well. The seizure of the person is quite in question. The issue to be resolved is whether the seizure of the person was reasonable when he was stopped and detained at some distance away from the premises to be searched when the only justification for the detention was to ensure the safety and efficacy of the search. I A At 8:45 p.m. on July 28, 2005, local police obtained a warrant to search a residence for a .380-caliber handgun. The residence was a basement apartment at 103 Lake Drive, in Wyandanch, New York. A confidential informant had told police he observed the gun when he was at the apartment to purchase drugs from “a heavy set black male with short hair” known as “Polo.” App. 16–26. As the search unit began preparations for executing the warrant, two officers, Detectives Richard Sneider and Richard Gorbecki, were conducting surveillance in an unmarked car outside the residence. About 9:56 p.m., Sneider and Gorbecki observed two men—later identified as petitioner Chunon Bailey and Bryant Middleton—leave the gated area above the basement apartment and enter a car parked in the driveway. Both matched the general physical description of “Polo” provided by the informant. There was no indication that the men were aware of the officers’ presence or had any knowledge of the impending search. The detectives watched the car leave the driveway. They waited for it to go a few hundred yards down the street and followed. The detectives informed the search team of their intent to follow and detain the departing occupants. The search team then executed the search warrant at the apartment. Detectives Sneider and Gorbecki tailed Bailey’s car for about a mile—and for about five minutes—before pulling the vehicle over in a parking lot by a fire station. They ordered Bailey and Middleton out of the car and did a patdown search of both men. The officers found no weapons but discovered a ring of keys in Bailey’s pocket. Bailey identified himself and said he was coming from his home at 103 Lake Drive. His driver’s license, however, showed his address as Bayshore, New York, the town where the confidential informant told the police the suspect, “Polo,” used to live. Id., at 89. Bailey’s passenger, Middleton, said Bailey was giving him a ride home and confirmed they were coming from Bailey’s residence at 103 Lake Drive. The officers put both men in handcuffs. When Bailey asked why, Gorbecki stated that they were being detained incident to the execution of a search warrant at 103 Lake Drive. Bailey responded: “I don’t live there. Anything you find there ain’t mine, and I’m not cooperating with your investigation.” Id., at 57, 77. The detectives called for a patrol car to take Bailey and Middleton back to the Lake Drive apartment. Detective Sneider drove the unmarked car back, while Detective Gorbecki used Bailey’s set of keys to drive Bailey’s car back to the search scene. By the time the group returned to 103 Lake Drive, the search team had discovered a gun and drugs in plain view inside the apartment. Bailey and Middleton were placed under arrest, and Bailey’s keys were seized incident to the arrest. Officers later discovered that one of Bailey’s keys opened the door of the basement apartment. B Bailey was charged with three federal offenses: possession of cocaine with intent to distribute, in violation of 21 U. S. C. §§841(a)(1) and (b)(1)(B)(iii); possession of a firearm by a felon, in violation of 18 U. S. C. §922(g)(1); and possession of a firearm in furtherance of a drug-trafficking offense, in violation of §924(c)(1)(A)(i). At trial Bailey moved to suppress the apartment key and the statements he made when stopped by Detectives Sneider and Gorbecki. That evidence, Bailey argued, derived from an unreasonable seizure. After an evidentiary hearing the United States District Court for the Eastern District of New York denied the motion to suppress. The District Court held that Bailey’s detention was permissible under Michigan v. Summers, 452 U.S. 692 (1981), as a detention incident to the execution of a search warrant. In the alternative, it held that Bailey’s detention was lawful as an investigatory detention supported by reasonable suspicion under Terry v. Ohio, 392 U.S. 1 (1968). After a trial the jury found Bailey guilty on all three counts. The Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit ruled that Bailey’s detention was proper and affirmed denial of the suppression motion. It interpreted this Court’s decision in Summers to “authoriz[e] law enforcement to detain the occupant of premises subject to a valid search warrant when that person is seen leaving those premises and the detention is effected as soon as reasonably practicable.” 652 F.3d 197, 208 (2011). Having found Bailey’s detention justified under Summers, the Court of Appeals did not address the District Court’s alternative holding that the stop was permitted under Terry. The Federal Courts of Appeals have reached differing conclusions as to whether Michigan v. Summers justifies the detention of occupants beyond the immediate vicinity of the premises covered by a search warrant. This Court granted certiorari to address the question. 566 U. S. ___ (2012). II The Fourth Amendment, applicable through the Fourteenth Amendment to the States, provides: “The right of the people to be secure in their persons . . . against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause . . . particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.” This Court has stated “the general rule that Fourth Amendment seizures are ‘reasonable’ only if based on probable cause” to believe that the individual has committed a crime. Dunaway v. New York, 442 U.S. 200, 213 (1979). The standard of probable cause, with “roots that are deep in our history,” Henry v. United States, 361 U.S. 98, 100 (1959), “represent[s] the accumulated wisdom of precedent and experience as to the minimum justification necessary to make the kind of intrusion involved in an arrest ‘reasonable’ under the Fourth Amendment.” Dunaway, supra, at 208. Within the framework of these fundamental rules there is some latitude for police to detain where “the intrusion on the citizen’s privacy ‘was so much less severe’ than that involved in a traditional arrest that ‘the opposing interests in crime prevention and detection and in the police officer’s safety’ could support the seizure as reasonable.” Summers, supra, at 697–698 (quoting Dunaway, supra, at 209); see also Terry, supra, at 27 (holding that a police officer who has reasonable suspicion of criminal activity may conduct a brief investigative stop). In Summers, the Court defined an important category of cases in which detention is allowed without probable cause to arrest for a crime. It permitted officers executing a search warrant “to detain the occupants of the premises while a proper search is conducted.” 452 U. S., at 705. The rule in Summers extends farther than some earlier exceptions because it does not require law enforcement to have particular suspicion that an individual is involved in criminal activity or poses a specific danger to the officers. Muehler v. Mena, 544 U.S. 93 (2005). In Muehler, applying the rule in Summers, the Court stated: “An officer’s authority to detain incident to a search is categorical; it does not depend on the ‘quantum of proof justifying detention or the extent of the intrusion to be imposed by the seizure.’ ” 544 U. S., at 98 (quoting Summers, supra, at 705, n. 19). The rule announced in Summers allows detention incident to the execution of a search warrant “because the character of the additional intrusion caused by detention is slight and because the justifications for detention are substantial.” Muehler, supra, at 98. In Summers and later cases the occupants detained were found within or immediately outside a residence at the moment the police officers executed the search warrant. In Summers, the defendant was detained on a walk leading down from the front steps of the house. See Tr. of Oral Arg. in O. T. 1980, No. 79–1794, pp. 41–42; see also Muehler, supra, at 96 (detention of occupant in adjoining garage); Los Angeles County v. Rettele, 550 U.S. 609, 611 (2007) (per curiam) (detention of occupants in bedroom). Here, however, petitioner left the apartment before the search began; and the police officers waited to detain him until he was almost a mile away. The issue is whether the reasoning in Summers can justify detentions beyond the immediate vicinity of the premises being searched. An exception to the Fourth Amendment rule prohibiting detention absent probable cause must not diverge from its purpose and rationale. See Florida v. Royer, 460 U.S. 491, 500 (1983) (plurality opinion) (“The scope of the detention must be carefully tailored to its underlying justification”). It is necessary, then, to discuss the reasons for the rule explained in Summers to determine if its rationale extends to a detention like the one here. A In Summers, the Court recognized three important law enforcement interests that, taken together, justify the detention of an occupant who is on the premises during the execution of a search warrant: officer safety, facilitating the completion of the search, and preventing flight. 452 U. S., at 702–703. 1 The first interest identified in Summers was “the interest in minimizing the risk of harm to the officers.” Id., at 702. There the Court held that “the execution of a warrant to search for narcotics is the kind of transaction that may give rise to sudden violence or frantic efforts to conceal or destroy evidence,” and “[t]he risk of harm to both the police and the occupants is minimized if the officers routinely exercise unquestioned command of the situation.” Id., at 702–703. When law enforcement officers execute a search warrant, safety considerations require that they secure the premises, which may include detaining current occupants. By taking “unquestioned command of the situation,” id., at 703, the officers can search without fear that occupants, who are on the premises and able to observe the course of the search, will become disruptive, dangerous, or otherwise frustrate the search. After Summers, this Court decided Muehler v. Mena. The reasoning and conclusions in Muehler in applying the Summers rule go quite far in allowing seizure and detention of persons to accommodate the necessities of a search. There, the person detained and held in handcuffs was not suspected of the criminal activity being investigated; but, the Court held, she could be detained nonetheless, to secure the premises while the search was underway. The “safety risk inherent in executing a search warrant for weapons was sufficient to justify the use of handcuffs, [and] the need to detain multiple occupants made the use of handcuffs all the more reasonable.” 544 U. S., at 100. While the Court in Muehler did remand for consideration of whether the detention there—alleged to have been two or three hours—was necessary in light of all the circumstances, the fact that so prolonged a detention indeed might have been permitted illustrates the far-reaching authority the police have when the detention is made at the scene of the search. This in turn counsels caution before extending the power to detain persons stopped or apprehended away from the premises where the search is being conducted. It is likely, indeed almost inevitable in the case of a resident, that an occupant will return to the premises at some point; and this might occur when the officers are still conducting the search. Officers can and do mitigate that risk, however, by taking routine precautions, for instance by erecting barricades or posting someone on the perimeter or at the door. In the instant case Bailey had left the premises, apparently without knowledge of the search. He posed little risk to the officers at the scene. If Bailey had rushed back to his apartment, the police could have apprehended and detained him under Summers. There is no established principle, however, that allows the arrest of anyone away from the premises who is likely to return. The risk, furthermore, that someone could return home during the execution of a search warrant is not limited to occupants who depart shortly before the start of a search. The risk that a resident might return home, either for reasons unrelated to the search or after being alerted by someone at the scene, exists whether he left five minutes or five hours earlier. Unexpected arrivals by occupants or other persons accustomed to visiting the premises might occur in many instances. Were police to have the authority to detain those persons away from the premises, the authority to detain incident to the execution of a search warrant would reach beyond the rationale of ensuring the integrity of the search by detaining those who are in fact on the scene. The Court of Appeals relied on an additional safety consideration. It concluded that limiting the application of the authority to detain to the immediate vicinity would put law enforcement officers in a dilemma. They would have to choose between detaining an individual immediately (and risk alerting occupants still inside) or allowing the individual to leave (and risk not being able to arrest him later if incriminating evidence were discovered). 652 F. 3d, at 205–206. Although the danger of alerting occupants who remain inside may be of real concern in some instances, as in the case when a no-knock warrant has been issued, this safety rationale rests on the false premise that a detention must take place. If the officers find that it would be dangerous to detain a departing individ-ual in front of a residence, they are not required to stop him. And, where there are grounds to believe the departing occupant is dangerous, or involved in criminal activity, police will generally not need Summers to detain him at least for brief questioning, as they can rely instead on Terry. The risk that a departing occupant might notice the police surveillance and alert others still inside the residence is also an insufficient safety rationale to justify ex-panding the existing categorical authority to detain so that it extends beyond the immediate vicinity of the premises to be searched. If extended in this way the rationale would justify detaining anyone in the neighborhood who could alert occupants that the police are outside, all without individualized suspicion of criminal activity or connection to the residence to be searched. This possibility demonstrates why it is necessary to confine the Summers rule to those who are present when and where the search is being conducted. 2 The second law enforcement interest relied on in Summers was that “the orderly completion of the search may be facilitated if the occupants of the premises are present.” 452 U. S., at 703. This interest in efficiency derives from distinct, but related, concerns. If occupants are permitted to wander around the premises, there is the potential for interference with the execution of the search warrant. They can hide or destroy evidence, seek to distract the officers, or simply get in the way. Those risks are not presented by an occupant who departs beforehand. So, in this case, after Bailey drove away from the Lake Drive apartment, he was not a threat to the proper execution of the search. Had he returned, officers would have been free to detain him at that point. A general interest in avoiding obstruction of a search, however, cannot justify detention beyond the vicinity of the premises to be searched. Summers also noted that occupants can assist the offi-cers. Under the reasoning in Summers, the occupants’ “self-interest may induce them to open locked doors or locked containers to avoid the use of force that is not only damaging to property but may also delay the completion of the task at hand.” Ibid. This justification must be confined to those persons who are on site and so in a position, when detained, to at once observe the progression of the search; and it would have no limiting principle were it to be applied to persons beyond the premises of the search. Here, it appears the police officers decided to wait until Bailey had left the vicinity of the search before detaining him. In any event it later became clear to the officers that Bailey did not wish to cooperate. See App. 57, 77 (“I don’t live there. Anything you find there ain’t mine, and I’m not cooperating with your investigation”). And, by the time the officers brought Bailey back to the apartment, the search team had discovered contraband. Bailey’s detention thus served no purpose in ensuring the efficient completion of the search. 3 The third law enforcement interest addressed in Summers was the “the legitimate law enforcement interest in preventing flight in the event that incriminating evidence is found.” 452 U. S., at 702. The proper interpretation of this language, in the context of Summers and in the broader context of the reasonableness standard that must govern and inform the detention incident to a search, is that the police can prohibit an occupant from leaving the scene of the search. As with the other interests identified in Summers, this justification serves to preserve the integrity of the search by controlling those persons who are on the scene. If police officers are concerned about flight, and have to keep close supervision of occupants who are not restrained, they might rush the search, causing unnecessary damage to property or compromising its careful execution. Allowing officers to secure the scene by detaining those present also prevents the search from being impeded by occupants leaving with the evidence being sought or the means to find it. The concern over flight is not because of the danger of flight itself but because of the damage that potential flight can cause to the integrity of the search. This interest does not independently justify detention of an occupant be- yond the immediate vicinity of the premises to be searched. The need to prevent flight, if unbounded, might be used to argue for detention, while a search is underway, of any regular occupant regardless of his or her location at the time of the search. If not circumscribed, the rationale of preventing flight would justify, for instance, detaining a suspect who is 10 miles away, ready to board a plane. The interest in preventing escape from police cannot extend this far without undermining the usual rules for arrest based on probable cause or a brief stop for questioning under standards derived from Terry. Even if the detention of a former occupant away from the premises could facilitate a later arrest should incriminating evidence be discovered, “the mere fact that law enforcement may be made more efficient can never by itself justify disregard of the Fourth Amendment.” Mincey v. Arizona, 437 U.S. 385, 393 (1978). In sum, of the three law enforcement interests identified to justify the detention in Summers, none applies with the same or similar force to the detention of recent occupants beyond the immediate vicinity of the premises to be searched. Any of the individual interests is also insufficient, on its own, to justify an expansion of the rule in Summers to permit the detention of a former occupant, wherever he may be found away from the scene of the search. This would give officers too much discretion. The categorical authority to detain incident to the execution of a search warrant must be limited to the immediate vicinity of the premises to be searched. B In Summers, the Court recognized the authority to detain occupants incident to the execution of a search warrant not only in light of the law enforcement interests at stake but also because the intrusion on personal liberty was limited. The Court held detention of a current occupant “represents only an incremental intrusion on personal liberty when the search of a home has been authorized by a valid warrant.” 452 U. S., at 703. Because the detention occurs in the individual’s own home, “it could add only minimally to the public stigma associated with the search itself and would involve neither the inconvenience nor the indignity associated with a compelled visit to the police station.” Id., at 702. Where officers arrest an individual away from his home, however, there is an additional level of intrusiveness. A public detention, even if merely incident to a search, will resemble a full-fledged arrest. As demonstrated here, detention beyond the immediate vicinity can involve an initial detention away from the scene and a second detention at the residence. In between, the individual will suffer the additional indignity of a compelled transfer back to the premises, giving all the appearances of an arrest. The detention here was more intrusive than a usual detention at the search scene. Bailey’s car was stopped; he was ordered to step out and was detained in full public view; he was handcuffed, transported in a marked patrol car, and detained further outside the apartment. These facts illustrate that detention away from a premises where police are already present often will be more intrusive than detentions at the scene. C Summers recognized that a rule permitting the detention of occupants on the premises during the execution of a search warrant, even absent individualized suspicion, was reasonable and necessary in light of the law enforcement interests in conducting a safe and efficient search. Because this exception grants substantial authority to police officers to detain outside of the traditional rules of the Fourth Amendment, it must be circumscribed. A spatial constraint defined by the immediate vicinity of the premises to be searched is therefore required for detentions incident to the execution of a search warrant. The police action permitted here—the search of a residence—has a spatial dimension, and so a spatial or geographical boundary can be used to determine the area within which both the search and detention incident to that search may occur. Limiting the rule in Summers to the area in which an occupant poses a real threat to the safe and efficient execution of a search warrant ensures that the scope of the detention incident to a search is confined to its underlying justification. Once an occupant is beyond the immediate vicinity of the premises to be searched, the search-related law enforcement interests are diminished and the intrusiveness of the detention is more severe. Here, petitioner was detained at a point beyond any reasonable understanding of the immediate vicinity of the premises in question; and so this case presents neither the necessity nor the occasion to further define the meaning of immediate vicinity. In closer cases courts can consider a number of factors to determine whether an occupant was detained within the immediate vicinity of the premises to be searched, including the lawful limits of the premises, whether the occupant was within the line of sight of his dwelling, the ease of reentry from the occupant’s location, and other relevant factors. Confining an officer’s authority to detain under Summers to the immediate vicinity of a premises to be searched is a proper limit because it accords with the rationale of the rule. The rule adopted by the Court of Appeals here, allowing detentions of a departed occupant “as soon as reasonably practicable,” departs from the spatial limit that is necessary to confine the rule in light of the substantial intrusions on the liberty of those detained.Because detention is justified by the interests in executing a safe and efficient search, the decision to detain must be acted upon at the scene of the search and not at a later time in a more remote place. If officers elect to defer the detention until the suspect or departing occupant leaves the immediate vicinity, the lawfulness of detention is controlled by other standards, including, of course, a brief stop for questioning based on reasonable suspicion under Terry or an arrest based on probable cause. A suspect’s particular actions in leaving the scene, including whether he appears to be armed or fleeing with the evidence sought, and any information the officers acquire from those who are conducting the search, including information that incriminating evidence has been discovered, will bear, of course, on the lawfulness of a later stop or detention. For example, had the search team radioed Detectives Sneider and Gorbecki about the gun and drugs discovered in the Lake Drive apartment as the officers stopped Bailey and Middleton, this may have provided them with probable cause for an arrest. III Detentions incident to the execution of a search warrant are reasonable under the Fourth Amendment because the limited intrusion on personal liberty is outweighed by the special law enforcement interests at stake. Once an individual has left the immediate vicinity of a premises to be searched, however, detentions must be justified by some other rationale. In this respect it must be noted that the District Court, as an alternative ruling, held that stopping petitioner was lawful under Terry. This opinion expresses no view on that issue. It will be open, on remand, for the Court of Appeals to address the matter and to determine whether, assuming the Terry stop was valid, it yielded information that justified the detention the officers then imposed. The judgment of the Court of Appeals is reversed, and the case is remanded for further proceedings consistent with this opinion. It is so ordered.

569.US.278

Respondent Monsanto invented and patented Roundup Ready soybean seeds, which contain a genetic alteration that allows them to survive exposure to the herbicide glyphosate. It sells the seeds subject to a licensing agreement that permits farmers to plant the purchased seed in one, and only one, growing season. Growers may consume or sell the resulting crops, but may not save any of the harvested soybeans for replanting. Petitioner Bowman purchased Roundup Ready soybean seed for his first crop of each growing season from a company associated with Monsanto and followed the terms of the licensing agreement. But to reduce costs for his riskier late-season planting, Bowman purchased soybeans intended for consumption from a grain elevator; planted them; treated the plants with glyphosate, killing all plants without the Roundup Ready trait; harvested the resulting soybeans that contained that trait; and saved some of these harvested seeds to use in his late-season planting the next season. After discovering this practice, Monsanto sued Bowman for patent infringement. Bowman raised the defense of patent exhaustion, which gives the purchaser of a patented article, or any subsequent owner, the right to use or resell that article. The District Court rejected Bowman’s defense and the Federal Circuit affirmed. Held: Patent exhaustion does not permit a farmer to reproduce patented seeds through planting and harvesting without the patent holder’s permission. Pp. 4–10. (a) Under the patent exhaustion doctrine, “the initial authorized sale of a patented article terminates all patent rights to that item,” Quanta Computer, Inc. v. LG Electronics, Inc., 553 U.S. 617, 625, and confers on the purchaser, or any subsequent owner, “the right to use [or] sell” the thing as he sees fit, United States v. Univis Lens Co., 316 U.S. 241, 249–250. However, the doctrine restricts the patentee’s rights only as to the “particular article” sold, id., at 251; it leaves untouched the patentee’s ability to prevent a buyer from making new copies of the patented item. By planting and harvesting Monsanto’s patented seeds, Bowman made additional copies of Monsanto’s patented invention, and his conduct thus falls outside the protections of patent exhaustion. Were this otherwise, Monsanto’s patent would provide scant benefit. After Monsanto sold its first seed, other seed companies could produce the patented seed to compete with Monsanto, and farmers would need to buy seed only once. Pp. 4–7. (b) Bowman argues that exhaustion should apply here because he is using seeds in the normal way farmers do, and thus allowing Monsanto to interfere with that use would create an impermissible exception to the exhaustion doctrine for patented seeds. But it is really Bowman who is asking for an exception to the well-settled rule that exhaustion does not extend to the right to make new copies of the patented item. If Bowman was granted that exception, patents on seeds would retain little value. Further, applying the normal rule will allow farmers to make effective use of patented seeds. Bowman, who purchased seeds intended for consumption, stands in a peculiarly poor position to argue that he cannot make effective use of his soybeans. Bowman conceded that he knew of no other farmer who planted soybeans bought from a grain elevator. In the more ordinary case, when a farmer purchases Roundup Ready seed from Monsanto or an affiliate, he will be able to plant it in accordance with Monsanto’s license to make one crop. Pp. 7–10. 657 F.3d 1341, affirmed. Kagan, J., delivered the opinion for a unanimous Court.

Under the doctrine of patent exhaustion, the authorized sale of a patented article gives the purchaser, or any subsequent owner, a right to use or resell that article. Such a sale, however, does not allow the purchaser to make new copies of the patented invention. The question in this case is whether a farmer who buys patented seeds may reproduce them through planting and harvesting without the patent holder’s permission. We hold that he may not. I Respondent Monsanto invented a genetic modification that enables soybean plants to survive exposure to glyphosate, the active ingredient in many herbicides (including Monsanto’s own Roundup). Monsanto markets soybean seed containing this altered genetic material as Roundup Ready seed. Farmers planting that seed can use a glyphosate-based herbicide to kill weeds without damaging their crops. Two patents issued to Monsanto cover various aspects of its Roundup Ready technology, including a seed in-corporating the genetic alteration. See Supp. App. SA1–21 (U. S. Patent Nos. 5,352,605 and RE39,247E); see also 657 F.3d 1341, 1343–1344 (CA Fed. 2011). Monsanto sells, and allows other companies to sell, Roundup Ready soybean seeds to growers who assent to a special licensing agreement. See App. 27a. That agreement permits a grower to plant the purchased seeds in one (and only one) season. He can then consume the resulting crop or sell it as a commodity, usually to a grain elevator or agricultural processor. See 657 F. 3d, at 1344–1345. But under the agreement, the farmer may not save any of the harvested soybeans for replanting, nor may he supply them to anyone else for that purpose. These restrictions reflect the ease of producing new generations of Roundup Ready seed. Because glyphosate resistance comes from the seed’s genetic material, that trait is passed on from the planted seed to the harvested soybeans: Indeed, a single Roundup Ready seed can grow a plant containing dozens of genetically identical beans, each of which, if replanted, can grow another such plant—and so on and so on. See App. 100a. The agreement’s terms prevent the farmer from co-opting that process to produce his own Roundup Ready seeds, forcing him instead to buy from Monsanto each season. Petitioner Vernon Bowman is a farmer in Indiana who, it is fair to say, appreciates Roundup Ready soybean seed. He purchased Roundup Ready each year, from a company affiliated with Monsanto, for his first crop of the season. In accord with the agreement just described, he used all of that seed for planting, and sold his entire crop to a grain elevator (which typically would resell it to an agricultural processor for human or animal consumption). Bowman, however, devised a less orthodox approach for his second crop of each season. Because he thought such late-season planting “risky,” he did not want to pay the premium price that Monsanto charges for Roundup Ready seed. Id., at 78a; see Brief for Petitioner 6. He therefore went to a grain elevator; purchased “commodity soybeans” intended for human or animal consumption; and planted them in his fields.[1] Those soybeans came from prior harvests of other local farmers. And because most of those farmers also used Roundup Ready seed, Bowman could anticipate that many of the purchased soybeans would contain Monsanto’s patented technology. When he applied a glyphosate-based herbicide to his fields, he confirmed that this was so; a significant proportion of the new plants survived the treatment, and produced in their turn a new crop of soybeans with the Roundup Ready trait. Bowman saved seed from that crop to use in his late-season planting the next year—and then the next, and the next, until he had harvested eight crops in that way. Each year, that is, he planted saved seed from the year before (sometimes adding more soybeans bought from the grain elevator), sprayed his fields with glyphosate to kill weeds (and any non-resistant plants), and produced a new crop of glyphosate-resistant—i.e., Roundup Ready—soybeans. After discovering this practice, Monsanto sued Bowman for infringing its patents on Roundup Ready seed. Bowman raised patent exhaustion as a defense, arguing that Monsanto could not control his use of the soybeans because they were the subject of a prior authorized sale (from local farmers to the grain elevator). The District Court rejected that argument, and awarded damages to Monsanto of $84,456. The Federal Circuit affirmed. It reasoned that patent exhaustion did not protect Bowman because he had “created a newly infringing article.” 657 F. 3d, at 1348. The “right to use” a patented article following an authorized sale, the court explained, “does not include the right to construct an essentially new article on the template of the original, for the right to make the article remains with the patentee.” Ibid. (brackets and internal quotation marks omitted). Accordingly, Bowman could not “ ‘replicate’ Monsanto’s patented technology by planting it in the ground to create newly infringing genetic material, seeds, and plants.” Ibid. We granted certiorari to consider the important question of patent law raised in this case, 568 U. S. ___ (2012), and now affirm. II The doctrine of patent exhaustion limits a patentee’s right to control what others can do with an article embodying or containing an invention.[2] Under the doctrine, “the initial authorized sale of a patented item terminates all patent rights to that item.” Quanta Computer, Inc. v. LG Electronics, Inc., 553 U.S. 617, 625 (2008). And by “exhaust[ing] the [patentee’s] monopoly” in that item, the sale confers on the purchaser, or any subsequent owner, “the right to use [or] sell” the thing as he sees fit. United States v. Univis Lens Co., 316 U.S. 241, 249–250 (1942). We have explained the basis for the doctrine as follows: “[T]he purpose of the patent law is fulfilled with respect to any particular article when the patentee has received his reward . . . by the sale of the article”; once that “purpose is realized the patent law affords no basis for restraining the use and enjoyment of the thing sold.” Id., at 251. Consistent with that rationale, the doctrine restricts a patentee’s rights only as to the “particular article” sold, ibid.; it leaves untouched the patentee’s ability to prevent a buyer from making new copies of the patented item. “[T]he purchaser of the [patented] machine . . . does not acquire any right to construct another machine either for his own use or to be vended to another.” Mitchell v. Hawley, 16 Wall. 544, 548 (1873); see Wilbur-Ellis Co. v. Kuther, 377 U.S. 422, 424 (1964) (holding that a purchaser’s “reconstruction” of a patented machine “would impinge on the patentee’s right ‘to exclude others from making’ . . . the article” (quoting 35 U. S. C. §154 (1964 ed.))). Rather, “a second creation” of the patented item “call[s] the monopoly, conferred by the patent grant, into play for a second time.” Aro Mfg. Co. v. Convertible Top Replacement Co., 365 U.S. 336, 346 (1961). That is because the patent holder has “received his reward” only for the actual article sold, and not for subsequent recreations of it. Univis, 316 U. S., at 251. If the purchaser of that article could make and sell endless copies, the patent would effectively protect the invention for just a single sale. Bowman himself disputes none of this analysis as a general matter: He forthrightly acknowledges the “well settled” principle “that the exhaustion doctrine does not extend to the right to ‘make’ a new product.” Brief for Petitioner 37 (citing Aro, 365 U. S., at 346). Unfortunately for Bowman, that principle decides this case against him. Under the patent exhaustion doctrine, Bowman could resell the patented soybeans he purchased from the grain elevator; so too he could consume the beans himself or feed them to his animals. Monsanto, although the patent holder, would have no business interfering in those uses of Roundup Ready beans. But the exhaustion doctrine does not enable Bowman to make additional patented soybeans without Monsanto’s permission (either express or implied). And that is precisely what Bowman did. He took the soybeans he purchased home; planted them in his fields at the time he thought best; applied glyphosate to kill weeds (as well as any soy plants lacking the Roundup Ready trait); and finally harvested more (many more) beans than he started with. That is how “to ‘make’ a new product,” to use Bowman’s words, when the original product is a seed. Brief for Petitioner 37; see Webster’s Third New International Dictionary 1363 (1961) (“make” means “cause to exist, occur, or appear,” or more specifically, “plant and raise (a crop)”). Because Bowman thus reproduced Monsanto’s patented invention, the exhaustion doctrine does not protect him.[3] Were the matter otherwise, Monsanto’s patent would provide scant benefit. After inventing the Roundup Ready trait, Monsanto would, to be sure, “receiv[e] [its] reward” for the first seeds it sells. Univis, 316 U. S., at 251. But in short order, other seed companies could reproduce the product and market it to growers, thus depriving Mon-santo of its monopoly. And farmers themselves need only buy the seed once, whether from Monsanto, a competitor, or (as here) a grain elevator. The grower could multiply his initial purchase, and then multiply that new creation, ad infinitum—each time profiting from the patented seed without compensating its inventor. Bowman’s late-season plantings offer a prime illustration. After buying beans for a single harvest, Bowman saved enough seed each year to reduce or eliminate the need for additional purchases. Monsanto still held its patent, but received no gain from Bowman’s annual production and sale of Roundup Ready soybeans. The exhaustion doctrine is limited to the “particular item” sold to avoid just such a mismatch between invention and reward. Our holding today also follows from J. E. M. Ag Supply, Inc. v. Pioneer Hi-Bred Int’l, Inc., 534 U.S. 124 (2001). We considered there whether an inventor could get a patent on a seed or plant, or only a certificate issued under the Plant Variety Protection Act (PVPA), 7 U. S. C. §2321 et seq. We decided a patent was available, rejecting the claim that the PVPA implicitly repealed the Patent Act’s coverage of seeds and plants. On our view, the two statutes established different, but not conflicting schemes: The requirements for getting a patent “are more stringent than those for obtaining a PVP certificate, and the pro-tections afforded” by a patent are correspondingly greater. J. E. M., 534 U. S., at 142. Most notable here, we explained that only a patent holder (not a certificate holder) could prohibit “[a] farmer who legally purchases and plants” a protected seed from saving harvested seed “for replanting.” Id., at 140; see id., at 143 (noting that the Patent Act, unlike the PVPA, contains “no exemptio[n]” for “saving seed”). That statement is inconsistent with applying exhaustion to protect conduct like Bowman’s. If a sale cut off the right to control a patented seed’s progeny, then (contrary to J. E. M.) the patentee could not prevent the buyer from saving harvested seed. Indeed, the patentee could not stop the buyer from selling such seed, which even a PVP certificate owner (who, recall, is supposed to have fewer rights) can usually accomplish. See 7 U. S. C. §§2541, 2543. Those limitations would turn upside-down the statutory scheme J. E. M. described. Bowman principally argues that exhaustion should apply here because seeds are meant to be planted. The exhaustion doctrine, he reminds us, typically prevents a patentee from controlling the use of a patented product following an authorized sale. And in planting Roundup Ready seeds, Bowman continues, he is merely using them in the normal way farmers do. Bowman thus concludes that allowing Monsanto to interfere with that use would “creat[e] an impermissible exception to the exhaustion doctrine” for patented seeds and other “self-replicating technologies.” Brief for Petitioner 16. But it is really Bowman who is asking for an unprecedented exception—to what he concedes is the “well settled” rule that “the exhaustion doctrine does not extend to the right to ‘make’ a new product.” See supra, at 5. Reproducing a patented article no doubt “uses” it after a fashion. But as already explained, we have always drawn the boundaries of the exhaustion doctrine to exclude that activity, so that the patentee retains an undiminished right to prohibit others from making the thing his patent protects. See, e.g., Cotton-Tie Co. v. Simmons, 106 U.S. 89, 93–94 (1882) (holding that a purchaser could not “use” the buckle from a patented cotton-bale tie to “make” a new tie). That is because, once again, if simple copying were a protected use, a patent would plummet in value after the first sale of the first item containing the invention. The undiluted patent monopoly, it might be said, would extend not for 20 years (as the Patent Act promises), but for only one transaction. And that would result in less incentive for innovation than Congress wanted. Hence our repeated insistence that exhaustion applies only to the particular item sold, and not to reproductions. Nor do we think that rule will prevent farmers from making appropriate use of the Roundup Ready seed they buy. Bowman himself stands in a peculiarly poor position to assert such a claim. As noted earlier, the commodity soybeans he purchased were intended not for planting, but for consumption. See supra, at 2–3. Indeed, Bowman conceded in deposition testimony that he knew of no other farmer who employed beans bought from a grain elevator to grow a new crop. See App. 84a. So a non-replicating use of the commodity beans at issue here was not just available, but standard fare. And in the more ordinary case, when a farmer purchases Roundup Ready seed qua seed—that is, seed intended to grow a crop—he will be able to plant it. Monsanto, to be sure, conditions the farmer’s ability to reproduce Roundup Ready; but it does not—could not realistically—preclude all planting. No sane farmer, after all, would buy the product without some ability to grow soybeans from it. And so Monsanto, predictably enough, sells Roundup Ready seed to farmers with a license to use it to make a crop. See supra, at 2, 6, n. 3. Applying our usual rule in this context therefore will allow farmers to benefit from Roundup Ready, even as it rewards Monsanto for its innovation. Still, Bowman has another seeds-are-special argument: that soybeans naturally “self-replicate or ‘sprout’ unless stored in a controlled manner,” and thus “it was the planted soybean, not Bowman” himself, that made replicas of Monsanto’s patented invention. Brief for Petitioner 42; see Tr. of Oral Arg. 14 (“[F]armers, when they plant seeds, they don’t exercise any control . . . over their crop” or “over the creative process”). But we think that blame-the-bean defense tough to credit. Bowman was not a passive observer of his soybeans’ multiplication; or put another way, the seeds he purchased (miraculous though they might be in other respects) did not spontaneously create eight successive soybean crops. As we have explained, supra at 2–3, Bowman devised and executed a novel way to harvest crops from Roundup Ready seeds without paying the usual premium. He purchased beans from a grain elevator anticipating that many would be Roundup Ready; applied a glyphosate-based herbicide in a way that culled any plants without the patented trait; and saved beans from the rest for the next season. He then planted those Roundup Ready beans at a chosen time; tended and treated them, including by exploiting their patented glyphosate-resistance; and harvested many more seeds, which he either marketed or saved to begin the next cycle. In all this, the bean surely figured. But it was Bowman, and not the bean, who controlled the reproduction (unto the eighth generation) of Monsanto’s patented invention. Our holding today is limited—addressing the situa- tion before us, rather than every one involving a self-replicating product. We recognize that such inventions are becoming ever more prevalent, complex, and diverse. In another case, the article’s self-replication might occur outside the purchaser’s control. Or it might be a necessary but incidental step in using the item for another purpose. Cf. 17 U. S. C. §117(a)(1) (“[I]t is not [a copyright] infringement for the owner of a copy of a computer program to make . . . another copy or adaptation of that computer program provide[d] that such a new copy or adaptation is created as an essential step in the utilization of the computer program”). We need not address here whether or how the doctrine of patent exhaustion would apply in such circumstances. In the case at hand, Bowman planted Monsanto’s patented soybeans solely to make and market replicas of them, thus depriving the company of the reward patent law provides for the sale of each article. Patent exhaustion provides no haven for that conduct. We accordingly affirm the judgment of the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit. It is so ordered. Notes 1 Grain elevators, as indicated above, purchase grain from farmers and sell it for consumption; under federal and state law, they generally cannot package or market their grain for use as agricultural seed. See 7 U. S. C. §1571; Ind. Code §15–15–1–32 (2012). But because soybeans are themselves seeds, nothing (except, as we shall see, the law) prevented Bowman from planting, rather than consuming, the product he bought from the grain elevator. 2 The Patent Act grants a patentee the “right to exclude others from making, using, offering for sale, or selling the invention.” 35 U. S. C. §154(a)(1); see §271(a) (“[W]hoever without authority makes, uses, offers to sell, or sells any patented invention . . . infringes the patent”). 3 This conclusion applies however Bowman acquired Roundup Ready seed: The doctrine of patent exhaustion no more protected Bowman’s reproduction of the seed he purchased for his first crop (from a Monsanto-affiliated seed company) than the beans he bought for his second(from a grain elevator). The difference between the two purchases was that the first—but not the second—came with a license from Monsanto to plant the seed and then harvest and market one crop of beans. We do not here confront a case in which Monsanto (or an affiliated seed company) sold Roundup Ready to a farmer without an express license agreement. For reasons we explain below, we think that case unlikely to arise. See infra, at 9. And in the event it did, the farmer might reasonably claim that the sale came with an implied license to plant and harvest one soybean crop.

569.US.267

Petitioner’s father established a trust for the benefit of petitioner and his siblings, and made petitioner the (nonprofessional) trustee. The trust’s sole asset was the father’s life insurance policy. Petitioner borrowed funds from the trust three times; all borrowed funds were repaid with interest. His siblings obtained a judgment against him in state court for breach of fiduciary duty, though the court found no apparent malicious motive. The court imposed constructive trusts on certain of petitioner’s interests—including his interest in the original trust—in order to secure petitioner’s payment of the judgment, with respondent serving as trustee for all of the trusts. Petitioner filed for bankruptcy. Respondent opposed discharge of petitioner’s state-court-imposed debts to the trust, and the Bankruptcy Court granted respondent summary judgment, holding that petitioner’s debts were not dischargeable pursuant to 11 U. S. C. §523(a)(4), which provides that an individual cannot obtain a bankruptcy discharge from a debt “for fraud or defalcation while acting in a fiduciary capacity, embezzlement, or larceny.” The Federal District Court and the Eleventh Circuit affirmed. The latter court reasoned that “defalcation requires a known breach of fiduciary duty, such that the conduct can be characterized as objectively reckless.” Held: The term “defalcation” in the Bankruptcy Code includes a culpable state of mind requirement involving knowledge of, or gross recklessness in respect to, the improper nature of the fiduciary behavior. Pp. 4−9. (a) While “defalcation” has been an exception to discharge in a bankruptcy statute since 1867, legal authorities have long disagreed about its meaning. Broad definitions of the term in modern and older dictionaries are unhelpful, and courts of appeals have disagreed about what mental state must accompany defalcation’s definition. Pp. 4−5. (b) In Neal v. Clark, 95 U.S. 704, this Court interpreted the term “fraud” in the Bankruptcy Code’s exceptions to discharge to mean “positive fraud, or fraud in fact, involving moral turpitude or intentional wrong, as does embezzlement; and not implied fraud, or fraud in law, which may exist without the imputation of bad faith or immorality.” Id., at 709. The term “defalcation” should be treated similarly. Thus, where the conduct at issue does not involve bad faith, moral turpitude, or other immoral conduct, “defalcation” requires an intentional wrong. An intentional wrong includes not only conduct that the fiduciary knows is improper but also reckless conduct of the kind that the criminal law often treats as the equivalent. Where actual knowledge of wrongdoing is lacking, conduct is considered as equivalent if, as set forth in the Model Penal Code, the fiduciary “consciously disregards,” or is willfully blind to, “a substantial and unjustifiable risk” that his conduct will violate a fiduciary duty. Pp. 5−7. (c) Several considerations support this interpretation. First, statutory context strongly favors it. The canon noscitur a sociis argues for interpreting “defalcation” as similar to its linguistic neighbors “embezzlement,” “larceny,” and “fraud,” which all require a showing of wrongful or felonious intent. See, e.g., Neal, supra, at 709. Second, the interpretation does not make the word identical to its statutory neighbors. “Embezzlement” requires conversion, “larceny” requires taking and carrying away another’s property, and “fraud” typically requires a false statement or omission; while “defalcation” can encompass a breach of fiduciary obligation that involves neither conversion, nor taking and carrying away another’s property, nor falsity. Third, the interpretation is consistent with the longstanding principle that “exceptions to discharge ‘should be confined to those plainly expressed.’ ” Kawaauhau v. Geiger, 523 U.S. 57, 62. It is also consistent with statutory exceptions to discharge that Congress normally confines to circumstances where strong, special policy considerations, such as the presence of fault, argue for preserving the debt, thereby benefiting, for example, a typically more honest creditor. See, e.g., 11 U. S. C. §523(a)(2)(A). Fourth, some Circuits have interpreted the statute similarly for many years without administrative or other difficulties. Finally, it is important to have a uniform interpretation of federal law, the choices are limited, and neither the parties nor the Government has presented strong considerations favoring a different interpretation. Pp. 7−9. 670 F.3d 1160, vacated and remanded. Breyer, J., delivered the opinion for a unanimous Court.

Section 523(a)(4) of the Federal Bankruptcy Code provides that an individual cannot obtain a bankruptcy discharge from a debt “for fraud or defalcation while acting in a fiduciary capacity, embezzlement, or larceny.” 11 U. S. C. §523(a)(4). We here consider the scope of the term “defalcation.” We hold that it includes a culpable state of mind requirement akin to that which accompanies application of the other terms in the same statutory phrase. We describe that state of mind as one involving knowledge of, or gross recklessness in respect to, the improper nature of the relevant fiduciary behavior. I In 1978, the father of petitioner Randy Bullock established a trust for the benefit of his five children. He made petitioner the (nonprofessional) trustee; and he transferred to the trust a single asset, an insurance policy on his life. 670 F.3d 1160, 1162 (CA11 2012); App. to Pet. for Cert. 33a. The trust instrument permitted the trustee to borrow funds from the insurer against the policy’s value (which, in practice, was available at an insurance-company-determined 6% interest rate). Id., at 17a, 34a, 50a. In 1981, petitioner, at his father’s request, borrowed money from the trust, paying the funds to his mother who used them to repay a debt to the father’s business. In 1984, petitioner again borrowed funds from the trust, this time using the funds to pay for certificates of deposit, which he and his mother used to buy a mill. In 1990, petitioner once again borrowed funds, this time using the money to buy real property for himself and his mother. 670 F. 3d, at 1162. Petitioner saw that all of the borrowed funds were repaid to the trust along with 6% interest. App. to Pet. for Cert. 17a, 45a, 50a; Brief for Petitioner 3; Brief for Respondent 2. In 1999, petitioner’s brothers sued petitioner in Illinois state court. The state court held that petitioner had committed a breach of fiduciary duty. It explained that petitioner “does not appear to have had a malicious motive in borrowing funds from the trust” but nonetheless “was clearly involved in self-dealing.” App. to Pet. for Cert. 45a, 52a. It ordered petitioner to pay the trust “the benefits he received from his breaches” (along with costs and attorney’s fees). Id., at 47a. The court imposed constructive trusts on petitioner’s interests in the mill and the original trust, in order to secure petitioner’s payment of its judgment, with respondent BankChampaign serving as trustee for all of the trusts. 670 F. 3d, at 1162; App. to Pet. for Cert. 47a–48a. After petitioner tried unsuccessfully to liquidate his interests in the mill and other constructive trust assets to obtain funds to make the court-ordered payment, petitioner filed for bankruptcy in federal court. Id., at 27a, 30a. BankChampaign opposed petitioner’s efforts to obtain a bankruptcy discharge of his state-court-imposed debts to the trust. And the Bankruptcy Court granted summary judgment in the bank’s favor. It held that the debts fell within §523(a)(4)’s exception “as a debt for defalcation while acting in a fiduciary capacity.” Id., at 40a–41a. Hence, they were not dischargeable. The Federal District Court reviewed the Bankruptcy Court’s determination. It said that it was “convinced” that BankChampaign was “abusing its position of trust by fail- ing to liquidate the assets,” but it nonetheless affirmed the Bankruptcy Court’s decision. Id., at 27a–28a. In turn, the Court of Appeals affirmed the District Court. It wrote that “defalcation requires a known breach of a fiduciary duty, such that the conduct can be characterized as objectively reckless.” 670 F. 3d, at 1166. And it found that petitioner’s conduct satisfied this standard. Ibid. Petitioner sought certiorari. In effect he has asked us to decide whether the bankruptcy term “defalcation” applies “in the absence of any specific finding of ill intent or evidence of an ultimate loss of trust principal.” Brief for United States as Amicus Curiae 1. See also Pet. for Cert. i. The lower courts have long disagreed about whether “defalcation” includes a scienter requirement and, if so, what kind of scienter it requires. Compare In re Sherman, 658 F.3d 1009, 1017 (CA9 2011) (“defalcation” includes “even innocent acts of failure to fully account for money received in trust” (internal quotation marks and brackets omitted)), with In re Uwimana, 274 F.3d 806, 811 (CA4 2001) (defalcation occurs when “negligence or even an in- nocent mistake . . . results in misappropriation”), with 670 F. 3d, at 1166 (“defalcation requires . . . conduct [that] can be characterized as objectively reckless”), and with In re Baylis, 313 F.3d 9, 20 (CA1 2002) (“defalcation requires something close to a showing of extreme recklessness”). In light of that disagreement, we granted the petition. II A Congress first included the term “defalcation” as an exception to discharge in a federal bankruptcy statute in 1867. See id., at 17. And legal authorities have disagreed about its meaning almost ever since. Dictionary definitions of “defalcation” are not particularly helpful. On the one hand, a law dictionary in use in 1867 defines the word “defalcation” as “the act of a defaulter,” which, in turn, it defines broadly as one “who is deficient in his accounts, or fails in making his accounts correct.” 1 J. Bouvier, Law Dictionary 387, 388 (4th ed. 1852). See also 4 Oxford English Dictionary 369 (2d ed. 1989) (quoting an 1846 definition that defines the term as “ ‘a breach of trust by one who has charge or management of money’ ”). Modern dictionaries contain similarly broad definitional language. Black’s Law Dictionary, for example, defines “defalcation” first as “Embezzlement,” but, second, as “[l]oosely, the failure to meet an obligation; a nonfraudulent default.” Black’s Law Dictionary 479 (9th ed. 2009) (hereinafter Black’s). See also American Heritage Dictionary 474 (5th ed. 2011) (“To misuse funds; embezzle”); 4 Oxford English Dictionary, supra, at 369 (“monetary deficiency through breach of trust by one who has the management or charge of funds; a fraudulent deficiency in money matters”); Webster’s New International Dictionary 686 (2d ed. 1954) (“An abstraction or misappropriation of money by one, esp. an officer or agent, having it in trust”); Webster’s Third New International Dictionary 590 (1986) (“misappropriation of money in one’s keeping”). On the other hand, an 1842 bankruptcy treatise warns that fiduciaries “are not supposed to commit defalcation in the matter of their trust, without . . . at least such criminal negligence as admits of no excuse.” G. Bicknell, Commentary on the Bankrupt Law of 1841, Showing Its Operation and Effect 12 (2d ed. 1842). Modern dictionaries often accompany their broad definitions with illustrative terms such as “embezzle,” American Heritage Dictionary, supra, at 474, or “fraudulent deficiency,” 4 Oxford English Dictionary, supra, at 369. And the editor of Black’s Law Dictionary has written that the term should be read as limited to deficiencies that are “fraudulent” and which are “the fault of someone put in trust of the money.” B. Garner, Modern American Usage 232 (3d ed. 2009) (emphasis added). Similarly, courts of appeals have long disagreed about the mental state that must accompany the bankruptcy-related definition of “defalcation.” Many years ago Judge Augustus Hand wrote that “the misappropriation must be due to a known breach of the duty, and not to mere negligence or mistake.” In re Bernard, 87 F.2d 705, 707 (CA2 1937). But Judge Learned Hand suggested that the term “may have included innocent defaults.” Central Hanover Bank & Trust Co. v. Herbst, 93 F.2d 510, 511 (CA2 1937) (emphasis added). A more modern treatise on trusts ends its discussion of the subject with a question mark. 4 A. Scott, W. Fratcher, & M. Ascher, Scott and Ascher on Trusts §24.26 P. 1797 (5th ed. 2007). In resolving these differences, we note that this long- standing disagreement concerns state of mind, not whether “defalcation” can cover a trustee’s failure (as here) to make a trust more than whole. We consequently shall assume without deciding that the statutory term is broad enough to cover the latter type of conduct and answer only the “state of mind” question. B 1 We base our approach and our answer upon one of this Court’s precedents. In 1878, this Court interpreted the related statutory term “fraud” in the portion of the Bankruptcy Code laying out exceptions to discharge. Justice Harlan wrote for the Court: “[D]ebts created by ‘fraud’ are associated directly with debts created by ‘embezzlement.’ Such association justifies, if it does not imperatively require, the conclusion that the ‘fraud’ referred to in that section means positive fraud, or fraud in fact, involving moral turpitude or intentional wrong, as does embezzlement; and not implied fraud, or fraud in law, which may exist without the imputation of bad faith or immorality.” Neal v. Clark, 95 U.S. 704, 709 (1878). We believe that the statutory term “defalcation” should be treated similarly. Thus, where the conduct at issue does not involve bad faith, moral turpitude, or other immoral conduct, the term requires an intentional wrong. We include as intentional not only conduct that the fiduciary knows is improper but also reckless conduct of the kind that the criminal law often treats as the equivalent. Thus, we include reckless conduct of the kind set forth in the Model Penal Code. Where actual knowledge of wrongdoing is lacking, we consider conduct as equivalent if the fiduciary “consciously disregards” (or is willfully blind to) “a substantial and unjustifiable risk” that his conduct will turn out to violate a fiduciary duty. ALI, Model Penal Code §2.02(2)(c), p. 226 (1985). See id., §2.02 Comment 9, at 248 (explaining that the Model Penal Code’s definition of “knowledge” was designed to include “ ‘wilful blindness’ ”). That risk “must be of such a nature and degree that, considering the nature and purpose of the actor’s conduct and the cir- cumstances known to him, its disregard involves a gross deviation from the standard of conduct that a law-abiding person would observe in the actor’s situation.” Id., §2.02(2)(c), at 226 (emphasis added). Cf. Ernst & Ernst v. Hochfelder, 425 U.S. 185, 194, n. 12 (1976) (defining scienter for securities law purposes as “a mental state embracing intent to deceive, manipulate, or defraud”). 2 Several considerations lead us to interpret the statutory term “defalcation” in this way. First, as Justice Harlan pointed out in Neal, statutory context strongly favors this interpretation. Applying the canon of interpretation noscitur a sociis, the Court there looked to fraud’s linguistic neighbor, “embezzlement.” It found that both terms refer to different forms of generally similar conduct. It wrote that both are “ ‘ejusdem generis,’ ” of the same kind, and that both are “ ‘referable to the same subject-matter.’ ” 95 U. S., at 709. Moreover, embezzlement requires a showing of wrongful intent. Ibid. (noting that embezzlement “involv[es] moral turpitude or intentional wrong”). See Moore v. United States, 160 U.S. 268, 269–270 (1895) (describing embezzlement and larceny as requiring “felonious intent”). See also, e.g., W. LaFave, Criminal Law §19.6(a), p. 995 (5th ed. 2010) (“intent to deprive” is part of embezzlement). Hence, the Court concluded, “fraud” must require an equivalent showing. Neal, supra, at 709. Neal has been the law for more than a century. And here, the additional neighbors (“larceny” and, as defined in Neal, “fraud”) mean that the canon noscitur a sociis argues even more strongly for similarly interpreting the similar statutory term “defalcation.” Second, this interpretation does not make the word identical to its statutory neighbors. See Babbitt v. Sweet Home Chapter, Communities for Great Ore., 515 U.S. 687, 698 (1995) (noting “[a] reluctance to treat statutory terms as surplusage”). As commonly used, “embezzlement” requires conversion, and “larceny” requires taking and carrying away another’s property. See LaFave, Criminal Law §§19.2, 19.5 (larceny); id., §19.6 (embezzlement). “Fraud” typically requires a false statement or omission. See id., §19.7 (discussing fraud in the context of false pretenses). “Defalcation,” as commonly used (hence as Congress might have understood it), can encompass a breach of fiduciary obligation that involves neither conversion, nor taking and carrying away another’s property, nor falsity. Black’s 479. See, e.g., In re Frankel, 77 B.R. 401 (Bkrtcy. Ct. WDNY 1987) (finding a breach of fiduciary duty and defalcation based on an unreasonable sale of assets). Nor are embezzlement, larceny, and fiduciary fraud simply special cases of defalcation as so defined. The statutory provision makes clear that the first two terms apply outside of the fiduciary context; and “defalcation,” unlike “fraud,” may be used to refer to nonfraudulent breaches of fiduciary duty. Black’s 479. Third, the interpretation is consistent with the long-standing principle that “exceptions to discharge ‘should be confined to those plainly expressed.’ ” Kawaauhau v. Geiger, 523 U.S. 57, 62 (1998) (quoting Gleason v. Thaw, 236 U.S. 558, 562 (1915)). See Local Loan Co. v. Hunt, 292 U.S. 234, 244 (1934); Neal, supra, at 709. It is also consistent with a set of statutory exceptions that Congress normally confines to circumstances where strong, special policy considerations, such as the presence of fault, argue for preserving the debt, thereby benefiting, for example, a typically more honest creditor. See, e.g., 11 U. S. C. §§523(a)(2)(A), (a)(2)(B), (a)(6), (a)(9) (fault). See also, e.g., §§523(a)(1), (a)(7), (a)(14), (a)(14A) (taxes); §523(a)(8) (educational loans); §523(a)(15) (spousal and child support). In the absence of fault, it is difficult to find strong policy reasons favoring a broader exception here, at least in respect to those whom a scienter requirement will most likely help, namely nonprofessional trustees, perhaps administering small family trusts potentially immersed in intrafamily arguments that are difficult to evaluate in terms of comparative fault. Fourth, as far as the briefs before us reveal, at least some Circuits have interpreted the statute similarly for many years without administrative, or other practical, difficulties. Baylis, 313 F.3d 9. See also In re Hyman, 502 F.3d 61, 69 (CA2 2007) (“This [scienter] standard . . . also has the virtue of ease of application since the courts and litigants have reference to a robust body of securities law examining what these terms mean”). Finally, it is important to have a uniform interpreta- tion of federal law, the choices are limited, and neither the parties nor the Government has presented us with strong considerations favoring a different interpretation. In addition to those we have already discussed, the Government has pointed to the fact that in 1970 Congress rewrote the statute, eliminating the word “misappropriation” and placing the term “defalcation” (previously in a different exemption provision) alongside its present three neighbors. See Brief for United States as Amicus Curiae 16–17. The Government believes that these changes support reading “defalcation” without a scienter requirement. But one might argue, with equal plausibility, that the changes reflect a decision to make certain that courts would read in similar ways “defalcation,” “fraud,” “embezzlement,” and “larceny.” In fact, we believe the 1970 changes are inconclusive. III In this case the Court of Appeals applied a standard of “objectiv[e] reckless[ness]” to facts presented at summary judgment. 670 F. 3d, at 1166. We consequently remand the case to permit the court to determine whether further proceedings are needed and, if so, to apply the heightened standard that we have set forth. For these reasons we vacate the judgment of the Court of Appeals and remand the case for further proceedings consistent with this opinion. It is so ordered.

568.US.165

The Hague Convention on the Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction requires the judicial or administrative authority of a Contracting State to order a child returned to her country of habitual residence if the authority finds that the child has been wrongfully removed to or retained in the Contracting State. The International Child Abduction Remedies Act (ICARA) implements the Convention in the United States, granting federal and state courts concurrent jurisdiction over Convention actions and directing those courts to decide cases in accordance with the Convention. ICARA also requires defendants to pay various expenses incurred by plaintiffs associated with the return of children. Petitioner Mr. Chafin, a United States citizen and member of the military, married respondent Ms. Chafin, a United Kingdom citizen, in Germany, where they later had a daughter, E. C. When Mr. Chafin was deployed to Afghanistan, Ms. Chafin took E. C. to Scotland. Mr. Chafin was later transferred to Huntsville, Alabama, and Ms. Chafin eventually traveled there with E. C. Soon after Ms. Chafin’s arrival, Mr. Chafin filed for divorce and child custody in Alabama. Ms. Chafin was subsequently deported, but E. C. remained in Alabama with Mr. Chafin. Several months later, Ms. Chafin filed a petition under the Convention and ICARA, seeking E. C.’s return to Scotland. The District Court concluded that E. C.’s country of habitual residence was Scotland and granted the petition for return. Ms. Chafin immediately departed for Scotland with E. C. Ms. Chafin then initiated custody proceedings in Scotland and was granted interim custody and a preliminary injunction prohibiting Mr. Chafin from removing E. C. from Scotland. Mr. Chafin appealed the District Court’s order, but the Eleventh Circuit dismissed the appeal as moot, on the ground that once a child has been returned to a foreign country, a U. S. court becomes powerless to grant relief. On remand, the District Court ordered Mr. Chafin to reimburse Ms. Chafin for court costs, attorney’s fees, and travel expenses. Held: The return of a child to a foreign country pursuant to a Convention return order does not render an appeal of that order moot. Pp. 5–14. (a) Article III restricts the power of federal courts to “Cases” and “Controversies,” and this “requirement subsists through all stages of [the] proceedings,” Lewis v. Continental Bank Corp., 494 U.S. 472, 477. No case or controversy exists, and a suit becomes moot, “when the issues presented are no longer ‘live’ or the parties lack a legally cognizable interest in the outcome,” Already, LLC v. Nike, Inc., 568 U. S. ___, ___. But a case “becomes moot only when it is impossible for a court to grant any effectual relief whatever to the prevailing party,” Knox v. Service Employees, 567 U. S. ___, ___. As “long as the parties have a concrete interest, however small, in the outcome of the litigation, the case is not moot,” ibid. Pp. 5–6. (b) Because the Chafins continue to vigorously contest the question of where their daughter will be raised, this dispute is very much alive. This case does not address “a hypothetical state of facts,” Lewis, supra, at 477, and there continues to exist between the parties “that concrete adverseness which sharpens the presentation of issues,” Camreta v. Greene, 563 U. S. ___, ___. Pp. 6–11. (1) Mr. Chafin seeks typical appellate relief: reversal of the District Court determination that E. C.’s habitual residence was Scotland and, upon reversal, an order that E. C. be returned to the United States. The question is whether such relief would be effectual. In arguing that this case is moot because the District Court has no authority to issue a re-return order either under the Convention or pursuant to its inherent equitable powers, Ms. Chafin confuses mootness with the merits. See, e.g., Powell v. McCormack, 395 U.S. 486, 500. Mr. Chafin’s claim for re-return cannot be dismissed as so implausible that it is insufficient to preserve jurisdiction, and his prospects of success are therefore not pertinent to the mootness inquiry. As to the effectiveness of any relief, even if Scotland were to ignore a re-return order, this case would not be moot. The U. S. courts continue to have personal jurisdiction over Ms. Chafin and may command her to take action under threat of sanctions. She could decide to comply with an order against her and return E. C. to the United States. Enforcement of the order may be uncertain if Ms. Chafin chooses to defy it, but such uncertainty does not typically render cases moot. Pp. 7–10. (2) Mr. Chafin also seeks, if he prevails, vacatur of the District Court’s expense orders. That too is common relief on appeal, and the mootness inquiry comes down to its effectiveness. In contending that this case is moot due to Mr. Chafin’s failure to pursue an appeal of the expense orders, which were entered as separate judgments, Ms. Chafin again confuses mootness with the merits. Because there is authority for the proposition that failure to appeal such judgments separately does not preclude relief, it is for lower courts at later stages of the litigation to decide whether Mr. Chafin is in fact entitled to the relief he seeks. That relief would not be “ ‘fully satisfactory,’ ” but “even the availability of a ‘partial remedy’ is ‘sufficient to prevent [a] case from being moot,’ ” Calderon v. Moore, 518 U.S. 149, 150. Pp. 10–11. (c) Manipulating constitutional doctrine and holding these cases moot is not necessary to achieve the ends of the Convention and ICARA, and may undermine the treaty’s goals and harm the children meant to be protected. If these cases were to become moot upon return, courts would be more likely to grant stays as a matter of course, to prevent the loss of any right to appeal. Such routine stays would conflict with the Convention’s mandate of prompt return. Courts should instead apply traditional factors in considering whether to stay a return order, see, e.g., Nken v. Holder, 556 U.S. 418, 434, thus ensuring that each case will receive the individualized treatment necessary for appropriate consideration of the child’s best interests. Finally, at both the district and appellate court level, courts should take steps to decide these cases as expeditiously as possible. Pp. 11–14. Vacated and remanded. Roberts, C. J., delivered the opinion for a unanimous Court. Ginsburg, J., filed a concurring opinion, in which Scalia and Breyer, JJ., joined.

The Hague Convention on the Civil Aspects of Inter- national Child Abduction generally requires courts in the United States to order children returned to their countries of habitual residence, if the courts find that the children have been wrongfully removed to or retained in the United States. The question is whether, after a child is returned pursuant to such an order, any appeal of the order is moot. I A The Hague Conference on Private International Law adopted the Hague Convention on the Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction in 1980. T. I. A. S. No. 11670, S. Treaty Doc. No. 99–11. In 1988, the United States ratified the treaty and passed implementing legislation, known as the International Child Abduction Remedies Act (ICARA), 102Stat. 437, 42 U. S. C. §11601 et seq. See generally Abbott v. Abbott, 560 U. S. ___, ___–___ (2010) (slip op., at 4–5). The Convention seeks “to secure the prompt return of children wrongfully removed to or retained in any Contracting State” and “to ensure that rights of custody and of access under the law of one Contracting State are ef- fectively respected in the other Contracting States.” Art. 1, S. Treaty Doc. No. 99–11, at 7. Article 3 of the Convention provides that the “removal or the retention of a child is to be considered wrongful” when “it is in breach of rights of custody attributed to a person, an institution or any other body, either jointly or alone, under the law of the State in which the child was habitually resident immediately before the removal or retention” and “at the time of removal or retention those rights were actually exercised, either jointly or alone, or would have been so exercised but for the removal or retention.” Ibid. Article 12 then states: “Where a child has been wrongfully removed or retained in terms of Article 3 and, at the date of the commencement of the proceedings before the judicial or administrative authority of the Contracting State where the child is, a period of less than one year has elapsed from the date of the wrongful removal or retention, the authority concerned shall order the return of the child forthwith.” Id., at 9. There are several exceptions to that command. Return is not required if the parent seeking it was not exercising custody rights at the time of removal or had consented to removal, if there is a “grave risk” that return will result in harm, if the child is mature and objects to return, or if return would conflict with fundamental principles of freedom and human rights in the state from which return is requested. Arts. 13, 20, id., at 10, 11. Finally, the Convention directs Contracting States to “designate a Central Authority to discharge the duties which are imposed by the Convention.” Art. 6, id., at 8; see also Art. 7, ibid. Congress established procedures for implementing the Convention in ICARA. See 42 U. S. C. §11601(b)(1). The Act grants federal and state courts concurrent jurisdiction over actions arising under the Convention, §11603(a), and directs them to “decide the case in accordance with the Convention,” §11603(d). If those courts find children to have been wrongfully removed or retained, the children “are to be promptly returned.” §11601(a)(4). ICARA also provides that courts ordering children returned generally must require defendants to pay various expenses incurred by plaintiffs, including court costs, legal fees, and transportation costs associated with the return of the children. §11607(b)(3). ICARA instructs the President to designate the U. S. Central Authority, §11606(a), and the President has designated the Office of Children’s Issues in the State Department’s Bureau of Consular Affairs, 22 CFR §94.2 (2012). Eighty-nine nations are party to the Convention as of this writing. Hague Conference on Private Int’l Law, Status Table, Convention of 25 October 1980 on the Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction, http:// www.hcch.net. In the 2009 fiscal year, 324 children removed to or retained in other countries were returned to the United States under the Convention, while 154 children removed to or retained in the United States were returned to their countries of habitual residence. Dept. of State, Report on Compliance with the Hague Convention on the Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction 6 (2010). B Petitioner Jeffrey Lee Chafin is a citizen of the United States and a sergeant first class in the U. S. Army. While stationed in Germany in 2006, he married respondent Lynne Hales Chafin, a citizen of the United Kingdom. Their daughter E. C. was born the following year. Later in 2007, Mr. Chafin was deployed to Afghanistan, and Ms. Chafin took E. C. to Scotland. Mr. Chafin was eventually transferred to Huntsville, Alabama, and in February 2010, Ms. Chafin traveled to Alabama with E. C. Soon thereafter, however, Mr. Chafin filed for divorce and for child custody in Alabama state court. Towards the end of the year, Ms. Chafin was arrested for domestic violence, an incident that alerted U. S. Citizenship and Immigration Services to the fact that she had overstayed her visa. She was deported in February 2011, and E. C. remained in Mr. Chafin’s care for several more months. In May 2011, Ms. Chafin initiated this case in the U. S. District Court for the Northern District of Alabama. She filed a petition under the Convention and ICARA seeking an order for E. C.’s return to Scotland. On October 11 and 12, 2011, the District Court held a bench trial. Upon the close of arguments, the court ruled in favor of Ms. Chafin, concluding that E. C.’s country of habitual residence was Scotland and granting the petition for return. Mr. Chafin immediately moved for a stay pending appeal, but the court denied his request. Within hours, Ms. Chafin left the country with E. C., headed for Scotland. By December 2011, she had initiated custody proceedings there. The Scottish court soon granted her interim custody and a preliminary injunction, prohibiting Mr. Chafin from removing E. C. from Scotland. In the meantime, Mr. Chafin had appealed the District Court order to the Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit. In February 2012, the Eleventh Circuit dismissed Mr. Chafin’s appeal as moot in a one-paragraph order, citing Bekier v. Bekier, 248 F.3d 1051 (2001). App. to Pet. for Cert. 1–2. In Bekier, the Eleventh Circuit had concluded that an appeal of a Convention return order was moot when the child had been returned to the foreign country, because the court “became powerless” to grant relief. 248 F. 3d, at 1055. In accordance with Bekier, the Court of Appeals remanded this case to the District Court with instructions to dismiss the suit as moot and vacate its order. On remand, the District Court did so, and also ordered Mr. Chafin to pay Ms. Chafin over $94,000 in court costs, attorney’s fees, and travel expenses. Meanwhile, the Alabama state court had dismissed the child custody proceeding initiated by Mr. Chafin for lack of jurisdiction. The Alabama Court of Civil Appeals affirmed, relying in part on the U. S. District Court’s finding that the child’s habitual residence was not Alabama, but Scotland. We granted certiorari to review the judgment of the Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit. 567 U. S. ___ (2012). II Article III of the Constitution restricts the power of federal courts to “Cases” and “Controversies.” Accordingly, “[t]o invoke the jurisdiction of a federal court, a litigant must have suffered, or be threatened with, an actual injury traceable to the defendant and likely to be redressed by a favorable judicial decision.” Lewis v. Continental Bank Corp., 494 U.S. 472, 477 (1990). Federal courts may not “decide questions that cannot affect the rights of litigants in the case before them” or give “opinion[s] advising what the law would be upon a hypothetical state of facts.” Ibid. (quoting North Carolina v. Rice, 404 U.S. 244, 246 (1971) (per curiam); internal quotation marks omitted). The “case-or-controversy requirement subsists through all stages of federal judicial proceedings, trial and appellate.” Lewis, 494 U. S., at 477. “[I]t is not enough that a dispute was very much alive when suit was filed”; the parties must “continue to have a ‘personal stake’ ” in the ultimate disposition of the lawsuit. Id., at 477–478 (quoting Los Angeles v. Lyons, 461 U.S. 95, 101 (1983); some internal quotation marks omitted). There is thus no case or controversy, and a suit becomes moot, “when the issues presented are no longer ‘live’ or the parties lack a legally cognizable interest in the outcome.” Already, LLC v. Nike, Inc., 568 U. S. ___, ___ (2013) (slip op., at 4) (quoting Murphy v. Hunt, 455 U.S. 478, 481 (1982) (per curiam); some internal quotation marks omitted). But a case “becomes moot only when it is impossible for a court to grant any effectual relief whatever to the prevailing party.” Knox v. Service Employees, 567 U. S. ___, ___ (2012) (slip op., at 7) (internal quotation marks omitted); see also Church of Scientology of Cal. v. United States, 506 U.S. 9, 12 (1992) (“if an event occurs while a case is pending on appeal that makes it impossible for the court to grant ‘any effectual relief whatever’ to a prevailing party, the appeal must be dismissed” (quoting Mills v. Green, 159 U.S. 651, 653 (1895))). “As long as the parties have a concrete interest, however small, in the outcome of the litigation, the case is not moot.” Knox, supra, at ___ (slip op., at 7) (internal quotation marks and brackets omitted). III This dispute is still very much alive. Mr. Chafin con- tinues to contend that his daughter’s country of habitual residence is the United States, while Ms. Chafin maintains that E. C.’s home is in Scotland. Mr. Chafin also argues that even if E. C.’s habitual residence was Scotland, she should not have been returned because the Convention’s defenses to return apply. Mr. Chafin seeks custody of E. C., and wants to pursue that relief in the United States, while Ms. Chafin is pursuing that right for herself in Scotland. And Mr. Chafin wants the orders that he pay Ms. Chafin over $94,000 vacated, while Ms. Chafin asserts the money is rightfully owed. On many levels, the Chafins continue to vigorously contest the question of where their daughter will be raised. This is not a case where a decision would address “a hypothetical state of facts.” Lewis, supra, at 477 (quoting Rice, supra, at 246; internal quotation marks omitted). And there is not the slightest doubt that there continues to exist between the parties “that concrete adverseness which sharpens the presentation of issues.” Camreta v. Greene, 563 U. S. ___, ___ (2011) (slip op., at 5) (quoting Lyons, supra, at 101; internal quotations marks omitted). A At this point in the ongoing dispute, Mr. Chafin seeks reversal of the District Court determination that E. C.’s habitual residence was Scotland and, if that determination is reversed, an order that E. C. be returned to the United States (or “re-return,” as the parties have put it). In short, Mr. Chafin is asking for typical appellate relief: that the Court of Appeals reverse the District Court and that the District Court undo what it has done. See Arkadelphia Milling Co. v. St. Louis Southwestern R. Co., 249 U.S. 134, 145–146 (1919); Northwestern Fuel Co. v. Brock, 139 U.S. 216, 219 (1891) (“Jurisdiction to correct what had been wrongfully done must remain with the court so long as the parties and the case are properly before it, either in the first instance or when remanded to it by an appellate tribunal”). The question is whether such relief would be effectual in this case. Ms. Chafin argues that this case is moot because the District Court lacks the authority to issue a re-return order either under the Convention or pursuant to its in- herent equitable powers. But that argument—which goes to the meaning of the Convention and the legal availability of a certain kind of relief—confuses mootness with the merits. In Powell v. McCormack, 395 U.S. 486 (1969), this Court held that a claim for backpay saved the case from mootness, even though the defendants argued that the backpay claim had been brought in the wrong court and therefore could not result in relief. As the Court explained, “this argument . . . confuses mootness with whether [the plaintiff] has established a right to recover . . . , a question which it is inappropriate to treat at this stage of the litigation.” Id., at 500. Mr. Chafin’s claim for re-return—under the Convention itself or according to general equitable principles—cannot be dismissed as so implausible that it is insufficient to preserve jurisdiction, see Steel Co. v. Citizens for Better Environment, 523 U.S. 83, 89 (1998), and his prospects of success are therefore not pertinent to the mootness inquiry. As to the effectiveness of any relief, Ms. Chafin asserts that even if the habitual residence ruling were reversed and the District Court were to issue a re-return order, that relief would be ineffectual because Scotland would simply ignore it.[1] But even if Scotland were to ignore a U. S. re-return order, or decline to assist in enforcing it, this case would not be moot. The U. S. courts continue to have personal jurisdiction over Ms. Chafin, may command her to take action even outside the United States, and may back up any such command with sanctions. See Steele v. Bulova Watch Co., 344 U.S. 280, 289 (1952); cf. Leman v. Krentler-Arnold Hinge Last Co., 284 U.S. 448, 451–452 (1932). No law of physics prevents E. C.’s return from Scotland, see Fawcett v. McRoberts, 326 F.3d 491, 496 (CA4 2003), abrogated on other grounds by Abbott v. Abbott, 560 U. S. ___ (2010), and Ms. Chafin might decide to comply with an order against her and return E. C. to the United States, see, e.g., Larbie v. Larbie, 690 F.3d 295, 303–304 (CA5 2012) (mother who had taken child to United Kingdom complied with Texas court sanctions order and order to return child to United States for trial), cert. pending, No. 12–304.[2] After all, the consequence of compliance presumably would not be relinquishment of custody rights, but simply custody proceedings in a different forum. Enforcement of the order may be uncertain if Ms. Cha- fin chooses to defy it, but such uncertainty does not typically render cases moot. Courts often adjudicate disputes where the practical impact of any decision is not assured. For example, courts issue default judgments against defendants who failed to appear or participate in the proceedings and therefore seem less likely to comply. See Fed. Rule Civ. Proc. 55. Similarly, the fact that a defendant is insolvent does not moot a claim for damages. See 13C C. Wright, A. Miller, & E. Cooper, Federal Practice and Procedure §3533.3, p. 3 (3d ed. 2008) (cases not moot “even though the defendant does not seem able to pay any portion of the damages claimed”). Courts also decide cases against foreign nations, whose choices to respect final rulings are not guaranteed. See, e.g., Republic of Austria v. Altmann, 541 U.S. 677 (2004) (suit against Austria for return of paintings); Republic of Argentina v. Weltover, Inc., 504 U.S. 607 (1992) (suit against Argentina for repayment of bonds). And we have heard the Government’s appeal from the reversal of a conviction, even though the defendants had been deported, reducing the practical impact of any decision; we concluded that the case was not moot because the defendants might “re-enter this country on their own” and encounter the consequences of our ruling. United States v. Villamonte-Marquez, 462 U.S. 579, 581, n. 2 (1983). So too here. A re-return order may not result in the return of E. C. to the United States, just as an order that an insolvent defendant pay $100 million may not make the plaintiff rich. But it cannot be said that the parties here have no “concrete interest” in whether Mr. Chafin secures a re-return order. Knox, 567 U. S., at ___ (slip op., at 7) (internal quotation marks omitted). “[H]owever small” that concrete interest may be due to potential difficulties in enforcement, it is not simply a matter of academic debate, and is enough to save this case from mootness. Ibid. (internal quotation marks omitted). B Mr. Chafin also seeks, if he prevails, vacatur of the District Court’s expense orders. The District Court ordered Mr. Chafin to pay Ms. Chafin over $94,000 in court costs, attorney’s fees, and travel expenses. See Civ. No. 11–1461 (ND Ala., Mar. 7, 2012), pp. 15–16; Civ. No. 11–1461 (ND Ala., June 5, 2012), p. 2. That award was predicated on the District Court’s earlier judgment allowing Ms. Chafin to return with her daughter to Scotland. See Civ. No. 11–1461 (ND Ala., Mar. 7, 2012), pp. 2–3, and n. 2.[3] Thus, in conjunction with reversal of the judgment, Mr. Chafin desires vacatur of the award. That too is common relief on appeal, see, e.g., Fawcett, supra, at 501, n. 6 (reversing costs and fees award when reversing on the issue of wrongful removal), and the mootness inquiry comes down to its effectiveness. At oral argument, Ms. Chafin contended that such relief was “gone in this case,” and that the case was therefore moot, because Mr. Chafin had failed to pursue an appeal of the expense orders, which had been entered as separate judgments. Tr. of Oral Arg. 33; see Civ. No. 11–1461 (ND Ala., Mar. 7, 2012); Civ. No. 11–1461 (ND Ala., June 5, 2012). But this is another argument on the merits. Mr. Chafin’s requested relief is not so implausible that it may be disregarded on the question of jurisdiction; there is authority for the proposition that failure to appeal such judgments separately does not preclude relief. See 15B Wright, Miller, & Cooper, supra, §3915.6, at 230, and n. 39.5 (2d ed., Supp. 2012) (citing cases). It is thus for lower courts at later stages of the litigation to decide whether Mr. Chafin is in fact entitled to the relief he seeks—vacatur of the expense orders. Such relief would of course not be “ ‘fully satisfactory,’ ” but with respect to the case as whole, “even the availability of a ‘partial remedy’ is ‘sufficient to prevent [a] case from being moot.’ ” Calderon v. Moore, 518 U.S. 149, 150 (1996) (per curiam) (quoting Church of Scientology, 506 U. S., at 13). IV Ms. Chafin is correct to emphasize that both the Hague Convention and ICARA stress the importance of the prompt return of children wrongfully removed or retained. We are also sympathetic to the concern that shuttling children back and forth between parents and across international borders may be detrimental to those children. But courts can achieve the ends of the Convention and ICARA—and protect the well-being of the affected children—through the familiar judicial tools of expediting proceedings and granting stays where appropriate. There is no need to manipulate constitutional doctrine and hold these cases moot. Indeed, doing so may very well undermine the goals of the treaty and harm the children it is meant to protect. If these cases were to become moot upon return, courts would be more likely to grant stays as a matter of course, to prevent the loss of any right to appeal. See, e.g., Garrison v. Hudson, 468 U.S. 1301, 1302 (1984) (Burger, C. J., in chambers) (“When . . . the normal course of appellate review might otherwise cause the case to become moot, issuance of a stay is warranted” (citation and internal quotation marks omitted)); Nicolson v. Pappalardo, Civ. No. 10–1125 (CA1, Feb. 19, 2010) (“Without necessarily finding a clear probability that appellant will prevail, we grant the stay because . . . a risk exists that the case could effectively be mooted by the child’s departure”). In cases in which a stay would not be granted but for the prospect of mootness, a child would lose precious months when she could have been readjusting to life in her country of habitual residence, even though the appeal had little chance of success. Such routine stays due to mootness would be likely but would conflict with the Convention’s mandate of prompt return to a child’s country of habitual residence. Routine stays could also increase the number of appeals. Currently, only about 15% of Hague Convention cases are appealed. Hague Conference on Private Int’l Law, N. Lowe, A Statistical Analysis of Applications Made in 2008 Under the Hague Convention of 25 October 1980 on the Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction, Pt. III–National Reports 207 (2011). If losing parents were effectively guaranteed a stay, it seems likely that more would appeal, a scenario that would undermine the goal of prompt return and the best interests of children who should in fact be returned. A mootness holding here might also encourage flight in future Hague Convention cases, as prevailing parents try to flee the jurisdiction to moot the case. See Bekier, 248 F. 3d, at 1055 (mootness holding “to some degree conflicts with the purposes of the Convention: to prevent parents from fleeing jurisdictions to find a more favorable judicial forum”). Courts should apply the four traditional stay factors in considering whether to stay a return order: “ ‘(1) whether the stay applicant has made a strong showing that he is likely to succeed on the merits; (2) whether the applicant will be irreparably injured absent a stay; (3) whether issuance of the stay will substantially injure the other parties interested in the proceeding; and (4) where the public interest lies.’ ” Nken v. Holder, 556 U.S. 418, 434 (2009) (quoting Hilton v. Braunskill, 481 U.S. 770, 776 (1987)). In every case under the Hague Convention, the well-being of a child is at stake; application of the traditional stay factors ensures that each case will receive the individualized treatment necessary for appropriate consideration of the child’s best interests. Importantly, whether at the district or appellate court level, courts can and should take steps to decide these cases as expeditiously as possible, for the sake of the children who find themselves in such an unfortunate situation. Many courts already do so. See Federal Judicial Center, J. Garbolino, The 1980 Hague Convention on the Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction: A Guide for Judges 116, n. 435 (2012) (listing courts that expedite appeals). Cases in American courts often take over two years from filing to resolution; for a six-year-old such as E. C., that is one-third of her lifetime. Expedition will help minimize the extent to which uncertainty adds to the challenges confronting both parents and child. * * * The Hague Convention mandates the prompt return of children to their countries of habitual residence. But such return does not render this case moot; there is a live dispute between the parties over where their child will be raised, and there is a possibility of effectual relief for the prevailing parent. The courts below therefore continue to have jurisdiction to adjudicate the merits of the parties’ respective claims. The judgment of the United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit is vacated, and the case is remanded for further proceedings consistent with this opinion. It is so ordered. Notes 1 Whether Scotland would do so is unclear; Ms. Chafin cited no authority for her assertion in her brief or at oral argument. In a recently issued decision from the Family Division of the High Court of Justiceof England and Wales, a judge of that court rejected the “concept of automatic re-return of a child in response to the overturn of [a] Hague order.” DL v. EL, [2013] EWHC 49, ¶59 (Judgt. of Jan. 17). The judge in that case did not ignore the pertinent re-return order—issued by the District Court in Larbie v. Larbie, 690 F.3d 295 (CA5 2012), cert. pending, No. 12–304—but did not consider it binding in light of the proceedings in England. Earlier in those proceedings, the Family Division of the High Court directed the parties to provide this Court with a joint statement onthe status of those proceedings. This Court is grateful for thatconsideration. 2 Ms. Chafin suggests that the Scottish court’s ne exeat order prohibits E. C. from leaving Scotland. The ne exeat order, however, only prohibits Mr. Chafin from removing E. C. from Scotland; it does not constrain Ms. Chafin in the same way. 3 The award was predicated on the earlier judgment even though that judgment was vacated. The District Court cited Eleventh Circuit cases for the proposition that if a plaintiff obtains relief before a district court and the case becomes moot on appeal, the plaintiff is still a prevailing party entitled to attorney’s fees. We express no view on that question. The fact remains that the District Court ordered Mr. Chafin to pay attorney’s fees and travel expenses based on its earlier ruling. A reversal, as opposed to vacatur, of the earlier ruling could change the prevailing party calculus and afford Mr. Chafin effective relief.

568.US.342

Immigration officials initiated removal proceedings against petitioner Chaidez in 2009 upon learning that she had pleaded guilty to mail fraud in 2004. To avoid removal, she sought to overturn that conviction by filing a petition for a writ of coram nobis, contending that her former attorney’s failure to advise her of the guilty plea’s immigration consequences constituted ineffective assistance of counsel under the Sixth Amendment. While her petition was pending, this Court held in Padilla v. Kentucky, 559 U. S. ___, that the Sixth Amendment requires defense attorneys to inform non-citizen clients of the deportation risks of guilty pleas. The District Court vacated Chaidez’s conviction, determining that Padilla did not announce a “new rule” under Teague v. Lane, 489 U.S. 288, and thus applied to Chaidez’s case. The Seventh Circuit reversed, holding that Padilla had declared a new rule and should not apply in a challenge to a final conviction. Held: Padilla does not apply retroactively to cases already final on direct review. Pp. 3−15. (a) Under Teague, a person whose conviction is already final may not benefit from a new rule of criminal procedure on collateral review. A “case announces a new rule if the result was not dictated by precedent existing at the time the defendant’s conviction became final.” Teague, 489 U. S., at 301. And a holding is not so dictated unless it would have been “apparent to all reasonable jurists.” Lambrix v. Singletary, 520 U.S. 518, 527−528. At the same time, a case does not “announce a new rule, [when] it [is] merely an application of the principle that governed” a prior decision to a different set of facts. Teague, 489 U. S., at 307. Thus, garden-variety applications of the test in Strickland v. Washington, 466 U.S. 668, for assessing ineffective assistance claims do not produce new rules, id., at 687−688. But Padilla did more than just apply Strickland’s general standard to yet another factual situation. Before deciding if failing to inform a client about the risk of deportation “fell below [Strickland’s] objective standard of reasonableness,” 466 U. S., at 688, Padilla first considered the threshold question whether advice about deportation was “categorically removed” from the scope of the Sixth Amendment right to counsel because it involved only a “collateral consequence” of a conviction, rather than a component of a criminal sentence, 559 U. S., at ___. That is, prior to asking how the Strickland test applied, Padilla asked whether that test applied at all. That preliminary question came to the Court unsettled. Hill v. Lockhart, 474 U.S. 52, had explicitly left open whether the Sixth Amendment right extends to collateral consequences. That left the issue to the state and lower federal courts, and they almost unanimously concluded that the Sixth Amendment does not require attorneys to inform their clients of a conviction’s collateral consequences, including deportation. Padilla’s contrary ruling thus answered an open question about the Sixth Amendment’s reach, in a way that altered the law of most jurisdictions. In so doing, Padilla broke new ground and imposed a new obligation. Pp. 3−11. (b) Chaidez argues that Padilla did no more than apply Strickland to a new set of facts. But she ignores that Padilla had to develop new law to determine that Strickland applied at all. The few lower court decisions she cites held only that a lawyer may not affirmatively misrepresent his expertise or otherwise actively mislead his client as to any important matter. Those rulings do not apply to her case, and they do not show that all reasonable judges thought that lawyers had to advise their clients about deportation risks. Neither does INS v. St. Cyr, 533 U.S. 289, have any relevance here. In saying that a reasonably competent lawyer would tell a non-citizen client about a guilty plea’s deportation consequences, St. Cyr did not determine that the Sixth Amendment requires a lawyer to provide such information. It took Padilla to decide that question. Pp. 11–15. 655 F.3d 684, affirmed. Kagan, J., delivered the opinion of the Court, in which Roberts, C. J., and Scalia, Kennedy, Breyer, and Alito, JJ., joined. Thomas, J., filed an opinion concurring in the judgment. Sotomayor, J., filed a dissenting opinion, in which Ginsburg, J., joined.

In Padilla v. Kentucky, 559 U. S. ___ (2010), this Court held that the Sixth Amendment requires an attorney for a criminal defendant to provide advice about the risk of deportation arising from a guilty plea. We consider here whether that ruling applies retroactively, so that a person whose conviction became final before we decided Padilla can benefit from it. We conclude that, under the prin-ciples set out in Teague v. Lane, 489 U.S. 288 (1989), Padilla does not have retroactive effect. I Petitioner Roselva Chaidez hails from Mexico, but became a lawful permanent resident of the United States in 1977. About 20 years later, she helped to defraud an automobile insurance company out of $26,000. After federal agents uncovered the scheme, Chaidez pleaded guilty to two counts of mail fraud, in violation of 18 U. S. C. §1341. The District Court sentenced her to four years of probation and ordered her to pay restitution. Chaidez’s conviction became final in 2004. Under federal immigration law, the offenses to which Chaidez pleaded guilty are “aggravated felonies,” subjecting her to mandatory removal from this country. See 8 U. S. C. §§1101(a)(43)(M)(i), 1227(a)(2)(A)(iii). But according to Chaidez, her attorney never advised her of that fact, and at the time of her plea she remained ignorant of it. Immigration officials initiated removal proceedings against Chaidez in 2009, after an application she made for citizenship alerted them to her prior conviction. To avoid removal, Chaidez sought to overturn that conviction by filing a petition for a writ of coram nobis in Federal District Court.[1] She argued that her former attorney’s failure to advise her of the immigration consequences of pleading guilty constituted ineffective assistance of counsel under the Sixth Amendment. While Chaidez’s petition was pending, this Court decided Padilla. Our ruling vindicated Chaidez’s view of the Sixth Amendment: We held that criminal defense attorneys must inform non-citizen clients of the risks of deportation arising from guilty pleas. See 559 U. S., at ___ (slip op., at 9). But the Government argued that Chaidez could not benefit from Padilla because it announced a “new rule” and, under Teague, such rules do not apply in collateral challenges to already-final convictions. The District Court determined that Padilla “did not announce a new rule for Teague purposes,” and therefore should apply to Chaidez’s case. 730 F. Supp. 2d 896, 904 (ND Ill. 2010). It then found that Chaidez’s counsel had performed deficiently under Padilla and that Chaidez suffered prejudice as a result. Accordingly, the court vacated Chaidez’s conviction. See No. 03 CR 636–6, 2010 WL 3979664 (ND Ill., Oct. 6, 2010). The United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit reversed, holding that Padilla had declared a new rule and so should not apply in a challenge to a final conviction. “Before Padilla,” the Seventh Circuit reasoned, “the [Supreme] Court had never held that the Sixth Amendment requires a criminal defense attorney to provide advice about matters not directly related to [a] client’s criminal prosecution,” including the risks of deporta-tion. 655 F.3d 684, 693 (2011). And state and lower federal courts had uniformly concluded that an attorney need not give “advice concerning [such a] collateral (as opposed to direct) consequenc[e] of a guilty plea.” Id., at 690. According to the Seventh Circuit, Padilla’s holding was new because it ran counter to that widely accepted “distinction between direct and collateral consequences.” 655 F. 3d, at 691. Judge Williams dissented. Agreeing with the Third Circuit’s view, she argued that Padilla “broke no new ground” because it merely applied established law about a lawyer’s “duty to consult” with a client. 655 F. 3d, at 695 (quoting United States v. Orocio, 645 F.3d 630, 638–639 (CA3 2011) (internal quotation marks omitted)). We granted certiorari, 566 U. S. ___ (2012), to resolve a split among federal and state courts on whether Padilla applies retroactively.[2] Holding that it does not, we affirm the Seventh Circuit. II Teague makes the retroactivity of our criminal procedure decisions turn on whether they are novel. When we announce a “new rule,” a person whose conviction is already final may not benefit from the decision in a habeas or similar proceeding.[3] Only when we apply a settled rule may a person avail herself of the decision on collateral review. Here, Chaidez filed her coram nobis petition five years after her guilty plea became final. Her challenge therefore fails if Padilla declared a new rule. “[A] case announces a new rule,” Teague explained, “when it breaks new ground or imposes a new obligation” on the government. 489 U. S., at 301. “To put it differ-ently,” we continued, “a case announces a new rule if the result was not dictated by precedent existing at the time the defendant’s conviction became final.” Ibid. And a holding is not so dictated, we later stated, unless it would have been “apparent to all reasonable jurists.” Lambrix v. Singletary, 520 U.S. 518, 527–528 (1997). But that account has a flipside. Teague also made clear that a case does not “announce a new rule, [when] it ‘[is] merely an application of the principle that governed’ ” a prior decision to a different set of facts. 489 U. S., at 307 (quoting Yates v. Aiken, 484 U.S. 211, 217 (1988)). As Justice Kennedy has explained, “[w]here the beginning point” of our analysis is a rule of “general application, a rule designed for the specific purpose of evaluating a myriad of factual contexts, it will be the infrequent case that yields a result so novel that it forges a new rule, one not dictated by precedent.” Wright v. West, 505 U.S. 277, 309 (1992) (concurring in judgment); see also Williams v. Taylor, 529 U.S. 362, 391 (2000). Otherwise said, when all we do is apply a general standard to the kind of factual circumstances it was meant to address, we will rarely state a new rule for Teague purposes. Because that is so, garden-variety applications of the test in Strickland v. Washington, 466 U.S. 668 (1984), for assessing claims of ineffective assistance of counsel do not produce new rules. In Strickland, we held that legal representation violates the Sixth Amendment if it falls “below an objective standard of reasonableness,” as indicated by “prevailing professional norms,” and the defendant suffers prejudice as a result. Id., at 687–688. That standard, we later concluded, “provides sufficient guidance for resolving virtually all” claims of ineffective assistance, even though their particular circumstances will differ. Williams, 529 U. S., at 391. And so we have granted relief under Strickland in diverse contexts without ever suggesting that doing so required a new rule. See, e.g., ibid.; Rompilla v. Beard, 545 U.S. 374 (2005); Wiggins v. Smith, 539 U.S. 510 (2003).[4] In like manner, Padilla would not have created a new rule had it only applied Strickland’s general standard to yet another factual situation—that is, had Padilla merely made clear that a lawyer who neglects to inform a client about the risk of deportation is professionally incompetent. But Padilla did something more. Before deciding if failing to provide such advice “fell below an objective stan-dard of reasonableness,” Padilla considered a threshold question: Was advice about deportation “categorically removed” from the scope of the Sixth Amendment right to counsel because it involved only a “collateral consequence” of a conviction, rather than a component of the criminal sentence? 559 U. S., at ___ (slip op., at 7–9).[5] In other words, prior to asking how the Strickland test applied (“Did this attorney act unreasonably?”), Padilla asked whether the Strickland test applied (“Should we even evaluate if this attorney acted unreasonably?”). And as we will describe, that preliminary question about Strickland’s ambit came to the Padilla Court unsettled—so that the Court’s answer (“Yes, Strickland governs here”) required a new rule. The relevant background begins with our decision in Hill v. Lockhart, 474 U.S. 52 (1985), which explicitly left open whether advice concerning a collateral consequence must satisfy Sixth Amendment requirements. Hill pleaded guilty to first-degree murder after his attorney misinformed him about his parole eligibility. In addressing his claim of ineffective assistance, we first held that the Strickland standard extends generally to the plea process. See Hill, 474 U. S., at 57. We then determined, however, that Hill had failed to allege prejudice from the lawyer’s error and so could not prevail under that standard. See id., at 60. That conclusion allowed us to avoid another, more categorical question: whether advice about parole (however inadequate and prejudicial) could possibly violate the Sixth Amendment. The Court of Appeals, we noted, had held “that parole eligibility is a collateral rather than a direct consequence of a guilty plea, of which a defendant need not be informed.” Id., at 55. But our ruling on prejudice made “it unnecessary to determine whether there may be circumstances under which” ad- vice about a matter deemed collateral violates the Sixth Amendment. Id., at 60.[6] That non-decision left the state and lower federal courts to deal with the issue; and they almost unanimously concluded that the Sixth Amendment does not require attorneys to inform their clients of a conviction’s collateral consequences, including deportation. All 10 federal appellate courts to consider the question decided, in the words of one, that “counsel’s failure to inform a defendant of the collateral consequences of a guilty plea is never” a violation of the Sixth Amendment. Santos-Sanchez v. United States, 548 F.3d 327, 334 (CA5 2008).[7] That constitutional guarantee, another typical decision expounded, “assures an accused of effective assistance of counsel in ‘criminal prosecutions’ ”; accordingly, advice about matters like de- portation, which are “not a part of or enmeshed in the criminal proceeding,” does not fall within the Amendment’s scope. United States v. George, 869 F.2d 333, 337 (CA7 1989). Appellate courts in almost 30 States agreed.[8] By contrast, only two state courts held that an attorney could violate the Sixth Amendment by failing to inform a client about deportation risks or other collateral consequences of a guilty plea.[9] That imbalance led the authors of the principal scholarly article on the subject to call the exclusion of advice about collateral consequences from the Sixth Amendment’s scope one of “the most widely recognized rules of American law.” Chin & Holmes, Effective Assistance of Counsel and the Consequences of Guilty Pleas, 87 Cornell L. Rev. 697, 706 (2002).[10] So when we decided Padilla, we answered a question about the Sixth Amendment’s reach that we had left open, in a way that altered the law of most jurisdictions—and our reasoning reflected that we were doing as much. In the normal Strickland case, a court begins by evaluating the reasonableness of an attorney’s conduct in light of professional norms, and then assesses prejudice. But as earlier indicated, see supra, at 5–6, Padilla had a different starting point. Before asking whether the performance of Padilla’s attorney was deficient under Strickland, we considered (in a separately numbered part of the opinion) whether Strickland applied at all. See 559 U. S., at ___ (slip op., at 7–9). Many courts, we acknowledged, had excluded advice about collateral matters from the Sixth Amendment’s ambit; and deportation, because the consequence of a distinct civil proceeding, could well be viewed as such a matter. See id., at ___ (slip op., at 7). But, we continued, no decision of our own committed us to “appl[y] a distinction between direct and collateral consequences to define the scope” of the right to counsel. Id., at ___ (slip op., at 8). And however apt that distinction might be in other contexts, it should not exempt from Sixth Amendment scrutiny a lawyer’s advice (or non-advice) about a plea’s deportation risk. Deportation, we stated, is “unique.” Ibid. It is a “particularly severe” penalty, and one “intimately related to the criminal process”; indeed, immigration statutes make it “nearly an automatic result” of some convictions. Ibid. We thus resolved the threshold question before us by breaching the previously chink-free wall between direct and collateral consequences: Notwithstanding the then-dominant view, “Strickland applies to Padilla’s claim.” Id., at ___ (slip op., at 9). If that does not count as “break[ing] new ground” or “impos[ing] a new obligation,” we are hard pressed to know what would. Teague, 489 U. S., at 301. Before Padilla, we had declined to decide whether the Sixth Amendment had any relevance to a lawyer’s advice about matters not part of a criminal proceeding. Perhaps some advice of that kind would have to meet Strickland’s reasonableness standard—but then again, perhaps not: No precedent of our own “dictated” the answer. Teague, 489 U. S., at 301. And as the lower courts filled the vacuum, they almost uniformly insisted on what Padilla called the “categorica[l] remov[al]” of advice about a conviction’s non-criminal consequences—including deportation—from the Sixth Amendment’s scope. 559 U. S., at ___ (slip op., at 9). It was Padilla that first rejected that categorical approach—and so made the Strickland test operative—when a criminal lawyer gives (or fails to give) advice about immigration consequences.[11] In acknowledging that fact, we do not cast doubt on, or at all denigrate, Padilla. Courts often need to, and do, break new ground; it is the very premise of Teague that a decision can be right and also be novel. All we say here is that Padilla’s holding that the failure to advise about a non-criminal consequence could violate the Sixth Amendment would not have been—in fact, was not—“apparent to all reasonable jurists” prior to our decision. Lambrix, 520 U. S., at 527–528. Padilla thus announced a “new rule.” III Chaidez offers, and the dissent largely adopts, a different account of Padilla, in which we did no more than apply Strickland to a new set of facts. On Chaidez’s view, Strickland insisted “[f]rom its inception” that all aspects of a criminal lawyer’s performance pass a test of “ ‘reasonableness under prevailing professional norms’ ”: The decision thus foreclosed any “categorical distinction between direct and collateral consequences.” Brief for Petitioner 21–22 (emphasis deleted) (quoting Strickland, 466 U. S., at 688). Indeed, Chaidez contends, courts prior to Padilla recognized Strickland’s all-encompassing scope and so applied its reasonableness standard to advice concerning deportation. See Brief for Petitioner 25–26; Reply Brief 10–12. She here points to caselaw in three federal appeals courts allowing ineffective assistance claims when attorneys affirmatively misled their clients about the deportation consequences of guilty pleas.[12] The only question left for Padilla to resolve, Chaidez claims, was whether professional norms also require criminal lawyers to volunteer advice about the risk of deportation. In addressing that issue, she continues, Padilla did a run-of-the-mill Strickland analysis. And more: It did an especially easy Strickland analysis. We had earlier noted in INS v. St. Cyr, 533 U.S. 289 (2001)—a case raising an issue of immigration law unrelated to the Sixth Amendment—that a “competent defense counsel” would inform his client about a guilty plea’s deportation consequences. Id., at 323, n. 50. All Padilla had to do, Chaidez concludes, was recite that prior finding. But Chaidez’s (and the dissent’s) story line is wrong, for reasons we have mostly already noted: Padilla had to develop new law, establishing that the Sixth Amendment applied at all, before it could assess the performance of Padilla’s lawyer under Strickland. See supra, at 5–6, 9. Our first order of business was thus to consider whether the widely accepted distinction between direct and collateral consequences categorically foreclosed Padilla’s claim, whatever the level of his attorney’s performance. We did not think, as Chaidez argues, that Strickland barred resort to that distinction. Far from it: Even in Padilla we did not eschew the direct-collateral divide across the board. See 559 U. S., at ___ (slip op., at 8) (“Whether that distinction is [generally] appropriate is a question we need not consider in this case”). Rather, we relied on the special “nature of deportation”—the severity of the penalty and the “automatic” way it follows from conviction—to show that “[t]he collateral versus direct distinction [was] ill-suited” to dispose of Padilla’s claim. Id., at ___ (slip op., at 8–9). All that reasoning came before we conducted a Strickland analysis (by examining professional norms and so forth), and none of it followed ineluctably from prior law.[13] Predictably, then, the caselaw Chaidez and the dissent cite fails to support their claim that lower courts “accepted that Strickland applied to deportation advice.” Brief for Petitioner 25; see post, at 8–11. True enough, three fed- eral circuits (and a handful of state courts) held before Pa-dilla that misstatements about deportation could support an ineffective assistance claim. But those decisions reasoned only that a lawyer may not affirmatively misrepresent his expertise or otherwise actively mislead his client on any important matter, however related to a criminal prosecution. See, e.g., United States v. Kwan, 407 F.3d 1005, 1015–1017 (CA9 2005). They co-existed happily with precedent, from the same jurisdictions (and almost all others), holding that deportation is not “so unique as to warrant an exception to the general rule that a defendant need not be advised of the [collateral] consequences of a guilty plea.” United States v. Campbell, 778 F.2d 764, 769 (CA11 1985).[14] So at most, Chaidez has shown that a minority of courts recognized a separate rule for material misrepresentations, regardless whether they concerned deportation or another collateral matter. That limited rule does not apply to Chaidez’s case. And because it lived in harmony with the exclusion of claims like hers from the Sixth Amendment, it does not establish what she needs to—that all reasonable judges, prior to Padilla, thought they were living in a Padilla-like world. Nor, finally, does St. Cyr have any relevance here. That decision stated what is common sense (and what we again recognized in Padilla): A reasonably competent lawyer will tell a non-citizen client about a guilty plea’s deportation consequences because “ ‘[p]reserving the client’s right to remain in the United States may be more important to the client than any potential jail sentence.’ ” Padilla, 559 U. S., at ___ (slip op., at 10) (quoting St. Cyr, 533 U. S., at 322). But in saying that much, St. Cyr did not determine that the Sixth Amendment requires a lawyer to provide such information. Courts had held to the contrary not because advice about deportation was insignificant to a client—really, who could think that, whether before or after St. Cyr?—but because it concerned a matter collateral to the criminal prosecution.[15] On those courts’ view, the Sixth Amendment no more demanded competent advice about a plea’s deportation consequences than it demanded competent representation in the deportation process itself. Padilla decided that view was wrong. But to repeat: It was Padilla that did so. In the years following St. Cyr, not a single state or lower federal court considering a lawyer’s failure to provide deportation advice abandoned the distinction between direct and collateral consequences, and several courts reaffirmed that divide. See, e.g., Santos-Sanchez, 548 F. 3d, at 335–336; Broomes v. Ashcroft, 358 F.3d 1251, 1256–1257 (CA10 2004); United States v. Fry, 322 F.3d 1198, 1200–1201 (CA9 2003). It took Padilla to decide that in assessing such a lawyer’s performance, the Sixth Amendment sets the standard.[16] IV This Court announced a new rule in Padilla. Under Teague, defendants whose convictions became final prior to Padilla therefore cannot benefit from its holding. We accordingly affirm the judgment of the Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit. It is so ordered. Notes 1 A petition for a writ of coram nobis provides a way to collaterally attack a criminal conviction for a person, like Chaidez, who is no longer “in custody” and therefore cannot seek habeas relief under 28 U. S. C. §2255 or §2241. See United States v. Morgan, 346 U.S. 502, 507, 510–511 (1954). Chaidez and the Government agree that nothing in this case turns on the difference between a coram nobis petition and a habeas petition, and we assume without deciding that they are correct. 2 Compare 655 F.3d 684 (CA7 2011) (case below) (not retroactive); United States v. Amer, 681 F.3d 211 (CA5 2012) (same); United States v. Chang Hong, 671 F.3d 1147 (CA10 2011) (same); State v. Gaitan, 209 N. J. 339, 37 A.3d 1089 (2012) (same), with United Statesv. Orocio, 645 F.3d 630 (CA3 2011) (retroactive); Commonwealth v. Clarke, 460 Mass. 30, 949 N.E.2d 892 (2011) (same). 3 Teague stated two exceptions: “[W]atershed rules of criminal procedure” and rules placing “conduct beyond the power of the [government] to proscribe” apply on collateral review, even if novel. 489 U. S., at 311 (internal quotation marks omitted). Chaidez does not argue that either of those exceptions is relevant here. 4 We did not consider Teague in Williams, Rompilla, and Wiggins, but we granted habeas relief pursuant to 28 U. S. C. §2254(d)(1) because state courts had unreasonably applied “clearly established” law. And, as we have explained, “clearly established” law is not “new” within the meaning of Teague. See Williams, 529 U. S., at 412. 5 We have never attempted to delineate the world of “collateral consequences,” see Padilla, 559 U. S., at ___, n. 8 (slip op., at 7, n. 8), nor do we do so here. But other effects of a conviction commonly viewed as collateral include civil commitment, civil forfeiture, sex offender registration, disqualification from public benefits, and disfranchisement. See id., at ___ (Alito, J., concurring in judgment) (slip op., at 2–3) (listing other examples). 6 In saying that much, we declined to rule not only on whether advice about a conviction’s collateral consequences falls outside the Sixth Amendment’s scope, but also on whether parole eligibility should be considered such a consequence, as the court of appeals held. 7 See Broomes v. Ashcroft, 358 F.3d 1251, 1256 (CA10 2004); United States v. Fry, 322 F.3d 1198, 1200–1201 (CA9 2003); United States v. Gonzalez, 202 F.3d 20, 25 (CA1 2000); Russo v. United States, 1999 WL 164951, *2 (CA2, Mar. 22, 1999); Ogunbase v. United States, 1991 WL 11619, *1 (CA6, Feb. 5, 1991); United States v. Del Rosario, 902 F.2d 55, 58–59 (CADC 1990); United States v. George, 869 F.2d 333, 337 (CA7 1989); United States v. Yearwood, 863 F.2d 6, 7–8 (CA4 1988); United States v. Campbell, 778 F.2d 764, 768–769 (CA11 1985). 8 Rumpel v. State, 847 So. 2d 399, 402–405 (Ala. Crim. App. 2002); Tafoya v. State, 500 P.2d 247, 252 (Alaska 1972); State v. Rosas, 183 Ariz. 421, 423, 904 P.2d 1245, 1247 (App. 1995); Niver v. Commissioner of Correction, 101 Conn. App. 1, 3–5, 919 A.2d 1073, 1075–1076 (2007) (per curiam); State v. Christie, 655 A.2d 836, 841 (Del. Super. 1994); Matos v. United States, 631 A.2d 28, 31–32 (D. C. 1993); Major v. State, 814 So. 2d 424, 431 (Fla. 2002); People v. Huante, 143 Ill. 2d 61, 68–71, 571 N.E.2d 736, 740–741 (1991); State v. Ramirez, 636 N.W.2d 740, 743–746 (Iowa 2001); State v. Muriithi, 273 Kan. 952, 961, 46 P.3d 1145, 1152 (2002); Commonwealth v. Fuartado, 170 S.W.3d 384, 385–386 (Ky. 2005); State v. Montalban, 2000–2739, p. 4 (La. 2/26/02), 810 So. 2d 1106, 1110; Commonwealth v. Fraire, 55 Mass. App. 916, 917, 774 N.E.2d 677, 678–679 (2002); People v. Davidovich, 463 Mich. 446, 452, 618 N.W.2d 579, 582 (2000) (per curiam); State ex rel. Nixon v. Clark, 926 S.W.2d 22, 25 (Mo. App. 1996); State v. Zarate, 264 Neb. 690, 693–696, 651 N.W.2d 215, 221–223 (2002); Barajas v. State, 115 Nev. 440, 441–442, 991 P.2d 474, 475–476 (1999) (per curiam); State v. Chung, 210 N. J. Super. 427, 434, 510 A.2d 72, 76 (App. Div. 1986); People v. Ford, 86 N.Y.2d 397, 403–404, 657 N.E.2d 265, 268–269 (1995); State v. Dalman, 520 N.W.2d 860, 863–864 (N. D. 1994); Commonwealth v. Frometa, 520 Pa. 552, 555–557, 555 A.2d 92, 93–94 (1989); State v. Alejo, 655 A.2d 692, 692–693 (R. I. 1995); Nikolaev v. Weber, 2005 S. D. 100, ¶¶11–12, 705 N.W.2d 72, 75–77 (per curiam); Bautista v. State, 160 S.W.3d 917, 922 (Tenn. Crim. App. 2004); Perez v. State, 31 S.W.3d 365, 367–368 (Tex. App. 2000); State v. Rojas-Martinez, 2005 UT 86, ¶¶15–20, 125 P.3d 930, 934–935; State v. Martinez-Lazo, 100 Wash. App. 869, 876–878, 999 P.2d 1275, 1279–1280 (2000); State v. Santos, 136 Wis. 2d 528, 531, 401 N.W.2d 856, 858 (App. 1987). 9 People v. Pozo, 746 P.2d 523, 527–529 (Colo. 1987); State v. Paredez, 2004–NMSC–036, ¶¶17–19, 136 N. M. 533, 539, 101 P.3d 799, 805. 10 The dissent is therefore wrong to claim that we emphasize “the absence of lower court authority” holding that an attorney’s failure to advise about deportation violated the Sixth Amendment. Post, at 10 (opinion of Sotomayor, J.). We instead point to the presence of lower court authority—in case after case and jurisdiction after jurisdiction—holding that such a failure, because relating to a collateral matter, could not do so. 11 The separate opinions in Padilla objected to just this aspect of the Court’s ruling. Dissents have been known to exaggerate the noveltyof majority opinions; and “the mere existence of a dissent,” like the existence of conflicting authority in state or lower federal courts, does not establish that a rule is new. Beard v. Banks, 542 U.S. 406, 416, n. 5 (2004); see Williams, 529 U. S., at 410. But the concurring and dissenting opinions in Padilla were on to something when they described the line the Court was crossing. “Until today,” Justice Alito wrote, “the longstanding and unanimous position of the federal courts was that reasonable defense counsel generally need only advise a client about the direct consequences of a criminal conviction.” See 559 U. S., at ___ (concurring in judgment) (slip op., at 2). Or again, this time from Justice Scalia: “[U]ntil today,” the Sixth Amendment guaranteed only “legal advice directly related to defense against prosecution” of a criminal charge. Id., at ___ (dissenting) (slip op., at 2). One need not agree with any of the separate opinions’ criticisms of Padilla to concur with their view that it modified governing law. 12 See United States v. Kwan, 407 F.3d 1005, 1015–1017 (CA9 2005); United States v. Couto, 311 F.3d 179, 188 (CA2 2002); Downs-Morgan v. United States, 765 F.2d 1534, 1540–1541 (CA11 1985). 13 The dissent’s entire analysis founders on this most basic point. In its lengthy description of Padilla, the dissent picks up in the middle—after the Court concluded that the direct-collateral distinction did not preclude finding that Padilla’s lawyer provided ineffective assistance under the Sixth Amendment. See post, at 3–5. The dissent justifies ignoring that threshold conclusion on the ground that “Padilla declined to embrace the . . . distinction between collateral and direct consequences” and “stated very clearly that it found the distinction irrelevant” to the case. Post, at 6. But it is exactly in refusing to apply the direct-collateral distinction that the Padilla Court did something novel. Before then, as the Court forthrightly acknowledged, that distinction would have doomed Padilla’s claim in well-nigh every court in the United States. See 559 U. S., at ___ (slip op., at 7); supra, at 9. 14 See also Resendiz v. Kovensky, 416 F.3d 952, 957 (CA9 2005) (“[B]ecause immigration consequences remain collateral, the failure of counsel to advise his client of the potential immigration consequences of a conviction does not violate the Sixth Amendment”); Russo v. United States, 1999 WL 164951, *2 (“[C]ounsel cannot be found ineffective for the mere failure to inform a defendant of the collateral consequences of a plea, such as deportation”) (relying on United States v. Santelises, 509 F.2d 703, 704 (CA2 1975) (per curiam)). 15 The dissent claims the opposite, averring that lower court “decisions show nothing more than that the underlying professional norms had not yet evolved to require attorneys to provide advice about deportation consequences.” Post, at 8. But the dissent cannot point to a single decision stating that a lawyer’s failure to offer advice about deportation met professional norms; all the decisions instead held that a lawyer’s breach of those norms was constitutionally irrelevant because deportation was a collateral consequence. See supra, at 7. Had courts in fact considered professional standards in the slew of cases before Padilla that presented Padilla-like claims, they would have discovered as early as 1968 that the American Bar Association instructed criminal lawyers to advise their non-citizen clients about the risks of deportation. See 3 ABA Project on Standards for Criminal Justice, Standards Relating to Pleas of Guilty §3.2(b), Commentary,p. 71 (App. Draft 1968). The difficulty in upholding such claims prior to Padilla had nothing to do with courts’ view of professional norms and everything to do with their use of the direct-collateral divide. 16 Chaidez makes two back-up arguments in her merits briefs—that Teague’s bar on retroactivity does not apply when a petitioner chal-lenges a federal conviction, or at least does not do so when she makes a claim of ineffective assistance. Brief for Petitioner 27–39. But Chaidez did not include those issues in her petition for certiorari. Nor, still more critically, did she adequately raise them in the lower courts. Only her petition for rehearing en banc in the Seventh Circuit at all questioned Teague’s applicability, and her argument there—that a “Teague-light” standard should apply to challenges to federal convictions—differs from the ones she has made in this Court. See Petition for Rehearing and for Rehearing En Banc in No. 10–3623 (CA7), p. 13. Moreover, we cannot find any case in which a federal court has considered Chaidez’s contention that Teague should not apply to ineffective assistance claims. “[M]indful that we are a court of review, not of first view,” we decline to rule on Chaidez’s new arguments. Cutter v. Wilkinson, 544 U.S. 709, 718, n. 7 (2005).

569.US.290

The Communications Act of 1934, as amended, requires state or local governments to act on siting applications for wireless facilities “within a reasonable period of time after the request is duly filed.” 47 U. S. C. §332(c)(7)(B)(ii). Relying on its broad authority to implement the Communications Act, see 47 U. S. C. §201(b), the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) issued a Declaratory Ruling concluding that the phrase “reasonable period of time” is presumptively (but rebuttably) 90 days to process an application to place a new antenna on an existing tower and 150 days to process all other applications. The cities of Arlington and San Antonio, Texas, sought review of the Declaratory Ruling in the Fifth Circuit. They argued that the Commission lacked authority to interpret §332(c)(7)(B)’s limitations. The Court of Appeals, relying on Circuit precedent holding that Chevron U. S. A. Inc. v. Natural Resources Defense Council, Inc., 467 U.S. 837, applies to an agency’s interpretation of its own statutory jurisdiction, applied Chevron to that question. Finding the statute ambiguous, it upheld as a permissible construction of the statute the FCC’s view that §201(b)’s broad grant of regulatory authority empowered it to administer §332(c)(7)(B). Held: Courts must apply the Chevron framework to an agency’s interpretation of a statutory ambiguity that concerns the scope of the agency’s statutory authority (i.e., its jurisdiction). Pp. 4–17. (a) Under Chevron, a reviewing court must first ask whether Congress has directly spoken to the precise question at issue; if so, the court must give effect to Congress’ unambiguously expressed intent. 467 U. S., at 842–843. However, if “the statute is silent or ambiguous,” the court must defer to the administering agency’s construction of the statute so long as it is permissible. Id., at 843. Pp. 4–5. (b) When a court reviews an agency’s interpretation of a statute it administers, the question is always, simply, whether the agency has stayed within the bounds of its statutory authority. There is no distinction between an agency’s “jurisdictional” and “nonjurisdictional” interpretations. The “jurisdictional-nonjurisdictional” line is meaningful in the judicial context because Congress has the power to tell the courts what classes of cases they may decide—that is, to define their jurisdiction—but not to prescribe how they decide those cases. But for agencies charged with administering congressional statutes, both their power to act and how they are to act is authoritatively prescribed by Congress, so that when they act improperly, no less than when they act beyond their jurisdiction, what they do is ultra vires. Because the question is always whether the agency has gone beyond what Congress has permitted it to do, there is no principled basis for carving out an arbitrary subset of “jurisdictional” questions from the Chevron framework. See, e.g., National Cable & Telecommunications Assn., Inc. v. Gulf Power Co., 534 U.S. 327, 333, 339. Pp. 5–10. (c) This Court has consistently afforded Chevron deference to agencies’ constructions of the scope of their own jurisdiction. See, e.g., Commodity Futures Trading Commission v. Schor, 478 U.S. 833; United States v. Eurodif S. A., 555 U.S. 305, 316. Chevron applies to statutes designed to curtail the scope of agency discretion, see Chemical Mfrs. Assn. v. Natural Resources Defense Council, Inc., 470 U.S. 116, 123, and even where concerns about agency self-aggrandizement are at their apogee—i.e., where an agency’s expansive construction of the extent of its own power would have wrought a fundamental change in the regulatory scheme, see FDA v. Brown & Williamson Tobacco Corp., 529 U.S. 120, 132. Pp. 10–14. (d) The contention that Chevron deference is not appropriate here because the FCC asserted jurisdiction over matters of traditional state and local concern is meritless. These cases have nothing to do with federalism: The statute explicitly supplants state authority, so the question is simply whether a federal agency or federal courts will draw the lines to which the States must hew. P. 14. (e) United States v. Mead Corp., 533 U.S. 218, requires that, for Chevron deference to apply, the agency must have received congressional authority to determine the particular matter at issue in the particular manner adopted. But Mead denied Chevron deference to action, by an agency with rulemaking authority, that was not rulemaking. There is no case in which a general conferral of rulemaking or adjudicative authority has been held insufficient to support Chevron deference for an exercise of that authority within the agency’s substantive field. A general conferral of rulemaking authority validates rules for all the matters the agency is charged with administering. It suffices to decide this case that the preconditions to deference under Chevron are satisfied because Congress has unambiguously vested the FCC with general authority to administer the Communications Act through rulemaking and adjudication, and the agency interpretation at issue was promulgated in the exercise of that authority. Pp. 14–16. 668 F.3d 229, affirmed. Scalia, J., delivered the opinion of the Court, in which Thomas, Ginsburg, Sotomayor, and Kagan, JJ., joined. Breyer, J., filed an opinion concurring in part and concurring in the judgment. Roberts, C. J., filed a dissenting opinion, in which Kennedy and Alito, JJ., joined. Notes 1 Together with No. 11–1547, Cable, Telecommunications, and Technology Committee of New Orleans City Council v. Federal Communications Commission, also on certiorari to the same court.

We consider whether an agency’s interpretation of a statutory ambiguity that concerns the scope of its regulatory authority (that is, its jurisdiction) is entitled to deference under Chevron U. S. A. Inc. v. Natural Resources Defense Council, Inc., 467 U.S. 837 (1984). I Wireless telecommunications networks require towers and antennas; proposed sites for those towers and antennas must be approved by local zoning authorities. In the Telecommunications Act of 1996, Congress “impose[d] specific limitations on the traditional authority of state and local governments to regulate the location, construction, and modification of such facilities,” Rancho Palos Verdes v. Abrams, 544 U.S. 113, 115 (2005), and incorporated those limitations into the Communications Act of 1934, see 110Stat. 56, 151. Section 201(b) of that Act empowers the Federal Communications Commission to “prescribe such rules and regulations as may be necessary in the public interest to carry out [its] provisions.” Ch. 296, 52Stat. 588, codified at 47 U. S. C. §201(b). Of course, that rulemaking authority extends to the subsequently added portions of the Act. See AT&T Corp. v. Iowa Utilities Bd., 525 U.S. 366, 377–378 (1999). The Act imposes five substantive limitations, which are codified in 47 U. S. C. §332(c)(7)(B); only one of them, §332(c)(7)(B)(ii), is at issue here. That provision requires state or local governments to act on wireless siting applications “within a reasonable period of time after the request is duly filed.” Two other features of §332(c)(7) are relevant. First, subparagraph (A), known as the “saving clause,” provides that nothing in the Act, except those limitations provided in §332(c)(7)(B), “shall limit or affect the authority of a State or local government” over siting decisions. Second, §332(c)(7)(B)(v) authorizes a person who believes a state or local government’s wireless-siting decision to be inconsistent with any of the limitations in §332(c)(7)(B) to “commence an action in any court of competent jurisdiction.” In theory, §332(c)(7)(B)(ii) requires state and local zoning authorities to take prompt action on siting applications for wireless facilities. But in practice, wireless providers often faced long delays. In July 2008, CTIA—The Wireless Association,[1] which represents wireless service providers, petitioned the FCC to clarify the meaning of §332(c)(7)(B)(ii)’s requirement that zoning authorities act on siting requests “within a reasonable period of time.” In November 2009, the Commission, relying on its broad statutory authority to implement the provisions of the Communications Act, issued a declaratory ruling responding to CTIA’s petition. In re Petition for Declaratory Ruling, 24 FCC Rcd. 13994, 14001. The Commission found that the “record evidence demonstrates that unreasonable delays in the personal wireless service facility siting process have obstructed the provision of wireless services” and that such delays “impede the promotion of ad- vanced services and competition that Congress deemed critical in the Telecommunications Act of 1996.” Id., at 14006, 14008. A “reasonable period of time” under §332(c)(7)(B)(ii), the Commission determined, is presumptively (but rebuttably) 90 days to process a collocation application (that is, an application to place a new antenna on an existing tower) and 150 days to process all other applications. Id., at 14005. Some state and local governments opposed adoption of the Declaratory Ruling on the ground that the Commission lacked “authority to interpret ambiguous provisions of Section 332(c)(7).” Id., at 14000. Specifically, they argued that the saving clause, §332(c)(7)(A), and the judicial review provision, §337(c)(7)(B)(v), together display a congressional intent to withhold from the Commission authority to interpret the limitations in §332(c)(7)(B). Asserting that ground of objection, the cities of Arlington and San Antonio, Texas, petitioned for review of the Declaratory Ruling in the Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. Relying on Circuit precedent, the Court of Appeals held that the Chevron framework applied to the threshold question whether the FCC possessed statutory authority to adopt the 90- and 150-day timeframes. 668 F.3d 229, 248 (CA5 2012) (citing Texas v. United States, 497 F.3d 491, 501 (CA5 2007)). Applying Chevron, the Court of Appeals found “§332(c)(7)(A)’s effect on the FCC’s author- ity to administer §332(c)(7)(B)’s limitations ambiguous,” 668 F. 3d, at 250, and held that “the FCC’s interpretation of its statutory authority” was a permissible construction of the statute. Id., at 254. On the merits, the court upheld the presumptive 90- and 150-day deadlines as a “permissible construction of §332(c)(7)(B)(ii) and (v) . . . entitled to Chevron deference.” Id., at 256. We granted certiorari, 568 U. S. ___ (2012), limited to the first question presented: “Whether . . . a court should apply Chevron to . . . an agency’s determination of its own jurisdiction.” Pet. for Cert. in No. 11–1545, p. i. II A As this case turns on the scope of the doctrine enshrined in Chevron, we begin with a description of that case’s now-canonical formulation. “When a court reviews an agency’s construction of the statute which it administers, it is confronted with two questions.” 467 U. S., at 842. First, applying the ordinary tools of statutory construction, the court must determine “whether Congress has directly spoken to the precise question at issue. If the intent of Congress is clear, that is the end of the matter; for the court, as well as the agency, must give effect to the unambiguously expressed intent of Congress.” Id., at 842–843. But “if the statute is silent or ambiguous with respect to the specific issue, the question for the court is whether the agency’s answer is based on a permissible construction of the statute.” Id., at 843. Chevron is rooted in a background presumption of congressional intent: namely, “that Congress, when it left ambiguity in a statute” administered by an agency, “understood that the ambiguity would be resolved, first and foremost, by the agency, and desired the agency (rather than the courts) to possess whatever degree of discretion the ambiguity allows.” Smiley v. Citibank (South Dakota), N. A., 517 U.S. 735, 740–741 (1996). Chevron thus provides a stable background rule against which Congress can legislate: Statutory ambiguities will be resolved, within the bounds of reasonable interpretation, not by the courts but by the administering agency. See Iowa Utilities Bd., 525 U. S., at 397. Congress knows to speak in plain terms when it wishes to circumscribe, and in capacious terms when it wishes to enlarge, agency discretion. B The question here is whether a court must defer under Chevron to an agency’s interpretation of a statutory ambiguity that concerns the scope of the agency’s statutory authority (that is, its jurisdiction). The argument against deference rests on the premise that there exist two distinct classes of agency interpretations: Some interpretations—the big, important ones, presumably—define the agency’s “jurisdiction.” Others—humdrum, run-of-the-mill stuff—are simply applications of jurisdiction the agency plainly has. That premise is false, because the distinction between “jurisdictional” and “nonjurisdictional” interpretations is a mirage. No matter how it is framed, the question a court faces when confronted with an agency’s inter- pretation of a statute it administers is always, simply, whether the agency has stayed within the bounds of its statutory authority. The misconception that there are, for Chevron purposes, separate “jurisdictional” questions on which no deference is due derives, perhaps, from a reflexive extension to agen- cies of the very real division between the jurisdictional and nonjurisdictional that is applicable to courts. In the judicial context, there is a meaningful line: Whether the court decided correctly is a question that has different consequences from the question whether it had the power to decide at all. Congress has the power (within limits) to tell the courts what classes of cases they may decide, see Trainmen v. Toledo, P. & W. R. Co., 321 U.S. 50, 63–64 (1944); Lauf v. E. G. Shinner & Co., 303 U.S. 323, 330 (1938), but not to prescribe or superintend how they decide those cases, see Plaut v. Spendthrift Farm, Inc., 514 U.S. 211, 218–219 (1995). A court’s power to decide a case is independent of whether its decision is correct, which is why even an erroneous judgment is entitled to res judicata effect. Put differently, a jurisdictionally proper but substantively incorrect judicial decision is not ultra vires. That is not so for agencies charged with administering congressional statutes. Both their power to act and how they are to act is authoritatively prescribed by Congress, so that when they act improperly, no less than when they act beyond their jurisdiction, what they do is ultra vires. Because the question—whether framed as an incorrect application of agency authority or an assertion of author- ity not conferred—is always whether the agency has gone beyond what Congress has permitted it to do, there is no principled basis for carving out some arbitrary subset of such claims as “jurisdictional.” An example will illustrate just how illusory the pro- posed line between “jurisdictional” and “nonjurisdictional” agency interpretations is. Imagine the following validly-enacted statute: Common Carrier Act Section 1. The Agency shall have jurisdiction to prohibit any common carrier from imposing an unreasonable condition upon access to its facilities. There is no question that this provision—including the terms “common carrier” and “unreasonable condition”—defines the Agency’s jurisdiction. Surely, the argument goes, a court must determine de novo the scope of that jurisdiction. Consider, however, this alternative formulation of the statute: Common Carrier Act Section 1. No common carrier shall impose an unreasonable condition upon access to its facilities. Section 2. The Agency may prescribe rules and regulations necessary in the public interest to effectuate Section 1 of this Act. Now imagine that the Agency, invoking its Section 2 authority, promulgates this Rule: “(1) The term ‘common carrier’ in Section 1 includes Internet Service Providers. (2) The term ‘unreasonable condition’ in Section 1 includes unreasonably high prices. (3) A monthly fee greater than $25 is an unreasonable condition on access to Internet service.” By this Rule, the Agency has claimed for itself jurisdiction that is doubly questionable: Does its authority extend to Internet Service Providers? And does it extend to setting prices? Yet Section 2 makes clear that Congress, in petitioners’ words, “conferred interpretive power on the agency” with respect to Section 1. Brief for Petitioners in No. 1545, p. 14. Even under petitioners’ theory, then, a court should defer to the Agency’s interpretation of the terms “common carrier” and “unreasonable condition”—that is to say, its assertion that its “jurisdiction” extends to regulating Internet Service Providers and setting prices. In the first case, by contrast, petitioners’ theory would accord the agency no deference. The trouble with this is that in both cases, the underlying question is exactly the same: Does the statute give the agency authority to regulate Internet Service Providers and cap prices, or not?[2] The reality, laid bare, is that there is no difference, insofar as the validity of agency action is concerned, between an agency’s exceeding the scope of its authority (its “jurisdiction”) and its exceeding authorized application of authority that it unquestionably has. “To exceed authorized application is to exceed authority. Virtually any administrative action can be characterized as either the one or the other, depending on how generally one wishes to describe the ‘authority.’ ” Mississippi Power & Light Co. v. Mississippi ex rel. Moore, 487 U.S. 354, 381 (1988) (Scalia, J., concurring in judgment); see also Monaghan, Marbury and the Administrative State, 83 Colum. L. Rev. 1, 29 (1983) (“Administrative application of law is administrative formulation of law whenever it involves elaboration of the statutory norm.”). This point is nicely illustrated by our decision in National Cable & Telecommunications Assn., Inc. v. Gulf Power Co., 534 U.S. 327 (2002). That case considered whether the FCC’s “jurisdiction” to regulate the rents utility-pole owners charge for “pole attachments” (defined as attachments by a cable television system or provider of telecommunications service) extended to attachments that provided both cable television and high-speed Internet access (attachments for so-called “commingled services”). Id., at 331–336. We held, sensibly, that Chevron applied. 534 U. S., at 333, 339. Whether framed as going to the scope of the FCC’s delegated authority or the FCC’s application of its delegated authority, the underlying question was the same: Did the FCC exceed the bounds of its statutory authority to regulate rents for “pole attachments” when it sought to regulate rents for pole attachments providing commingled services? The label is an empty distraction because every new application of a broad statutory term can be reframed as a questionable extension of the agency’s jurisdiction. One of the briefs in support of petitioners explains, helpfully, that “[j]urisdictional questions concern the who, what, where, and when of regulatory power: which subject matters may an agency regulate and under what conditions.” Brief for IMLA Respondents 18–19. But an agency’s application of its authority pursuant to statutory text answers the same questions. Who is an “outside salesman”? What is a “pole attachment”? Where do the “waters of the United States” end? When must a Medicare provider challenge a reimbursement determination in order to be entitled to an administrative appeal? These can all be reframed as questions about the scope of agencies’ regulatory jurisdiction— and they are all questions to which the Chevron framework applies. See Christopher v. SmithKline Beecham Corp., 567 U. S. ___, ___, ___ (2012) (slip op., at 2, 8); National Cable & Telecommunications Assn., supra, at 331, 333; United States v. Riverside Bayview Homes, Inc., 474 U.S. 121, 123, 131 (1985); Sebelius v. Auburn Regional Medical Center, 568 U. S. ___, ___, ___ (2013) (slip op., at 1, 11). In sum, judges should not waste their time in the mental acrobatics needed to decide whether an agency’s interpretation of a statutory provision is “jurisdictional” or “nonjurisdictional.” Once those labels are sheared away, it becomes clear that the question in every case is, simply, whether the statutory text forecloses the agency’s assertion of authority, or not. See H. Edwards & L. Elliott, Federal Standards of Review 146 (2007) (“In practice, it does not appear to matter whether delegated authority is viewed as a threshold inquiry.”). The federal judge as haruspex, sifting the entrails of vast statutory schemes to divine whether a particular agency interpretation qualifies as “jurisdictional,” is not engaged in reasoned decisionmaking. C Fortunately, then, we have consistently held “that Chevron applies to cases in which an agency adopts a con- struction of a jurisdictional provision of a statute it administers.” 1 R. Pierce, Administrative Law Treatise §3.5, p. 187 (2010). One of our opinions explicitly says that no “exception exists to the normal [deferential] standard of review” for “ ‘jurisdictional or legal question[s] concerning the coverage’ ” of an Act. NLRB v. City Disposal Systems, Inc., 465 U.S. 822, 830, n. 7 (1984). A prime example of deferential review for questions of jurisdiction is Commodity Futures Trading Comm’n v. Schor, 478 U.S. 833 (1986). That case involved a CFTC interpretation of 7 U. S. C. §18(c), which provides that before the Commission takes action on a complaint, the complainant must file a bond to cover “any reparation award that may be issued by the Commission against the complainant on any counterclaim by respondent.” (Emphasis added.) The CFTC, pursuant to its broad rulemaking authority, see §12a(5), interpreted that oblique reference to counterclaims as granting it “the power to take jurisdiction over” not just federal-law counterclaims, but state-law counterclaims as well. Schor, supra, at 844. We not only deferred under Chevron to the Commission’s “eminently reasonable . . . interpretation of the statute it is entrusted to administer,” but also chided the Court of Appeals for declining to afford def- erence because of the putatively “ ‘statutory interpretation-jurisdictional’ nature of the question at issue.” 478 U. S., at 844–845. Similar examples abound. We have afforded Chevron deference to the Commerce Department’s determination that its authority to seek antidumping duties extended to uranium imported under contracts for enrichment services, United States v. Eurodif S. A., 555 U.S. 305, 316 (2009); to the Interstate Commerce Commission’s view that courts, not the Commission, possessed “initial jurisdiction with respect to the award of reparations” for unreasonable shipping charges, Reiter v. Cooper, 507 U.S. 258, 269 (1993) (internal quotation marks and ellipsis omitted); and to the Army Corps of Engineers’ assertion that its permitting authority over discharges into “waters of the United States” extended to “freshwater wetlands” adjacent to covered waters, Riverside Bayview Homes, supra, at 123–124, 131. We have even deferred to the FCC’s assertion that its broad regulatory authority extends to pre-empting conflicting state rules. City of New York v. FCC, 486 U.S. 57, 64 (1988); Capital Cities Cable, Inc. v. Crisp, 467 U.S. 691, 700 (1984).[3] Our cases hold that Chevron applies equally to statutes designed to curtail the scope of agency discretion. For instance, in Chemical Mfrs. Assn. v. Natural Resources Defense Council, Inc., 470 U.S. 116, 123 (1985), we considered a statute prohibiting the Environmental Protection Agency from “modify[ing] any requirement of this section as it applies to any specific pollutant which is on the toxic pollutant list.” The EPA construed the statute as not precluding it from granting variances with respect to certain toxic pollutants. Finding no “clear congressional intent to forbid EPA’s sensible variance mechanism,” id., at 134, we deferred to the EPA’s construction of this express limitation on its own regulatory authority, id., at 125 (citing Chevron, 467 U. S. 837); see also, e.g., Japan Whaling Assn. v. American Cetacean Soc., 478 U.S. 221, 226, 232–234 (1986). The U. S. Reports are shot through with applications of Chevron to agencies’ constructions of the scope of their own jurisdiction. And we have applied Chevron where concerns about agency self-aggrandizement are at their apogee: in cases where an agency’s expansive construction of the extent of its own power would have wrought a fundamental change in the regulatory scheme. In FDA v. Brown & Williamson Tobacco Corp., 529 U.S. 120 (2000), the threshold question was the “appropriate framework for analyzing” the FDA’s assertion of “jurisdiction to regulate tobacco products,” id., at 126, 132—a question of vast “economic and political magnitude,” id., at 133. “Because this case involves an administrative agency’s construction of a statute that it administers,” we held, Chevron applied. 529 U. S., at 132. Similarly, in MCI Telecommunications Corp. v. American Telephone & Telegraph Co., 512 U.S. 218, 224, 229, 231 (1994), we applied the Chevron framework to the FCC’s assertion that the statutory phrase “modify any requirement” gave it authority to eliminate rate-filing requirements, “the essential characteristic of a rate-regulated industry,” for long-distance telephone carriers. The false dichotomy between “jurisdictional” and “non- jurisdictional” agency interpretations may be no more than a bogeyman, but it is dangerous all the same. Like the Hound of the Baskervilles, it is conjured by those with greater quarry in sight: Make no mistake—the ultimate target here is Chevron itself. Savvy challengers of agency action would play the “jurisdictional” card in every case. See, e.g., Cellco Partnership v. FCC, 700 F.3d 534, 541 (CADC 2012). Some judges would be deceived by the specious, but scary-sounding, “jurisdictional”-“nonjurisdictional” line; others tempted by the prospect of making public policy by prescribing the meaning of ambiguous statutory commands. The effect would be to transfer any number of interpretive decisions—archetypal Chevron questions, about how best to construe an ambiguous term in light of competing policy interests—from the agencies that administer the statutes to federal courts.[4] We have cautioned that “judges ought to refrain from substituting their own interstitial lawmaking” for that of an agency. Ford Motor Credit Co. v. Milhollin, 444 U.S. 555, 568 (1980). That is precisely what Chevron prevents. III A One group of respondents contends that Chevron deference is inappropriate here because the FCC has “assert[ed] jurisdiction over matters of traditional state and local concern.” Brief for IMLA Respondents 35. But this case has nothing to do with federalism. Section 332(c)(7)(B)(ii) explicitly supplants state authority by requiring zoning authorities to render a decision “within a reasonable period of time,” and the meaning of that phrase is indisputably a question of federal law. We rejected a similar faux-federalism argument in the Iowa Utilities Board case, in terms that apply equally here: “This is, at bottom, a debate not about whether the States will be allowed to do their own thing, but about whether it will be the FCC or the federal courts that draw the lines to which they must hew.” 525 U. S., at 379, n. 6. These lines will be drawn either by unelected federal bureaucrats, or by unelected (and even less politically accountable) federal judges. “[I]t is hard to spark a passionate ‘States’ rights’ debate over that detail.” Ibid. B A few words in response to the dissent. The question on which we granted certiorari was whether “a court should apply Chevron to review an agency’s determination of its own jurisdiction.” Pet. for Cert. i.[5] Perhaps sensing the incoherence of the “jurisdictional-nonjurisdictional” line, the dissent does not even attempt to defend it, see post, at 5, but proposes a much broader scope for de novo judicial review: Jurisdictional or not, and even where a rule is at issue and the statute contains a broad grant of rulemaking authority, the dissent would have a court search provision-by-provision to determine “whether [that] delegation covers the ‘specific provision’ and ‘particular question’ before the court.” Post, at 11–12. The dissent is correct that United States v. Mead Corp., 533 U.S. 218 (2001), requires that, for Chevron deference to apply, the agency must have received congressional authority to determine the particular matter at issue in the particular manner adopted. No one disputes that. But Mead denied Chevron deference to action, by an agency with rulemaking authority, that was not rulemaking. What the dissent needs, and fails to produce, is a single case in which a general conferral of rulemaking or adjudicative authority has been held insufficient to support Chevron deference for an exercise of that authority within the agency’s substantive field. There is no such case, and what the dissent proposes is a massive revision of our Chevron jurisprudence. Where we differ from the dissent is in its apparent rejection of the theorem that the whole includes all of its parts—its view that a general conferral of rulemaking authority does not validate rules for all the matters the agency is charged with administering. Rather, the dissent proposes that even when general rulemaking authority is clear, every agency rule must be subjected to a de novo judicial determination of whether the particular issue was committed to agency discretion. It offers no standards at all to guide this open-ended hunt for congressional intent (that is to say, for evidence of congressional intent more specific than the conferral of general rulemaking author- ity). It would simply punt that question back to the Court of Appeals, presumably for application of some sort of totality-of-the-circumstances test—which is really, of course, not a test at all but an invitation to make an ad hoc judgment regarding congressional intent. Thirteen Courts of Appeals applying a totality-of-the-circumstances test would render the binding effect of agency rules unpredictable and destroy the whole stabilizing purpose of Chevron. The excessive agency power that the dissent fears would be replaced by chaos. There is no need to wade into these murky waters. It suffices to decide this case that the preconditions to deference under Chevron are satisfied because Congress has unambiguously vested the FCC with general authority to administer the Communications Act through rulemaking and adjudication, and the agency interpretation at issue was promulgated in the exercise of that authority. * * * Those who assert that applying Chevron to “jurisdictional” interpretations “leaves the fox in charge of the henhouse” overlook the reality that a separate category of “jurisdictional” interpretations does not exist. The fox-in-the-henhouse syndrome is to be avoided not by estab- lishing an arbitrary and undefinable category of agency decisionmaking that is accorded no deference, but by taking seriously, and applying rigorously, in all cases, statutory limits on agencies’ authority. Where Congress has established a clear line, the agency cannot go beyond it; and where Congress has established an ambiguous line, the agency can go no further than the ambiguity will fairly allow. But in rigorously applying the latter rule, a court need not pause to puzzle over whether the interpretive question presented is “jurisdictional.” If “the agency’s answer is based on a permissible construction of the statute,” that is the end of the matter. Chevron, 467 U. S., at 842. The judgment of the Court of Appeals is affirmed. It is so ordered. Notes 1 This is not a typographical error. CTIA—The Wireless Association was the name of the petitioner. CTIA is presumably an (unpronounceable) acronym, but even the organization’s website does not say what it stands for. That secret, known only to wireless-service-provider insiders, we will not disclose here. 2 The dissent’s non-answer to this example reveals the hollowness of its theory. It “might,” the dissent claims, be “harder” to interpret the first Act, because it is (somehow) less “clear” than the second Act. Post, at 15–16 (opinion of Roberts, C. J.). That it is even possible that the two could come out differently under the dissent’s test (whatever it is) shows that that test must be wrong. The two statutes are substantively identical. Any difference in outcome would be arbitrary, so a sound interpretive approach should yield none. 3 The dissent’s reliance on dicta in Adams Fruit Co. v. Barrett, 494 U.S. 638 (1990), see post, at 8–9, is misplaced. In that case, the Department of Labor had interpreted a statute creating a private right of action for migrant or seasonal farmworkers as providing no remedy where a state workers’-compensation law covered the worker. 494 U. S., at 649. We held that we had no need to “defer to the Secretary of Labor’s view of the scope of” that private right of action “because Congress has expressly established the Judiciary and not the Department of Labor as the adjudicator of private rights of action arising under the statute.” Ibid. Adams Fruit stands for the modest proposition that the Judiciary, not any executive agency, determines “the scope”—including the available remedies—“of judicial power vested by” statutes establishing private rights of action. Id., at 650. Adams Fruit explicitly affirmed the Department’s authority to promulgate the substantive standards enforced through that private right of action. See ibid. The dissent’s invocation of Gonzales v. Oregon, 546 U.S. 243 (2006), see post, at 10–11, is simply perplexing: The majority opinion in that case expressly lists the Communications Act as an example of a statute under which an agency’s “authority is clear because the statute gives an agency broad power to enforce all provisions of the statute.” 546 U. S., at 258–259 (citing 47 U. S. C. §201(b); emphasis added). That statement cannot be squared with the dissent’s proposed remand for the Fifth Circuit to determine “whether Congress delegated interpretive authority over §332(c)(7)(B)(ii) to the FCC.” Post, at 18. 4 The Chief Justice’s discomfort with the growth of agency power, see post, at 2–4, is perhaps understandable. But the dissent overstates when it claims that agencies exercise “legislative power” and “judicial power.” Post, at 2; see also post, at 16. The former is vested exclusively in Congress, U. S. Const., Art. I, §1, the latter in the “one supreme Court” and “such inferior Courts as the Congress may from time to time ordain and establish,” Art. III, §1. Agencies make rules (“Private cattle may be grazed on public lands X, Y, and Z subject to certain conditions”) and conduct adjudications (“This rancher’s grazing permit is revoked for violation of the conditions”) and have done so since the beginning of the Republic. These activities take “legislative” and “judicial” forms, but they are exercises of—indeed, under our constitutional structure they must be exercises of—the “executive Power.” Art. II, §1, cl. 1. 5 The dissent—apparently with no attempt at irony—accuses us of “misunderstand[ing]” the question presented as one of “jurisdiction.” Post, at 5. Whatever imprecision inheres in our understanding of the question presented derives solely from our having read it.

568.US.398

Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 (FISA), 50 U. S. C. §1881a, added by the FISA Amendments Act of 2008, permits the Attorney General and the Director of National Intelligence to acquire foreign intelligence information by jointly authorizing the surveillance of individuals who are not “United States persons” and are reasonably believed to be located outside the United States. Before doing so, the Attorney General and the Director of National Intelligence normally must obtain the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court’s (FISC) approval. Surveillance under §1881a is subject to statutory conditions, judicial authorization, congressional supervision, and compliance with the Fourth Amendment. Respondents—attorneys and human rights, labor, legal, and media organizations—are United States persons who claim that they engage in sensitive international communications with individuals who they believe are likely targets of §1881a surveillance. On the day that the FISA Amendments Act was enacted, they filed suit, seeking a declaration that §1881a is facially unconstitutional and a permanent injunction against §1881a-authorized surveillance. The District Court found that respondents lacked standing, but the Second Circuit reversed, holding that respondents showed (1) an “objectively reasonable likelihood” that their communications will be intercepted at some time in the future, and (2) that they are suffering present injuries resulting from costly and burdensome measures they take to protect the confidentiality of their international communications from possible §1881a surveillance. Held: Respondents do not have Article III standing. Pp. 8–24. (a) To establish Article III standing, an injury must be “concrete, particularized, and actual or imminent; fairly traceable to the challenged action; and redressable by a favorable ruling.” Monsanto Co. v. Geertson Seed Farms, 561 U. S. ___, ___. “[T]hreatened injury must be ‘ “certainly impending” ’ to constitute injury in fact,” and “[a]llegations of possible future injury” are not sufficient. Whitmore v. Arkansas, 495 U.S. 149, 158. Pp. 8–10. (b) Respondents assert that they have suffered injury in fact that is fairly traceable to §1881a because there is an objectively reasonable likelihood that their communications with their foreign contacts will be intercepted under §1881a at some point. This argument fails. Initially, the Second Circuit’s “objectively reasonable likelihood” standard is inconsistent with this Court’s “threatened injury” requirement. Respondents’ standing theory also rests on a speculative chain of possibilities that does not establish that their potential injury is certainly impending or is fairly traceable to §1881a. First, it is highly speculative whether the Government will imminently target communications to which respondents are parties. Since respondents, as U. S. persons, cannot be targeted under §1881a, their theory necessarily rests on their assertion that their foreign contacts will be targeted. Yet they have no actual knowledge of the Government’s §1881a targeting practices. Second, even if respondents could demonstrate that the targeting of their foreign contacts is imminent, they can only speculate as to whether the Government will seek to use §1881aauthorized surveillance instead of one of the Government’s numerous other surveillance methods, which are not challenged here. Third, even if respondents could show that the Government will seek FISC authorization to target respondents’ foreign contacts under §1881a, they can only speculate as to whether the FISC will authorize the surveillance. This Court is reluctant to endorse standing theories that require guesswork as to how independent decisionmakers will exercise their judgment. See, e.g., Whitmore, supra, at 159–160. Fourth, even if the Government were to obtain the FISC’s approval to target respondents’ foreign contacts under §1881a, it is unclear whether the Government would succeed in acquiring those contacts’ communications. And fifth, even if the Government were to target respondents’ foreign contacts, respondents can only speculate as to whether their own communications with those contacts would be incidentally acquired. Pp. 10–15. (c) Respondents’ alternative argument is also unpersuasive. They claim that they suffer ongoing injuries that are fairly traceable to §1881a because the risk of §1881a surveillance requires them to take costly and burdensome measures to protect the confidentiality of their communications. But respondents cannot manufacture standing by choosing to make expenditures based on hypothetical future harm that is not certainly impending. Because they do not face a threat of certainly impending interception under §1881a, their costs are simply the product of their fear of surveillance, which is insufficient to create standing. See Laird v. Tatum, 408 U.S. 1, 10–15. Accordingly, any ongoing injuries that respondents are suffering are not fairly traceable to §1881a. Pp. 16–20. (d) Respondents’ remaining arguments are likewise unavailing. Contrary to their claim, their alleged injuries are not the same kinds of injuries that supported standing in cases such as Friends of the Earth, Inc. v. Laidlaw Environmental Services (TOC), Inc., 528 U.S. 167, Meese v. Keene, 481 U.S. 465, and Monsanto, supra. And their suggestion that they should be held to have standing because otherwise the constitutionality of §1881a will never be adjudicated is both legally and factually incorrect. First, “ ‘[t]he assumption that if respondents have no standing to sue, no one would have standing, is not a reason to find standing.’ ” Valley Forge Christian College v. Americans United for Separation of Church and State, Inc., 454 U.S. 464, 489. Second, the holding in this case by no means insulates §1881a from judicial review. Pp. 20–23. 638 F.3d 118, reversed and remanded. Alito, J., delivered the opinion of the Court, in which Roberts, C. J., and Scalia, Kennedy, and Thomas, JJ., joined. Breyer, J., filed a dissenting opinion, in which Ginsburg, Sotomayor, and Kagan, JJ., joined.

Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978, 50 U. S. C. §1881a (2006 ed., Supp. V), allows the Attorney General and the Director of National Intelligence to acquire foreign intelligence information by jointly authorizing the surveillance of individuals who are not “United States persons”[1] and are reasonably believed to be located outside the United States. Before doing so, the Attorney General and the Director of National Intelligence normally must obtain the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court’s approval. Respondents are United States persons whose work, they allege, requires them to engage in sensitive international communications with individ- uals who they believe are likely targets of surveillance under §1881a. Respondents seek a declaration that §1881a is unconstitutional, as well as an injunction against §1881a-authorized surveillance. The question before us is whether respondents have Article III standing to seek this prospective relief. Respondents assert that they can establish injury in fact because there is an objectively reasonable likelihood that their communications will be acquired under §1881a at some point in the future. But respondents’ theory of future injury is too speculative to satisfy the wellestablished requirement that threatened injury must be “certainly impending.” E.g., Whitmore v. Arkansas, 495 U.S. 149, 158 (1990). And even if respondents could demonstrate that the threatened injury is certainly impending, they still would not be able to establish that this injury is fairly traceable to §1881a. As an alternative argument, respondents contend that they are suffering present injury because the risk of §1881a-authorized surveillance al- ready has forced them to take costly and burdensome meas- ures to protect the confidentiality of their international communications. But respondents cannot manufacture stand- ing by choosing to make expenditures based on hypothetical future harm that is not certainly impending. We therefore hold that respondents lack Article III standing. I A In 1978, after years of debate, Congress enacted the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) to authorize and regulate certain governmental electronic surveillance of communications for foreign intelligence purposes. See 92Stat. 1783, 50 U. S. C. §1801 et seq.; 1 D. Kris & J. Wilson, National Security Investigations & Prosecutions §§3.1, 3.7 (2d ed. 2012) (hereinafter Kris & Wilson). In enacting FISA, Congress legislated against the backdrop of our decision in United States v. United States Dist. Court for Eastern Dist. of Mich., 407 U.S. 297 (1972) (Keith), in which we explained that the standards and procedures that law enforcement officials must follow when conducting “surveillance of ‘ordinary crime’ ” might not be required in the context of surveillance conducted for domestic national-security purposes. Id., at 322–323. Although the Keith opinion expressly disclaimed any ruling “on the scope of the President’s surveillance power with respect to the activities of foreign powers,” id., at 308, it implicitly suggested that a special framework for foreign intelligence surveillance might be constitutionally permissible, see id., at 322–323. In constructing such a framework for foreign intel- ligence surveillance, Congress created two specialized courts. In FISA, Congress authorized judges of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) to approve electronic surveillance for foreign intelligence purposes if there is probable cause to believe that “the target of the electronic surveillance is a foreign power or an agent of a foreign power,” and that each of the specific “facilities or places at which the electronic surveillance is directed is being used, or is about to be used, by a foreign power or an agent of a foreign power.” §105(a)(3), 92Stat. 1790; see §§105(b)(1)(A), (b)(1)(B), ibid.; 1 Kris & Wilson §7:2, at 194–195; id., §16:2, at 528–529. Additionally, Congress vested the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court of Review with jurisdiction to review any denials by the FISC of applications for electronic surveillance. §103(b), 92Stat. 1788; 1 Kris & Wilson §5:7, at 151–153. In the wake of the September 11th attacks, President George W. Bush authorized the National Security Agency (NSA) to conduct warrantless wiretapping of telephone and e-mail communications where one party to the communication was located outside the United States and a participant in “the call was reasonably believed to be a member or agent of al Qaeda or an affiliated terrorist organization,” App. to Pet. for Cert. 403a. See id., at 263a–265a, 268a, 273a–279a, 292a–293a; American Civil Liberties Union v. NSA, 493 F.3d 644, 648 (CA6 2007) (ACLU) (opinion of Batchelder, J.). In January 2007, the FISC issued orders authorizing the Government to target international communications into or out of the United States where there was probable cause to believe that one participant to the communication was a member or agent of al Qaeda or an associated terrorist organization. App. to Pet. for Cert. 312a, 398a, 405a. These FISC orders sub- jected any electronic surveillance that was then occur- ring under the NSA’s program to the approval of the FISC. Id., at 405a; see id., at 312a, 404a. After a FISC Judge subsequently narrowed the FISC’s authorization of such surveillance, however, the Executive asked Congress to amend FISA so that it would provide the intelligence community with additional authority to meet the challenges of modern technology and international terrorism. Id., at 315a–318a, 331a–333a, 398a; see id., at 262a, 277a–279a, 287a. When Congress enacted the FISA Amendments Act of 2008 (FISA Amendments Act), 122Stat. 2436, it left much of FISA intact, but it “established a new and independent source of intelligence collection authority, beyond that granted in traditional FISA.” 1 Kris & Wilson §9:11, at 349–350. As relevant here, §702 of FISA, 50 U. S. C. §1881a (2006 ed., Supp. V), which was enacted as part of the FISA Amendments Act, supplements pre-existing FISA authority by creating a new framework under which the Government may seek the FISC’s authorization of certain foreign intelligence surveillance targeting the communications of non-U. S. persons located abroad. Unlike traditional FISA surveillance, §1881a does not require the Government to demonstrate probable cause that the target of the electronic surveillance is a for- eign power or agent of a foreign power. Compare §§1805(a)(2)(A), (a)(2)(B), with §§1881a(d)(1), (i)(3)(A); 638 F.3d 118, 126 (CA2 2011); 1 Kris & Wilson §16:16, at 584. And, unlike traditional FISA, §1881a does not require the Government to specify the nature and location of each of the particular facilities or places at which the electronic surveillance will occur. Compare §§1805(a)(2)(B), (c)(1) (2006 ed. and Supp. V), with §§1881a(d)(1), (g)(4), (i)(3)(A); 638 F. 3d, at 125–126; 1 Kris & Wilson §16:16, at 585.[2] The present case involves a constitutional challenge to §1881a. Surveillance under §1881a is subject to statutory conditions, judicial authorization, congressional supervision, and compliance with the Fourth Amendment. Section 1881a provides that, upon the issuance of an order from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, “the Attorney General and the Director of National Intelligence may authorize jointly, for a period of up to 1 year . . . , the targeting of persons reasonably believed to be located outside the United States to acquire foreign intelligence information.” §1881a(a). Surveillance under §1881a may not be intentionally targeted at any person known to be in the United States or any U. S. person reasonably believed to be located abroad. §§1881a(b)(1)–(3); see also §1801(i). Additionally, acquisitions under §1881a must comport with the Fourth Amendment. §1881a(b)(5). Moreover, surveillance under §1881a is subject to congressional oversight and several types of Executive Branch review. See §§1881a(f)(2), (l); Amnesty Int’l USA v. McConnell, 646 F. Supp. 2d 633, 640–641 (SDNY 2009). Section 1881a mandates that the Government obtain the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court’s approval of “targeting” procedures, “minimization” procedures, and a governmental certification regarding proposed surveillance. §§1881a(a), (c)(1), (i)(2), (i)(3). Among other things, the Government’s certification must attest that (1) pro- cedures are in place “that have been approved, have been submitted for approval, or will be submitted with the certification for approval by the [FISC] that are reason- ably designed” to ensure that an acquisition is “limited to targeting persons reasonably believed to be located outside” the United States; (2) minimization procedures adequately restrict the acquisition, retention, and dissemination of nonpublic information about unconsenting U. S. persons, as appropriate; (3) guidelines have been adopted to ensure compliance with targeting limits and the Fourth Amendment; and (4) the procedures and guidelines referred to above comport with the Fourth Amendment. §1881a(g)(2); see §1801(h). The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court’s role includes determining whether the Government’s certifi- cation contains the required elements. Additionally, the Court assesses whether the targeting procedures are “reasonably designed” (1) to “ensure that an acquisition . . . is limited to targeting persons reasonably believed to be located outside the United States” and (2) to “prevent the intentional acquisition of any communication as to which the sender and all intended recipients are known . . . to be located in the United States.” §1881a(i)(2)(B). The Court analyzes whether the minimization procedures “meet the definition of minimization procedures under section 1801(h) . . . , as appropriate.” §1881a(i)(2)(C). The Court also assesses whether the targeting and minimization procedures are consistent with the statute and the Fourth Amendment. See §1881a(i)(3)(A).[3] B Respondents are attorneys and human rights, labor, legal, and media organizations whose work allegedly requires them to engage in sensitive and sometimes privileged telephone and e-mail communications with colleagues, clients, sources, and other individuals located abroad. Respondents believe that some of the people with whom they exchange foreign intelligence information are likely targets of surveillance under §1881a. Specifically, respondents claim that they communicate by telephone and e-mail with people the Government “believes or believed to be associated with terrorist organizations,” “people located in geographic areas that are a special focus” of the Government’s counterterrorism or diplomatic efforts, and activists who oppose governments that are supported by the United States Government. App. to Pet. for Cert. 399a. Respondents claim that §1881a compromises their ability to locate witnesses, cultivate sources, obtain information, and communicate confidential information to their clients. Respondents also assert that they “have ceased engaging” in certain telephone and e-mail conversations. Id., at 400a. According to respondents, the threat of surveillance will compel them to travel abroad in order to have in-person conversations. In addition, respondents declare that they have undertaken “costly and burdensome measures” to protect the confidentiality of sensitive communications. Ibid. C On the day when the FISA Amendments Act was en- acted, respondents filed this action seeking (1) a declaration that §1881a, on its face, violates the Fourth Amendment, the First Amendment, Article III, and separation-of-powers principles and (2) a permanent injunction against the use of §1881a. Respondents assert what they characterize as two separate theories of Article III standing. First, they claim that there is an objectively reasonable likelihood that their communications will be acquired under §1881a at some point in the future, thus causing them injury. Second, respondents maintain that the risk of surveillance under §1881a is so substantial that they have been forced to take costly and burdensome measures to protect the confidentiality of their international communications; in their view, the costs they have incurred constitute present injury that is fairly traceable to §1881a. After both parties moved for summary judgment, the District Court held that respondents do not have standing. McConnell, 646 F. Supp. 2d, at 635. On appeal, however, a panel of the Second Circuit reversed. The panel agreed with respondents’ argument that they have standing due to the objectively reasonable likelihood that their communications will be intercepted at some time in the future. 638 F. 3d, at 133, 134, 139. In addition, the panel held that respondents have established that they are suffering “present injuries in fact—economic and professional harms—stemming from a reasonable fear of future harmful government conduct.” Id., at 138. The Second Circuit denied rehearing en banc by an equally divided vote. 667 F.3d 163 (2011). Because of the importance of the issue and the novel view of standing adopted by the Court of Appeals, we granted certiorari, 566 U. S. ___ (2012), and we now reverse. II Article III of the Constitution limits federal courts’ jurisdiction to certain “Cases” and “Controversies.” As we have explained, “[n]o principle is more fundamental to the judiciary’s proper role in our system of government than the constitutional limitation of federal-court jurisdiction to actual cases or controversies.” DaimlerChrysler Corp. v. Cuno, 547 U.S. 332, 341 (2006) (internal quotation marks omitted); Raines v. Byrd, 521 U.S. 811, 818 (1997) (internal quotation marks omitted); see, e.g., Summers v. Earth Island Institute, 555 U.S. 488, 492–493 (2009). “One element of the case-or-controversy requirement” is that plaintiffs “must establish that they have standing to sue.” Raines, supra, at 818; see also Summers, supra, at 492–493; DaimlerChrysler Corp., supra, at 342; Lujan v. Defenders of Wildlife, 504 U.S. 555, 560 (1992). The law of Article III standing, which is built on separation-of-powers principles, serves to prevent the judicial process from being used to usurp the powers of the political branches. Summers, supra, at 492–493; Daimler-Chrysler Corp., supra, at 341–342, 353; Raines, supra, at 818–820; Valley Forge Christian College v. Americans United for Separation of Church and State, Inc., 454 U.S. 464, 471–474 (1982); Schlesinger v. Reservists Comm. to Stop the War, 418 U.S. 208, 221–222 (1974). In keeping with the purpose of this doctrine, “[o]ur standing inquiry has been especially rigorous when reaching the merits of the dispute would force us to decide whether an action taken by one of the other two branches of the Federal Government was unconstitutional.” Raines, supra, at 819–820; see Valley Forge Christian College, supra, at 473–474; Schlesinger, supra, at 221–222. “Relaxation of standing requirements is directly related to the expansion of judicial power,” United States v. Richardson, 418 U.S. 166, 188 (1974) (Powell, J., concurring); see also Summers, supra, at 492–493; Schlesinger, supra, at 222, and we have often found a lack of standing in cases in which the Judiciary has been requested to review actions of the political branches in the fields of intelligence gathering and foreign affairs, see, e.g., Richardson, supra, at 167–170 (plaintiff lacked standing to challenge the constitutionality of a statute permitting the Central Intelligence Agency to account for its expenditures solely on the certificate of the CIA Director); Schlesinger, supra, at 209–211 (plaintiffs lacked standing to challenge the Armed Forces Reserve membership of Members of Congress); Laird v. Tatum, 408 U.S. 1, 11–16 (1972) (plaintiffs lacked standing to challenge an Army intelligence-gathering program). To establish Article III standing, an injury must be “concrete, particularized, and actual or imminent; fairly traceable to the challenged action; and redressable by a favorable ruling.” Monsanto Co. v. Geertson Seed Farms, 561 U. S. ___, ___ (2010) (slip op., at 7); see also Summers, supra, at 493; Defenders of Wildlife, 504 U. S., at 560–561. “Although imminence is concededly a somewhat elastic concept, it cannot be stretched beyond its purpose, which is to ensure that the alleged injury is not too speculative for Article III purposes—that the injury is certainly impending.” Id., at 565, n. 2 (internal quotation marks omitted). Thus, we have repeatedly reiterated that “threatened injury must be certainly impending to constitute injury in fact,” and that “[a]llegations of possible future injury” are not sufficient. Whitmore, 495 U. S., at 158 (emphasis added; internal quotation marks omitted); see also Defenders of Wildlife, supra, at 565, n. 2, 567, n. 3; see DaimlerChrysler Corp., supra, at 345; Friends of the Earth, Inc. v. Laidlaw Environmental Services (TOC), Inc., 528 U.S. 167, 190 (2000); Babbitt v. Farm Workers, 442 U.S. 289, 298 (1979). III A Respondents assert that they can establish injury in fact that is fairly traceable to §1881a because there is an objectively reasonable likelihood that their communications with their foreign contacts will be intercepted under §1881a at some point in the future. This argument fails. As an initial matter, the Second Circuit’s “objectively reasonable likelihood” standard is inconsistent with our requirement that “threatened injury must be certainly impending to constitute injury in fact.” Whitmore, supra, at 158 (internal quotation marks omitted); see also DaimlerChrysler Corp., supra, at 345; Laidlaw, supra, at 190; Defenders of Wildlife, supra, at 565, n. 2; Babbitt, supra, at 298. Furthermore, respondents’ argument rests on their highly speculative fear that: (1) the Government will decide to target the communications of non-U. S. persons with whom they communicate; (2) in doing so, the Government will choose to invoke its authority under §1881a rather than utilizing another method of surveillance; (3) the Article III judges who serve on the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court will conclude that the Government’s proposed surveillance procedures satisfy §1881a’s many safeguards and are consistent with the Fourth Amendment; (4) the Government will succeed in inter- cepting the communications of respondents’ contacts; and (5) respondents will be parties to the particular communications that the Government intercepts. As discussed below, respondents’ theory of standing, which relies on a highly attenuated chain of possibilities, does not satisfy the requirement that threatened injury must be certainly impending. See Summers, supra, at 496 (rejecting a standing theory premised on a speculative chain of possibilities); Whitmore, supra, at 157–160 (same). Moreover, even if respondents could demonstrate injury in fact, the second link in the above-described chain of contingencies—which amounts to mere speculation about whether surveillance would be under §1881a or some other authority—shows that respondents cannot satisfy the requirement that any injury in fact must be fairly traceable to §1881a. First, it is speculative whether the Government will imminently target communications to which respondents are parties. Section 1881a expressly provides that respondents, who are U. S. persons, cannot be targeted for surveillance under §1881a. See §§1881a(b)(1)–(3); 667 F. 3d, at 173 (Raggi, J., dissenting from denial of rehearing en banc). Accordingly, it is no surprise that respondents fail to offer any evidence that their communications have been monitored under §1881a, a failure that substantially undermines their standing theory. See ACLU, 493 F. 3d, at 655–656, 673–674 (opinion of Batchelder, J.) (concluding that plaintiffs who lacked evidence that their communications had been intercepted did not have standing to challenge alleged NSA surveillance). Indeed, respondents do not even allege that the Government has sought the FISC’s approval for surveillance of their communications. Accordingly, respondents’ theory necessarily rests on their assertion that the Government will target other individuals—namely, their foreign contacts. Yet respondents have no actual knowledge of the Government’s §1881a targeting practices. Instead, respondents merely speculate and make assumptions about whether their communications with their foreign contacts will be acquired under §1881a. See 667 F. 3d, at 185–187 (opinion of Raggi, J.). For example, journalist Christopher Hedges states: “I have no choice but to assume that any of my international communications may be subject to government surveillance, and I have to make decisions . . . in light of that assumption.” App. to Pet. for Cert. 366a (emphasis added and deleted). Similarly, attorney Scott McKay asserts that, “[b]ecause of the [FISA Amendments Act], we now have to assume that every one of our international communications may be monitored by the government.” Id., at 375a (emphasis added); see also id., at 337a, 343a–344a, 350a, 356a. “The party invoking federal jurisdiction bears the burden of establishing” standing—and, at the summary judgment stage, such a party “can no longer rest on . . . ‘mere allegations,’ but must ‘set forth’ by affidavit or other evidence ‘specific facts.’ ” Defenders of Wildlife, 504 U. S., at 561. Respondents, however, have set forth no specific facts demonstrating that the communications of their foreign contacts will be targeted. More- over, because §1881a at most authorizes—but does not mandate or direct—the surveillance that respondents fear, respondents’ allegations are necessarily conjectural. See United Presbyterian Church in U. S. A. v. Reagan, 738 F.2d 1375, 1380 (CADC 1984) (Scalia, J.); 667 F. 3d, at 187 (opinion of Raggi, J.). Simply put, respondents can only speculate as to how the Attorney General and the Director of National Intelligence will exercise their discretion in determining which communications to target.[4] Second, even if respondents could demonstrate that the targeting of their foreign contacts is imminent, respondents can only speculate as to whether the Government will seek to use §1881aauthorized surveillance (rather than other methods) to do so. The Government has numerous other methods of conducting surveillance, none of which is challenged here. Even after the enactment of the FISA Amendments Act, for example, the Government may still conduct electronic surveillance of persons abroad under the older provisions of FISA so long as it satisfies the applicable requirements, including a demonstration of probable cause to believe that the person is a foreign power or agent of a foreign power. See §1805. The Government may also obtain information from the intelligence services of foreign nations. Brief for Petitioners 33. And, although we do not reach the question, the Government contends that it can conduct FISA-exempt human and technical surveillance programs that are governed by Executive Order 12333. See Exec. Order No. 12333, §§1.4, 2.1–2.5, 3 CFR 202, 210–212 (1981), reprinted as amended, note following 50 U. S. C. §401, pp. 543, 547–548. Even if respondents could demonstrate that their foreign contacts will imminently be targeted—indeed, even if they could show that interception of their own communications will imminently occur—they would still need to show that their injury is fairly traceable to §1881a. But, because respondents can only speculate as to whether any (asserted) interception would be under §1881a or some other authority, they cannot satisfy the “fairly traceable” requirement. Third, even if respondents could show that the Government will seek the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court’s authorization to acquire the communications of respondents’ foreign contacts under §1881a, respondents can only speculate as to whether that court will authorize such surveillance. In the past, we have been reluctant to endorse standing theories that require guesswork as to how independent decisionmakers will exercise their judgment. In Whitmore, for example, the plaintiff’s theory of standing hinged largely on the probability that he would obtain federal habeas relief and be convicted upon retrial. In holding that the plaintiff lacked standing, we explained that “[i]t is just not possible for a litigant to prove in advance that the judicial system will lead to any particular result in his case.” 495 U. S., at 159–160; see Defenders of Wildlife, 504 U. S., at 562. We decline to abandon our usual reluctance to endorse standing theories that rest on speculation about the decisions of independent actors. Section 1881a mandates that the Government must obtain the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court’s approval of targeting procedures, minimization procedures, and a governmental certification regarding proposed surveillance. §§1881a(a), (c)(1), (i)(2), (i)(3). The Court must, for example, determine whether the Government’s procedures are “reasonably designed . . . to minimize the acquisition and retention, and prohibit the dissemination, of nonpublicly available information concerning unconsenting United States persons.” §1801(h); see §§1881a(i)(2), (i)(3)(A). And, critically, the Court must also assess whether the Government’s targeting and minimization procedures comport with the Fourth Amend- ment. §1881a(i)(3)(A). Fourth, even if the Government were to obtain the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court’s approval to tar- get respondents’ foreign contacts under §1881a, it is unclear whether the Government would succeed in acquiring the communications of respondents’ foreign contacts. And fifth, even if the Government were to conduct surveillance of respondents’ foreign contacts, respondents can only speculate as to whether their own communications with their foreign contacts would be incidentally acquired. In sum, respondents’ speculative chain of possibilities does not establish that injury based on potential future surveillance is certainly impending or is fairly traceable to §1881a.[5] B Respondents’ alternative argument—namely, that they can establish standing based on the measures that they have undertaken to avoid §1881a-authorized surveillance—fares no better. Respondents assert that they are suffering ongoing injuries that are fairly traceable to §1881a because the risk of surveillance under §1881a requires them to take costly and burdensome measures to protect the confidentiality of their communications. Respondents claim, for instance, that the threat of surveillance sometimes compels them to avoid certain e-mail and phone conversations, to “tal[k] in generalities rather than specifics,” or to travel so that they can have in-person conversations. Tr. of Oral Arg. 38; App. to Pet. for Cert. 338a, 345a, 367a, 400a.[6] The Second Circuit panel concluded that, because respondents are already suffering such ongoing injuries, the likelihood of interception under §1881a is relevant only to the question whether respondents’ ongoing injuries are “fairly traceable” to §1881a. See 638 F. 3d, at 133–134; 667 F. 3d, at 180 (opinion of Raggi, J.). Analyzing the “fairly traceable” element of standing under a relaxed reasonableness standard, see 638 F. 3d, at 133–134, the Second Circuit then held that “plaintiffs have established that they suffered present injuries in fact—economic and professional harms—stemming from a reasonable fear of future harmful government conduct,” id., at 138. The Second Circuit’s analysis improperly allowed respondents to establish standing by asserting that they suffer present costs and burdens that are based on a fear of surveillance, so long as that fear is not “fanciful, paranoid, or otherwise unreasonable.” See id., at 134. This improperly waters down the fundamental requirements of Article III. Respondents’ contention that they have standing because they incurred certain costs as a reasonable reaction to a risk of harm is unavailing—because the harm respondents seek to avoid is not certainly impending. In other words, respondents cannot manufacture standing merely by inflicting harm on themselves based on their fears of hypothetical future harm that is not certainly impending. See Pennsylvania v. New Jersey, 426 U.S. 660, 664 (1976) (per curiam); National Family Planning & Reproductive Health Assn., Inc., 468 F.3d 826, 831 (CADC 2006). Any ongoing injuries that respondents are suffering are not fairly traceable to §1881a. If the law were otherwise, an enterprising plaintiff would be able to secure a lower standard for Article III standing simply by making an expenditure based on a nonparanoid fear. As Judge Raggi accurately noted, under the Second Circuit panel’s reasoning, respondents could, “for the price of a plane ticket, . . . transform their standing burden from one requiring a showing of actual or imminent . . . interception to one requiring a showing that their subjective fear of such interception is not fanciful, irrational, or clearly unreasonable.” 667 F. 3d, at 180 (internal quotation marks omitted). Thus, allowing respondents to bring this action based on costs they incurred in response to a speculative threat would be tantamount to accepting a repackaged version of respondents’ first failed theory of standing. See ACLU, 493 F. 3d, at 656–657 (opinion of Batchelder, J.). Another reason that respondents’ present injuries are not fairly traceable to §1881a is that even before §1881a was enacted, they had a similar incentive to engage in many of the countermeasures that they are now taking. See id., at 668–670. For instance, respondent Scott McKay’s declaration describes—and the dissent heavily relies on—Mr. McKay’s “knowledge” that thousands of communications involving one of his clients were monitored in the past. App. to Pet. for Cert. 370a; post, at 4, 7–8. But this surveillance was conducted pursuant to FISA authority that predated §1881a. See Brief for Petitioners 32, n. 11; Al-Kidd v. Gonzales, No. 05–cv–93, 2008 WL 5123009 (D Idaho, Dec. 4, 2008). Thus, because the Government was allegedly conducting surveillance of Mr. McKay’s client before Congress enacted §1881a, it is difficult to see how the safeguards that Mr. McKay now claims to have implemented can be traced to §1881a. Because respondents do not face a threat of certainly impending interception under §1881a, the costs that they have incurred to avoid surveillance are simply the product of their fear of surveillance,[7] and our decision in Laird makes it clear that such a fear is insufficient to create standing. See 408 U. S., at 10–15. The plaintiffs in Laird argued that their exercise of First Amendment rights was being “chilled by the mere existence, without more, of [the Army’s] investigative and data-gathering activity.” Id., at 10. While acknowledging that prior cases had held that constitutional violations may arise from the chilling effect of “regulations that fall short of a direct prohibi- tion against the exercise of First Amendment rights,” the Court declared that none of those cases involved a “chilling effect aris[ing] merely from the individual’s knowledge that a governmental agency was engaged in certain activities or from the individual’s concomitant fear that, armed with the fruits of those activities, the agency might in the future take some other and additional action detrimental to that individual.” Id., at 11. Because “[a]llegations of a subjective ‘chill’ are not an adequate substitute for a claim of specific present objective harm or a threat of specific future harm,” id., at 13–14, the plaintiffs in Laird—and respondents here—lack standing. See ibid.; ACLU, supra, at 661–662 (opinion of Batchelder, J.) (holding that plaintiffs lacked standing because they “allege[d] only a subjective apprehension” of alleged NSA surveillance and “a personal (self-imposed) unwillingness to communicate”); United Presbyterian Church, 738 F. 2d, at 1378 (holding that plaintiffs lacked standing to challenge the legality of an Executive Order relating to surveillance because “the ‘chilling effect’ which is produced by their fear of being subjected to illegal surveillance and which deters them from conducting constitutionally protected activities, is foreclosed as a basis for standing” by Laird). For the reasons discussed above, respondents’ self-inflicted injuries are not fairly traceable to the Government’s purported activities under §1881a, and their subjective fear of surveillance does not give rise to standing. IV A Respondents incorrectly maintain that “[t]he kinds of injuries incurred here—injuries incurred because of [respondents’] reasonable efforts to avoid greater injuries that are otherwise likely to flow from the conduct they challenge—are the same kinds of injuries that this Court held to support standing in cases such as” Laidlaw, Meese v. Keene, 481 U.S. 465 (1987), and Monsanto. Brief for Respondents 24. As an initial matter, none of these cases holds or even suggests that plaintiffs can establish standing simply by claiming that they experienced a “chilling effect” that resulted from a governmental policy that does not regulate, constrain, or compel any action on their part. Moreover, each of these cases was very different from the present case. In Laidlaw, plaintiffs’ standing was based on “the proposition that a company’s continuous and pervasive illegal discharges of pollutants into a river would cause nearby residents to curtail their recreational use of that waterway and would subject them to other economic and aesthetic harms.” 528 U. S., at 184. Because the unlawful discharges of pollutants were “concededly ongoing,” the only issue was whether “nearby residents”—who were members of the organizational plaintiffs—acted reasonably in refraining from using the polluted area. Id., at 183–184. Laidlaw is therefore quite unlike the present case, in which it is not “concede[d]” that respondents would be subject to unlawful surveillance but for their decision to take preventive measures. See ACLU, 493 F. 3d, at 686 (opinion of Batchelder, J.) (distinguishing Laidlaw on this ground); id., at 689–690 (Gibbons, J., concurring) (same); 667 F. 3d, at 182–183 (opinion of Raggi, J.) (same). Laidlaw would resemble this case only if (1) it were undisputed that the Government was using §1881a-authorized surveillance to acquire respondents’ communications and (2) the sole dispute concerned the reasonableness of respondents’ preventive measures. In Keene, the plaintiff challenged the constitutionality of the Government’s decision to label three films as “political propaganda.” 481 U. S., at 467. The Court held that the plaintiff, who was an attorney and a state legislator, had standing because he demonstrated, through “detailed affidavits,” that he “could not exhibit the films without incurring a risk of injury to his reputation and of an impairment of his political career.” Id., at 467, 473–475. Unlike the present case, Keene involved “more than a ‘subjective chill’ ” based on speculation about potential governmental action; the plaintiff in that case was unquestionably regulated by the relevant statute, and the films that he wished to exhibit had already been labeled as “political propaganda.” See ibid.; ACLU, 493 F. 3d, at 663–664 (opinion of Batchelder, J.); id., at 691 (Gibbons, J., concurring). Monsanto, on which respondents also rely, is likewise inapposite. In Monsanto, conventional alfalfa farmers had standing to seek injunctive relief because the agency’s decision to deregulate a variety of genetically engineered alfalfa gave rise to a “significant risk of gene flow to non-genetically-engineered varieties of alfalfa.” 561 U. S., at ___ (slip op., at 13). The standing analysis in that case hinged on evidence that genetically engineered alfalfa “ ‘seed fields [we]re currently being planted in all the major alfalfa seed production areas’ ”; the bees that pollinate alfalfa “ ‘have a range of at least two to ten miles’ ”; and the alfalfa seed farms were concentrated in an area well within the bees’ pollination range. Id., at ___–___, and n. 3 (slip op., at 11–12, and n. 3). Unlike the conventional alfalfa farmers in Monsanto, however, respondents in the present case present no concrete evidence to substantiate their fears, but instead rest on mere conjecture about possible governmental actions. B Respondents also suggest that they should be held to have standing because otherwise the constitutionality of §1881a could not be challenged. It would be wrong, they maintain, to “insulate the government’s surveillance activities from meaningful judicial review.” Brief for Respondents 60. Respondents’ suggestion is both legally and factually incorrect. First, “ ‘[t]he assumption that if respondents have no standing to sue, no one would have standing, is not a reason to find standing.’ ” Valley Forge Christian College, 454 U. S., at 489; Schlesinger, 418 U. S., at 227; see also Richardson, 418 U. S., at 179; Raines, 521 U. S., at 835 (Souter, J., joined by Ginsburg, J., concurring in judgment). Second, our holding today by no means insulates §1881a from judicial review. As described above, Congress created a comprehensive scheme in which the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court evaluates the Government’s certifications, targeting procedures, and minimization procedures—including assessing whether the targeting and minimization procedures comport with the Fourth Amendment. §§1881a(a), (c)(1), (i)(2), (i)(3). Any dissatisfaction that respondents may have about the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court’s rulings—or the congressional delineation of that court’s role—is irrelevant to our standing analysis. Additionally, if the Government intends to use or disclose information obtained or derived from a §1881a acquisition in judicial or administrative proceedings, it must provide advance notice of its intent, and the affected person may challenge the lawfulness of the acquisition. §§1806(c), 1806(e), 1881e(a) (2006 ed. and Supp. V).[8] Thus, if the Government were to prosecute one of respondent-attorney’s foreign clients using §1881a-authorized surveillance, the Government would be required to make a disclosure. Although the foreign client might not have a viable Fourth Amendment claim, see, e.g., United States v. Verdugo-Urquidez, 494 U.S. 259, 261 (1990), it is possible that the monitoring of the target’s conversations with his or her attorney would provide grounds for a claim of standing on the part of the attorney. Such an attorney would certainly have a stronger evidentiary basis for establishing standing than do respondents in the present case. In such a situation, unlike in the present case, it would at least be clear that the Government had acquired the foreign client’s communications using §1881a-authorized surveillance. Finally, any electronic communications service provider that the Government directs to assist in §1881a surveillance may challenge the lawfulness of that directive before the FISC. §§1881a(h)(4), (6). Indeed, at the behest of a service provider, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court of Review previously analyzed the constitutionality of electronic surveillance directives issued pursuant to a now-expired set of FISA amendments. See In re Directives Pursuant to Section 105B of Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, 551 F.3d 1004, 1006–1016 (2008) (holding that the provider had standing and that the directives were constitutional). * * * We hold that respondents lack Article III standing because they cannot demonstrate that the future injury they purportedly fear is certainly impending and because they cannot manufacture standing by incurring costs in anticipation of non-imminent harm. We therefore reverse the judgment of the Second Circuit and remand the case for further proceedings consistent with this opinion. It is so ordered. Notes 1 The term “United States person” includes citizens of the United States, aliens admitted for permanent residence, and certain associations and corporations. 50 U. S. C. §1801(i); see §1881(a). 2 Congress recently reauthorized the FISA Amendments Act for another five years. See 126Stat. 1631. 3 The dissent attempts to downplay the safeguards established by §1881a. See post, at 4 (opinion of Breyer, J.). Notably, the dissent does not directly acknowledge that §1881a surveillance must comport with the Fourth Amendment, see §1881a(b)(5), and that the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court must assess whether targeting and minimization procedures are consistent with the Fourth Amendment, see §1881a(i)(3)(A). 4 It was suggested at oral argument that the Government could help resolve the standing inquiry by disclosing to a court, perhaps through an in camera proceeding, (1) whether it is intercepting respondents’ communications and (2) what targeting or minimization procedures it is using. See Tr. of Oral Arg. 13–14, 44, 56. This suggestion is puzzling. As an initial matter, it is respondents’ burden to prove their standing by pointing to specific facts, Lujan v. Defenders of Wildlife, 504 U.S. 555, 561 (1992), not the Government’s burden to disprove standing by revealing details of its surveillance priorities. Moreover, this type of hypothetical disclosure proceeding would allow a terrorist (or his attorney) to determine whether he is currently under U. S. surveillance simply by filing a lawsuit challenging the Government’s surveillance program. Even if the terrorist’s attorney were to comply with a protective order prohibiting him from sharing the Government’s disclosures with his client, the court’s postdisclosure decision about whether to dismiss the suit for lack of standing would surely signal to the terrorist whether his name was on the list of surveillance targets. 5 Our cases do not uniformly require plaintiffs to demonstrate that it is literally certain that the harms they identify will come about. In some instances, we have found standing based on a “substantial risk” that the harm will occur, which may prompt plaintiffs to reasonably incur costs to mitigate or avoid that harm. Monsanto Co. v. Geertson Seed Farms, 561 U. S. ___, ___ (2010) (slip op., at 11–12). See also Pennell v. City of San Jose, 485 U.S. 1, 8 (1988); Blum v. Yaretsky, 457 U.S. 991, 1000–1001 (1982); Babbitt v. Farm Workers, 442 U.S. 289, 298 (1979). But to the extent that the “substantial risk” standard is relevant and is distinct from the “clearly impending” requirement, respondents fall short of even that standard, in light of the attenuated chain of inferences necessary to find harm here. See supra, at 11–15. In addition, plaintiffs bear the burden of pleading and proving concrete facts showing that the defendant’s actual action has caused the substantial risk of harm. Plaintiffs cannot rely on speculation about “ ‘the unfettered choices made by independent actors not before the court.’ ” Defenders of Wildlife, 504 U. S., at 562. 6 For all the focus on respondents’ supposed need to travel abroad in light of potential §1881a surveillance, respondents cite only one specific instance of travel: an attorney’s trip to New York City to meet with other lawyers. See App. to Pet. for Cert. 352a. This domestic travel had but a tenuous connection to §1881a, because §1881aauthorized acquisitions “may not intentionally target any person known at the time of acquisition to be located in the United States.” §1881a(b)(1); see also 667 F.3d 163, 202 (CA2 2011) (Jacobs, C. J., dissenting from denial of rehearing en banc); id., at 185 (opinion of Raggi, J. (same)). 7 Although respondents’ alternative theory of standing rests primarily on choices that they have made based on their subjective fear of surveillance, respondents also assert that third parties might be disinclined to speak with them due to a fear of surveillance. See App. to Pet. for Cert. 372a–373a, 352a–353a. To the extent that such assertions are based on anything other than conjecture, see Defenders of Wildlife, 504 U. S., at 560, they do not establish injury that is fairly traceable to §1881a, because they are based on third parties’ subjective fear of surveillance, see Laird, 408 U. S., at 10–14. 8 The possibility of judicial review in this context is not farfetched. In United States v. Damrah, 412 F.3d 618 (CA6 2005), for example, the Government made a pretrial disclosure that it intended to use FISA evidence in a prosecution; the defendant (unsuccessfully) moved to suppress the FISA evidence, even though he had not been the target of the surveillance; and the Sixth Circuit ultimately held that FISA’s procedures are consistent with the Fourth Amendment. See id., at 622, 623, 625.

569.US.27

Petitioners, Comcast Corporation and its subsidiaries, allegedly “cluster” their cable television operations within a particular region by swapping their systems outside the region for competitor systems inside the region. Respondents, named plaintiffs in this class-action antitrust suit, claim that they and other Comcast subscribers in the Philadelphia “cluster” are harmed because Comcast’s strategy lessens competition and leads to supra-competitive prices. They sought class certification under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 23(b)(3), which requires that “questions of law or fact common to class members predominate over any questions affecting only individual members.” The District Court required them to show (1) that the “antitrust impact” of the violation could be proved at trial through evidence common to the class and (2) that the damages were measurable on a classwide basis through a “common methodology.” The court accepted only one of respondents’ four proposed theories of antitrust impact: that Comcast’s actions lessened competition from “overbuilders,” i.e., companies that build competing networks in areas where an incumbent cable company already operates. It then certified the class, finding that the damages from overbuilder deterrence could be calculated on a classwide basis, even though respondents’ expert acknowledged that his regression model did not isolate damages resulting from any one of respondents’ theories. In affirming, the Third Circuit refused to consider petitioners’ argument that the model failed to attribute damages to overbuilder deterrence because doing so would require reaching the merits of respondents’ claims at the class certification stage. Held: Respondents’ class action was improperly certified under Rule 23(b)(3). Pp. 5–11. (a) A party seeking to maintain a class action must be prepared to show that Rule 23(a)’s numerosity, commonality, typicality, and adequacy-of-representation requirements have been met, Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. v. Dukes, 564 U. S. ___, ___, and must satisfy through evidentiary proof at least one of Rule 23(b)’s provisions. The same analytical principles govern certification under both Rule 23(a) and Rule 23(b). Courts may have to “ ‘probe behind the pleadings before coming to rest on the certification question,’ and [a] certification is proper only if ‘the trial court is satisfied, after a rigorous analysis, that [Rule 23’s] prerequisites . . . have been satisfied.’ ” Ibid. The analysis will frequently “overlap with the merits of the plaintiff’s underlying claim” because a “ ‘class determination generally involves considerations that are enmeshed in the factual and legal issues comprising the plaintiff’s cause of action.’ ” Ibid. Pp. 5–6. (b) The Third Circuit ran afoul of this Court’s precedents when it refused to entertain arguments against respondents’ damages model that bore on the propriety of class certification simply because they would also be pertinent to the merits determination. If they prevail, respondents would be entitled only to damages resulting from reduced overbuilder competition. A model that does not attempt to measure only those damages attributable to that theory cannot establish that damages are susceptible of measurement across the entire class for Rule 23(b)(3) purposes. The lower courts’ contrary reasoning flatly contradicts this Court’s cases, which require a determination that Rule 23 is satisfied, even when that requires inquiry into the merits of the claim. Wal-Mart, supra, at ___, and n. 6. Pp. 6–8. (c) Under the proper standard for evaluating certification, respondents’ model falls far short of establishing that damages can be measured classwide. The figure respondents’ expert used was calculated assuming the validity of all four theories of antitrust impact initially advanced by respondents. Because the model cannot bridge the differences between supra-competitive prices in general and supra-competitive prices attributable to overbuilder deterrence, Rule 23(b)(3) cannot authorize treating subscribers in the Philadelphia cluster as members of a single class. Pp. 8–11. 655 F.3d 182, reversed. Scalia, J., delivered the opinion of the Court, in which Roberts, C. J., and Kennedy, Thomas, and Alito, JJ., joined. Ginsburg and Breyer, JJ., filed a dissenting opinion, in which Sotomayor and Kagan, JJ., joined.

The District Court and the Court of Appeals approved certification of a class of more than 2 million current and former Comcast subscribers who seek damages for al- leged violations of the federal antitrust laws. We consider whether certification was appropriate under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 23(b)(3). I Comcast Corporation and its subsidiaries, petitioners here, provide cable-television services to residential and commercial customers. From 1998 to 2007, petitioners engaged in a series of transactions that the parties have described as “clustering,” a strategy of concentrating op- erations within a particular region. The region at issue here, which the parties have referred to as the Philadel- phia “cluster” or the Philadelphia “Designated Market Area” (DMA), includes 16 counties located in Pennsylvania, Delaware, and New Jersey.[1] Petitioners pursued their clustering strategy by acquiring competitor cable providers in the region and swapping their own systems outside the region for competitor systems located in the region. For instance, in 2001, petitioners obtained Adelphia Com- munications’ cable systems in the Philadelphia DMA, along with its 464,000 subscribers; in exchange, petitioners sold to Adelphia their systems in Palm Beach, Florida, and Los Angeles, California. As a result of nine cluster- ing transactions, petitioners’ share of subscribers in the re- gion allegedly increased from 23.9 percent in 1998 to 69.5 percent in 2007. See 264 F.R.D. 150, 156, n. 8, 160 (ED Pa. 2010). The named plaintiffs, respondents here, are subscribers to Comcast’s cable-television services. They filed a class-action antitrust suit against petitioners, claiming that petitioners entered into unlawful swap agreements, in violation of §1 of the Sherman Act, and monopolized or at- tempted to monopolize services in the cluster, in viola- tion of §2. Ch. 647, 26Stat. 209, as amended, 15 U. S. C. §§1, 2. Petitioners’ clustering scheme, respondents contended, harmed subscribers in the Philadelphia cluster by eliminating competition and holding prices for cable services above competitive levels. Respondents sought to certify a class under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 23(b)(3). That provision permits certification only if “the court finds that the questions of law or fact common to class members predominate over any questions affecting only individual members.” The District Court held, and it is uncontested here, that to meet the predominance requirement respondents had to show (1) that the existence of individual injury resulting from the alleged antitrust violation (referred to as “antitrust impact”) was “capable of proof at trial through evidence that [was] common to the class rather than individual to its members”; and (2) that the damages resulting from that injury were measurable “on a class-wide basis” through use of a “common methodology.” 264 F. R. D., at 154.[2] Respondents proposed four theories of antitrust impact: First, Comcast’s clustering made it profitable for Comcast to withhold local sports programming from its competi- tors, resulting in decreased market penetration by direct broadcast satellite providers. Second, Comcast’s activities reduced the level of competition from “overbuilders,” companies that build competing cable networks in areas where an incumbent cable company already operates. Third, Comcast reduced the level of “benchmark” competition on which cable customers rely to compare prices. Fourth, clustering increased Comcast’s bargaining power relative to content providers. Each of these forms of impact, respondents alleged, increased cable subscription rates throughout the Philadelphia DMA. The District Court accepted the overbuilder theory of antitrust impact as capable of classwide proof and rejected the rest. Id., at 165, 174, 178, 181. Accordingly, in its certification order, the District Court limited respondents’ “proof of antitrust impact” to “the theory that Comcast engaged in anticompetitive clustering conduct, the effect of which was to deter the entry of overbuilders in the Philadelphia DMA.” App. to Pet. for Cert. 192a–193a.[3] The District Court further found that the damages resulting from overbuilder-deterrence impact could be calculated on a classwide basis. To establish such dam- ages, respondents had relied solely on the testimony of Dr. James McClave. Dr. McClave designed a regression model comparing actual cable prices in the Philadelphia DMA with hypothetical prices that would have prevailed but for petitioners’ allegedly anticompetitive activities. The model calculated damages of $875,576,662 for the entire class. App. 1388a (sealed). As Dr. McClave acknowledged, however, the model did not isolate damages resulting from any one theory of antitrust impact. Id., at 189a–190a. The District Court nevertheless certified the class. A divided panel of the Court of Appeals affirmed. On appeal, petitioners contended the class was improperly certified because the model, among other shortcomings, failed to attribute damages resulting from overbuilder deterrence, the only theory of injury remaining in the case. The court refused to consider the argument because, in its view, such an “attac[k] on the merits of the methodology [had] no place in the class certification inquiry.” 655 F.3d 182, 207 (CA3 2011). The court emphasized that, “[a]t the class certification stage,” respondents were not required to “tie each theory of antitrust impact to an exact calculation of damages.” Id., at 206. According to the court, it had “not reached the stage of determining on the merits whether the methodology is a just and reasonable inference or speculative.” Ibid. Rather, the court said, respondents must “assure us that if they can prove antitrust impact, the resulting damages are capable of measurement and will not require labyrinthine individual calculations.” Ibid. In the court’s view, that burden was met because respondents’ model calculated “supra-competitive prices regardless of the type of anticompetitive conduct.” Id., at 205. We granted certiorari. 567 U. S. ___ (2012).[4] II The class action is “an exception to the usual rule that litigation is conducted by and on behalf of the individual named parties only.” Califano v. Yamasaki, 442 U.S. 682, 700–701 (1979). To come within the exception, a party seeking to maintain a class action “must affirmatively demonstrate his compliance” with Rule 23. Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. v. Dukes, 564 U. S. ___, ___ (2011) (slip op., at 10). The Rule “does not set forth a mere pleading standard.” Ibid. Rather, a party must not only “be prepared to prove that there are in fact sufficiently numerous parties, common questions of law or fact,” typicality of claims or defenses, and adequacy of representation, as required by Rule 23(a). Ibid. The party must also satisfy through evidentiary proof at least one of the provisions of Rule 23(b). The provision at issue here is Rule 23(b)(3), which requires a court to find that “the questions of law or fact common to class members predominate over any questions affecting only individual members.” Repeatedly, we have emphasized that it “ ‘may be necessary for the court to probe behind the pleadings before coming to rest on the certification question,’ and that certification is proper only if ‘the trial court is satisfied, after a rigorous analysis, that the prerequisites of Rule 23(a) have been satisfied.’ ” Ibid. (quoting General Telephone Co. of Southwest v. Falcon, 457 U.S. 147, 160–161 (1982)). Such an analysis will frequently entail “overlap with the merits of the plaintiff’s underlying claim.” 564 U. S., at ___ (slip op., at 10). That is so because the “ ‘class determination generally involves considerations that are enmeshed in the factual and legal issues comprising the plaintiff’s cause of action.’ ” Ibid. (quoting Falcon, supra, at 160). The same analytical principles govern Rule 23(b). If anything, Rule 23(b)(3)’s predominance criterion is even more demanding than Rule 23(a). Amchem Products, Inc. v. Windsor, 521 U.S. 591, 623–624 (1997). Rule 23(b)(3), as an “ ‘adventuresome innovation,’ ” is designed for situations “ ‘in which “class-action treatment is not as clearly called for.” ’ ” Wal-Mart, supra, at ___ (slip op., at 22) (quoting Amchem, 521 U. S., at 614–615). That explains Congress’s addition of procedural safeguards for (b)(3) class members beyond those provided for (b)(1) or (b)(2) class members (e.g., an opportunity to opt out), and the court’s duty to take a “ ‘close look’ ” at whether common questions predominate over individual ones. Id., at 615. III Respondents’ class action was improperly certified un- der Rule 23(b)(3). By refusing to entertain arguments against respondents’ damages model that bore on the propriety of class certification, simply because those arguments would also be pertinent to the merits determination, the Court of Appeals ran afoul of our precedents requiring precisely that inquiry. And it is clear that, under the proper standard for evaluating certification, respondents’ model falls far short of establishing that damages are capable of measurement on a classwide basis. Without presenting another methodology, respondents cannot show Rule 23(b)(3) predominance: Questions of individual damage calculations will inevitably overwhelm questions common to the class. This case thus turns on the straightforward application of class-certification principles; it provides no occasion for the dissent’s extended discussion, post, at 5–11 (Ginsburg and Breyer, JJ., dissenting), of substantive antitrust law. A We start with an unremarkable premise. If respondents prevail on their claims, they would be entitled only to damages resulting from reduced overbuilder competition, since that is the only theory of antitrust impact accepted for class-action treatment by the District Court. It follows that a model purporting to serve as evidence of damages in this class action must measure only those damages attributable to that theory. If the model does not even attempt to do that, it cannot possibly establish that damages are susceptible of measurement across the entire class for purposes of Rule 23(b)(3). Calculations need not be exact, see Story Parchment Co. v. Paterson Parchment Paper Co., 282 U.S. 555, 563 (1931), but at the class-certification stage (as at trial), any model supporting a “plaintiff’s damages case must be consistent with its liability case, particularly with respect to the alleged anticompetitive effect of the violation.” ABA Section of Antitrust Law, Proving Antitrust Damages: Legal and Economic Issues 57, 62 (2d ed. 2010); see, e.g., Image Tech. Servs. v. Eastman Kodak Co., 125 F.3d 1195, 1224 (CA9 1997). And for purposes of Rule 23, courts must conduct a “ ‘rigorous analysis’ ” to determine whether that is so. Wal-Mart, supra, at ___ (slip op., at 10). The District Court and the Court of Appeals saw no need for respondents to “tie each theory of antitrust impact” to a calculation of damages. 655 F. 3d, at 206. That, they said, would involve consideration of the “merits” having “no place in the class certification inquiry.” Id., at 206–207. That reasoning flatly contradicts our cases requiring a determination that Rule 23 is satisfied, even when that requires inquiry into the merits of the claim. Wal-Mart, supra, at ___, and n. 6 (slip op., at 10–11, and n. 6). The Court of Appeals simply concluded that respondents “provided a method to measure and quantify damages on a classwide basis,” finding it unnecessary to decide “whether the methodology [was] a just and reasonable inference or speculative.” 655 F. 3d, at 206. Under that logic, at the class-certification stage any method of measurement is acceptable so long as it can be applied classwide, no matter how arbitrary the measurements may be. Such a proposition would reduce Rule 23(b)(3)’s predominance requirement to a nullity. B There is no question that the model failed to measure damages resulting from the particular antitrust injury on which petitioners’ liability in this action is premised.[5] The scheme devised by respondents’ expert, Dr. McClave, sought to establish a “but for” baseline—a figure that would show what the competitive prices would have been if there had been no antitrust violations. Damages would then be determined by comparing to that baseline what the actual prices were during the charged period. The “but for” figure was calculated, however, by assuming a market that contained none of the four distortions that respondents attributed to petitioners’ actions. In other words, the model assumed the validity of all four theories of antitrust impact initially advanced by respondents: decreased penetration by satellite providers, overbuilder deterrence, lack of benchmark competition, and increased bargaining power. At the evidentiary hearing, Dr. McClave expressly admitted that the model calculated damages resulting from “the alleged anticompetitive conduct as a whole” and did not attribute damages to any one particular theory of anticompetitive impact. App. 189a–190a, 208a. This methodology might have been sound, and might have produced commonality of damages, if all four of those alleged distortions remained in the case. But as Judge Jordan’s partial dissent pointed out: “[B]ecause the only surviving theory of antitrust impact is that clustering reduced overbuilding, for Dr. McClave’s comparison to be relevant, his benchmark counties must reflect the conditions that would have prevailed in the Philadelphia DMA but for the alleged reduction in overbuilding. In all respects unrelated to reduced overbuilding, the benchmark counties should reflect the actual conditions in the Philadelphia DMA, or else the model will identify ‘damages’ that are not the result of reduced overbuilding, or, in other words, that are not the certain result of the wrong.” 655 F. 3d, at 216 (internal quotation marks omitted). The majority’s only response to this was that “[a]t the class certification stage we do not require that Plaintiffs tie each theory of antitrust impact to an exact calculation of damages, but instead that they assure us that if they can prove antitrust impact, the resulting damages are capable of measurement and will not require labyrinthine individual calculations.” Id., at 206. But such assurance is not provided by a methodology that identifies damages that are not the result of the wrong. For all we know, cable subscribers in Gloucester County may have been overcharged because of petitioners’ alleged elimination of satellite competition (a theory of liability that is not ca- pable of classwide proof); while subscribers in Camden County may have paid elevated prices because of petitioners’ increased bargaining power vis-à-vis content providers (another theory that is not capable of classwide proof); while yet other subscribers in Montgomery County may have paid rates produced by the combined effects of multiple forms of alleged antitrust harm; and so on. The permutations involving four theories of liability and 2 million subscribers located in 16 counties are nearly endless. In light of the model’s inability to bridge the differences between supra-competitive prices in general and supra-competitive prices attributable to the deterrence of overbuilding, Rule 23(b)(3) cannot authorize treating subscribers within the Philadelphia cluster as members of a single class.[6] Prices whose level above what an expert deems “competitive” has been caused by factors unrelated to an accepted theory of antitrust harm are not “anticompetitive” in any sense relevant here. “The first step in a damages study is the translation of the legal theory of the harmful event into an analysis of the economic impact of that event.” Federal Judicial Center, Reference Manual on Scientific Evidence 432 (3d ed. 2011) (emphasis added). The District Court and the Court of Appeals ignored that first step entirely. The judgment of the Court of Appeals for the Third Cir- cuit is reversed. It is so ordered. Notes 1 A “Designated Market Area” is a term used by Nielsen Media Research to define a broadcast-television market. Strictly speaking, the Philadelphia DMA comprises 18 counties, not 16. 2 Respondents sought certification for the following class: “All cable television customers who subscribe or subscribed at any times since December 1, 1999, to the present to video programming services (other than solely to basic cable services) from Comcast, or any of its subsidiaries or affiliates in Comcast’s Philadelphia cluster.” App. 35a. 3 The District Court did not hold that the three alternative theories of liability failed to establish antitrust impact, but merely that those theories could not be determined in a manner common to all the class plaintiffs. The other theories of liability may well be available forthe plaintiffs to pursue as individual actions. Any contention that the plaintiffs should be allowed to recover damages attributable to all four theories in this class action would erroneously suggest one of two things—either that the plaintiffs may also recover such damages in individual actions or that they are precluded from asserting those theories in individual actions. 4 The question presented reads: “Whether a district court may certify a class action without resolving whether the plaintiff class had introduced admissible evidence, including expert testimony, to show that the case is susceptible to awarding damages on a class-wide basis.” 567 U. S., at ___. Respondents contend that petitioners forfeited their ability to answer this question in the negative because they did not make an objection to the admission of Dr. McClave’s testimony under the Federal Rules of Evidence. See Daubert v. Merrell Dow Pharmaceuticals, Inc., 509 U.S. 579 (1993). Such a forfeit would make it impossible for petitioners to argue that Dr. McClave’s testimony was not “admissible evidence” under the Rules; but it does not make it impossible for them to argue that the evidence failed “to show that the case is susceptible to awarding damages on a class-wide basis.” Petitioners argued below, and continue to argue here, that certification was improper because respondents had failed to establish that damages could be measured on a classwide basis. That is the question we address here. 5 The dissent is of the view that what an econometric model proves is a “question of fact” on which we will not “undertake to review concurrent findings . . . by two courts below in the absence of a very obvious and exceptional showing of error.” Post, at 9 (quoting United States v. Virginia, 518 U.S. 515, 589, n. 5 (1996) (Scalia, J., dissenting) (internal quotation marks omitted)). To begin with, neither of the courts below found that the model established damages attributable to overbuilding alone. Second, while the data contained within an econometric model may well be “questions of fact” in the relevant sense, what those data prove is no more a question of fact than what our opinions hold. And finally, even if it were a question of fact, concluding that the model here established damages attributable to overbuilding alone would be “obvious[ly] and exceptional[ly]” erroneous. 6 We might add that even if the model had identified subscribers who paid more solely because of the deterrence of overbuilding, it still would not have established the requisite commonality of damages unless it plausibly showed that the extent of overbuilding (absent deterrence) would have been the same in all counties, or that the extent is irrelevant to effect upon ability to charge supra-competitive prices.

569.US.251

The Federal Aviation Administration Authorization Act of 1994 (FAAAA) preempts state laws “related to a price, route, or service of any motor carrier . . . with respect to the transportation of property.” 49 U. S. C. §14501(c)(1). This provision borrows from the Airline Deregulation Act of 1978 (ADA), which preempts state laws “related to a price, route, or service of an air carrier,” §41713(b)(1), but it adds the important qualification, “with respect to transportation of property.” Plaintiff-respondent Pelkey brought suit in New Hampshire Superior Court, alleging that defendant-petitioner Dan’s City Used Cars (Dan’s City), a towing company, took custody of his car after towing it from his landlord’s parking lot without Pelkey’s knowledge, failed to notify him of its plan to auction the car, held an auction despite Pelkey’s notice that he wanted to reclaim the car, and eventually traded the car away without compensating Pelkey for the loss of his vehicle. In disposing of his car, Pelkey further alleged, Dan’s City did not meet the requirements contained in chapter 262 of the New Hampshire Revised Statutes Annotated, which regulates the disposal of abandoned vehicles by a “storage company.” Dan’s City’s misconduct, Pelkey charged, both violated New Hampshire’s Consumer Protection Act and breached the towing company’s statutory and common-law duties as a bailee to use reasonable care while in possession of a bailor’s property. The court granted summary judgment to Dan’s City, concluding that the FAAAA preempted Pelkey’s claims. The New Hampshire Supreme Court reversed. It held the FAAAA’s preemption clause inapplicable because Pelkey’s claims related to Dan’s City’s conduct in disposing of his car post-storage, not to conduct concerning “the transportation of property,” or a towing com- pany’s “service.” Held: Section 14501(c)(1) does not preempt state-law claims stemming from the storage and disposal of a towed vehicle. Pp. 7–13. (a) Where Congress has superseded state legislation by statute, this Court’s task is to “identify the domain expressly pre-empted,” Lorillard Tobacco Co. v. Reilly, 533 U.S. 525, 541, focusing first on the statutory language, CSX Transp., Inc. v. Easterwood, 507 U.S. 658, 664. In Rowe v. New Hampshire Motor Transp. Assn., 552 U.S. 364, 370, this Court’s reading of §14501(c)(1) was informed by decisions interpreting parallel language in the ADA’s preemption clause. Thus, the Court held, the phrase “related to” embraces state laws “having a connection with or reference to” carrier “ ‘rates, routes, or services,’ ” whether directly or indirectly. Ibid. At the same time, the breadth of the words “related to” does not mean that the preemption clause should be read with an “uncritical literalism.” New York State Conference of Blue Cross & Blue Shield Plans v. Travelers Ins. Co., 514 U.S. 645, 655–656. The Court has cautioned that §14501(c)(1) does not preempt state laws affecting carrier prices, routes, and services “in only a ‘tenuous, remote, or peripheral . . . manner.’ ” Rowe, 552 U. S., at 371. Pp. 7–8. (b) Pelkey’s state-law claims escape preemption because they are “related to” neither the “transportation of property” nor the “service” of a motor carrier. Although §14501(c)(1) otherwise tracks the ADA’s air-carrier preemption provision, the FAAAA formulation’s one conspicuous alteration—addition of the words “with respect to the transportation of property”—significantly limits the FAAAA’s preemptive scope. It is not sufficient for a state law to relate to the “price, route, or service” of a motor carrier in any capacity; the law must also concern a motor carrier’s “transportation of property.” Title 49 defines “transportation,” in relevant part, as “services related to th[e] movement” of property, “including arranging for . . . storage [and] handling.” §13102(23)(B). Pelkey’s Consumer Protection Act and negligence claims are not “related to th[e] movement” of his car. Chapter 262 regulates the disposal of vehicles once their transportation—here, by towing—has ended. Pelkey seeks redress only for conduct occurring after the car ceased moving and was stored. Dan’s City maintains that because §13102(23)(B)’s definition of “transportation” includes “storage” and “handling,” Pelkey’s claims fall within §14501(c)(1)’s preemptive ambit. But “storage” and “handling” fit within §13102(23)(B)’s definition only when those services “relat[e] to th[e] movement” of property. Thus temporary storage of an item in transit en route to its final destination qualifies as “transportation,” but permanent storage does not. Here, no storage occurred in the course of transporting Pelkey’s vehicle. Pelkey’s claims are also unrelated to a “service” a motor carrier renders its customers. The transportation service Dan’s City pro-vided—removal of Pelkey’s car from his landlord’s parking lot—did involve the movement of property, but that service ended months before the conduct on which Pelkey’s claims are based. Because chapter 262, on which Pelkey relies, addresses “storage compan[ies]” and “garage owner[s] or keeper[s],” not transportation activities, it has neither a direct nor an indirect connection to transportation services a motor carrier offers its customers. See Rowe, 552 U. S., at 371. The conclusion that state-law claims regarding disposal of towed vehicles are not preempted is in full accord with Congress’ purpose in enacting §14501(c)(1), which was to displace “a State’s direct substitution of its own governmental commands for ‘competitive market forces’ in determining . . . the services that motor carriers will provide.” Id., at 372. The New Hampshire prescriptions Pelkey invokes hardly constrain participation in interstate commerce by requiring a motor carrier to offer services not available in the market. Nor do they “freez[e] into place services that carriers might prefer to discontinue in the future.” Ibid. Pp. 8–11. (c) Dan’s City’s additional arguments in favor of preemption are not persuasive. Dan’s City contends that because none of Pelkey’s claims fit within the exceptions to preemption detailed in 49 U. S. C. §§14501(c)(2), (3), and (5), his claims must be preempted. But exceptions, while sometimes a helpful interpretive guide, do not in themselves delineate the scope of the rule. Here, the exceptions identify matters a State may regulate when it would otherwise be precluded from doing so, but they do not control more than that. Dan’s City also maintains that Pelkey’s claims are “related to” its towing service because selling Pelkey’s car was the means by which Dan’s City obtained payment for the tow. If such state-law claims were preempted, no law would govern resolution of a non-contract-based dispute arising from a towing company’s disposal of a vehicle previously towed or afford a remedy for wrongful disposal. No such design can be attributed to a rational Congress. See Silkwood v. Kerr-McGee Corp., 464 U.S. 238, 251. Pp. 11–13. 163 N. H. 483, 44 A.3d 480, affirmed. Ginsburg, J., delivered the opinion for a unanimous Court.

This case concerns the preemptive scope of a provision of the Federal Aviation Administration Authorization Act of 1994 (FAAAA or Act) applicable to motor carriers. Codi- fied at 49 U. S. C. §14501(c)(1), the provision reads: “[A] State . . . may not enact or enforce a law, regulation, or other provision having the force and effect of law related to a price, route, or service of any motor carrier . . . with respect to the transportation of property.” Plaintiff-respondent Robert Pelkey brought suit under New Hampshire law against defendant-petitioner Dan’s City Used Cars (Dan’s City), a towing company. Pelkey al- leged that Dan’s City took custody of his car after towing it without Pelkey’s knowledge, failed to notify him of its plan to auction the car, held an auction despite Pelkey’s communication that he wanted to arrange for the car’s return, and eventually traded the car away without compensating Pelkey for the loss of his vehicle. Disposal of abandoned vehicles by a “storage company” is regulated by chapter 262 of the New Hampshire Revised Statutes Annotated. See N. H. Rev. Stat. Ann. §§262:31 to 262:40–c (West 2004 and 2012 West Cum. Supp.). Dan’s City relied on those laws to dispose of Pelkey’s vehicle for nonpayment of towing and storage fees. According to Pelkey, however, Dan’s City failed to comply with New Hampshire’s provisions governing the sale of stored vehicles and the application of sale proceeds. Pelkey charged that Dan’s City’s disposal of his car without following the requirements contained in chapter 262 violated the New Hampshire Consumer Protection Act, §358–A:2 (West 2009), as well as Dan’s City’s statutory and common-law duties as bailee to exercise reasonable care while in possession of a bailor’s property. We hold, in accord with the New Hampshire Supreme Court, that state-law claims stemming from the storage and disposal of a car, once towing has ended, are not sufficiently connected to a motor carrier’s service with respect to the transportation of property to warrant pre- emption under §14501(c)(1). The New Hampshire law in point regulates no towing services, no carriage of prop- erty. Instead, it trains on custodians of stored vehicles seeking to sell them. Congress did not displace the State’s regulation of that activity by any federal prescription. I A The Airline Deregulation Act of 1978 (ADA), 92Stat. 1705, largely deregulated the domestic airline industry. In keeping with the statute’s aim to achieve “maximum reliance on competitive market forces,” id., at 1706, Congress sought to “ensure that the States would not undo federal deregulation with regulation of their own.” Morales v. Trans World Airlines, Inc., 504 U.S. 374, 378 (1992). Congress therefore included a preemption provision, now codified at 49 U. S. C. §41713(b)(1), prohibiting States from enacting or enforcing any law “related to a price, route, or service of an air carrier.” Two years later, the Motor Carrier Act of 1980, 94 Stat. 793, extended deregulation to the trucking industry. Congress completed the deregulation 14 years thereafter, in 1994, by expressly preempting state trucking regulation. Congress did so upon finding that state governance of intrastate transportation of property had become “unreasonably burden[some]” to “free trade, interstate commerce, and American consumers.” Columbus v. Ours Ga- rage & Wrecker Service, Inc., 536 U.S. 424, 440 (2002) (citing FAAAA §601(a)(1), 108Stat. 1605). Borrowing from the ADA’s preemption clause, but adding a new qualification, §601(c) of the FAAAA supersedes state laws “related to a price, route, or service of any motor carrier . . . with respect to the transportation of property.” 108Stat. 1606, now codified at 49 U. S. C. §14501(c)(1) (emphasis added).[1] The Act exempts certain measures from its preemptive scope, including state laws regulating motor vehicle safety, size, and weight; motor carrier insurance; and the intrastate transportation of household goods. §§14501(c)(2)(A)–(B). Also exempted from preemption are state laws “relating to the price” of “vehicle transportation by a tow truck,” if towing occurs without prior consent of the vehicle owner. §14501(c)(2)(C). This case involves the interaction between the FAAAA’s preemption clause and the State of New Hampshire’s regulation of the removal, storage, and disposal of abandoned motor vehicles. Chapter 262 of the New Hampshire Revised Statutes Annotated establishes procedures by which an “authorized official” or the “owner . . . of any private property . . . on which a vehicle is parked without permission” may arrange to have the vehicle towed and stored. N. H. Rev. Stat. Ann. §§262:31 to 262:34, 262:40–a(I). It generally makes the owner of a towed vehicle responsible for reasonable removal and storage fees. See §262:33(I) (reasonable removal and storage charges “shall be a lien against the vehicle which shall be paid by the owner”); §262:33(II) (owner entitled to recover vehicle after “payment of all reasonable towing and storage charges”); §262:40–a(II) (owner of a vehicle towed from a parking lot or parking garage is responsible for “removal and storage charges” when the lot or garage conspicuously posts notice of parking restrictions). Under chapter 262, the custodian of a car that remains unclaimed for 30 days following a tow may dispose of the vehicle upon compliance with notice requirements. §§262:36–a(I), (II). A “garage owner or keeper” must post notices of an impending sale in public places and provide mail notice to the vehicle owner whenever the owner’s address may “be ascertained . . . by the exercise of reasonable diligence.” §262:38. If a towed vehicle is not fit for legal use, its custodian need not provide individual or public notice prior to disposal, and sale of the vehicle may occur upon written notice to and approval from New Hampshire’s Department of Public Safety. §262:36–a(III).[2] On compliance with the statutory requirements, the custodian of a stored vehicle may sell the vehicle by public auction at its place of business. §262:37. The storage company may use the sale proceeds to pay “the amount of the liens and the reasonable expenses incident to the sale.” §262:39 (West 2004). Remaining proceeds are payable “to the [vehicle’s] owner . . . if claimed at any time within one year from the date of sale.” Ibid. B The landlord of the apartment complex in which Pelkey lived required tenants to remove their cars from the parking lot in the event of a snowstorm, so that the snow could be cleared. Pelkey’s 2004 Honda Civic remained in the lot during and after a February 2007 snowstorm. At the landlord’s request, Dan’s City towed and stored the vehicle. Confined to his bed with a serious medical condition, Pelkey did not know his car had been towed. Soon after removal of his car, Pelkey was admitted to the hospital for a procedure to amputate his left foot, during which he suffered a heart attack. He remained under hospital care until his discharge on April 9, 2007. Unaware of Pelkey’s identity or illness, Dan’s City sought permission from New Hampshire’s Department of Public Safety to sell the Honda at auction without notice. In response, the department identified Pelkey as the last known owner of the vehicle. Dan’s City wrote to Pelkey, notifying him that it had towed and was storing his car. When the post office returned the letter, checking the box “moved, left no address,” Dan’s City scheduled an auction for April 19. Meanwhile, in the days following Pelkey’s discharge from the hospital, his attorney learned from counsel for the apartment complex that the car had been towed by Dan’s City and was scheduled to be sold at pub- lic auction. On April 17, Pelkey’s attorney informed Dan’s City that Pelkey wanted to pay any charges owed and reclaim his vehicle. Dan’s City nevertheless proceeded with the auction. Attracting no bidders, Dan’s City later disposed of the car by trading it to a third party. Pelkey was not notified in advance of the trade, and has received no proceeds from the sale. Pelkey brought suit against Dan’s City in New Hampshire Superior Court. He alleged that Dan’s City violated the New Hampshire Consumer Protection Act, N. H. Rev. Stat. Ann. §358–A:2, by failing to comply with chapter 262’s requirements for disposal of stored vehicles, mak- ing false statements about the condition and value of his Honda, and proceeding with the auction despite notice that Pelkey wanted to reclaim the car.[3] He also alleged that Dan’s City negligently breached both statutory and common-law duties as a bailee to use reasonable care in disposing of the car. Granting summary judgment to Dan’s City, the New Hampshire Superior Court concluded that Pelkey’s claims were preempted by the FAAAA. The New Hampshire Supreme Court reversed. It held the FAAAA’s preemption clause, 49 U. S. C. §14501(c)(1), inapplicable because Pelkey’s claims related to Dan’s City’s conduct in disposing of his Honda post-storage, not to conduct concerning “the transportation of property.” 163 N. H. 483, 490–493, 44 A.3d 480, 487–489 (2012) (emphasis deleted). Alternatively, the court ruled that, even if Pelkey’s claims could be said to concern the transportation of property, they did not “sufficiently relat[e] to a towing company’s ‘service’ to be preempted.” Id., at 493, 44 A. 3d, at 490. We granted certiorari to resolve a division of opinion in state supreme courts on whether 49 U. S. C. §14501(c)(1) preempts a vehicle owner’s state-law claims against a towing company regarding the company’s post-towing disposal of the vehicle. 568 U. S. ___ (2012). Compare 163 N. H. 483, 44 A.3d 480 (this case), with Weatherspoon v. Tillery Body Shop, Inc., 44 So. 3d 447, 458 (Ala. 2010) (§14501(c)(1) preempts state statutory and common-law claims arising out of storage and sale of a towed vehicle). II A Where, as in this case, Congress has superseded state legislation by statute, our task is to “identify the domain expressly pre-empted.” Lorillard Tobacco Co. v. Reilly, 533 U.S. 525, 541 (2001). To do so, we focus first on the statutory language, “which necessarily contains the best evidence of Congress’ pre-emptive intent.” CSX Transp., Inc. v. Easterwood, 507 U.S. 658, 664 (1993). The FAAAA’s preemption clause prohibits enforcement of state laws “related to a price, route, or service of any motor carrier . . . with respect to the transportation of property.” 49 U. S. C. §14501(c)(1). In Rowe v. New Hampshire Motor Transp. Assn., 552 U.S. 364, 370 (2008), our reading of this language was informed by decisions interpreting the parallel language in the ADA’s preemption clause. The phrase “related to,” we said, embraces state laws “having a connection with or reference to” carrier “ ‘rates, routes, or services,’ ” whether directly or indirectly. Ibid. (quoting Morales, 504 U. S., at 384; emphasis deleted). See also id., at 383 (“ordinary meaning of . . . words [‘related to’] is a broad one,” thus ADA’s use of those words “expresses a broad pre-emptive purpose”). At the same time, the breadth of the words “related to” does not mean the sky is the limit. We have refused to read the preemption clause of the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974, 29 U. S. C. §1144(a), which supersedes state laws “relate[d] to any employee benefit plan,” with an “uncritical literalism,” else “for all practical purposes pre-emption would never run its course.” New York State Conference of Blue Cross & Blue Shield Plans v. Travelers Ins. Co., 514 U.S. 645, 655–656 (1995) (internal quotation marks omitted). And we have cautioned that §14501(c)(1) does not preempt state laws affecting carrier prices, routes, and services “in only a ‘tenuous, remote, or peripheral . . . manner.’ ” Rowe, 552 U. S., at 371 (quoting Morales, 504 U. S., at 390). B The New Hampshire Supreme Court concluded that Pelkey’s state-law claims are “related to” neither the “transportation of property” nor the “service” of a motor carrier. We agree. Pelkey’s claims escape preemption, we hold, because they are not “related to” the service of a motor carrier “with respect to the transportation of property.” §14501(c)(1). Although §14501(c)(1) otherwise tracks the ADA’s air-carrier preemption provision, see Rowe, 552 U. S., at 370, the FAAAA formulation contains one conspicuous alteration—the addition of the words “with respect to the transportation of property.” That phrase “massively limits the scope of preemption” ordered by the FAAAA. Ours Garage, 536 U. S., at 449 (Scalia, J., dissenting).[4] As the New Hampshire Supreme Court correctly understood, for purposes of FAAAA preemption, it is not sufficient that a state law relates to the “price, route, or service” of a motor carrier in any capacity; the law must also concern a motor carrier’s “transportation of property.” See 163 N. H., at 490, 44 A. 3d, at 487. Title 49 defines “transportation,” in relevant part, as “services related to th[e] movement” of property, “including arranging for, receipt, delivery, elevation, transfer in transit, refrigeration, icing, ventilation, storage, handling, packing, unpacking, and interchange of passengers and property.” §13102(23)(B). Pelkey’s Consumer Protection Act and negligence claims are not “related to th[e] movement” of his car. Ibid. (emphasis added). He charges Dan’s City with failure to comply with chapter 262 and neglect of its statutory and common-law duties of care as a bailee of his stored vehicle. Chapter 262 does not limit when, where, or how tow trucks may be operated. The Chapter regulates, instead, the disposal of vehicles once their transportation—here, by towing—has ended. Pelkey does not object to the manner in which his car was moved or the price of the tow; he seeks redress only for conduct subsequent to “transportation,” conduct occurring after the car ceased moving and was stored. Dan’s City maintains that because §13102(23)(B)’s definition of “transportation” includes “storage” and “handling,” Pelkey’s claims, which do concern the storage and handling of his car, fall within §14501(c)(1)’s preemp- tive ambit. Dan’s City overlooks, however, that under §13102(23)(B), services such as “storage” and “handling” fit within the definition of “transportation” only when those services “relat[e] to th[e] movement” of property. Temporary storage of an item in transit en route to its final destination relates to the movement of property and therefore fits within §13102(23)(B)’s definition. But property stored after delivery is no longer in transit. Cf. 49 CFR §375.609 (2012) (distinguishing between “storage-in-transit” and “permanent storage” (regulation of Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration)). Here, no storage occurred in the course of transporting Pelkey’s vehicle. Dan’s City’s storage of Pelkey’s car after the towing job was done, in short, does not involve “transportation” within the meaning of the federal Act. Pelkey’s claims also survive preemption under §14501(c)(1) because they are unrelated to a “service” a motor carrier renders its customers. The transportation service Dan’s City provided was the removal of Pelkey’s car from his landlord’s parking lot. That service, which did involve the movement of property, ended months before the conduct on which Pelkey’s claims are based. His claims rely on New Hampshire’s abandoned vehicle disposal regime, prescribed in chapter 262, for the rules governing Dan’s City’s conduct.[5] Chapter 262 addresses “storage compan[ies]” and “garage owner[s] or keeper[s],” not transportation activities. See N. H. Rev. Stat. Ann. §§262:36–a, 262:38. Unlike Maine’s tobacco delivery regulations at issue in Rowe, chapter 262 has neither a direct nor an indirect connection to any transportation services a motor carrier offers its customers. See 552 U. S., at 371. We need not venture an all-purposes definition of transportation “service[s]” in order to conclude that state-law claims homing in on the disposal of stored vehicles fall outside §14501(c)(1)’s preemptive compass. Our conclusion that state-law claims regarding disposal of towed vehicles are not preempted is in full accord with Congress’ purpose in enacting §14501(c)(1). Concerned that state regulation “impeded the free flow of trade, traffic, and transportation of interstate commerce,” Congress resolved to displace “certain aspects of the State regulatory process.” FAAAA §601(a), 108Stat. 1605 (emphasis added). The target at which it aimed was “a State’s direct substitution of its own governmental commands for competitive market forces in determining (to a signifi- cant degree) the services that motor carriers will pro- vide.” Rowe, 552 U. S., at 372 (internal quotation marks omitted). Pelkey’s claims are far removed from Congress’ driving concern. He sued under state consumer protection and tort laws to gain compensation for the alleged unlawful disposal of his vehicle. The state laws in question hardly constrain participation in interstate commerce by requiring a motor carrier to offer services not available in the market. Nor do the state laws invoked by Pelkey “freez[e] into place services that carriers might prefer to discon- tinue in the future.” Ibid. New Hampshire’s laws on dis- posal of stored vehicles, moreover, will not open the way for “a patchwork of state service-determining laws, rules, and regulations.” Id., at 373. As Dan’s City concedes, abandoned vehicle laws like chapter 262 “do not hamper the operations of tow truckers” and “are not the kind of burdensome state economic regulation Congress sought to preempt.” Reply Brief 21. C Dan’s City advances two further arguments in favor of preemption. First, Dan’s City contends that Congress’ enumeration of exceptions to preemption, detailed in 49 U. S. C. §§14501(c)(2), (3), and (5), permits state regulation of motor carriers only when the State’s law comes within a specified exception. Because Pelkey’s claims do not fit within any exception to preemption, Dan’s City urges, those claims must be preempted. This argument exceeds sensible bounds. Exceptions to a general rule, while sometimes a helpful interpretive guide, do not in themselves delineate the scope of the rule. The exceptions to §14501(c)(1)’s general rule of preemption identify matters a State may regulate when it would otherwise be precluded from doing so, but they do not control more than that. An example may clarify the point. Section 14501(c) does not exempt zoning regulations. Such laws, however, “are peculiarly within the province of state and local legislative authorities.” Warth v. Seldin, 422 U.S. 490, 508, n. 18 (1975). It is hardly doubtful that state or local regulation of the physical location of motor-carrier operations falls outside the preemptive sweep of §14501(c)(1). That is so because zoning ordinances ordinarily are not “related to a price, route, or service of any motor carrier . . . with re- spect to the transportation of property.” §14501(c)(1). The same is true of New Hampshire’s regulation of the dis- posal of stored vehicles. Dan’s City, in a second argument, urges otherwise. Pelkey’s claims, Dan’s City maintains, are “related to” the towing service it rendered because selling Pelkey’s car was the means by which Dan’s City obtained payment for the tow. But if such state-law claims are preempted, no law would govern resolution of a non-contract-based dispute arising from a towing company’s disposal of a vehicle previously towed or afford a remedy for wrongful disposal. Federal law does not speak to these issues.[6] Thus, not only would the preemption urged by Dan’s City leave vehicle owners without any recourse for damages, it would eliminate the sole legal authorization for a towing com- pany’s disposal of stored vehicles that go unclaimed. No such design can be attributed to a rational Congress. See Silkwood v. Kerr-McGee Corp., 464 U.S. 238, 251 (1984) (“It is difficult to believe that Congress would, without comment, remove all means of judicial recourse for those injured by illegal conduct.”). In sum, Dan’s City cannot have it both ways. It cannot rely on New Hampshire’s regulatory framework as authorization for the sale of Pelkey’s car, yet argue that Pelkey’s claims, invoking the same state-law regime, are preempted. New Hampshire’s legislation on abandoned vehicles gave rise to Pelkey’s debt and established the conditions under which Dan’s City could collect on that debt by selling Pelkey’s Honda. See N. H. Rev. Stat. Ann. §§262:33, 262:36–a, 262:40–a; supra, at 3–5. Pelkey’s claims, attacking Dan’s City’s conduct in disposing of the vehicle, rest on the very same provisions. See Brief for Petitioner 41 (“All of the alleged wrongful conduct of Dan’s City was part of the state sanctioned and regulated process for disposing of abandoned vehicles under Ch. 262.”). * * * For the reasons stated, we hold that 49 U. S. C. §14501(c)(1) does not preempt state-law claims for dam- ages stemming from the storage and disposal of a towed vehicle. The judgment of the New Hampshire Supreme Court is therefore affirmed. It is so ordered. Notes 1 The term “motor carrier” is defined as “a person providing motor vehicle transportation for compensation.” 49 U. S. C. §13102(14) (2006 ed., Supp. V). We have previously recognized that tow trucks qualify as “motor carriers” under §14501(c)(1). Columbus v. Ours Garage & Wrecker Service, Inc., 536 U.S. 424, 430 (2002). Dan’s City’s qualification as a motor carrier under the FAAAA is uncontested by the parties. See Brief for Petitioner i; Brief for Respondent 18. 2 Section 262:36–a has been amended since April 2007, when Dan’s City’s alleged misconduct occurred. The amendments do not bear on the outcome of this case. 3 The Consumer Protection Act makes it unlawful for “any person to use any unfair method of competition or any unfair or deceptive act or practice in the conduct of any trade or commerce within” New Hampshire. N. H. Rev. Stat. Ann. §358–A:2 (West 2009). It authorizes a private claim for damages and equitable relief; for a willful or knowing violation, the Act allows the plaintiff to recover “as much as 3 times, but not less than 2 times,” actual damages. §358–A:10(I) (2012 West Cum. Supp.). 4 Although this statement appears in the Ours Garage dissent, nothing in the Court’s opinion in that case is in any way inconsistent with the dissent’s characterization of §14501(c)(1). 5 The parties dispute whether, as Pelkey alleges, conduct that violates chapter 262 may qualify as an unfair or deceptive act or practice proscribed by New Hampshire’s Consumer Protection Act. This dispute turns on interpretation of state law, a matter on which we express no opinion. 6 There is an exception to Congress’ silence, but it is of no aid to Dan’s City: The Act spares from preemption laws “relating to the price of for-hire motor vehicle transportation by a tow truck, if such transportation is performed [as it was here] without the prior consent or authorization of the owner or operator of the motor vehicle.” 49 U. S. C. §14501(c)(2)(C).

568.US.597

The Clean Water Act (Act) requires that National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (NPDES) permits be secured before pollutants are discharged from any point source into the navigable waters of the United States. See 33 U. S. C. §§1311(a), 1362(12). One of the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) implementing regulations, the Silvicultural Rule, specifies which types of logging-related discharges are point sources. 40 CFR §122.27(b)(1). These discharges require NPDES permits unless some other federal statutory provision exempts them from coverage. One such statutory provision exempts “discharges composed entirely of stormwater,” 33 U. S. C. §1342(p)(1), unless the discharge is “associated with industrial activ- ity,” §1342(p)(2)(B). Under the EPA’s Industrial Stormwater Rule, the term “associated with industrial activity” covers only discharges “from any conveyance that is used for collecting and conveying storm water and that is directly related to manufacturing, processing or raw materials storage areas at an industrial plant.” 40 CFR §122.26(b)(14). Shortly before oral argument in the instant cases, the EPA issued a final version of an amendment to the Industrial Stormwater Rule, clarifying that the NPDES permit requirement applies only to logging operations involving rock crushing, gravel washing, log sorting, and log storage facilities, which are all listed in the Silvicultural Rule. Petitioner Georgia-Pacific West has a contract with Oregon to harvest timber from a state forest. When it rains, water runs off two logging roads used by petitioner into ditches, culverts, and channels that discharge the water into nearby rivers and streams. The discharges often contain large amounts of sediment, which evidence shows may be harmful to fish and other aquatic organisms. Respondent Northwest Environmental Defense Center (NEDC) filed suit against petitioner and state and local governments and officials, including petitioner Decker, invoking the Act’s citizen-suit provision, 33 U. S. C. §1365, and alleging that the defendants had not obtained NPDES permits before discharging stormwater runoff into two Oregon rivers. The District Court dismissed the action for failure to state a claim, concluding that NPDES permits were not required because the ditches, culverts, and channels were not point sources of pollution under the Act and the Silvicultural Rule. The Ninth Circuit reversed. It held that the conveyances were point sources under the Silvicultural Rule. It also concluded that the discharges were “associated with industrial activity” under the Industrial Stormwater Rule, despite the EPA’s contrary conclusion that the regulation excludes the type of stormwater discharges from logging roads at issue. Thus, the court held, the discharges were not exempt from the NPDES permitting scheme. Held: 1. A provision of the Act governing challenges to agency actions, §1369(b), is not a jurisdictional bar to this suit. That provision is the exclusive vehicle for suits seeking to invalidate certain agency decisions, such as the establishment of effluent standards and the issuance of permits. It does not bar a district court from entertaining a citizen suit under §1365 when the suit is against an alleged violator and seeks to enforce an obligation imposed by the Act or its regulations. The present action falls within the scope of §1365. Pp. 8–9. 2. The EPA’s recent amendment to the Industrial Stormwater Rule does not make the cases moot. A live controversy continues to exist regarding whether petitioners may be held liable for unlawful discharges under the earlier version of the Industrial Stormwater Rule. That version governed petitioners’ past discharges, which might be the basis for the imposition of penalties even if, in the future, those types of discharges will not require a permit. These cases thus remain live and justiciable. See Gwaltney of Smithfield, Ltd. v. Chesapeake Bay Foundation, Inc., 484 U.S. 49, 64–65. The fact that the District Court might rule that NEDC’s arguments lack merit, or that relief is not warranted on the facts of these cases, does not make the cases moot. Pp. 9–11. 3. The preamendment version of the Industrial Stormwater Rule, as permissibly construed by the EPA, exempts discharges of channeled stormwater runoff from logging roads from the NPDES permitting scheme. The regulation is a reasonable interpretation of the statutory term “associated with industrial activity,” §1342(p)(2)(B), and the agency has construed the regulation to exempt the discharges at issue here. When an agency interprets its own regulation, the Court, as a general rule, defers to it “unless that interpretation is ‘plainly erroneous or inconsistent with the regulation.’ ” Chase Bank USA, N. A. v. McCoy, 562 U. S. ___, ___ (quoting Auer v. Robbins, 519 U.S. 452, 461). Here, it was reasonable for the EPA to conclude that the conveyances at issue are “directly related” only to the harvesting of raw materials, rather than to “manufacturing, processing, or raw materials storage areas at an industrial plant.” 40 CFR §122.26(b)(14). The regulatory scheme, taken as a whole, leaves open the rational interpretation that the regulation extends only to traditional industrial buildings such as factories and associated sites and other relatively fixed facilities. Another reason to accord Auer deference to the EPA’s interpretation is that there is no indication that the agency’s current view is a change from prior practice or is a post hoc justification adopted in response to litigation. See Christopher v. SmithKline Beecham Corp., 567 U. S. ___, ___. Rather, the EPA has been consistent in its view that the types of discharges at issue do not require NPDES permits. Its decision also exists against a background of state regulation with respect to stormwater runoff from logging roads. In exercising the broad discretion the Act gives the EPA in the realm of stormwater runoff, the agency could reasonably have concluded that further federal regulation would be duplicative or counterproductive in light of Oregon’s extensive rules on the subject. Pp. 11–15. 640 F.3d 1063, reversed and remanded. Kennedy, J., delivered the opinion of the Court, in which Roberts, C. J., and Thomas, Ginsburg, Alito, Sotomayor, and Kagan, JJ., joined, and in which Scalia, J., joined as to Parts I and II. Roberts, C. J., filed a concurring opinion, in which Alito, J., joined. Scalia, J., filed an opinion concurring in part and dissenting in part. Breyer, J., took no part in the consideration or decision of the cases. Notes 1 Together with No. 11–347, Georgia-Pacific West, Inc., et al. v. Northwest Environmental Defense Center, also on certiorari to the same court.

These cases present the question whether the Clean Water Act (Act) and its implementing regulations require permits before channeled stormwater runoff from logging roads can be discharged into the navigable waters of the United States. Under the statute and its implementing regulations, a permit is required if the discharges are deemed to be “associated with industrial activity.” 33 U. S. C. §1342(p)(2)(B). The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), with the responsibility to enforce the Act, has issued a regulation defining the term “associated with industrial activity” to cover only discharges “from any conveyance that is used for collecting and conveying storm water and that is directly related to manufacturing, processing or raw materials storage areas at an industrial plant.” 40 CFR 122.26(b)(14) (2006). The EPA interprets its regulation to exclude the type of stormwater discharges from logging roads at issue here. See Brief for United States as Amicus Curiae 24–27. For reasons now to be explained, the Court concludes the EPA’s determination is a reasonable interpretation of its own regulation; and, in consequence, deference is accorded to the interpretation under Auer v. Robbins, 519 U.S. 452, 461 (1997). I A Congress passed the Clean Water Act in 1972 to “restore and maintain the chemical, physical, and biological integrity of the Nation’s waters.” 86Stat. 816, 33 U. S. C. §1251(a). A central provision of the Act is its require- ment that individuals, corporations, and governments se- cure National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (NPDES) permits before discharging pollution from any point source into the navigable waters of the United States. See §§1311(a), 1362(12); EPA v. California ex rel. State Water Resources Control Bd., 426 U.S. 200, 205 (1976). The Act defines “point source” as “any discernible, confined and discrete conveyance, including but not limited to any pipe, ditch, channel, tunnel, conduit, well, discrete fissure, container, rolling stock, concentrated animal feeding operation, or vessel or other floating craft, from which pollutants are or may be discharged. This term does not include agricultural stormwater discharges and return flows from irrigated agriculture.” §1362(14). When the Act took effect, the EPA found it difficult to process permit applications from countless owners and operators of point sources throughout the country. The agency issued regulations exempting certain types of point-source discharges from the NPDES permitting scheme, but in 1977 those directives were found invalid. The Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit ruled that the statute did not give the EPA “authority to exempt categories of point sources from the permit requirements” of the Act. Natural Resources Defense Council, Inc. v. Costle, 568 F.2d 1369, 1377. In response the EPA issued new regulations to define with more precision which categories of discharges qualified as point sources in the first place. Among these regulations was the so-called Silvicultural Rule. This rule is at issue here. It provides: “Silvicultural point source means any discernible, confined and discrete conveyance related to rock crushing, gravel washing, log sorting, or log storage facilities which are operated in connection with silvicultural activities and from which pollutants are discharged into waters of the United States. The term does not include non-point source silvicultural activities such as nursery operations, site preparation, reforestation and subsequent cultural treatment, thinning, prescribed burning, pest and fire control, harvesting operations, surface drainage, or road construction and maintenance from which there is natural runoff.” 40 CFR §122.27(b)(1). Under the quoted rule, any discharge from a logging-related source that qualifies as a point source requires an NPDES permit unless some other federal statutory provision exempts it from that coverage. In one such provision, 33 U. S. C. §1342(p), Congress has exempted certain discharges of stormwater runoff. The statutory exemptions were considered necessary because, from the outset, the EPA had encountered recurring difficulties in determining how best to manage discharges of this kind. See, e.g., Natural Resources Defense Council, Inc. v. EPA, 966 F.2d 1292, 1295–1296 (CA9 1992). In 1987, Congress responded to these problems and adopted various stormwater-related amendments to the Act. §405, 101Stat. 69, 33 U. S. C. §1342(p). The 1987 amendments exempt from the NPDES permitting scheme most “discharges composed entirely of stormwater.” §1342(p)(1). The general exemption, however, does not extend to all stormwater discharges. As relevant here, Congress directed the EPA to continue to require per- mits for stormwater discharges “associated with indus- trial activity.” §1342(p)(2)(B). The statute does not define that term, but the EPA adopted a regulation (hereinafter Industrial Stormwater Rule) in which it defined it as “the discharge from any conveyance that is used for collecting and conveying storm water and that is directly related to manufacturing, processing or raw materials storage areas at an industrial plant. The term does not include discharges from facilities or activities excluded from the NPDES program under this part 122. For the categories of industries identified in this section, the term includes, but is not limited to, storm water discharges from . . . immediate access roads and rail lines used or traveled by carriers of raw materials, manufactured products, waste material, or by-products used or created by the facility . . . .” 40 CFR §122.26(b)(14) (2006). The Industrial Stormwater Rule also specified that, with one exception not relevant here, “[f]acilities classified as Standard Industrial Classificatio[n] 24” are “considered to be engaging in ‘industrial activity’ for purposes of paragraph (b)(14).” Ibid. The Standard Industrial Classifications are a system used by federal agencies to categorize firms engaged in different types of business activity. See Dept. of Labor, Standard Industrial Classifications Manual, online at http://www.osha.gov/pls/imis/sic_manual.html (as visited Mar. 14, 2013, and available in Clerk of Court’s case file). Standard Industrial Classification 24 identifies industries involved in the field of “Lumber and Wood Products.” 2 App. 64. This includes the “Logging” industry, defined as “[e]stablishments primarily engaged in cutting timber and in producing . . . primary forest or wood raw materials.” Ibid. On November 30, 2012—three days before the instant cases were argued in this Court—the EPA issued its final version of an amendment to the Industrial Stormwater Rule. The amendment was the agency’s response to the Court of Appeals’ ruling now under review. The amended version seeks to clarify the types of facilities within Standard Industrial Classification 24 that are deemed to be engaged in industrial activity for purposes of the rule. The amended Industrial Stormwater Rule does not cover all facilities within Standard Industrial Classification 24. It limits covered stormwater discharges to “[f]acilities classified within Standard Industrial Clas-sification 24, Industry Group 241 that are rock crushing, gravel washing, log sorting, or log storage facilities operated in connection with silvicultural activities . . . and Industry Groups 242 through 249.” 77 Fed. Reg. 72974, pt. 122, subpt. B (2012). It should be noted, by way of explanation, that an Industry Group is a subcategory of businesses within a Standard Industrial Classification. Industry Group 241 is “Logging,” while Industry Groups 242 through 245 are, respectively, “Sawmills and Planing Mills,” “Millwork, Veneer, Plywood, and Structural Wood,” “Wood Containers,” and “Wood Buildings and Mobile Homes.” Industry Group 249 is “Miscellaneous Wood Products.” Industry Groups 246 through 248 are blank categories. Standard Industrial Classifications Manual, supra, Major Group 24. It is fair to say the purpose of the amended regulation is to bring within the NPDES permit process only those logging operations that involve the four types of activity (rock crushing, gravel washing, log sorting, and log storage facilities) that are defined as point sources by the explicit terms of the Silvicultural Rule. Up to this stage in the litigation, of course, the cases have been concerned with the Industrial Stormwater Rule before the amendment adopted on November 30, 2012. The amended regulation will determine whether from this point forward NPDES permits will be required for the stormwater discharges at issue. The parties disagree about the significance of the amended rule for purposes of these cases. Before reaching this and other preliminary points, however, it is appropriate to set forth the facts and history of the cases leading to the proceedings in this Court. B At issue are discharges of channeled stormwater runoff from two logging roads in Oregon’s Tillamook State Forest, lying in the Pacific Coast Range about 40 miles west of Portland. Petitioner Georgia-Pacific West, along with other logging and paper-products companies, has a contract with the State of Oregon to harvest timber from the forest. It uses the roads for that purpose. When it rains (which it does often in the mountains of northwest Oregon, averaging in some areas more than 100 inches per year), water runs off the graded roads into a system of ditches, culverts, and channels that discharge the water into nearby rivers and streams. The discharges often contain large amounts of sediment, in the form of dirt and crushed gravel from the roads. There is evidence that this runoff can harm fish and other aquatic organisms. In September 2006, respondent Northwest Environmental Defense Center (NEDC) filed suit in the United States District Court for the District of Oregon. It invoked the Clean Water Act’s citizen-suit provision, 33 U. S. C. §1365, and named as defendants certain firms involved in log-ging and paper-products operations (including petitioner Georgia-Pacific West), as well as state and local governments and officials (including the State Forester of Oregon, who is now petitioner Doug Decker). The suit alleged that the defendants caused discharges of channeled stormwater runoff into two waterways—the South Fork Trask River and the Little South Fork Kilchis River. The defendants had not obtained NPDES permits, and so, the suit alleged, they had violated the Act. The District Court dismissed the action for failure to state a claim. It concluded that NPDES permits were not required because the ditches, culverts, and channels were not point sources of pollution under the Act and the Silvicultural Rule. The Court of Appeals for the Ninth Cir- cuit reversed. Northwest Environmental Defense Center v. Brown, 640 F.3d 1063 (2011). It relied upon three principal propositions. First, it held that the District Court had subject-matter jurisdiction under §1365 notwithstanding a different provision of the Act, 33 U. S. C. §1369(b)(1), limiting judicial review of EPA regulations. Second, the Court of Appeals held that while the EPA’s Silvicultural Rule is ambiguous on the question whether the conveyances at issue are point sources, those conveyances must be deemed point sources under the rule in order to give effect to the Act’s expansive definition of the term. Third, the Court of Appeals held that because the Industrial Stormwater Rule makes cross-reference to Standard Industrial Classification 24, the discharges at issue are “associated with industrial activity” within the meaning of the regulation, despite the EPA’s conclusion to the con- trary. The regulation was held to be unambiguous on this point. The Court of Appeals thus ruled that the dis- charges were from point sources and not exempt from the NPDES permitting scheme by the Industrial Stormwater Rule. It followed that petitioners had been in violation of the Act. This Court granted certiorari. 567 U. S. ___ (2012). II Before proceeding to the merits, it is necessary to consider two jurisdictional questions. A Respondent NEDC invoked the jurisdiction of the District Court under 33 U. S. C. §1365(a), which “authorize[s] private enforcement of the provisions of [the Clean Water Act]” and its implementing regulations. Department of Energy v. Ohio, 503 U.S. 607, 613, n. 5 (1992). Petitioners, however, maintain that this suit is barred by a separate provision of the Act, §1369(b). That statute provides for “judicial review in the United States courts of appeals of various particular actions by the [EPA] Administrator, including establishment of effluent standards and issuance of permits for discharge of pollutants.” Middlesex County Sewerage Authority v. National Sea Clammers Assn., 453 U.S. 1, 13–14 (1981). Where that review is available, it is the exclusive means of challenging actions covered by the statute, §1369(b)(2), and an application for review must be lodged in the court of appeals within 120 days of the Administrator’s action, §1369(b)(1). The Court of Appeals was correct to rule that the exclusive jurisdiction mandate is not applicable in this suit. Section 1369(b) extends only to certain suits challenging some agency actions. It does not bar a district court from entertaining a citizen suit under §1365 when the suit is against an alleged violator and seeks to enforce an obligation imposed by the Act or its regulations. The present action is within the scope of §1365. It is a claim to enforce what is at least a permissible reading of the Silvicultural Rule. The rule is ambiguous: Its characterization of silvicultural harvesting operations “from which there is natural runoff,” 40 CFR §122.27(b)(1), as a nonpoint source might be read, as petitioners contend, to apply to the channeled stormwater runoff at issue; or it might be read, as respondent NEDC urges, to apply only to runoff not collected in channels or other engineered improvements. See New Oxford American Dictionary 1167 (3d ed. 2010) (Oxford Dict.) (“natural” means “existing in or caused by nature; not made or caused by humankind”). NEDC’s reading would make the channeled discharges here point-source pollution under the Act. In its view only this interpretation can be squared with the Act’s broad definition of “point source.” 33 U. S. C. §1362(14). On this premise, the instant suit is an effort not to challenge the Silvicultural Rule but to enforce it under a proper interpretation. It is a basic tenet that “regulations, in order to be valid, must be consistent with the statute under which they are promulgated.” United States v. Larionoff, 431 U.S. 864, 873 (1977). For jurisdictional purposes, it is unnecessary to determine whether NEDC is correct in arguing that only its reading of the Silvicultural Rule is permitted under the Act. It suffices to note that NEDC urges the Court to adopt a “purposeful but permissible reading of the regulation . . . to bring it into harmony with . . . the statute.” Environmental Defense v. Duke Energy Corp., 549 U.S. 561, 573 (2007). NEDC does not seek “an implicit declaration that the . . . regulations were invalid as written.” Ibid. And, as a result, §1369(b) is not a jurisdictional bar to this suit. B “It is a basic principle of Article III that a justiciable case or controversy must remain extant at all stages of review, not merely at the time the complaint is filed.” United States v. Juvenile Male, 564 U. S. ___, ___ (2011) (per curiam) (slip op., at 4) (internal quotation marks omitted). This principle requires us to determine whether the EPA’s recent amendment to the Industrial Stormwater Rule makes the cases moot. In a supplemental brief filed after oral argument, petitioner Decker, joined by the United States as amicus curiae, takes the position that the recent amendment makes these cases moot in relevant part. See Supp. Brief for Petitioners in No. 11–338, pp. 4–6; Supp. Brief for United States as Amicus Curiae 4–8. That conclusion is incorrect. “A case becomes moot only when it is impossible for a court to grant any effectual relief whatever to the prevailing party.” Knox v. Service Employees Int’l, 567 U. S. ___, ___ (2012) (slip op., at 7) (internal quotation marks omitted). Here, despite the recent amendment, a live controversy continues to exist regarding whether petitioners may be held liable for unlawful discharges under the earlier version of the Industrial Stormwater Rule. Respondent NEDC continues to press its claim that petitioners’ discharges are unlawful under both the amended regulation and the earlier version. See Supp. Brief for Respondent 3–13. The instant cases provide no occasion to interpret the amended regulation. “ ‘[W]e are a court of review, not of first view.’ ” Arkansas Game and Fish Comm’n v. United States, ante, at 13 (quoting Cutter v. Wilkinson, 544 U.S. 709, 718, n. 7 (2005)). The parties, however, have litigated the suit extensively based on the earlier version of the Industrial Stormwater Rule; and that version governed petitioners’ past discharges, which might be the basis for the imposition of penalties even if, in the future, those types of discharges will not require a permit. If the Court of Appeals is correct that petitioners were obligated to secure NPDES permits before discharging channeled stormwater runoff, the District Court might order some remedy for their past violations. The Act contemplates civil penalties of up to $25,000 per day, 33 U. S. C. §1319(d), as well as attorney’s fees for prevailing parties, §1365(d). NEDC, in addition, requests injunctive relief for both past and ongoing violations, in part in the form of an order that petitioners incur certain environmental-remediation costs to alleviate harms attributable to their past discharges. Under these circumstances, the cases remain live and justiciable, for the possibility of some remedy for a proven past violation is real and not remote. See Gwaltney of Smithfield, Ltd. v. Chesapeake Bay Foundation, Inc., 484 U.S. 49, 64–65 (1987). The District Court, it is true, might rule that NEDC’s arguments lack merit, or that the relief it seeks is not warranted on the facts of these cases. That possibility, however, does not make the cases moot. “There may be jurisdiction and yet an absence of merits.” General Investment Co. v. New York Central R. Co., 271 U.S. 228, 230 (1926). III The substantive question of the necessity for an NPDES permit under the earlier rule now must be addressed. Under the Act, petitioners were required to secure NPDES permits for the discharges of channeled stormwater runoff only if the discharges were “associated with industrial activity,” 33 U. S. C. §1342(p)(2)(B), as that statutory term is defined in the preamendment version of the Industrial Stormwater Rule, 40 CFR §122.26(b)(14) (2006). Otherwise, the discharges fall within the Act’s general exemption of “discharges composed entirely of stormwater” from the NPDES permitting scheme. 33 U. S. C. §1342(p)(1). NEDC first contends that the statutory term “associated with industrial activity” unambiguously covers discharges of channeled stormwater runoff from logging roads. See Chevron U. S. A. Inc. v. Natural Resources Defense Council, Inc., 467 U.S. 837, 842–843 (1984). That view, however, overlooks the multiple definitions of the terms “indus- trial” and “industry.” These words can refer to business activity in general, yet so too can they be limited to “economic activity concerned with the processing of raw materials and manufacture of goods in factories.” Oxford Dict. 887. The latter definition does not necessarily encompass outdoor timber harvesting. The statute does not foreclose more specific definition by the agency, since it provides no further detail as to its intended scope. Somewhat more plausible is NEDC’s claim that the preamendment version of the Industrial Stormwater Rule unambiguously required a permit for the discharges at issue. NEDC reasons that under the rule, “[f]or the categories of industries identified in this section,” NPDES permits are required for, among other things, “storm water discharges from . . . immediate access roads . . . used or traveled by carriers of raw materials.” 40 CFR §122.26(b)(14) (2006). Yet this raises the question whether logging is a “categor[y] of industr[y]” identified by the section. The regulation goes on to identify a list of “categories of facilities” that “are considered to be engaging in ‘industrial activity’ for purposes” of the Industrial Stormwater Rule. Ibid. In the earlier version of the regulation, this list included “[f]acilities classified as Standard Industrial Classificatio[n] 24,” which encompasses “Logging.” Ibid. See also supra, at 4–5. Hence, NEDC asserts, logging is among the categories of industries for which “storm water discharges from . . . immediate access roads . . . used or traveled by carriers of raw materials” required NPDES permits under the earlier version of the Industrial Stormwater Rule. §122.26(b)(14). NEDC further notes, in support of its reading of the regulation, that modern logging is a large-scale, highly mechanized enterprise, using sophisticated harvesting machines weighing up to 20 tons. See Brief for Respondent 4–5. The EPA takes a different view. It concludes that the earlier regulation invoked Standard Industrial Classification 24 “ ‘to regulate traditional industrial sources such as sawmills.’ ” Brief for United States as Amicus Curiae 24–25. It points to the regulation’s reference to “facilities” and the classification’s reference to “establishments,” which suggest industrial sites more fixed and permanent than outdoor timber-harvesting operations. Ibid. See also 55 Fed. Reg. 47990, 48008 (1990). This reading is re- inforced by the Industrial Stormwater Rule’s definition of discharges associated with industrial activity as discharges “from any conveyance that is used for collecting and conveying storm water and that is directly related to manufacturing, processing or raw materials storage areas at an industrial plant.” 40 CFR §122.26(b)(14) (2006). This language lends support to the EPA’s claim that the regulation does not cover temporary, outdoor logging installations. It was reasonable for the agency to conclude that the conveyances at issue are “directly related” only to the harvesting of raw materials, rather than to “manufacturing,” “processing,” or “raw materials storage areas.” See Oxford Dict. 1066 (manufacturing is “mak[ing] (something) on a large scale using machinery”); id., at 1392 (processing is “perform[ing] a series of mechanical or chemical operations on (something) in order to change or preserve it”). In addition, even if logging as a general matter is a type of economic activity within the regulation’s scope, a reasonable interpretation of the regulation could still require the discharges to be related in a direct way to operations “at an industrial plant” in order to be subject to NPDES permitting. NEDC resists this conclusion, noting that elsewhere in the Industrial Stormwater Rule the EPA has required NPDES permits for stormwater discharges associated with other types of outdoor economic activity. See §122.26(b)(14)(iii) (mining); §122.26(b)(14)(v) (landfills receiving industrial waste); §122.26(b)(14)(x) (large construction sites). The EPA reasonably could conclude, however, that these types of activities tend to be more fixed and permanent than timber-harvesting operations are and have a closer connection to traditional industrial sites. In light of the language of the regulation just discussed, moreover, the inclusion of these types of economic activity in the Industrial Stormwater Rule need not be read to mandate that all stormwater discharges related to these activities fall within the rule, just as the inclusion of logging need not be read to extend to all discharges from logging sites. The regulation’s reach may be limited by the requirement that the discharges be “directly related to manufacturing, processing or raw materials storage areas at an industrial plant.” §122.26(b)(14). It is well established that an agency’s interpretation need not be the only possible reading of a regulation—or even the best one—to prevail. When an agency interprets its own regulation, the Court, as a general rule, defers to it “unless that interpretation is ‘plainly erroneous or inconsistent with the regulation.’ ” Chase Bank USA, N. A. v. McCoy, 562 U. S. ___, ___ (2011) (slip op., at 12) (quoting Auer, 519 U. S., at 461). The EPA’s interpretation is a permissible one. Taken together, the regulation’s ref- erences to “facilities,” “establishments,” “manufacturing,” “processing,” and an “industrial plant” leave open the rational interpretation that the regulation extends only to traditional industrial buildings such as factories and associated sites, as well as other relatively fixed facilities. There is another reason to accord Auer deference to the EPA’s interpretation: there is no indication that its current view is a change from prior practice or a post hoc justification adopted in response to litigation. See Christopher v. SmithKline Beecham Corp., 567 U. S. ___, ___ (2012) (slip op., at 10). The opposite is the case. The agency has been consistent in its view that the types of discharges at issue here do not require NPDES permits. The EPA’s decision exists against a background of state regulation with respect to stormwater runoff from logging roads. The State of Oregon has made an extensive effort to develop a comprehensive set of best practices to manage stormwater runoff from logging roads. These practices include rules mandating filtration of stormwater runoff before it enters rivers and streams, Ore. Admin. Rule 629–625–0330(4) (2012); requiring logging companies to construct roads using surfacing that minimizes the sediment in runoff, Rule 629–625–0700(2); and obligating firms to cease operations where such efforts fail to prevent vis- ible increases in water turbidity, Rule 629–625–0700(3). Oregon has invested substantial time and money in establishing these practices. In addition, the development, siting, maintenance, and regulation of roads—and in particular of state forest roads—are areas in which Oregon has considerable expertise. In exercising the broad discretion the Clean Water Act gives the EPA in the realm of stormwater runoff, the agency could reasonably have concluded that further federal regulation in this area would be duplicative or counterproductive. Indeed, Congress has given express instructions to the EPA to work “in consultation with State and local officials” to alleviate stormwater pollution by developing the precise kind of best management practices Oregon has established here. 33 U. S. C. §1342(p)(6). * * * The preamendment version of the Industrial Stormwater Rule, as permissibly construed by the agency, exempts discharges of channeled stormwater runoff from logging roads from the NPDES permitting scheme. As a result, there is no need to reach petitioners’ alternative argument that the conveyances in question are not “pipe[s], ditch[es], channel[s], tunnel[s], conduit[s],” or any other type of point source within the Act’s definition of the term. §1362(14). For the reasons stated, the judgment of the Court of Appeals is reversed, and the cases are remanded for proceedings consistent with this opinion. It is so ordered. Justice Breyer took no part in the consideration or decision of these cases.

570.US.254

The Armed Career Criminal Act (ACCA) increases the sentences of certain federal defendants who have three prior convictions “for a violent felony,” including “burglary, arson, or extortion.” 18 U. S. C. §924(e). To determine whether a past conviction is for one of those crimes, courts use a “categorical approach”: They compare the statutory elements of a prior conviction with the elements of the “generic” crime―i.e., the offense as commonly understood. If the statute’s elements are the same as, or narrower than, those of the generic offense, the prior conviction qualifies as an ACCA predicate. When a prior conviction is for violating a “divisible statute”—one that sets out one or more of the elements in the alternative, e.g., burglary involving entry into a building or an automobile—a “modified categorical approach” is used. That approach permits sentencing courts to consult a limited class of documents, such as indictments and jury instructions, to determine which alternative element formed the basis of the defendant’s prior conviction. Petitioner Descamps was convicted of being a felon in possession of a firearm. The Government sought an ACCA sentence enhancement, pointing to Descamps’ three prior convictions, including one for burglary under California Penal Code Ann. §459, which provides that a “person who enters” certain locations “with intent to commit grand or petit larceny or any felony is guilty of burglary.” In imposing an enhanced sentence, the District Court rejected Descamps’ argument that his §459 conviction cannot serve as an ACCA predicate because §459 goes beyond the “generic” definition of burglary. The Ninth Circuit affirmed, holding that its decision in United States v. Aguila-Montes de Oca, 655 F.3d 915, permits the application of the modified categorical approach to a prior conviction under a statute that is “categorically broader than the generic offense.” It found that Descamps’ §459 conviction, as revealed in the plea colloquy, rested on facts satisfying the elements of generic burglary. Held: The modified categorical approach does not apply to statutes like §459 that contain a single, indivisible set of elements. Pp. 5−23. (a) This Court’s caselaw all but resolves this case. In Taylor v. United States, 495 U.S. 575, and Shepard v. United States, 544 U.S. 13, the Court approved the use of a modified categorical approach in a “narrow range of cases” in which a divisible statute, listing potential offense elements in the alternative, renders opaque which element played a part in the defendant’s conviction. Because a sentencing court cannot tell, simply by looking at a divisible statute, which version of the offense a defendant was convicted of, the court is permitted to consult extra-statutory documents—but only to assess whether the defendant was convicted of the particular “statutory definition” that corresponds to the generic offense. Nijhawan v. Holder, 557 U.S. 29, and Johnson v. United States, 559 U.S. 133, also emphasized this elements-based rationale for the modified categorical approach. That approach plays no role here, where the dispute does not concern alternative elements but a simple discrepancy between generic burglary and §459. Pp. 5−10. (b) The Ninth Circuit’s Aguila-Montes approach turns an elements-based inquiry into an evidence-based one, asking not whether “statutory definitions” necessarily require an adjudicator to find the generic offense, but whether the prosecutor’s case realistically led the adjudicator to find certain facts. Aguila-Montes has no roots in this Court’s precedents. In fact, it subverts those decisions, conflicting with each of the rationales supporting the categorical approach and threatening to undo all its benefits. Pp. 10–19. (1) Taylor’s elements-centric categorical approach comports with ACCA’s text and history, avoids Sixth Amendment concerns that would arise from sentencing courts’ making factual findings that properly belong to juries, and averts “the practical difficulties and potential unfairness of a factual approach.” 495 U. S., at 601. ACCA’s language shows that Congress intended sentencing courts “to look only to the fact that the defendant had been convicted of crimes falling within certain categories, and not to the facts underlying the prior convictions.” Id., at 600. The Ninth Circuit’s approach runs headlong into that congressional choice. Instead of reviewing extra-statutory documents only to determine which alternative element was the basis for the conviction, the Circuit looks to those materials to discover what the defendant actually did. Under ACCA, the sentencing court’s finding of a predicate offense indisputably increases the maximum penalty. Accordingly, that finding would (at least) raise serious Sixth Amendment concerns if it went beyond merely identifying a prior conviction. That is why Shepard refused to permit sentencing courts to make a disputed determination about what facts must have supported a defendant’s conviction. 544 U. S., at 25 (plurality opinion). Yet the Ninth Circuit flouts this Court’s reasoning by authorizing judicial factfinding that goes far beyond the recognition of a prior conviction. The Ninth Circuit’s decision also creates the same “daunting” difficulties and inequities that first encouraged the adoption of the categorical approach. Sentencing courts following Aguila-Montes would have to expend resources examining (often aged) documents for evidence that a defendant admitted, or a prosecutor showed, facts that, although unnecessary to the crime of conviction, satisfied an element of the relevant generic offense. And the Aguila-Montes approach would also deprive many defendants of the benefits of their negotiated plea deals. Pp. 12–16. (2) In defending Aguila-Montes, the Ninth Circuit denied any real distinction between divisible and indivisible statutes extending further than the generic offense. But the Circuit’s efforts to imaginatively reconceive all indivisible statutes as divisible ones are unavailing. Only divisible statutes enable a sentencing court to conclude that a jury (or judge at a plea hearing) has convicted the defendant of every element of the generic crime. Pp. 16−19. (c) The Government offers a slightly different argument: It contends that the modified categorical approach should apply where, as here, the mismatch of elements between the crime of conviction and the generic offense results not from a missing element but from an element’s overbreadth. But that distinction is malleable and manipulable. And in any event, it is a distinction without a difference. Whether the statute of conviction has an overbroad or missing element, the problem is the same: Because of the mismatch in elements, a person convicted under that statute is never convicted of the generic crime. Pp. 19−22. (d) Because generic unlawful entry is not an element, or an alternative element of, §459, a conviction under that statute is never for generic burglary. Descamps’ ACCA enhancement was therefore improper. Pp. 22–23. 466 Fed. Appx. 563, reversed. Kagan, J., delivered the opinion of the Court, in which Roberts, C. J., and Scalia, Kennedy, Ginsburg, Breyer, and Sotomayor, JJ., joined. Kennedy, J., filed a concurring opinion. Thomas, J., filed an opinion concurring in the judgment. Alito, J., filed a dissenting opinion.

The Armed Career Criminal Act (ACCA or Act), 18 U. S. C. §924(e), increases the sentences of certain federal defendants who have three prior convictions “for a violent felony,” including “burglary, arson, or extortion.” To determine whether a past conviction is for one of those crimes, courts use what has become known as the “categorical approach”: They compare the elements of the statute forming the basis of the defendant’s conviction with the elements of the “generic” crime—i.e., the offense as commonly understood. The prior conviction qualifies as an ACCA predicate only if the statute’s elements are the same as, or narrower than, those of the generic offense. We have previously approved a variant of this method—labeled (not very inventively) the “modified categorical approach”—when a prior conviction is for violating a so-called “divisible statute.” That kind of statute sets out one or more elements of the offense in the alternative—for example, stating that burglary involves entry into a building or an automobile. If one alternative (say, a building) matches an element in the generic offense, but the other (say, an automobile) does not, the modified categorical approach permits sentencing courts to consult a limited class of documents, such as indictments and jury instructions, to determine which alternative formed the basis of the defendant’s prior conviction. The court can then do what the categorical approach demands: compare the elements of the crime of conviction (including the alternative element used in the case) with the elements of the generic crime. This case presents the question whether sentencing courts may also consult those additional documents when a defendant was convicted under an “indivisible” statute—i.e., one not containing alternative elements—that criminalizes a broader swath of conduct than the relevant generic offense. That would enable a court to decide, based on information about a case’s underlying facts, that the defendant’s prior conviction qualifies as an ACCA predicate even though the elements of the crime fail to satisfy our categorical test. Because that result would contravene our prior decisions and the principles underlying them, we hold that sentencing courts may not apply the modified categorical approach when the crime of which the defendant was convicted has a single, indivisible set of elements. I Petitioner Michael Descamps was convicted of being a felon in possession of a firearm, in violation of 18 U. S. C. §922(g). That unadorned offense carries a maximum penalty of 10 years in prison. The Government, however, sought an enhanced sentence under ACCA, based on Descamps’ prior state convictions for burglary, robbery, and felony harassment. ACCA prescribes a mandatory minimum sentence of 15 years for a person who violates §922(g) and “has three previous convictions . . . for a violent felony or a serious drug offense.” §924(e)(1). The Act defines a “violent felony” to mean any felony, whether state or federal, that “has as an element the use, attempted use, or threatened use of physical force against the person of another,” or that “is burglary, arson, or extortion, involves use of explosives, or otherwise involves conduct that presents a serious potential risk of physical injury to another.” §924(e)(2)(B). Descamps argued that his prior burglary conviction could not count as an ACCA predicate offense under our categorical approach. He had pleaded guilty to violating California Penal Code Ann. §459 (West 2010), which provides that a “person who enters” certain locations “with intent to commit grand or petit larceny or any felony is guilty of burglary.” That statute does not require the entry to have been unlawful in the way most burglary laws do. Whereas burglary statutes generally demand breaking and entering or similar conduct, California’s does not: It covers, for example, a shoplifter who enters a store, like any customer, during normal business hours. See People v. Barry, 94 Cal. 481, 483–484, 29 P. 1026, 1026–1027 (1892). In sweeping so widely, the state law goes beyond the normal, “generic” definition of burglary. According to Descamps, that asymmetry of offense elements precluded his conviction under §459 from serving as an ACCA predicate, whether or not his own burglary involved an unlawful entry that could have satisfied the requirements of the generic crime. The District Court disagreed. According to the court, our modified categorical approach permitted it to examine certain documents, including the record of the plea colloquy, to discover whether Descamps had “admitted the elements of a generic burglary” when entering his plea. App. 50a. And that transcript, the court ruled, showed that Descamps had done so. At the plea hearing, the prosecutor proffered that the crime “ ‘ involve[d] the breaking and entering of a grocery store,’ ” and Descamps failed to object to that statement. Ibid. The plea proceed- ings, the District Court thought, thus established that Descamps’ prior conviction qualified as a generic burglary (and so as a “violent felony”) under ACCA. Applying the requisite penalty enhancement, the court sentenced Descamps to 262 months in prison—more than twice the term he would otherwise have received. The Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit affirmed, relying on its recently issued decision in United States v. Aguila-Montes de Oca, 655 F. 3d 915 (2011) (en banc) (per curiam). There, a divided en banc court took much the same view of the modified categorical approach as had the District Court in this case. The en banc court held that when a sentencing court considers a conviction under §459—or any other statute that is “categorically broader than the generic offense”—the court may scrutinize certain documents to determine the factual basis of the conviction. See id., at 940. Applying that approach, the Court of Appeals here found that Descamps’ plea, as revealed in the colloquy, “rested on facts that satisfy the elements of the generic definition of burglary.” 466 Fed. Appx. 563, 565 (2012). We granted certiorari, 567 U. S. ___ (2012), to resolve a Circuit split on whether the modified categorical approach applies to statutes like §459 that contain a single, “indivisible” set of elements sweeping more broadly than the corresponding generic offense. [ 1 ] We hold that it does not, and so reverse. II Our caselaw explaining the categorical approach and its “modified” counterpart all but resolves this case. In those decisions, as shown below, the modified approach serves a limited function: It helps effectuate the categorical analysis when a divisible statute, listing potential offense elements in the alternative, renders opaque which element played a part in the defendant’s conviction. So understood, the modified approach cannot convert Descamps’ conviction under §459 into an ACCA predicate, because that state law defines burglary not alternatively, but only more broadly than the generic offense. We begin with Taylor v. United States, 495 U. S. 575 (1990) , which established the rule for determining when a defendant’s prior conviction counts as one of ACCA’s enumerated predicate offenses (e.g., burglary). Taylor adopted a “formal categorical approach”: Sentencing courts may “look only to the statutory definitions”—i.e., the elements—of a defendant’s prior offenses, and not “to the particular facts underlying those convictions.” Id., at 600. If the relevant statute has the same elements as the “generic” ACCA crime, then the prior conviction can serve as an ACCA predicate; so too if the statute defines the crime more narrowly, because anyone convicted under that law is “necessarily . . . guilty of all the [generic crime’s] elements.” Id., at 599. But if the statute sweeps more broadly than the generic crime, a conviction under that law cannot count as an ACCA predicate, even if the defendant actually committed the offense in its generic form. The key, we emphasized, is elements, not facts. So, for example, we held that a defendant can receive an ACCA enhancement for burglary only if he was convicted of a crime having “the basic elements” of generic burglary—i.e., “unlawful or unprivileged entry into, or remaining in, a building or structure, with intent to commit a crime.” Ibid. And indeed, we indicated that the very statute at issue here, §459, does not fit that bill because “California defines ‘burglary’ so broadly as to include shoplifting.” Id., at 591. At the same time, Taylor recognized a “narrow range of cases” in which sentencing courts—applying what we would later dub the “modified categorical approach”—may look beyond the statutory elements to “the charging paper and jury instructions” used in a case. Id., at 602. To explain when courts should resort to that approach, we hypothesized a statute with alternative elements—more particularly, a burglary statute (otherwise conforming to the generic crime) that prohibits “entry of an automobile as well as a building.” Ibid. One of those alternatives (a building) corresponds to an element in generic burglary, whereas the other (an automobile) does not. In a typical case brought under the statute, the prosecutor charges one of those two alternatives, and the judge instructs the jury accordingly. So if the case involves entry into a building, the jury is “actually required to find all the elements of generic burglary,” as the categorical approach demands. Ibid. But the statute alone does not disclose whether that has occurred. Because the statute is “divisible”—i.e., comprises multiple, alternative versions of the crime—a later sentencing court cannot tell, without reviewing something more, if the defendant’s conviction was for the generic (building) or non-generic (automobile) form of burglary. Hence Taylor permitted sentencing courts, as a tool for implementing the categorical approach, to examine a limited class of documents to determine which of a statute’s alternative elements formed the basis of the defendant’s prior conviction. In Shepard v. United States, 544 U. S. 13 (2005) , the hypothetical we posited in Taylor became real: We confronted a Massachusetts burglary statute covering entries into “boats and cars” as well as buildings. 544 U. S., at 17. The defendant there pleaded guilty to violating the statute, and we first confirmed that Taylor’s categorical approach applies not just to jury verdicts, but also to plea agreements. That meant, we held, that a conviction based on a guilty plea can qualify as an ACCA predicate only if the defendant “necessarily admitted [the] elements of the generic offense.” Id., at 26. But as we had anticipated in Taylor, the divisible nature of the Massachusetts burglary statute confounded that inquiry: No one could know, just from looking at the statute, which version of the offense Shepard was convicted of. Accordingly, we again authorized sentencing courts to scrutinize a restricted set of materials—here, “the terms of a plea agreement or transcript of colloquy between judge and defendant”—to determine if the defendant had pleaded guilty to entering a building or, alternatively, a car or boat. Ibid. Yet we again underscored the narrow scope of that review: It was not to determine “what the defendant and state judge must have understood as the factual basis of the prior plea,” but only to assess whether the plea was to the version of the crime in the Massachusetts statute (burglary of a building) corresponding to the generic offense. Id., at 25–26 (plurality opinion). Two more recent decisions have further emphasized the elements-based rationale—applicable only to divisible statutes—for examining documents like an indictment or plea agreement. In Nijhawan v. Holder, 557 U. S. 29 (2009) , we discussed another Massachusetts statute, this one prohibiting “ ‘ Breaking and Entering at Night’ ” in any of four alternative places: a “building, ship, vessel, or vehicle.” Id., at 35. We recognized that when a statute so “refer[s] to several different crimes,” not all of which qualify as an ACCA predicate, a court must determine which crime formed the basis of the defendant’s conviction. Ibid. That is why, we explained, Taylor and Shepard developed the modified categorical approach. By reviewing the extra-statutory materials approved in those cases, courts could discover “which statutory phrase,” contained within a statute listing “several different” crimes, “covered a prior conviction.” 557 U. S., at 41. And a year later, we repeated that understanding of when and why courts can resort to those documents: “[T]he ‘modified categorical approach’ that we have approved permits a court to determine which statutory phrase was the basis for the conviction.” Johnson v. United States, 559 U. S. 133, 144 (2010) (citation omitted). Applied in that way—which is the only way we have ever allowed—the modified approach merely helps im- plement the categorical approach when a defendant was convicted of violating a divisible statute. The modified approach thus acts not as an exception, but instead as a tool. It retains the categorical approach’s central feature: a focus on the elements, rather than the facts, of a crime. And it preserves the categorical approach’s basic method: comparing those elements with the generic offense’s. All the modified approach adds is a mechanism for making that comparison when a statute lists multiple, alternative elements, and so effectively creates “several different . . . crimes.” Nijhawan, 557 U. S., at 41. If at least one, but not all of those crimes matches the generic version, a court needs a way to find out which the defendant was convicted of. That is the job, as we have always understood it, of the modified approach: to identify, from among several alternatives, the crime of conviction so that the court can compare it to the generic offense. [ 2 ] The modified approach thus has no role to play in this case. The dispute here does not concern any list of alternative elements. Rather, it involves a simple discrepancy between generic burglary and the crime established in §459. The former requires an unlawful entry along the lines of breaking and entering. See 3 W. LaFave, Substantive Criminal Law §21.1(a) (2d ed. 2003) (hereinafter LaFave). The latter does not, and indeed covers simple shoplifting, as even the Government acknowledges. See Brief for United States 38; Barry, 94 Cal., at 483–484, 29 P., at 1026–1027. In Taylor’s words, then, §459 “define[s] burglary more broadly” than the generic offense. 495 U. S., at 599. And because that is true—because California, to get a conviction, need not prove that Descamps broke and entered—a §459 violation cannot serve as an ACCA predicate. Whether Descamps did break and enter makes no difference. And likewise, whether he ever admitted to breaking and entering is irrelevant. Our decisions authorize review of the plea colloquy or other approved extra-statutory documents only when a statute defines burglary not (as here) overbroadly, but instead alternatively, with one statutory phrase corresponding to the generic crime and another not. In that circumstance, a court may look to the additional documents to determine which of the statutory offenses (generic or non-generic) formed the basis of the defendant’s conviction. But here no uncertainty of that kind exists, and so the categorical approach needs no help from its modified partner. We know Descamps’ crime of conviction, and it does not correspond to the relevant generic offense. Under our prior decisions, the inquiry is over. III The Court of Appeals took a different view. Dismissing everything we have said on the subject as “lack[ing] conclusive weight,” the Ninth Circuit held in Aguila-Montes that the modified categorical approach could turn a conviction under any statute into an ACCA predicate offense. 655 F. 3d, at 931. The statute, like §459, could contain a single, indivisible set of elements covering far more conduct than the generic crime—and still, a sentencing court could “conside[r] to some degree the factual basis for the defendant’s conviction” or, otherwise stated, “the particular acts the defendant committed.” Id., at 935–936. More specifically, the court could look to reliable materials (the charging document, jury instructions, plea colloquy, and so forth) to determine “what facts” can “confident[ly]” be thought to underlie the defendant’s conviction in light of the “prosecutorial theory of the case” and the “facts put forward by the government.” Id., at 936–937. It makes no difference, in the Ninth Circuit’s view, whether “specific words in the statute” of conviction “ ‘ actually required’ ” the jury (or judge accepting a plea) “to find a particular generic element.” Id., at 936 (quoting Taylor, 495 U. S., at 602; internal quotation marks omitted). [ 3 ] That approach—which an objecting judge aptly called “modified factual,” 655 F. 3d, at 948 (Berzon, J., concurring in judgment)—turns an elements-based inquiry into an evidence-based one. It asks not whether “statutory definitions” necessarily require an adjudicator to find the generic offense, but instead whether the prosecutor’s case realistically led the adjudicator to make that determi- nation. And it makes examination of extra-statutory documents not a tool used in a “narrow range of cases” to identify the relevant element from a statute with multiple alternatives, but rather a device employed in every case to evaluate the facts that the judge or jury found. By this point, it should be clear that the Ninth Circuit’s new way of identifying ACCA predicates has no roots in our precedents. But more: Aguila-Montes subverts those decisions, conflicting with each of the rationales supporting the categorical approach and threatening to undo all its benefits. A This Court offered three grounds for establishing our elements-centric, “formal categorical approach.” Taylor, 495 U. S., at 600. First, it comports with ACCA’s text and history. Second, it avoids the Sixth Amendment concerns that would arise from sentencing courts’ making findings of fact that properly belong to juries. And third, it averts “the practical difficulties and potential unfairness of a factual approach.” Id., at 601. When assessed in light of those three reasons, the Ninth Circuit’s ruling strikes out swinging. Start with the statutory text and history. As we have long recognized, ACCA increases the sentence of a defendant who has three “previous convictions” for a violent felony—not a defendant who has thrice committed such a crime. 18 U. S. C. §924(e)(1); see Taylor, 495 U. S., at 600. That language shows, as Taylor explained, that “Congress intended the sentencing court to look only to the fact that the defendant had been convicted of crimes falling within certain categories, and not to the facts underlying the prior convictions.” Ibid.; see Shepard, 544 U. S., at 19. If Congress had wanted to increase a sentence based on the facts of a prior offense, it presumably would have said so; other statutes, in other contexts, speak in just that way. See Nijhawan, 557 U. S., at 36 (construing an immigration statute as requiring a “ ‘circumstance-specific,’ not a ‘categorical,’ ” approach). But in ACCA, Taylor found, Congress made a deliberate decision to treat every conviction of a crime in the same manner: During the lengthy debate preceding the statute’s enactment, “no one suggested that a particular crime might sometimes count towards enhancement and sometimes not, depending on the facts of the case.” 495 U. S., at 601. Congress instead meant ACCA to function as an on-off switch, directing that a prior crime would qualify as a predicate offense in all cases or in none. The Ninth Circuit’s approach runs headlong into that congressional choice. Instead of reviewing documents like an indictment or plea colloquy only to determine “which statutory phrase was the basis for the conviction,” the Ninth Circuit looks to those materials to discover what the defendant actually did. Johnson, 559 U. S., at 144. This case demonstrates the point. Descamps was not convicted of generic burglary, because (as the Government agrees) §459 does not contain that crime’s required unlawful-entry element. See Brief for United States 38, 43–44. At most, the colloquy showed that Descamps committed generic burglary, and so hypothetically could have been convicted under a law criminalizing that conduct. But that is just what we said, in Taylor and elsewhere, is not enough. See 495 U. S., at 600; Carachuri-Rosendo v. Holder, 560 U. S. ___, ___ (2010) (slip op., at 11) (rejecting such a “ ‘ hypothetical approach’ ” given a similar statute’s directive to “look to the conviction itself,” rather than “to what might have or could have been charged”). And the necessary result of the Ninth Circuit’s method is exactly the differential treatment we thought Congress, in enacting ACCA, took care to prevent. In the two years since Aguila-Montes, the Ninth Circuit has treated some, but not other, convictions under §459 as ACCA predicates, based on minor variations in the cases’ plea documents. Compare, e.g., 466 Fed. Appx., at 565 (Descamps’ §459 conviction counts as generic burglary), with 655 F. 3d, at 946 (Aguila-Montes’ does not). Similarly, consider (though Aguila-Montes did not) the categorical approach’s Sixth Amendment underpinnings. We have held that “[o]ther than the fact of a prior conviction, any fact that increases the penalty for a crime beyond the prescribed statutory maximum must be submitted to a jury, and proved beyond a reasonable doubt.” Apprendi v. New Jersey, 530 U. S. 466, 490 (2000) . Under ACCA, the court’s finding of a predicate offense indisputably increases the maximum penalty. Accordingly, that finding would (at the least) raise serious Sixth Amendment concerns if it went beyond merely identifying a prior conviction. Those concerns, we recognized in Shepard, counsel against allowing a sentencing court to “make a disputed” determination “about what the defendant and state judge must have understood as the factual basis of the prior plea,” or what the jury in a prior trial must have accepted as the theory of the crime. 544 U. S., at 25 (plurality opinion); see id., at 28 (Thomas, J., concurring in part and concurring in judgment) (stating that such a finding would “giv[e] rise to constitutional error, not doubt”). Hence our insistence on the categorical approach. Yet again, the Ninth Circuit’s ruling flouts our reasoning—here, by extending judicial factfinding beyond the recog- nition of a prior conviction. Our modified categorical approach merely assists the sentencing court in identifying the defendant’s crime of conviction, as we have held the Sixth Amendment permits. But the Ninth Circuit’s reworking authorizes the court to try to discern what a trial showed, or a plea proceeding revealed, about the defendant’s underlying conduct. See Aguila-Montes, 655 F. 3d, at 937. And there’s the constitutional rub. The Sixth Amendment contemplates that a jury—not a sentencing court—will find such facts, unanimously and beyond a reasonable doubt. And the only facts the court can be sure the jury so found are those constituting elements of the offense—as distinct from amplifying but legally extraneous circumstances. See, e.g., Richardson v. United States, 526 U. S. 813, 817 (1999) . Similarly, as Shepard indicated, when a defendant pleads guilty to a crime, he waives his right to a jury determination of only that offense’s elements; whatever he says, or fails to say, about superfluous facts cannot license a later sentencing court to impose extra punishment. See 544 U. S., at 24–26 (plurality opinion). So when the District Court here enhanced Descamps’ sentence, based on his supposed acquiescence to a prosecutorial statement (that he “broke and entered”) irrelevant to the crime charged, the court did just what we have said it cannot: rely on its own finding about a non-elemental fact to increase a defendant’s maximum sentence. Finally, the Ninth Circuit’s decision creates the same “daunting” difficulties and inequities that first encouraged us to adopt the categorical approach. Taylor, 495 U. S., at 601–602. In case after case, sentencing courts following Aguila-Montes would have to expend resources examining (often aged) documents for evidence that a defendant admitted in a plea colloquy, or a prosecutor showed at trial, facts that, although unnecessary to the crime of conviction, satisfy an element of the relevant generic offense. The meaning of those documents will often be uncertain. And the statements of fact in them may be downright wrong. A defendant, after all, often has little incentive to contest facts that are not elements of the charged offense—and may have good reason not to. At trial, extraneous facts and arguments may confuse the jury. (Indeed, the court may prohibit them for that reason.) And during plea hearings, the defendant may not wish to irk the prosecutor or court by squabbling about superfluous factual allegations. In this case, for example, Descamps may have let the prosecutor’s statement go by because it was irrelevant to the proceedings. He likely was not thinking about the possibility that his silence could come back to haunt him in an ACCA sentencing 30 years in the future. (Actually, he could not have been thinking that thought: ACCA was not even on the books at the time of Descamps’ burglary conviction.) Still worse, the Aguila-Montes approach will deprive some defendants of the benefits of their negotiated plea deals. Assume (as happens every day) that a defendant surrenders his right to trial in exchange for the government’s agreement that he plead guilty to a less serious crime, whose elements do not match an ACCA offense. Under the Ninth Circuit’s view, a later sentencing court could still treat the defendant as though he had pleaded to an ACCA predicate, based on legally extraneous statements found in the old record. Taylor recognized the problem: “[I]f a guilty plea to a lesser, nonburglary offense was the result of a plea bargain,” the Court stated, “it would seem unfair to impose a sentence enhancement as if the defendant had pleaded guilty” to generic burglary. 495 U. S., at 601–602. That way of proceeding, on top of everything else, would allow a later sentencing court to rewrite the parties’ bargain. B The Ninth Circuit defended its (excessively) modified approach by denying any real distinction between divisible and indivisible statutes extending further than the generic offense. “The only conceptual difference,” the court reasoned, “is that [a divisible statute] creates an explicitly finite list of possible means of commission, while [an indivisible one] creates an implied list of every means of commission that otherwise fits the definition of a given crime.” Aguila-Montes, 655 F. 3d, at 927. For example, an indivisible statute “requir[ing] use of a ‘weapon’ is not meaningfully different”—or so says the Ninth Circuit—“from a statute that simply lists every kind of weapon in existence . . . (‘gun, axe, sword, baton, slingshot, knife, machete, bat,’ and so on).” Ibid. In a similar way, every indivisible statute can be imaginatively reconstructed as a divisible one. And if that is true, the Ninth Circuit asks, why limit the modified categorical approach only to explicitly divisible statutes? The simple answer is: Because only divisible statutes enable a sentencing court to conclude that a jury (or judge at a plea hearing) has convicted the defendant of every element of the generic crime. A prosecutor charging a violation of a divisible statute must generally select the relevant element from its list of alternatives. See, e.g., The Confiscation Cases, 20 Wall. 92, 104 (1874) (“[A]n indictment or a criminal information which charges the person accused, in the disjunctive, with being guilty of one or of another of several offences, would be destitute of the necessary certainty, and would be wholly insufficient”). [ 4 ] And the jury, as instructions in the case will make clear, must then find that element, unanimously and beyond a reasonable doubt. So assume, along the lines of the Ninth Circuit’s example, that a statute criminalizes assault with any of eight specified weapons; and suppose further, as the Ninth Circuit did, that only assault with a gun counts as an ACCA offense. A later sentencing court need only check the charging documents and instructions (“Do they refer to a gun or something else?”) to determine whether in convicting a defendant under that divisible statute, the jury necessarily found that he committed the ACCA-qualifying crime. None of that is true of an overbroad, indivisible stat- ute. A sentencing court, to be sure, can hypothetically reconceive such a statute in divisible terms. So, as Aguila-Montes reveals, a court blessed with sufficient time and imagination could devise a laundry list of potential “weapons”—not just the eight the Ninth Circuit mentioned, but also (for starters) grenades, pipe bombs, spears, tire irons, BB guns, nunchucks, and crossbows. But the thing about hypothetical lists is that they are, well, hypothetical. As long as the statute itself requires only an indeterminate “weapon,” that is all the indictment must (or is likely to) allege and all the jury instructions must (or are likely to) mention. And most important, that is all the jury must find to convict the defendant. The jurors need not all agree on whether the defendant used a gun or a knife or a tire iron (or any other particular weapon that might appear in an imagined divisible statute), because the actual statute requires the jury to find only a “weapon.” And even if in many cases, the jury could have readily reached consensus on the weapon used, a later sentencing court cannot supply that missing judgment. Whatever the underlying facts or the evidence presented, the defendant still would not have been convicted, in the deliberate and considered way the Constitution guarantees, of an offense with the same (or narrower) elements as the supposed generic crime (assault with a gun). Indeed, accepting the Ninth Circuit’s contrary reasoning would altogether collapse the distinction between a categorical and a fact-specific approach. After all, the Ninth Circuit’s “weapons” example is just the tip of the iceberg: Courts can go much further in reconceiving indivisible statutes as impliedly divisible ones. In fact, every element of every statute can be imaginatively transformed as the Ninth Circuit suggests—so that every crime is seen as containing an infinite number of sub-crimes corresponding to “all the possible ways an individual can commit” it. Aguila-Montes, 655 F. 3d, at 927. (Think: Professor Plum, in the ballroom, with the candlestick?; Colonel Mustard, in the conservatory, with the rope, on a snowy day, to cover up his affair with Mrs. Peacock?) If a sentencing court, as the Ninth Circuit holds, can compare each of those “implied . . . means of commission” to the generic ACCA offense, ibid. (emphasis deleted), then the categorical approach is at an end. At that point, the court is merely asking whether a particular set of facts leading to a conviction conforms to a generic ACCA offense. And that is what we have expressly and repeatedly forbidden. Courts may modify the categorical approach to accommodate alternative “statutory definitions.” Ibid.; cf. MCI Telecommunications Corp. v. American Telephone & Telegraph Co., 512 U. S. 218, 225 (1994) (“ ‘ [T]o modify’ means to change moderately or in minor fashion”). They may not, by pretending that every fact pattern is an “implied” statutory definition, Aguila-Montes, 655 F. 3d, at 927, convert that approach into its opposite. IV The Government tries to distance itself from the Ninth Circuit by offering a purportedly narrower theory—that although an indivisible statute that is “truly missing” an element of the generic offense cannot give rise to an ACCA conviction, California’s burglary law can do so because it merely “contains a broader version of the [generic] element of unlawfulness of entry.” Brief for United States 11–12. The Government’s argument proceeds in three steps. It begins from the premise that sentencing courts applying ACCA should consider not only the statute defining a prior crime but also any judicial interpretations of it. Next, the Government points to a California decision holding (not surprisingly) that a defendant cannot “burglariz[e] his own home”; the case’s reasoning, the Government notes, is that §459 (though not saying so explicitly) requires “an entry which invades a possessory right.” People v. Gauze, 15 Cal. 3d 709, 713–716, 542 P. 2d 1365, 1367–1368 (1975). Given that precedent, the Government contends, §459 includes a kind of “unlawful entry” element, although it is broader than the generic crime’s analogous requirement. Finally, the Government asserts that sentencing courts may use the modified approach “to determine whether a particular defendant’s conviction under” such an overbroad statute actually “was for [the] generic” crime. Brief for United States 11. Although elaborately developed in the Government’s brief, this argument’s first two steps turn out to be sideshows. We may reserve the question whether, in determining a crime’s elements, a sentencing court should take account not only of the relevant statute’s text, but of judicial rulings interpreting it. And we may assume, as the Government insists, that California caselaw treats §459 as including an element of entry “invading a possessory right”—although, truth be told, we find the state decisions on that score contradictory and confusing. [ 5 ] Even on those assumptions, §459’s elements do not come into line with generic burglary’s. As the Government concedes, almost every entry onto another’s property with intent to steal—including, for example, a shoplifter’s walking into an open store—“invades a possessory right” under §459. See Brief for United States 38; Gauze, 15 Cal. 3d, at 714, 542 P. 2d, at 1367. By contrast, generic burglary’s unlawful-entry element excludes any case in which a person enters premises open to the public, no matter his intent; the generic crime requires breaking and entering or similar unlawful activity. See Brief for United States 38; LaFave §21.1(a). So everything rests on the Government’s third point: that this mismatch does not preclude applying the modified categorical approach, because it results not from a missing element but instead from an element’s overbreadth. But for starters, we see no principled way to make that distinction. Most overbroad statutes can also be characterized as missing an element; and most statutes missing an element can also be labeled overbroad. Here is the only conclusion in Aguila-Montes we agree with: “[I]t is difficult, if not impossible” to determine which is which. 655 F. 3d, at 925. The example that court gave was as follows: A statute of conviction punishes possession of pornography, but a federal law carries a sentence enhancement for possession of child pornography. Is the statute of conviction overbroad because it includes both adult and child pornography; or is that law instead missing the element of involvement of minors? The same name game can be played with §459. The Government labors mightily to turn what it fears looks like a missing-element statute into an overbroad statute through the incorporation of judicial decisions. But even putting those decisions aside, the Government might have described §459 as merely having an overbroad element because “entry” includes both the lawful and the unlawful kind. And conversely, Descamps could claim that even as judicially inter- preted, §459 is entirely missing generic burglary’s ele- ment of breaking and entering or similar unlawful conduct. All is in the eye of the beholder, and prone to endless manipulation. In any event, and more fundamentally, we see no reason why the Government’s distinction should matter. Whether the statute of conviction has an overbroad or missing element, the problem is the same: Because of the mismatch in elements, a person convicted under that statute is never convicted of the generic crime. In this case, for example, Descamps was not convicted of generic burglary because §459, whether viewed as missing an element or containing an overbroad one, does not require breaking and entering. So every reason we have given—textual, constitutional, and practical—for rejecting the Ninth Circuit’s proposed approach applies to the Government’s as well. See supra, at 12–16. At bottom, the Government wants the same thing as the Ninth Circuit (if nominally in a few fewer cases): It too wishes a sentencing court to look beyond the elements to the evidence or, otherwise said, to explore whether a person convicted of one crime could also have been convicted of another, more serious offense. But that circumstance-specific review is just what the categorical approach precludes. And as we have explained, we adopted the modified approach to help implement the categorical inquiry, not to undermine it. V Descamps may (or may not) have broken and entered, and so committed generic burglary. But §459—the crime of which he was convicted—does not require the factfinder (whether jury or judge) to make that determination. Because generic unlawful entry is not an element, or an alternative element, of §459, a conviction under that statute is never for generic burglary. And that decides this case in Descamps’ favor; the District Court should not have enhanced his sentence under ACCA. [ 6 ] That court and the Ninth Circuit erred in invoking the modified categorical approach to look behind Descamps’ conviction in search of record evidence that he actually committed the generic offense. The modified approach does not authorize a sentencing court to substitute such a facts-based inquiry for an elements-based one. A court may use the modified approach only to determine which alternative element in a divisible statute formed the basis of the defendant’s conviction. Accordingly, we reverse the judgment of the Court of Appeals. It is so ordered. Notes 1 Compare, e.g., 466 Fed. Appx. 563, 565 (CA9 2012) (case below) (applying the modified categorical approach to §459); United States v. Armstead, 467 F. 3d 943, 947–950 (CA6 2006) (applying that approach to a similar, indivisible statute), with, e.g., United States v. Beardsley, 691 F. 3d 252, 268–274 (CA2 2012) (holding that the modified categorical approach applies only to divisible statutes); United States v. Giggey, 551 F. 3d 27, 40 (CA1 2008) (en banc) (same). 2 The dissent delves into the nuances of various States’ laws in an effort to cast doubt on this understanding of our prior holdings, arguing that we used the modified categorical approach in cases like Taylor, Shepard, and Johnson “in relation to statutes that may not have been divisible” in the way that we have just described. Post, at 5 (Alito, J.). But if, as the dissent claims, the state laws at issue in those cases set out “merely alternative means, not alternative elements” of an offense, post, at 7, that is news to us. And more important, it would have been news to the Taylor, Shepard, and Johnson Courts: All those decisions rested on the explicit premise that the laws “contain[ed] statutory phrases that cover several different . . . crimes,” not several different methods of committing one offense. Johnson, 559 U. S., at 144 (citing Nijhawan, 557 U. S., at 41). And if the dissent’s real point is that distinguishing between “alternative elements” and “alternative means” is difficult, we can see no real-world reason to worry. Whatever a statute lists (whether elements or means), the documents we approved in Taylor and Shepard—i.e., indictment, jury instructions, plea colloquy, and plea agreement—would reflect the crime’s elements. So a court need not parse state law in the way the dissent suggests: When a state law is drafted in the alternative, the court merely resorts to the approved documents and compares the elements revealed there to those of the generic offense. 3 The dissent, as we understand it, takes the same view as the Ninth Circuit; accordingly, each of the reasons—statutory, constitutional, and practical—that leads us to reject Aguila-Montes proves fatal to the dissent’s position as well. The dissent several times obscures its call to explore facts with language from our categorical cases, asking whether “the relevant portions of the state record clearly show that the jury necessarily found, or the defendant necessarily admitted, the elements of [the] generic [offense].” Post, at 14; see Shepard, 544 U. S., at 24 (plurality opinion) (reiterating Taylor’s “demanding requirement that . . . a prior conviction ‘necessarily’ involve[]” a jury finding on each elementof the generic offense) (emphasis added). But the dissent nowhere explains how a factfinder can have “necessarily found” a non-element—that is, a fact that by definition is not necessary to support a conviction. The dissent’s fundamental view is that a sentencing court should be able to make reasonable “inference[s]” about what the factfinder really (even though not necessarily) found. See post, at 15. That position accords with our dissenting colleague’s previously expressed skepticism about the categorical approach. See Moncrieffe v. Holder, 569 U. S. ___, ___ (2013) (slip op., at 11) (Alito, J., dissenting) (“I would hold that the categorical approach is not controlling where the state conviction at issue was based on a state statute that encompasses both a substantial number of cases that qualify under the federal standard and a substantial number that do not. In such situations, it is appropriate to look beyond the elements of the state offense and to rely as well on facts that were admitted in state court or that, taking a realistic view, were clearly proved”). But there are several decades of water over that dam, and the dissent offers no newly persuasive reasons for revisiting our precedents. 4 See also 1 C. Wright & A. Leipold, Federal Practice and Procedure: Criminal §125, pp. 550–551 (4th ed. 2008) (“If a single statute sets forth several different offenses, [a] pleading . . . that does not indicate which crime [the] defendant allegedly committed is insufficient”); 5 W.LaFave, J. Israel, N. King, & O. Kerr, Criminal Procedure §19.3(a), p. 263 (3d ed. 2007) (“[W]here a statute specifies several different ways in which the crime can be committed, [courts often] hold that the pleading must refer to the particular alternative presented in the individual case”). 5 Several decisions treat “invasion of a possessory right” as an aspect of §459’s entry element, see, e.g., People v. Waidla, 22 Cal. 4th 690, 723, 996 P. 2d 46, 65 (2000); Fortes v. Sacramento Munic. Ct. Dist., 113 Cal. App. 3d 704, 712–714, 170 Cal. Rptr. 292, 296–297 (1980), but others view the issue of possessory right as bearing only on the affirmative defense of consent, see, e.g., People v. Sherow, 196 Cal. App. 4th 1296, 1303–1305, 1311, and n. 9, 128 Cal. Rptr. 3d 255, 260–261, 266, and n. 9 (2011); People v. Felix, 23 Cal. App. 4th 1385, 1397, 28 Cal. Rptr. 2d 860, 867 (1994). And California’s pattern jury instructions do not require the jury to find invasion of a possessory right before convicting a defendant of burglary. See 1 Cal. Jury Instr., Crim., No. 1700 (2012). 6 The Government here forfeited an alternative argument that §459 qualifies as a predicate offense under ACCA’s “residual clause,” which covers statutes “involv[ing] conduct that presents a serious potential risk of physical injury to another.” . We express no view on that argument’s merits. Compare United States v. Mayer, 560 F. 3d 948, 960–963 (CA9 2009) (holding that Oregon’s burglary statute falls within the residual clause, even though it does not include all of generic burglary’s elements), with id., at 951 (Kozinski, C. J., dissenting from denial of rehearing en banc) (arguing that the panel opinion “is a train wreck in the making”).

568.US.313

After the State of Michigan rested its case at petitioner Evans’ arson trial, the court granted Evans’ motion for a directed verdict of acquittal, concluding that the State had failed to prove that the burned building was not a dwelling, a fact the court mistakenly believed was an “element” of the statutory offense. The State Court of Appeals reversed and remanded for retrial. In affirming, the State Supreme Court held that a directed verdict based on an error of law that did not resolve a factual element of the charged offense was not an acquittal for double jeopardy purposes. Held: The Double Jeopardy Clause bars retrial for Evans’ offense. Pp. 4−17. (a) Retrial following a court-decreed acquittal is barred, even if the acquittal is “based upon an egregiously erroneous foundation,” Fong Foo v. United States, 369 U.S. 141, 143, such as an erroneous decision to exclude evidence, Sanabria v. United States, 437 U.S. 54, 68−69; a mistaken understanding of what evidence would suffice to sustain a conviction, Smith v. Massachusetts, 543 U.S. 462, 473; or a “misconstruction of the statute” defining the requirements to convict, Arizona v. Rumsey, 467 U.S. 303, 211. Most relevant here, an acquittal encompasses any ruling that the prosecution’s proof is insufficient to establish criminal liability for an offense. See, e.g., United States v. Scott, 437 U.S. 82, 98; Burks v. United States, 437 U.S. 1, 10. In contrast to procedural rulings, which lead to dismissals or mistrials on a basis unrelated to factual guilt or innocence, acquittals are substantive rulings that conclude proceedings absolutely, and thus raise significant double jeopardy concerns. Scott, 437 U. S., at 91. Here, the trial court clearly “evaluated the [State’s] evidence and determined that it was legally insufficient to sustain a conviction.” United States v. Martin Linen Supply Co., 430 U.S. 564, 572. Evans’ acquittal was the product of an erroneous interpretation of governing legal principles, but that error affects only the accuracy of the determination to acquit, not its essential character. See Scott, 437 U. S., at 98. Pp. 4−6. (b) The State Supreme Court attempted to distinguish this Court’s cases on the ground that they involved “the sufficiency of the factual elements of the charged offense,” while Evans’ case concerned “an error of law unrelated to [his] guilt or innocence,” but this Court perceives no such difference. This case, like the Court’s previous ones, involves an antecedent legal error that led to an acquittal because the State failed to prove a fact it was not actually required to prove. The State and the United States claim that only when an actual element of the offense is resolved can there be an acquittal of the offense, but Evans’ verdict was based on something that was concededly not an element. Their argument reads Martin Linen too narrowly and is inconsistent with this Court’s decisions since then. Martin Linen focused on the significance of the District Court’s acquittal based on a nonculpability determination, and its result did not depend on defining the “elements” of the offense. Culpability is the touchstone, not whether any particular elements were resolved or whether the nonculpability determination was legally correct. Scott, 437 U. S., at 98. Pp. 7−11. (c) Additional arguments the State and the United States raise in support of the lower court’s distinction are unpersuasive. The State claims that unless an actual element of the offense is resolved by the trial court, the only way to know whether the court’s ruling was an “acquittal” is to rely upon the court’s label, which would wrongly allow the form of the trial court’s action to control. However, the instant decision turns not on the form of the trial court’s action but on whether that action serves substantive or procedural purposes. The State and the United States argue that if the grounds for an acquittal are untethered from the actual elements of the offense, a trial court could issue an unreviewable order finding insufficient evidence to convict for any reason at all. But this Court presumes that courts exercise their duties in good faith. The State also suggests that Evans should not be heard to complain when a trial-court error that he induced is corrected and the State wishes to retry him, but most midtrial acquittals result from defense motions. The United States claims that, under Lee v. United States, 432 U.S. 23, Evans was required to ask the court to resolve whether nondwelling status was an element of the offense before jeopardy attached. However, Lee involved a midtrial dismissal that was akin to a mistrial, while this case involves a ruling on the sufficiency of the State’s proof. Pp. 11−14. (d) This Court declines to revisit decisions such as Fong Foo, Smith, Rumsey, and Smalis v. Pennsylvania, 476 U.S. 140. There is no reason to believe that the existing rules have become so “unworkable” as to justify overruling precedent. Payne v. Tennessee, 501 U.S. 808, 827. And the logic of those cases still holds. As for the objection that the rule denies the prosecution a full and fair opportunity to present its evidence to the jury while the defendant reaps a “windfall” from the trial court’s unreviewable error, sovereigns have power to prevent such situations by disallowing the practice of midtrial acquittals, encouraging courts to defer consideration of a motion to acquit until after the jury renders a verdict, or providing for mandatory continuances or expedited interlocutory appeals. Pp. 14−16. 491 Mich. 1, 810 N.W.2d 535, reversed. Sotomayor, J., delivered the opinion of the Court, in which Roberts, C. J., and Scalia, Kennedy, Thomas, Ginsburg, Breyer, and Kagan, JJ., joined. Alito, J., filed a dissenting opinion.

When the State of Michigan rested its case at petitioner Lamar Evans’ arson trial, the court entered a directed verdict of acquittal, based upon its view that the State had not provided sufficient evidence of a particular element of the offense. It turns out that the unproven “element” was not actually a required element at all. We must de- cide whether an erroneous acquittal such as this nevertheless constitutes an acquittal for double jeopardy purposes, which would mean that Evans could not be retried. This Court has previously held that a judicial acquittal premised upon a “misconstruction” of a criminal statute is an “acquittal on the merits . . . [that] bars retrial.” Arizona v. Rumsey, 467 U.S. 203, 211 (1984). Seeing no meaningful constitutional distinction between a trial court’s “misconstruction” of a statute and its erroneous addition of a statutory element, we hold that a midtrial acquittal in these circumstances is an acquittal for double jeopardy purposes as well. I The State charged Evans with burning “other real property,” a violation of Mich. Comp. Laws §750.73 (1981). The State’s evidence at trial suggested that Evans had burned down an unoccupied house. At the close of the State’s case, however, Evans moved for a directed ver- dict of acquittal. He pointed the court to the applicable Michigan Criminal Jury Instructions, which listed as the “Fourth” element of the offense “that the building was not a dwelling house.” 3 Mich. Crim. Jury Instr. §31.3, p. 31–7 (2d ed., Supp. 2006/2007). And the commentary to the Instructions emphasized, “an essential element is that the structure burned is not a dwelling house.” Id., at 31–8. Evans argued that Mich. Comp. Laws §750.72 criminal- izes common-law arson, which requires that the structure burned be a dwelling, while the provision under which he was charged, §750.73, covers all other real property.[1] Persuaded, the trial court granted the motion. 491 Mich. 1, 8, 810 N.W.2d 535, 539 (2012). The court explained that the “ ‘testimony [of the homeowner] was this was a dwelling house,’ ” so the nondwelling requirement of §750.73 was not met. Ibid. On the State’s appeal, the Michigan Court of Appeals reversed and remanded. 288 Mich. App. 410, 794 N.W.2d 848 (2010). Evans had conceded, and the court held, that under controlling precedent, burning “other real property” is a lesser included offense under Michigan law, and disproving the greater offense is not required. Id., at 416, 794 N. W. 2d, at 852 (citing People v. Antonelli, 66 Mich. App. 138, 140, 238 N.W.2d 551, 552 (1975) (on rehearing)).[2] The court thus explained it was “undisputed that the trial court misperceived the elements of the offense with which [Evans] was charged and erred by directing a verdict.” 288 Mich. App., at 416, 794 N. W. 2d, at 852. But the court rejected Evans’ argument that the Double Jeopardy Clause barred retrial. Id., at 421–422, 794 N. W. 2d, at 856. In a divided decision, the Supreme Court of Michigan affirmed. It held that “when a trial court grants a defendant’s motion for a directed verdict on the basis of an error of law that did not resolve any factual element of the charged offense, the trial court’s ruling does not constitute an acquittal for the purposes of double jeopardy and re- trial is therefore not barred.” 491 Mich., at 4, 810 N. W. 2d, at 536–537. We granted certiorari to resolve the disagreement among state and federal courts on the question whether retrial is barred when a trial court grants an acquittal be- cause the prosecution had failed to prove an “element” of the offense that, in actuality, it did not have to prove.[3] 567 U. S. ___ (2012). We now reverse. II A In answering this question, we do not write on a clean slate. Quite the opposite. It has been half a century since we first recognized that the Double Jeopardy Clause bars retrial following a court-decreed acquittal, even if the ac- quittal is “based upon an egregiously erroneous foundation.” Fong Foo v. United States, 369 U.S. 141, 143 (1962) (per curiam). A mistaken acquittal is an acquittal nonetheless, and we have long held that “[a] verdict of acquittal . . . could not be reviewed, on error or otherwise, without putting [a defendant] twice in jeopardy, and thereby violating the Constitution.” United States v. Ball, 163 U.S. 662, 671 (1896). Our cases have applied Fong Foo’s principle broadly. An acquittal is unreviewable whether a judge directs a jury to return a verdict of acquittal, e.g., Fong Foo, 369 U. S., at 143, or forgoes that formality by entering a judgment of acquittal herself. See Smith v. Massachusetts, 543 U.S. 462, 467–468 (2005) (collecting cases). And an acquittal precludes retrial even if it is premised upon an erroneous decision to exclude evidence, Sanabria v. United States, 437 U.S. 54, 68–69, 78 (1978); a mistaken understanding of what evidence would suffice to sustain a conviction, Smith, 543 U. S., at 473; or a “misconstruction of the stat- ute” defining the requirements to convict, Rumsey, 467 U. S., at 203, 211; cf. Smalis v. Pennsylvania, 476 U.S. 140, 144–145, n. 7 (1986). In all these circumstances, “the fact that the acquittal may result from erroneous evidentiary rulings or erroneous interpretations of governing legal principles affects the accuracy of that determination, but it does not alter its essential character.” United States v. Scott, 437 U.S. 82, 98 (1978) (internal quotation marks and citation omitted). Most relevant here, our cases have defined an acquittal to encompass any ruling that the prosecution’s proof is insufficient to establish criminal liability for an offense. See ibid., and n. 11; Burks v. United States, 437 U.S. 1, 10 (1978); United States v. Martin Linen Supply Co., 430 U.S. 564, 571 (1977). Thus an “acquittal” includes “a ruling by the court that the evidence is insufficient to convict,” a “factual finding [that] necessarily establish[es] the criminal defendant’s lack of criminal culpability,” and any other “rulin[g] which relate[s] to the ultimate question of guilt or innocence.” Scott, 437 U. S., at 91, 98, and n. 11 (internal quotation marks omitted). These sorts of substantive rulings stand apart from procedural rulings that may also terminate a case midtrial, which we generally refer to as dismissals or mistrials. Procedural dismissals include rulings on questions that “are unrelated to factual guilt or innocence,” but “which serve other purposes,” including “a legal judgment that a defendant, although criminally culpable, may not be punished” because of some problem like an error with the indictment. Id., at 98, and n. 11. Both procedural dismissals and substantive rulings result in an early end to trial, but we explained in Scott that the double jeopardy consequences of each differ. “[T]he law attaches particular significance to an acquittal,” so a merits-related ruling concludes proceedings absolutely. Id., at 91. This is because “[t]o permit a second trial after an acquittal, however mistaken the acquittal may have been, would present an unacceptably high risk that the Government, with its vastly superior resources, might wear down the defendant so that ‘even though innocent he may be found guilty,’ ” ibid. (quoting Green v. United States, 355 U.S. 184, 188 (1957)). And retrial following an acquittal would upset a defendant’s ex- pectation of repose, for it would subject him to additional “embarrassment, expense and ordeal” while “compelling him to live in a continuing state of anxiety and insecurity.” Id., at 187. In contrast, a “termination of the proceedings against [a defendant] on a basis unrelated to factual guilt or innocence of the offense of which he is accused,” 437 U. S., at 98–99, i.e., some procedural ground, does not pose the same concerns, because no expectation of finality attaches to a properly granted mistrial. Here, “it is plain that the [trial court] . . . evaluated the [State’s] evidence and determined that it was legally insufficient to sustain a conviction.” Martin Linen, 430 U. S., at 572. The trial court granted Evans’ motion under a rule that requires the court to “direct a verdict of acquittal on any charged offense as to which the evidence is insufficient to support conviction.” Mich. Rule Crim. Proc. 6.419(A) (2012). And the court’s oral ruling leaves no doubt that it made its determination on the basis of “ ‘[t]he testimony’ ” that the State had presented. 491 Mich., at 8, 810 N. W. 2d, at 539. This ruling was not a dismissal on a procedural ground “unrelated to factual guilt or innocence,” like the question of “preindictment delay” in Scott, but rather a determination that the State had failed to prove its case. 437 U. S., at 98, 99. Under our precedents, then, Evans was acquitted. There is no question the trial court’s ruling was wrong; it was predicated upon a clear misunderstanding of what facts the State needed to prove under State law. But that is of no moment. Martin Linen, Sanabria, Rumsey, Smalis, and Smith all instruct that an acquittal due to insufficient evidence precludes retrial, whether the court’s evaluation of the evidence was “correct or not,” Martin Linen, 430 U. S., at 571, and regardless of whether the court’s decision flowed from an incorrect antecedent ruling of law. Here Evans’ acquittal was the product of an “erroneous interpretatio[n] of governing legal principles,” but as in our other cases, that error affects only “the accuracy of [the] determination” to acquit, not “its essential character.” Scott, 437 U. S., at 98 (internal quotation marks omitted). B The court below saw things differently. It identified a “constitutionally meaningful difference” between this case and our previous decisions. Those cases, the court found, “involve[d] evidentiary errors regarding the proof needed to establish a factual element of the . . . crimes at issue,” but still ultimately involved “a resolution regarding the sufficiency of the factual elements of the charged offense.” 491 Mich., at 14–15, 810 N. W. 2d, at 542–543. When a court mistakenly “identifie[s] an extraneous element and dismisse[s] the case solely on that basis,” however, it has “not resolve[d] or even address[ed] any factual element necessary to establish” the offense. Id., at 15, 20, 810 N. W. 2d, at 543, 546. As a result, the court below reasoned, the case terminates “based on an error of law unrelated to [the] defendant’s guilt or innocence on the ele-ments of the charged offense,” and thus falls outside the definition of an acquittal. Id., at 21, 810 N. W. 2d, at 546. We fail to perceive the difference. This case, like our previous ones, involves an antecedent legal error that led to an acquittal because the State failed to prove some fact it was not actually required to prove. Consider Rumsey. There the trial court, sitting as sentencer in a capital case involving a murder committed during a robbery, mistakenly held that Arizona’s statutory aggravating factor describing killings for pecuniary gain was limited to murders for hire. Accordingly, it found the State had failed to prove the killing was for pecuniary gain and sentenced the defendant to life imprisonment. After the State successfully appealed and obtained a death sentence on remand, we held that retrial on the penalty phase question was a double jeopardy violation.[4] The only relevant difference between that situation and this one is that in Rumsey the trial court’s error was called a “misinterpretation” and a “misconstruction of the statute,” 467 U. S., at 207, 211, whereas here the error has been designated the “erroneous addition of [an] extraneous element to the charged offense.” 491 Mich., at 3–4, 810 N. W. 2d, at 536. But we have emphasized that labels do not control our analysis in this context; rather, the substance of a court’s decision does. See Smalis, 476 U. S., at 144, n. 5; Scott, 437 U. S., at 96–97; Martin Linen, 430 U. S., at 571. The error in Rumsey could just as easily have been characterized as the erroneous addition of an element of the statutory aggravating circumstance: that the homicide be a murder-for-hire. Conversely, the error here could be viewed as a misinterpretation of the statute’s phrase “building or other real property” to exclude dwellings.[5] This is far too fine a distinction to be meaningful, and we reject the notion that a defendant’s constitutional rights would turn on the happenstance of how an appellate court chooses to describe a trial court’s error. Echoing the Michigan Supreme Court, the State and the United States, as well as the dissent, emphasize Martin Linen’s description of an acquittal as the “resolution, correct or not, of some or all of the factual elements of the offense charged.” 430 U. S., at 571 (emphasis added); see Brief for Respondent 11–17; see Brief for United States as Amicus Curiae 11–15 (hereinafter U. S. Brief); see post, at 6–8. They observe that the Double Jeopardy Clause protects against being twice placed in jeopardy for the same “offence,” U. S. Const., Amdt. 5, cl. 2, and they note that an offense comprises constituent parts called elements, which are facts that must be proved to sustain a conviction. See, e.g., United States v. Dixon, 509 U.S. 688, 696–697 (1993). Consequently, they argue, only if an actual element of the offense is resolved can it be said that there has been an acquittal of the offense, because “ ‘innocence of the charged offense’ cannot turn on something that is concededly not an element of the offense.” U. S. Brief 15. Because Evans’ trial ended without resolution of even one actual element, they conclude, there was no acquittal. This argument reads Martin Linen too narrowly, and it is inconsistent with our decisions since then. Our focus in Martin Linen was on the significance of a judicial acquittal under Fed. Rule Crim. Proc. 29. The District Court in that case had “evaluated the Government’s evidence and determined that it was legally insufficient to sustain a con-viction.” 430 U. S., at 572. That determination of nonculpability was enough to make the acquittal akin to a jury verdict; our holding did not depend upon defining the “elements” of the offense. As we have explained, supra, at 5–6, Scott confirms that the relevant distinction is between judicial determinations that go to “the criminal defendant’s lack of criminal culpability,” and those that hold “that a defendant, although criminally culpable, may not be punished because of a supposed” procedural error. 437 U. S., at 98. Culpability (i.e., the “ultimate question of guilt or innocence”) is the touchstone, not whether any particular elements were resolved or whether the determination of nonculpability was legally correct. Id., at 98, n. 11 (internal quotation marks omitted). Perhaps most inconsistent with the State’s and United States’ argument is Burks. There we held that when a defendant raises insanity as a defense, and a court decides the “Government ha[s] failed to come forward with sufficient proof of [the defendant’s] capacity to be responsible for criminal acts,” the defendant has been acquitted because the court decided that “criminal culpability ha[s] not been established.” 437 U. S., at 10. Lack of insanity was not an “element” of Burks’ offense, bank robbery by use of a dangerous weapon. See 18 U. S. C. §2113(d) (1976 ed.). Rather, insanity was an affirmative defense to criminal liability. Our conclusion thus depended upon equating a judicial acquittal with an order finding insufficient evidence of culpability, not insufficient evidence of any particular element of the offense.[6] In the end, this case follows those that have come before it. The trial court’s judgment of acquittal resolved the question of Evans’ guilt or innocence as a matter of the sufficiency of the evidence, not on unrelated procedural grounds. That judgment, “however erroneous” it was, precludes reprosecution on this charge, and so should have barred the State’s appeal as well. Sanabria, 437 U. S., at 69. III A The State, supported by the United States, offers three other reasons why the distinction drawn by the court be- low should be maintained. None persuades us. To start, the State argues that unless an actual element of the offense is resolved by the trial court, the only way to know whether the court’s ruling was an “acquittal” is to rely upon the label used by the court, which would wrongly allow the form of the trial court’s action to control. Brief for Respondent 17–18, 21–22. We disagree. Our decision turns not on the form of the trial court’s action, but rather whether it “serve[s]” substantive “purposes” or procedural ones. Scott, 437 U. S., at 98, n. 11. If a trial court were to announce, midtrial, “The defendant shall be acquitted because he was prejudiced by preindictment delay,” the Double Jeopardy Clause would pose no barrier to reprosecution, notwithstanding the “acquittal” label. Cf. Scott, 437 U.S. 82. Here we know the trial court acquitted Evans, not because it incanted the word “acquit” (which it did not), but because it acted on its view that the prosecution had failed to prove its case. Next, the State and the United States fear that if the grounds for an acquittal are untethered from the actual elements of the offense, a trial court could issue an unreviewable order finding insufficient evidence to convict for any reason at all, such as that the prosecution failed to prove “that the structure burned [was] blue.” Brief for Respondent 16–17; U. S. Brief 15. If the concern is that there is no limit to the magnitude of the error that could yield an acquittal, the response is that we have long held as much. See supra, at 4. If the concern is instead that our holding will make it easier for courts to insulate from review acquittals that are granted as a form of nullifi- cation, see Brief for Respondent 30, n. 58, we reject the premise. We presume here, as in other contexts, that courts exercise their duties in good faith. Cf. Harrington v. Richter, 562 U. S. ___, ___ (2011) (slip op., at 13). Finally, the State suggests that because Evans induced the trial court’s error, he should not be heard to complain when that error is corrected and the State wishes to retry him. Brief for Respondent 32–33; cf. id., at 5–9. But we have recognized that “most [judgments of acquittal] re- sult from defense motions,” so “[t]o hold that a defendant waives his double jeopardy protection whenever a trial court error in his favor on a midtrial motion leads to an acquittal would undercut the adversary assumption on which our system of criminal justice rests, and would vitiate one of the fundamental rights established by the Fifth Amendment.” Sanabria, 437 U. S., at 78 (citation omitted).[7] It is true that when a defendant persuades the court to declare a mistrial, jeopardy continues and retrial is generally allowed. See United States v. Dinitz, 424 U.S. 600 (1976). But in such circumstances the defendant consents to a disposition that contemplates reprosecution, whereas when a defendant moves for acquittal he does not. See Sanabria, 437 U. S., at 75. The United States makes a related argument. It contends that Evans could have asked the court to resolve whether nondwelling status is an element of the offense before jeopardy attached, so having elected to wait until trial was underway to raise the point, he cannot now claim a double jeopardy violation. U. S. Brief 22–25. The Government relies upon Lee v. United States, 432 U.S. 23 (1977), in which the District Court dismissed an indictment midtrial because it had failed to allege the required intent element of the offense. We held that retrial on a corrected indictment was not barred, because the dismissal was akin to a mistrial, not an acquittal. This was clear because the District Court had separately denied the defendant’s motion for judgment of acquittal, explaining that the defendant “ ‘has been proven [guilty] beyond any reasonable doubt in the world,’ ” while acknowledging that the error in the indictment required dismissal. Id., at 26–27. Because the defendant “invited the court to interrupt the proceedings before formalizing a finding on the merits” by raising the indictment issue so late, we held the principles governing a defendant’s consent to mistrial should apply. Id., at 28 (citing Dinitz, 424 U. S. 600). The Government suggests the situation here is “functionally similar,” because “identifying the elements of an offense is a necessary step in determining the sufficiency of a charging document.” U. S. Brief 23. But we can- not ignore the fact that what the trial court actually did here was rule on the sufficiency of the State’s proof, not the sufficiency of the information filed against him. Lee demonstrates that the two need not rise or fall together. And even if the Government is correct that Evans could have challenged the charging document on the same legal theory he used to challenge the sufficiency of the evidence, it matters that he made only the latter motion, a motion that necessarily may not be made until trial is underway. Evans cannot be penalized for requesting from the court a ruling on the merits of the State’s case, as the Michigan Rules entitled him to do; whether he could have also brought a distinct procedural objection earlier on is beside the point. B In the alternative, the State and the United States ask us to reconsider our past decisions. Brief for Respondent 34–56 (suggesting overruling our cases since at least Fong Foo); U. S. Brief 27–32 (suggesting overruling Smith, Rumsey, and Smalis).[8] We declined to revisit our cases when the United States made a similar request in Smalis. 476 U. S., at 144; see Brief for United States as Amicus Curiae in Smalis v. Pennsylvania, O. T. 1985, No. 85–227, pp. 19–25. And we decline to do so here. First, we have no reason to believe the existing rules have become so “unworkable” as to justify overruling precedent. Payne v. Tennessee, 501 U.S. 808, 827 (1991). The distinction drawn in Scott has stood the test of time, and we expect courts will continue to have little “difficulty in distinguishing between those rulings which relate to the ultimate question of guilt or innocence and those which serve other purposes.” 437 U. S., at 98, n. 11 (internal quotation marks omitted). See, e.g., United States v. Dionisio, 503 F.3d 78, 83–88 (CA2 2007) (collecting cases); 6 W. LaFave, J. Israel, N. King, & O. Kerr, Criminal Procedure §25.3(a), p. 629 (3d ed. 2007) (same). Second, the logic of these cases still holds. There is no question that a jury verdict of acquittal precludes retrial, and thus bars appeal of any legal error that may have led to that acquittal. See Ball, 163 U. S., at 671. So, had the trial court here instructed the jury that it must find the burned structure was not a dwelling in order to convict, the jury would have acquitted Evans accordingly; “ ‘[a] jury is presumed to follow its instructions.’ ” Blueford v. Arkansas, 566 U. S. ___, ___ (2012) (slip op., at 6) (quoting Weeks v. Angelone, 528 U.S. 225, 234 (2000)). And that would have been the end of the matter. From that premise, Fong Foo’s holding follows: If a trial court instead exercises its discretion to direct a jury to return a verdict of acquittal, jeopardy also terminates notwithstanding any legal error, because there too it is the jury that returns an acquittal. And from there, Martin Linen’s conclusion is unavoidable: It should make no difference whether the court employs the formality of directing the jury to return an acquittal or whether the court enters an acquittal itself. Sanabria, Rumsey, Smalis, and Smith merely apply Fong Foo and Martin Linen in tandem: If a trial court makes an antecedent legal error (as in Fong Foo), and then grants a judgment of acquittal rather than directing the jury to acquit (as in Martin Linen), the result is an acquittal all the same. In other words, there is no way for antecedent legal errors to be reviewable in the context of judicial acquittals unless those errors are also reviewable when they give rise to jury acquittals (contrary to the settled understanding that a jury verdict of acquittal is unreviewable), or unless we distinguish between juries that acquit pursuant to their instructions and judicial acquittals (notwithstand- ing that this is a purely formal distinction). Neither option has become more attractive with time. We therefore reiterate: “any contention that the Double Jeopardy Clause must itself . . . leave open a way of correcting legal errors is at odds with the well-established rule that the bar will attach to a preverdict acquittal that is patently wrong in law.” Smith, 543 U. S., at 473. Finally, the State and the United States object that this rule denies the prosecution a full and fair opportunity to present its evidence to the jury, while the defendant reaps a “windfall” from the trial court’s unreviewable error. Brief for Respondent 6; U. S. Brief 31–32. But sovereigns are hardly powerless to prevent this sort of situation, as we observed in Smith, 543 U. S., at 474. Nothing obligates a jurisdiction to afford its trial courts the power to grant a midtrial acquittal, and at least two States disallow the practice. See Nev. Rev. Stat. §175.381(1) (2011); State v. Parfait, 96, 1814 (La. App. 1 Cir. 05/09/97), 693 So. 2d 1232, 1242. Many jurisdictions, including the federal system, allow or encourage their courts to defer consideration of a motion to acquit until after the jury returns a verdict, which mitigates double jeopardy concerns.[9] See Fed. Rule Crim. Proc. 29(b). And for cases such as this, in which a trial court’s interpretation of the relevant criminal statute is likely to prove dispositive, we see no reason why jurisdictions could not provide for mandatory continuances or expedited interlocutory appeals if they wished to prevent misguided acquittals from being entered.[10] But having chosen to vest its courts with the power to grant midtrial acquittals, the State must bear the corresponding risk that some acquittals will be granted in error. * * * We hold that Evans’ trial ended in an acquittal when the trial court ruled the State had failed to produce sufficient evidence of his guilt. The Double Jeopardy Clause thus bars retrial for his offense and should have barred the State’s appeal. The judgment of the Supreme Court of Michigan is Reversed. Notes 1 Mich. Comp. Laws §750.72 (1981), “Burning dwelling house,” provides: “Any person who wilfully or maliciously burns any dwelling house, either occupied or unoccupied, or the contents thereof, whether owned by himself or another, or any building within the curtilage of such dwelling house, or the contents thereof, shall be guilty of a felony, punishable by imprisonment in the state prison not more than 20 years.” And §750.73, “Burning of other real property,” provides: “Any person who wilfully or maliciously burns any building or other real property, or the contents thereof, other than those specified in the next preceding section of this chapter, the property of himself or another, shall be guilty of a felony, punishable by imprisonment in the state prison for not more than 10 years.” 2 In other words, the pattern jury instructions were incorrect. The State later revised them. See 288 Mich. App. 410, 416, n. 3, 794 N.W.2d 848, 852, n. 3 (2010). 3 Compare 491 Mich. 1, 810 N.W.2d 535 (2012) (case below), and State v. Korsen, 138 Idaho 706, 716–717, 69 P.3d 126, 136–137 (2003) (same conclusion), and United States v. Maker, 751 F.2d 614, 624 (CA3 1984) (same), with Carter v. State, 365 Ark. 224, 228, 227 S.W.3d 895, 898 (2006) (rejecting this distinction), and State v. Lynch, 79 N. J. 327, 337–343, 399 A.2d 629, 634–637 (1979) (holding double jeopardy barred retrial after trial court erroneously required extra element). 4 Under Bullington v. Missouri, 451 U.S. 430 (1981), a capital defendant is “acquitted” of the death penalty if, at the end of a separate sentencing proceeding, the factfinder concludes that the prosecution has failed to prove required additional facts to support a sentence of death. Thus in Rumsey, the trial court’s initial “judgment, based on findings sufficient to establish legal entitlement to the life sentence, amounts to an acquittal on the merits and, as such, bars any retrial of the appropriateness of the death penalty.” 467 U. S., at 211. 5 Indeed, it is possible that this is what the trial court thought it was doing, not articulating an additional element. The statute criminalizes burning “any building or other real property, . . . other than those specified in” the previous section, which criminalizes the burning of a dwelling house. Mich. Comp. Laws §750.73. In light of the statute’s phrasing, the trial court interpreted “building or other real property” to be exclusive of the type of property described in §750.72, although the Michigan courts have explained that the term is actually meant to be inclusive. So the trial court decision could be viewed as having given the statutory “building” element an unduly narrow construction (by limiting it to nondwellings), just as the trial court in Rumsey gave the pecuniary-gain provision an unduly narrow construction (by limiting it to contract killings). Nevertheless, we accept the parties’ and the Michigan courts’ alternative characterization of the trial court’s error as the “addition” of an extraneous element. Our observation simply underscores how malleable the distinction adopted by the Michigan Supreme Court, and defended by the State and the United States, can be. And it belies the dissent’s suggestion, post, at 11 (opinion of Alito, J.), that drawing this distinction is “quite easy” here, and that the basis for the trial court’s ruling could not be subject to “real dispute.” 6 To account for Burks, the United States posits that, “[a]s used in [its] brief, the ‘elements’ of an offense encompass legally recognized defenses that would negate culpability.” U. S. Brief 11, n. 3. So too would the dissent hold that, “as used in this opinion, the ‘elements’ of an offense include legally recognized affirmative defenses that would negate culpability.” Post, at 8, n. 2. Rather than adopt a novel definition of the word “element” to mean “elements and affirmative defenses,” and then promptly limit that novel definition to these circumstances, we prefer to read Burks for what it says, which is that the issue is whether the bottom-line question of “criminal culpability” was resolved. 437 U. S., at 10. 7 The dissent says that “defense counsel fooled the judge,” post, at 6, but surely that charge is not fair. Nothing suggests counsel exceeded the permissible bounds of zealous advocacy on behalf of his client. Counsel presented a colorable legal argument, and marshaled persuasive authority: Michigan’s own criminal jury instructions, which, at the time, supported his position. See supra, at 2, 3, n. 2. 8 The dissent’s true gripe may be with these cases as well, rather than our result here, which, we have explained, follows inevitably from them. See post, at 5 (noting “how far [our cases] have departed from the common-law principles that applied at the time of the founding”); compare post, at 12 (“Permitting retrial in these egregious cases is especially appropriate”), with Fong Foo v. United States, 369 U.S. 141, 143 (1962) (per curiam) (according finality to even those acquittals “based upon an egregiously erroneous foundation”). 9 If a court grants a motion to acquit after the jury has convicted, there is no double jeopardy barrier to an appeal by the government from the court’s acquittal, because reversal would result in reinstatement of the jury verdict of guilt, not a new trial. United States v. Wilson, 420 U.S. 332 (1975). 10 Here, the prosecutor twice asked the court for a recess to review the Michigan statutes and to discuss the question with her supervisor. 491 Mich., at 7, 810 N. W. 2d, at 538–539. If the trial court’s refusal was ill-advised, that is a matter for state procedure to address, but it does not bear on the double jeopardy consequences of the acquittal that followed.

570.US.297

The University of Texas at Austin considers race as one of various factors in its undergraduate admissions process. The University, which is committed to increasing racial minority enrollment, adopted its current program after this Court decided Grutter v. Bollinger, 539 U.S. 306, upholding the use of race as one of many “plus factors” in an admissions program that considered the overall individual contribution of each candidate, and decided Gratz v. Bollinger, 539 U.S. 244, holding unconstitutional an admissions program that automatically awarded points to applicants from certain racial minorities. Petitioner, who is Caucasian, was rejected for admission to the University’s 2008 entering class. She sued the University and school officials, alleging that the University’s consideration of race in admissions violated the Equal Protection Clause. The District Court granted summary judgment to the University. Affirming, the Fifth Circuit held that Grutter required courts to give substantial deference to the University, both in the definition of the compelling interest in diversity’s benefits and in deciding whether its specific plan was narrowly tailored to achieve its stated goal. Applying that standard, the court upheld the University’s admissions plan. Held: Because the Fifth Circuit did not hold the University to the demanding burden of strict scrutiny articulated in Grutter and Regents of Univ. of Cal. v. Bakke, 438 U.S. 265, its decision affirming the District Court’s grant of summary judgment to the University was incorrect. Pp. 5–13. (a) Bakke, Gratz, and Grutter, which directly address the question considered here, are taken as given for purposes of deciding this case. In Bakke’s principal opinion, Justice Powell recognized that state university “decisions based on race or ethnic origin . . . are reviewable under the Fourteenth Amendment,” 438 U. S., at 287, using a strict scrutiny standard, id., at 299. He identified as a compelling interest that could justify the consideration of race the interest in the educational benefits that flow from a diverse student body, but noted that this interest is complex, encompassing a broad array “of qualifications and characteristics of which racial or ethnic origin is but a single though important element.” Id., at 315 In Gratz and Grutter, the Court endorsed these precepts, observing that an admissions process with such an interest is subject to judicial review and must withstand strict scrutiny, Gratz, supra, at 275, i.e., a university must clearly demonstrate that its “ ‘purpose or interest is both constitutionally permissible and substantial, and that its use of the classification is “necessary . . . to the accomplishment” of its purpose,’ ” Bakke, supra, at 305. Additional guidance may be found in the Court’s broader equal protection jurisprudence. See, e.g., Rice v. Cayetano, 528 U.S. 495, 517; Richmond v. J. A. Croson Co., 488 U.S. 469, 505. Strict scrutiny is a searching examination, and the government bears the burden to prove “ ‘that the reasons for any [racial] classification [are] clearly identified and unquestionably legitimate.’ ” Ibid. Pp. 5–8. (b) Under Grutter, strict scrutiny must be applied to any admissions program using racial categories or classifications. A court may give some deference to a university’s “judgment that such diversity is essential to its educational mission,” 539 U. S., at 328, provided that diversity is not defined as mere racial balancing and there is a reasoned, principled explanation for the academic decision. On this point, the courts below were correct in finding that Grutter calls for deference to the University’s experience and expertise about its educational mission. However, once the University has established that its goal of diversity is consistent with strict scrutiny, the University must prove that the means it chose to attain that diversity are narrowly tailored to its goal. On this point, the University receives no deference. Id., at 333. It is at all times the University’s obligation to demonstrate, and the Judiciary’s obligation to determine, that admissions processes “ensure that each applicant is evaluated as an individual and not in a way that makes an applicant’s race or ethnicity the defining feature of his or her application.” Id., at 337. Narrow tailoring also requires a reviewing court to verify that it is “necessary” for the university to use race to achieve the educational benefits of diversity. Bakke, supra, at 305. The reviewing court must ultimately be satisfied that no workable race-neutral alternatives would produce the educational benefits of diversity. Rather than perform this searching examination, the Fifth Circuit held petitioner could challenge only whether the University’s decision to use race as an admissions factor “was made in good faith.” It presumed that the school had acted in good faith and gave petitioner the burden of rebutting that presumption. It thus undertook the narrow-tailoring requirement with a “degree of deference” to the school. These expressions of the controlling standard are at odds with Grutter’s command that “all racial classifications imposed by government ‘must be analyzed by a reviewing court under strict scrutiny.’ ” 539 U. S., at 326. Strict scrutiny does not permit a court to accept a school’s assertion that its admissions process uses race in a permissible way without closely examining how the process works in practice, yet that is what the District Court and Fifth Circuit did here. The Court vacates the Fifth Circuit’s judgment. But fairness to the litigants and the courts that heard the case requires that it be remanded so that the admissions process can be considered and judged under a correct analysis. In determining whether summary judgment in the University’s favor was appropriate, the Fifth Circuit must assess whether the University has offered sufficient evidence to prove that its admissions program is narrowly tailored to obtain the educational benefits of diversity. Pp. 8–13. 631 F.3d 213, vacated and remanded. Kennedy, J., delivered the opinion of the Court, in which Roberts, C. J., and Scalia, Thomas, Breyer, Alito, and Sotomayor, JJ., joined. Scalia, J., and Thomas, J., filed concurring opinions. Ginsburg, J., filed a dissenting opinion. Kagan, J., took no part in the consideration or decision of the case.

The University of Texas at Austin considers race as one of various factors in its undergraduate admissions process. Race is not itself assigned a numerical value for each ap-plicant, but the University has committed itself to increasing racial minority enrollment on campus. It refers to this goal as a “critical mass.” Petitioner, who is Caucasian, sued the University after her application was re-jected. She contends that the University’s use of race in the admissions process violated the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. The parties asked the Court to review whether the judgment below was consistent with “this Court’s deci-sions interpreting the Equal Protection Clause of the Four- teenth Amendment, including Grutter v. Bollinger, 539 U. S. 306 (2003) .” Pet. for Cert. i. The Court concludes that the Court of Appeals did not hold the University to the demanding burden of strict scrutiny articulated in Grutter and Regents of Univ. of Cal. v. Bakke, 438 U. S. 265, 305 (1978) (opinion of Powell, J.). Because the Court of Appeals did not apply the correct standard of strict scrutiny, its decision affirming the District Court’s grant of summary judgment to the University was incorrect. That decision is vacated, and the case is remanded for further proceedings. I A Located in Austin, Texas, on the most renowned campus of the Texas state university system, the University is one of the leading institutions of higher education in the Nation. Admission is prized and competitive. In 2008, when petitioner sought admission to the University’s entering class, she was 1 of 29,501 applicants. From this group 12,843 were admitted, and 6,715 accepted and enrolled. Petitioner was denied admission. In recent years the University has used three different programs to evaluate candidates for admission. The first is the program it used for some years before 1997, when the University considered two factors: a numerical score reflecting an applicant’s test scores and academic perform-ance in high school (Academic Index or AI), and the applicant’s race. In 1996, this system was held unconstitutional by the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. It ruled the University’s consideration of race violated the Equal Protection Clause because it did not further any compelling government interest. Hopwood v. Texas, 78 F. 3d 932, 955 (1996). The second program was adopted to comply with the Hopwood decision. The University stopped considering race in admissions and substituted instead a new holistic metric of a candidate’s potential contribution to the University, to be used in conjunction with the Academic Index. This “Personal Achievement Index” (PAI) measures a student’s leadership and work experience, awards, extracurricular activities, community service, and other special circumstances that give insight into a student’s background. These included growing up in a single-parent home, speaking a language other than English at home, significant family responsibilities assumed by the applicant, and the general socioeconomic condition of the student’s family. Seeking to address the decline in minority enrollment after Hopwood, the University also expanded its outreach programs. The Texas State Legislature also responded to the Hop-wood decision. It enacted a measure known as the Top Ten Percent Law, codified at Tex. Educ. Code Ann. §51.803 (West 2009). Also referred to as H. B. 588, the Top Ten Percent Law grants automatic admission to any public state college, including the University, to all students in the top 10% of their class at high schools in Texas that comply with certain standards. The University’s revised admissions process, coupled with the operation of the Top Ten Percent Law, resulted in a more racially diverse environment at the University. Before the admissions program at issue in this case, in the last year under the post-Hopwood AI/PAI system that did not consider race, the entering class was 4.5% African-American and 16.9% Hispanic. This is in contrast with the 1996 pre-Hopwood and Top Ten Percent regime, when race was explicitly considered, and the University’s entering freshman class was 4.1% African-American and 14.5% Hispanic. Following this Court’s decisions in Grutter v. Bollinger, supra, and Gratz v. Bollinger, 539 U. S. 244 (2003) , the University adopted a third admissions program, the 2004 program in which the University reverted to explicit consideration of race. This is the program here at issue. In Grutter, the Court upheld the use of race as one of many “plus factors” in an admissions program that considered the overall individual contribution of each candidate. In Gratz, by contrast, the Court held unconstitutional Michigan’s undergraduate admissions program, which automatically awarded points to applicants from certain racial minorities. The University’s plan to resume race-conscious admissions was given formal expression in June 2004 in an in-ternal document entitled Proposal to Consider Race and Ethnicity in Admissions (Proposal). Supp. App. 1a. The Proposal relied in substantial part on a study of a subset of undergraduate classes containing between 5 and 24 students. It showed that few of these classes had significant enrollment by members of racial minorities. In addition the Proposal relied on what it called “anecdotal” reports from students regarding their “interaction in the classroom.” The Proposal concluded that the University lacked a “critical mass” of minority students and that to remedy the deficiency it was necessary to give explicit consideration to race in the undergraduate admissions program. To implement the Proposal the University included a student’s race as a component of the PAI score, begin- ning with applicants in the fall of 2004. The University asks students to classify themselves from among five predefined racial categories on the application. Race is not assigned an explicit numerical value, but it is undisputed that race is a meaningful factor. Once applications have been scored, they are plotted on a grid with the Academic Index on the x-axis and the Personal Achievement Index on the y-axis. On that grid students are assigned to so-called cells based on their individual scores. All students in the cells falling above a certain line are admitted. All students below the line are not. Each college—such as Liberal Arts or Engineering—admits students separately. So a student is considered initially for her first-choice college, then for her second choice, and finally for general admission as an undeclared major. Petitioner applied for admission to the University’s 2008 entering class and was rejected. She sued the University and various University officials in the United States District Court for the Western District of Texas. She alleged that the University’s consideration of race in admissions violated the Equal Protection Clause. The parties cross-moved for summary judgment. The District Court granted summary judgment to the University. The United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit affirmed. It held that Grutter required courts to give substantial deference to the University, both in the definition of the compelling interest in diversity’s benefits and in deciding whether its specific plan was narrowly tailored to achieve its stated goal. Applying that standard, the court upheld the University’s admissions plan. 631 F. 3d 213, 217–218 (2011). Over the dissent of seven judges, the Court of Appeals denied petitioner’s request for rehearing en banc. See 644 F. 3d 301, 303 (CA5 2011) (per curiam). Petitioner sought a writ of certiorari. The writ was granted. 565 U. S. ___ (2012). B Among the Court’s cases involving racial classifications in education, there are three decisions that directly address the question of considering racial minority status as a positive or favorable factor in a university’s admissions process, with the goal of achieving the educational benefits of a more diverse student body: Bakke, 438 U. S. 265 ; Gratz, supra; and Grutter, 539 U. S. 306 . We take those cases as given for purposes of deciding this case. We begin with the principal opinion authored by Justice Powell in Bakke, supra. In Bakke, the Court considered a system used by the medical school of the University of California at Davis. From an entering class of 100 students the school had set aside 16 seats for minority applicants. In holding this program impermissible under the Equal Protection Clause Justice Powell’s opinion stated certain basic premises. First, “decisions based on race or ethnic origin by faculties and administrations of state universities are reviewable under the Fourteenth Amend-ment.” Id., at 287 (separate opinion). The principle of equal protection admits no “artificial line of a ‘two- class theory’ ” that “permits the recognition of special wards entitled to a degree of protection greater than that accorded others.” Id., at 295. It is therefore irrelevant that a system of racial preferences in admissions may seem benign. Any racial classification must meet strict scrutiny, for when government decisions “touch upon an individual’s race or ethnic background, he is entitled to a judicial determination that the burden he is asked to bear on that basis is precisely tailored to serve a compelling governmental interest.” Id., at 299. Next, Justice Powell identified one compelling interest that could justify the consideration of race: the interest in the educational benefits that flow from a diverse student body. Redressing past discrimination could not serve as a compelling interest, because a university’s “broad mission [of] education” is incompatible with making the “judicial, legislative, or administrative findings of constitutional or statutory violations” necessary to justify remedial racial classification. Id., at 307–309. The attainment of a diverse student body, by contrast, serves values beyond race alone, including enhanced class-room dialogue and the lessening of racial isolation and stereotypes. The academic mission of a university is “a special concern of the First Amendment.” Id., at 312. Part of “ ‘the business of a university [is] to provide that atmosphere which is most conducive to speculation, experiment, and creation,’ ” and this in turn leads to the question of “ ‘who may be admitted to study.’ ” Sweezy v. New Hampshire, 354 U. S. 234, 263 (1957) (Frankfurter, J., concurring in judgment). Justice Powell’s central point, however, was that this interest in securing diversity’s benefits, although a permissible objective, is complex. “It is not an interest in simple ethnic diversity, in which a specified percentage of the student body is in effect guaranteed to be members of selected ethnic groups, with the remaining percentage an undifferentiated aggregation of students. The diversity that furthers a compelling state interest encompasses a far broader array of qualifications and characteristics of which racial or ethnic origin is but a single though important element.” Bakke, 438 U. S., at 315 (separate opinion). In Gratz, 539 U. S. 244 , and Grutter, supra, the Court endorsed the precepts stated by Justice Powell. In Grutter, the Court reaffirmed his conclusion that obtaining the educational benefits of “student body diversity is a compelling state interest that can justify the use of race in university admissions.” Id., at 325. As Gratz and Grutter observed, however, this follows only if a clear precondition is met: The particular admissions process used for this objective is subject to judicial review. Race may not be considered unless the admissions process can withstand strict scrutiny. “Nothing in Justice Powell’s opinion in Bakke signaled that a university may employ whatever means it desires to achieve the stated goal of diversity without regard to the limits imposed by our strict scrutiny analysis.” Gratz, supra, at 275. “To be narrowly tailored, a race-conscious admissions program cannot use a quota system,” Grutter, 539 U. S., at 334, but instead must “remain flexible enough to ensure that each applicant is evaluated as an individual and not in a way that makes an applicant’s race or ethnicity the defining feature of his or her application,” id., at 337. Strict scru-tiny requires the university to demonstrate with clarity that its “purpose or interest is both constitutionally permissible and substantial, and that its use of the classification is necessary . . . to the accomplishment of its purpose.” Bakke, 438 U. S., at 305 (opinion of Powell, J.) (internal quotation marks omitted). While these are the cases that most specifically address the central issue in this case, additional guidance may be found in the Court’s broader equal protection jurisprudence which applies in this context. “Distinctions between citizens solely because of their ancestry are by their very nature odious to a free people,” Rice v. Cayetano, 528 U. S. 495, 517 (2000) (internal quotation marks omitted), and therefore “are contrary to our traditions and hence constitutionally suspect,” Bolling v. Sharpe, 347 U. S. 497, 499 (1954) . “ ‘[B]ecause racial characteristics so seldom provide a relevant basis for disparate treatment,’ ” Richmond v. J. A. Croson Co., 488 U. S. 469, 505 (1989) (quoting Fullilove v. Klutznick, 448 U. S. 448 –534 (1980) (Stevens, J., dissenting)), “the Equal Protection Clause demands that racial classifications . . . be subjected to the ‘most rigid scrutiny.’ ” Loving v. Virginia, 388 U. S. 1, 11 (1967) . To implement these canons, judicial review must begin from the position that “any official action that treats a person differently on account of his race or ethnic origin is inherently suspect.” Fullilove, supra, at 523 (Stewart, J., dissenting); McLaughlin v. Florida, 379 U. S. 184, 192 (1964) . Strict scrutiny is a searching examination, and it is the government that bears the burden to prove “ ‘that the reasons for any [racial] classification [are] clearly iden-tified and unquestionably legitimate,’ ” Croson, supra, at 505 (quoting Fullilove, 448 supra, at 533–535 (Stevens, J., dissenting)). II Grutter made clear that racial “classifications are constitutional only if they are narrowly tailored to further compelling governmental interests.” 539 U. S., at 326. And Grutter endorsed Justice Powell’s conclusion in Bakke that “the attainment of a diverse student body . . . is a consti-tutionally permissible goal for an institution of higher education.” 438 U. S., at 311–312 (separate opinion). Thus, under Grutter, strict scrutiny must be applied to any admissions program using racial categories or classifications. According to Grutter, a university’s “educational judgment that such diversity is essential to its educational mission is one to which we defer.” 539 U. S., at 328. Grutter concluded that the decision to pursue “the educational benefits that flow from student body diversity,” id., at 330, that the University deems integral to its mission is, in substantial measure, an academic judgment to which some, but not complete, judicial deference is proper under Grutter. A court, of course, should ensure that there is a reasoned, principled explanation for the academic decision. On this point, the District Court and Court of Appeals were correct in finding that Grutter calls for de-ference to the University’s conclusion, “ ‘based on its experience and expertise,’ ” 631 F. 3d, at 230 (quoting 645 F. Supp. 2d 587, 603 (WD Tex. 2009)), that a diverse student body would serve its educational goals. There is disagreement about whether Grutter was consistent with the principles of equal protection in approving this compelling interest in diversity. See post, at 1 (Scalia, J., concurring); post, at 4–5 (Thomas, J., concurring); post, at 1–2 (Ginsburg, J., dissenting). But the parties here do not ask the Court to revisit that aspect of Grutter’s holding. A university is not permitted to define diversity as “some specified percentage of a particular group merely because of its race or ethnic origin.” Bakke, supra, at 307 (opinion of Powell, J.). “That would amount to outright racial balancing, which is patently unconstitutional.” Grutter, supra, at 330. “Racial balancing is not transformed from ‘patently unconstitutional’ to a compelling state interest simply by relabeling it ‘racial diversity.’ ” Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School Dist. No. 1, 551 U. S. 701, 732 (2007) . Once the University has established that its goal of di-versity is consistent with strict scrutiny, however, there must still be a further judicial determination that the admissions process meets strict scrutiny in its implementation. The University must prove that the means chosen by the University to attain diversity are narrowly tailored to that goal. On this point, the University receives no deference. Grutter made clear that it is for the courts, not for university administrators, to ensure that “[t]he means chosen to accomplish the [government’s] asserted purpose must be specifically and narrowly framed to accomplish that purpose.” 539 U. S., at 333 (internal quotation marks omitted). True, a court can take account of a university’s experience and expertise in adopting or rejecting certain admissions processes. But, as the Court said in Grutter, it remains at all times the University’s obligation to demonstrate, and the Judiciary’s obligation to determine, that admissions processes “ensure that each applicant is evaluated as an individual and not in a way that makes an applicant’s race or ethnicity the defining feature of his or her application.” Id., at 337. Narrow tailoring also requires that the reviewing court verify that it is “necessary” for a university to use race to achieve the educational benefits of diversity. Bakke, supra, at 305. This involves a careful judicial inquiry into whether a university could achieve sufficient diversity without using racial classifications. Although “[n]arrow tailoring does not require exhaustion of every conceivable race-neutral alternative,” strict scrutiny does require a court to examine with care, and not defer to, a university’s “serious, good faith consideration of workable race-neutral alternatives.” See Grutter, 539 U. S., at 339–340 (emphasis added). Consideration by the university is of course necessary, but it is not sufficient to satisfy strict scrutiny: The reviewing court must ultimately be satisfied that no workable race-neutral alternatives would produce the edu-cational benefits of diversity. If “ ‘a nonracial approach . . . could promote the substantial interest about as well and at tolerable administrative expense,’ ” Wygant v. Jackson Bd. of Ed., 476 U. S. 267 , n. 6 (1986) (quoting Greenawalt, Judicial Scrutiny of “Benign” Racial Preference in Law School Admissions, 75 Colum. L. Rev. 559, 578–579 (1975)), then the university may not consider race. A plaintiff, of course, bears the burden of placing the validity of a university’s adoption of an affirmative action plan in issue. But strict scrutiny imposes on the univer-sity the ultimate burden of demonstrating, before turning to racial classifications, that available, workable race-neutral alternatives do not suffice. Rather than perform this searching examination, however, the Court of Appeals held petitioner could challenge only “whether [the University’s] decision to reintroduce race as a factor in admissions was made in good faith.” 631 F. 3d, at 236. And in considering such a challenge, the court would “presume the University acted in good faith” and place on petitioner the burden of rebutting that presumption. Id., at 231–232. The Court of Appeals held that to “second-guess the merits” of this aspect of the University’s decision was a task it was “ill-equipped to perform” and that it would attempt only to “ensure that [the University’s] decision to adopt a race-conscious admissions policy followed from [a process of] good faith consideration.” Id., at 231. The Court of Appeals thus concluded that “the narrow-tailoring inquiry—like the compelling-interest inquiry—is undertaken with a degree of deference to the Universit[y].” Id., at 232. Because “the efforts of the University have been studied, serious, and of high purpose,” the Court of Appeals held that the use of race in the admissions program fell within “a constitutionally protected zone of discretion.” Id., at 231. These expressions of the controlling standard are at odds with Grutter’s command that “all racial classifications imposed by government ‘must be analyzed by a reviewing court under strict scrutiny.’ ” 539 U. S., at 326 (quoting Adarand Constructors, Inc. v. Peña, 515 U. S. 200, 227 (1995) ). In Grutter, the Court approved the plan at issue upon concluding that it was not a quota, was sufficiently flexible, was limited in time, and followed “serious, good faith consideration of workable race-neutral alternatives.” 539 U. S., at 339. As noted above, see supra, at 1, the parties do not challenge, and the Court therefore does not consider, the correctness of that determination. Grutter did not hold that good faith would forgive an impermissible consideration of race. It must be remembered that “the mere recitation of a ‘benign’ or legitimate purpose for a racial classification is entitled to little or no weight.” Croson, 488 U. S., at 500. Strict scrutiny does not permit a court to accept a school’s assertion that its admissions process uses race in a permissible way without a court giving close analysis to the evidence of how the process works in practice. The higher education dynamic does not change the narrow tailoring analysis of strict scrutiny applicable in other contexts. “[T]he analysis and level of scrutiny applied to determine the validity of [a racial] classification do not vary simply because the objective appears acceptable . . . . While the validity and importance of the objective may affect the outcome of the analysis, the analysis itself does not change.” Mississippi Univ. for Women v. Hogan, 458 U. S. 718 , n. 9 (1982). The District Court and Court of Appeals confined the strict scrutiny inquiry in too narrow a way by deferring to the University’s good faith in its use of racial classifications and affirming the grant of summary judgment on that basis. The Court vacates that judgment, but fairness to the litigants and the courts that heard the case requires that it be remanded so that the admissions process can be considered and judged under a correct analysis. See Adarand, supra, at 237. Unlike Grutter, which was decided after trial, this case arises from cross-motions for summary judgment. In this case, as in similar cases, in determining whether summary judgment in favor of the University would be appropriate, the Court of Appeals must assess whether the University has offered sufficient evidence that would prove that its admissions program is narrowly tailored to obtain the educational benefits of diversity. Whether this record—and not “simple . . . assurances of good intention,” Croson, supra, at 500—is sufficient is a question for the Court of Appeals in the first instance. * * * Strict scrutiny must not be “ ‘strict in theory, but fatal in fact,’ ” Adarand, supra, at 237; see also Grutter, supra, at 326. But the opposite is also true. Strict scrutiny must not be strict in theory but feeble in fact. In order for judicial review to be meaningful, a university must make a showing that its plan is narrowly tailored to achieve the only interest that this Court has approved in this context: the benefits of a student body diversity that “encompasses a . . . broa[d] array of qualifications and characteristics of which racial or ethnic origin is but a single though important element.” Bakke, 438 U. S., at 315 (opinion of Powell, J.). The judgment of the Court of Appeals is vacated, and the case is remanded for further proceedings consistent with this opinion. It is so ordered. Justice Kagan took no part in the consideration or decision of this case.

568.US.237

Officer Wheetley pulled over respondent Harris for a routine traffic stop. Observing Harris’s nervousness and an open beer can, Wheetley sought consent to search Harris’s truck. When Harris refused, Wheetley executed a sniff test with his trained narcotics dog, Aldo. The dog alerted at the driver’s-side door handle, leading Wheetley to conclude that he had probable cause for a search. That search turned up nothing Aldo was trained to detect, but did reveal pseudoephedrine and other ingredients for manufacturing methamphetamine. Harris was arrested and charged with illegal possession of those ingredients. In a subsequent stop while Harris was out on bail, Aldo again alerted on Harris’s truck but nothing of interest was found. At a suppression hearing, Wheetley testified about his and Aldo’s extensive training in drug detection. Harris’s attorney did not contest the quality of that training, focusing instead on Aldo’s certification and performance in the field, particularly in the two stops of Harris’s truck. The trial court denied the motion to suppress, but the Florida Supreme Court reversed. It held that a wide array of evidence was always necessary to establish probable cause, including field-performance records showing how many times the dog has falsely alerted. If an officer like Wheetley failed to keep such records, he could never have probable cause to think the dog a reliable indicator of drugs. Held: Because training and testing records supported Aldo’s reliability in detecting drugs and Harris failed to undermine that evidence, Wheetley had probable cause to search Harris’s truck. Pp. 5–11. (a) In testing whether an officer has probable cause to conduct a search, all that is required is the kind of “fair probability” on which “reasonable and prudent [people] act.” Illinois v. Gates, 462 U.S. 213, 235. To evaluate whether the State has met this practical and common-sensical standard, this Court has consistently looked to the totality of the circumstances and rejected rigid rules, bright-line tests, and mechanistic inquiries. Ibid. The Florida Supreme Court flouted this established approach by creating a strict evidentiary checklist to assess a drug-detection dog’s reliability. Requiring the State to introduce comprehensive documentation of the dog’s prior hits and misses in the field, and holding that absent field records will preclude a finding of probable cause no matter how much other proof the State offers, is the antithesis of a totality-of-the-circumstances approach. This is made worse by the State Supreme Court’s treatment of field-performance records as the evidentiary gold standard when, in fact, such data may not capture a dog’s false negatives or may markedly overstate a dog’s false positives. Such inaccuracies do not taint records of a dog’s performance in standard training and certification settings, making that performance a better measure of a dog’s reliability. Field records may sometimes be relevant, but the court should evaluate all the evidence, and should not prescribe an inflexible set of requirements. Under the correct approach, a probable-cause hearing focusing on a dog’s alert should proceed much like any other, with the court allowing the parties to make their best case and evaluating the totality of the circumstances. If the State has produced proof from controlled settings that a dog performs reliably in detecting drugs, and the defendant has not contested that showing, the court should find probable cause. But a defendant must have an opportunity to challenge such evidence of a dog’s reliability, whether by cross-examining the testifying officer or by introducing his own fact or expert witnesses. The defendant may contest training or testing standards as flawed or too lax, or raise an issue regarding the particular alert. The court should then consider all the evidence and apply the usual test for probable cause—whether all the facts surrounding the alert, viewed through the lens of common sense, would make a reasonably prudent person think that a search would reveal contraband or evidence of a crime. Pp. 5–9. (b) The record in this case amply supported the trial court’s determination that Aldo’s alert gave Wheetley probable cause to search the truck. The State introduced substantial evidence of Aldo’s training and his proficiency in finding drugs. Harris declined to challenge any aspect of that training or testing in the trial court, and the Court does not consider such arguments when they are presented for this first time in this Court. Harris principally relied below on Wheetley’s failure to find any substance that Aldo was trained to detect. That infers too much from the failure of a particular alert to lead to drugs, and did not rebut the State’s evidence from recent training and testing. Pp. 9–11. 71 So. 3d 756, reversed. Kagan, J., delivered the opinion for a unanimous Court.

In this case, we consider how a court should determine if the “alert” of a drug-detection dog during a traffic stop provides probable cause to search a vehicle. The Florida Supreme Court held that the State must in every case present an exhaustive set of records, including a log of the dog’s performance in the field, to establish the dog’s reliability. See 71 So. 3d 756, 775 (2011). We think that demand inconsistent with the “flexible, common-sense standard” of probable cause. Illinois v. Gates, 462 U.S. 213, 239 (1983). I William Wheetley is a K–9 Officer in the Liberty County, Florida Sheriff’s Office. On June 24, 2006, he was on a routine patrol with Aldo, a German shepherd trained to detect certain narcotics (methamphetamine, marijuana, cocaine, heroin, and ecstasy). Wheetley pulled over respondent Clayton Harris’s truck because it had an expired license plate. On approaching the driver’s-side door, Wheetley saw that Harris was “visibly nervous,” unable to sit still, shaking, and breathing rapidly. Wheetley also noticed an open can of beer in the truck’s cup holder. App. 62. Wheetley asked Harris for consent to search the truck, but Harris refused. At that point, Wheetley retrieved Aldo from the patrol car and walked him around Harris’s truck for a “free air sniff.” Id., at 63. Aldo alerted at the driver’s-side door handle—signaling, through a distinctive set of behaviors, that he smelled drugs there. Wheetley concluded, based principally on Aldo’s alert, that he had probable cause to search the truck. His search did not turn up any of the drugs Aldo was trained to detect. But it did reveal 200 loose pseudoephedrine pills, 8,000 matches, a bottle of hydrochloric acid, two containers of antifreeze, and a coffee filter full of iodine crystals—all ingredients for making methamphetamine. Wheetley accordingly arrested Harris, who admitted after proper Miranda warnings that he routinely “cooked” methamphetamine at his house and could not go “more than a few days without using” it. Id., at 68. The State charged Harris with possessing pseudoephedrine for use in manufacturing methamphetamine. While out on bail, Harris had another run-in with Wheetley and Aldo. This time, Wheetley pulled Harris over for a broken brake light. Aldo again sniffed the truck’s exterior, and again alerted at the driver’s-side door handle. Wheetley once more searched the truck, but on this occasion discovered nothing of interest. Harris moved to suppress the evidence found in his truck on the ground that Aldo’s alert had not given Wheetley probable cause for a search. At the hearing on that motion, Wheetley testified about both his and Aldo’s training in drug detection. See id., at 52–82. In 2004, Wheetley (and a different dog) completed a 160-hour course in narcotics detection offered by the Dothan, Alabama Police Department, while Aldo (and a different handler) completed a similar, 120-hour course given by the Apopka, Florida Police Department. That same year, Aldo received a one-year certification from Drug Beat, a private company that specializes in testing and certifying K–9 dogs. Wheetley and Aldo teamed up in 2005 and went through another, 40-hour refresher course in Dothan together. They also did four hours of training exercises each week to maintain their skills. Wheetley would hide drugs in certain ve- hicles or buildings while leaving others “blank” to determine whether Aldo alerted at the right places. Id., at 57. According to Wheetley, Aldo’s performance in those exercises was “really good.” Id., at 60. The State introduced “Monthly Canine Detection Training Logs” consistent with that testimony: They showed that Aldo always found hidden drugs and that he performed “satisfactorily” (the higher of two possible assessments) on each day of training. Id., at 109–116. On cross-examination, Harris’s attorney chose not to contest the quality of Aldo’s or Wheetley’s training. She focused instead on Aldo’s certification and his performance in the field, particularly the two stops of Harris’s truck. Wheetley conceded that the certification (which, he noted, Florida law did not require) had expired the year before he pulled Harris over. See id., at 70–71. Wheetley also acknowledged that he did not keep complete records of Aldo’s performance in traffic stops or other field work; instead, he maintained records only of alerts resulting in arrests. See id., at 71–72, 74. But Wheetley defended Aldo’s two alerts to Harris’s seemingly narcotics-free truck: According to Wheetley, Harris probably transferred the odor of methamphetamine to the door handle, and Aldo responded to that “residual odor.” Id., at 80. The trial court concluded that Wheetley had probable cause to search Harris’s truck and so denied the motion to suppress. Harris then entered a no-contest plea while reserving the right to appeal the trial court’s ruling. An intermediate state court summarily affirmed. See 989 So. 2d 1214, 1215 (2008) (per curiam). The Florida Supreme Court reversed, holding that Wheetley lacked probable cause to search Harris’s vehicle under the Fourth Amendment. “[W]hen a dog alerts,” the court wrote, “the fact that the dog has been trained and certified is simply not enough to establish probable cause.” 71 So. 3d, at 767. To demonstrate a dog’s reliability, the State needed to produce a wider array of evidence: “[T]he State must present . . . the dog’s training and certification records, an explanation of the meaning of the particular training and certification, field performance records (including any unverified alerts), and evidence concerning the experience and training of the officer handling the dog, as well as any other objective evidence known to the officer about the dog’s reliability.” Id., at 775. The court particularly stressed the need for “evidence of the dog’s performance history,” including records showing “how often the dog has alerted in the field without illegal contraband having been found.” Id., at 769. That data, the court stated, could help to expose such problems as a handler’s tendency (conscious or not) to “cue [a] dog to alert” and “a dog’s inability to distinguish between resid- ual odors and actual drugs.” Id., at 769, 774. Accordingly, an officer like Wheetley who did not keep full records of his dog’s field performance could never have the requisite cause to think “that the dog is a reliable indicator of drugs.” Id., at 773. Judge Canady dissented, maintaining that the major- ity’s “elaborate and inflexible evidentiary requirements” went beyond the demands of probable cause. Id., at 775. He would have affirmed the trial court’s ruling on the strength of Aldo’s training history and Harris’s “fail[ure] to present any evidence challenging” it. Id., at 776. We granted certiorari, 566 U. S. ___ (2012), and now reverse. II A police officer has probable cause to conduct a search when “the facts available to [him] would ‘warrant a [person] of reasonable caution in the belief’” that contraband or evidence of a crime is present. Texas v. Brown, 460 U.S. 730, 742 (1983) (plurality opinion) (quoting Carroll v. United States, 267 U.S. 132, 162 (1925)); see Safford Unified School Dist. #1 v. Redding, 557 U.S. 364, 370– 371 (2009). The test for probable cause is not reducible to “precise definition or quantification.” Maryland v. Pringle, 540 U.S. 366, 371 (2003). “Finely tuned standards such as proof beyond a reasonable doubt or by a preponderance of the evidence . . . have no place in the [probable-cause] decision.” Gates, 462 U. S., at 235. All we have required is the kind of “fair probability” on which “reasonable and prudent [people,] not legal technicians, act.” Id., at 238, 231 (internal quotation marks omitted). In evaluating whether the State has met this practical and common-sensical standard, we have consistently looked to the totality of the circumstances. See, e.g., Pringle, 540 U. S., at 371; Gates, 462 U. S., at 232; Brinegar v. United States, 338 U.S. 160, 176 (1949). We have rejected rigid rules, bright-line tests, and mechanistic inquiries in favor of a more flexible, all-things-considered approach. In Gates, for example, we abandoned our old test for assessing the reliability of informants’ tips because it had devolved into a “complex superstructure of evidentiary and analytical rules,” any one of which, if not complied with, would derail a finding of probable cause. 462 U. S., at 235. We lamented the development of a list of “inflexible, independent requirements applicable in every case.” Id., at 230, n. 6. Probable cause, we emphasized, is “a fluid concept—turning on the assessment of probabilities in particular factual contexts—not readily, or even use- fully, reduced to a neat set of legal rules.” Id., at 232. The Florida Supreme Court flouted this established approach to determining probable cause. To assess the reliability of a drug-detection dog, the court created a strict evidentiary checklist, whose every item the State must tick off.[1] Most prominently, an alert cannot establish probable cause under the Florida court’s decision unless the State introduces comprehensive documentation of the dog’s prior “hits” and “misses” in the field. (One wonders how the court would apply its test to a rookie dog.) No matter how much other proof the State offers of the dog’s reliability, the absent field performance records will preclude a finding of probable cause. That is the antithesis of a totality-of-the-circumstances analysis. It is, indeed, the very thing we criticized in Gates when we overhauled our method for assessing the trustworthiness of an informant’s tip. A gap as to any one matter, we explained, should not sink the State’s case; rather, that “deficiency . . . may be compensated for, in determining the overall reliability of a tip, by a strong showing as to . . . other indicia of reliability.” Id., at 233. So too here, a finding of a drug-detection dog’s reliability cannot depend on the State’s satisfaction of multiple, independent evidentiary requirements. No more for dogs than for human informants is such an inflexible checklist the way to prove reliability, and thus establish probable cause. Making matters worse, the decision below treats records of a dog’s field performance as the gold standard in evidence, when in most cases they have relatively limited import. Errors may abound in such records. If a dog on patrol fails to alert to a car containing drugs, the mistake usually will go undetected because the officer will not initiate a search. Field data thus may not capture a dog’s false negatives. Conversely (and more relevant here), if the dog alerts to a car in which the officer finds no narcotics, the dog may not have made a mistake at all. The dog may have detected substances that were too well hidden or present in quantities too small for the officer to locate. Or the dog may have smelled the residual odor of drugs previously in the vehicle or on the driver’s person.[2] Field data thus may markedly overstate a dog’s real false positives. By contrast, those inaccuracies—in either direction—do not taint records of a dog’s performance in standard training and certification settings. There, the designers of an assessment know where drugs are hidden and where they are not—and so where a dog should alert and where he should not. The better measure of a dog’s reliability thus comes away from the field, in controlled testing environments.[3] For that reason, evidence of a dog’s satisfactory performance in a certification or training program can itself provide sufficient reason to trust his alert. If a bona fide organization has certified a dog after testing his reliability in a controlled setting, a court can presume (subject to any conflicting evidence offered) that the dog’s alert provides probable cause to search. The same is true, even in the absence of formal certification, if the dog has recently and successfully completed a training program that evaluated his proficiency in locating drugs. After all, law enforcement units have their own strong incentive to use effective training and certification programs, because only accurate drug-detection dogs enable officers to locate contraband without incurring unnecessary risks or wasting limited time and resources. A defendant, however, must have an opportunity to challenge such evidence of a dog’s reliability, whether by cross-examining the testifying officer or by introducing his own fact or expert witnesses. The defendant, for example, may contest the adequacy of a certification or training program, perhaps asserting that its standards are too lax or its methods faulty. So too, the defendant may examine how the dog (or handler) performed in the assessments made in those settings. Indeed, evidence of the dog’s (or handler’s) history in the field, although susceptible to the kind of misinterpretation we have discussed, may sometimes be relevant, as the Solicitor General acknowledged at oral argument. See Tr. of Oral Arg. 23–24 (“[T]he defendant can ask the handler, if the handler is on the stand, about field performance, and then the court can give that answer whatever weight is appropriate”). And even assuming a dog is generally reliable, circumstances surrounding a particular alert may undermine the case for probable cause—if, say, the officer cued the dog (consciously or not), or if the team was working under un- familiar conditions. In short, a probable-cause hearing focusing on a dog’s alert should proceed much like any other. The court should allow the parties to make their best case, consistent with the usual rules of criminal procedure. And the court should then evaluate the proffered evidence to decide what all the circumstances demonstrate. If the State has produced proof from controlled settings that a dog performs reliably in detecting drugs, and the defendant has not contested that showing, then the court should find probable cause. If, in contrast, the defendant has challenged the State’s case (by disputing the reliability of the dog overall or of a particular alert), then the court should weigh the competing evidence. In all events, the court should not prescribe, as the Florida Supreme Court did, an inflexible set of evidentiary requirements. The question—similar to every inquiry into probable cause—is whether all the facts surrounding a dog’s alert, viewed through the lens of common sense, would make a reason- ably prudent person think that a search would reveal con- traband or evidence of a crime. A sniff is up to snuff when it meets that test. III And here, Aldo’s did. The record in this case amply supported the trial court’s determination that Aldo’s alert gave Wheetley probable cause to search Harris’s truck. The State, as earlier described, introduced substantial evidence of Aldo’s training and his proficiency in finding drugs. See supra, at 2–3. The State showed that two years before alerting to Harris’s truck, Aldo had successfully completed a 120-hour program in narcotics detection, and separately obtained a certification from an independent company. And although the certification expired after a year, the Sheriff’s Office required continuing training for Aldo and Wheetley. The two satisfied the requirements of another, 40-hour training program one year prior to the search at issue. And Wheetley worked with Aldo for four hours each week on exercises designed to keep their skills sharp. Wheetley testified, and written records confirmed, that in those settings Aldo always performed at the highest level. Harris, as also noted above, declined to challenge in the trial court any aspect of Aldo’s training. See supra, at 3. To be sure, Harris’s briefs in this Court raise questions about that training’s adequacy—for example, whether the programs simulated sufficiently diverse environments and whether they used enough blind testing (in which the handler does not know the location of drugs and so cannot cue the dog). See Brief for Respondent 57–58. Similarly, Harris here queries just how well Aldo performed in controlled testing. See id., at 58. But Harris never voiced those doubts in the trial court, and cannot do so for the first time here. See, e.g., Rugendorf v. United States, 376 U.S. 528, 534 (1964). As the case came to the trial court, Aldo had successfully completed two recent drug-detection courses and maintained his proficiency through weekly training exercises. Viewed alone, that training record—with or without the prior certification—sufficed to establish Aldo’s reliability. See supra, at 8–9. And Harris’s cross-examination of Wheetley, which focused on Aldo’s field performance, failed to rebut the State’s case. Harris principally contended in the trial court that because Wheetley did not find any of the substances Aldo was trained to detect, Aldo’s two alerts must have been false. See Brief for Respondent 1; App. 77–80. But we have already described the hazards of inferring too much from the failure of a dog’s alert to lead to drugs, see supra, at 7; and here we doubt that Harris’s logic does justice to Aldo’s skills. Harris cooked and used methamphetamine on a regular basis; so as Wheetley later surmised, Aldo likely responded to odors that Harris had transferred to the driver’s-side door handle of his truck. See supra, at 3. A well-trained drug-detection dog should alert to such odors; his response to them might appear a mistake, but in fact is not. See n. 2, supra. And still more fundamentally, we do not evaluate probable cause in hindsight, based on what a search does or does not turn up. See United States v. Di Re, 332 U.S. 581, 595 (1948). For the reasons already stated, Wheetley had good cause to view Aldo as a reliable detector of drugs. And no special circumstance here gave Wheetley reason to discount Aldo’s usual dependability or distrust his response to Harris’s truck. Because training records established Aldo’s reliability in detecting drugs and Harris failed to undermine that showing, we agree with the trial court that Wheetley had probable cause to search Harris’s truck. We accordingly reverse the judgment of the Florida Supreme Court. It is so ordered. Notes 1 By the time of oral argument in this case, even Harris declined to defend the idea that the Fourth Amendment compels the State to produce each item of evidence the Florida Supreme Court enumerated. See Tr. of Oral Arg. 29–30 (“I don’t believe the Constitution requires [that list]”). Harris instead argued that the court’s decision, although “look[ing] rather didactic,” in fact did not impose any such requirement. Id., at 29; see id., at 31 (“[I]t’s not a specific recipe that can’t be de-viated from”). But in reading the decision below as establishing a man-datory checklist, we do no more than take the court at its (oft-repeated) word. See, e.g., 71 So. 3d 756, 758, 759, 771, 775 (Fla. 2011) (holding that the State “must” present the itemized evidence). 2 See U. S. Dept. of Army, Military Working Dog Program 30 (Pamphlet 190–12, 1993) (“The odor of a substance may be present in enough concentration to cause the dog to respond even after the substance has been removed. Therefore, when a detector dog responds and no drugor explosive is found, do not assume the dog has made an error”); S. Bryson, Police Dog Tactics 257 (2d ed. 2000) (“Four skiers toke up in the parking lot before going up the mountain. Five minutes later a narcotic detector dog alerts to the car. There is no dope inside. How-ever, the dog has performed correctly”). The Florida Supreme Court treated a dog’s response to residual odor as an error, referring to the “inability to distinguish between [such] odors and actual drugs” as a “facto[r] that call[s] into question Aldo’s reliability.” 71 So. 3d, at 773–774; see supra, at 4. But that statement reflects a misunderstanding. A detection dog recognizes an odor, not a drug, and should alert whenever the scent is present, even if the substance is gone (just as a police officer’s much inferior nose detects the odor of marijuana for some time after a joint has been smoked). In the usual case, the mere chance that the substance might no longer be at the location does not matter; a well-trained dog’s alert establishes a fair probability—all that is required for probable cause—that either drugs or evidence of a drug crime (like the precursor chemicals in Harris’s truck) will be found. 3 See K. Furton, J. Greb, & H. Holness, Florida Int’l Univ., The Scientific Working Group on Dog and Orthogonal Detector Guidelines 1, 61–62, 66 (2010) (recommending as a “best practice” that a dog’s reliability should be assessed based on “the results of certification and proficiency assessments,” because in those “procedure[s] you should know whether you have a false positive,” unlike in “most operational situations”).

569.US.1

Police took a drug-sniffing dog to Jardines’ front porch, where the dog gave a positive alert for narcotics. Based on the alert, the officers obtained a warrant for a search, which revealed marijuana plants; Jardines was charged with trafficking in cannabis. The Supreme Court of Florida approved the trial court’s decision to suppress the evidence, holding that the officers had engaged in a Fourth Amendment search unsupported by probable cause. Held: The investigation of Jardines’ home was a “search” within the meaning of the Fourth Amendment. Pp. 3–10. (a) When “the Government obtains information by physically intruding” on persons, houses, papers, or effects, “a ‘search’ within the original meaning of the Fourth Amendment” has “undoubtedly occurred.” United States v. Jones, 565 U. S. ___, ___, n. 3. Pp. 3–4. (b) At the Fourth Amendment’s “very core” stands “the right of a man to retreat into his own home and there be free from unreason-able governmental intrusion.” Silverman v. United States, 365 U.S. 505, 511. The area “immediately surrounding and associated with the home”—the curtilage—is “part of the home itself for Fourth Amendment purposes.” Oliver v. United States, 466 U.S. 170, 180. The officers entered the curtilage here: The front porch is the classic exemplar of an area “to which the activity of home life extends.” Id., at 182, n. 12. Pp. 4–5. (c) The officers’ entry was not explicitly or implicitly invited. Offi-cers need not “shield their eyes” when passing by a home “on public thoroughfares,” California v. Ciraolo, 476 U.S. 207, 213, but “no man can set his foot upon his neighbour’s close without his leave,” Entick v. Carrington, 2 Wils. K. B. 275, 291, 95 Eng. Rep. 807, 817. A police officer not armed with a warrant may approach a home in hopes of speaking to its occupants, because that is “no more than any private citizen might do.” Kentucky v. King, 563 U. S. ___, ___. But the scope of a license is limited not only to a particular area but also to a specific purpose, and there is no customary invitation to enter the curtilage simply to conduct a search. Pp. 5–8. (d) It is unnecessary to decide whether the officers violated Jardines’ expectation of privacy under Katz v. United States, 389 U.S. 347. Pp. 8–10. 73 So. 3d 34, affirmed. Scalia, J., delivered the opinion of the Court, in which Thomas, Ginsburg, Sotomayor, and Kagan, JJ., joined. Kagan, J., filed a concurring opinion, in which Ginsburg and Sotomayor, JJ., joined. Alito, J., filed a dissenting opinion, in which Roberts, C. J., and Kennedy and Breyer, JJ., joined.

We consider whether using a drug-sniffing dog on a homeowner’s porch to investigate the contents of the home is a “search” within the meaning of the Fourth Amendment. I In 2006, Detective William Pedraja of the Miami-Dade Police Department received an unverified tip that mari- juana was being grown in the home of respondent Joelis Jardines. One month later, the Department and the Drug Enforcement Administration sent a joint surveillance team to Jardines’ home. Detective Pedraja was part of that team. He watched the home for fifteen minutes and saw no vehicles in the driveway or activity around the home, and could not see inside because the blinds were drawn. Detective Pedraja then approached Jardines’ home accompanied by Detective Douglas Bartelt, a trained canine handler who had just arrived at the scene with his drug-sniffing dog. The dog was trained to detect the scent of marijuana, cocaine, heroin, and several other drugs, indicating the presence of any of these substances through particular behavioral changes recognizable by his handler. Detective Bartelt had the dog on a six-foot leash, owing in part to the dog’s “wild” nature, App. to Pet. for Cert. A–35, and tendency to dart around erratically while searching. As the dog approached Jardines’ front porch, he apparently sensed one of the odors he had been trained to detect, and began energetically exploring the area for the strongest point source of that odor. As Detective Bartelt explained, the dog “began tracking that airborne odor by . . . tracking back and forth,” engaging in what is called “bracketing,” “back and forth, back and forth.” Id., at A– 33 to A–34. Detective Bartelt gave the dog “the full six feet of the leash plus whatever safe distance [he could] give him” to do this—he testified that he needed to give the dog “as much distance as I can.” Id., at A–35. And Detective Pedraja stood back while this was occurring, so that he would not “get knocked over” when the dog was “spinning around trying to find” the source. Id., at A–38. After sniffing the base of the front door, the dog sat, which is the trained behavior upon discovering the odor’s strongest point. Detective Bartelt then pulled the dog away from the door and returned to his vehicle. He left the scene after informing Detective Pedraja that there had been a positive alert for narcotics. On the basis of what he had learned at the home, De- tective Pedraja applied for and received a warrant to search the residence. When the warrant was executed later that day, Jardines attempted to flee and was arrested; the search revealed marijuana plants, and he was charged with trafficking in cannabis. At trial, Jardines moved to suppress the marijuana plants on the ground that the canine investigation was an unreasonable search. The trial court granted the motion, and the Florida Third District Court of Appeal reversed. On a petition for discretionary review, the Florida Supreme Court quashed the decision of the Third District Court of Appeal and approved the trial court’s decision to suppress, holding (as relevant here) that the use of the trained narcotics dog to investigate Jardines’ home was a Fourth Amendment search unsupported by probable cause, rendering invalid the warrant based upon information gathered in that search. 73 So. 3d 34 (2011). We granted certiorari, limited to the question of whether the officers’ behavior was a search within the meaning of the Fourth Amendment. 565 U. S. ___ (2012). II The Fourth Amendment provides in relevant part that the “right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated.” The Amendment establishes a simple baseline, one that for much of our history formed the exclusive basis for its protections: When “the Government obtains information by physically intruding” on persons, houses, papers, or effects, “a ‘search’ within the original meaning of the Fourth Amendment” has “un- doubtedly occurred.” United States v. Jones, 565 U. S. ___, ___, n. 3 (2012) (slip op., at 6, n. 3). By reason of our decision in Katz v. United States, 389 U.S. 347 (1967), property rights “are not the sole measure of Fourth Amendment violations,” Soldal v. Cook County, 506 U.S. 56, 64 (1992)—but though Katz may add to the baseline, it does not subtract anything from the Amendment’s protections “when the Government does engage in [a] physi- cal intrusion of a constitutionally protected area,” United States v. Knotts, 460 U.S. 276, 286 (1983) (Brennan, J., concurring in the judgment). That principle renders this case a straightforward one. The officers were gathering information in an area belonging to Jardines and immediately surrounding his house—in the curtilage of the house, which we have held enjoys protection as part of the home itself. And they gathered that information by physically entering and occupying the area to engage in conduct not explicitly or implicitly permitted by the homeowner. A The Fourth Amendment “indicates with some precision the places and things encompassed by its protections”: persons, houses, papers, and effects. Oliver v. United States, 466 U.S. 170, 176 (1984). The Fourth Amendment does not, therefore, prevent all investigations conducted on private property; for example, an officer may (subject to Katz) gather information in what we have called “open fields”—even if those fields are privately owned—because such fields are not enumerated in the Amendment’s text. Hester v. United States, 265 U.S. 57 (1924). But when it comes to the Fourth Amendment, the home is first among equals. At the Amendment’s “very core” stands “the right of a man to retreat into his own home and there be free from unreasonable governmental in- trusion.” Silverman v. United States, 365 U.S. 505, 511 (1961). This right would be of little practical value if the State’s agents could stand in a home’s porch or side garden and trawl for evidence with impunity; the right to retreat would be significantly diminished if the police could enter a man’s property to observe his repose from just outside the front window. We therefore regard the area “immediately surrounding and associated with the home”—what our cases call the curtilage—as “part of the home itself for Fourth Amendment purposes.” Oliver, supra, at 180. That principle has ancient and durable roots. Just as the distinction between the home and the open fields is “as old as the common law,” Hester, supra, at 59, so too is the identity of home and what Blackstone called the “curtilage or homestall,” for the “house protects and privileges all its branches and appurtenants.” 4 W. Blackstone, Commentaries on the Laws of England 223, 225 (1769). This area around the home is “intimately linked to the home, both physically and psychologically,” and is where “privacy expectations are most heightened.” California v. Ciraolo, 476 U.S. 207, 213 (1986). While the boundaries of the curtilage are generally “clearly marked,” the “conception defining the curtilage” is at any rate familiar enough that it is “easily understood from our daily experience.” Oliver, 466 U. S., at 182, n. 12. Here there is no doubt that the officers entered it: The front porch is the classic exemplar of an area adjacent to the home and “to which the activity of home life extends.” Ibid. B Since the officers’ investigation took place in a constitutionally protected area, we turn to the question of whether it was accomplished through an unlicensed physical in- trusion.[1] While law enforcement officers need not “shield their eyes” when passing by the home “on public thoroughfares,” Ciraolo, 476 U. S., at 213, an officer’s leave to gather information is sharply circumscribed when he steps off those thoroughfares and enters the Fourth Amendment’s protected areas. In permitting, for example, visual observation of the home from “public navigable airspace,” we were careful to note that it was done “in a physically nonintrusive manner.” Ibid. Entick v. Carrington, 2 Wils. K. B. 275, 95 Eng. Rep. 807 (K. B. 1765), a case “undoubtedly familiar” to “every American statesman” at the time of the Founding, Boyd v. United States, 116 U.S. 616, 626 (1886), states the general rule clearly: “[O]ur law holds the property of every man so sacred, that no man can set his foot upon his neighbour’s close without his leave.” 2 Wils. K. B., at 291, 95 Eng. Rep., at 817. As it is undisputed that the detectives had all four of their feet and all four of their companion’s firmly planted on the constitutionally protected extension of Jardines’ home, the only question is whether he had given his leave (even implicitly) for them to do so. He had not. “A license may be implied from the habits of the country,” notwithstanding the “strict rule of the English common law as to entry upon a close.” McKee v. Gratz, 260 U.S. 127, 136 (1922) (Holmes, J.). We have accordingly recognized that “the knocker on the front door is treated as an invitation or license to attempt an entry, justifying ingress to the home by solicitors, hawkers and peddlers of all kinds.” Breard v. Alexandria, 341 U.S. 622, 626 (1951). This implicit license typically permits the visitor to approach the home by the front path, knock promptly, wait briefly to be received, and then (absent invitation to linger longer) leave. Complying with the terms of that traditional invitation does not require fine-grained legal knowledge; it is generally managed without incident by the Nation’s Girl Scouts and trick-or-treaters.[2] Thus, a police officer not armed with a warrant may approach a home and knock, precisely because that is “no more than any private citizen might do.” Kentucky v. King, 563 U. S. ___, ___ (2011) (slip op., at 16). But introducing a trained police dog to explore the area around the home in hopes of discovering incriminating evidence is something else. There is no customary invitation to do that. An invitation to engage in canine forensic investigation assuredly does not inhere in the very act of hanging a knocker.[3] To find a visitor knocking on the door is routine (even if sometimes unwelcome); to spot that same visitor exploring the front path with a metal detector, or marching his bloodhound into the garden before saying hello and asking permission, would inspire most of us to—well, call the police. The scope of a license—express or implied—is limited not only to a particular area but also to a specific purpose. Consent at a traffic stop to an officer’s checking out an anonymous tip that there is a body in the trunk does not permit the officer to rummage through the trunk for narcotics. Here, the background social norms that invite a visitor to the front door do not invite him there to conduct a search.[4] The State points to our decisions holding that the subjective intent of the officer is irrelevant. See Ashcroft v. al-Kidd, 563 U. S. ___ (2011); Whren v. United States, 517 U.S. 806 (1996). But those cases merely hold that a stop or search that is objectively reasonable is not vitiated by the fact that the officer’s real reason for making the stop or search has nothing to do with the validating reason. Thus, the defendant will not be heard to complain that although he was speeding the officer’s real reason for the stop was racial harassment. See id., at 810, 813. Here, however, the question before the court is precisely whether the officer’s conduct was an objectively reasonable search. As we have described, that depends upon whether the officers had an implied license to enter the porch, which in turn depends upon the purpose for which they entered. Here, their behavior objectively reveals a purpose to conduct a search, which is not what anyone would think he had license to do. III The State argues that investigation by a forensic narcotics dog by definition cannot implicate any legitimate privacy interest. The State cites for authority our decisions in United States v. Place, 462 U.S. 696 (1983), United States v. Jacobsen, 466 U.S. 109 (1984), and Illinois v. Caballes, 543 U.S. 405 (2005), which held, respectively, that canine inspection of luggage in an airport, chemical testing of a substance that had fallen from a parcel in transit, and canine inspection of an automobile during a lawful traffic stop, do not violate the “reasonable expectation of privacy” described in Katz. Just last Term, we considered an argument much like this. Jones held that tracking an automobile’s where- abouts using a physically-mounted GPS receiver is a Fourth Amendment search. The Government argued that the Katz standard “show[ed] that no search occurred,” as the defendant had “no ‘reasonable expectation of privacy’ ” in his whereabouts on the public roads, Jones, 565 U. S., at ___ (slip op., at 5)—a proposition with at least as much support in our case law as the one the State marshals here. See, e.g., United States v. Knotts, 460 U.S. 276, 278 (1983). But because the GPS receiver had been physically mounted on the defendant’s automobile (thus intruding on his “effects”), we held that tracking the vehicle’s movements was a search: a person’s “ Fourth Amendment rights do not rise or fall with the Katz formulation.” Jones, supra, at ___ (slip op., at 5). The Katz reasonable-expectations test “has been added to, not substituted for,” the traditional property-based understanding of the Fourth Amendment, and so is unnecessary to consider when the government gains evidence by physically intruding on constitutionally protected areas. Jones, supra, at ___ (slip op., at 8). Thus, we need not decide whether the officers’ investigation of Jardines’ home violated his expectation of privacy under Katz. One virtue of the Fourth Amendment’s property-rights baseline is that it keeps easy cases easy. That the officers learned what they learned only by physically intruding on Jardines’ property to gather evidence is enough to establish that a search occurred. For a related reason we find irrelevant the State’s argument (echoed by the dissent) that forensic dogs have been commonly used by police for centuries. This argument is apparently directed to our holding in Kyllo v. United States, 533 U.S. 27 (2001), that surveillance of the home is a search where “the Government uses a device that is not in general public use” to “explore details of the home that would previously have been unknowable without physical intrusion.” Id., at 40 (emphasis added). But the implication of that statement (inclusio unius est exclusio alterius) is that when the government uses a physical intrusion to explore details of the home (including its curtilage), the antiquity of the tools that they bring along is irrelevant. * * * The government’s use of trained police dogs to inves- tigate the home and its immediate surroundings is a “search” within the meaning of the Fourth Amendment. The judgment of the Supreme Court of Florida is therefore affirmed. It is so ordered. Notes 1 At oral argument, the State and its amicus the Solicitor General argued that Jardines conceded in the lower courts that the officers had a right to be where they were. This misstates the record. Jardines conceded nothing more than the unsurprising proposition that the of-ficers could have lawfully approached his home to knock on the front door in hopes of speaking with him. Of course, that is not what they did. 2 With this much, the dissent seems to agree—it would inquire into “ ‘the appearance of things,’ ” post, at 5 (opinion of Alito, J.), what is “typica[l]” for a visitor, ibid., what might cause “alarm” to a “resident of the premises,” ibid., what is “expected” of “ordinary visitors,” ibid., and what would be expected from a “ ‘reasonably respectful citizen,’ ” post, at 7. These are good questions. But their answers are incompatible with the dissent’s outcome, which is presumably why the dissent does not even try to argue that it would be customary, usual, reasonable, respectful, ordinary, typical, nonalarming, etc., for a stranger to explore the curtilage of the home with trained drug dogs. 3 The dissent insists that our argument must rest upon “the particular instrument that Detective Bartelt used to detect the odor of mari-juana”—the dog. Post, at 8. It is not the dog that is the problem, but the behavior that here involved use of the dog. We think a typical person would find it “ ‘a cause for great alarm’ ” (the kind of reaction the dis-sent quite rightly relies upon to justify its no-night-visits rule, post,at 5) to find a stranger snooping about his front porch with or withouta dog. The dissent would let the police do whatever they want by way of gathering evidence so long as they stay on the base-path, to use a baseball analogy—so long as they “stick to the path that is typically used to approach a front door, such as a paved walkway.” Ibid. From that vantage point they can presumably peer into the house through binoculars with impunity. That is not the law, as even the State con-cedes. See Tr. of Oral Arg. 6. 4 The dissent argues, citing King, that “gathering evidence—even damning evidence—is a lawful activity that falls within the scope of the license to approach.” Post, at 7. That is a false generalization. What King establishes is that it is not a Fourth Amendment search to approach the home in order to speak with the occupant, because all are invited to do that. The mere “purpose of discovering information,” post, at 8, in the course of engaging in that permitted conduct does not cause it to violate the Fourth Amendment. But no one is impliedly invited to enter the protected premises of the home in order to do nothing but conduct a search.

570.US.136

The Drug Price Competition and Patent Term Restoration Act of 1984 (Hatch-Waxman Act or Act) creates special procedures for identifying and resolving patent disputes between brand-name and generic drug manufacturers, one of which requires a prospective generic manufacturer to assure the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) that it will not infringe the brand-name’s patents. One way to provide such assurance (the “paragraph IV” route) is by certifying that any listed, relevant patent “is invalid or will not be infringed by the manufacture, use, or sale” of the generic drug. 21 U. S. C. §355(j)(2)(A)(vii)(IV). Respondent Solvay Pharmaceuticals obtained a patent for its approved brand-name drug AndroGel. Subsequently, respondents Actavis and Paddock filed applications for generic drugs modeled after AndroGel and certified under paragraph IV that Solvay’s patent was invalid and that their drugs did not infringe it. Solvay sued Actavis and Paddock, claiming patent infringement. See 35 U. S. C. §271(e)(2)(A). The FDA eventually approved Actavis’ generic product, but instead of bringing its drug to market, Actavis entered into a “reverse payment” settlement agreement with Solvay, agreeing not to bring its generic to market for a specified number of years and agreeing to promote AndroGel to doctors in exchange for millions of dollars. Paddock made a similar agreement with Solvay, as did respondent Par, another manufacturer aligned in the patent litigation with Paddock. The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) filed suit, alleging that respondents violated §5 of the Federal Trade Commission Act by unlawfully agreeing to abandon their patent challenges, to refrain from launching their low-cost generic drugs, and to share in Solvay’s monopoly profits. The District Court dismissed the complaint. The Eleventh Circuit concluded that as long as the anticompetitive effects of a settlement fall within the scope of the patent’s exclusionary potential, the settlement is immune from antitrust attack. Noting that the FTC had not alleged that the challenged agreements excluded competition to a greater extent than would the patent, if valid, it affirmed the complaint’s dismissal. It further recognized that if parties to this sort of case do not settle, a court might declare a patent invalid. But since public policy favors the settlement of disputes, it held that courts could not require parties to continue to litigate in order to avoid antitrust liability. Held: The Eleventh Circuit erred in affirming the dismissal of the FTC’s complaint. Pp. 8–21. (a) Although the anticompetitive effects of the reverse settlement agreement might fall within the scope of the exclusionary potential of Solvay’s patent, this does not immunize the agreement from antitrust attack. For one thing, to refer simply to what the holder of a valid patent could do does not by itself answer the antitrust question. Here, the paragraph IV litigation put the patent’s validity and preclusive scope at issue, and the parties’ settlement—in which, the FTC alleges, the plaintiff agreed to pay the defendants millions to stay out of its market, even though the defendants had no monetary claim against the plaintiff—ended that litigation. That form of settlement is unusual, and there is reason for concern that such settlements tend to have significant adverse effects on competition. It would be incongruous to determine antitrust legality by measuring the settlement’s anticompetitive effects solely against patent law policy, and not against procompetitive antitrust policies as well. Both are relevant in determining the scope of monopoly and antitrust immunity conferred by a patent, see, e.g., United States v. Line Material Co., 333 U.S. 287, 310, 311, and the antitrust question should be answered by considering traditional antitrust factors. For another thing, this Court’s precedents make clear that patent-related settlement agreements can sometimes violate the antitrust laws. See, e.g., United States v. Singer Mfg. Co., 374 U.S. 174; United States v. New Wrinkle, Inc., 342 U.S. 371; Standard Oil Co. (Indiana) v. United States, 283 U.S. 163. Finally, the Hatch-Waxman Act’s general procompetitive thrust—facilitating challenges to a patent’s validity and requiring parties to a paragraph IV dispute to report settlement terms to federal antitrust regulators—suggests a view contrary to the Eleventh Circuit’s. Pp. 8–14. (b) While the Eleventh Circuit’s conclusion finds some support in a general legal policy favoring the settlement of disputes, its related underlying practical concern consists of its fear that antitrust scrutiny of a reverse payment agreement would require the parties to engage in time-consuming, complex, and expensive litigation to demonstrate what would have happened to competition absent the settlement. However, five sets of considerations lead to the conclusion that this concern should not determine the result here and that the FTC should have been given the opportunity to prove its antitrust claim. First, the specific restraint at issue has the “potential for genuine adverse effects on competition.” FTC v. Indiana Federation of Dentists, 476 U.S. 447, 460–461. Payment for staying out of the market keeps prices at patentee-set levels and divides the benefit between the patentee and the challenger, while the consumer loses. And two Hatch-Waxman Act features—the 180-day exclusive-right-to-sell advantage given to the first paragraph IV challenger to win FDA approval, §355(j)(5)(B)(iv), and the roughly 30-month period that the subsequent manufacturers would be required to wait out before winning FDA approval, §355(j)(5)(B)(iii)—mean that a reverse settlement agreement with the first filer removes from consideration the manufacturer most likely to introduce competition quickly. Second, these anticompetitive consequences will at least sometimes prove unjustified. There may be justifications for reverse payment that are not the result of having sought or brought about anticompetitive consequences, but that does not justify dismissing the FTC’s complaint without examining the potential justifications. Third, where a reverse payment threatens to work unjustified anticompetitive harm, the patentee likely has the power to bring about that harm in practice. The size of the payment from a branded drug manufacturer to a generic challenger is a strong indicator of such power. Fourth, an antitrust action is likely to prove more feasible administratively than the Eleventh Circuit believed. It is normally not necessary to litigate patent validity to answer the antitrust question. A large, unexplained reverse payment can provide a workable surrogate for a patent’s weakness, all without forcing a court to conduct a detailed exploration of the patent’s validity. Fifth, the fact that a large, unjustified reverse payment risks antitrust liability does not prevent litigating parties from settling their lawsuits. As in other industries, they may settle in other ways, e.g., by allowing the generic manufacturer to enter the patentee’s market before the patent expires without the patentee’s paying the challenger to stay out prior to that point. Pp. 14–20. (c) This Court declines to hold that reverse payment settlement agreements are presumptively unlawful. Courts reviewing such agreements should proceed by applying the “rule of reason,” rather than under a “quick look” approach. See California Dental Assn. v. FTC, 526 U.S. 756, 775, n. 12. Pp. 20–21. 677 F.3d 1298, reversed and remanded. Breyer, J., delivered the opinion of the Court, in which Kennedy, Ginsburg, Sotomayor, and Kagan, JJ., joined. Roberts, C. J., filed a dissenting opinion, in which Scalia and Thomas, JJ., joined. Alito, J., took no part in the consideration or decision of the case.

Company A sues Company B for patent infringement. The two companies settle under terms that require (1) Company B, the claimed infringer, not to produce the pat-ented product until the patent’s term expires, and (2) Company A, the patentee, to pay B many millions of dollars. Because the settlement requires the patentee to pay the alleged infringer, rather than the other way around, this kind of settlement agreement is often called a “reverse payment” settlement agreement. And the basic question here is whether such an agreement can sometimes unreasonably diminish competition in violation of the antitrust laws. See, e.g., 15 U. S. C. §1 (Sherman Act prohibition of “restraint[s] of trade or commerce”). Cf. Palmer v. BRG of Ga., Inc., 498 U. S. 46 (1990) (per curiam) (invalidating agreement not to compete). In this case, the Eleventh Circuit dismissed a Federal Trade Commission (FTC) complaint claiming that a particular reverse payment settlement agreement violated the antitrust laws. In doing so, the Circuit stated that a reverse payment settlement agreement generally is “immune from antitrust attack so long as its anticompetitive effects fall within the scope of the exclusionary potential of the patent.” FTC v. Watson Pharmaceuticals, Inc., 677 F. 3d 1298, 1312 (2012). And since the alleged infringer’s promise not to enter the patentee’s market expired before the patent’s term ended, the Circuit found the agreement legal and dismissed the FTC complaint. Id., at 1315. In our view, however, reverse payment settlements such as the agreement alleged in the complaint before us can some-times violate the antitrust laws. We consequently hold that the Eleventh Circuit should have allowed the FTC’s lawsuit to proceed. I A Apparently most if not all reverse payment settlement agreements arise in the context of pharmaceutical drug regulation, and specifically in the context of suits brought under statutory provisions allowing a generic drug manufacturer (seeking speedy marketing approval) to challenge the validity of a patent owned by an already-approved brand-name drug owner. See Brief for Petitioner 29; 12 P. Areeda & H. Hovenkamp, Antitrust Law ¶2046, p. 338 (3d ed. 2012) (hereinafter Areeda); Hovenkamp, Sensible Antitrust Rules for Pharmaceutical Competition, 39 U. S. F. L. Rev. 11, 24 (2004). We consequently describe four key features of the relevant drug-regulatory framework established by the Drug Price Competition and Patent Term Restoration Act of 1984, 98Stat. 1585, as amended. That Act is commonly known as the Hatch-Waxman Act. First, a drug manufacturer, wishing to market a new prescription drug, must submit a New Drug Application to the federal Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and undergo a long, comprehensive, and costly testing process, after which, if successful, the manufacturer will receive marketing approval from the FDA. See 21 U. S. C. §355(b)(1) (requiring, among other things, “full reports of investigations” into safety and effectiveness; “a full list of the articles used as components”; and a “full description” of how the drug is manufactured, processed, and packed). Second, once the FDA has approved a brand-name drug for marketing, a manufacturer of a generic drug can obtain similar marketing approval through use of abbrevi-ated procedures. The Hatch-Waxman Act permits a generic manufacturer to file an Abbreviated New Drug Appli-cation specifying that the generic has the “same active ingredients as,” and is “biologically equivalent” to, the al-ready-approved brand-name drug. Caraco Pharmaceutical Laboratories, Ltd. v. Novo Nordisk A/S, 566 U. S. ___, ___ (2012) (slip op., at 2) (citing 21 U. S. C. §§355(j)(2)(A)(ii), (iv)). In this way the generic manufacturer can obtain approval while avoiding the “costly and time-consuming studies” needed to obtain approval “for a pioneer drug.” See Eli Lilly & Co. v. Medtronic, Inc., 496 U. S. 661, 676 (1990) . The Hatch-Waxman process, by allowing the generic to piggy-back on the pioneer’s approval efforts, “speed[s] the introduction of low-cost generic drugs to market,” Caraco, supra, at ___ (slip op., at 2), thereby furthering drug competition. Third, the Hatch-Waxman Act sets forth special pro-cedures for identifying, and resolving, related patent dis-putes. It requires the pioneer brand-name manufacturer to list in its New Drug Application the “number and the expiration date” of any relevant patent. See 21 U. S. C. §355(b)(1). And it requires the generic manufacturer in its Abbreviated New Drug Application to “assure the FDA” that the generic “will not infringe” the brand-name’s patents. See Caraco, supra, at___ (slip op., at 3). The generic can provide this assurance in one of several ways. See 21 U. S. C. §355(j)(2)(A)(vii). It can certify that the brand-name manufacturer has not listed any rele- vant patents. It can certify that any relevant patents have expired. It can request approval to market beginning when any still-in-force patents expire. Or, it can certify that any listed, relevant patent “is invalid or will not be infringed by the manufacture, use, or sale” of the drug described in the Abbreviated New Drug Application. See §355(j)(2)(A)(vii)(IV). Taking this last-mentioned route (called the “paragraph IV” route), automatically counts as patent infringement, see 35 U. S. C. §271(e)(2)(A) (2006 ed., Supp. V), and often “means provoking litigation.” Caraco, supra, at___ (slip op., at 5). If the brand-name patentee brings an infringement suit within 45 days, the FDA then must withhold approving the generic, usually for a 30-month period, while the parties litigate patent validity (or infringement) in court. If the courts decide the matter within that period, the FDA follows that determination; if they do not, the FDA may go forward and give approval to market the generic product. See 21 U. S. C. §355(j)(5)(B)(iii). Fourth, Hatch-Waxman provides a special incentive for a generic to be the first to file an Abbreviated New Drug Application taking the paragraph IV route. That ap- plicant will enjoy a period of 180 days of exclusivity (from the first commercial marketing of its drug). See §355(j)(5)(B)(iv) (establishing exclusivity period). During that period of exclusivity no other generic can compete with the brand-name drug. If the first-to-file generic manufacturer can overcome any patent obstacle and bring the generic to market, this 180-day period of exclusivity can prove valuable, possibly “worth several hundred million dollars.” Hemphill, Paying for Delay: Pharmaceutical Patent Settlement as a Regulatory Design Problem, 81 N. Y. U. L. Rev. 1553, 1579 (2006). Indeed, the Generic Pharmaceutical Association said in 2006 that the “ ‘vast majority of potential profits for a generic drug manufacturer materialize during the 180-day exclusivity period.’ ” Brief for Petitioner 6 (quoting statement). The 180-day ex- clusivity period, however, can belong only to the first generic to file. Should that first-to-file generic forfeit the exclusivity right in one of the ways specified by statute, no other generic can obtain it. See §355(j)(5)(D). B 1 In 1999, Solvay Pharmaceuticals, a respondent here, filed a New Drug Application for a brand-name drug called AndroGel. The FDA approved the application in 2000. In 2003, Solvay obtained a relevant patent and disclosed that fact to the FDA, 677 F. 3d, at 1308, as Hatch-Waxman requires. See §355(c)(2) (requiring, in addition, that FDA must publish new patent information upon submission). Later the same year another respondent, Actavis, Inc. (then known as Watson Pharmaceuticals), filed an Abbreviated New Drug Application for a generic drug modeled after AndroGel. Subsequently, Paddock Laboratories, also a respondent, separately filed an Abbreviated New Drug Application for its own generic product. Both Actavis and Paddock certified under paragraph IV that Solvay’s listed patent was invalid and their drugs did not infringe it. A fourth manufacturer, Par Pharmaceutical, likewise a re- spondent, did not file an application of its own but joined forces with Paddock, agreeing to share the patent litigation costs in return for a share of profits if Paddock obtained approval for its generic drug. Solvay initiated paragraph IV patent litigation against Actavis and Paddock. Thirty months later the FDA approved Actavis’ first-to-file generic product, but, in 2006, the patent-litigation parties all settled. Under the terms of the settlement Actavis agreed that it would not bring its generic to market until August 31, 2015, 65 months before Solvay’s patent expired (unless someone else marketed a generic sooner). Actavis also agreed to promote AndroGel to urologists. The other generic manufacturers made roughly similar promises. And Solvay agreed to pay millions of dollars to each generic—$12 million in total to Paddock; $60 million in total to Par; and an estimated $19–$30 million annually, for nine years, to Actavis. See App. 46, 49–50, Complaint ¶¶66, 77. The companies de- scribed these payments as compensation for other services the generics promised to perform, but the FTC contends the other services had little value. According to the FTC the true point of the payments was to compensate the generics for agreeing not to compete against AndroGel until 2015. See id., at 50–53, Complaint ¶¶81–85. 2 On January 29, 2009, the FTC filed this lawsuit against all the settling parties, namely, Solvay, Actavis, Paddock, and Par. The FTC’s complaint (as since amended) alleged that respondents violated §5 of the Federal Trade Commission Act, 15 U. S. C. §45, by unlawfully agreeing “to share in Solvay’s monopoly profits, abandon their patent challenges, and refrain from launching their low-cost generic products to compete with AndroGel for nine years.” App. 29, Complaint ¶5. See generally FTC v. Indiana Federation of Dentists, 476 U. S. 447, 454 (1986) (Section 5 “encompass[es] . . . practices that violate the Sherman Act and the other antitrust laws”). The District Court held that these allegations did not set forth an antitrust law violation. In re Androgel Antitrust Litigation (No. II), 687 F. Supp. 2d 1371, 1379 (ND Ga. 2010). It accordingly dismissed the FTC’s complaint. The FTC appealed. The Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit affirmed the District Court. It wrote that “absent sham litigation or fraud in obtaining the patent, a reverse payment settlement is immune from antitrust attack so long as its anticompetitive effects fall within the scope of the exclusionary potential of the patent.” 677 F. 3d, at 1312. The court recognized that “antitrust laws typically prohibit agreements where one company pays a potential competitor not to enter the market.” Id., at 1307 (citing Valley Drug Co. v. Geneva Pharmaceuticals, Inc., 344 F. 3d 1294, 1304 (CA11 2003)). See also Palmer, 498 U. S., at 50 (agreement to divide territorial markets held “unlawful on its face”). But, the court found that “reverse payment settlements of patent litigation presen[t] atypical cases because one of the parties owns a patent.” 677 F. 3d, at 1307 (internal quotation marks and second alteration omitted). Patent holders have a “lawful right to exclude others from the market,” ibid. (internal quotation marks omitted); thus a patent “conveys the right to cripple competition.” Id., at 1310 (internal quotation marks omitted). The court recognized that, if the parties to this sort of case do not settle, a court might declare the patent invalid. Id., at 1305. But, in light of the public policy favoring settlement of disputes (among other considerations) it held that the courts could not require the parties to continue to litigate in order to avoid antitrust liability. Id., at 1313–1314. The FTC sought certiorari. Because different courts have reached different conclusions about the application of the antitrust laws to Hatch-Waxman-related patent settlements, we granted the FTC’s petition. Compare, e.g., id., at 1312 (case below) (settlements generally “immune from antitrust attack”); In re Ciprofloxacin Hydrochloride Antitrust Litigation, 544 F. 3d 1323, 1332–1337 (CA Fed. 2008) (similar); In re Tamoxifen Citrate Antitrust Litigation, 466 F. 3d 187, 212–213 (CA2 2006) (similar), with In re K-Dur Antitrust Litigation, 686 F. 3d 197, 214–218 (CA3 2012) (settlements presumptively unlawful). II A Solvay’s patent, if valid and infringed, might have permitted it to charge drug prices sufficient to recoup the reverse settlement payments it agreed to make to its po- tential generic competitors. And we are willing to take this fact as evidence that the agreement’s “anticompetitive effects fall within the scope of the exclusionary potential of the patent.” 677 F. 3d, at 1312. But we do not agree that that fact, or characterization, can immunize the agreement from antitrust attack. For one thing, to refer, as the Circuit referred, simply to what the holder of a valid patent could do does not by itself answer the antitrust question. The patent here may or may not be valid, and may or may not be infringed. “[A] valid patent excludes all except its owner from the use of the protected process or product,” United States v. Line Material Co., 333 U. S. 287, 308 (1948) (emphasis added). And that exclusion may permit the patent owner to charge a higher-than-competitive price for the patented product. But an invalidated patent carries with it no such right. And even a valid patent confers no right to exclude products or processes that do not actually infringe. The paragraph IV litigation in this case put the patent’s validity at issue, as well as its actual preclusive scope. The parties’ settlement ended that litigation. The FTC alleges that in substance, the plaintiff agreed to pay the defendants many millions of dollars to stay out of its market, even though the defendants did not have any claim that the plaintiff was liable to them for damages. That form of settlement is unusual. And, for reasons discussed in Part II–B, infra, there is reason for concern that settlements tak- ing this form tend to have significant adverse effects on competition. Given these factors, it would be incongruous to determine antitrust legality by measuring the settlement’s anticompetitive effects solely against patent law policy, rather than by measuring them against procompetitive antitrust policies as well. And indeed, contrary to the Circuit’s view that the only pertinent question is whether “the settlement agreement . . . fall[s] within” the legitimate “scope” of the patent’s “exclusionary potential,” 677 F. 3d, at 1309, 1312, this Court has indicated that patent and antitrust policies are both relevant in determining the “scope of the patent monopoly”—and consequently antitrust law immunity—that is conferred by a patent. Thus, the Court in Line Material explained that “the improper use of [a patent] monopoly,” is “invalid” under the antitrust laws and resolved the antitrust question in that case by seeking an accommodation “between the law- ful restraint on trade of the patent monopoly and the illegal restraint prohibited broadly by the Sherman Act.” 333 U. S., at 310. To strike that balance, the Court asked questions such as whether “the patent statute specifically gives a right” to restrain competition in the manner challenged; and whether “competition is impeded to a greater degree” by the restraint at issue than other restraints previously approved as reasonable. Id., at 311. See also United States v. United States Gypsum Co., 333 U. S. 364 –391 (1948) (courts must “balance the privileges of [the patent holder] and its licensees under the patent grants with the prohibitions of the Sherman Act against combi- nations and attempts to monopolize”); Walker Process Equipment, Inc. v. Food Machinery & Chemical Corp., 382 U. S. 172, 174 (1965) (“[E]nforcement of a patent procured by fraud” may violate the Sherman Act). In short, rather than measure the length or amount of a restriction solely against the length of the patent’s term or its earning potential, as the Court of Appeals apparently did here, this Court answered the antitrust question by considering traditional antitrust factors such as likely anticompetitive effects, redeeming virtues, market power, and potentially offsetting legal considerations present in the circumstances, such as here those related to patents. See Part II–B, infra. Whether a particular restraint lies “beyond the limits of the patent monopoly” is a conclusion that flows from that analysis and not, as The Chief Justice suggests, its starting point. Post, at 3, 8 (dissenting opinion). For another thing, this Court’s precedents make clear that patent-related settlement agreements can sometimes violate the antitrust laws. In United States v. Singer Mfg. Co., 374 U. S. 174 (1963) , for example, two sewing machine companies possessed competing patent claims; a third company sought a patent under circumstances where doing so might lead to the disclosure of information that would invalidate the other two firms’ patents. All three firms settled their patent-related disagreements while assigning the broadest claims to the firm best able to enforce the patent against yet other potential competitors. Id., at 190–192. The Court did not examine whether, on the assumption that all three patents were valid, patent law would have allowed the patents’ holders to do the same. Rather, emphasizing that the Sherman Act “im- poses strict limitations on the concerted activities in which patent owners may lawfully engage,” id., at 197, it held that the agreements, although settling patent disputes, violated the antitrust laws. Id., at 195, 197. And that, in important part, was because “the public interest in granting patent monopolies” exists only to the extent that “the public is given a novel and useful invention” in “consideration for its grant.” Id., at 199 (White, J., concurring). See also United States v. New Wrinkle, Inc., 342 U. S. 371, 378 (1952) (applying antitrust scrutiny to patent settlement); Standard Oil Co. (Indiana) v. United States, 283 U. S. 163 (1931) (same). Similarly, both within the settlement context and without, the Court has struck down overly restrictive patent licensing agreements—irrespective of whether those agreements produced supra-patent-permitted revenues. We concede that in United States v. General Elec. Co., 272 U. S. 476, 489 (1926) , the Court permitted a single patentee to grant to a single licensee a license containing a minimum resale price requirement. But in Line Material, supra, at 308, 310–311, the Court held that the antitrust laws forbid a group of patentees, each owning one or more patents, to cross-license each other, and, in doing so, to insist that each licensee maintain retail prices set collectively by the patent holders. The Court was willing to presume that the single-patentee practice approved in General Electric was a “reasonable restraint” that “accords with the patent monopoly granted by the patent law,” 333 U. S., at 312, but declined to extend that conclusion to multiple-patentee agreements: “As the Sherman Act prohibits agreements to fix prices, any arrangement between patentees runs afoul of that prohibition and is outside the patent monopoly.” Ibid. In New Wrinkle, 342 U. S., at 378, the Court held roughly the same, this time in respect to a similar arrangement in settlement of a litigation between two patentees, each of which contended that its own patent gave it the exclusive right to control production. That one or the other company (we may presume) was right about its patent did not lead the Court to confer antitrust immunity. Far from it, the agreement was found to violate the Sherman Act. Id., at 380. Finally in Standard Oil Co. (Indiana), the Court upheld cross-licensing agreements among patentees that settled actual and impending patent litigation, 283 U. S., at 168, which agreements set royalty rates to be charged third parties for a license to practice all the patents at issue (and which divided resulting revenues). But, in doing so, Justice Brandeis, writing for the Court, warned that such an arrangement would have violated the Sherman Act had the patent holders thereby “dominate[d]” the industry and “curtail[ed] the manufacture and supply of an unpatented product.” Id., at 174. These cases do not simply ask whether a hypothetically valid patent’s holder would be able to charge, e.g., the high prices that the challenged patent-related term allowed. Rather, they seek to ac-commodate patent and antitrust policies, finding challenged terms and conditions unlawful unless patent law policy offsets the antitrust law policy strongly favoring competition. Thus, contrary to the dissent’s suggestion, post, at 4–6, there is nothing novel about our approach. What does appear novel are the dissent’s suggestions that a patent holder may simply “pa[y] a competitor to respect its patent” and quit its patent invalidity or noninfringement claim without any antitrust scrutiny whatever, post, at 3, and that “such settlements . . . are a well-known feature of intellectual property litigation,” post, at 10. Closer examination casts doubt on these claims. The dissent does not identify any patent statute that it understands to grant such a right to a patentee, whether expressly or by fair implication. It would be difficult to reconcile the proposed right with the patent-related policy of eliminating unwarranted patent grants so the public will not “continually be required to pay tribute to would-be monopolists without need or justification.” Lear, Inc. v. Adkins, 395 U. S. 653, 670 (1969) . And the authorities cited for this proposition (none from this Court, and none an antitrust case) are not on point. Some of them say that when Company A sues Company B for patent infringement and demands, say, $100 million in damages, it is not uncommon for B (the defendant) to pay A (the plaintiff) some amount less than the full demand as part of the settlement—$40 million, for example. See Schildkraut, Patent-Splitting Settlements and the Reverse Payment Fallacy, 71 Antitrust L. J. 1033, 1046 (2004) (suggesting that this hypothetical settlement includes “an implicit net payment” from A to B of $60 million—i.e., the amount of the settlement discount). The cited authorities also indicate that if B has a counterclaim for damages against A, the original infringement plaintiff, A might end up paying B to settle B’s counterclaim. Cf. Metro-Goldwyn Mayer, Inc. v. 007 Safety Prods., Inc., 183 F. 3d 10, 13 (CA1 1999) (describing trademark dispute and settlement). Insofar as the dissent urges that settlements taking these commonplace forms have not been thought for that reason alone subject to antitrust liability, we agree, and do not intend to alter that understanding. But the dissent appears also to suggest that reverse payment settlements—e.g., in which A, the plaintiff, pays money to defendant B purely so B will give up the patent fight—should be viewed for antitrust purposes in the same light as these familiar settlement forms. See post, at 9–10. We cannot agree. In the traditional examples cited above, a party with a claim (or counterclaim) for damages receives a sum equal to or less than the value of its claim. In reverse payment settlements, in contrast, a party with no claim for damages (something that is usually true of a paragraph IV litigation defendant) walks away with money simply so it will stay away from the patentee’s market. That, we think, is something quite different. Cf. Verizon Communications, Inc. v. Law Offices of Curtis V. Trinko, LLP, 540 U. S. 398, 408 (2004) (“[C]ollusion” is “the supreme evil of antitrust”). Finally, the Hatch-Waxman Act itself does not embody a statutory policy that supports the Eleventh Circuit’s view. Rather, the general procompetitive thrust of the statute, its specific provisions facilitating challenges to a patent’s validity, see Part I–A, supra, and its later-added provisions requiring parties to a patent dispute triggered by a paragraph IV filing to report settlement terms to the FTC and the Antitrust Division of the Department of Justice, all suggest the contrary. See §§1112–1113, 117Stat. 2461–2462. Those interested in legislative history may also wish to examine the statements of individual Members of Congress condemning reverse payment settlements in advance of the 2003 amendments. See, e.g., 148 Cong. Rec. 14437 (2002) (remarks of Sen. Hatch) (“It was and is very clear that the [Hatch-Waxman Act] was not designed to allow deals between brand and generic companies to delay competition”); 146 Cong. Rec. 18774 (2000) (remarks of Rep. Waxman) (introducing bill to deter companies from “strik[ing] collusive agreements to trade multimillion dol- lar payoffs by the brand company for delays in the introduction of lower cost, generic alternatives”). B The Eleventh Circuit’s conclusion finds some degree of support in a general legal policy favoring the settlement of disputes. 677 F. 3d, at 1313–1314. See also Schering-Plough Corp. v. FTC, 402 F. 3d 1056, 1074–1075 (2005) (same); In re Tamoxifen Citrate, 466 F. 3d, at 202 (noting public’s “ ‘strong interest in settlement’ ” of complex and expensive cases). The Circuit’s related underlying practical concern consists of its fear that antitrust scrutiny of a reverse payment agreement would require the parties to litigate the validity of the patent in order to demonstrate what would have happened to competition in the absence of the settlement. Any such litigation will prove time consuming, complex, and expensive. The antitrust game, the Circuit may believe, would not be worth that litigation candle. We recognize the value of settlements and the patent litigation problem. But we nonetheless conclude that this patent-related factor should not determine the result here. Rather, five sets of considerations lead us to conclude that the FTC should have been given the opportunity to prove its antitrust claim. First, the specific restraint at issue has the “potential for genuine adverse effects on competition.” Indiana Federation of Dentists, 476 U. S., at 460–461 (citing 7 Areeda ¶1511, at 429 (1986)). The payment in effect amounts to a purchase by the patentee of the exclusive right to sell its product, a right it already claims but would lose if the patent litigation were to continue and the patent were held invalid or not infringed by the generic product. Suppose, for example, that the exclusive right to sell produces $50 million in supracompetitive profits per year for the patentee. And suppose further that the patent has 10 more years to run. Continued litigation, if it results in patent invalidation or a finding of noninfringement, could cost the patentee $500 million in lost revenues, a sum that then would flow in large part to consumers in the form of lower prices. We concede that settlement on terms permitting the patent challenger to enter the market before the patent expires would also bring about competition, again to the consumer’s benefit. But settlement on the terms said by the FTC to be at issue here—payment in return for staying out of the market—simply keeps prices at patentee-set levels, potentially producing the full patent-related $500 million monopoly return while dividing that return between the challenged patentee and the patent challenger. The patentee and the challenger gain; the consumer loses. Indeed, there are indications that patentees sometimes pay a generic challenger a sum even larger than what the generic would gain in profits if it won the paragraph IV litigation and entered the market. See Hemphill, 81 N. Y. U. L. Rev., at 1581. See also Brief for 118 Law, Economics, and Business Professors et al. as Amici Curiae 25 (estimating that this is true of the settlement challenged here). The rationale behind a payment of this size cannot in every case be supported by traditional settlement considerations. The payment may instead provide strong evidence that the patentee seeks to induce the generic challenger to abandon its claim with a share of its monopoly profits that would otherwise be lost in the competitive market. But, one might ask, as a practical matter would the parties be able to enter into such an anticompetitive agreement? Would not a high reverse payment signal to other potential challengers that the patentee lacks confidence in its patent, thereby provoking additional challenges, perhaps too many for the patentee to “buy off?” Two special features of Hatch-Waxman mean that the an- swer to this question is “not necessarily so.” First, under Hatch-Waxman only the first challenger gains the special advantage of 180 days of an exclusive right to sell a generic version of the brand-name product. See Part I–A, supra. And as noted, that right has proved valuable—indeed, it can be worth several hundred million dollars. See Hemphill, supra, at 1579; Brief for Petitioner 6. Subsequent challengers cannot secure that exclusivity period, and thus stand to win significantly less than the first if they bring a successful paragraph IV challenge. That is, if subsequent litigation results in invalidation of the patent, or a ruling that the patent is not infringed, that litigation victory will free not just the challenger to compete, but all other potential competitors too (once they obtain FDA approval). The potential reward available to a subsequent challenger being significantly less, the patentee’s payment to the initial challenger (in return for not pressing the patent challenge) will not necessarily provoke subsequent challenges. Second, a generic that files a paragraph IV after learning that the first filer has settled will (if sued by the brand-name) have to wait out a stay period of (roughly) 30 months before the FDA may approve its application, just as the first filer did. See 21 U. S. C. §355(j)(5)(B)(iii). These features together mean that a reverse payment settlement with the first filer (or, as in this case, all of the initial filers) “removes from consideration the most motivated challenger, and the one closest to introducing competition.” Hemphill, supra, at 1586. The dissent may doubt these provisions matter, post, at 15–17, but scholars in the field tell us that “where only one party owns a patent, it is virtually unheard of outside of pharmaceuticals for that party to pay an accused infringer to settle the lawsuit.” 1 H. Hovenkamp, M. Janis, M. Lemley, & C. Leslie, IP and Antitrust §15.3, p. 15–45, n. 161 (2d ed. Supp. 2011). It may well be that Hatch-Waxman’s unique regulatory framework, including the special advantage that the 180-day exclusivity period gives to first filers, does much to explain why in this context, but not others, the patentee’s ordinary incentives to resist paying off challengers (i.e., the fear of provoking myriad other challengers) appear to be more frequently overcome. See 12 Areeda ¶2046, at 341 (3d ed. 2010) (noting that these provisions, no doubt unintentionally, have created special incentives for collusion). Second, these anticompetitive consequences will at least sometimes prove unjustified. See 7 id., ¶1504, at 410–415 (3d ed. 2010); California Dental Assn. v. FTC, 526 U. S., 756, 786–787 (1999) (Breyer, J., concurring in part and dissenting in part). As the FTC admits, offsetting or re- deeming virtues are sometimes present. Brief for Petitioner 37–39. The reverse payment, for example, may amount to no more than a rough approximation of the litigation expenses saved through the settlement. That payment may reflect compensation for other services that the generic has promised to perform—such as distributing the patented item or helping to develop a market for that item. There may be other justifications. Where a reverse payment reflects traditional settlement considerations, such as avoided litigation costs or fair value for services, there is not the same concern that a patentee is using its monopoly profits to avoid the risk of patent invalidation or a finding of noninfringement. In such cases, the parties may have provided for a reverse payment without having sought or brought about the anticompetitive consequences we mentioned above. But that possibility does not justify dismissing the FTC’s complaint. An antitrust defendant may show in the antitrust proceeding that legitimate justifications are present, thereby explaining the presence of the challenged term and showing the lawfulness of that term under the rule of reason. See, e.g., Indiana Federation of Dentists, supra, at 459; 7 Areeda ¶¶1504a–1504b, at 401–404 (3d ed. 2010). Third, where a reverse payment threatens to work unjustified anticompetitive harm, the patentee likely pos- sesses the power to bring that harm about in practice. See id., ¶1503, at 392–393. At least, the “size of the payment from a branded drug manufacturer to a prospective generic is itself a strong indicator of power”—namely, the power to charge prices higher than the competitive level. 12 id., ¶2046, at 351. An important patent itself helps to assure such power. Neither is a firm without that power likely to pay “large sums” to induce “others to stay out of its market.” Ibid. In any event, the Commission has referred to studies showing that reverse payment agreements are associated with the presence of higher-than-competitive profits—a strong indication of market power. See Brief for Petitioner 45. Fourth, an antitrust action is likely to prove more fea- sible administratively than the Eleventh Circuit believed. The Circuit’s holding does avoid the need to litigate the patent’s validity (and also, any question of infringement). But to do so, it throws the baby out with the bath water, and there is no need to take that drastic step. That is because it is normally not necessary to litigate patent validity to answer the antitrust question (unless, perhaps, to determine whether the patent litigation is a sham, see 677 F. 3d, at 1312). An unexplained large reverse payment itself would normally suggest that the patentee has serious doubts about the patent’s survival. And that fact, in turn, suggests that the payment’s objective is to maintain supracompetitive prices to be shared among the patentee and the challenger rather than face what might have been a competitive market—the very anticompetitive consequence that underlies the claim of antitrust unlawfulness. The owner of a particularly valuable patent might contend, of course, that even a small risk of invalidity justifies a large payment. But, be that as it may, the payment (if otherwise unexplained) likely seeks to prevent the risk of competition. And, as we have said, that consequence constitutes the relevant anticompetitive harm. In a word, the size of the unexplained reverse payment can provide a workable surrogate for a patent’s weakness, all without forcing a court to conduct a detailed exploration of the validity of the patent itself. 12 Areeda ¶2046, at 350–352. Fifth, the fact that a large, unjustified reverse payment risks antitrust liability does not prevent litigating parties from settling their lawsuit. They may, as in other industries, settle in other ways, for example, by allowing the generic manufacturer to enter the patentee’s market prior to the patent’s expiration, without the patentee paying the challenger to stay out prior to that point. Although the parties may have reasons to prefer settlements that include reverse payments, the relevant antitrust question is: What are those reasons? If the basic reason is a desire to maintain and to share patent-generated monopoly profits, then, in the absence of some other justification, the antitrust laws are likely to forbid the arrangement. In sum, a reverse payment, where large and unjustified, can bring with it the risk of significant anticompetitive effects; one who makes such a payment may be unable to explain and to justify it; such a firm or individual may well possess market power derived from the patent; a court, by examining the size of the payment, may well be able to assess its likely anticompetitive effects along with its potential justifications without litigating the validity of the patent; and parties may well find ways to settle pa- tent disputes without the use of reverse payments. In our view, these considerations, taken together, outweigh the single strong consideration—the desirability of settlements—that led the Eleventh Circuit to provide near-automatic antitrust immunity to reverse payment settlements. III The FTC urges us to hold that reverse payment settlement agreements are presumptively unlawful and that courts reviewing such agreements should proceed via a “quick look” approach, rather than applying a “rule of reason.” See California Dental, 526 U. S., at 775, n. 12 (“Quick-look analysis in effect” shifts to “a defendant the burden to show empirical evidence of procompetitive effects”); 7 Areeda ¶1508, at 435–440 (3d ed. 2010). We decline to do so. In California Dental, we held (unanimously) that abandonment of the “rule of reason” in favor of presumptive rules (or a “quick-look” approach) is appropriate only where “an observer with even a rudimentary understanding of economics could conclude that the arrangements in question would have an anticompetitive effect on customers and markets.” 526 U. S., at 770; id., at 781 (Breyer, J., concurring in part and dissenting in part). We do not believe that reverse payment settlements, in the context we here discuss, meet this criterion. That is because the likelihood of a reverse payment bringing about anticompetitive effects depends upon its size, its scale in relation to the payor’s anticipated future litigation costs, its independence from other services for which it might represent payment, and the lack of any other convincing justification. The existence and degree of any anticompetitive consequence may also vary as among industries. These complexities lead us to conclude that the FTC must prove its case as in other rule-of-reason cases. To say this is not to require the courts to insist, contrary to what we have said, that the Commission need litigate the patent’s validity, empirically demonstrate the virtues or vices of the patent system, present every possible supporting fact or refute every possible pro-defense theory. As a leading antitrust scholar has pointed out, “ ‘[t]here is always something of a sliding scale in appraising reason-ableness,’ ” and as such “ ‘the quality of proof required should vary with the circumstances.’ ” California Dental, supra, at 780 (quoting with approval 7 Areeda ¶1507, at 402 (1986)). As in other areas of law, trial courts can structure antitrust litigation so as to avoid, on the one hand, the use of antitrust theories too abbreviated to permit proper analysis, and, on the other, consideration of every possible fact or theory irrespective of the minimal light it may shed on the basic question—that of the presence of sig-nificant unjustified anticompetitive consequences. See 7 id., ¶1508c, at 438–440. We therefore leave to the lower courts the structuring of the present rule-of-reason antitrust litigation. We reverse the judgment of the Eleventh Circuit. And we remand the case for further proceedings consistent with this opinion. It is so ordered. Justice Alito took no part in the consideration or decision of this case.

568.US.216

Under Georgia’s Hospital Authorities Law (Law), political subdivisions may create special-purpose public entities called hospital authorities to provide “for the operation and maintenance of needed health care facilities in the several counties and municipalities of th[e] state.” The Law permits authorities to “exercise public and essential governmental functions” and delegates to them numerous general powers, including the ability to acquire and lease hospitals and other public health facilities. Ga. Code Ann. §31–7–75. The Hospital Authority of Albany-Dougherty County (Authority) owns Phoebe Putney Memorial Hospital (Memorial), one of two hospitals in the county. The Authority formed two private nonprofit corporations to manage Memorial: Phoebe Putney Health System, Inc. (PPHS) and Phoebe Putney Memorial Hospital, Inc. (PPMH). After the Authority decided to purchase the second hospital in the county and lease it to a subsidiary of PPHS, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) issued an administrative complaint alleging that the transaction would substantially reduce competition in the market for acute-care hospital services, in violation of §5 of the Federal Trade Commission Act and §7 of the Clayton Act. The FTC and Georgia subsequently sued the Authority, PPHS, PPMH, and others (collectively respondents), seeking to enjoin the transaction pending administrative proceedings. The District Court denied the request for a preliminary injunction and granted respondents’ motion to dismiss, holding that respondents are immune from antitrust liability under the state-action doctrine. The Eleventh Circuit affirmed. It concluded that the Authority, as a local governmental entity, was entitled to state-action immunity because the challenged anticompetitive conduct was a foreseeable result of the Law. The court reasoned that the state legislature could have readily anticipated an anticompetitive effect, given the breadth of the powers delegated to hospital authorities, particularly leasing and acquisition powers that could lead to consolidation of hospital ownership. Held: Because Georgia has not clearly articulated and affirmatively expressed a policy allowing hospital authorities to make acquisitions that substantially lessen competition, state-action immunity does not apply. Pp. 6–19. (a) This Court recognized in Parker v. Brown, 317 U.S. 341, 350–352, that the federal antitrust laws do not prevent States from imposing market restraints “as an act of government . . . .” Under the state-action doctrine, immunity from federal antitrust law may extend to nonstate actors carrying out the State’s regulatory program. See, e.g., Patrick v. Burget, 486 U.S. 94, 99–100. But given the antitrust laws’ values of free enterprise and economic competition, “state-action immunity is disfavored,” FTC v. Ticor Title Ins. Co., 504 U.S. 621, 636, and is recognized only when it is clear that the challenged anticompetitive conduct is undertaken pursuant to the “State’s own” regulatory scheme, id., at 635. Immunity will attach only to activities of substate governmental entities that are undertaken pursuant to a “clearly articulated and affirmatively expressed” state policy to displace competition. Community Communications Co. v. Boulder, 455 U.S. 40, 52. A state legislature need not “expressly state” that intent, Hallie v. Eau Claire, 471 U.S. 34, 43, but the anticompetitive effect must have been the “foreseeable result” of what the State authorized, id., at 42. Pp. 6–9. (b) Respondents’ state-action immunity defense fails under the clear-articulation test because there is no evidence the State affirmatively contemplated that hospital authorities would displace competition by consolidating hospital ownership. The Authority’s powers, including its acquisition and leasing powers, mirror general powers routinely conferred by state law on private corporations. More is required to establish state-action immunity; the Authority must show that it has been delegated authority not just to act, but to act or regulate anticompetitively. Columbia v. Omni Outdoor Advertising, Inc., 499 U.S. 365, 372. In Boulder, this Court concluded that a Colorado law granting municipalities the power to enact ordinances governing local affairs did not satisfy the clear-articulation test, 455 U. S., at 55–56, because, when a State’s position “is one of mere neutrality respecting the municipal actions challenged as anticompetitive,” the State cannot be said to have “ ‘contemplated’ ” those anticompetitive actions, id., at 55. That principle controls here. Grants of general corporate power allowing substate governmental entities to participate in a competitive marketplace are typically used without raising federal antitrust concerns, so a State cannot be said to have contemplated that such powers will be used anticompetitively. Here, though the Law allows the Authority to acquire hospitals, it does not clearly articulate and affirmatively express a state policy empowering the Authority to make acquisitions of existing hospitals that will substantially lessen competition. Pp. 9–10. (c) In concluding otherwise, the Eleventh Circuit applied the concept of “foreseeability” too loosely. This Court, recognizing that no legislature “can be expected to catalog all of the anticipated effects” of a statute delegating authority to a substate governmental entity, Hallie, 471 U. S., at 43, has approached the clear-articulation inquiry practically, but without diluting the ultimate requirement that the State must have affirmatively contemplated the displacement of competition such that the challenged anticompetitive effects can be attributed to the “state itself,” Parker, 317 U. S., at 352. Thus, the Court has found a state policy to displace federal antitrust law was sufficiently expressed where the displacement of competition was the inherent, logical, or ordinary result of the exercise of authority delegated by the state legislature. In that scenario, the State must have foreseen and implicitly endorsed the anticompetitive effects as consistent with its policy goals. See Hallie, 471 U. S., at 41; Omni, 499 U. S., at 373. By contrast, when a State grants an entity a general power to act, it does so against the backdrop of federal antitrust law. Entities might transgress antitrust requirements by exercising their powers anticompetitively, but a reasonable legislature’s ability to anticipate that possibility falls well short of clearly articulating an affirmative state policy to displace competition. The Eleventh Circuit’s argument, echoed by respondents, that the case falls within the foreseeability standard used in Hallie and Omni is rejected. Pp. 11–14. (d) Respondents’ additional arguments are also unpersuasive. They contend that because hospital authorities are granted unique powers and responsibilities to fulfill Georgia’s objective of providing access to adequate and affordable health care, it was foreseeable that they would decide that the best way to serve their communities was to acquire an existing local hospital, instead of incurring the additional expense and regulatory burden of expanding, or constructing, a facility. But even though the authorities may differ from private corporations offering hospital services, neither the Law nor any other state-law provision clearly articulates a state policy allowing authorities to exercise their general corporate powers without regard to anticompetitive effects. Respondents also contend that when there is doubt about whether the clear-articulation test is satisfied, federal courts should err on the side of recognizing immunity to avoid improper interference with state policy choices. But the Law here is not ambiguous, and respondents’ suggestion is inconsistent with the principle that “state-action immunity is disfavored,” Ticor Title, 504 U. S., at 636. Pp. 14–19. 663 F.3d 1369, reversed and remanded. Sotomayor, J., delivered the opinion for a unanimous Court.

Under this Court’s state-action immunity doctrine, when a local governmental entity acts pursuant to a clearly articulated and affirmatively expressed state policy to displace competition, it is exempt from scrutiny under the federal antitrust laws. In this case, we must decide whether a Georgia law that creates special-purpose public entities called hospital authorities and gives those entities general corporate powers, including the power to acquire hospitals, clearly articulates and affirmatively expresses a state policy to permit acquisitions that substantially lessen competition. Because Georgia’s grant of general cor- porate powers to hospital authorities does not include permission to use those powers anticompetitively, we hold that the clear-articulation test is not satisfied and state-action immunity does not apply. I A In 1941, the State of Georgia amended its Constitution to allow political subdivisions to provide health care services. 1941 Ga. Laws p. 50. The State concurrently enacted the Hospital Authorities Law (Law), id., at 241, Ga. Code Ann. §31–7–70 et seq. (2012), “to provide a mechanism for the operation and maintenance of needed health care facilities in the several counties and municipalities of th[e] state.” §31–7–76(a). “The purpose of the constitutional provision and the statute based thereon was to . . . create an organization which could carry out and make more workable the duty which the State owed to its in- digent sick.” DeJarnette v. Hospital Auth. of Albany, 195 Ga. 189, 200, 23 S.E.2d 716, 723 (1942) (citations omitted). As amended, the Law authorizes each county and municipality, and certain combinations of counties or municipalities, to create “a public body corporate and politic” called a “hospital authority.” §§31–7–72(a), (d). Hospital authorities are governed by 5- to 9-member boards that are appointed by the governing body of the county or municipality in their area of operation. §31–7–72(a). Under the Law, a hospital authority “exercise[s] public and essential governmental functions” and is delegated “all the powers necessary or convenient to carry out and effectuate” the Law’s purposes. §31–7–75. Giving more content to that general delegation, the Law enumerates 27 powers conferred upon hospital authorities, including the power “[t]o acquire by purchase, lease, or otherwise and to operate projects,” §31–7–75(4), which are defined to include hospitals and other public health facilities, §31–7–71(5); “[t]o construct, reconstruct, improve, alter, and repair projects,” §31–7–75(5); “[t]o lease . . . for operation by others any project” provided certain conditions are satisfied, §31–7–75(7); and “[t]o establish rates and charges for the services and use of the facilities of the authority,” §31–7–75(10). Hospital authorities may not operate or construct any project for profit, and accordingly they must set rates so as only to cover operating expenses and create reasonable reserves. §31–7–77. B In the same year that the Law was adopted, the city of Albany and Dougherty County established the Hospital Authority of Albany-Dougherty County (Authority) and the Authority promptly acquired Phoebe Putney Memorial Hospital (Memorial), which has been in operation in Al- bany since 1911. In 1990, the Authority restructured its operations by forming two private nonprofit corporations to manage Memorial: Phoebe Putney Health System, Inc. (PPHS), and its subsidiary, Phoebe Putney Memorial Hospital, Inc. (PPMH). The Authority leased Memorial to PPMH for $1 per year for 40 years. Under the lease, PPMH has exclusive authority over the operation of Memorial, including the ability to set rates for services. Consistent with §31–7–75(7), PPMH is subject to lease conditions that require provision of care to the indigent sick and limit its rate of return. Memorial is one of two hospitals in Dougherty County. The second, Palmyra Medical Center (Palmyra), was estab- lished in Albany in 1971 and is located just two miles from Memorial. At the time suit was brought in this case, Palmyra was operated by a national for-profit hospital network, HCA, Inc. (HCA). Together, Memorial and Palmyra account for 86 percent of the market for acute-care hospital services provided to commercial health care plans and their customers in the six counties surrounding Al- bany. Memorial accounts for 75 percent of that market on its own. In 2010, PPHS began discussions with HCA about acquiring Palmyra. Following negotiations, PPHS presented the Authority with a plan under which the Authority would purchase Palmyra with PPHS controlled funds and then lease Palmyra to a PPHS subsidiary for $1 per year under the Memorial lease agreement. The Authority unanimously approved the transaction. The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) shortly there- after issued an administrative complaint alleging that the proposed purchase-and-lease transaction would create a virtual monopoly and would substantially reduce competition in the market for acute-care hospital services, in violation of §5 of the Federal Trade Commission Act, 38Stat. 719, 15 U. S. C. §45, and §7 of the Clayton Act, 38Stat. 731, 15 U. S. C. §18. The FTC, along with the State of Georgia,[1] subsequently filed suit against the Authority, HCA, Palmyra, PPHS, PPMH, and the new PPHS subsidiary created to manage Palmyra (collectively respondents), seeking to enjoin the transaction pending administrative proceedings. See 15 U. S. C. §§26, 53(b). The United States District Court for the Middle District of Georgia denied the request for a preliminary injunction and granted respondents’ motion to dismiss. 793 F. Supp. 2d 1356 (2011). The District Court held that respondents are immune from antitrust liability under the state-action doctrine. See id., at 1366–1381. The United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit affirmed. 663 F.3d 1369 (2011). As an initial matter, the court “agree[d] with the [FTC] that, on the facts alleged, the joint operation of Memorial and Palmyra would substantially lessen competition or tend to create, if not create, a monopoly.” Id., at 1375. But the court con-cluded that the transaction was immune from antitrust liability. See id., at 1375–1378. The Court of Appeals explained that as a local governmental entity, the Authority was entitled to state-action immunity if the challenged anticompetitive conduct was a “ ‘foreseeable result’ ” of Georgia’s legislation. Id., at 1375. According to the court, anticompetitive conduct is foreseeable if it could have been “ ‘reasonably anticipated’ ” by the state legislature; it is not necessary, the court reasoned, for an anticompetitive effect to “ be ‘one that ordinarily occurs, routinely occurs, or is inherently likely to occur as a result of the empowering legislation.’ ” Id., at 1375–1376 (quoting FTC v. Hospital Bd. of Directors of Lee Cty., 38 F.3d 1184, 1188, 1190–1191 (CA11 1994)). Applying that standard, the Court of Appeals concluded that the Law contemplated the anticompetitive conduct challenged by the FTC. The court noted the “impressive breadth” of the powers given to hospital authorities, which include traditional powers of private corporations and a few additional capabilities, such as the power to exercise eminent domain. See 663 F. 3d, at 1376. More specifically, the court reasoned that the Georgia Legislature must have anticipated that the grant of power to hospital authorities to acquire and lease projects would produce anticompetitive effects because “[f]oreseeably, acquisitions could consolidate ownership of competing hospitals, eliminating competition between them.” Id., at 1377.[2] The Court of Appeals also rejected the FTC’s alternative argument that state-action immunity did not apply because the transaction in substance involved a transfer of control over Palmyra from one private entity to another, with the Authority acting as a mere conduit for the sale to evade antitrust liability. See id., at 1376, n. 12. We granted certiorari on two questions: whether the Georgia Legislature, through the powers it vested in hospital authorities, clearly articulated and affirmatively expressed a state policy to displace competition in the market for hospital services; and if so, whether state-action immunity is nonetheless inapplicable as a result of the Authority’s minimal participation in negotiating the terms of the sale of Palymra and the Authority’s limited supervision of the two hospitals’ operations. See 567 U. S. ___ (2012). Concluding that the answer to the first question is “no,” we reverse without reaching the second question.[3] II In Parker v. Brown, 317 U.S. 341 (1943), this Court held that because “nothing in the language of the Sherman Act [ 15 U. S. C. §1 et seq.] or in its history” suggested that Congress intended to restrict the sovereign capacity of the States to regulate their economies, the Act should not be read to bar States from imposing market restraints “as an act of government.” Id., at 350, 352. Following Parker, we have held that under certain circumstances, immunity from the federal antitrust laws may extend to nonstate actors carrying out the State’s regulatory program. See Patrick v. Burget, 486 U.S. 94, 99–100 (1988); Southern Motor Carriers Rate Conference, Inc. v. United States, 471 U.S. 48, 56–57 (1985). But given the fundamental national values of free enterprise and economic competition that are embodied in the federal antitrust laws, “state-action immunity is disfavored, much as are repeals by implication.” FTC v. Ticor Title Ins. Co., 504 U.S. 621, 636 (1992). Consistent with this preference, we recognize state-action immunity only when it is clear that the challenged anticompetitive conduct is undertaken pursuant to a regulatory scheme that “is the State’s own.” Id., at 635. Accordingly, “[c]loser analysis is required when the activity at issue is not directly that of” the State itself, but rather “is carried out by others pursuant to state authorization.” Hoover v. Ronwin, 466 U.S. 558, 568 (1984). When determining whether the anticompetitive acts of private parties are entitled to immunity, we employ a two-part test, requiring first that “the challenged restraint . . . be one clearly articu- lated and affirmatively expressed as state policy,” and second that “the policy . . . be actively supervised by the State.” California Retail Liquor Dealers Assn. v. Midcal Aluminum, Inc., 445 U.S. 97, 105 (1980) (internal quotation marks omitted). This case involves allegedly anticompetitive conduct undertaken by a substate governmental entity. Because municipalities and other political subdivisions are not themselves sovereign, state-action immunity under Parker does not apply to them directly. See Columbia v. Omni Outdoor Advertising, Inc., 499 U.S. 365, 370 (1991); Lafay- ette v. Louisiana Power & Light Co., 435 U.S. 389, 411–413 (1978) (plurality opinion). At the same time, however, substate governmental entities do receive immunity from antitrust scrutiny when they act “pursuant to state policy to displace competition with regulation or monopoly public service.” Id., at 413.[4] This rule “preserves to the States their freedom . . . to use their municipalities to administer state regulatory policies free of the inhibitions of the federal antitrust laws without at the same time permitting purely parochial interests to disrupt the Nation’s free-market goals.” Id., at 415–416. As with private parties, immunity will only attach to the activities of local governmental entities if they are undertaken pursuant to a “clearly articulated and affirmatively expressed” state policy to displace competition. Community Communications Co. v. Boulder, 455 U.S. 40, 52 (1982). But unlike private parties, such entities are not subject to the “active state supervision requirement” because they have less of an incentive to pursue their own self-interest under the guise of implementing state policies. Hallie v. Eau Claire, 471 U.S. 34, 46–47 (1985).[5] “[T]o pass the ‘clear articulation’ test,” a state legislature need not “expressly state in a statute or its legislative history that the legislature intends for the delegated action to have anticompetitive effects.” Id., at 43. Rather, we explained in Hallie that state-action immunity applies if the anticompetitive effect was the “ foreseeable result” of what the State authorized. Id., at 42. We applied that principle in Omni, where we concluded that the clear-articulation test was satisfied because the suppression of competition in the billboard market was the foreseeable result of a state statute authorizing municipalities to adopt zoning ordinances regulating the construction of buildings and other structures. 499 U. S., at 373. III A Applying the clear-articulation test to the Law before us, we conclude that respondents’ claim for state-action immunity fails because there is no evidence the State affirmatively contemplated that hospital authorities would displace competition by consolidating hospital ownership. The acquisition and leasing powers exercised by the Authority in the challenged transaction, which were the principal powers relied upon by the Court of Appeals in finding state-action immunity, see 663 F. 3d, at 1377, mirror general powers routinely conferred by state law upon private corporations.[6] Other powers possessed by hospital authorities that the Court of Appeals characterized as having “impressive breadth,” id., at 1376, also fit this pattern, including the ability to make and execute contracts, §31–7–75(3), to set rates for services, §31–7–75(10), to sue and be sued, §31–7–75(1), to borrow money, §31–7–75(17), and the residual authority to exercise any or all powers possessed by private corporations, §31–7–75(21). Our case law makes clear that state-law authority to act is insufficient to establish state-action immunity; the substate governmental entity must also show that it has been delegated authority to act or regulate anticompetitively. See Omni, 499 U. S., at 372. In Boulder, we held that Colorado’s Home Rule Amendment allowing municipalities to govern local affairs did not satisfy the clear-articulation test. 455 U. S., at 55–56. There was no doubt in that case that the city had authority as a matter of state law to pass an ordinance imposing a moratorium on a cable provider’s expansion of service. Id., at 45–46. But we rejected the proposition that “the general grant of power to enact ordinances necessarily implies state authorization to enact specific anticompetitive ordinances” because such an approach “would wholly eviscerate the concepts of ‘clear articulation and affirmative expression’ that our precedents require.” Id., at 56. We explained that when a State’s position “is one of mere neutrality respecting the municipal actions challenged as anticompetitive,” the State cannot be said to have “ ‘contemplated’ ” those anticompetitive actions. Id., at 55. The principle articulated in Boulder controls this case. Grants of general corporate power that allow substate governmental entities to participate in a competitive marketplace should be, can be, and typically are used in ways that raise no federal antitrust concerns. As a result, a State that has delegated such general powers “can hardly be said to have ‘contemplated’ ” that they will be used anticompetitively. Ibid. See also 1A P. Areeda & H. Hovenkamp, Antitrust Law ¶225a, p. 131 (3d ed. 2006) (hereinafter Areeda & Hovenkamp) (“When a state grants power to an inferior entity, it presumably grants the power to do the thing contemplated, but not to do so anticompetitively”). Thus, while the Law does allow the Authority to acquire hospitals, it does not clearly articulate and affirmatively express a state policy empowering the Authority to make acquisitions of existing hospitals that will substantially lessen competition. B In concluding otherwise, and specifically in reasoning that the Georgia Legislature “must have anticipated” that acquisitions by hospital authorities “would produce anticompetitive effects,” 663 F. 3d, at 1377, the Court of Appeals applied the concept of “foreseeability” from our clear-articulation test too loosely. In Hallie, we recognized that it would “embod[y] an unrealistic view of how legislatures work and of how statutes are written” to require state legislatures to explicitly authorize specific anticompetitive effects before state-action immunity could apply. 471 U. S., at 43. “No legislature,” we explained, “can be expected to catalog all of the anticipated effects” of a statute delegating authority to a substate governmental entity. Ibid. Instead, we have approached the clear-articulation inquiry more practically, but without diluting the ultimate requirement that the State must have affirmatively contemplated the displacement of competition such that the challenged anticompetitive effects can be attributed to the “state itself.” Parker, 317 U. S., at 352. Thus, we have concluded that a state policy to displace federal antitrust law was sufficiently expressed where the displacement of competition was the inherent, logical, or ordinary result of the exercise of authority delegated by the state legislature. In that scenario, the State must have foreseen and implicitly endorsed the anticompetitive effects as consistent with its policy goals. For example, in Hallie, Wisconsin statutory law regulating the municipal provision of sewage services expressly permitted cities to limit their service to surrounding unincorporated areas. See 471 U. S., at 41. While unincorporated towns alleged that the city’s exercise of that power constituted an unlawful tying arrangement, an unlawful refusal to deal, and an abuse of monopoly power, we had no trouble concluding that these alleged anticompetitive effects were affirmatively contemplated by the State because it was “clear” that they “logically would result” from the grant of authority. Id., at 42. As described by the Wisconsin Supreme Court, the state legislature “ ‘viewed annexation by the city of a surrounding unincorporated area as a reasonable quid pro quo that a city could require before extending sewer services to the area.’ ” Id., at 44–45, n. 8 (quoting Hallie v. Chippewa Falls, 105 Wis. 2d 533, 540–541, 314 N.W.2d 321, 325 (1982)). Without immunity, federal antitrust law could have undermined that arrangement and taken completely off the table the policy option that the State clearly intended for cities to have. Similarly, in Omni, where the respondents alleged that the city had used its zoning power to protect an incumbent billboard provider against competition, we found that the clear-articulation test was easily satisfied even though the state statutes delegating zoning authority to the city did not explicitly permit the suppression of competition. We explained that “[t]he very purpose of zoning regulation is to displace unfettered business freedom in a manner that regularly has the effect of preventing normal acts of competition” and that a zoning ordinance regulating the size, location, and spacing of billboards “necessarily protects existing billboards against some competition from newcomers.” 499 U. S., at 373. Other cases in which we have found a “clear articulation” of the State’s intent to displace competition without an explicit statement have also involved authorizations to act or regulate in ways that were inherently anticompetitive.[7] By contrast, “simple permission to play in a market” does not “foreseeably entail permission to roughhouse in that market unlawfully.” Kay Elec. Cooperative v. Newkirk, 647 F.3d 1039, 1043 (CA10 2011). When a State grants some entity general power to act, whether it is a private corporation or a public entity like the Authority, it does so against the backdrop of federal antitrust law. See Ticor Title, 504 U. S., at 632. Of course, both private parties and local governmental entities conceivably may transgress antitrust requirements by exercising their general powers in anticompetitive ways. But a reasonable legislature’s ability to anticipate that (potentially undesirable) possibility falls well short of clearly articulating an affirmative state policy to displace competition with a regulatory alternative. Believing that this case falls within the scope of the foreseeability standard applied in Hallie and Omni, the Court of Appeals stated that “[i]t defies imagination to suppose the [state] legislature could have believed that every geographic market in Georgia was so replete with hospitals that authorizing acquisitions by the authorities could have no serious anticompetitive consequences.” 663 F. 3d, at 1377. Respondents echo this argument, noting that each of Georgia’s 159 counties covers a small geographical area and that most of them are sparsely populated, with nearly three-quarters having fewer than 50,000 residents as of the 2010 Census. Brief for Respondents 46. Even accepting, arguendo, the premise that facts about a market could make the anticompetitive use of general corporate powers “foreseeable,” we reject the Court of Appeals’ and respondents’ conclusion because only a relatively small subset of the conduct permitted as a matter of state law by Ga. Code Ann. §31–7–75(4) has the potential to negatively affect competition. Contrary to the Court of Appeals’ and respondents’ characterization, §31–7–75(4) is not principally concerned with hospital authorities’ ability to acquire multiple hospitals and consolidate their operations. Section 31–7–75(4) allows authorities to acquire “projects,” which includes not only “hospitals,” but also “health care facilities, dormitories, office buildings, clinics, housing accommodations, nursing homes, rehabilitation centers, extended care facilities, and other public health facilities.” §31–7–71(5). Narrowing our focus to the market for hospital services, the power to acquire hospitals still does not ordinarily produce anticompetitive effects. Section 31–7–75(4) was, after all, the source of power for newly formed hospital authorities to acquire a hospital in the first instance—a transaction that was unlikely to raise any antitrust concerns even in small markets because the transfer of ownership from private to public hands does not increase market concentration. See 1A Areeda & Hovenkamp ¶224e(c), at 126 (“[S]ubstitution of one monopolist for another is not an antitrust violation”). While subsequent acquisitions by authorities have the potential to reduce competition, they will raise federal antitrust concerns only in markets that are large enough to support more than one hospital but sufficiently small that the merger of competitors would lead to a significant increase in market concentration. This is too slender a reed to support the Court of Appeals’ and respondents’ inference. IV A Taking a somewhat different approach than the Court of Appeals, respondents insist that the Law should not be read as a mere authorization for hospital authorities to participate in the hospital-services market and exercise general corporate powers. Rather, they contend that hos- pital authorities are granted unique powers and respon- sibilities to fulfill the State’s objective of providing all residents with access to adequate and affordable health and hospital care. See, e.g., Ga. Code Ann. §31–7–75(22). Respondents argue that in view of hospital authorities’ statutory objective, their specific attributes, and the regulatory context in which they operate, it was foreseeable that authorities facing capacity constraints would decide they could best serve their communities’ needs by acquiring an existing local hospital rather than incur the additional expense and regulatory burden of expanding a facility or constructing a new one. See Brief for Respondents 33–39. In support of this argument, respondents observe that hospital authorities are simultaneously empowered to act in ways private entities cannot while also being subject to significant regulatory constraints. On the power side, as the Court of Appeals noted, 663 F. 3d, at 1376–1377, hospital authorities may acquire through eminent domain property that is “essential to the [authority’s] purposes.” §31–7–75(12).[8] On the restraint side, hospital authorities are managed by a publicly accountable board, §§31–7–74.1, 31–7–76, they must operate on a nonprofit basis, §31–7–77, and they may only lease a project for others to operate after determining that doing so will promote the community’s public health needs and that the lessee will not receive more than a reasonable rate of return on its investment, §31–7–75(7). Moreover, hospital authorities operate within a broader regulatory context in which Georgia requires any party seeking to establish or significantly expand certain medical facilities, including hospitals, to obtain a certificate of need from state regulators. See §31–6–40 et seq.[9] We have no doubt that Georgia’s hospital authorities differ materially from private corporations that offer hospital services. But nothing in the Law or any other provision of Georgia law clearly articulates a state policy to allow authorities to exercise their general corporate powers, including their acquisition power, without regard to negative effects on competition. The state legislature’s objective of improving access to affordable health care does not logically suggest that the State intended that hospital authorities pursue that end through mergers that create monopolies. Nor do the restrictions imposed on hospital authorities, including the requirement that they operate on a nonprofit basis, reveal such a policy. Particularly in light of our national policy favoring competition, these restrictions should be read to reflect more modest aims. The legislature may have viewed profit generation as incompatible with its goal of providing care for the indigent sick. In addition, the legislature may have believed that some hospital authorities would operate in markets with characteristics of natural monopolies, in which case the legislature could not rely on competition to control prices. See Cantor v. Detroit Edison Co., 428 U.S. 579, 595–596 (1976). We recognize that Georgia, particularly through its certificate of need requirement, does limit competition in the market for hospital services in some respects. But regulation of an industry, and even the authorization of discrete forms of anticompetitive conduct pursuant to a regulatory structure, does not establish that the State has affirmatively contemplated other forms of anticompetitive conduct that are only tangentially related. Thus, in Goldfarb v. Virginia State Bar, 421 U.S. 773 (1975), we re- jected a state-action defense to price-fixing claims where a state bar adopted a compulsory minimum fee schedule. Although the State heavily regulated the practice of law, we found no evidence that it had adopted a policy to displace price competition among lawyers. Id., at 788–792. And in Cantor, we concluded that a state commission’s regulation of rates for electricity charged by a public utility did not confer state-action immunity for a claim that the utility’s free distribution of light bulbs restrained trade in the light-bulb market. 428 U. S., at 596. In this case, the fact that Georgia imposes limits on entry into the market for medical services, which apply to both hospital authorities and private corporations, does not clearly articulate a policy favoring the consolidation of existing hospitals that are engaged in active competition. Accord, FTC v. University Health, Inc., 938 F.2d 1206, 1213, n. 13 (CA11 1991). As to the Authority’s eminent domain power, it was not exercised here and we do not find it relevant to the question whether the State authorized hospital authorities to consolidate market power through potentially anticompetitive acquisitions of existing hospitals. B Finally, respondents contend that to the extent there is any doubt about whether the clear-articulation test is satisfied in this context, federal courts should err on the side of recognizing immunity to avoid improper interference with state policy choices. See Brief for Respondents 43–44. But we do not find the Law ambiguous on the question whether it clearly articulates a policy authorizing anticompetitive acquisitions; it does not. More fundamentally, respondents’ suggestion is inconsistent with the principle that “state-action immunity is disfavored.” Ticor Title, 504 U. S., at 636. Parker and its progeny are premised on an understanding that respect for the States’ coordinate role in government counsels against reading the federal antitrust laws to restrict the States’ sovereign capacity to regulate their economies and provide services to their citizens. But federalism and state sovereignty are poorly served by a rule of construction that would allow “essential national policies” embodied in the antitrust laws to be displaced by state delegations of authority “intended to achieve more limited ends.” 504 U. S., at 636. As an amici brief filed by 20 States in support of the FTC contends, loose application of the clear-articulation test would attach significant unintended consequences to States’ frequent delegations of corporate authority to local bodies, effectively requiring States to disclaim any intent to displace competition to avoid inadvertently authorizing anticompetitive conduct. Brief for State of Illinois et al. as Amici Curiae 12–17; see also Surgical Care Center of Hammond, L. C. v. Hospital Serv. Dist. No. 1, 171 F.3d 231, 236 (CA5 1999) (en banc). We decline to set such a trap for unwary state legislatures. * * * We hold that Georgia has not clearly articulated and affirmatively expressed a policy to allow hospital authorities to make acquisitions that substantially lessen competition. The judgment of the Court of Appeals is reversed, and the case is remanded for further proceedings consistent with this opinion. It is so ordered. Notes 1 Georgia did not join the notice of appeal filed by the FTC and is no longer a party in the case. 2 In tension with the Court of Appeals’ decision, other Circuits have held in analogous circumstances that substate governmental entities exercising general corporate powers were not entitled to state-action immunity. See Kay Elec. Cooperative v. Newkirk, 647 F.3d 1039, 1043, 1045–1047 (CA10 2011); First Am. Title Co. v. Devaugh, 480 F.3d 438, 456–457 (CA6 2007); Surgical Care Center of Hammond, L. C. v. Hospital Serv. Dist. No. 1, 171 F.3d 231, 235–236 (CA5 1999) (en banc); Lancaster Community Hospital v. Antelope Valley Hospital Dist., 940 F.2d 397, 402–403 (CA9 1991). 3 After issuing its decision, the Court of Appeals dissolved the temporary injunction that it had granted pending appeal and the transaction closed. The case is not moot, however, because the District Court on remand could enjoin respondents from taking actions that would disturb the status quo and impede a final remedial decree. See Knox v. Service Employees, 567 U. S. ___, ___ (2012) (slip op., at 7) (“A case becomes moot only when it is impossible for a court to grant any effectual relief whatever to the prevailing party” (internal quotation marks omitted)); see also FTC v. Whole Foods Market, Inc., 548 F.3d 1028, 1033–1034 (CADC 2008) (opinion of Brown, J.) (rejecting a mootness argument in a similar posture). 4 An amicus curiae contends that we should recognize and applya “market participant” exception to state-action immunity because Georgia’s hospital authorities engage in proprietary activities. Brief for National Federation of Independent Business 6–24; see also Columbia v. Omni Outdoor Advertising, Inc., 499 U.S. 365, 374–375, 379 (1991) (leaving open the possibility of a market participant exception). Because this argument was not raised by the parties or passed on by the lower courts, we do not consider it. United Parcel Service, Inc. v. Mitchell, 451 U.S. 56, 60, n. 2 (1981). 5 The Eleventh Circuit has held that while Georgia’s hospital authorities are “unique entities” that lie “somewhere between a local, general-purpose governing body (such as a city or county) and a corporation,” they qualify as “an instrumentality, agency, or ‘political subdivision’ of Georgia for purposes of state action immunity.” Crosby v. Hospital Auth. of Valdosta & Lowndes Cty., 93 F.3d 1515, 1524–1526 (1996). The FTC has not challenged that characterization of Georgia’s hospital authorities, and we accordingly operate from the assumption that hos-pital authorities are akin to political subdivisions. 6 Compare Ga. Code Ann. §§31–7–75(4), (7) (2012) (authorizing hospital authorities to acquire projects and enter lease agreements), with §14–2–302 (outlining general powers of private corporations in Georgia, which include the ability to acquire and lease property), §14–2–1101 (allowing corporate mergers), and §§14–2–1201, 14–2–1202 (allowing sales of corporate assets to other corporations). 7 See Southern Motor Carriers Rate Conference, Inc. v. United States, 471 U.S. 48, 64, 65, and n. 25 (1985) (finding that a state commission’s decision to encourage collective ratemaking by common carriers was entitled to state-action immunity where the legislature had left “[t]he details of the inherently anticompetitive rate-setting process . . . tothe agency’s discretion”); Hallie v. Eau Claire, 471 U.S. 34, 42 (1985) (describing New Motor Vehicle Bd. of Cal. v. Orrin W. Fox Co., 439 U.S. 96 (1978), as a case where there was not an “express intent to displace the antitrust laws” but where the regulatory structure at issue restricting the establishment or relocation of automobile dealerships “inher-ently displaced unfettered business freedom” (internal quotation marks and brackets omitted)). 8 The Court of Appeals also invoked Ga. Code Ann. §31–7–84, which provides that hospital authorities do not have the power to assess taxes, but allows the applicable governing body in the authority’s area of operation to impose taxes to cover the authority’s expenses. See 663 F. 3d, at 1377. This provision applies in cases in which the county or municipality has entered into a contract with a hospital authority for the use of its facilities. See §§31–7–84(a), 31–7–85. No such contract exists in this case, and respondents have not relied on this provision in briefing or argument before us. 9 Georgia first adopted certificate of need legislation in 1978 in part to comply with a since-repealed federal law conditioning federal funding for a number of health care programs on a State’s enactment of certificate of need laws. See 1978 Ga. Laws p. 941, as amended, Ga. Code Ann. §31–6–40 et seq. (2012); see also National Health Planning and Resources Development Act of 1974, 88Stat. 2246, repealed by §701(a), 100Stat. 3799. Many other States also have certificate of need laws. See National Conference of State Legislatures, Certificate of Need: State Health Laws and Programs, online at http://www.ncsl.org/issues-research/health/con-certificate-of-need-state-laws.aspx (as visited Feb. 15, 2013, and available in Clerk of Court’s case file) (indicating in “States with CON Programs” table that 35 States retained some type of certificate of need program as of December 2011 while 15 other States had such programs but have repealed them).

568.US.442

The Investment Advisers Act makes it illegal for investment advisers to defraud their clients, 15 U. S. C. §§80b–6(1), (2), and authorizes the Securities and Exchange Commission to bring enforcement actions against investment advisers who violate the Act, or against individuals who aid and abet such violations, §80b–9(d). If the SEC seeks civil penalties as part of those actions, it must file suit “within five years from the date when the claim first accrued,” pursuant to a general statute of limitations that governs many penalty provisions throughout the U. S. Code, 28 U. S. C. §2462. In 2008, the SEC sought civil penalties from petitioners Alpert and Gabelli. The complaint alleged that they aided and abetted investment adviser fraud from 1999 until 2002. Petitioners moved to dismiss, arguing in part that the civil penalty claim was untimely. Invoking the five-year statute of limitations in §2462, they pointed out that the complaint alleged illegal activity up until August 2002 but was not filed until April 2008. The District Court agreed and dismissed the civil penalty claim as time barred. The Second Circuit reversed, accepting the SEC’s argument that because the underlying violations sounded in fraud, the “discovery rule” applied, meaning that the statute of limitations did not begin to run until the SEC discovered or reasonably could have discovered the fraud. Held: The five-year clock in §2462 begins to tick when the fraud occurs, not when it is discovered. Pp. 4–11. (a) This is the most natural reading of the statute. “In common parlance a right accrues when it comes into existence.” United States v. Lindsay, 346 U.S. 568, 569. The “standard rule” is that a claim accrues “when the plaintiff has ‘ “a complete and present cause of action.” ’ ” Wallace v. Kato, 549 U.S. 384, 388. Such an understanding appears in cases and dictionaries from the 19th century, when the predecessor to §2462 was enacted. And this reading sets a fixed date when exposure to the specified Government enforcement efforts ends, advancing “the basic policies of all limitations provisions: repose, elimination of stale claims, and certainty about a plaintiff’s opportunity for recovery and a defendant’s potential liabilities.” Rotella v. Wood, 528 U.S. 549, 555. Pp. 4–5. (b) The Government nonetheless argues that the discovery rule should apply here. That doctrine is an “exception” to the standard rule, and delays accrual “until a plaintiff has ‘discovered’ ” his cause of action. Merck & Co. v. Reynolds, 559 U. S. ___, ___. It arose from the recognition that “something different was needed in the case of fraud, where a defendant’s deceptive conduct may prevent a plaintiff from even knowing that he or she has been defrauded.” Ibid. Thus “where a plaintiff has been injured by fraud and ‘remains in ignorance of it without any fault or want of diligence or care on his part, the bar of the statute does not begin to run until the fraud is discovered.’ ” Holmberg v. Armbrecht, 327 U.S. 392, 397. This Court, however, has never applied the discovery rule in this context, where the plaintiff is not a defrauded victim seeking recompense, but is instead the Government bringing an enforcement action for civil penalties. The Government’s case is not saved by Exploration Co. v. United States, 247 U.S. 435. There, the discovery rule was applied in favor of the Government, but the Government was itself a victim; it had been defrauded and was suing to recover its loss. It was not bringing an enforcement action for penalties. There are good reasons why the fraud discovery rule has not been extended to Government civil penalty enforcement actions. The discovery rule exists in part to preserve the claims of parties who have no reason to suspect fraud. The Government is a different kind of plaintiff. The SEC’s very purpose, for example, is to root out fraud, and it has many legal tools at hand to aid in that pursuit. The Government in these types of cases also seeks a different type of relief. The discovery rule helps to ensure that the injured receive recompense, but civil penalties go beyond compensation, are intended to punish, and label defendants wrongdoers. Emphasizing the importance of time limits on penalty actions, Chief Justice Marshall admonished that it “would be utterly repugnant to the genius of our laws” if actions for penalties could “be brought at any distance of time.” Adams v. Woods, 2 Cranch 336, 342. Yet grafting the discovery rule onto §2462 would raise similar concerns. It would leave defendants exposed to Government enforcement action not only for five years after their misdeeds, but for an additional uncertain period into the future. And repose would hinge on speculation about what the Government knew, when it knew it, and when it should have known it. Deciding when the Government knew or reasonably should have known of a fraud would also present particular challenges for the courts, such as determining who the relevant actor is in assessing Government knowledge, whether and how to consider agency priorities and resource constraints in deciding when the Government reasonably should have known of a fraud, and so on. Applying a discovery rule to Government penalty actions is far more challenging than applying the rule to suits by defrauded victims, and the Court declines to do so. Pp. 5–11. 653 F.3d 49, reversed and remanded. Roberts, C. J., delivered the opinion for a unanimous Court.

The Investment Advisers Act makes it illegal for investment advisers to defraud their clients, and authorizes the Securities and Exchange Commission to seek civil penalties from advisers who do so. Under the general statute of limitations for civil penalty actions, the SEC has five years to seek such penalties. The question is whether the five-year clock begins to tick when the fraud is complete or when the fraud is discovered. I A Under the Investment Advisers Act of 1940, it is unlawful for an investment adviser “to employ any device, scheme, or artifice to defraud any client or prospective client” or “to engage in any transaction, practice, or course of business which operates as a fraud or deceit upon any client or prospective client.” 54Stat. 852, as amended, 15 U. S. C. §§80b–6(1), (2). The Securities and Exchange Commission is authorized to bring enforcement actions against investment advisers who violate the Act, or individuals who aid and abet such violations. §80b–9(d). As part of such enforcement actions, the SEC may seek civil penalties, §§80b–9(e), (f) (2006 ed. and Supp. V), in which case a five-year statute of limitations applies: “Except as otherwise provided by Act of Congress, an action, suit or proceeding for the enforcement of any civil fine, penalty, or forfeiture, pecuniary or otherwise, shall not be entertained unless commenced within five years from the date when the claim first accrued if, within the same period, the offender or the property is found within the United States in order that proper service may be made thereon.” 28 U. S. C. §2462. This statute of limitations is not specific to the Investment Advisers Act, or even to securities law; it governs many penalty provisions throughout the U. S. Code. Its origins date back to at least 1839, and it took on its current form in 1948. See Act of Feb. 28, 1839, ch. 36, §4, 5Stat. 322. B Gabelli Funds, LLC, is an investment adviser to a mutual fund formerly known as Gabelli Global Growth Fund (GGGF). Petitioner Bruce Alpert is Gabelli Funds’ chief operating officer, and petitioner Marc Gabelli used to be GGGF’s portfolio manager. In 2008, the SEC brought a civil enforcement action against Alpert and Gabelli. According to the complaint, from 1999 until 2002 Alpert and Gabelli allowed one GGGF investor—Headstart Advisers, Ltd.—to engage in “market timing” in the fund. As this Court has explained, “[m]arket timing is a trading strategy that exploits time delay in mutual funds’ daily valuation system.” Janus Capital Group, Inc. v. First Derivative Traders, 564 U. S. ___, ___, n. 1 (2011) (slip op., at 2, n. 1). Mutual funds are typically valued once a day, at the close of the New York Stock Exchange. Because funds often hold securities traded on different exchanges around the world, their reported valuation may be based on stale information. If a mutual fund’s reported valuation is artificially low compared to its real value, market timers will buy that day and sell the next to realize quick profits. Market timing is not illegal but can harm long-term investors in a fund. See id., at ___–___, and n. 1 (slip op., at 2–3, and n. 1). The SEC’s complaint alleged that Alpert and Gabelli permitted Headstart to engage in market timing in exchange for Headstart’s investment in a hedge fund run by Gabelli. According to the SEC, petitioners did not disclose Headstart’s market timing or the quid pro quo agreement, and instead banned others from engaging in market timing and made statements indicating that the practice would not be tolerated. The complaint stated that during the relevant period, Headstart earned rates of return of up to 185%, while “the rate of return for long-term investors in GGGF was no more than negative 24.1 percent.” App. 73. The SEC alleged that Alpert and Gabelli aided and abetted violations of §§80b–6(1) and (2), and it sought civil penalties under §80b–9. Petitioners moved to dismiss, arguing in part that the claim for civil penalties was untimely. They invoked the five-year statute of limitations in §2462, pointing out that the complaint alleged market timing up until August 2002 but was not filed until April 2008. The District Court agreed and dismissed the SEC’s civil penalty claim as time barred.[1] The Second Circuit reversed. It acknowledged that §2462 required an action for civil penalties to be brought within five years “from the date when the claim first accrued,” but accepted the SEC’s argument that because the underlying violations sounded in fraud, the “discovery rule” applied to the statute of limitations. As explained by the Second Circuit, “[u]nder the discovery rule, the statute of limitations for a particular claim does not accrue until that claim is discovered, or could have been discovered with reasonable diligence, by the plaintiff.” 653 F.3d 49, 59 (2011). The court concluded that while “this rule does not govern the accrual of most claims,” it does govern the claims at issue here. Ibid. As the court explained, “for claims that sound in fraud a discovery rule is read into the relevant statute of limitation.” Id., at 60.[2] We granted certiorari. 567 U. S. ___ (2012). II A This case centers around the meaning of 28 U. S. C. §2462: “an action . . . for the enforcement of any civil fine, penalty, or forfeiture . . . shall not be entertained unless commenced within five years from the date when the claim first accrued.” Petitioners argue that a claim based on fraud accrues—and the five-year clock begins to tick—when a defendant’s allegedly fraudulent conduct occurs. That is the most natural reading of the statute. “In common parlance a right accrues when it comes into existence . . . .” United States v. Lindsay, 346 U.S. 568, 569 (1954). Thus the “standard rule” is that a claim accrues “when the plaintiff has a complete and present cause of action.” Wallace v. Kato, 549 U.S. 384, 388 (2007) (internal quotation marks omitted); see also, e.g., Bay Area Laundry and Dry Cleaning Pension Trust Fund v. Ferbar Corp. of Cal., 522 U.S. 192, 201 (1997); Clark v. Iowa City, 20 Wall. 583, 589 (1875). That rule has governed since the 1830s when the predecessor to §2462 was enacted. See, e.g., Bank of United States v. Daniel, 12 Pet. 32, 56 (1838); Evans v. Gee, 11 Pet. 80, 84 (1837). And that definition appears in dictionaries from the 19th century up until today. See, e.g., 1 A. Burrill, A Law Dictionary and Glossary 17 (1850) (“an action accrues when the plaintiff has a right to commence it”); Black’s Law Dictionary 23 (9th ed. 2009) (defining “accrue” as “[t]o come into existence as an enforceable claim or right”). This reading sets a fixed date when exposure to the specified Government enforcement efforts ends, advancing “the basic policies of all limitations provisions: repose, elimination of stale claims, and certainty about a plain- tiff’s opportunity for recovery and a defendant’s potential liabilities.” Rotella v. Wood, 528 U.S. 549, 555 (2000). Statutes of limitations are intended to “promote justice by preventing surprises through the revival of claims that have been allowed to slumber until evidence has been lost, memories have faded, and witnesses have disappeared.” Railroad Telegraphers v. Railway Express Agency, Inc., 321 U.S. 342, 348–349 (1944). They provide “security and stability to human affairs.” Wood v. Carpenter, 101 U.S. 135, 139 (1879). We have deemed them “vital to the welfare of society,” ibid., and concluded that “even wrongdoers are entitled to assume that their sins may be forgot- ten,” Wilson v. Garcia, 471 U.S. 261, 271 (1985). B Notwithstanding these considerations, the Government argues that the discovery rule should apply instead. Under this rule, accrual is delayed “until the plaintiff has ‘discovered’ ” his cause of action. Merck & Co. v. Reynolds, 559 U. S. ___, ___ (2010) (slip op., at 8). The doctrine arose in 18th-century fraud cases as an “exception” to the standard rule, based on the recognition that “something different was needed in the case of fraud, where a defendant’s deceptive conduct may prevent a plaintiff from even knowing that he or she has been defrauded.” Ibid. This Court has held that “where a plaintiff has been injured by fraud and ‘remains in ignorance of it without any fault or want of diligence or care on his part, the bar of the statute does not begin to run until the fraud is discovered.’ ” Holmberg v. Armbrecht, 327 U.S. 392, 397 (1946) (quoting Bailey v. Glover, 21 Wall. 342, 348 (1875)). And we have explained that “fraud is deemed to be discovered when, in the exercise of reasonable diligence, it could have been discovered.” Merck & Co., supra, at ___ (slip op., at 9) (internal quotation marks and alterations omitted). But we have never applied the discovery rule in this context, where the plaintiff is not a defrauded victim seeking recompense, but is instead the Government bringing an enforcement action for civil penalties. Despite the discovery rule’s centuries-old roots, the Government cites no lower court case before 2008 employing a fraud-based discovery rule in a Government enforcement action for civil penalties. See Brief for Respondent 23 (citing SEC v. Tambone, 550 F.3d 106, 148–149 (CA1 2008); SEC v. Koenig, 557 F.3d 736, 739 (CA7 2009)). When pressed at oral argument, the Government conceded that it was aware of no such case. Tr. of Oral Arg. 25. The Government was also unable to point to any example from the first 160 years after enactment of this statute of limitations where it had even asserted that the fraud discovery rule applied in such a context. Id., at 26–27 (citing only United States v. Maillard, 26 F. Cas. 1140, 1142 (No. 15,709) (SDNY 1871), a “fraudulent concealment” case, see n. 2, supra). Instead the Government relies heavily on Exploration Co. v. United States, 247 U.S. 435 (1918), in an attempt to show that the discovery rule should benefit the Government to the same extent as private parties. See, e.g., Brief for Respondent 10–11, 16, 17, 33–34, 41–45. In that case, a company had fraudulently procured land from the United States, and the United States sued to undo the trans- action. The company raised the statute of limitations as a defense, but this Court allowed the case to proceed, concluding that the rule “that statutes of limitations upon suits to set aside fraudulent transactions shall not begin to run until the discovery of the fraud” applied “in favor of the Government as well as a private individual.” Exploration Co., supra, at 449. But in Exploration Co., the Government was itself a victim; it had been defrauded and was suing to recover its loss. The Government was not bringing an enforcement action for penalties. Exploration Co. cannot save the Government’s case here. There are good reasons why the fraud discovery rule has not been extended to Government enforcement actions for civil penalties. The discovery rule exists in part to preserve the claims of victims who do not know they are injured and who reasonably do not inquire as to any injury. Usually when a private party is injured, he is imme- diately aware of that injury and put on notice that his time to sue is running. But when the injury is self-concealing, private parties may be unaware that they have been harmed. Most of us do not live in a state of constant investigation; absent any reason to think we have been injured, we do not typically spend our days looking for evidence that we were lied to or defrauded. And the law does not require that we do so. Instead, courts have developed the discovery rule, providing that the statute of limitations in fraud cases should typically begin to run only when the injury is or reasonably could have been discovered. The same conclusion does not follow for the Government in the context of enforcement actions for civil penalties. The SEC, for example, is not like an individual victim who relies on apparent injury to learn of a wrong. Rather, a central “mission” of the Commission is to “investigat[e] potential violations of the federal securities laws.” SEC, Enforcement Manual 1 (2012). Unlike the private party who has no reason to suspect fraud, the SEC’s very purpose is to root it out, and it has many legal tools at hand to aid in that pursuit. It can demand that securities brokers and dealers submit detailed trading information. Id., at 44. It can require investment advisers to turn over their comprehensive books and records at any time. 15 U. S. C. §80b–4 (2006 ed. and Supp. V). And even without fil- ing suit, it can subpoena any documents and witnesses it deems relevant or material to an investigation. See §§77s(c), 78u(b), 80a–41(b), 80b–9(b) (2006 ed.). The SEC is also authorized to pay monetary awards to whistleblowers, who provide information relating to violations of the securities laws. §78u–6 (2006 ed., Supp. V). In addition, the SEC may offer “cooperation agreements” to violators to procure information about others in exchange for more lenient treatment. See Enforcement Manual, at 119–137. Charged with this mission and armed with these weapons, the SEC as enforcer is a far cry from the defrauded victim the discovery rule evolved to protect. In a civil penalty action, the Government is not only a different kind of plaintiff, it seeks a different kind of relief. The discovery rule helps to ensure that the injured receive recompense. But this case involves penalties, which go beyond compensation, are intended to punish, and label defendants wrongdoers. See Meeker v. Lehigh Valley R. Co., 236 U.S. 412, 423 (1915) (a penalty covered by the predecessor to §2462 is “something imposed in a punitive way for an infraction of a public law”); see also Tull v. United States, 481 U.S. 412, 422 (1987) (penalties are “intended to punish culpable individuals,” not “to extract compensation or restore the status quo”). Chief Justice Marshall used particularly forceful language in emphasizing the importance of time limits on penalty actions, stating that it “would be utterly repugnant to the genius of our laws” if actions for penalties could “be brought at any distance of time.” Adams v. Woods, 2 Cranch 336, 342 (1805). Yet grafting the discovery rule onto §2462 would raise similar concerns. It would leave defendants exposed to Government enforcement action not only for five years after their misdeeds, but for an additional uncertain period into the future. Repose would hinge on speculation about what the Government knew, when it knew it, and when it should have known it. See Rotella, 528 U. S., at 554 (disapproving a rule that would have “extended the limitations period to many decades” because such a rule was “beyond any limit that Congress could have contemplated” and “would have thwarted the basic objective of repose underlying the very notion of a limitations period”). Determining when the Government, as opposed to an individual, knew or reasonably should have known of a fraud presents particular challenges for the courts. Agencies often have hundreds of employees, dozens of offices, and several levels of leadership. In such a case, when does “the Government” know of a violation? Who is the relevant actor? Different agencies often have overlapping responsibilities; is the knowledge of one attributed to all? In determining what a plaintiff should have known, we ask what facts “a reasonably diligent plaintiff would have discovered.” Merck & Co., 559 U. S., at ___ (slip op., at 8). It is unclear whether and how courts should consider agency priorities and resource constraints in applying that test to Government enforcement actions. See 3M Co. v. Browner, 17 F.3d 1453, 1461 (CADC 1994) (“An agency may experience problems in detecting statutory violations because its enforcement effort is not sufficiently funded; or because the agency has not devoted an adequate number of trained personnel to the task; or because the agency’s enforcement program is ill-designed or inefficient; or because the nature of the statute makes it difficult to uncover violations; or because of some combination of these factors and others”). And in the midst of any inquiry as to what it knew when, the Government can be expected to assert various privileges, such as law enforcement, attorney-client, work product, or deliberative process, further complicating judicial attempts to apply the discovery rule. See, e.g., App. in No. 10–3581 (CA2), p. 147 (Government invoking such privileges in this case, in response to a request for documents relating to the SEC’s investigation of Headstart); see also Rotella, supra, at 559 (rejecting a rule in part due to “the controversy inherent in divining when a plaintiff should have discovered” a wrong). To be sure, Congress has expressly required such inquiries in some statutes. But in many of those instances, the Government is itself an injured victim looking for recompense, not a prosecutor seeking penalties. See, e.g., 28 U. S. C. §§2415, 2416(c) (Government suits for money dam- ages founded on contracts or torts). Moreover, statutes applying a discovery rule in the context of Govern- ment suits often couple that rule with an absolute provision for repose, which a judicially imposed discovery rule would lack. See, e.g., 21 U. S. C. §335b(b)(3) (limiting certain Government civil penalty actions to “6 years after the date when facts material to the act are known or reasonably should have been known by the Secretary but in no event more than 10 years after the date the act took place”). And several statutes applying a discovery rule to the Government make some effort to identify the official whose knowledge is relevant. See 31 U. S. C. §3731(b)(2) (relevant knowledge is that of “the official of the United States charged with responsibility to act in the circumstances”). Applying a discovery rule to Government penalty actions is far more challenging than applying the rule to suits by defrauded victims, and we have no mandate from Congress to undertake that challenge here. * * * As we held long ago, the cases in which “a statute of limitation may be suspended by causes not mentioned in the statute itself . . . are very limited in character, and are to be admitted with great caution; otherwise the court would make the law instead of administering it.” Amy v. Watertown (No. 2), 130 U.S. 320, 324 (1889) (internal quotation marks omitted). Given the lack of textual, historical, or equitable reasons to graft a discovery rule onto the statute of limitations of §2462, we decline to do so. The judgment of the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit is reversed, and the case is remanded for further proceedings consistent with this opinion. It is so ordered. Notes 1 The SEC also sought injunctive relief and disgorgement, claims the District Court found timely on the ground that they were not subject to §2462. Those issues are not before us. 2 The court distinguished the discovery rule, which governs when a claim accrues, from doctrines that toll the running of an applicable limitations period when the defendant takes steps beyond the challenged conduct itself to conceal that conduct from the plaintiff. 653 F. 3d, at 59–60. The SEC abandoned any reliance on such doctrines below, and they are not before us. See Response and Reply Brief for SEC Appellant/Cross-Appellee in No. 10–3581 (CA2), p. 34 (“The Commission is not seeking application of the fraudulent concealment doctrine or other equitable tolling principles”).

569.US.66

Respondent brought a collective action under the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 (FLSA) on behalf of herself and “other employees similarly situated.” 29 U. S. C. §216(b). After she ignored petitioners’ offer of judgment under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 68, the District Court, finding that no other individuals had joined her suit and that the Rule 68 offer fully satisfied her claim, concluded that respondent’s suit was moot and dismissed it for lack of subject-matter jurisdiction. The Third Circuit reversed. It held that respondent’s individual claim was moot but that her collective action was not, explaining that allowing defendants to “pick off” named plaintiffs before certification with calculated Rule 68 offers would frustrate the goals of collective actions. The case was remanded to the District Court to allow respondent to seek “conditional certification,” which, if successful, would relate back to the date of her complaint. Held: Because respondent had no personal interest in representing putative, unnamed claimants, nor any other continuing interest that would preserve her suit from mootness, her suit was appropriately dismissed for lack of subject-matter jurisdiction. Pp. 3–12. (a) While the Courts of Appeals disagree whether an unaccepted Rule 68 offer that fully satisfies a plaintiff’s individual claim is sufficient to render that claim moot, respondent conceded the issue below and did not properly raise it here. Thus, this Court assumes, without deciding, that petitioners’ offer mooted her individual claim. Pp. 3–5. (b) Well-settled mootness principles control the outcome of this case. After respondent’s individual claim became moot, the suit became moot because she had no personal interest in representing others in the action. To avoid that outcome, respondent relies on cases that arose in the context of Rule 23 class actions, but they are inapposite, both because Rule 23 actions are fundamentally different from FLSA collective actions and because the cases are inapplicable to the facts here. Pp. 5–11. (1) Neither Sosna v. Iowa, 419 U.S. 393, nor United States Parole Comm’n v. Geraghty, 445 U.S. 388, support respondent’s position. Geraghty extended the principles of Sosna—which held that a class action is not rendered moot when the named plaintiff’s individual claim becomes moot after the class has been duly certified—to denials of class certification motions; and it provided that, where an action would have acquired independent legal status but for the district court’s erroneous denial of class certification, a corrected ruling on appeal “relates back” to the time of the erroneous denial. 445 U. S., at 404, and n. 11. However, Geraghty’s holding was explicitly limited to cases in which the named plaintiff’s claim remains live at the time the district court denies class certification. See id., at 407, n. 11. Here, respondent had not yet moved for “conditional certification” when her claim became moot, nor had the District Court anticipatorily ruled on any such request. She thus has no certification decision to which her claim could have related back. More fundamentally, essential to Sosna and Geraghty was the fact that a putative class acquires an independent legal status once it is certified under Rule 23. By contrast, under the FLSA, “conditional certification” does not produce a class with an independent legal status, or join additional parties to the action. Pp. 7–8. (2) A line of cases holding that an “inherently transitory” class-action claim is not necessarily moot upon the termination of the named plaintiff’s claim, see, e.g., County of Riverside v. McLaughlin, 500 U.S. 44, 52, is similarly inapplicable. Respondent argues that a defendant’s use of Rule 68 offers to “pick off” a named plaintiff before the collective-action process is complete renders the action “inherently transitory.” But this rationale was developed to address circumstances in which the challenged conduct was effectively unreviewable because no plaintiff possessed a personal stake in the suit long enough for litigation to run its course, and it has invariably focused on the fleeting nature of the challenged conduct giving rise to the claim, not on the defendant’s litigation strategy. Unlike a claim for injunctive relief, a damages claim cannot evade review, nor can an offer of full settlement insulate such a claim from review. Putative plaintiffs may be foreclosed from vindicating their rights in respondent’s suit, but they remain free to do so in their own suits. Pp. 8–10. (3) Finally, Deposit Guaranty Nat. Bank v. Roper, 445 U.S. 326, does not support respondent’s claim that the purposes served by the FLSA’s collective-action provisions would be frustrated by defendants’ use of Rule 68 to “pick off” named plaintiffs before the collective-action process has run its course. In Roper, where the named plaintiffs’ individual claims became moot after the District Court denied their Rule 23 class certification motion and entered judgment in their favor based on defendant’s offer of judgment, this Court found that the named plaintiffs could appeal the denial of certification because they possessed an ongoing, personal economic stake in the substantive controversy, namely, to shift a portion of attorney’s fees and expenses to successful class litigants. Here, respondent conceded that petitioners’ offer provided complete relief, and she asserted no continuing economic interest in shifting attorney’s fees and costs. Moreover, Roper was tethered to the unique significance of Rule 23 class certification decisions. Pp. 10–11. 656 F.3d 189, reversed. Thomas, J., delivered the opinion of the Court, in which Roberts, C. J., and Scalia, Kennedy, and Alito, JJ., joined. Kagan, J., filed a dissenting opinion, in which Ginsburg, Breyer, and Sotomayor, JJ., joined.

The Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 (FLSA), 29 U. S. C. §201 et seq., provides that an employee may bring an action to recover damages for specified violations of the Act on behalf of himself and other “similarly situated” employees. We granted certiorari to resolve whether such a case is justiciable when the lone plaintiff’s individual claim becomes moot. 567 U. S. ___ (2012). We hold that it is not justiciable. I The FLSA establishes federal minimum-wage, maximum-hour, and overtime guarantees that cannot be modified by contract. Section 16(b) of the FLSA, 52Stat. 1060, as amended, 29 U. S. C. §216(b), gives employees the right to bring a private cause of action on their own behalf and on behalf of “other employees similarly situated” for specified violations of the FLSA. A suit brought on behalf of other employees is known as a “collective action.” See Hoffmann-La Roche Inc. v. Sperling, 493 U.S. 165, 169–170 (1989). In 2009, respondent, who was formerly employed by petitioners as a registered nurse at Pennypack Center in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, filed a complaint on behalf of herself and “all other persons similarly situated.” App. 115–116. Respondent alleged that petitioners violated the FLSA by automatically deducting 30 minutes of time worked per shift for meal breaks for certain employees, even when the employees performed compensable work during those breaks. Respondent, who remained the sole plaintiff throughout these proceedings, sought statutory damages for the alleged violations. When petitioners answered the complaint, they simultaneously served upon respondent an offer of judgment under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 68. The offer included $7,500 for alleged unpaid wages, in addition to “such reasonable attorneys’ fees, costs, and expenses . . . as the Court may determine.” Id., at 77. Petition- ers stipulated that if respondent did not accept the offer within 10 days after service, the offer would be deemed withdrawn. After respondent failed to respond in the allotted time period, petitioners filed a motion to dismiss for lack of subject-matter jurisdiction. Petitioners argued that because they offered respondent complete relief on her individual damages claim, she no longer possessed a personal stake in the outcome of the suit, rendering the action moot. Respondent objected, arguing that petitioners were inappropriately attempting to “pick off” the named plaintiff before the collective-action process could unfold. Id., at 91. The District Court found that it was undisputed that no other individuals had joined respondent’s suit and that the Rule 68 offer of judgment fully satisfied her individual claim. It concluded that petitioners’ Rule 68 offer of judgment mooted respondent’s suit, which it dismissed for lack of subject-matter jurisdiction. The Court of Appeals reversed. 656 F.3d 189 (CA3 2011). The court agreed that no other potential plaintiff had opted into the suit, that petitioners’ offer fully satisfied respondent’s individual claim, and that, under its precedents, whether or not such an offer is accepted, it generally moots a plaintiff’s claim. Id., at 195. But the court nevertheless held that respondent’s collective action was not moot. It explained that calculated attempts by some defendants to “pick off” named plaintiffs with strategic Rule 68 offers before certification could short circuit the process, and, thereby, frustrate the goals of collective actions. Id., at 196–198. The court determined that the case must be remanded in order to allow respondent to seek “conditional certification”[1] in the District Court. If respondent were successful, the District Court was to relate the certification motion back to the date on which respondent filed her complaint.[2] Ibid. II Article III, §2, of the Constitution limits the jurisdiction of federal courts to “Cases” and “Controversies,” which restricts the authority of federal courts to resolving “ ‘the legal rights of litigants in actual controversies,’ ” Valley Forge Christian College v. Americans United for Separation of Church and State, Inc., 454 U.S. 464, 471 (1982) (quoting Liverpool, New York & Philadelphia S. S. Co. v. Commissioners of Emigration, 113 U.S. 33, 39 (1885)). In order to invoke federal-court jurisdiction, a plaintiff must demonstrate that he possesses a legally cognizable interest, or “ ‘personal stake,’ ” in the outcome of the action. See Camreta v. Greene, 563 U. S. ___, ___ (2011) (slip op., at 5) (quoting Summers v. Earth Island Institute, 555 U.S. 488, 493 (2009)). This requirement ensures that the Federal Judiciary confines itself to its constitutionally limited role of adjudicating actual and concrete disputes, the resolutions of which have direct consequences on the parties involved. A corollary to this case-or-controversy requirement is that “ ‘an actual controversy must be extant at all stages of review, not merely at the time the complaint is filed.’ ” Arizonans for Official English v. Arizona, 520 U.S. 43, 67 (1997) (quoting Preiser v. Newkirk, 422 U.S. 395, 401 (1975)). If an intervening circumstance deprives the plaintiff of a “personal stake in the outcome of the lawsuit,” at any point during litigation, the action can no longer proceed and must be dismissed as moot. Lewis v. Continental Bank Corp., 494 U.S. 472, 477–478 (1990) (internal quotation marks omitted). In the proceedings below, both courts concluded that petitioners’ Rule 68 offer afforded respondent complete relief on—and thus mooted—her FLSA claim. See 656 F. 3d, at 201; No. 09–5782, 2010 WL 2038676, *4 (ED Pa., May 19, 2010). Respondent now contends that these rulings were erroneous, because petitioners’ Rule 68 offer lapsed without entry of judgment. Brief for Respondent 12–16. The United States, as amicus curiae, similarly urges the Court to hold that petitioners’ unaccepted offer did not moot her FLSA claim and to affirm the Court of Appeals on this basis. Brief for United States 10–15. While the Courts of Appeals disagree whether an un-accepted offer that fully satisfies a plaintiff’s claim is sufficient to render the claim moot,[3] we do not reach this question, or resolve the split, because the issue is not properly before us. The Third Circuit clearly held in this case that respondent’s individual claim was moot. 656 F. 3d, at 201. Acceptance of respondent’s argument to the contrary now would alter the Court of Appeals’ judgment, which is impermissible in the absence of a cross-petition from respondent. See Northwest Airlines, Inc. v. County of Kent, 510 U.S. 355, 364 (1994); Trans World Airlines, Inc. v. Thurston, 469 U.S. 111, 119, n. 14 (1985). Moreover, even if the cross-petition rule did not apply, respondent’s waiver of the issue would still prevent us from reaching it. In the District Court, respondent conceded that “[a]n offer of complete relief will generally moot the [plaintiff’s] claim, as at that point the plaintiff retains no personal interest in the outcome of the litigation.” App. 93; 2010 WL 2038676, at *4. Respondent made a similar concession in her brief to the Court of Appeals, see App. 193, and failed to raise the argument in her brief in opposition to the petition for certiorari. We, therefore, assume, without deciding, that petitioners’ Rule 68 offer mooted respondent’s individual claim. See Baldwin v. Reese, 541 U.S. 27, 34 (2004). III We turn, then, to the question whether respondent’s action remained justiciable based on the collective-action allegations in her complaint. A straightforward application of well-settled mootness principles compels our answer. In the absence of any claimant’s opting in, respondent’s suit became moot when her individual claim became moot, because she lacked any personal interest in representing others in this action. While the FLSA authorizes an aggrieved employee to bring an action on behalf of himself and “other employees similarly situated,” 29 U. S. C. §216(b), the mere presence of collective-action allegations in the complaint cannot save the suit from mootness once the individual claim is satisfied.[4] In order to avoid this outcome, respondent relies almost entirely upon cases that arose in the context of Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 23 class actions, particularly United States Parole Comm’n v. Geraghty, 445 U.S. 388 (1980); Deposit Guaranty Nat. Bank v. Roper, 445 U.S. 326 (1980); and Sosna v. Iowa, 419 U.S. 393 (1975). But these cases are inapposite, both because Rule 23 actions are fundamentally different from collective actions under the FLSA, see Hoffmann-La Roche Inc., 493 U. S., at 177–178 (Scalia, J., dissenting), and because these cases are, by their own terms, inapplicable to these facts. It follows that this action was appropriately dismissed as moot. A Respondent contends that she has a sufficient personal stake in this case based on a statutorily created collective- action interest in representing other similarly situated employees under §216(b). Brief for Respondent 47–48. In support of her argument, respondent cites our decision in Geraghty, which in turn has its roots in Sosna. Neither case supports her position. In Sosna, the Court held that a class action is not rendered moot when the named plaintiff’s individual claim becomes moot after the class has been duly certified. 419 U. S., at 399. The Court reasoned that when a district court certifies a class, “the class of unnamed persons described in the certification acquire[s] a legal status separate from the interest asserted by [the named plaintiff],” with the result that a live controversy may continue to exist, even after the claim of the named plaintiff becomes moot. Id., at 399–402. Geraghty narrowly extended this principle to denials of class certification motions. The Court held that where an action would have acquired the independent legal status described in Sosna but for the district court’s erroneous denial of class certification, a corrected ruling on appeal “relates back” to the time of the erroneous denial of the certification motion. 445 U. S., at 404, and n. 11. Geraghty is inapposite, because the Court explicitly limited its holding to cases in which the named plaintiff’s claim remains live at the time the district court denies class certification. See id., at 407, n. 11. Here, respondent had not yet moved for “conditional certification” when her claim became moot, nor had the District Court anticipa-torily ruled on any such request. Her claim instead became moot prior to these events, foreclosing any recourse to Geraghty. There is simply no certification decision to which respondent’s claim could have related back. More fundamentally, essential to our decisions in Sosna and Geraghty was the fact that a putative class acquires an independent legal status once it is certified under Rule 23. Under the FLSA, by contrast, “conditional certification” does not produce a class with an independent legal status, or join additional parties to the action. The sole consequence of conditional certification is the sending of court-approved written notice to employees, see Hoffmann-La Roche Inc., supra, at 171–172, who in turn become parties to a collective action only by filing written con- sent with the court, §216(b). So even if respondent were to secure a conditional certification ruling on remand, nothing in that ruling would preserve her suit from mootness. B Respondent also advances an argument based on a separate, but related, line of cases in which the Court held that an “inherently transitory” class-action claim is not necessarily moot upon the termination of the named plaintiff’s claim. Like our decision in Geraghty, this line of cases began with Sosna and is similarly inapplicable here. After concluding that the expiration of a named plain-tiff’s claim following certification does not moot the class action, Sosna suggested that, where a named plaintiff’s individual claim becomes moot before the district court has an opportunity to rule on the certification motion, and the issue would otherwise evade review, the certification might “relate back” to the filing of the complaint. 419 U. S., at 402, n. 11. The Court has since held that the relation-back doctrine may apply in Rule 23 cases where it is “certain that other persons similarly situated” will continue to be subject to the challenged conduct and the claims raised are “ ‘so inherently transitory that the trial court will not have even enough time to rule on a motion for class certification before the proposed representative’s individual interest expires.’ ” County of Riverside v. McLaughlin, 500 U.S. 44, 52 (1991) (quoting Geraghty, supra, at 399), in turn citing Gerstein v. Pugh, 420 U.S. 103, 110, n. 11 (1975)). Invoking this doctrine, respondent argues that defendants can strategically use Rule 68 offers to “pick off” named plaintiffs before the collective-action process is complete, rendering collective actions “inher-ently transitory” in effect. Brief for Respondent 37. Our cases invoking the “inherently transitory” relation-back rationale do not apply. The “inherently transitory” rationale was developed to address circumstances in which the challenged conduct was effectively unreviewable, because no plaintiff possessed a personal stake in the suit long enough for litigation to run its course. A plaintiff might seek, for instance, to bring a class action challenging the constitutionality of temporary pretrial detentions. In doing so, the named plaintiff would face the considerable challenge of preserving his individual claim from mootness, since pretrial custody likely would end prior to the resolution of his claim. See Gerstein, supra. To address this problem, the Court explained that in cases where the transitory nature of the conduct giving rise to the suit would effectively insulate defendants’ conduct from review, certification could potentially “relate back” to the filing of the complaint. Id., at 110, n. 11; McLaughlin, supra, at 52. But this doctrine has invariably focused on the fleeting nature of the challenged conduct giving rise to the claim, not on the defendant’s litigation strategy. See, e.g., Swisher v. Brady, 438 U.S. 204, 214, n. 11 (1978); Spencer v. Kemna, 523 U.S. 1, 17–18 (1998). In this case, respondent’s complaint requested statutory damages. Unlike claims for injunctive relief challenging ongoing conduct, a claim for damages cannot evade review; it remains live until it is settled, judicially resolved, or barred by a statute of limitations. Nor can a defendant’s attempt to obtain settlement insulate such a claim from review, for a full settlement offer addresses plaintiff’s alleged harm by making the plaintiff whole. While settlement may have the collateral effect of foreclosing unjoined claimants from having their rights vindicated in respondent’s suit, such putative plaintiffs remain free to vindicate their rights in their own suits. They are no less able to have their claims settled or adjudicated following respondent’s suit than if her suit had never been filed at all. C Finally, respondent argues that the purposes served by the FLSA’s collective-action provisions—for example, efficient resolution of common claims and lower individual costs associated with litigation—would be frustrated by defendants’ use of Rule 68 to “pick off” named plaintiffs before the collective-action process has run its course. Both respondent and the Court of Appeals purported to find support for this position in our decision in Roper, 445 U. S., at 339. In Roper, the named plaintiffs’ individual claims became moot after the District Court denied their motion for class certification under Rule 23 and subsequently entered judgment in their favor, based on the defendant bank’s offer of judgment for the maximum recoverable amount of damages, in addition to interest and court costs. Id., at 329–330. The Court held that even though the District Court had entered judgment in the named plaintiffs’ favor, they could nevertheless appeal the denial of their motion to certify the class. The Court found that, under the particular circumstances of that case, the named plaintiffs possessed an ongoing, personal economic stake in the substantive controversy—namely, to shift a portion of attorney’s fees and expenses to successful class litigants.[5] Id., at 332–334, and n. 6. Only then, in dicta, did the Court underscore the importance of a district court’s class certification decision and observe that allowing defendants to “ ‘pic[k] off’ ” party plaintiffs before an affirmative ruling was achieved “would frustrate the objectives of class actions.” Id., at 339. Roper’s holding turned on a specific factual finding that the plaintiffs’ possessed a continuing personal economic stake in the litigation, even after the defendants’ offer of judgment. Id., at 336. As already explained, here, respondent conceded that petitioners’ offer “provided complete relief on her individual claims,” Brief in Opposition i, and she failed to assert any continuing economic interest in shifting attorney’s fees and costs to others. Moreover, Roper’s dictum was tethered to the unique significance of certification decisions in class-action proceedings. 445 U. S., at 339. Whatever significance “conditional certification” may have in §216(b) proceedings, it is not tantamount to class certification under Rule 23. * * * The Court of Appeals concluded that respondent’s individual claim became moot following petitioners’ Rule 68 offer of judgment. We have assumed, without deciding, that this is correct. Reaching the question on which we granted certiorari, we conclude that respondent has no personal interest in representing putative, unnamed claimants, nor any other continuing interest that would preserve her suit from mootness. Respondent’s suit was, therefore, appropriately dismissed for lack of subject-matter jurisdiction. The judgment of the Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit is reversed. It is so ordered. Notes 1 Lower courts have borrowed class-action terminology to describe the process of joining co-plaintiffs under 29 U. S. C. §216(b). While we do not express an opinion on the propriety of this use of class-action nomenclature, we do note that there are significant differences between certification under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 23 and the joinder process under §216(b). 2 The “relation back” doctrine was developed in the context of class actions under Rule 23 to address the circumstance in which a named plaintiff’s claim becomes moot prior to certification of the class. This case raises two circumstances in which the Court has applied this doctrine. First, where a named plaintiff’s claim is “inherently transi-tory,” and becomes moot prior to certification, a motion for certification may “relate back” to the filing of the complaint. See, e.g., County of Riverside v. McLaughlin, 500 U.S. 44, 51–52 (1991). Second, we have held that where a certification motion is denied and a named plaintiff’s claim subsequently becomes moot, an appellate reversal of the certification decision may relate back to the time of the denial. See United States Parole Comm’n v. Geraghty, 445 U.S. 388, 404 (1980). 3 Compare, e.g., Weiss v. Regal Collections, 385 F.3d 337, 340 (CA3 2004), with McCauley v. Trans Union, LLC, 402 F.3d 340, 342 (CA2 2005). 4 While we do not resolve the question whether a Rule 68 offer that fully satisfies the plaintiff’s claims is sufficient by itself to moot the action, supra, at 5, we note that Courts of Appeals on both sides of that issue have recognized that a plaintiff’s claim may be satisfied even without the plaintiff’s consent. Some courts maintain that an unaccepted offer of complete relief alone is sufficient to moot the individual’s claim. E.g., Weiss, supra, at 340; Greisz v. Household Bank (Ill.), N. A., 176 F.3d 1012, 1015 (CA7 1999). Other courts have held that, in the face of an unaccepted offer of complete relief, district courts may “enter judgment in favor of the plaintiffs in accordance with the defendants’ Rule 68 offer of judgment.” O’Brien v. Ed Donnelly Enters., Inc., 575 F.3d 567, 575 (CA6 2009); see also McCauley v. Trans Union, LLC, 402 F.3d 340, 342 (CA2 2005). Contrary to the dissent’s assertion, see post, at 8 (opinion of Kagan, J.), nothing in the nature of FLSA actions precludes satisfaction—and thus the mooting—of the individual’s claim before the collective-action component of the suit has run its course. 5 Because Roper is distinguishable on the facts, we need not consider its continuing validity in light of our subsequent decision in Lewis v. Continental Bank Corp., 494 U.S. 472 (1990). See id., at 480 (“[An] interest in attorney’s fees is, of course, insufficient to create an Article III case or controversy where none exists on the merits of the underlying claim”).

568.US.251

Petitioner attorneys represented respondent Minton in a federal patent infringement suit. The District Court declared Minton’s patent invalid under the “on sale” bar since he had leased his interactive securities trading system to a securities brokerage “more than one year prior to the date of the [patent] application.” 35 U. S. C. §102(b). In a motion for reconsideration, Minton argued for the first time that the lease was part of ongoing testing, and therefore fell within the “experimental use” exception to the on-sale bar. The District Court denied the motion and the Federal Circuit affirmed, concluding that the District Court had appropriately held that argument waived. Convinced that his attorneys’ failure to timely raise the argument cost him the lawsuit and led to the invalidation of his patent, Minton brought a legal malpractice action in Texas state court. His former attorneys argued that Minton’s infringement claims would have failed even if the experimental-use argument had been timely raised, and the trial court agreed. On appeal, Minton claimed that the federal district courts had exclusive jurisdiction over claims like his under 28 U. S. C. §1338(a), which provides for exclusive federal jurisdiction over any case “arising under any Act of Congress relating to patents.” Minton argued that the state trial court had therefore lacked jurisdiction, and he should be able to start over with his malpractice suit in federal court. Applying the test of Grable & Sons Metal Products, Inc. v. Darue Engineering & Mfg., 545 U.S. 308, the Texas Court of Appeals rejected Minton’s argument, proceeded to the merits, and determined that Minton had failed to establish experimental use. The Texas Supreme Court reversed, concluding that the case properly belonged in federal court because the success of Minton’s malpractice claim relied upon a question of federal patent law. Held: Section §1338(a) does not deprive the state courts of subject matter jurisdiction over Minton’s malpractice claim. Pp. 4–13. (a) Congress has authorized the federal district courts to exercise original jurisdiction over “any civil action arising under any Act of Congress relating to patents,” and further decreed that “[n]o State court shall have jurisdiction over any [such] claim.” §1338(a). Because federal law did not create the cause of action asserted by Minton’s legal malpractice claim, the claim can “aris[e] under” federal patent law only if it “necessarily raise[s] a stated federal issue, actually disputed and substantial, which a federal forum may entertain without disturbing any congressionally approved balance of federal and state judicial responsibilities.” Grable, 545 U. S., at 314. Pp. 4–6. (b) Applying Grable’s inquiry here, it is clear that Minton’s legal malpractice claim does not arise under federal patent law. Pp. 6–12. (1) Resolution of a federal patent question is “necessary” to Minton’s case. To prevail on his claim, Minton must show that an experimental-use argument would have prevailed if only petitioners had timely made it in the earlier patent litigation. That hypothetical patent case within the malpractice case must be resolved to decide Minton’s malpractice claim. P. 7. (2) The federal issue is also “actually disputed.” Minton argues that the experimental-use exception applied, which would have saved his patent from the on-sale bar; petitioners argue that it did not. Pp. 7–8. (3) Minton’s argument founders, however, on Grable’s substantiality requirement. The substantiality inquiry looks to the importance of the issue to the federal system as a whole. Here, the federal issue does not carry the necessary significance. No matter how the state courts resolve the hypothetical “case within a case,” the real-world result of the prior federal patent litigation will not change. Nor will allowing state courts to resolve these cases undermine “the development of a uniform body of [patent] law.” Bonito Boats, Inc. v. Thunder Craft Boats, Inc., 489 U.S. 141, 162. The federal courts have exclusive jurisdiction over actual patent cases, and in resolving the nonhypothetical patent questions those cases present they are of course not bound by state precedents. Minton suggests that state courts’ answers to hypothetical patent questions can sometimes have real-world effect on other patents through issue preclusion, but even assuming that is true, such “fact-bound and situation-specific” effects are not sufficient to establish arising under jurisdiction, Empire HealthChoice Assurance, Inc. v. McVeigh, 547 U.S. 677, 701. Finally, the federal courts’ greater familiarity with patent law is not enough, by itself, to trigger the federal courts’ exclusive patent jurisdiction. Pp. 8–12. (4) It follows from the foregoing that Minton does not meet Grable’s fourth requirement, which is concerned with the appropriate federal-state balance. There is no reason to suppose that Congress meant to bar from state courts state legal malpractice claims simply because they require resolution of a hypothetical patent issue. P. 12. 355 S.W.3d 634, reversed and remanded. Roberts, C. J., delivered the opinion for a unanimous Court.

Federal courts have exclusive jurisdiction over cases “arising under any Act of Congress relating to patents.” 28 U. S. C. §1338(a). The question presented is whether a state law claim alleging legal malpractice in the handling of a patent case must be brought in federal court. I In the early 1990s, respondent Vernon Minton developed a computer program and telecommunications network designed to facilitate securities trading. In March 1995, he leased the system—known as the Texas Computer Exchange Network, or TEXCEN—to R. M. Stark & Co., a securities brokerage. A little over a year later, he applied for a patent for an interactive securities trading system that was based substantially on TEXCEN. The U. S. Patent and Trademark Office issued the patent in January 2000. Patent in hand, Minton filed a patent infringement suit in Federal District Court against the National Association of Securities Dealers, Inc. (NASD) and the NASDAQ Stock Market, Inc. He was represented by Jerry Gunn and the other petitioners. NASD and NASDAQ moved for summary judgment on the ground that Minton’s patent was invalid under the “on sale” bar, 35 U. S. C. §102(b). That provision specifies that an inventor is not entitled to a patent if “the invention was . . . on sale in [the United States], more than one year prior to the date of the application,” and Minton had leased TEXCEN to Stark more than one year prior to filing his patent application. Rejecting Minton’s argument that there were differences between TEXCEN and the patented system that precluded application of the on-sale bar, the District Court granted the summary judgment motion and declared Minton’s patent invalid. Minton v. National Assn. of Securities Dealers, Inc., 226 F. Supp. 2d 845, 873, 883–884 (ED Tex. 2002). Minton then filed a motion for reconsideration in the District Court, arguing for the first time that the lease agreement with Stark was part of ongoing testing of TEXCEN and therefore fell within the “experimental use” exception to the on-sale bar. See generally Pfaff v. Wells Electronics, Inc., 525 U.S. 55, 64 (1998) (describing the exception). The District Court denied the motion. Minton v. National Assn. of Securities Dealers, Inc., No. 9:00–cv–00019 (ED Tex., July 15, 2002). Minton appealed to the U. S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit. That court affirmed, concluding that the District Court had appropriately held Minton’s experimental-use argument waived. See Minton v. National Assn. of Securities Dealers, Inc., 336 F.3d 1373, 1379–1380 (CA Fed. 2003). Minton, convinced that his attorneys’ failure to raise the experimental-use argument earlier had cost him the lawsuit and led to invalidation of his patent, brought this malpractice action in Texas state court. His former lawyers defended on the ground that the lease to Stark was not, in fact, for an experimental use, and that therefore Minton’s patent infringement claims would have failed even if the experimental-use argument had been timely raised. The trial court agreed, holding that Minton had put forward “less than a scintilla of proof” that the lease had been for an experimental purpose. App. 213. It accordingly granted summary judgment to Gunn and the other lawyer defendants. On appeal, Minton raised a new argument: Because his legal malpractice claim was based on an alleged error in a patent case, it “aris[es] under” federal patent law for purposes of 28 U. S. C. §1338(a). And because, under §1338(a), “[n]o State court shall have jurisdiction over any claim for relief arising under any Act of Congress relating to patents,” the Texas court—where Minton had originally brought his malpractice claim—lacked subject matter jurisdiction to decide the case. Accordingly, Minton argued, the trial court’s order should be vacated and the case dismissed, leaving Minton free to start over in the Federal District Court. A divided panel of the Court of Appeals of Texas rejected Minton’s argument. Applying the test we articulated in Grable & Sons Metal Products, Inc. v. Darue Engineering & Mfg., 545 U.S. 308, 314 (2005), it held that the federal interests implicated by Minton’s state law claim were not sufficiently substantial to trigger §1338 “arising under” jurisdiction. It also held that finding exclusive federal jurisdiction over state legal malpractice actions would, contrary to Grable’s commands, disturb the balance of federal and state judicial responsibilities. Proceeding to the merits of Minton’s malpractice claim, the Court of Appeals affirmed the trial court’s determination that Minton had failed to establish experimental use and that arguments on that ground therefore would not have saved his infringement suit. The Supreme Court of Texas reversed, relying heavily on a pair of cases from the U. S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit. 355 S.W.3d 634, 641–642 (2011) (discussing Air Measurement Technologies, Inc. v. Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld, L. L. P., 504 F.3d 1262 (2007); Immunocept, LLC v. Fulbright & Jaworski, LLP, 504 F.3d 1281 (2007)). The Court concluded that Minton’s claim involved “a substantial federal issue” within the meaning of Grable “because the success of Minton’s malpractice claim is reliant upon the viability of the experimental use exception as a defense to the on-sale bar.” 355 S. W. 3d, at 644. Adjudication of Minton’s claim in federal court was consistent with the appropriate balance between federal and state judicial responsibilities, it held, because “the federal government and patent litigants have an interest in the uniform application of patent law by courts well-versed in that subject matter.” Id., at 646 (citing Immunocept, supra, at 1285–1286; Air Measurement Technologies, supra, at 1272). Justice Guzman, joined by Justices Medina and Willett, dissented. The dissenting justices would have held that the federal issue was neither substantial nor disputed, and that maintaining the proper balance of responsibility between state and federal courts precluded relegating state legal malpractice claims to federal court. We granted certiorari. 568 U. S. ___ (2012). II “Federal courts are courts of limited jurisdiction,” possessing “only that power authorized by Constitution and statute.” Kokkonen v. Guardian Life Ins. Co. of America, 511 U.S. 375, 377 (1994). There is no dispute that the Constitution permits Congress to extend federal court jurisdiction to a case such as this one, see Osborn v. Bank of United States, 9 Wheat. 738, 823–824 (1824); the question is whether Congress has done so, see Powell v. McCormack, 395 U.S. 486, 515–516 (1969). As relevant here, Congress has authorized the federal district courts to exercise original jurisdiction in “all civil actions arising under the Constitution, laws, or treaties of the United States,” 28 U. S. C. §1331, and, more particularly, over “any civil action arising under any Act of Congress relating to patents,” §1338(a). Adhering to the demands of “[l]inguistic consistency,” we have interpreted the phrase “arising under” in both sections identically, applying our §1331 and §1338(a) precedents interchangeably. See Christianson v. Colt Industries Operating Corp., 486 U.S. 800, 808–809 (1988). For cases falling within the patent-specific arising under jurisdiction of §1338(a), however, Congress has not only provided for federal jurisdiction but also eliminated state jurisdiction, decreeing that “[n]o State court shall have jurisdiction over any claim for relief arising under any Act of Congress relating to patents.” §1338(a) (2006 ed., Supp. V). To determine whether jurisdiction was proper in the Texas courts, therefore, we must determine whether it would have been proper in a federal district court—whether, that is, the case “aris[es] under any Act of Congress relating to patents.” For statutory purposes, a case can “aris[e] under” federal law in two ways. Most directly, a case arises under federal law when federal law creates the cause of action asserted. See American Well Works Co. v. Layne & Bowler Co., 241 U.S. 257, 260 (1916) (“A suit arises under the law that creates the cause of action”). As a rule of inclusion, this “creation” test admits of only extremely rare exceptions, see, e.g., Shoshone Mining Co. v. Rutter, 177 U.S. 505 (1900), and accounts for the vast bulk of suits that arise under federal law, see Franchise Tax Bd. of Cal. v. Construction Laborers Vacation Trust for Southern Cal., 463 U.S. 1, 9 (1983). Minton’s original patent infringement suit against NASD and NASDAQ, for example, arose under federal law in this manner because it was authorized by 35 U. S. C. §§271, 281. But even where a claim finds its origins in state rather than federal law—as Minton’s legal malpractice claim indisputably does—we have identified a “special and small category” of cases in which arising under jurisdiction still lies. Empire HealthChoice Assurance, Inc. v. McVeigh, 547 U.S. 677, 699 (2006). In outlining the contours of this slim category, we do not paint on a blank canvas. Unfortunately, the canvas looks like one that Jackson Pollock got to first. See 13D C. Wright, A. Miller, E. Cooper, & R. Freer, Federal Practice and Procedure §3562, pp. 175–176 (3d ed. 2008) (reviewing general confusion on question). In an effort to bring some order to this unruly doctrine several Terms ago, we condensed our prior cases into the following inquiry: Does the “state-law claim necessarily raise a stated federal issue, actually disputed and substantial, which a federal forum may entertain without disturbing any congressionally approved balance of federal and state judicial responsibilities”? Grable, 545 U. S., at 314. That is, federal jurisdiction over a state law claim will lie if a federal issue is: (1) necessarily raised, (2) actually disputed, (3) substantial, and (4) capable of resolution in federal court without disrupting the federal-state balance approved by Congress. Where all four of these requirements are met, we held, jurisdiction is proper because there is a “serious federal interest in claiming the advantages thought to be inherent in a federal forum,” which can be vindicated without disrupting Congress’s intended division of labor between state and federal courts. Id., at 313–314. III Applying Grable’s inquiry here, it is clear that Minton’s legal malpractice claim does not arise under federal patent law. Indeed, for the reasons we discuss, we are comfortable concluding that state legal malpractice claims based on underlying patent matters will rarely, if ever, arise under federal patent law for purposes of §1338(a). Although such cases may necessarily raise disputed questions of patent law, those cases are by their nature unlikely to have the sort of significance for the federal system necessary to establish jurisdiction. A To begin, we acknowledge that resolution of a federal patent question is “necessary” to Minton’s case. Under Texas law, a plaintiff alleging legal malpractice must establish four elements: (1) that the defendant attorney owed the plaintiff a duty; (2) that the attorney breached that duty; (3) that the breach was the proximate cause of the plaintiff’s injury; and (4) that damages occurred. See Alexander v. Turtur & Associates, Inc., 146 S.W.3d 113, 117 (Tex. 2004). In cases like this one, in which the attorney’s alleged error came in failing to make a particular argument, the causation element requires a “case within a case” analysis of whether, had the argument been made, the outcome of the earlier litigation would have been different. 355 S. W. 3d, at 639; see 4 R. Mallen & J. Smith, Legal Malpractice §37:15, pp. 1509–1520 (2012). To prevail on his legal malpractice claim, therefore, Minton must show that he would have prevailed in his federal patent infringement case if only petitioners had timely made an experimental-use argument on his behalf. 355 S. W. 3d, at 644. That will necessarily require application of patent law to the facts of Minton’s case. B The federal issue is also “actually disputed” here—indeed, on the merits, it is the central point of dispute. Minton argues that the experimental-use exception properly applied to his lease to Stark, saving his patent from the on-sale bar; petitioners argue that it did not. This is just the sort of “ ‘dispute . . . respecting the . . . effect of [federal] law’ ” that Grable envisioned. 545 U. S., at 313 (quoting Shulthis v. McDougal, 225 U.S. 561, 569 (1912)). C Minton’s argument founders on Grable’s next requirement, however, for the federal issue in this case is not substantial in the relevant sense. In reaching the opposite conclusion, the Supreme Court of Texas focused on the importance of the issue to the plaintiff’s case and to the parties before it. 355 S. W. 3d, at 644 (“because the success of Minton’s malpractice claim is reliant upon the viability of the experimental use exception as a defense to the on-sale bar, we hold that it is a substantial federal issue”); see also Air Measurement Technologies, 504 F. 3d, at 1272 (“the issue is substantial, for it is a necessary element of the malpractice case”). As our past cases show, however, it is not enough that the federal issue be significant to the particular parties in the immediate suit; that will always be true when the state claim “necessarily raise[s]” a disputed federal issue, as Grable separately requires. The substantiality inquiry under Grable looks instead to the importance of the issue to the federal system as a whole. In Grable itself, for example, the Internal Revenue Service had seized property from the plaintiff and sold it to satisfy the plaintiff’s federal tax delinquency. 545 U. S., at 310–311. Five years later, the plaintiff filed a state law quiet title action against the third party that had purchased the property, alleging that the IRS had failed to comply with certain federally imposed notice requirements, so that the seizure and sale were invalid. Ibid. In holding that the case arose under federal law, we primarily focused not on the interests of the litigants themselves, but rather on the broader significance of the notice question for the Federal Government. We emphasized the Government’s “strong interest” in being able to recover delinquent taxes through seizure and sale of property, which in turn “require[d] clear terms of notice to allow buyers . . . to satisfy themselves that the Service has touched the bases necessary for good title.” Id., at 315. The Government’s “direct interest in the availability of a federal forum to vindicate its own administrative action” made the question “an important issue of federal law that sensibly belong[ed] in a federal court.” Ibid. A second illustration of the sort of substantiality we require comes from Smith v. Kansas City Title & Trust Co., 255 U.S. 180 (1921), which Grable described as “[t]he classic example” of a state claim arising under federal law. 545 U. S., at 312. In Smith, the plaintiff argued that the defendant bank could not purchase certain bonds issued by the Federal Government because the Government had acted unconstitutionally in issuing them. 255 U. S., at 198. We held that the case arose under federal law, because the “decision depends upon the determination” of “the constitutional validity of an act of Congress which is directly drawn in question.” Id., at 201. Again, the relevant point was not the importance of the question to the parties alone but rather the importance more generally of a determination that the Government “securities were issued under an unconstitutional law, and hence of no validity.” Ibid.; see also Merrell Dow Pharmaceuticals Inc. v. Thompson, 478 U.S. 804, 814, n. 12 (1986). Here, the federal issue carries no such significance. Because of the backward-looking nature of a legal malpractice claim, the question is posed in a merely hypothetical sense: If Minton’s lawyers had raised a timely experimental-use argument, would the result in the patent infringement proceeding have been different? No matter how the state courts resolve that hypothetical “case within a case,” it will not change the real-world result of the prior federal patent litigation. Minton’s patent will remain invalid. Nor will allowing state courts to resolve these cases undermine “the development of a uniform body of [patent] law.” Bonito Boats, Inc. v. Thunder Craft Boats, Inc., 489 U.S. 141, 162 (1989). Congress ensured such uniformity by vesting exclusive jurisdiction over actual patent cases in the federal district courts and exclusive appellate jurisdiction in the Federal Circuit. See 28 U. S. C. §§1338(a), 1295(a)(1). In resolving the nonhypothetical patent questions those cases present, the federal courts are of course not bound by state court case-within-a-case patent rulings. See Tafflin v. Levitt, 493 U.S. 455, 465 (1990). In any event, the state court case-within-a-case inquiry asks what would have happened in the prior federal proceeding if a particular argument had been made. In answering that question, state courts can be expected to hew closely to the pertinent federal precedents. It is those precedents, after all, that would have applied had the argument been made. Cf. ibid. (“State courts adjudicating civil RICO claims will . . . be guided by federal court interpretations of the relevant federal criminal statutes, just as federal courts sitting in diversity are guided by state court interpretations of state law”). As for more novel questions of patent law that may arise for the first time in a state court “case within a case,” they will at some point be decided by a federal court in the context of an actual patent case, with review in the Federal Circuit. If the question arises frequently, it will soon be resolved within the federal system, laying to rest any contrary state court precedent; if it does not arise frequently, it is unlikely to implicate substantial federal interests. The present case is “poles apart from Grable,” in which a state court’s resolution of the federal question “would be controlling in numerous other cases.” Empire HealthChoice Assurance, Inc., 547 U. S., at 700. Minton also suggests that state courts’ answers to hypothetical patent questions can sometimes have real-world effect on other patents through issue preclusion. Brief for Respondent 33–36. Minton, for example, has filed what is known as a “continuation patent” application related to his original patent. See 35 U. S. C. §120; 4A D. Chisum, Patents §13.03 (2005) (describing continuation applications). He argues that, in evaluating this separate application, the patent examiner could be bound by the Texas trial court’s interpretation of the scope of Minton’s original patent. See Brief for Respondent 35–36. It is unclear whether this is true. The Patent and Trademark Office’s Manual of Patent Examining Procedure provides that res judicata is a proper ground for rejecting a patent “only when the earlier decision was a decision of the Board of Appeals” or certain federal reviewing courts, giving no indication that state court decisions would have preclusive effect. See Dept. of Commerce, Patent and Trademark Office, Manual of Patent Examining Procedure §706.03(w), p. 700–79 (rev. 8th ed. 2012); 35 U. S. C. §§134(a), 141, 145; Reply Brief 9–10. In fact, Minton has not identified any case finding such preclusive effect based on a state court decision. But even assuming that a state court’s case-within-a-case adjudication may be preclusive under some circumstances, the result would be limited to the parties and patents that had been before the state court. Such “fact-bound and situation-specific” effects are not sufficient to establish federal arising under jurisdiction. Empire HealthChoice Assurance, Inc., supra, at 701. Nor can we accept the suggestion that the federal courts’ greater familiarity with patent law means that legal malpractice cases like this one belong in federal court. See Air Measurement Technologies, 504 F. 3d, at 1272 (“The litigants will also benefit from federal judges who have experience in claim construction and infringement matters”); 355 S. W. 3d, at 646 (“patent litigants have an interest in the uniform application of patent law by courts well-versed in that subject matter”). It is true that a similar interest was among those we considered in Grable. 545 U. S., at 314. But the possibility that a state court will incorrectly resolve a state claim is not, by itself, enough to trigger the federal courts’ exclusive patent jurisdiction, even if the potential error finds its root in a misunderstanding of patent law. There is no doubt that resolution of a patent issue in the context of a state legal malpractice action can be vitally important to the particular parties in that case. But something more, demonstrating that the question is significant to the federal system as a whole, is needed. That is missing here. D It follows from the foregoing that Grable’s fourth requirement is also not met. That requirement is concerned with the appropriate “balance of federal and state judicial responsibilities.” Ibid. We have already explained the absence of a substantial federal issue within the meaning of Grable. The States, on the other hand, have “a special responsibility for maintaining standards among members of the licensed professions.” Ohralik v. Ohio State Bar Assn., 436 U.S. 447, 460 (1978). Their “interest . . . in regulating lawyers is especially great since lawyers are essential to the primary governmental function of administering justice, and have historically been officers of the courts.” Goldfarb v. Virginia State Bar, 421 U.S. 773, 792 (1975) (internal quotation marks omitted). We have no reason to suppose that Congress—in establishing exclusive federal jurisdiction over patent cases—meant to bar from state courts state legal malpractice claims simply because they require resolution of a hypothetical patent issue. * * * As we recognized a century ago, “[t]he Federal courts have exclusive jurisdiction of all cases arising under the patent laws, but not of all questions in which a patent may be the subject-matter of the controversy.” New Marshall Engine Co. v. Marshall Engine Co., 223 U.S. 473, 478 (1912). In this case, although the state courts must answer a question of patent law to resolve Minton’s legal malpractice claim, their answer will have no broader effects. It will not stand as binding precedent for any future patent claim; it will not even affect the validity of Minton’s patent. Accordingly, there is no “serious federal interest in claiming the advantages thought to be inherent in a federal forum,” Grable, supra, at 313. Section 1338(a) does not deprive the state courts of subject matter jurisdiction. The judgment of the Supreme Court of Texas is reversed, and the case is remanded for further proceedings not inconsistent with this opinion. It is so ordered.

568.US.266

A federal court of appeals normally will not correct a legal error made in a criminal trial unless the defendant first brought the error to the trial court’s attention. United States v. Olano, 507 U.S. 725, 731. But Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure 52(b) provides an exception, permitting “[a] plain error that affects substantial rights [to] be considered even though it was not brought to the [trial] court’s attention.” Here, the District Court increased the length of petitioner Henderson’s sentence so he could participate in a prison drug rehabilitation program. Henderson’s counsel did not object to the sentence, but, on appeal, Henderson claimed that the District Court plainly erred in increasing his sentence solely for rehabilitative purposes. While the appeal was pending, this Court decided in Tapia v. United States, 563 U. S. ___, ___, that it is error for a court to “impose or lengthen a prison sentence to enable an offender to complete a treatment program or otherwise to promote rehabilitation.” While this meant that the District Court’s sentence was erroneous, the Fifth Circuit determined that Rule 52(b) did not give it authority to correct the error. In doing so, it concluded that an error is “plain” under the Rule only if it was clear under current law at the time of trial, but that, in this case, Circuit law was unsettled until Tapia was decided. Held: Regardless of whether a legal question was settled or unsettled at the time of trial, an error is “plain” within the meaning of Rule 52(b) so long as the error was plain at the time of appellate review. Pp. 3–13. (a) The question of whether an error must be plain at the time it is committed or at the time it is reviewed reflects two competing legal principles. The principle that a right may be forfeited in a case if it is not timely asserted before a tribunal having jurisdiction to determine it favors limiting the assessment of plainness to the time of the error’s commission. See Olano, supra, at 731. And the rule that an appellate court must apply the law in effect at the time it renders its decision favors assessing plainness at the time of review. See Thorpe v. Housing Authority of Durham, 393 U.S. 268, 281. Because neither principle is absolute, the conflict cannot be decided by looking to one rather than the other. The text of Rule 52(b) also leaves open the temporal question. And relevant precedent does not directly answer the question. In Olano, this Court said that Rule 52(b) authorizes an appeals court to correct a forfeited error only if (1) there is an “error,” (2) that is “plain,” (3) that “affect[s] substantial rights,” 507 U.S. 732, and (4) that “ ‘seriously affect[s] the fairness, integrity or public reputation of judicial proceedings,’ ” id., at 736. In Johnson v. United States, 520 U.S. 461, 468, the Court concluded that, where a trial court’s decision was clearly correct under circuit law when made but becomes “clearly contrary to the law at the time of appeal[,] it is enough that an error be ‘plain’ at the time of appellate consideration.” However, neither case addressed what rule should apply where the law is unsettled at the time of the error but plain at the time of review. 507 U. S., at 734, 520 U. S, at 467−468. Pp. 3−6. (b) This precedent, when read in light of the underlying background principles, leads to the conclusion that Rule 52(b)’s “plain error” phrase applies at the time of review. If “plain error” covers trial court decisions that were plainly correct when made and those that were plainly incorrect when made, it should cover cases in the middle―i.e., where the law was neither clearly correct nor incorrect, but unsettled, at the time of the trial court’s decision. To hold to the contrary would lead to unjustifiably different treatment of similarly situated individuals, for there is no practical reason to treat a defendant more harshly simply because his circuit’s law was unclear at the time of trial. Even if a “time of error” rule would provide an added incentive to counsel to call a trial judge’s attention to the matter so the judge could quickly consider remedial action, such incentive has little, if any, practical importance since counsel normally has good reasons for calling a trial court’s attention to potential error, e.g., the advantage to counsel and client of having an error speedily corrected. In sum, in contrast to a “time of error” rule, a “time of review” interpretation furthers the basic principle that “an appellate court must apply the law in effect at the time it renders its decision,” Thorpe, supra, at 281; works little, if any, practical harm upon the competing administrative principle that insists that counsel call a potential error to the trial court’s attention; and is consistent with Rule 52(b)’s basic purpose of creating a fairness-based exception to the general requirement that an objection be made at trial to preserve a claim of error. Pp. 6−9. (c) The Government’s arguments to the contrary are unpersuasive. Its claim that appellate courts should consider only errors that counsel called to the trial court’s attention and errors that the court should have independently recognized overlooks the way in which Rule 52(b) restricts the appellate court’s authority to correct an error to those errors that would, in fact, seriously affect the fairness, integrity, or public reputation of judicial proceedings. The Government also fears that the holding here will lead to too many “plain error” claims. But, a new rule of law set by an appellate court cannot automatically lead that court to consider all contrary determinations by trial courts plainly erroneous, given that lower court decisions that are questionable but not plainly wrong fall outside the Rule’s scope, and given that any error must have affected the defendant’s substantial rights and affected the fairness, integrity, or public reputation of judicial proceedings. Finally, the Government’s textual argument that Rule 52(b) is written mostly in the past tense, whatever its merits, is foreclosed by Johnson. Pp. 10−12. 646 F.3d 223, reversed and remanded. Breyer, J., delivered the opinion of the Court, in which Roberts, C. J., and Kennedy, Ginsburg, Sotomayor, and Kagan, JJ., joined. Scalia, J., filed a dissenting opinion, in which Thomas and Alito, JJ., joined.

A federal court of appeals normally will not correct a legal error made in criminal trial court proceedings unless the defendant first brought the error to the trial court’s attention. See United States v. Olano, 507 U.S. 725, 731 (1993). But Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure 52(b), creating an exception to the normal rule, says that “[a] plain error that affects substantial rights may be considered even though it was not brought to the [trial] court’s attention.” (Emphasis added.) The Rule does not say explicitly, however, as of just what time the error must be “plain.” Must the lower court ruling be plainly erroneous as of the time the lower court made the error? Or can an error still count as “plain” if the erroneous nature of that ruling is not “plain” until the time of appellate review? The case before us concerns a District Court’s decision on a substantive legal question that was unsettled at the time the trial court acted, thus foreclosing the possibility that any error could have been “plain” then. Before the case was final and at the time of direct appellate review, however, the question had become settled in the defendant’s favor, making the trial court’s error “plain”—but not until that later time. In our view, as long as the error was plain as of that later time—the time of appellate review—the error is “plain” within the meaning of the Rule. And the Court of Appeals “may . . . conside[r]” the error even though it was “not brought to the [trial] court’s attention.” Fed. Rule Crim. Proc. 52(b). I In early 2010, Armarcion Henderson, the petitioner, pleaded guilty in Federal District Court to a charge of being a felon in possession of a firearm. 646 F.3d 223, 224 (CA5 2011). The District Judge accepted the plea and, in June 2010, he sentenced Henderson to an above-Guidelines prison term of 60 months. Ibid. The judge entered the longer sentence to “try to help” Henderson by qualifying him for an in-prison drug rehabilitation program, a program that would provide “the treatment and the counse[l]ing that this defendant needs right now.” App. to Pet. for Cert. 35a, 40a. Henderson’s counsel did not object. Indeed, the judge asked counsel if there was “any reason why that sentence as stated should not be imposed.” Id., at 41a. And counsel replied, “Procedurally, no.” Ibid. Subsequently, Henderson appealed, claiming, among other things, that the District Court had “plain[ly]” erred in sentencing him to an above-Guidelines prison term solely for rehabilitative purposes. 646 F. 3d, at 224. In 2011, after Henderson was sentenced but before Henderson’s appeal was heard, this Court decided Tapia v. United States, 564 U. S. ___. There, we held that it is error for a court to “impose or lengthen a prison sentence to enable an offender to complete a treatment program or otherwise to promote rehabilitation.” Id., at ___ (slip op., at 15). Given Tapia, Henderson’s sentence was unlawful, and the District Court’s decision to impose that sentence was erroneous. But, since Henderson’s counsel had not objected in the trial court, the Court of Appeals could not correct the error unless Rule 52(b) applied. The Rule, however, applies only if the error was “plain.” The error was not plain before Tapia; it was plain after Tapia. Thus, the Fifth Circuit had to determine the temporal scope of Rule 52(b)’s words “plain error.” The appeals court decided that Rule 52(b) did not give it the authority to correct the trial court’s error. 646 F. 3d, at 225. The appellate panel pointed out that, “[b]efore Tapia, there was a circuit split on whether a District Court can consider a defendant’s rehabilitative needs to lengthen a sentence.” Ibid. The panel added that the Fifth Circuit had “not pronounced on the question” before Henderson was sentenced. Ibid. Thus, at the time when the District Court reached its decision, the law in that Circuit was unsettled. The Court of Appeals concluded that “Henderson cannot show that the error in his case was plain, . . . because an error is plain only if it was clear under current law at the time of trial.” Ibid. (internal quotation marks omitted). The Fifth Circuit denied rehearing en banc by a divided vote. 665 F.3d 160 (2011) (per curiam) (7 to 10). Henderson filed a petition for certiorari. And we granted the petition to resolve differences among the Circuits. Compare, e.g., United States v. Cordery, 656 F.3d 1103, 1107 (CA10 2011) (time of review), with, e.g., United States v. Mouling, 557 F.3d 658, 664 (CADC 2009) (time of error). II A Is the time for determining “plainness” the time when the error is committed, or can an error be “plain” if it is not plain until the time the error is reviewed? The question reflects a conflict between two important, here competing, legal principles. On the one hand, “ ‘[n]o procedural principle is more familiar to this Court than that a constitutional right,’ or a right of any other sort, ‘may be for- feited in criminal as well as civil cases by the failure to make timely assertion of the right before a tribunal hav- ing jurisdiction to determine it.’ ” Olano, 507 U. S., at 731 (quoting Yakus v. United States, 321 U.S. 414, 444 (1944)). This principle favors assessing plainness limited to the time the error was committed. On the other hand, “[t]he general rule . . . is that an appellate court must apply the law in effect at the time it renders its decision.” Thorpe v. Housing Authority of Durham, 393 U.S. 268, 281 (1969). See Ziffrin v. United States, 318 U.S. 73, 78 (1943). Indeed, Chief Justice Marshall wrote long ago: “It is in the general true that the province of an appellate court is only to enquire whether a judgment when rendered was erroneous or not. But if subsequent to the judgment and before the decision of the appellate court, a law intervenes and positively changes the rule which governs, the law must be obeyed, or its obligation denied. . . . In such a case the court must decide according to existing laws, and if it be necessary to set aside a judgment, rightful when rendered, but which cannot be affirmed but in violation of law, the judgment must be set aside.” United States v. Schooner Peggy, 1 Cranch 103, 110 (1801). This principle favors assessing plainness at the time of review. Rule 52(b) itself makes clear that the first principle is not absolute. Indeed, we have said that a “ ‘rigid and undeviating judicially declared practice under which courts of review would invariably and under all circumstances decline to consider all questions which had not previously been specifically urged would be out of har- mony with . . . the rules of fundamental justice.’ ” Olano, supra, at 732 (quoting Hormel v. Helvering, 312 U.S. 552, 557 (1941); ellipsis in original). But neither is the second principle absolute. Even where a new rule of law is at issue, Rule 52(b) does not give a court of appeals authority to overlook a failure to object unless an error not only “affect[s] substantial rights” but also “seriously affect[s] the fairness, integrity or public reputation of judicial proceedings.” Olano, supra, at 732 (internal quotation marks omitted; brackets in original). Because the two principles here point in different directions and neither is absolute, we cannot decide this conflict simply by looking to one rather than to the other. The text of Rule 52(b) does not resolve the problem. It does not say that a court of appeals may consider an “error that was plain”—language that would look to the past. Rather, it simply says that a court of appeals may consider “[a] plain error.” And that language leaves the temporal question open. But see infra, at 12. Neither does precedent answer the temporal question—at least not directly. Olano is clearly relevant. There, we said that Rule 52(b) authorizes an appeals court to correct a forfeited error only if (1) there is “an error,” (2) the error is “ plain,” and (3) the error “affect[s] substantial rights.” 507 U. S., at 732 (internal quotation marks omitted). Pointing out that Rule 52 “is permissive, not mandatory,” id., at 735, we added (4) that “the standard that should guide the exercise of remedial discretion under Rule 52(b)” is whether “the error ‘seriously affect[s] the fairness, in- tegrity or public reputation of judicial proceedings,’ ” id., at 736 (quoting United States v. Atkinson, 297 U.S. 157, 160 (1936); brackets in original). At the same time, we said that “[w]e need not consider the special case where the error was unclear at the time of trial but becomes clear on appeal because the applicable law has been clarified.” 507 U. S., at 734. That is the case now before us. Johnson v. United States, 520 U.S. 461 (1997), is also relevant. We there considered a trial court’s decision that was clearly correct under Circuit law when made but which, by the time of review, had become plainly erroneous due to an intervening authoritative legal decision. We concluded that, “where the law at the time of trial was settled and clearly contrary to the law at the time of appeal[,] it is enough that an error be ‘plain’ at the time of appellate consideration.” Id., at 468. As in Olano, however, we declined to decide whether that same rule should apply where the law is unsettled at the time of error but plain at the time of review. 520 U. S., at 467–468. As we have said, this is precisely the case now before us. B The text, precedents, and background principles do not directly dictate a result here. But prior precedent has helped to shape current law. And that precedent, read in light of those underlying principles, leads us to interpret Rule 52(b)’s phrase “plain error” as applying at the time of review. Given Johnson, a “time of error” interpretation would prove highly, and unfairly, anomalous. Consider the lay of the post-Johnson legal land: No one doubts that an (un-objected to) error by a trial judge will ordinarily fall within Rule 52(b)’s word “plain” as long as the trial court’s decision was plainly incorrect at the time it was made. E.g., Olano, supra, at 734. That much is common ground. Johnson then adds that, at least in one circumstance, an (un-objected to) error by a trial judge will also fall within Rule 52(b)’s word “plain” even if the judge was not plainly incorrect at the time it was made. That is the circumstance where an error is “plain” even if the trial judge’s decision was plainly correct at the time when it was made but subsequently becomes incorrect based on a change in law. 520 U. S., at 468. And, since by definition the trial judge did not commit plain error at the time of the ruling, Johnson explicitly rejects applying the words “plain error” as of the time when the trial judge acted. Instead, Johnson deems it “enough that an error be ‘plain’ at the time of appellate consideration” for that error to fall within Rule 52(b)’s category of “plain error.” Ibid. But if the Rule’s words “plain error” cover both (1) trial court decisions that were plainly correct at the time when the judge made the decision and (2) trial court decisions that were plainly incorrect at the time when the judge made the decision, then why should they not also cover (3) cases in the middle—i.e., where the law at the time of the trial judge’s decision was neither clearly correct nor incorrect, but unsettled? To hold to the contrary would bring about unjustifi- ably different treatment of similarly situated individuals. Imagine three virtually identical defendants, each from a different circuit, each sentenced in January to identical long prison terms, and each given those long sentences for the same reason, namely to obtain rehabilitative treatment. Imagine that none of them raises an objection. In June, the Supreme Court holds this form of sentencing unlawful. And, in December, each of the three different circuits considers the claim that the trial judge’s January-imposed prison term constituted a legal error. Imagine further that in the first circuit the law in January made the trial court’s decision clearly lawful as of the time when the judge made it; in the second circuit, the law in January made the trial court’s decision clearly unlawful as of the time when the judge made it; and in the third circuit, the law in January was unsettled. To apply Rule 52(b)’s words “plain error” as of the time of appellate review would treat all three defendants alike. It would permit all three to go on to argue to the appellate court that the trial court error affected their “substantial rights” and “seriously affect[ed] the fairness, integrity or public reputation of judicial proceedings.” Olano, supra, at 732 (internal quotation marks omitted). To interpret “plain error” differently, however, would treat these three virtually identical defendants differently, allowing only the first two defendants, but not the third defendant, po- tentially to qualify for Rule 52(b) relief. All three defen- dants suffered from legal error; all three failed to object; and all three would benefit from the new legal interpre- tation. What reason is there to give two of these three defendants the benefits of a new rule of law, but not the third? Cf. Schooner Peggy, 1 Cranch, at 110. There is no practical ground for making this distinction. To the contrary, to distinguish and treat more harshly cases where a circuit’s law was unclear would simply promote arguments about whether the law of the circuit initially was unclear (rather than clearly settled one way or the other). And these arguments are likely to be particularly difficult to resolve where what is at issue is a matter of legal degree, not kind. To what extent, for example, did a prosecutor’s closing argument go too far down the road of prejudice? A “time of error” interpretation also would require courts of appeals to play a kind of temporal ping-pong, looking at the law that now is to decide whether “error” exists, looking at the law that then was to decide whether the error was “plain,” and looking at the circumstances that now are to decide whether the defendant has satisfied Olano’s third and fourth criteria. Thus, the “time of error” interpretation would make the appellate process yet more complex and time consuming. We recognize, as the Solicitor General points out, that a “time of error” rule, even if confined to instances in which the law is uncertain, would in such cases provide an added incentive to counsel to call the lower court judge’s attention to the matter at a time when that judge could quickly take remedial action. And, even if no remedy is offered, the lower court judge’s analysis may help the court of appeals to decide the legal question. See Brief for United States 30–32. See also Mouling, 557 F. 3d, at 664. We disagree with the Solicitor General, however, in that we also believe that, in the present context, any added incentive has little, if any, practical importance. That is because counsel normally has other good reasons for calling a trial court’s attention to potential error—for example, it is normally to the advantage of counsel and his client to get the error speedily corrected. And, even where that is not so, counsel cannot rely upon the “plain error” rule to make up for a failure to object at trial. After all, that rule will help only if (1) the law changes in the defendant’s favor, (2) the change comes after trial but before the appeal is decided, (3) the error affected the defendant’s “substantial rights,” and (4) the error “seriously affect[ed] the fairness, integrity or public reputation of judicial pro- ceedings.” Olano, 507 U. S., at 732 (internal quotation marks omitted). If there is a lawyer who would deliberately forgo objection now because he perceives some slightly expanded chance to argue for “plain error” later, we suspect that, like the unicorn, he finds his home in the imagination, not the courtroom. The upshot is that a “time of review” interpretation furthers the basic Schooner Peggy principle that “an appellate court must apply the law in effect at the time it renders its decision.” Thorpe, 393 U. S., at 281. It works little, if any, practical harm upon the competing administrative principle that insists that counsel call a potential error to the trial court’s attention. And, it is consistent with the basic purpose of Rule 52(b), namely the creation of a fairness-based exception to the general requirement that an objection be made at trial. See supra, at 4. At the same time, the competing “time of error” rule is out of step with our precedents, creates unfair and anomalous results, and works practical administrative harm. Thus, in the direct appeals of cases that are not yet final, we consider the “time of review” interpretation the better reading of Rule 52’s words “plain error.” III The Solicitor General makes several other important arguments, but they fail to lead us to a different conclusion. First, the Government argues that the purpose of plain-error review is to ensure “the integrity of the [trial] proceedings.” Brief for United States 33–34. In turn, the argument goes, appellate courts should consider only (1) errors that counsel called to the court’s attention and (2) errors that the trial court should have known about regardless, namely those that then were plain. Expanding on this theme, one Court of Appeals described plain error as “error that is so clear-cut, so obvious, a competent district judge should be able to avoid it without benefit of objection. When the state of the law is unclear at trial and only becomes clear as a result of later authority, the District Court’s error is perforce not plain; we expect district judges to be knowledgeable, not clairvoyant.” United States v. Turman, 122 F.3d 1167, 1170 (CA9 1997) (citation omitted). This approach, however, overlooks the way in which the plain-error rule—Rule 52(b)—restricts the appellate court’s authority to correct an error to those errors that would, in fact, seriously affect the fairness, integrity, or public reputation of judicial proceedings. Cf. United States v. Farrell, 672 F.3d 27, 36–37 (CA1 2012) (considering the issue from this perspective). And the approach runs headlong into Johnson. The error in Johnson was not an error that the District Court should have known about at the time. It was the very opposite: The District Judge should have known that his ruling (at the time he made it) was not error; and perhaps not even clairvoyance could have led him to hold to the contrary. Cf. Khan v. State Oil Co., 93 F.3d 1358, 1362–1364 (CA7 1996) (registering disagreement with this Court’s precedent while following it nonetheless); State Oil Co. v. Khan, 522 U.S. 3, 20–22 (1997) (approving of that approach). Rather, Johnson makes clear that plain-error review is not a grading system for trial judges. It has broader purposes, including in part allowing courts of appeals better to identify those instances in which the application of a new rule of law to cases on appeal will meet the demands of fairness and judicial integrity. See Johnson, 520 U. S., at 467–468; Olano, 507 U. S., at 732. Second, the Government fears that our holding will lead to too many claims of “plain error.” Brief for United States 26–28. After all, courts of appeals, not just the Supreme Court, clarify the law through their opinions. When a court of appeals does so, will not all defendants, including many who never objected in the court below, insist that the court of appeals now judge their cases according to the new rule? And will “plain error” in such cases not then disappear, leaving only simple “error” in its stead? The answer to this claim is that a new rule of law, set forth by an appellate court, cannot automatically lead that court to consider all contrary determinations by trial courts plainly erroneous. Many such new rules, as we have pointed out, concern matters of degree, not kind. And a lower court ruling about such matters (say, the nature of a closing argument), even if now wrong (in light of the new appellate holding), is not necessarily plainly wrong. The Rule’s requirement that an error be “plain” means that lower court decisions that are questionable but not plainly wrong (at time of trial or at time of appeal) fall outside the Rule’s scope. And there are other reasons for concluding that our holding will not open any “plain error” floodgates. As we have said, the Rule itself contains other screening criteria. The error must have affected the defendant’s substantial rights and it must have seriously affected the fairness, integrity, or public reputation of judicial proceedings. Olano, supra, at 732. When courts apply these latter criteria, the fact that a defendant did not object, despite unsettled law, may well count against the grant of Rule 52(b) relief. Moreover, the problem here arises only when there is a new rule of law, when the law was previously unsettled, and when the District Court reached a decision contrary to the subsequent rule. These limitations may well explain the absence of any account before us of “plain error” inundation in those Circuits that already follow the interpretation we now adopt. See, e.g., Farrell, supra, at 36–37; Cordery, 656 F. 3d, at 1107; United States v. Garcia, 587 F.3d 509, 519–520 (CA2 2009); United States v. Ross, 77 F.3d 1525, 1539 (CA7 1996). Finally, the Government points out that Rule 52(b) is written mostly in the past tense. It says that a “plain error . . . may be considered even though it was not brought to the court’s attention.” (Emphasis added.) This use of the past tense, the Government argues, refers to a “plain error” that was not “brought to the court’s attention” back then, when the error occurred. And that linguistic fact, in turn, means that the error must have been plain at that time. Brief for United States 18–22. Whatever the merits of this textual argument, however, Johnson forecloses it. The error at issue in that case was not even an error, let alone plain, at the time when the defendant might have “brought [it] to the court’s attention.” Nonetheless, we found the error to be “plain error.” We cannot square the Government’s textual argument with our holding in that case. IV For these reasons, we conclude that whether a legal question was settled or unsettled at the time of trial, “it is enough that an error be ‘plain’ at the time of appellate consideration” for “[t]he second part of the [four-part] Olano test [to be] satisfied.” Johnson, supra, at 468. The contrary judgment of the Court of Appeals is reversed, and the case is remanded for further proceedings consistent with this opinion. It is so ordered.

569.US.483

The Federal Employees’ Group Life Insurance Act of 1954 (FEGLIA) establishes an insurance program for federal employees. FEGLIA permits an employee to name a beneficiary of life insurance proceeds, and specifies an “order of precedence” providing that an employee’s death benefits accrue first to that beneficiary ahead of other potential recipients. 5 U. S. C. §8705(a). A Virginia statute revokes a beneficiary designation in any contract that provides a death benefit to a former spouse where there has been a change in the decedent’s marital status. Va. Code Ann. §20–111.1(A) (Section A). In the event that this provision is pre-empted by federal law, a separate provision of Virginia law, Section D, provides a cause of action rendering the former spouse liable for the principal amount of the proceeds to the party who would have received them were Section A not pre-empted. §20–111.1(D). Warren Hillman named then-spouse, respondent Judy Maretta, as the beneficiary of his Federal Employees’ Group Life Insurance (FEGLI) policy. After their divorce, he married petitioner Jacqueline Hillman but never changed his named FEGLI beneficiary. After Warren’s death, Maretta, still the named beneficiary, filed a claim for the FEGLI proceeds and collected them. Hillman sued in Virginia court, seeking recovery of the proceeds under Section D. Maretta argued in response that Section D is pre-empted by federal law. The parties agreed that Section A is pre-empted. The Virginia Circuit Court found Maretta liable to Hillman under Section D for the FEGLI policy proceeds. The State Supreme Court reversed, concluding that Section D is pre-empted by FEGLIA because it conflicts with the purposes and objectives of Congress. Held: Section D of the Virginia statute is pre-empted by FEGLIA. Pp. 6–15. (a) State law is pre-empted “to the extent of any conflict with a federal statute.” Crosby v. National Foreign Trade Council, 530 U.S. 363, 372. This case raises the question whether Virginia law “stands as an obstacle to the accomplishment and execution of the full purposes and objectives of Congress.” Hines v. Davidowitz, 312 U.S. 52, 67. Pp. 6–13. (1) To determine whether a state law conflicts with Congress’ purposes and objectives, the nature of the federal interest must first be ascertained. Crosby, 530 U. S., at 372–373. Two previous cases govern the analysis of the relationship between Section D and FEGLIA here. In Wissner v. Wissner, 338 U.S. 655, a California court granted a decedent’s widow, who was not the named beneficiary of a policy under the federal National Service Life Insurance Act of 1940 (NSLIA), an interest in the insurance proceeds as community property under state law. This Court reversed. Because NSLIA provided that the insured had a right to designate a beneficiary and could change that designation at any time, the Court reasoned that Congress had “spoken with force and clarity in directing that the proceeds belong to the named beneficiary and no other.” Id., at 658. The Court addressed a similar question regarding the federal Servicemen’s Group Life Insurance Act of 1965 (SGLIA) in Ridgway v. Ridgway, 454 U.S. 46. There, a Maine court imposed a constructive trust on insurance proceeds paid to a servicemember’s widow, the named beneficiary, and ordered that they be paid to the decedent’s first wife as required by a divorce decree. Holding the constructive trust pre-empted, the Ridgway Court explained that Wissner controlled and that SGLIA made clear that “the insured service member possesses the right freely to designate the beneficiary and to alter that choice at any time by communicating the decision in writing to the proper office.” Id., at 56. Pp. 7–9. (2) The reasoning in Wissner and Ridgway applies with equal force here. NSLIA and SGLIA are strikingly similar to FEGLIA, which creates a scheme that gives highest priority to an insured’s designated beneficiary, §8705(a), and which underscores that the employee’s “right” of designation “cannot be waived or restricted,” 5 CFR §843.205(e). Section D interferes with this scheme, because it directs that the proceeds actually belong to someone other than the named beneficiary by creating a cause of action for their recovery by a third party. FEGLIA establishes a clear and predictable procedure for an employee to indicate who the intended beneficiary shall be and evinces Congress’ decision to accord federal employees an unfettered freedom of choice in selecting a beneficiary and to ensure the proceeds actually belong to that beneficiary. This conclusion is confirmed by another provision of FEGLIA, §8705(e), which creates a limited exception to the order of precedence by allowing proceeds to be paid to someone other than the named beneficiary, if, and only if, the requisite documentation is filed with the Government before the employee’s death, so that any departure from the beneficiary designation is managed within, not outside, the federal system. If States could make alternative distributions outside the clear procedure Congress established, §8705(e)’s narrow exception would be transformed into a general license for state law to override FEGLIA. Pp. 9–13. (b) Hillman’s additional arguments in support of a different result are unpersuasive. Pp. 13–15. 283 Va. 34, 722 S.E.2d 32, affirmed. Sotomayor, J., delivered the opinion of the Court, in which Roberts, C. J., and Kennedy, Ginsburg, Breyer, and Kagan, JJ., joined, and in which Scalia, J., joined as to all but footnote 4. Thomas, J., and Alito, J., filed opinions concurring in the judgment.

. . . the insured’s expressed intent” and that evidence beyond an employee’s named beneficiary could therefore be relevant in some circumstances to determining that intent. Post, at 2–3 (opinion concurring in judgment) (emphasis in original). For the reasons explained, however, that statement of Congress’ purpose is incomplete. See supra, at 9–10. Congress sought to ensure that an employee’s intent would be given effect only through the designation of a beneficiary or through the narrow exceptions specifically provided in the statute, see infra, at 12–13. 5 Congress enacted 5 U. S. C. §8705(e) following federal-court decisions that found FEGLIA to pre-empt state-court constructive trust actions predicated upon divorce decrees. See, e.g., Gonzalez, 839 F. 2d, at 1439–1440. Reflecting this backdrop, the House Report noted that “Under current law, . . . divorce decrees . . . do not affect the payment of life insurance proceeds. Instead, when the policyholder dies, the proceeds are paid to the beneficiary designated by the policyholder, if any, or to other individuals as specified by statute.” H. R. Rep. No. 105–134, p. 2 (1997). To address the issue raised by these lower court cases, Congress could have amended FEGLIA to allow state law to take precedence over the named beneficiary when there is any conflict with a divorce decree or annulment. But Congress did not do so, and instead described the precise conditions under which a divorce decree could displace an employee’s named beneficiary. 6 Hillman contends that §8705(e) of FEGLIA indicates that Congress contemplated that the proceeds could be paid to someone other than the named beneficiary and that Section D is consistent with that broad principle. Brief for Petitioner 43. As noted, however, §8705(e) has the opposite implication, because it is framed as a specific exception to the rule that the proceeds accrue in all cases to the named beneficiary. It is not, as Hillman suggests, a general rule authorizing state law to supersede FEGLIA.

570.US.693

After the California Supreme Court held that limiting marriage to opposite-sex couples violated the California Constitution, state voters passed a ballot initiative known as Proposition 8, amending the State Constitution to define marriage as a union between a man and a woman. Respondents, same-sex couples who wish to marry, filed suit in federal court, challenging Proposition 8 under the Due Process and Equal Protection Clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment, and naming as defendants California’s Governor and other state and local officials responsible for enforcing California’s marriage laws. The officials refused to defend the law, so the District Court allowed petitioners—the initiative’s official proponents—to intervene to defend it. After a bench trial, the court declared Proposition 8 unconstitutional and enjoined the public officials named as defendants from enforcing the law. Those officials elected not to appeal, but petitioners did. The Ninth Circuit certified a question to the California Supreme Court: whether official proponents of a ballot initiative have authority to assert the State’s interest in defending the constitutionality of the initiative when public officials refuse to do so. After the California Supreme Court answered in the affirmative, the Ninth Circuit concluded that petitioners had standing under federal law to defend Proposition 8’s constitutionality. On the merits, the court affirmed the District Court’s order. Held: Petitioners did not have standing to appeal the District Court’s order. Pp. 5–17. (a) Article III of the Constitution confines the judicial power of federal courts to deciding actual “Cases” or “Controversies.” §2. One essential aspect of this requirement is that any person invoking the power of a federal court must demonstrate standing to do so. In other words, the litigant must seek a remedy for a personal and tangible harm. Although most standing cases consider whether a plaintiff has satisfied the requirement when filing suit, Article III demands that an “actual controversy” persist throughout all stages of litigation. Already, LLC v. Nike, Inc., 568 U. S. ___, ___. Standing “must be met by persons seeking appellate review, just as it must be met by persons appearing in courts of first instance.” Arizonans for Official English v. Arizona, 520 U.S. 43, 64. The parties do not contest that respondents had standing to initiate this case against the California officials responsible for enforcing Proposition 8. But once the District Court issued its order, respondents no longer had any injury to redress, and the state officials chose not to appeal. The only individuals who sought to appeal were petitioners, who had intervened in the District Court, but they had not been ordered to do or refrain from doing anything. Their only interest was to vindicate the constitutional validity of a generally applicable California law. As this Court has repeatedly held, such a “generalized grievance”—no matter how sincere—is insufficient to confer standing. See Lujan v. Defenders of Wildlife, 504 U.S. 555, 573–574. Petitioners claim that the California Constitution and election laws give them a “ ‘unique,’ ‘special,’ and ‘distinct’ role in the initiative process,” Reply Brief 5, but that is only true during the process of enacting the law. Once Proposition 8 was approved, it became a duly enacted constitutional amendment. Petitioners have no role—special or otherwise—in its enforcement. They therefore have no “personal stake” in defending its enforcement that is distinguishable from the general interest of every California citizen. No matter how deeply committed petitioners may be to upholding Proposition 8, that is not a particularized interest sufficient to create a case or controversy under Article III. Pp. 5–9. (b) Petitioners’ arguments to the contrary are unpersuasive. Pp. 9–16. (1) They claim that they may assert the State’s interest on the State’s behalf, but it is a “fundamental restriction on our authority” that “[i]n the ordinary course, a litigant . . . cannot rest a claim to relief on the legal rights or interests of third parties.” Powers v. Ohio, 499 U.S. 400, 410. In Diamond v. Charles, 476 U.S. 54, for example, a pediatrician engaged in private practice was not permitted to defend the constitutionality of Illinois’ abortion law after the State chose not to appeal an adverse ruling. The state attorney general’s “letter of interest,” explaining that the State’s interest in the proceeding was “ ‘essentially co-terminous with’ ” Diamond’s position, id., at 61, was insufficient, since Diamond was unable to assert an injury of his own, id, at 65. Pp. 9–10. (2) Petitioners contend the California Supreme Court’s determination that they were authorized under California law to assert the State’s interest in the validity of Proposition 8 means that they “need no more show a personal injury, separate from the State’s indisputable interest in the validity of its law, than would California’s Attorney General or did the legislative leaders held to have standing in Karcher v. May, 484 U.S. 72 (1987).” Reply Brief 6. But far from supporting petitioners’ standing, Karcher is compelling precedent against it. In that case, after the New Jersey attorney general refused to defend the constitutionality of a state law, leaders of New Jersey’s Legislature were permitted to appear, in their official capacities, in the District Court and Court of Appeals to defend the law. What is significant about Karcher, however, is what happened after the Court of Appeals decision. The legislators lost their leadership positions, but nevertheless sought to appeal to this Court. The Court held that they could not do so. Although they could participate in the lawsuit in their official capacities as presiding officers of the legislature, as soon as they lost that capacity, they lost standing. Id., at 81. Petitioners here hold no office and have always participated in this litigation solely as private parties. Pp. 10–13. (3) Nor is support found in dicta in Arizonans for Official English v. Arizona, supra. There, in expressing “grave doubts” about the standing of ballot initiative sponsors to defend the constitutionality of an Arizona initiative, the Court noted that it was “aware of no Arizona law appointing initiative sponsors as agents of the people of Arizona to defend, in lieu of public officials, the constitutionality of initiatives made law of the State.” Id., at 65. Petitioners argue that, by virtue of the California Supreme Court’s decision, they are authorized to act as “agents of the people of California.” Brief for Petitioners 15. But that Court never described petitioners as “agents of the people.” All the California Supreme Court’s decision stands for is that, so far as California is concerned, petitioners may “assert legal arguments in defense of the state’s interest in the validity of the initiative measure” in federal court. 628 F.3d 1191, 1193. That interest is by definition a generalized one, and it is precisely because proponents assert such an interest that they lack standing under this Court’s precedents. Petitioners are also plainly not agents of the State. As an initial matter, petitioners’ newfound claim of agency is inconsistent with their representations to the District Court, where they claimed to represent their own interests as official proponents. More to the point, the basic features of an agency relationship are missing here: Petitioners are not subject to the control of any principal, and they owe no fiduciary obligation to anyone. As one amicus puts it, “the proponents apparently have an unelected appointment for an unspecified period of time as defenders of the initiative, however and to whatever extent they choose to defend it.” Brief for Walter Dellinger 23. Pp. 13–16. (c) The Court does not question California’s sovereign right to maintain an initiative process, or the right of initiative proponents to defend their initiatives in California courts. But standing in federal court is a question of federal law, not state law. No matter its reasons, the fact that a State thinks a private party should have standing to seek relief for a generalized grievance cannot override this Court’s settled law to the contrary. Article III’s requirement that a party invoking the jurisdiction of a federal court seek relief for a personal, particularized injury serves vital interests going to the role of the Judiciary in the federal system of separated powers. States cannot alter that role simply by issuing to private parties who otherwise lack standing a ticket to the federal courthouse. Pp. 16–17. 671 F.3d 1052, vacated and remanded. Roberts, C. J., delivered the opinion of the Court, in which Scalia, Ginsburg, Breyer, and Kagan, JJ., joined. Kennedy, J., filed a dissenting opinion, in which Thomas, Alito, and Sotomayor, JJ., joined.

The public is currently engaged in an active political debate over whether same-sex couples should be allowed to marry. That question has also given rise to litigation. In this case, petitioners, who oppose same-sex marriage, ask us to decide whether the Equal Protection Clause “prohibits the State of California from defining marriage as the union of a man and a woman.” Pet. for Cert. i. Respondents, same-sex couples who wish to marry, view the issue in somewhat different terms: For them, it is whether California—having previously recognized the right of same-sex couples to marry—may reverse that decision through a referendum. Federal courts have authority under the Constitution to answer such questions only if necessary to do so in the course of deciding an actual “case” or “controversy.” As used in the Constitution, those words do not include every sort of dispute, but only those “historically viewed as capable of resolution through the judicial process.” Flast v. Cohen, 392 U. S. 83, 95 (1968) . This is an essential limit on our power: It ensures that we act as judges, and do not engage in policymaking properly left to elected representatives. For there to be such a case or controversy, it is not enough that the party invoking the power of the court have a keen interest in the issue. That party must also have “standing,” which requires, among other things, that it have suffered a concrete and particularized injury. Because we find that petitioners do not have standing, we have no authority to decide this case on the merits, and neither did the Ninth Circuit. I In 2008, the California Supreme Court held that limiting the official designation of marriage to opposite-sex couples violated the equal protection clause of the California Constitution. In re Marriage Cases, 43 Cal. 4th 757, 183 P. 3d 384. Later that year, California voters passed the ballot initiative at the center of this dispute, known as Proposition 8. That proposition amended the California Constitution to provide that “[o]nly marriage between a man and a woman is valid or recognized in California.” Cal. Const., Art. I, §7.5. Shortly thereafter, the California Supreme Court rejected a procedural challenge to the amendment, and held that the Proposition was properly enacted under California law. Strauss v. Horton, 46 Cal. 4th 364, 474–475, 207 P. 3d 48, 122 (2009). According to the California Supreme Court, Proposition 8 created a “narrow and limited exception” to the state constitutional rights otherwise guaranteed to same-sex couples. Id., at 388, 207 P. 3d, at 61. Under California law, same-sex couples have a right to enter into relationships recognized by the State as “domestic partnerships,” which carry “the same rights, protections, and benefits, and shall be subject to the same responsibilities, obligations, and duties under law . . . as are granted to and imposed upon spouses.” Cal. Fam. Code Ann. §297.5(a) (West 2004). In In re Marriage Cases, the California Supreme Court concluded that the California Constitution further guarantees same-sex couples “all of the constitutionally based incidents of marriage,” including the right to have that marriage “officially recognized” as such by the State. 43 Cal. 4th, at 829, 183 P. 3d, at 433–434. Proposition 8, the court explained in Strauss, left those rights largely undisturbed, reserving only “the official designation of the term ‘marriage’ for the union of opposite-sex couples as a matter of state constitutional law.” 46 Cal. 4th, at 388, 207 P. 3d, at 61. Respondents, two same-sex couples who wish to marry, filed suit in federal court, challenging Proposition 8 under the Due Process and Equal Protection Clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment to the Federal Constitution. The complaint named as defendants California’s Governor, attorney general, and various other state and local officials responsible for enforcing California’s marriage laws. Those officials refused to defend the law, although they have continued to enforce it throughout this litigation. The District Court allowed petitioners—the official proponents of the initiative, see Cal. Elec. Code Ann. §342 (West 2003)—to intervene to defend it. After a 12-day bench trial, the District Court declared Proposition 8 uncon-stitutional, permanently enjoining the California officials named as defendants from enforcing the law, and “directing the official defendants that all persons under their control or supervision” shall not enforce it. Perry v. Schwarzenegger, 704 F. Supp. 2d 921, 1004 (ND Cal. 2010). Those officials elected not to appeal the District Court order. When petitioners did, the Ninth Circuit asked them to address “why this appeal should not be dismissed for lack of Article III standing.” Perry v. Schwarzenegger, Civ. No. 10–16696 (CA9, Aug. 16, 2010), p. 2. After briefing and argument, the Ninth Circuit certified a question to the California Supreme Court: “Whether under Article II, Section 8 of the California Constitution, or otherwise under California law, the official proponents of an initiative measure possess either a particularized interest in the initiative’s valid-ity or the authority to assert the State’s interest in the initiative’s validity, which would enable them to defend the constitutionality of the initiative upon its adoption or appeal a judgment invalidating the initiative, when the public officials charged with that duty refuse to do so.” Perry v. Schwarzenegger, 628 F. 3d 1191, 1193 (2011). The California Supreme Court agreed to decide the certified question, and answered in the affirmative. Without addressing whether the proponents have a particularized interest of their own in an initiative’s validity, the court concluded that “[i]n a postelection challenge to a voter-approved initiative measure, the official proponents of the initiative are authorized under California law to appear and assert the state’s interest in the initiative’s validity and to appeal a judgment invalidating the measure when the public officials who ordinarily defend the measure or appeal such a judgment decline to do so.” Perry v. Brown, 52 Cal. 4th 1116, 1127, 265 P. 3d 1002, 1007 (2011). Relying on that answer, the Ninth Circuit concluded that petitioners had standing under federal law to defend the constitutionality of Proposition 8. California, it reasoned, “ ‘has standing to defend the constitutionality of its [laws],’ ” and States have the “prerogative, as independent sovereigns, to decide for themselves who may assert their interests.” Perry v. Brown, 671 F. 3d 1052, 1070, 1071 (2012) (quoting Diamond v. Charles, 476 U. S. 54, 62 (1986) ). “All a federal court need determine is that the state has suffered a harm sufficient to confer standing and that the party seeking to invoke the jurisdiction of the court is authorized by the state to represent its interest in remedying that harm.” 671 F. 3d, at 1072. On the merits, the Ninth Circuit affirmed the District Court. The court held the Proposition unconstitutional under the rationale of our decision in Romer v. Evans, 517 U. S. 620 (1996) . 671 F. 3d, at 1076, 1095. In the Ninth Circuit’s view, Romer stands for the proposition that “the Equal Protection Clause requires the state to have a legitimate reason for withdrawing a right or benefit from one group but not others, whether or not it was required to confer that right or benefit in the first place.” 671 F. 3d, at 1083–1084. The Ninth Circuit concluded that “taking away the official designation” of “marriage” from same-sex couples, while continuing to afford those couples all the rights and obligations of marriage, did not further any legitimate interest of the State. Id., at 1095. Proposition 8, in the court’s view, violated the Equal Protection Clause because it served no purpose “but to impose on gays and lesbians, through the public law, a majority’s private disapproval of them and their relationships.” Ibid. We granted certiorari to review that determination, and directed that the parties also brief and argue “Whether petitioners have standing under Article III, §2, of the Constitution in this case.” 568 U. S. ___ (2012). II Article III of the Constitution confines the judicial power of federal courts to deciding actual “Cases” or “Controversies.” §2. One essential aspect of this requirement is that any person invoking the power of a federal court must demonstrate standing to do so. This requires the litigant to prove that he has suffered a concrete and particularized injury that is fairly traceable to the challenged conduct, and is likely to be redressed by a favorable judicial decision. Lujan v. Defenders of Wildlife, 504 U. S. 555 –561 (1992). In other words, for a federal court to have authority under the Constitution to settle a dispute, the party before it must seek a remedy for a personal and tangible harm. “The presence of a disagreement, however sharp and acrimonious it may be, is insufficient by itself to meet Art. III’s requirements.” Diamond, supra, at 62. The doctrine of standing, we recently explained, “serves to prevent the judicial process from being used to usurp the powers of the political branches.” Clapper v. Amnesty Int’l USA, 568 U. S. ___, ___ (2013) (slip op., at 9). In light of this “overriding and time-honored concern about keeping the Judiciary’s power within its proper constitu- tional sphere, we must put aside the natural urge to proceed directly to the merits of [an] important dispute and to ‘settle’ it for the sake of convenience and effi-ciency.” Raines v. Byrd, 521 U. S. 811, 820 (1997) (footnote omitted). Most standing cases consider whether a plaintiff has satisfied the requirement when filing suit, but Article III demands that an “actual controversy” persist throughout all stages of litigation. Already, LLC v. Nike, Inc., 568 U. S. ___, ___ (2013) (slip op., at 4) (internal quotation marks omitted). That means that standing “must be met by persons seeking appellate review, just as it must be met by persons appearing in courts of first instance.” Arizonans for Official English v. Arizona, 520 U. S. 43, 64 (1997) . We therefore must decide whether petitioners had standing to appeal the District Court’s order. Respondents initiated this case in the District Court against the California officials responsible for enforcing Proposition 8. The parties do not contest that respondents had Article III standing to do so. Each couple expressed a desire to marry and obtain “official sanction” from the State, which was unavailable to them given the declaration in Proposition 8 that “marriage” in California is solely between a man and a woman. App. 59. After the District Court declared Proposition 8 unconstitutional and enjoined the state officials named as defendants from enforcing it, however, the inquiry under Article III changed. Respondents no longer had any injury to redress—they had won—and the state officials chose not to appeal. The only individuals who sought to appeal that order were petitioners, who had intervened in the District Court. But the District Court had not ordered them to do or refrain from doing anything. To have standing, a litigant must seek relief for an injury that affects him in a “personal and individual way.” Defenders of Wildlife, supra, at 560, n. 1. He must possess a “direct stake in the outcome” of the case. Arizonans for Official English, supra, at 64 (internal quotation marks omitted). Here, however, petitioners had no “direct stake” in the outcome of their appeal. Their only interest in having the District Court order reversed was to vindicate the constitutional validity of a generally applicable California law. We have repeatedly held that such a “generalized grievance,” no matter how sincere, is insufficient to confer standing. A litigant “raising only a generally available grievance about government—claiming only harm to his and every citizen’s interest in proper application of the Constitution and laws, and seeking relief that no more directly and tangibly benefits him than it does the public at large—does not state an Article III case or controversy.” Defenders of Wildlife, supra, at 573–574; see Lance v. Coffman, 549 U. S. 437, 439 (2007) (per curiam) (“Our refusal to serve as a forum for generalized grievances has a lengthy pedigree.”); Allen v. Wright, 468 U. S. 737, 754 (1984) (“an asserted right to have the Government act in accordance with law is not sufficient, standing alone, to confer jurisdiction on a federal court”); Massachusetts v. Mellon, 262 U. S. 447, 488 (1923) (“The party who invokes the [judicial] power must be able to show . . . that he has sustained or is immediately in danger of sustaining some direct injury . . . and not merely that he suffers in some indefinite way in common with people generally.”). Petitioners argue that the California Constitution and its election laws give them a “ ‘unique,’ ‘special,’ and ‘distinct’ role in the initiative process—one ‘involving both authority and responsibilities that differ from other supporters of the measure.’ ” Reply Brief 5 (quoting 52 Cal. 4th, at 1126, 1142, 1160, 265 P. 3d, at 1006, 1017–1018, 1030). True enough—but only when it comes to the process of enacting the law. Upon submitting the proposed initiative to the attorney general, petitioners became the official “proponents” of Proposition 8. Cal. Elec. Code Ann. §342 (West 2003). As such, they were responsible for collecting the signatures required to qualify the measure for the ballot. §§9607–9609. After those signatures were collected, the proponents alone had the right to file the measure with election officials to put it on the ballot. §9032. Petitioners also possessed control over the arguments in favor of the initiative that would appear in California’s ballot pamphlets. §§9064, 9065, 9067, 9069. But once Proposition 8 was approved by the voters, the measure became “a duly enacted constitutional amendment or statute.” 52 Cal. 4th, at 1147, 265 P. 3d, at 1021. Petitioners have no role—special or otherwise—in the enforcement of Proposition 8. See id., at 1159, 265 P. 3d, at 1029 (petitioners do not “possess any official authority . . . to directly enforce the initiative measure in question”). They therefore have no “personal stake” in defending its enforcement that is distinguishable from the general interest of every citizen of California. Defenders of Wildlife, supra, at 560–561. Article III standing “is not to be placed in the hands of ‘concerned bystanders,’ who will use it simply as a ‘vehicle for the vindication of value interests.’ ” Diamond, 476 U. S., at 62. No matter how deeply committed petitioners may be to upholding Proposition 8 or how “zealous [their] advocacy,” post, at 4 (Kennedy, J., dissenting), that is not a “particularized” interest sufficient to create a case or controversy under Article III. Defenders of Wildlife, 504 U. S., at 560, and n. 1; see Arizonans for Official English, 520 U. S., at 65 (“Nor has this Court ever identified ini-tiative proponents as Article-III-qualified defenders of the measures they advocated.”); Don’t Bankrupt Washington Committee v. Continental Ill. Nat. Bank & Trust Co. of Chicago, 460 U. S. 1077 (1983) (summarily dismissing, for lack of standing, appeal by an initiative proponent from a decision holding the initiative unconstitutional). III A Without a judicially cognizable interest of their own, petitioners attempt to invoke that of someone else. They assert that even if they have no cognizable interest in appealing the District Court’s judgment, the State of California does, and they may assert that interest on the State’s behalf. It is, however, a “fundamental restriction on our authority” that “[i]n the ordinary course, a litigant must assert his or her own legal rights and interests, and cannot rest a claim to relief on the legal rights or inter-ests of third parties.” Powers v. Ohio, 499 U. S. 400, 410 (1991) . There are “certain, limited exceptions” to that rule. Ibid. But even when we have allowed litigants to assert the interests of others, the litigants themselves still “must have suffered an injury in fact, thus giving [them] a sufficiently concrete interest in the outcome of the issue in dispute.” Id., at 411 (internal quotation marks omitted). In Diamond v. Charles, for example, we refused to allow Diamond, a pediatrician engaged in private practice in Illinois, to defend the constitutionality of the State’s abortion law. In that case, a group of physicians filed a con-stitutional challenge to the Illinois statute in federal court. The State initially defended the law, and Diamond, a professed “conscientious object[or] to abortions,” in-tervened to defend it alongside the State. 476 U. S., at 57–58. After the Seventh Circuit affirmed a permanent injunction against enforcing several provisions of the law, the State chose not to pursue an appeal to this Court. But when Diamond did, the state attorney general filed a “ ‘letter of interest,’ ” explaining that the State’s interest in the proceeding was “ ‘essentially co-terminous with the position on the issues set forth by [Diamond].’ ” Id., at 61. That was not enough, we held, to allow the appeal to proceed. As the Court explained, “[e]ven if there were cir-cumstances in which a private party would have stand- ing to defend the constitutionality of a challenged statute, this [was] not one of them,” because Diamond was not able to assert an injury in fact of his own. Id., at 65 (footnote omitted). And without “any judicially cognizable interest,” Diamond could not “maintain the litigation abandoned by the State.” Id., at 71. For the reasons we have explained, petitioners have likewise not suffered an injury in fact, and therefore would ordinarily have no standing to assert the State’s interests. B Petitioners contend that this case is different, because the California Supreme Court has determined that they are “authorized under California law to appear and assert the state’s interest” in the validity of Proposition 8. 52 Cal. 4th, at 1127, 265 P. 3d, at 1007. The court below agreed: “All a federal court need determine is that the state has suffered a harm sufficient to confer standing and that the party seeking to invoke the jurisdiction of the court is authorized by the state to represent its interest in remedying that harm.” 671 F. 3d, at 1072. As petitioners put it, they “need no more show a personal injury, separate from the State’s indisputable interest in the validity of its law, than would California’s Attorney General or did the legislative leaders held to have standing in Karcher v. May, 484 U. S. 72 (1987) .” Reply Brief 6. In Karcher, we held that two New Jersey state legis-lators—Speaker of the General Assembly Alan Karcher and President of the Senate Carmen Orechio—could intervene in a suit against the State to defend the constitutionality of a New Jersey law, after the New Jersey attorney general had declined to do so. 484 U. S., at 75, 81–82. “Since the New Jersey Legislature had authority under state law to represent the State’s interests in both the District Court and the Court of Appeals,” we held that the Speaker and the President, in their official capacities, could vindicate that interest in federal court on the legislature’s behalf. Id., at 82. Far from supporting petitioners’ standing, however, Karcher is compelling precedent against it. The legislators in that case intervened in their official capacities as Speaker and President of the legislature. No one doubts that a State has a cognizable interest “in the continued enforceability” of its laws that is harmed by a judicial decision declaring a state law unconstitutional. Maine v. Taylor, 477 U. S. 131, 137 (1986) . To vindicate that interest or any other, a State must be able to designate agents to represent it in federal court. See Poindexter v. Greenhow, 114 U. S. 270, 288 (1885) (“The State is a political corporate body [that] can act only through agents”). That agent is typically the State’s attorney general. But state law may provide for other officials to speak for the State in federal court, as New Jersey law did for the State’s presiding legislative officers in Karcher. See 484 U. S., at 81–82. What is significant about Karcher is what happened after the Court of Appeals decision in that case. Karcher and Orechio lost their positions as Speaker and President, but nevertheless sought to appeal to this Court. We held that they could not do so. We explained that while they were able to participate in the lawsuit in their official capacities as presiding officers of the incumbent legislature, “since they no longer hold those offices, they lack authority to pursue this appeal.” Id., at 81. The point of Karcher is not that a State could authorize private parties to represent its interests; Karcher and Orechio were permitted to proceed only because they were state officers, acting in an official capacity. As soon as they lost that capacity, they lost standing. Petitioners here hold no office and have always participated in this litigation solely as private parties. The cases relied upon by the dissent, see post, at 11–12, provide petitioners no more support. The dissent’s primary authorities, in fact, do not discuss standing at all. See Young v. United States ex rel. Vuitton et Fils S. A., 481 U. S. 787 (1987) ; United States v. Providence Journal Co., 485 U. S. 693 (1988) . And none comes close to establishing that mere authorization to represent a third party’s interests is sufficient to confer Article III standing on private parties with no injury of their own. The dissent highlights the discretion exercised by special prosecutors appointed by federal courts to pursue contempt charges. See post, at 11 (citing Young, supra, at 807). Such prosecutors do enjoy a degree of independence in carrying out their appointed role, but no one would suppose that they are not subject to the ultimate au-thority of the court that appointed them. See also Prov-idence Journal, supra, at 698–707 (recognizing further control exercised by the Solicitor General over special prosecutors). The dissent’s remaining cases, which at least consider standing, are readily distinguishable. See Vermont Agency of Natural Resources v. United States ex rel. Stevens, 529 U. S. 765 –778 (2000) (justifying qui tam actions based on a partial assignment of the Government’s damages claim and a “well nigh conclusive” tradition of such actions in English and American courts dating back to the 13th century); Whitmore v. Arkansas, 495 U. S. 149 –164 (1989) (justifying “next friend” standing based on a similar history dating back to the 17th century, requiring the next friend to prove a disability of the real party in interest and a “significant relationship” with that party); Gollust v. Mendell, 501 U. S. 115 –125 (1990) (requiring plaintiff in shareholder-derivative suit to maintain a financial stake in the outcome of the litigation, to avoid “serious constitutional doubt whether that plaintiff could demonstrate the standing required by Article III’s case-or-controversy limitation”). C Both petitioners and respondents seek support from dicta in Arizonans for Official English v. Arizona, 520 U. S. 43 . The plaintiff in Arizonans for Official English filed a constitutional challenge to an Arizona ballot initiative declaring English “ ‘the official language of the State of Arizona.’ ” Id., at 48. After the District Court declared the initiative unconstitutional, Arizona’s Governor announced that she would not pursue an appeal. Instead, the principal sponsor of the ballot initiative—the Arizonans for Official English Committee—sought to defend the measure in the Ninth Circuit. Id., at 55–56, 58. Analogizing the sponsors to the Arizona Legislature, the Ninth Circuit held that the Committee was “qualified to defend [the initiative] on appeal,” and affirmed the District Court. Id., at 58, 61. Before finding the case mooted by other events, this Court expressed “grave doubts” about the Ninth Circuit’s standing analysis. Id., at 66. We reiterated that “[s]tanding to defend on appeal in the place of an original defendant . . . demands that the litigant possess ‘a direct stake in the outcome.’ ” Id., at 64 (quoting Diamond, 476 U. S., at 62). We recognized that a legislator authorized by state law to represent the State’s interest may satisfy standing requirements, as in Karcher, supra, at 82, but noted that the Arizona committee and its members were “not elected representatives, and we [we]re aware of no Arizona law appointing initiative sponsors as agents of the people of Arizona to defend, in lieu of public officials, the constitutionality of initiatives made law of the State.” Arizonans for Official English, supra, at 65. Petitioners argue that, by virtue of the California Supreme Court’s decision, they are authorized to act “ ‘as agents of the people’ of California.” Brief for Petitioners 15 (quoting Arizonans for Official English, supra, at 65). But that Court never described petitioners as “agents of the people,” or of anyone else. Nor did the Ninth Circuit. The Ninth Circuit asked—and the California Supreme Court answered—only whether petitioners had “the authority to assert the State’s interest in the initiative’s validity.” 628 F. 3d, at 1193; 52 Cal. 4th, at 1124, 265 P. 3d, at 1005. All that the California Supreme Court decision stands for is that, so far as California is concerned, petitioners may argue in defense of Proposition 8. This “does not mean that the proponents become de facto public officials”; the authority they enjoy is “simply the authority to participate as parties in a court action and to assert legal arguments in defense of the state’s interest in the validity of the initiative measure.” Id., at 1159, 265 P. 3d, at 1029. That interest is by definition a generalized one, and it is precisely because proponents assert such an interest that they lack standing under our precedents. And petitioners are plainly not agents of the State—“formal” or otherwise, see post, at 7. As an initial matter, petitioners’ newfound claim of agency is inconsistent with their representations to the District Court. When the proponents sought to intervene in this case, they did not purport to be agents of California. They argued instead that “no other party in this case w[ould] adequately rep-resent their interests as official proponents.” Motion to Intervene in No. 09–2292 (ND Cal.), p. 6 (emphasis added). It was their “unique legal status” as official proponents—not an agency relationship with the people of California—that petitioners claimed “endow[ed] them with a significantly protectable interest” in ensuring that the District Court not “undo[ ] all that they ha[d] done in obtaining . . . enactment” of Proposition 8. Id., at 10, 11. More to the point, the most basic features of an agency relationship are missing here. Agency requires more than mere authorization to assert a particular interest. “An essential element of agency is the principal’s right to control the agent’s actions.” 1 Restatement (Third) of Agency §1.01, Comment f (2005) (hereinafter Restatement). Yet petitioners answer to no one; they decide for themselves, with no review, what arguments to make and how to make them. Unlike California’s attorney general, they are not elected at regular intervals—or elected at all. See Cal. Const., Art. V, §11. No provision provides for their removal. As one amicus explains, “the proponents apparently have an unelected appointment for an unspecified period of time as defenders of the initiative, however and to whatever extent they choose to defend it.” Brief for Walter Dellinger 23. “If the relationship between two persons is one of agency . . . , the agent owes a fiduciary obligation to the principal.” 1 Restatement §1.01, Comment e. But petitioners owe nothing of the sort to the people of California. Unlike California’s elected officials, they have taken no oath of office. E.g., Cal. Const., Art. XX, §3 (prescribing the oath for “all public officers and employees, executive, legislative, and judicial”). As the California Supreme Court explained, petitioners are bound simply by “the same ethical constraints that apply to all other parties in a legal proceeding.” 52 Cal. 4th, at 1159, 265 P. 3d, at 1029. They are free to pursue a purely ideological commit- ment to the law’s constitutionality without the need to take cognizance of resource constraints, changes in public opinion, or potential ramifications for other state priorities. Finally, the California Supreme Court stated that “[t]he question of who should bear responsibility for any attorney fee award . . . is entirely distinct from the question” before it. Id., at 1161, 265 P. 3d, at 1031. (emphasis added). But it is hornbook law that “a principal has a duty to indem-nify the agent against expenses and other losses incurred by the agent in defending against actions brought by third parties if the agent acted with actual authority in taking the action challenged by the third party’s suit.” 2 Restatement §8.14, Comment d. If the issue of fees is entirely distinct from the authority question, then authority cannot be based on agency. Neither the California Supreme Court nor the Ninth Circuit ever described the proponents as agents of the State, and they plainly do not qualify as such. IV The dissent eloquently recounts the California Supreme Court’s reasons for deciding that state law authorizes petitioners to defend Proposition 8. See post, at 3–5. We do not “disrespect[ ]” or “disparage[ ]” those reasons. Post, at 12. Nor do we question California’s sovereign right to maintain an initiative process, or the right of initiative proponents to defend their initiatives in California courts, where Article III does not apply. But as the dissent acknowledges, see post, at 1, standing in federal court is a question of federal law, not state law. And no matter its reasons, the fact that a State thinks a private party should have standing to seek relief for a generalized grievance cannot override our settled law to the contrary. The Article III requirement that a party invoking the jurisdiction of a federal court seek relief for a personal, particularized injury serves vital interests going to the role of the Judiciary in our system of separated powers. “Refusing to entertain generalized grievances ensures that . . . courts exercise power that is judicial in nature,” Lance, 549 U. S., at 441, and ensures that the Federal Judiciary respects “the proper—and properly limited—role of the courts in a democratic society,” DaimlerChrysler Corp. v. Cuno, 547 U. S. 332, 341 (2006) (internal quotation marks omitted). States cannot alter that role simply by issuing to private parties who otherwise lack standing a ticket to the federal courthouse. * * * We have never before upheld the standing of a private party to defend the constitutionality of a state statute when state officials have chosen not to. We decline to do so for the first time here. Because petitioners have not satisfied their burden to demonstrate standing to appeal the judgment of the District Court, the Ninth Circuit was without jurisdiction to consider the appeal. The judgment of the Ninth Circuit is vacated, and the case is remanded with instructions to dismiss the appeal for lack of jurisdiction. It is so ordered.

569.US.513

The Agricultural Marketing Agreement Act of 1937 (AMAA), which was enacted to stabilize prices for agricultural commodities, regulates only “handlers,” i.e., “processors, associations of producers, and others engaged in the handling” of covered agricultural commodities, 7 U. S. C. §608c(1). Any handler that violates the Secretary of Agriculture’s marketing orders may be subject to civil and criminal penalties. §§608a(5), 608a(6), and 608c(14). One such order, the California Raisin Marketing Order (Marketing Order or Order), established a Raisin Administrative Committee (RAC), which recommends setting up annual reserve pools of raisins that are not to be sold on the open domestic market, and which recommends what portion of a particular year’s production should be included in the pool. The Order also requires handlers to pay assessments to help cover the RAC’s administrative costs. Petitioners, California raisin growers, started a business that processed more than 3 million pounds of raisins from their farm and 60 other farms during the two crop years. When they refused to surrender the requisite portions of raisins to the reserve, the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) began administrative proceedings, alleging that petitioners were handlers who were required to retain raisins in reserve and pay assessments. Petitioners countered that as producers, they were not subject to the Order. They also raised an affirmative defense that the Order violated the Fifth Amendment’s prohibition against taking property without just compensation. An Administrative Law Judge found that petitioners were handlers, found that they had violated the AMAA and the Marketing Order, and rejected their takings defense. On appeal, a judicial officer agreed that petitioners were handlers who had violated the Marketing Order, imposed fines and civil penalties, and declined to address the takings claim. Petitioners sought review in the Federal District Court. Granting summary judgment to the USDA, it found that substantial evidence supported the agency’s determination that petitioners were handlers rather than producers, and it rejected petitioners’ takings claim. The Ninth Circuit affirmed. It agreed that petitioners were handlers subject to the Marketing Order, but concluded that it lacked jurisdiction to resolve the takings claim, which they should have raised in the Court of Federal Claims. It recognized that when a handler raises a takings defense, Court of Federal Claims Tucker Act jurisdiction gives way to the AMAA’s comprehensive remedial scheme, see 7 U. S. C. §608c(15), but found that petitioners had brought the takings claim in their capacity as producers. Held: The Ninth Circuit has jurisdiction to decide petitioners’ takings claim. Pp. 9–15. (a) That court incorrectly determined that petitioners brought their takings claim as producers rather than handlers. Petitioners argued that they were producers—and thus not subject to the AMAA or the Marketing Order—but both the USDA and the District Court concluded that they were handlers. And the fines and civil penalties for failure to reserve raisins were levied on them in that capacity. Because the Marketing Order imposes duties on petitioners only in their capacity as handlers, their takings claim raised as a defense against those duties is necessarily raised in that same capacity. In finding otherwise, the Ninth Circuit confused petitioners’ statutory argument that they were producers with their constitutional argument that, assuming they were handlers, their fine violated the Fifth Amendment. The relevant question is whether a federal court has jurisdiction to adjudicate a takings defense raised by a handler seeking review of a final agency order. Pp. 9–10. (b) The Government’s claim that petitioners’ takings-based defense was rightly dismissed on ripeness grounds is unpersuasive, and its reliance on Williamson County Regional Planning Comm’n v. Hamilton Bank of Johnson City, 473 U.S. 172, is misplaced. There, a plaintiff’s claim that a zoning decision effected a taking without just compensation was not ripe. But the claim failed because the plaintiff could not show that it had been injured by the Government’s action when there had been no final decision. Here, petitioners were subject to a final agency order imposing concrete fines and penalties. The takings claim in Williamson County was also not yet ripe because the plaintiff had not sought “compensation through the procedures [provided by] the State.” Id., at 194. The Government argues that petitioners’ takings claim is premature because the Tucker Act affords a remedy, but, in fact, the AMAA provides a comprehensive remedial scheme that withdraws Tucker Act jurisdiction over a handler’s takings claim. As a result, there is no alternative remedy. Pp. 10–14. (c) A takings-based defense may be raised by a handler in the context of an enforcement proceeding initiated by the USDA under §608c(14). The provision’s text does not bar handlers from raising constitutional defenses to the USDA’s enforcement action. Allowing handlers to do so would not diminish the incentive to file direct challenges to marketing orders under §608c(15)(A), for a handler who refuses to comply with a marketing order and waits for an enforcement action will be liable for significant monetary penalties if the constitutional challenge fails. It would also make little sense to force a party to pay an assessed fine in one proceeding and then turn around and sue for recovery of that same money in another proceeding. See Eastern Enterprises v. Apfel, 524 U.S. 498, 520. Pp. 14–15. 673 F.3d 1071, reversed and remanded. Thomas, J., delivered the opinion for a unanimous Court.

Under the Agricultural Marketing Agreement Act of 1937 (AMAA) and the California Raisin Marketing Order (Marketing Order or Order) promulgated by the Secretary of Agriculture, raisin growers are frequently required to turn over a percentage of their crop to the Federal Government. The AMAA and the Marketing Order were adopted to stabilize prices by limiting the supply of raisins on the market. Petitioners are California raisin growers who believe that this regulatory scheme violates the Fifth Amendment. After petitioners refused to surrender the requisite portion of their raisins, the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) began administrative pro-ceedings against petitioners that led to the imposition of more than $650,000 in fines and civil penalties. Petitioners sought judicial review, claiming that the monetary sanctions were an unconstitutional taking of private property without just compensation. The Ninth Circuit held that petitioners were required to bring their takings claim in the Court of Federal Claims and that it therefore lacked jurisdiction to review petitioners’ claim. We disagree. Petitioners’ takings claim, raised as an affirmative defense to the agency’s enforcement action, was properly before the court because the AMAA provides a comprehensive remedial scheme that withdraws Tucker Act jurisdiction over takings claims brought by raisin handlers. Accordingly, we reverse and remand to the Ninth Circuit. I A Congress enacted the AMAA during the Great Depression in an effort to insulate farmers from competitive market forces that it believed caused “unreasonable fluctuations in supplies and prices.” Ch. 296, 50Stat. 246, as amended, 7 U. S. C. §602(4). To achieve this goal, Congress declared a national policy of stabilizing prices for agricultural commodities. Ibid. The AMAA authorizes the Secretary of Agriculture to promulgate marketing or-ders that regulate the sale and delivery of agricultural goods. §608c(1); see also Block v. Community Nutrition Institute, 467 U.S. 340, 346 (1984) (“The Act contemplates a cooperative venture among the Secretary, handlers, and producers the principal purposes of which are to raise the price of agricultural products and to establish an orderly system for marketing them”). The Secretary may delegate to industry committees the authority to administer marketing orders. §608c(7)(C). The AMAA does not directly regulate the “producer[s]” who grow agricultural commodities, §608c(13)(B); it only regulates “handlers,” which the AMAA defines as “processors, associations of producers, and others engaged in the handling” of covered agricultural commodities. §608c(1). Handlers who violate the Secretary’s marketing orders may be subject to civil and criminal penalties. §§608a(5), 608a(6), and 608c(14). The Secretary promulgated a marketing order for California raisins in 1949.[1] See 14 Fed. Reg. 5136 (codified, as amended, at 7 CFR pt. 989 (2013)). In particular, “[t]he Raisin Marketing Order, like other fruit and vegetable orders adopted under the AMAA, [sought] to stabilize producer returns by limiting the quantity of raisins sold by handlers in the domestic competitive market.” Lion Raisins, Inc. v. United States, 416 F.3d 1356, 1359 (CA Fed. 2005). The Marketing Order defines a raisin “handler” as “(a) [a]ny processor or packer; (b) [a]ny person who places . . . raisins in the current of commerce from within [California] to any point outside thereof; (c) [a]ny person who delivers off-grade raisins . . . into any eligible non-normal outlet; or (d) [a]ny person who blends raisins [subject to certain exceptions].” 7 CFR §989.15. The Marketing Order also established the Raisin Administrative Committee (RAC), which consists of 47 members, with 35 representing producers, ten representing handlers, one representing the cooperative bargaining associations, and one member of the public. See §989.26. The Marketing Order authorizes the RAC to recommend setting up annual reserve pools of raisins that are not to be sold on the open domestic market. See 7 U. S. C. §608c(6)(E); 7 CFR §§989.54(d) and 989.65. Each year, the RAC reviews crop yield, inventories, and shipments and makes recommendations to the Secretary whether or not there should be a reserve pool. §989.54. If the RAC recommends a reserve pool, it also recommends what portion of that year’s production should be included in the pool (“reserve-tonnage”). The rest of that year’s production remains available for sale on the open market (“free-tonnage”). §§989.54(d), (a). The Secretary approves the recommendation if he determines that the recommen-dation would “effectuate the declared policy of the Act.” §989.55. The reserve-tonnage, calculated as a percentage of a producer’s crop, varies from year to year.[2] Under the Marketing Order’s reserve requirements, a producer is only paid for the free-tonnage raisins. §989.65. The reserve-tonnage raisins, on the other hand, must be held by the handler in segregated bins “for the account” of the RAC. §989.66(f ). The RAC may then sell the reserve-tonnage raisins to handlers for resale in overseas markets, or may alternatively direct that they be sold or given at no cost to secondary, noncompetitive domestic markets, such as school lunch programs. §989.67(b). The reserve pool sales proceeds are used to finance the RAC’s administrative costs. §989.53(a). In the event that there are any remaining funds, the producers receive a pro rata share. 7 U. S. C. §608c(6)(E); 7 CFR §989.66(h). As a result, even though producers do not receive payment for reserve-tonnage raisins at the time of delivery to a handler, they retain a limited interest in the net proceeds of the RAC’s disposition of the reserve pool. Handlers have other duties beyond managing the RAC’s reserve pool. The Marketing Order requires them to file certain reports with the RAC, such as reports concerning the quantity of raisins that they hold or acquire. §989.73. They are also required to allow the RAC access to their premises, raisins, and business records to verify the ac-curacy of the handlers’ reports, §989.77, to obtain inspections of raisins acquired, §989.58(d), and to pay certain assessments, §989.80, which help cover the RAC’s administrative costs. A handler who violates any provision of the Order or its implementing regulations is subject to a civil penalty of up to $1,100 per day. 7 U. S. C. §608c(14)(B); 7 CFR §3.91(b)(1)(vii). A handler who does not comply with the reserve requirement must “compensate the [RAC] for the amount of the loss resulting from his failure to . . . deliver” the requisite raisins. §989.166(c). B Petitioners Marvin and Laura Horne have been producing raisins in two California counties (Fresno and Madera) since 1969. The Hornes do business as Raisin Valley Farms, a general partnership. For more than 30 years, the Hornes operated only as raisin producers. But, af- ter becoming disillusioned with the AMAA regulatory scheme,[3] they began looking for ways to avoid the mandatory reserve program. Since the AMAA applies only to handlers, the Hornes devised a plan to bring their raisins to market without going through a traditional handler. To this end, the Hornes entered into a partnership with Mrs. Horne’s parents called Lassen Vineyards. In addition to its grape-growing activities, Lassen Vineyards purchased equipment to clean, stem, sort, and package the raisins from Raisin Valley Farms and Lassen Vineyards. It also contracted with more than 60 other raisin growers to clean, stem, sort, and, in some cases, box and stack their raisins for a fee. The Hornes’ facilities processed more than 3 million pounds of raisins in toto during the 2002–2003 and 2003–2004 crop years. During these two crop years, the Hornes produced 27.4% and 12.3% of the raisins they processed, respectively. Although the USDA informed the Hornes in 2001 that their proposed operations made them “handlers” under the AMAA, the Hornes paid no assessments to the RAC during the 2002–2003 and 2003–2004 crop years. Nor did they set aside reserve-tonnage raisins from those produced and owned by the more than 60 other farmers who contracted with Lassen Vineyards for packing services. They also declined to arrange for RAC inspection of the rai- sins they received for processing, denied the RAC access to their records, and held none of their own raisins in reserve. On April 1, 2004, the Administrator of the Agriculture Marketing Service (Administrator) initiated an enforcement action against the Hornes, Raisin Valley Farms, and Lassen Vineyards (petitioners). The complaint alleged that petitioners were “handlers” of California raisins during the 2002–2003 and 2003–2004 crop years. It also alleged that petitioners violated the AMAA and the Marketing Order by submitting inaccurate forms to the RAC and failing to hold inspections of incoming raisins, retain raisins in reserve, pay assessments, and allow access to their records. Petitioners denied the allegations, countering that they were not “handlers” and asserting that they did not acquire physical possession of the other producers’ raisins within the meaning of the regulations. Petition- ers also raised several affirmative defenses, including a claim that the Marketing Order violated the Fifth Amend-ment’s prohibition against taking property without just compensation. An Administrative Law Judge (ALJ) concluded in 2006 that petitioners were handlers of raisins and thus subject to the Marketing Order. The ALJ also concluded that petitioners violated the AMAA and the Marketing Order and rejected petitioners’ takings defense based on its view that “handlers no longer have a property right that permits them to market their crop free of regulatory control.” App. 39 (citing Cal-Almond, Inc. v. United States, 30 Fed. Cl. 244, 246–247 (1994)). Petitioners appealed to a judicial officer who, like the ALJ, also found that petitioners were handlers and that they had violated the Marketing Order. The judicial of-ficer imposed $202,600 in civil penalties under 7 U. S. C. §608c(14)(B); $8,783.39 in assessments for the two crop years under 7 CFR §989.80(a); and $483,843.53 for the value of the California raisins that petitioners failed to hold in reserve for the two crop years under §989.166(c). The judicial officer believed that he lacked “authority to judge the constitutionality of the various statutes administered by the [USDA],” App. 73, and declined to adjudicate petitioners’ takings claim. Petitioners filed a complaint in Federal District Court seeking judicial review of the USDA’s decision. See 7 U. S. C. §608c(14)(B). The District Court granted summary judgment to the USDA. The court held that substantial evidence supported the agency’s determination that petitioners were “handlers” subject to the Marketing Order, and rejected petitioners’ argument that they were exempt from the Marketing Order due to their status as “producers” under §608c(13)(B). No. CV–F–08–1549 LJO SMS, 2009 WL 4895362, *15 (ED Cal., Dec. 11, 2009). Petitioners renewed their Fifth Amendment argument, asserting that the reserve-tonnage requirement consti-tuted a physical taking. Though the District Court found that the RAC takes title to a significant portion of a California raisin producer’s crop through the reserve requirement, the court held that the transfer of title to the RAC did not constitute a physical taking. See id., at *26 (“ ‘[I]n essence, [petitioners] are paying an admissions fee or toll—admittedly a steep one—for marketing raisins. The Government does not force plaintiffs to grow raisins or to market the raisins; rather, it directs that if they grow and market raisins, then passing title to their “reserve tonnage” raisins to the RAC is the admissions ticket’ ” (quot-ing Evans v. United States, 74 Fed. Cl. 554, 563–564 (2006))). The Ninth Circuit affirmed. The court agreed that petitioners were “handlers” subject to the Marketing Or-der’s provisions, and rejected petitioners’ argument that they were producers, and, thus exempt from regulation. 673 F.3d 1071, 1078 (2012). The court did not resolve petitioners’ takings claim, however, because it concluded that that it lacked jurisdiction to do so. The court explained that “a takings claim against the federal government must be brought [in the Court of Federal Claims] in the first instance, ‘unless Congress has withdrawn the Tucker Act grant of jurisdiction in the relevant statute.’ ” Id., at 1079 (quoting Eastern Enterprises v. Apfel, 524 U.S. 498, 520 (1998) (plurality opinion)). The court recognized that 7 U. S. C. §608c(15) provides an administrative remedy to handlers wishing to challenge marketing orders under the AMAA, and it agreed that “when a handler, or a producer-handler in its capacity as a handler, challenges a marketing order on takings grounds, Court of Federal Claims Tucker Act jurisdiction gives way to section [60]8c(15)’s comprehensive procedural scheme and administrative exhaustion requirements.” 673 F. 3d, at 1079. But, the Ninth Circuit determined, petitioners brought the takings claim in their capacity as producers, not handlers. Id., at 1080. Consequently, the court was of the view that “[n]othing in the AMAA precludes the Hornes from alleging in the Court of Federal Claims that the reserve program injures them in their capacity as producers by subjecting them to a taking requiring compensation.” Ibid. This availability of a Federal Claims Court action thus rendered petitioners’ takings claim un-ripe for adjudication. Ibid. We granted certiorari to determine whether the Ninth Circuit has jurisdiction to review petitioners’ takings claim. 568 U. S. ___ (2012). II A The Ninth Circuit’s jurisdictional ruling flowed from its determination that petitioners brought their takings claim as producers rather than handlers. This determination is not correct. Although petitioners argued that they were producers—and thus not subject to the AMAA or Marketing Order at all—both the USDA and the District Court concluded that petitioners were “handlers.” Accordingly, the civil penalty, assessment, and reimbursement for fail-ure to reserve raisins were all levied on petitioners in their capacity as “handlers.” If petitioners’ argument that they were producers had prevailed, they would not have been subject to any of the monetary sanctions imposed on them. See 7 U. S. C. §608c(13)(B) (“No order issued under this chapter shall be applicable to any producer in his capacity as a producer”). It is undisputed that the Marketing Order imposes duties on petitioners only in their capacity as handlers. As a result, any defense raised against those duties is necessarily raised in that same capacity. Petitioners ar-gue that it would be unconstitutional for the Government to come on their land and confiscate raisins, or to con-fiscate the proceeds of raisin sales, without paying just com-pensation; and, that it is therefore unconstitutional to fine petitioners for not complying with the unconstitutional requirement.[4] See Brief for Petitioners 54. Given that fines can only be levied on handlers, petitioners’ takings claim makes sense only as a defense to penalties imposed upon them in their capacity as handlers. The Ninth Circuit confused petitioners’ statutory argument (i.e., “we are producers, not handlers”) with their constitutional argument (i.e., “assuming we are handlers, fining us for refusing to turn over reserve-tonnage raisins violates the Fifth Amendment”).[5] The relevant question, then, is whether a federal court has jurisdiction to adjudicate a takings defense raised by a handler seeking review of a final agency order. B The Government argues that petitioners’ takings-based defense was rightly dismissed on ripeness grounds. Brief for Respondent 21–22. According to the Government, be-cause a takings claim can be pursued later in the Court of Federal Claims, the Ninth Circuit correctly refused to adjudicate petitioners’ takings defense. In support of its position, the Government relies largely on Williamson County Regional Planning Comm’n v. Hamilton Bank of Johnson City, 473 U.S. 172 (1985). Brief for Respondent 21–22 (“Just compensation need not ‘be paid in advance of, or contemporaneously with, the taking; all that is re-quired is that a ‘reasonable, certain and adequate provision for obtaining compensation’ exist at the time of the taking’ ” (quoting Williamson County, 473 U. S., at 194)). In that case, the plaintiff filed suit against the Regional Planning Commission, claiming that a zoning decision by the Commission effected a taking of property without just compensation. Id., at 182. We found that the plaintiff’s claim was not “ripe” for two reasons, neither of which supports the Government’s position. First, we explained that the plaintiff’s takings claim in Williamson County failed because the plaintiff could not show that it had been injured by the Government’s action. Specifically, the plaintiff “ha[d] not yet obtained a final decision regarding the application of the zoning ordinance and subdivision regulations to its property.” Id., at 186. Here, by contrast, petitioners were subject to a final agency order imposing concrete fines and penalties at the time they sought judicial review under §608c(14)(B). This was clearly sufficient “injury” for federal jurisdiction. Second, the Williamson County plaintiff’s takings claim was not yet ripe because the plaintiff had not sought “compensation through the procedures the State ha[d] provided for doing so.” Id., at 194. We explained that “[i]f the government has provided an adequate process for obtaining compensation, and if resort to that process yields just compensation, then the property owner has no claim against the Government for a taking.” Id., at 194–195 (internal quotation marks and alteration omitted). Stated differently, a Fifth Amendment claim is premature until it is clear that the Government has both taken property and denied just compensation. Although we often refer to this consideration as “prudential ‘ripeness,’ ” Lucas v. South Carolina Coastal Council, 505 U.S. 1003, 1013 (1992), we have recognized that it is not, strictly speaking, jurisdictional.[6] See Stop the Beach Renourishment, Inc. v. Florida Dept. of Environmental Protection, 560 U. S. ___, ___, and n. 10 (2010) (slip op., at 24, and n. 10). Here, the Government argues that petitioners’ takings claim is premature because the Tucker Act affords “the requisite reasonable, certain, and adequate provision for obtaining just compensation that a property owner must pursue.” Brief for Respondent 22. In the Government’s view, “[p]etitioners should have complied with the order, and, after a portion of their raisins were placed in reserve to be disposed of as directed by the RAC, . . . sought compensation as producers in the Court of Federal Claims for the alleged taking.” Id., at 24–25. We disagree with the Government’s argument, however, because the AMAA provides a comprehensive remedial scheme that withdraws Tucker Act jurisdiction over a handler’s takings claim. As a result, there is no alternative “reasonable, certain, and adequate” remedial scheme through which petitioners (as handlers) must proceed before obtaining review of their claim under the AMAA.[7] The Court of Federal Claims has jurisdiction over Tucker Act claims “founded either upon the Constitution, or any Act of Congress or any regulation of an executive de-partment.” 28 U. S. C. §1491(a)(1). “[A] claim for just compensation under the Takings Clause must be brought to the Court of Federal Claims in the first instance, unless Congress has withdrawn the Tucker Act grant of jurisdiction in the relevant statute.” Eastern Enterprises, 524 U. S., at 520 (plurality opinion); see also United States v. Bormes, 568 U. S. ___, ___ (2012) (slip op., at 5) (where “a statute contains its own self-executing remedial scheme,” a court “look[s] only to that statute”). To determine whether a statutory scheme displaces Tucker Act jurisdiction, a court must “examin[e] the purpose of the [statute], the entirety of its text, and the structure of review that it establishes.” United States v. Fausto, 484 U.S. 439, 444 (1988). Under the AMAA’s comprehensive remedial scheme, handlers may challenge the content, applicability, and en-forcement of marketing orders. Pursuant to §§608c(15) (A)–(B), a handler may file with the Secretary a direct challenge to a marketing order and its applicability to him. We have held that “any handler” subject to a mar-keting order must raise any challenges to the order, including constitutional challenges, in administrative proceedings. See United States v. Ruzicka, 329 U.S. 287, 294 (1946). Once the Secretary issues a ruling, the federal district court where the “handler is an inhabitant, or has his principal place of business” is “vested with jurisdiction . . . to review [the] ruling.”[8] §608c(15)(B). These statutory provisions afford handlers a ready avenue to bring takings claim against the USDA. We thus conclude that the AMAA withdraws Tucker Act jurisdiction over petitioners’ takings claim. Petitioners (as handlers) have no alternative remedy, and their takings claim was not “premature” when presented to the Ninth Circuit. C Although petitioners’ claim was not “premature” for Tucker Act purposes, the question remains whether a takings-based defense may be raised by a handler in the context of an enforcement proceeding initiated by the USDA under §608c(14). We hold that it may. The AMAA provides that the handler may not be subjected to an adverse order until he has been given “notice and an opportunity for an agency hearing on the record.” §608c(14)(B). The text of §608c(14)(B) does not bar handlers from raising constitutional defenses to the USDA’s enforcement action. Allowing handlers to raise constitutional challenges in the course of enforcement proceedings would not diminish the incentive to file direct challenges to marketing orders under §608c(15)(A) because a handler who refuses to comply with a marketing order and waits for an enforcement action will be liable for significant monetary penalties if his constitutional challenge fails. In the case of an administrative enforcement proceeding, when a party raises a constitutional defense to an assessed fine, it would make little sense to require the party to pay the fine in one proceeding and then turn around and sue for recovery of that same money in another proceeding. See Eastern Enterprises, supra, at 520. We see no indication that Congress intended this result for handlers subject to enforcement proceedings under the AMAA. Petitioners were therefore free to raise their takings-based defense before the USDA. And, because §608c(14)(B) allows a handler to seek judicial review of an adverse order, the district court and Ninth Circuit were not precluded from reviewing petitioners’ constitutional challenge. The grant of jurisdiction necessarily includes the power to review any constitutional challenges properly presented to and rejected by the agency. We are therefore satisfied that the petitioners raised a cognizable takings defense and that the Ninth Circuit erred in declining to adjudicate it. III The Ninth Circuit has jurisdiction to decide whether the USDA’s imposition of fines and civil penalties on petitioners, in their capacity as handlers, violated the Fifth Amendment. The judgment of the Ninth Circuit is reversed, and the case is remanded for further proceedings consistent with this opinion. It is so ordered. Notes 1 The AMAA also applies to a vast array of other agricultural products, including “[m]ilk, fruits (including filberts, almonds, pecans and walnuts . . . , pears, olives, grapefruit, cherries, caneberries (including raspberries, blackberries, and loganberries), cranberries, . . . tobacco, vegetables, . . . hops, [and] honeybees.” §608c(2). 2 In 2002–2003 and 2003–2004, the crop years at issue here, the reserve percentages were set at 47 percent and 30 percent of a producer’s crop, respectively. See RAC, Marketing Policy & Industry Statistics 2012, p. 28 (Table 12). 3 The Hornes wrote the Secretary and to the RAC in 2002 setting out their grievances: “[W]e are growers that will pack and market our raisins. We reserve our rights under the Constitution of the United States . . . [T]he Marketing Order Regulating Raisins has become a tool for grower bankruptcy, poverty, and involuntary servitude. The Marketing Order Regulating Raisins is a complete failure for growers, handlers, and the USDA . . . [W]e will not relinquish ownership of our crop. We put forth the money and effort to grow it, not the Raisin Administrative Committee. This is America, not a communist state.” App. to Pet. for Cert. 60a. 4 The Ninth Circuit construed the takings argument quite differently, stating that petitioners believe the regulatory scheme “takes reserve-tonnage raisins belonging to producers.” 673 F.3d 1071, 1080 (2012). When the agency brought its enforcement action against petitioners, however, it did not seek to recover reserve-tonnage raisins from the 2002–2003 and 2003–2004 crop years. Rather, it sought monetary penalties and reimbursement. Petitioners could not argue in the face of such agency action that the Secretary was attempting to take raisins that had already been harvested and sold. Instead, petitioners argued that they could not be compelled to pay fines for refusing to accede to an unconstitutional taking. 5 The Government notes that petitioners did not own most of the raisins that they failed to reserve and argues that petitioners would have no takings claim based on those raisins. See Brief for Respondent 19. We take no position on the merits of petitioners’ takings claim. We simply recognize that insofar as the petitioners challenged the imposition of monetary sanctions under the Marketing Order, they raised their takings-based defense in their capacity as handlers. On remand, the Ninth Circuit can decide in the first instance whether petitioners may raise the takings defense with respect to raisins they never owned. 6 A “Case” or “Controversy” exists once the government has taken private property without paying for it. Accordingly, whether an alternative remedy exists does not affect the jurisdiction of the federal court. 7 That is not to say that a producer who turns over her reserve-tonnage raisins could not bring suit for just compensation in the Court of Claims. Whether a producer could bring such a claim, and what impact the availability of such a claim would have on petitioners’ takings-based defense, are questions going to the merits of petitioners’ defense, not to a court’s jurisdiction to entertain it. We therefore do not address those issues here. 8 Petitioners filed an administrative petition before the Secretary in March 2007 pursuant to §608c(15)(A) challenging the Marketing Order and its application to them. The USDA argued that they had no standing to file the petition because they had not admitted that they were handlers. The judicial officer granted the USDA’s motion to dismiss the petition for lack of jurisdiction. Petitioners filed a complaint in District Court, but the court dismissed it as untimely. The Ninth Circuit affirmed. See Horne v. Dept. of Agriculture, 395 Fed. Appx. 486 (2010).

568.US.289

The Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996 (AEDPA) provides that a federal habeas court may not grant relief to a state prisoner whose claim has already been “adjudicated on the merits in State court,” 28 U. S. C. §2254(d), unless the claim’s adjudication resulted in a decision that was “contrary to, or involved an unreasonable application of, clearly established Federal law, as determined by [this] Court,” §2254(d)(1), or “based on an unreasonable determination of the facts in light of the evidence presented in the State court proceeding,” §2254(d)(2). A California jury convicted respondent Williams of first-degree murder. On direct appeal to the California Court of Appeal, she claimed that the trial court’s questioning and dismissal of a juror during deliberations violated both the Sixth Amendment and California law. In holding that the juror had been properly dismissed for bias, the California Court of Appeal quoted the definition of “impartiality” from United States v. Wood, 299 U.S. 123, 145–146, but it did not expressly acknowledge that it was deciding a Sixth Amendment issue. The State Supreme Court remanded for further consideration in light of its intervening Cleveland decision, which held that a trial court abused its discretion by dismissing for failure to deliberate a juror who appeared to disagree with the rest of the jury about the evidence. Reaffirming its prior decision on remand, the State Court of Appeal discussed Cleveland, again quoted Wood, and failed to expressly acknowledge that Williams had raised a federal claim. When Williams later sought federal habeas relief, the District Court applied §2254’s deferential standard of review for claims adjudicated on the merits and denied relief. But the Ninth Circuit concluded that the State Court of Appeal had not considered Williams’ Sixth Amendment claim. The court then reviewed that claim de novo and held that the questioning and dismissal of the juror violated the Sixth Amendment. Held: 1. For purposes of §2254(d), when a state court rules against a defendant in an opinion that rejects some of the defendant’s claims but does not expressly address a federal claim, a federal habeas court must presume, subject to rebuttal, that the federal claim was adjudicated on the merits. Pp. 7–13. (a) This conclusion follows logically from Harrington v. Richter, 562 U. S. ___. There, the Court held that when a state court issues an order that summarily rejects without discussion all the claims raised by a defendant, including a federal claim that the defendant subsequently presses in federal habeas, the federal habeas court must presume that the federal claim was adjudicated on the merits. Though Richter concerned a state-court order that did not address any of the defendant’s claims, there is no sound reason not to apply its presumption when a state-court opinion addresses some but not all of those claims. Federal habeas courts should not assume that any unaddressed federal claim was simply overlooked because state courts do not uniformly discuss separately every claim referenced by a defendant. In fact, they frequently take a different course. They may view a line of state precedent as fully incorporating a related federal constitutional right, may not regard a fleeting reference to a provision of the Federal Constitution or federal precedent as sufficient to raise a federal claim, or may simply regard a claim as too insubstantial to merit discussion. Pp. 7−10. (b) Petitioner’s argument for an irrebuttable presumption goes too far. Certainly, if a state standard subsumes the federal standard, the federal claim may be regarded as having been adjudicated on the merits. See Early v. Packer, 537 U.S. 3, 8. But where, e.g., the state standard is less protective or the federal precedent was mentioned in passing, the presumption may be rebutted—either by a habeas petitioner (to show that the federal court should consider the claim de novo) or by the State (to show that the federal claim should be regarded as procedurally defaulted). See Coleman v. Thompson, 501 U.S. 722, 739. An irrebuttable presumption that state courts never overlook federal claims would sometimes be wrong. It would also improperly excise §2254(d)’s on-the-merits requirement, for a claim that is rejected as a result of sheer inadvertence has not been evaluated on the merits. The experience of the lower federal courts shows that allowing federal habeas petitioners to rebut the presumption will not prompt an unduly burdensome flood of litigation. Pp. 10−13. 2. Applying the rebuttable presumption of merits adjudication here, the Ninth Circuit erred by finding that the State Court of Appeal overlooked Williams’ Sixth Amendment claim. Several facts lead to that conclusion. Most important is that the court discussed Cleveland, a State Supreme Court case that in turn examined three Federal Court of Appeals cases concerning the Sixth Amendment implications of discharging holdout jurors. Though Cleveland refused to follow those cases, the views of the federal courts of appeals do not bind a State Supreme Court when it decides a federal constitutional question. Regardless of whether a California court would consider Williams’ state-law and Sixth Amendment claims to be coextensive, their similarity makes it unlikely that the State Court of Appeal decided one while overlooking the other. The State Court of Appeal’s quotation of Wood, supra, at 145−146, further confirms that it was well aware that the juror’s questioning and dismissal implicated federal law. Williams’ litigation strategy also supports this result. She treated her state and federal claims as interchangeable, so it is not surprising that the state courts did as well. Notably, Williams neither petitioned the State Court of Appeal for rehearing nor argued in subsequent state and federal proceedings that the state court had failed to adjudicate her Sixth Amendment claim on the merits. Pp. 13−16. 646 F.3d 626, reversed and remanded. Alito, J., delivered the opinion of the Court, in which Roberts, C. J., and Kennedy, Thomas, Ginsburg, Breyer, Sotomayor, and Kagan, JJ., joined. Scalia, J., filed an opinion concurring in the judgment.

The Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996 (AEDPA) restricts the circumstances under which a federal habeas court may grant relief to a state prisoner whose claim has already been “adjudicated on the merits in State court.” 28 U. S. C. §2254(d). Specifically, if a claim has been “adjudicated on the merits in State court,” a federal habeas court may not grant relief unless “the adjudication of the claim— “(1) resulted in a decision that was contrary to, or involved an unreasonable application of, clearly established Federal law, as determined by the Supreme Court of the United States; or “(2) resulted in a decision that was based on an unreasonable determination of the facts in light of the evidence presented in the State court proceeding.” Ibid. Because the requirements of §2254(d) are difficult to meet, it is important whether a federal claim was “adjudicated on the merits in State court,” and this case requires us to ascertain the meaning of the adjudication-on-the merits requirement. This issue arises when a defendant convicted in state court attempts to raise a federal claim, either on direct appeal or in a collateral state proceeding, and a state court rules against the defendant and issues an opinion that addresses some issues but does not expressly address the federal claim in question. If this defendant then raises the same claim in a federal habeas proceeding, should the federal court regard the claim as having been adjudicated on the merits by the state court and apply deference under §2254(d)? Or may the federal court assume that the state court simply overlooked the federal claim and proceed to adjudicate the claim de novo, the course taken by the Court of Appeals in the case at hand? We believe that the answer to this question follows logically from our decision in Harrington v. Richter, 562 U. S. ___ (2011). In that case, we held that, when a state court issues an order that summarily rejects without discussion all the claims raised by a defendant, including a federal claim that the defendant subsequently presses in a federal habeas proceeding, the federal habeas court must presume (subject to rebuttal) that the federal claim was adjudicated on the merits. We see no reason why this same rule should not apply when the state court addresses some of the claims raised by a defendant but not a claim that is later raised in a federal habeas proceeding. Applying this rule in the present case, we hold that the federal claim at issue here (a Sixth Amendment jury trial claim) must be presumed to have been adjudicated on the merits by the California courts, that this presumption was not adequately rebutted, that the restrictive standard of review set out in §2254(d)(2) consequently applies, and that under that standard respondent is not entitled to habeas relief. We therefore reverse the judgment of the Court of Appeals. I A In October 1993, respondent Tara Williams took two of her friends for a drive in southern California with the objective of committing a robbery. They stopped at a liquor store in Long Beach, and while Williams waited in the getaway car, her friends stole money from the cash register and fatally shot the store’s owner. Williams then drove one of her friends away, and the other fled on foot. Williams avoided capture for five years but was ultimately apprehended and charged with first-degree murder. At trial, Williams admitted that she had served as the getaway driver but claimed that she did not know that her friends were going to rob the liquor store at the particular time in question. Instead, she contended that the three friends had agreed only that they would “case” the store and would possibly return later that evening to rob it. The State countered that, regardless of whether Williams knew precisely when and where the robbery was to take place, she had agreed to help commit a robbery and that this was sufficient to provide the predicate for felony murder under California law. After deliberating for about three hours, the jury foreman sent the judge two notes. The first note asked the following question: “ ‘Is it legally permissible for a juror to interpret . . . the jury instructions to mean that the conspiracy should involve a plan to commit a specific robbery rather than a general plan to commit robberies in the future?’ ” Tr. 1247. The second note stated: “I wish to inform you that we have one juror who . . . has expressed an intention to disregard the law . . . and . . . has expressed concern relative to the severity of the charge (first degree murder).” Id., at 1246. The judge told the jury that the answer to the question in the first note was “no.” Id., at 1249. Then, over Williams’ objection, the judge briefly questioned the foreman outside the presence of the rest of the jury about the second note. The foreman said that he thought the judge’s answer to the first note might resolve the problem, and the judge instructed the jury to resume its deliberations. The next morning, once again over Williams’ objection, the judge decided to inquire further about the foreman’s second note. On questioning by the judge and lawyers for both parties, the foreman testified that Juror 6 had brought up past instances of jury nullification. The foreman also expressed doubt about whether Juror 6 was willing to apply the felony-murder rule. The trial judge then ordered questioning of Juror 6, who first denied and then admitted bringing up instances of nullification. Juror 6 also testified that this was a serious case and that he would vote to convict only if he was “very convinced . . . beyond a reasonable doubt.” Id., at 1280. He later clarified that in his view “convinced beyond a reasonable doubt” and “very convinced beyond a reasonable doubt” meant the same thing. Id., at 1281. After taking testi- mony from the remaining jurors, who corroborated the foreman’s testimony to varying degrees, the trial judge dis- missed Juror 6 for bias. With an alternate juror in place, the jury convicted Williams of first-degree murder. B On appeal to the California Court of Appeal, Williams argued, among other things, that the discharge of Juror 6 violated both the Sixth Amendment and the California Penal Code, which allows a California trial judge to dismiss a juror who “upon . . . good cause shown to the court is found to be unable to perform his or her duty.” Cal. Penal Code Ann. §1089 (West 2004). Although Williams’ brief challenged the questioning and dismissal of Juror 6 on both state and federal grounds, it did not clearly distinguish between these two lines of authority. In a written opinion affirming Williams’ conviction, the California Court of Appeal devoted several pages to discussing the propriety of the trial judge’s decision to dis- miss the juror. People v. Taylor, No. B137365 (Mar. 27, 2001). The court held that Juror 6 had been properly dismissed for bias and quoted this Court’s definition of “impartiality” in United States v. Wood, 299 U.S. 123, 145–146 (1936). But despite its extended discussion of Juror 6’s dismissal and the questioning that preceded it, the California Court of Appeal never expressly acknowledged that it was deciding a Sixth Amendment issue. Williams petitioned the California Supreme Court for review, and while her petition was pending, that court decided People v. Cleveland, 25 Cal. 4th 466, 21 P.3d 1225 (2001), which held that a trial court had abused its discretion by dismissing for failure to deliberate a juror who appeared to disagree with the rest of the jury about the evidence. The California Supreme Court granted Williams’ petition for review and remanded her case for further consideration in light of this intervening authority. People v. Taylor, No. S097387 (July 11, 2001). On remand, the California Court of Appeal issued a revised opinion holding that the trial court had not abused its discretion by questioning the jury and dismissing Juror 6. Williams argued that Juror 6—like the holdout juror in Cleveland—was dismissed because he was uncooperative with other jurors who did not share his view of the evidence. But the California Court of Appeal disagreed, explaining that Williams’ argument “not only misstate[d] the evidence,” but also “ignore[d] the trial court’s explanation that it was discharging Juror No. 6 because he had shown himself to be biased, not because he was failing to deliberate or engaging in juror nullification.” People v. Taylor, No. B137365 (Jan. 18, 2002), App. to Pet. for Cert. 105a. As in its earlier opinion, the California Court of Appeal quoted our definition of juror bias in Wood, but the court did not expressly acknowledge that Williams had invoked a federal basis for her argument. Despite that omission, however, Williams did not seek rehearing or other- wise suggest that the court had overlooked her federal claim. Instead, she filed another petition for review in the California Supreme Court, but this time that court denied relief in a one-sentence order. People v. Taylor, No. S104661 (Apr. 10, 2002), App. to Pet. for Cert. 85a. Williams sought but failed to obtain relief through state habeas proceedings, and she then filed a federal habeas petition under 28 U. S. C. §2254. The District Court applied AEDPA’s deferential standard of review for claims previously adjudicated on the merits and denied relief. Williams v. Mitchell, No. 03–2691 (CD Cal., May 30, 2007), App. to Pet. for Cert. 57a. In so holding, the District Court adopted a Magistrate Judge’s finding that the evidence “amply support[ed] the trial judge’s determination that good cause existed for the discharge of Juror 6.” Williams v. Mitchell, No. 03–2691 (CD Cal., Mar. 19, 2007), id., at 70a. The Ninth Circuit reversed. Unlike the District Court, the Ninth Circuit declined to apply the deferential standard of review contained in §2254(d). The Ninth Circuit took this approach because it thought it “obvious” that the State Court of Appeal had “overlooked or disregarded” Williams’ Sixth Amendment claim.[1] Williams v. Cavazos, 646 F.3d 626, 639 (2011). The Ninth Circuit reasoned that Cleveland, the State Supreme Court decision on which the State Court of Appeal had relied, “was not a constitutional decision,” 646 F. 3d, at 640, and the Ninth Circuit attributed no significance to the state court’s citation of our decision in Wood. Reviewing Williams’ Sixth Amendment claim de novo, the Ninth Circuit applied its own precedent and held that the questioning and dismissal of Juror 6 violated the Sixth Amendment. 646 F. 3d, at 646–647. We granted the warden’s petition for a writ of certiorari, 565 U. S. ___ (2012), in order to decide whether the Ninth Circuit erred by refusing to afford AEDPA deference to the California Court of Appeal’s decision. II A As noted above, AEDPA sharply limits the circum- stances in which a federal court may issue a writ of habeas corpus to a state prisoner whose claim was “adjudicated on the merits in State court proceedings.” 28 U. S. C. §2254(d). In Richter, 562 U. S., at ___ (slip op., at 10), we held that §2254(d) “does not require a state court to give reasons before its decision can be deemed to have been ‘adjudicated on the merits.’ ” Rather, we explained, “[w]hen a federal claim has been presented to a state court and the state court has denied relief, it may be presumed that the state court adjudicated the claim on the merits in the absence of any indication or state-law procedural principles to the contrary.” Id., at ___ (slip op., at 9). Our reasoning in Richter points clearly to the answer to the question presented in the case at hand. Although Richter itself concerned a state-court order that did not address any of the defendant’s claims, we see no reason why the Richter presumption should not also apply when a state-court opinion addresses some but not all of a defendant’s claims. There would be a reason for drawing a distinction between these two situations if opinions issued by state appellate courts always separately addressed every single claim that is mentioned in a defendant’s papers. If there were such a uniform practice, then federal habeas courts could assume that any unaddressed federal claim was simply overlooked. No such assumption is warranted, however, because it is not the uniform practice of busy state courts to discuss separately every single claim to which a defendant makes even a passing reference. On the contrary, there are several situations in which state courts frequently take a different course. First, there are circumstances in which a line of state precedent is viewed as fully incorporating a related federal constitutional right. In California, for example, the state constitutional right to be present at trial “ ‘is generally coextensive with’ ” the protections of the Federal Constitution. People v. Butler, 46 Cal. 4th 847, 861, 209 P.3d 596, 606 (2009); see also, e.g., Commonwealth v. Prunty, 462 Mass. 295, 305, n. 14, 968 N.E.2d 361, 371, n. 14 (2012) (standard for racial discrimination in juror selection “ ‘is the same under the Federal Constitution and the [Massachusetts] Declaration of Rights’ ”); State v. Krause, 817 N.W.2d 136, 144 (Minn. 2012) (“ ‘The due process protection provided under the Minnesota Constitution is identical to the due proces[s] guaranteed under the Constitution of the United States’ ”); State v. Engelhardt, 280 Kan. 113, 122, 119 P.3d 1148, 1158 (2005) (observing that a Kansas statute is “analytically and functionally identical to the requirements under the Confrontation Clause and the Due Process Clause of the federal Constitution”). In this situation, a state appellate court may regard its discussion of the state precedent as sufficient to cover a claim based on the related federal right. Second, a state court may not regard a fleeting reference to a provision of the Federal Constitution or federal precedent as sufficient to raise a separate federal claim. Federal courts of appeals refuse to take cognizance of arguments that are made in passing without proper development. See, e.g., United States v. Cloud, 680 F.3d 396, 409, n. 7 (CA4 2012); United States v. Mitchell, 502 F.3d 931, 953, n. 2 (CA9 2007); United States v. Charles, 469 F.3d 402, 408 (CA5 2006); Reynolds v. Wagner, 128 F.3d 166, 178 (CA3 1997); Carducci v. Regan, 714 F.2d 171, 177 (CADC 1983). State appellate courts are entitled to follow the same practice. Third, there are instances in which a state court may simply regard a claim as too insubstantial to merit discussion. Indeed, the California Court of Appeal has expressly stated that it has no obligation to address claims that lack arguable merit. See People v. Rojas, 118 Cal. App. 3d 278, 290, 173 Cal. Rptr. 91, 93 (1981). That court has explained: “In an era in which there is concern that the quality of justice is being diminished by appellate backlog with its attendant delay, which in turn contributes to a lack of finality of judgment, it behooves us as an appellate court to ‘get to the heart’ of cases presented and dispose of them expeditiously.” Ibid. See also People v. Burke, 18 Cal. App. 72, 79, 122 P. 435, 439 (1912) (“The author of an opinion . . . must follow his own judgment as to the degree of elaboration to be accorded to the treatment of any proposition and as to the questions which are worthy of notice at all” (emphasis added)). While it is preferable for an appellate court in a criminal case to list all of the arguments that the court recognizes as having been properly presented, see R. Aldisert, Opinion Writing 95–96 (3d ed. 2012), federal courts have no authority to impose mandatory opinion-writing standards on state courts, see Coleman v. Thompson, 501 U.S. 722, 739 (1991) (“[W]e have no power to tell state courts how they must write their opinions”). The caseloads shouldered by many state appellate courts are very heavy,[2] and the opinions issued by these courts must be read with that factor in mind. In sum, because it is by no means uncommon for a state court to fail to address separately a federal claim that the court has not simply overlooked, we see no sound reason for failing to apply the Richter presumption in cases like the one now before us. When a state court rejects a federal claim without expressly addressing that claim, a federal habeas court must presume that the federal claim was adjudicated on the merits—but that presumption can in some limited circumstances be rebutted. B Not satisfied with a strong but rebuttable presumption, petitioner urges us to make the presumption irrebuttable. Specifically, petitioner contends that a state court must be regarded as having adjudicated a federal claim on the merits if the state court addressed “the substance of [an] asserted trial error.” Brief for Petitioner 27. Suppose, for example, that a defendant claimed in state court that something that occurred at trial violated both a provision of the Federal Constitution and a related provision of state law, and suppose further that the state court, in denying relief, made no reference to federal law. According to petitioner’s argument, a federal habeas court would be required to proceed on the assumption that the federal claim was adjudicated on the merits. This argument goes too far. To be sure, if the state-law rule subsumes the federal standard—that is, if it is at least as protective as the federal standard—then the federal claim may be regarded as having been adjudicated on the merits. See Early v. Packer, 537 U.S. 3, 8 (2002) (per curiam). But what if, for example, in at least some circumstances the state standard is less protective? Or what if the state standard is quite different from the federal standard, and the defendant’s papers made no effort to develop the basis for the federal claim? What if a provision of the Federal Constitution or a federal precedent was simply mentioned in passing in a footnote or was buried in a string cite? In such circumstances, the presumption that the federal claim was adjudicated on the merits may be rebutted—either by the habeas petitioner (for the purpose of showing that the claim should be considered by the federal court de novo) or by the State (for the purpose of showing that the federal claim should be regarded as procedurally defaulted). See Coleman, supra, at 739 (rebuttable presumption of no independent and adequate state ground applies so long as “it fairly appears that a state court judgment rested primarily on federal law or was interwoven with federal law”). Thus, while the Richter presumption is a strong one that may be rebutted only in unusual circumstances, it is not irrebuttable.[3] “Per se rules should not be applied . . . in situations where the generalization is incorrect as an empirical matter,” Coleman, 501 U. S., at 737, and an irrebuttable presumption that state courts never overlook federal claims would occasionally miss the mark. The language of 28 U. S. C. §2254(d) makes it clear that this provision applies only when a federal claim was “adjudicated on the merits in State court.” A judgment is normally said to have been rendered “on the merits” only if it was “delivered after the court . . . heard and evaluated the evidence and the parties’ substantive arguments.” Black’s Law Dictionary 1199 (9th ed. 2009) (emphasis added). And as used in this context, the word “merits” is defined as “[t]he intrinsic rights and wrongs of a case as determined by matters of substance, in distinction from matters of form.” Webster’s New International Dictionary 1540 (2d ed. 1954) (emphasis added); see also, e.g., 9 Oxford English Dictionary 634 (2d ed. 1989) (“the intrinsic ‘rights and wrongs’ of the matter, in contradistinction to extraneous points such as the competence of the tribunal or the like” (emphasis added)); Random House Dictionary of the English Language 897 (1967) (“the intrinsic right and wrong of a matter, as a law case, unobscured by procedural details, technicalities, personal feelings, etc.” (emphasis added)). If a federal claim is rejected as a result of sheer inadvertence, it has not been evaluated based on the intrinsic right and wrong of the matter. Justice Scalia is surely correct that such claims have been adjudicated and present federal questions we may review, post, at 3–4, but it does not follow that they have been adjudicated “on the merits.” By having us nevertheless apply AEDPA’s deferential standard of review in such cases, petitioner’s argument would improperly excise §2254(d)’s on-the-merits requirement. Nor does petitioner’s preferred approach follow inexorably from AEDPA’s deferential architecture. Even while leaving “primary responsibility” for adjudicating federal claims to the States, Woodford v. Visciotti, 537 U.S. 19, 27 (2002) (per curiam), AEDPA permits de novo review in those rare cases when a state court decides a federal claim in a way that is “contrary to” clearly established Supreme Court precedent, see Panetti v. Quarterman, 551 U.S. 930, 953 (2007). When the evidence leads very clearly to the conclusion that a federal claim was inadvertently overlooked in state court, §2254(d) entitles the prisoner to an unencumbered opportunity to make his case before a fed- eral judge. We are not persuaded that applying a rebuttable presumption in this context will be unduly burdensome for federal courts. Before Richter, every Court of Appeals to consider the issue allowed a prisoner to argue that a state court had overlooked his federal claim.[4] That approach did not prompt an unmanageable flood of litigation, and we see no reason to fear that it will do so now. III Applying the presumption of merits adjudication to the facts of this case, we hold that the Ninth Circuit erred by finding that the California Court of Appeal overlooked Williams’ Sixth Amendment claim. Several facts make this conclusion inescapable. Most important is the state court’s discussion of Cleveland, 25 Cal. 4th 466, 21 P.3d 1225, a California Supreme Court decision on which the Court of Appeal solicited briefing. Cleveland held that a California trial court, “if put on notice that a juror is not participating in delib- erations,” may “conduct ‘whatever inquiry is reasonably necessary to determine’ whether such grounds exist and . . . discharge the juror if it appears as a ‘demonstrable reality’ that the juror is unable or unwilling to deliberate.” Id., at 484, 21 P. 3d, at 1237 (citations omitted). The Cleveland court acknowledged “[t]he need to protect the sanctity of jury deliberations,” id., at 476, 21 P. 3d, at 1231, and included a lengthy discussion of three Federal Court of Appeals cases that it said had “considered these issues in depth,” id., at 480–484, 21 P. 3d, at 1234–1237. Those three cases—United States v. Symington, 195 F.3d 1080 (CA9 1999), United States v. Thomas, 116 F.3d 606 (CA2 1997), and United States v. Brown, 823 F.2d 591 (CADC 1987)—concern the discharge of holdout jurors in federal court. Each case discusses the Sixth Amendment right to a jury trial and concludes that a trial court should not inquire further if it appears that there is “ ‘any reasonable possibility that the impetus for a juror’s dismissal stems from the juror’s views on the merits of the case.’ ” Cleveland, supra, at 484, 21 P. 3d, at 1237 (quoting Symington, supra, at 1087); see also Thomas, supra, at 621–622; Brown, supra, at 596. Though the Cleveland court found much to praise in these decisions, it expressly declined to follow them on this point. 25 Cal. 4th, at 483–484, 21 P. 3d, at 1236–1237. Cleveland did not expressly purport to decide a federal constitutional question, but its discussion of Symington, Thomas, and Brown shows that the California Supreme Court understood itself to be deciding a question with federal constitutional dimensions. See 25 Cal. 4th, at 487, 21 P. 3d, at 1239 (Werdegar, J., concurring) (emphasizing importance of careful appellate review in juror discharge cases in light of the “constitutional dimension to the problem”). Indeed, it is difficult to imagine the California Supreme Court announcing an interpretation of Cal. Penal Code Ann. §1089 that it believed to be less protective than the Sixth Amendment, as any such interpretation would provide no guidance to state trial judges bound to follow both state and federal law. The Ninth Circuit’s conclusion to the contrary rested on the fact that Cleveland refused to follow Symington, Brown, and Thomas. 646 F. 3d, at 640. But the views of the federal courts of appeals do not bind the California Supreme Court when it decides a federal constitutional question, and disagreeing with the lower federal courts is not the same as ignoring federal law. The Ninth Circuit’s apparent assumption that the California Supreme Court could not refuse to follow federal court of appeals precedent without disregarding the Federal Constitution would undo §2254(d)’s “contrary to” provision, which requires deference unless a state court fails to follow Supreme Court precedent. 28 U. S. C. §2254(d)(1). Regardless of whether a California court would consider Williams’ §1089 and Sixth Amendment claims to be perfectly coextensive, the fact that these claims are so similar makes it unlikely that the California Court of Appeal decided one while overlooking the other. Indeed, it is dif- ficult to imagine any panel of appellate judges reading Cleveland and passing on the propriety of dismissing a holdout juror under §1089 without realizing that such situations also bear on the federal constitutional right to a fair trial. The California Court of Appeal’s quotation of our definition of “impartiality” from Wood, 299 U. S., at 145–146, points to the same conclusion, confirming that the state court was well aware that the questioning and dismissal of Juror 6 implicated both state and federal law. Williams’ litigation strategy supports the same result. Throughout her state proceedings, Williams treated her state and federal claims as interchangeable, and it is hardly surprising that the state courts did so as well. See Brief for Appellant in No. B137365 (Cal. App.), App. 29 (citing §1089 precedent and concluding that Williams “was accordingly denied her Sixth Amendment right to a unanimous jury”). After the California Court of Appeal rendered its decision, Williams neither petitioned that court for rehearing nor argued in the subsequent state and federal proceedings that the state court had failed to adjudicate her Sixth Amendment claim on the merits. The possibility that the California Court of Appeal had simply overlooked Williams’ Sixth Amendment claim apparently did not occur to anyone until that issue was raised by two judges during the oral argument in the Ninth Circuit. See 646 F. 3d, at 638, n. 7. Williams presumably knows her case better than anyone else, and the fact that she does not appear to have thought that there was an oversight makes such a mistake most improbable. We think it exceedingly unlikely that the California Court of Appeal overlooked Williams’ federal claim, and the Ninth Circuit’s judgment to the contrary is reversed. The case is remanded for further proceedings consistent with this opinion. It is so ordered. Notes 1 Consistent with our decision in Ylst v. Nunnemaker, 501 U.S. 797, 806 (1991), the Ninth Circuit “look[ed] through” the California Supreme Court’s summary denial of Williams’ petition for review and examined the California Court of Appeal’s opinion, the last reasoned state-court decision to address Juror 6’s dismissal. Williams v. Cavazos, 646 F.3d 626, 635 (2011). 2 See, e.g., Judicial Council of California, 2011 Court Statistics Report, Statewide Caseload Trends, 2000–2001 Through 2009–2010, p. 15 (observing that in fiscal year 2009–2010, the 105-judge California Court of Appeal produced opinions in 10,270 cases), online at http://www.courts.ca.gov/documents/2011CourtStatisticsReport.pdf (all Inter-net materials as visited Jan. 24, 2013, and available in Clerk of Court’s case file); In re Certification of Need for Additional Judges, 2012 WL 6619382 (Fla., Dec. 20, 2012) (in fiscal year 2011–2012, Florida’s Second District Court of Appeal received appeals in 6,834 cases); Supreme Court of Ohio, 2011 Ohio Courts Statistical Report, p. 14 (observing that in 2011 the State’s 69 intermediate appellatejudges rendered decisions in 7,129 cases), online at http://www.supremecourt.ohio.gov / publications / annrep / IOCS / 2011OCS.pdf;Court Statistics Project, Examining the Work of State Courts: An Analysis of 2010 State Court Caseloads 40 (2012) (noting that in 2010 state appellate courts received appeals in over 270,000 cases). 3 For example, when a defendant does so little to raise his claim that he fails to “ ‘fairly present’ ” it in “each appropriate state court,” Baldwin v. Reese, 541 U.S. 27, 29 (2004), the Richter presumption is fully rebutted. 4 See, e.g., Lyell v. Renico, 470 F.3d 1177, 1181–1182 (CA6 2006); Billings v. Polk, 441 F.3d 238, 252 (CA4 2006); Espy v. Massac, 443 F.3d 1362, 1364–1365, and n. 2 (CA11 2006); Brown v. Luebbers, 371 F.3d 458, 460–461 (CA8 2004) (en banc); Chadwick v. Janecka, 312 F.3d 597, 606 (CA3 2002); Norde v. Keane, 294 F.3d 401, 410 (CA2 2002); Duckett v. Mullin, 306 F.3d 982, 990 (CA10 2002); Fortini v. Murphy, 257 F.3d 39, 47 (CA1 2001).

568.US.519

The “exclusive rights” that a copyright owner has “to distribute copies . . . of [a] copyrighted work,” 17 U. S. C. §106(3), are qualified by the application of several limitations set out in §§107 through 122, including the “first sale” doctrine, which provides that “the owner of a particular copy or phonorecord lawfully made under this title . . . is entitled, without the authority of the copyright owner, to sell or otherwise dispose of the possession of that copy or phonorecord,” §109(a). Importing a copy made abroad without the copyright owner’s permission is an infringement of §106(3). See §602(a)(1). In Quality King Distributors, Inc. v. L’anza Research Int’l, Inc., 523 U.S. 135, 145, this Court held that §602(a)(1)’s reference to §106(3) incorporates the §§107 through 122 limitations, including §109’s “first sale” doctrine. However, the copy in Quality King was initially manufactured in the United States and then sent abroad and sold. Respondent, John Wiley & Sons, Inc., an academic textbook publisher, often assigns to its wholly owned foreign subsidiary (Wiley Asia) rights to publish, print, and sell foreign editions of Wiley’s English language textbooks abroad. Wiley Asia’s books state that they are not to be taken (without permission) into the United States. When petitioner Kirtsaeng moved from Thailand to the United States to study mathematics, he asked friends and family to buy foreign edition English-language textbooks in Thai book shops, where they sold at low prices, and to mail them to him in the United States. He then sold the books, reimbursed his family and friends, and kept the profit. Wiley filed suit, claiming that Kirtsaeng’s unauthorized importation and resale of its books was an infringement of Wiley’s §106(3) exclusive right to distribute and §602’s import prohibition. Kirtsaeng replied that because his books were “lawfully made” and acquired legitimately, §109(a)’s “first sale” doctrine permitted importation and resale without Wiley’s further permission. The District Court held that Kirtsaeng could not assert this defense because the doctrine does not apply to goods manufactured abroad. The jury then found that Kirtsaeng had willfully infringed Wiley’s American copyrights and assessed damages. The Second Circuit affirmed, concluding that §109(a)’s “lawfully made under this title” language indicated that the “first sale” doctrine does not apply to copies of American copyrighted works manufactured abroad. Held: The “first sale” doctrine applies to copies of a copyrighted work lawfully made abroad. Pp. 7–33. (a) Wiley reads “lawfully made under this title” to impose a geographical limitation that prevents §109(a)’s doctrine from applying to Wiley Asia’s books. Kirtsaeng, however, reads the phrase as imposing the non-geographical limitation made “in accordance with” or “in compliance with” the Copyright Act, which would permit the doctrine to apply to copies manufactured abroad with the copyright owner’s permission. Pp. 7–8. (b) Section 109(a)’s language, its context, and the “first sale” doctrine’s common-law history favor Kirtsaeng’s reading. Pp. 8–24. (1) Section 109(a) says nothing about geography. “Under” can logically mean “in accordance with.” And a nongeographical interpretation provides each word in the phrase “lawfully made under this title” with a distinct purpose: “lawfully made” suggests an effort to distinguish copies that were made lawfully from those that were not, and “under this title” sets forth the standard of “lawful[ness]” (i.e., the U. S. Copyright Act). This simple reading promotes the traditional copyright objective of combatting piracy and makes word-by-word linguistic sense. In contrast, the geographical interpretation bristles with linguistic difficulties. Wiley first reads “under” to mean “in conformance with the Copyright Act where the Copyright Act is applicable.” Wiley then argues that the Act “is applicable” only in the United States. However, neither “under” nor any other word in “lawfully made under this title” means “where.” Nor can a geographical limitation be read into the word “applicable.” The fact that the Act does not instantly protect an American copyright holder from unauthorized piracy taking place abroad does not mean the Act is inapplicable to copies made abroad. Indeed, §602(a)(2) makes foreign-printed pirated copies subject to the Copyright Act. And §104 says that works “subject to protection” include unpublished works “without regard to the [author’s] nationality or domicile,” and works “first published” in any of the nearly 180 nations that have signed a copyright treaty with the United States. Pp. 8–12. (2) Both historical and contemporary statutory context indicate that Congress did not have geography in mind when writing the present version of §109(a). A comparison of the language in §109(a)’s predecessor and the present provision supports this conclusion. The former version referred to those who are not owners of a copy, but mere possessors who “lawfully obtained” a copy, while the present version covers only owners of a “lawfully made” copy. This new language, including the five words at issue, makes clear that a lessee of a copy will not receive “first sale” protection but one who owns a copy will be protected, provided that the copy was “lawfully made.” A nongeographical interpretation is also supported by other provisions of the present statute. For example, the “manufacturing clause,” which limited importation of many copies printed outside the United States, was phased out in an effort to equalize treatment of copies made in America and copies made abroad. But that “equal treatment” principle is difficult to square with a geographical interpretation that would grant an American copyright holder permanent control over the American distribution chain in respect to copies printed abroad but not those printed in America. Finally, the Court normally presumes that the words “lawfully made under this title” carry the same meaning when they appear in different but related sections, and it is unlikely that Congress would have intended the consequences produced by a geographical interpretation. Pp. 12–16. (3) A nongeographical reading is also supported by the canon of statutory interpretation that “when a statute covers an issue previously governed by the common law,” it is presumed that “Congress intended to retain the substance of the common law.” Samantar v. Yousuf, 560 U. S. ___, ___. The common-law “first sale” doctrine, which has an impeccable historic pedigree, makes no geographical distinctions. Nor can such distinctions be found in Bobbs-Merrill Co. v. Straus, 210 U.S. 339, where this Court first applied the “first sale” doctrine, or in §109(a)’s predecessor provision, which Congress enacted a year later. Pp. 17–19. (4) Library associations, used-book dealers, technology companies, consumer-goods retailers, and museums point to various ways in which a geographical interpretation would fail to further basic constitutional copyright objectives, in particular “promot[ing] the Progress of Science and useful Arts,” Art. I, §8, cl. 8. For example, a geographical interpretation of the first-sale doctrine would likely require libraries to obtain permission before circulating the many books in their collections that were printed overseas. Wiley counters that such problems have not occurred in the 30 years since a federal court first adopted a geographical interpretation. But the law has not been settled for so long in Wiley’s favor. The Second Circuit in this case was the first Court of Appeals to adopt a purely geographical interpretation. Reliance on the “first sale” doctrine is also deeply embedded in the practices of booksellers, libraries, museums, and retailers, who have long relied on its protection. And the fact that harm has proved limited so far may simply reflect the reluctance of copyright holders to assert geographically based resale rights. Thus, the practical problems described by petitioner and his amici are too serious, extensive, and likely to come about to be dismissed as insignificant—particularly in light of the ever-growing importance of foreign trade to America. Pp. 19–24. (c) Several additional arguments that Wiley and the dissent make in support of a geographical interpretation are unpersuasive. Pp. 24–33. 654 F.3d 210, reversed and remanded. Breyer, J., delivered the opinion of the Court, in which Roberts, C. J., and Thomas, Alito, Sotomayor, and Kagan, JJ., joined. Kagan, J., filed a concurring opinion, in which Alito, J., joined. Ginsburg, J., filed a dissenting opinion, in which Kennedy, J., joined, and in which Scalia, J., joined except as to Parts III and V–B–1.

Section 106 of the Copyright Act grants “the owner of copyright under this title” certain “exclusive rights,” including the right “to distribute copies . . . of the copyrighted work to the public by sale or other transfer of ownership.” 17 U. S. C. §106(3). These rights are qualified, however, by the application of various limitations set forth in the next several sections of the Act, §§107 through 122. Those sections, typically entitled “Limitations on exclusive rights,” include, for example, the principle of “fair use” (§107), permission for limited library archival reproduction, (§108), and the doctrine at issue here, the “first sale” doctrine (§109). Section 109(a) sets forth the “first sale” doctrine as follows: “Notwithstanding the provisions of section 106(3) [the section that grants the owner exclusive distribution rights], the owner of a particular copy or phonorecord lawfully made under this title . . . is entitled, without the authority of the copyright owner, to sell or otherwise dispose of the possession of that copy or phonorecord.” (Emphasis added.) Thus, even though §106(3) forbids distribution of a copy of, say, the copyrighted novel Herzog without the copyright owner’s permission, §109(a) adds that, once a copy of Her- zog has been lawfully sold (or its ownership otherwise lawfully transferred), the buyer of that copy and subsequent owners are free to dispose of it as they wish. In copyright jargon, the “first sale” has “exhausted” the copyright owner’s §106(3) exclusive distribution right. What, however, if the copy of Herzog was printed abroad and then initially sold with the copyright owner’s permission? Does the “first sale” doctrine still apply? Is the buyer, like the buyer of a domestically manufactured copy, free to bring the copy into the United States and dispose of it as he or she wishes? To put the matter technically, an “importation” provision, §602(a)(1), says that “[i]mportation into the United States, without the authority of the owner of copyright under this title, of copies . . . of a work that have been acquired outside the United States is an infringement of the exclusive right to distribute copies . . . under section 106 . . . .” 17 U. S. C. §602(a)(1) (2006 ed., Supp. V) (emphasis added). Thus §602(a)(1) makes clear that importing a copy without permission violates the owner’s exclusive distri- bution right. But in doing so, §602(a)(1) refers explicitly to the §106(3) exclusive distribution right. As we have just said, §106 is by its terms “[s]ubject to” the various doctrines and principles contained in §§107 through 122, in- cluding §109(a)’s “first sale” limitation. Do those same modifications apply—in particular, does the “first sale” modification apply—when considering whether §602(a)(1) prohibits importing a copy? In Quality King Distributors, Inc. v. L’anza Research Int’l, Inc., 523 U.S. 135, 145 (1998), we held that §602(a)(1)’s reference to §106(3)’s exclusive distribution right incorporates the later subsections’ limitations, including, in particular, the “first sale” doctrine of §109. Thus, it might seem that, §602(a)(1) notwithstanding, one who buys a copy abroad can freely import that copy into the United States and dispose of it, just as he could had he bought the copy in the United States. But Quality King considered an instance in which the copy, though purchased abroad, was initially manufactured in the United States (and then sent abroad and sold). This case is like Quality King but for one important fact. The copies at issue here were manufactured abroad. That fact is important because §109(a) says that the “first sale” doctrine applies to “a particular copy or phonorecord lawfully made under this title.” And we must decide here whether the five words, “lawfully made under this title,” make a critical legal difference. Putting section numbers to the side, we ask whether the “first sale” doctrine applies to protect a buyer or other lawful owner of a copy (of a copyrighted work) lawfully manufactured abroad. Can that buyer bring that copy into the United States (and sell it or give it away) without obtaining permission to do so from the copyright owner? Can, for example, someone who purchases, say at a used bookstore, a book printed abroad subsequently resell it without the copyright owner’s permission? In our view, the answers to these questions are, yes. We hold that the “first sale” doctrine applies to copies of a copyrighted work lawfully made abroad. I A Respondent, John Wiley & Sons, Inc., publishes aca- demic textbooks. Wiley obtains from its authors various foreign and domestic copyright assignments, licenses and permissions—to the point that we can, for present pur- poses, refer to Wiley as the relevant American copyright owner. See 654 F.3d 210, 213, n. 6 (CA2 2011). Wiley often assigns to its wholly owned foreign subsidiary, John Wiley & Sons (Asia) Pte Ltd., rights to publish, print, and sell Wiley’s English language textbooks abroad. App. to Pet. for Cert. 47a–48a. Each copy of a Wiley Asia foreign edition will likely contain language making clear that the copy is to be sold only in a particular country or geographical region outside the United States. 654 F. 3d, at 213. For example, a copy of Wiley’s American edition says, “Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. All rights reserved. . . . Printed in the United States of America.” J. Walker, Fundamentals of Physics, p. vi (8th ed. 2008). A copy of Wiley Asia’s Asian edition of that book says: “Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons (Asia) Pte Ltd[.] All rights reserved. This book is authorized for sale in Europe, Asia, Africa, and the Middle East only and may be not exported out of these territories. Exportation from or importation of this book to another region without the Publisher’s authorization is illegal and is a violation of the Publisher’s rights. The Publisher may take legal action to enforce its rights. . . . Printed in Asia.” J. Walker, Fundamentals of Physics, p. vi (8th ed. 2008 Wiley Int’l Student ed.). Both the foreign and the American copies say: “No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means . . . except as permitted under Sections 107 or 108 of the 1976 United States Copyright Act.” Compare, e.g., ibid. (Int’l ed.), with Walker, supra, at vi (American ed.). The upshot is that there are two essentially equivalent versions of a Wiley textbook, 654 F. 3d, at 213, each version manufactured and sold with Wiley’s permission: (1) an American version printed and sold in the United States, and (2) a foreign version manufactured and sold abroad. And Wiley makes certain that copies of the second version state that they are not to be taken (without permission) into the United States. Ibid. Petitioner, Supap Kirtsaeng, a citizen of Thailand, moved to the United States in 1997 to study mathemat- ics at Cornell University. Ibid. He paid for his educa- tion with the help of a Thai Government scholarship which required him to teach in Thailand for 10 years on his return. Brief for Petitioner 7. Kirtsaeng successfully completed his undergraduate courses at Cornell, successfully completed a Ph. D. program in mathematics at the University of Southern California, and then, as promised, returned to Thailand to teach. Ibid. While he was studying in the United States, Kirtsaeng asked his friends and family in Thailand to buy copies of foreign edition English-language textbooks at Thai book shops, where they sold at low prices, and mail them to him in the United States. Id., at 7–8. Kirtsaeng would then sell them, reimburse his family and friends, and keep the profit. App. to Pet. for Cert. 48a–49a. B In 2008 Wiley brought this federal lawsuit against Kirtsaeng for copyright infringement. 654 F. 3d, at 213. Wiley claimed that Kirtsaeng’s unauthorized importation of its books and his later resale of those books amounted to an infringement of Wiley’s §106(3) exclusive right to dis- tribute as well as §602’s related import prohibition. 17 U. S. C. §§106(3) (2006 ed.), 602(a) (2006 ed., Supp. V). See also §501 (2006 ed.) (authorizing infringement action). App. 204–211. Kirtsaeng replied that the books he had acquired were “ ‘lawfully made’ ” and that he had acquired them legitimately. Record in No. 1:08–CV–7834–DCP (SDNY), Doc. 14, p. 3. Thus, in his view, §109(a)’s “first sale” doctrine permitted him to resell or otherwise dispose of the books without the copyright owner’s further permission. Id., at 2–3. The District Court held that Kirtsaeng could not assert the “first sale” defense because, in its view, that doctrine does not apply to “foreign-manufactured goods” (even if made abroad with the copyright owner’s permission). App. to Pet. for Cert. 72a. The jury then found that Kirtsaeng had willfully infringed Wiley’s American copyrights by selling and importing without authorization copies of eight of Wiley’s copyrighted titles. And it assessed statutory damages of $600,000 ($75,000 per work). 654 F. 3d, at 215. On appeal, a split panel of the Second Circuit agreed with the District Court. Id., at 222. It pointed out that §109(a)’s “first sale” doctrine applies only to “the owner of a particular copy . . . lawfully made under this title.” Id., at 218–219 (emphasis added). And, in the majority’s view, this language means that the “first sale” doctrine does not apply to copies of American copyrighted works manufactured abroad. Id., at 221. A dissenting judge thought that the words “lawfully made under this title” do not refer “to a place of manufacture” but rather “focu[s] on whether a particular copy was manufactured lawfully under” Amer- ica’s copyright statute, and that “the lawfulness of the manufacture of a particular copy should be judged by U. S. copyright law.” Id., at 226 (opinion of Murtha, J.). We granted Kirtsaeng’s petition for certiorari to con- sider this question in light of different views among the Circuits. Compare id., at 221 (case below) (“first sale” doctrine does not apply to copies manufactured outside the United States), with Omega S. A. v. Costco Wholesale Corp., 541 F.3d 982, 986 (CA9 2008) (“first sale” doctrine applies to copies manufactured outside the United States only if an authorized first sale occurs within the United States), aff’d by an equally divided court, 562 U. S. ___ (2010), and Sebastian Int’l, Inc. v. Consumer Contacts (PTY) Ltd., 847 F.2d 1093, 1098, n. 1 (CA3 1988) (limitation of the first sale doctrine to copies made within the United States “does not fit comfortably within the scheme of the Copyright Act”). II We must decide whether the words “lawfully made under this title” restrict the scope of §109(a)’s “first sale” doctrine geographically. The Second Circuit, the Ninth Circuit, Wiley, and the Solicitor General (as amicus) all read those words as imposing a form of geographical limitation. The Second Circuit held that they limit the “first sale” doctrine to particular copies “made in territories in which the Copyright Act is law,” which (the Circuit says) are copies “manufactured domestically,” not “outside of the United States.” 654 F. 3d, at 221–222 (emphasis added). Wiley agrees that those five words limit the “first sale” doctrine “to copies made in conformance with the [United States] Copyright Act where the Copyright Act is appli- cable,” which (Wiley says) means it does not apply to copies made “outside the United States” and at least not to “foreign production of a copy for distribution exclusively abroad.” Brief for Respondent 15–16. Similarly, the Solicitor General says that those five words limit the “first sale” doctrine’s applicability to copies “ ‘made subject to and in compliance with [the Copyright Act],’ ” which (the Solicitor General says) are copies “made in the United States.” Brief for United States as Amicus Curiae 5 (hereinafter Brief for United States) (emphasis added). And the Ninth Circuit has held that those words limit the “first sale” doctrine’s applicability (1) to copies lawfully made in the United States, and (2) to copies lawfully made outside the United States but initially sold in the United States with the copyright owner’s permission. Denbicare U. S. A. Inc. v. Toys “R” Us, Inc., 84 F.3d 1143, 1149–1150 (1996). Under any of these geographical interpretations, §109(a)’s “first sale” doctrine would not apply to the Wiley Asia books at issue here. And, despite an American copyright owner’s permission to make copies abroad, one who buys a copy of any such book or other copyrighted work—whether at a retail store, over the Internet, or at a library sale—could not resell (or otherwise dispose of) that particular copy without further permission. Kirtsaeng, however, reads the words “lawfully made under this title” as imposing a non-geographical limitation. He says that they mean made “in accordance with” or “in compliance with” the Copyright Act. Brief for Petitioner 26. In that case, §109(a)’s “first sale” doctrine would apply to copyrighted works as long as their manufacture met the requirements of American copyright law. In particular, the doctrine would apply where, as here, copies are manufactured abroad with the permission of the copyright owner. See §106 (referring to the owner’s right to authorize). In our view, §109(a)’s language, its context, and the common-law history of the “first sale” doctrine, taken together, favor a non-geographical interpretation. We also doubt that Congress would have intended to create the practical copyright-related harms with which a geographical interpretation would threaten ordinary scholarly, artistic, commercial, and consumer activities. See Part II–D, infra. We consequently conclude that Kirtsaeng’s nongeographical reading is the better reading of the Act. A The language of §109(a) read literally favors Kirtsaeng’s nongeographical interpretation, namely, that “lawfully made under this title” means made “in accordance with” or “in compliance with” the Copyright Act. The language of §109(a) says nothing about geography. The word “under” can mean “[i]n accordance with.” 18 Oxford English Dictionary 950 (2d ed. 1989). See also Black’s Law Dictionary 1525 (6th ed. 1990) (“according to”). And a nongeographical interpretation provides each word of the five-word phrase with a distinct purpose. The first two words of the phrase, “lawfully made,” suggest an effort to distinguish those copies that were made lawfully from those that were not, and the last three words, “under this title,” set forth the standard of “lawful[ness].” Thus, the nongeograph- ical reading is simple, it promotes a traditional copyright objective (combatting piracy), and it makes word-by-word linguistic sense. The geographical interpretation, however, bristles with linguistic difficulties. It gives the word “lawfully” little, if any, linguistic work to do. (How could a book be unlawfully “made under this title”?) It imports geography into a statutory provision that says nothing explicitly about it. And it is far more complex than may at first appear. To read the clause geographically, Wiley, like the Sec- ond Circuit and the Solicitor General, must first emphasize the word “under.” Indeed, Wiley reads “under this title” to mean “in conformance with the Copyright Act where the Copyright Act is applicable.” Brief for Respondent 15. Wiley must then take a second step, arguing that the Act “is applicable” only in the United States. Ibid. And the Solicitor General must do the same. See Brief for United States 6 (“A copy is ‘lawfully made under this title’ if Title 17 governs the copy’s creation and the copy is made in compliance with Title 17’s requirements”). See also post, at 7 (Ginsburg, J., dissenting) (“under” describes something “governed or regulated by another”). One difficulty is that neither “under” nor any other word in the phrase means “where.” See, e.g., 18 Oxford English Dictionary, supra, at 947–952 (definition of “under”). It might mean “subject to,” see post, at 6, but as this Court has repeatedly acknowledged, the word evades a uniform, consistent meaning. See Kucana v. Holder, 558 U.S. 233, 245 (2010) (“ ‘under’ is chameleon”); Ardestani v. INS, 502 U.S. 129, 135 (1991) (“under” has “many dictionary definitions” and “must draw its meaning from its context”). A far more serious difficulty arises out of the uncer- tainty and complexity surrounding the second step’s effort to read the necessary geographical limitation into the word “applicable” (or the equivalent). Where, precisely, is the Copyright Act “applicable”? The Act does not instantly protect an American copyright holder from unauthorized piracy taking place abroad. But that fact does not mean the Act is inapplicable to copies made abroad. As a matter of ordinary English, one can say that a statute imposing, say, a tariff upon “any rhododendron grown in Nepal” applies to all Nepalese rhododendrons. And, similarly, one can say that the American Copyright Act is applicable to all pirated copies, including those printed overseas. Indeed, the Act itself makes clear that (in the Solicitor General’s language) foreign-printed pirated copies are “sub- ject to” the Act. §602(a)(2) (2006 ed., Supp. V) (refer- ring to importation of copies “the making of which either constituted an infringement of copyright, or which would have constituted an infringement of copyright if this title had been applicable”); Brief for United States 5. See also post, at 6 (suggesting that “made under” may be read as “subject to”). The appropriateness of this linguistic usage is underscored by the fact that §104 of the Act itself says that works “subject to protection under this title” include unpublished works “without regard to the nationality or domicile of the author,” and works “first published” in any one of the nearly 180 nations that have signed a copyright treaty with the United States. §§104(a), (b) (2006 ed.) (emphasis added); §101 (2006 ed., Supp. V) (defining “treaty party”); U. S. Copyright Office, Circular No. 38A, International Copyright Relations of the United States (2010). Thus, ordinary English permits us to say that the Act “applies” to an Irish manuscript lying in its author’s Dublin desk drawer as well as to an original recording of a ballet performance first made in Japan and now on display in a Kyoto art gallery. Cf. 4 M. Nimmer & D. Nimmer, Copyright §17.02, pp. 17–18, 17–19 (2012) (herein- after Nimmer on Copyright) (noting that the principle that “copyright laws do not have any extraterritorial operation” “requires some qualification”). The Ninth Circuit’s geographical interpretation pro- duces still greater linguistic difficulty. As we said, that Cir- cuit interprets the “first sale” doctrine to cover both (1) copies manufactured in the United States and (2) copies manufactured abroad but first sold in the United States with the American copyright owner’s permission. Den- bicare U. S. A., 84 F. 3d, at 1149–1150. See also Brief for Respondent 16 (suggesting that the clause at least excludes “the foreign production of a copy for distribution exclusively abroad”); id., at 51 (the Court need “not de- cide whether the copyright owner would be able to restrict further distribution” in the case of “a downstream domestic purchaser of authorized imports”); Brief for Petitioner in Costco Wholesale Corp. v. Omega, S. A., O. T. 2010, No. 08–1423, p. 12 (excepting imported copies “made by unrelated foreign copyright holders” (emphasis deleted)). We can understand why the Ninth Circuit may have thought it necessary to add the second part of its definition. As we shall later describe, see Part II–D, infra, without some such qualification a copyright holder could prevent a buyer from domestically reselling or even giving away copies of a video game made in Japan, a film made in Germany, or a dress (with a design copyright) made in China, even if the copyright holder has granted permission for the foreign manufacture, importation, and an initial domestic sale of the copy. A publisher such as Wiley would be free to print its books abroad, allow their im- portation and sale within the United States, but prohibit students from later selling their used texts at a campus bookstore. We see no way, however, to reconcile this half-geographical/half-nongeographical interpretation with the language of the phrase, “lawfully made under this title.” As a matter of English, it would seem that those five words either do cover copies lawfully made abroad or they do not. In sum, we believe that geographical interpretations create more linguistic problems than they resolve. And considerations of simplicity and coherence tip the purely linguistic balance in Kirtsaeng’s, nongeographical, favor. B Both historical and contemporary statutory context in- dicate that Congress, when writing the present version of §109(a), did not have geography in mind. In respect to history, we compare §109(a)’s present language with the language of its immediate predecessor. That predecessor said: “[N]othing in this Act shall be deemed to forbid, prevent, or restrict the transfer of any copy of a copyrighted work the possession of which has been lawfully obtained.” Copyright Act of 1909, §41, 35Stat. 1084 (emphasis added). See also Copyright Act of 1947, §27, 61Stat. 660. The predecessor says nothing about geography (and Wiley does not argue that it does). So we ask whether Congress, in changing its language implicitly introduced a geograph- ical limitation that previously was lacking. See also Part II–C, infra (discussing 1909 codification of common-law principle). A comparison of language indicates that it did not. The predecessor says that the “first sale” doctrine protects “the transfer of any copy the possession of which has been lawfully obtained.” The present version says that “the owner of a particular copy or phonorecord lawfully made under this title is entitled to sell or otherwise dispose of the possession of that copy or phonorecord.” What does this change in language accomplish? The language of the former version referred to those who are not owners of a copy, but mere possessors who “lawfully obtained” a copy. The present version covers only those who are owners of a “lawfully made” copy. Whom does the change leave out? Who might have law- fully obtained a copy of a copyrighted work but not owned that copy? One answer is owners of movie theaters, who during the 1970’s (and before) often leased films from movie distributors or filmmakers. See S. Donahue, American Film Distribution 134, 177 (1987) (describing producer-distributer and distributer-exhibitor agreements); Note, The Relationship Between Motion Picture Distribution and Exhibition: An Analysis of the Effects of Anti-Blind Bidding Legislation, 9 Comm/Ent. L. J. 131, 135 (1986). Because the theater owners had “lawfully obtained” their copies, the earlier version could be read as allowing them to sell that copy, i.e., it might have given them “first sale” protection. Because the theater owners were lessees, not owners, of their copies, the change in language makes clear that they (like bailees and other lessees) cannot take advantage of the “first sale” doctrine. (Those who find legislative history useful will find confirmation in, e.g., House Committee on the Judiciary, Copyright Law Revision, Supplementary Report of the Register of Copyrights on the General Revision of the U. S. Copyright Law: 1965 Revision Bill, 89th Cong., 1st Sess., pt. 6, p. 30 (Comm. Print 1965) (hereinafter Copyright Law Revision) (“[W]here a person has rented a print of a motion picture from the copyright owner, he would have no right to lend, rent, sell, or otherwise dispose of the print without first obtaining the copyright owner’s permission”). See also Platt & Munk Co. v. Republic Graphics, Inc., 315 F.2d 847, 851 (CA2 1963) (Friendly, J.) (pointing out predecessor statute’s leasing problem)). This objective perfectly well explains the new language of the present version, including the five words here at issue. Section 109(a) now makes clear that a lessee of a copy will not receive “first sale” protection but one who owns a copy will receive “first sale” protection, provided, of course, that the copy was “lawfully made” and not pi- rated. The new language also takes into account that a copy may be “lawfully made under this title” when the copy, say of a phonorecord, comes into its owner’s possession through use of a compulsory license, which “this title” provides for elsewhere, namely, in §115. Again, for those who find legislative history useful, the relevant legislative report makes this clear. H. R. Rep. No. 94–1476, p. 79 (1976) (“For example, any resale of an illegally ‘pirated’ phonorecord would be an infringement, but the disposition of a phonorecord legally made under the compulsory licensing provisions of section 115 would not”). Other provisions of the present statute also support a nongeographical interpretation. For one thing, the stat- ute phases out the “manufacturing clause,” a clause that appeared in earlier statutes and had limited importation of many copies (of copyrighted works) printed outside the United States. §601, 90Stat. 2588 (“Prior to July 1, 1982 . . . the importation into or public distribution in the United States of copies of a work consisting preponderantly of nondramatic literary material . . . is prohibited unless the portions consisting of such material have been manufac- tured in the United States or Canada”). The phasing out of this clause sought to equalize treatment of copies manufactured in America and copies manufactured abroad. See H. R. Rep. No. 94–1476, at 165–166. The “equal treatment” principle, however, is difficult to square with a geographical interpretation of the “first sale” clause that would grant the holder of an American copyright (perhaps a foreign national, see supra, at 10) permanent control over the American distribution chain (sales, resales, gifts, and other distribution) in respect to copies printed abroad but not in respect to copies printed in America. And it is particularly difficult to believe that Congress would have sought this unequal treatment while saying nothing about it and while, in a related clause (the manufacturing phase-out), seeking the opposite kind of policy goal. Cf. Golan v. Holder, 565 U. S. ___, ___ (2012) (slip op., at 30) (Congress has moved from a copyright regime that, prior to 1891, entirely excluded foreign works from U. S. copyright protection to a regime that now “ensure[s] that most works, whether foreign or domestic, would be governed by the same legal regime” (emphasis added)). Finally, we normally presume that the words “lawfully made under this title” carry the same meaning when they appear in different but related sections. Department of Revenue of Ore. v. ACF Industries, Inc., 510 U.S. 332, 342 (1994). But doing so here produces surprising consequences. Consider: (1) Section 109(c) says that, despite the copyright owner’s exclusive right “to display” a copyrighted work (provided in §106(5)), the owner of a particular copy “law- fully made under this title” may publicly display it without further authorization. To interpret these words geographically would mean that one who buys a copyrighted work of art, a poster, or even a bumper sticker, in Canada, in Europe, in Asia, could not display it in America without the copyright owner’s further authorization. (2) Section 109(e) specifically provides that the owner of a particular copy of a copyrighted video arcade game “lawfully made under this title” may “publicly perform or display that game in coin-operated equipment” without the authorization of the copyright owner. To interpret these words geographically means that an arcade owner could not (“without the authority of the copyright owner”) perform or display arcade games (whether new or used) originally made in Japan. Cf. Red Baron-Franklin Park, Inc. v. Taito Corp., 883 F.2d 275 (CA4 1989). (3) Section 110(1) says that a teacher, without the copyright owner’s authorization, is allowed to perform or display a copyrighted work (say, an audiovisual work) “in the course of face-to-face teaching activities”—unless the teacher knowingly used “a copy that was not law- fully made under this title.” To interpret these words geographically would mean that the teacher could not (without further authorization) use a copy of a film during class if the copy was lawfully made in Canada, Mexico, Europe, Africa, or Asia. (4) In its introductory sentence, §106 provides the Act’s basic exclusive rights to an “owner of a copyright under this title.” The last three words cannot support a geographic interpretation. Wiley basically accepts the first three readings, but ar- gues that Congress intended the restrictive consequences. And it argues that context simply requires that the words of the fourth example receive a different interpretation. Leaving the fourth example to the side, we shall explain in Part II–D, infra, why we find it unlikely that Congress would have intended these, and other related consequences. C A relevant canon of statutory interpretation favors a nongeographical reading. “[W]hen a statute covers an is- sue previously governed by the common law,” we must pre- sume that “Congress intended to retain the substance of the common law.” Samantar v. Yousuf, 560 U. S. ___, ___, n. 13 (2010) (slip op., at 14, n. 13). See also Isbrandtsen Co. v. Johnson, 343 U.S. 779, 783 (1952) (“Statutes which invade the common law . . . are to be read with a presumption favoring the retention of long-established and familiar principles, except when a statu- tory purpose to the contrary is evident”). The “first sale” doctrine is a common-law doctrine with an impeccable historic pedigree. In the early 17th century Lord Coke explained the common law’s refusal to permit restraints on the alienation of chattels. Referring to Littleton, who wrote in the 15th century, Gray, Two Contributions to Coke Studies, 72 U. Chi. L. Rev. 1127, 1135 (2005), Lord Coke wrote: “[If] a man be possessed of . . . a horse, or of any other chattell . . . and give or sell his whole interest . . . therein upon condition that the Donee or Vendee shall not alien[ate] the same, the [condition] is voi[d], because his whole interest . . . is out of him, so as he hath no possibilit[y] of a Reverter, and it is against Trade and Traffi[c], and bargaining and contracting betwee[n] man and man: and it is within the reason of our Author that it should ouster him of all power given to him.” 1 E. Coke, Institutes of the Laws of England §360, p. 223 (1628). A law that permits a copyright holder to control the resale or other disposition of a chattel once sold is simi- larly “against Trade and Traffi[c], and bargaining and con- tracting.” Ibid. With these last few words, Coke emphasizes the importance of leaving buyers of goods free to compete with each other when reselling or otherwise disposing of those goods. American law too has generally thought that competition, including freedom to resell, can work to the advantage of the consumer. See, e.g., Leegin Creative Leather Products, Inc. v. PSKS, Inc., 551 U.S. 877, 886 (2007) (restraints with “manifestly anticompetitive effects” are per se illegal; others are subject to the rule of reason (internal quotation marks omitted)); 1 P. Areeda & H. Hovenkamp, Antitrust Law ¶100, p. 4 (3d ed. 2006) (“[T]he principal objective of antitrust policy is to maximize consumer welfare by encouraging firms to behave competitively”). The “first sale” doctrine also frees courts from the administrative burden of trying to enforce restrictions upon difficult-to-trace, readily movable goods. And it avoids the selective enforcement inherent in any such effort. Thus, it is not surprising that for at least a century the “first sale” doctrine has played an important role in American copyright law. See Bobbs-Merrill Co. v. Straus, 210 U.S. 339 (1908); Copyright Act of 1909, §41, 35Stat. 1084. See also Copyright Law Revision, Further Discussions and Comments on Preliminary Draft for Revised U. S. Copyright Law, 88th Cong., 2d Sess., pt. 4, p. 212 (Comm. Print 1964) (Irwin Karp of Authors’ League of America expressing concern for “the very basic concept of copyright law that, once you’ve sold a copy legally, you can’t restrict its resale”). The common-law doctrine makes no geographical distinctions; nor can we find any in Bobbs-Merrill (where this Court first applied the “first sale” doctrine) or in §109(a)’s predecessor provision, which Congress enacted a year later. See supra, at 12. Rather, as the Solicitor General acknowledges, “a straightforward application of Bobbs-Merrill” would not preclude the “first sale” defense from applying to authorized copies made overseas. Brief for United States 27. And we can find no language, context, purpose, or history that would rebut a “straightforward application” of that doctrine here. The dissent argues that another principle of statutory interpretation works against our reading, and points out that elsewhere in the statute Congress used different words to express something like the non-geographical reading we adopt. Post, at 8–9 (quoting §602(a)(2) (prohibiting the importation of copies “the making of which either constituted an infringement of copyright, or which would have constituted an infringement of copyright if this title had been applicable” (emphasis deleted))). Hence, Congress, the dissent believes, must have meant §109(a)’s different language to mean something different (such as the dissent’s own geographical interpretation of §109(a)). We are not aware, however, of any canon of interpretation that forbids interpreting different words used in different parts of the same statute to mean roughly the same thing. Regardless, were there such a canon, the dissent’s interpretation of §109(a) would also violate it. That is because Congress elsewhere in the 1976 Act included the words “manufactured in the United States or Canada,” 90Stat. 2588, which express just about the same geographical thought that the dissent reads into §109(a)’s very different language. D Associations of libraries, used-book dealers, technology companies, consumer-goods retailers, and museums point to various ways in which a geographical interpretation would fail to further basic constitutional copyright objectives, in particular “promot[ing] the Progress of Science and useful Arts.” U. S. Const., Art. I, §8, cl. 8. The American Library Association tells us that library collections contain at least 200 million books published abroad (presumably, many were first published in one of the nearly 180 copyright-treaty nations and enjoy American copyright protection under 17 U. S. C. §104, see supra, at 10); that many others were first published in the United States but printed abroad because of lower costs; and that a geographical interpretation will likely require the li- braries to obtain permission (or at least create significant uncertainty) before circulating or otherwise distributing these books. Brief for American Library Association et al. as Amici Curiae 4, 15–20. Cf. id., at 16–20, 28 (discussing limitations of potential defenses, including the fair use and archival exceptions, §§107–108). See also Library and Book Trade Almanac 511 (D. Bogart ed., 55th ed. 2010) (during 2000–2009 “a significant amount of book printing moved to foreign nations”). How, the American Library Association asks, are the libraries to obtain permission to distribute these millions of books? How can they find, say, the copyright owner of a foreign book, perhaps written decades ago? They may not know the copyright holder’s present address. Brief for American Library Association 15 (many books lack indication of place of manufacture; “no practical way to learn where [a] book was printed”). And, even where addresses can be found, the costs of finding them, contacting owners, and negotiating may be high indeed. Are the libraries to stop circulating or distributing or displaying the millions of books in their collections that were printed abroad? Used-book dealers tell us that, from the time when Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson built commercial and personal libraries of foreign books, American readers have bought used books published and printed abroad. Brief for Powell’s Books Inc. et al. as Amici Curiae 7 (citing M. Stern, Antiquarian Bookselling in the United States (1985)). The dealers say that they have “operat[ed] . . . for centuries” under the assumption that the “first sale” doctrine applies. Brief for Powell’s Books 7. But under a geographical interpretation a contemporary tourist who buys, say, at Shakespeare and Co. (in Paris), a dozen copies of a foreign book for American friends might find that she had violated the copyright law. The used-book dealers cannot easily predict what the foreign copyright holder may think about a reader’s effort to sell a used copy of a novel. And they believe that a geographical interpretation will injure a large portion of the used-book business. Technology companies tell us that “automobiles, microwaves, calculators, mobile phones, tablets, and personal computers” contain copyrightable software programs or packaging. Brief for Public Knowledge et al. as Amici Curiae 10. See also Brief for Association of Service and Computer Dealers International, Inc., et al. as Amici Curiae 2. Many of these items are made abroad with the American copyright holder’s permission and then sold and imported (with that permission) to the United States. Brief for Retail Litigation Center, Inc., et al. as Amici Curiae 4. A geographical interpretation would prevent the resale of, say, a car, without the permission of the holder of each copyright on each piece of copyrighted automobile software. Yet there is no reason to believe that foreign auto manufacturers regularly obtain this kind of permission from their software component suppliers, and Wiley did not indicate to the contrary when asked. See Tr. of Oral Arg. 29–30. Without that permission a foreign car owner could not sell his or her used car. Retailers tell us that over $2.3 trillion worth of for- eign goods were imported in 2011. Brief for Retail Litigation Center 8. American retailers buy many of these goods after a first sale abroad. Id., at 12. And, many of these items bear, carry, or contain copyrighted “packaging, logos, labels, and product inserts and instructions for [the use of] everyday packaged goods from floor cleaners and health and beauty products to breakfast cereals.” Id., at 10–11. The retailers add that American sales of more traditional copyrighted works, “such as books, recorded music, motion pictures, and magazines” likely amount to over $220 billion. Id., at 9. See also id., at 10 (electronic game industry is $16 billion). A geographical interpretation would subject many, if not all, of them to the disruptive impact of the threat of infringement suits. Id., at 12. Art museum directors ask us to consider their efforts to display foreign-produced works by, say, Cy Twombly, René Magritte, Henri Matisse, Pablo Picasso, and others. See supra, at 10 (describing how §104 often makes such works “subject to” American copyright protection). A geographical interpretation, they say, would require the museums to obtain permission from the copyright owners before they could display the work, see supra, at 15—even if the copyright owner has already sold or donated the work to a foreign museum. Brief for Association of Art Museum Directors et al. as Amici Curiae 10–11. What are the museums to do, they ask, if the artist retained the copyright, if the artist cannot be found, or if a group of heirs is arguing about who owns which copyright? Id., at 14. These examples, and others previously mentioned, help explain why Lord Coke considered the “first sale” doctrine necessary to protect “Trade and Traffi[c], and bargaining and contracting,” and they help explain why American copyright law has long applied that doctrine. Cf. supra, at 17–18. Neither Wiley nor any of its many amici deny that a geographical interpretation could bring about these “horribles”—at least in principle. Rather, Wiley essentially says that the list is artificially invented. Brief for Respondent 51–52. It points out that a federal court first adopted a geographical interpretation more than 30 years ago. CBS, Inc. v. Scorpio Music Distributors, Inc., 569 F. Supp. 47, 49 (ED Pa. 1983), summarily aff’d, 738 F.2d 424 (CA3 1984) (table). Yet, it adds, these problems have not occurred. Why not? Because, says Wiley, the problems and threats are purely theoretical; they are unlikely to reflect reality. See also post, at 30–31. We are less sanguine. For one thing, the law has not been settled for long in Wiley’s favor. The Second Circuit, in its decision below, is the first Court of Appeals to adopt a purely geographical interpretation. The Third Circuit has favored a nongeographical interpretation. Sebastian Int’l, 847 F.2d 1093. The Ninth Circuit has favored a modified geographical interpretation with a nongeographical (but textually unsustainable) corollary designed to diminish the problem. Denbicare U. S. A., 84 F.3d 1143. See supra, at 11–12. And other courts have hesitated to adopt, and have cast doubt upon, the validity of the geographical interpretation. Pearson Educ., Inc. v. Liu, 656 F. Supp. 2d 407 (SDNY 2009); Red-Baron Franklin Park, Inc. v. Taito Corp., No. 88–0156–A, 1988 WL 167344, *3 (ED Va. 1988), rev’d on other grounds, 883 F.2d 275 (CA4 1989). For another thing, reliance upon the “first sale” doctrine is deeply embedded in the practices of those, such as book- sellers, libraries, museums, and retailers, who have long relied upon its protection. Museums, for example, are not in the habit of asking their foreign counterparts to check with the heirs of copyright owners before sending, e.g., a Picasso on tour. Brief for Association of Art Mu- seum Directors 11–12. That inertia means a dramatic change is likely necessary before these institutions, instructed by their counsel, would begin to engage in the complex permission-verifying process that a geographical interpretation would demand. And this Court’s adoption of the geographical interpretation could provide that dramatic change. These intolerable consequences (along with the absurd result that the copyright owner can ex- ercise downstream control even when it authorized the import or first sale) have understandably led the Ninth Circuit, the Solicitor General as amicus, and the dissent to adopt textual readings of the statute that attempt to mitigate these harms. Brief for United States 27–28; post, at 24–28. But those readings are not defensible, for they require too many unprecedented jumps over linguistic and other hurdles that in our view are insurmountable. See, e.g., post, at 26 (acknowledging that its reading of §106(3) “significantly curtails the independent effect of §109(a)”). Finally, the fact that harm has proved limited so far may simply reflect the reluctance of copyright holders so far to assert geographically based resale rights. They may decide differently if the law is clarified in their favor. Regardless, a copyright law that can work in practice only if unenforced is not a sound copyright law. It is a law that would create uncertainty, would bring about selective enforcement, and, if widely unenforced, would breed disrespect for copyright law itself. Thus, we believe that the practical problems that petitioner and his amici have described are too serious, too extensive, and too likely to come about for us to dismiss them as insignificant—particularly in light of the ever-growing importance of foreign trade to America. See The World Bank, Imports of goods and services (% of GDP) (imports in 2011 18% of U. S. gross domestic product compared to 11% in 1980), online at http:// data.worldbank.org/indicator/NE.IMP.GNFS.ZS? (as visited Mar. 15, 2013, and available in Clerk of Court’s case file). The upshot is that copyright-related consequences along with language, context, and interpretive canons argue strongly against a geographical interpretation of §109(a). III Wiley and the dissent make several additional impor- tant arguments in favor of the geographical interpretation. First, they say that our Quality King decision strongly supports its geographical interpretation. In that case we asked whether the Act’s “importation provision,” now §602(a)(1) (then §602(a)), barred importation (without permission) of a copyrighted item (labels affixed to hair care products) where an American copyright owner authorized the first sale and export of hair care products with copyrighted labels made in the United States, and where a buyer sought to import them back into the United States without the copyright owner’s permission. 523 U. S., at 138–139. We held that the importation provision did not prohibit sending the products back into the United States (without the copyright owner’s permission). That section says: “Importation into the United States, without the authority of the owner of copyright under this title, of copies or phonorecords of a work that have been acquired outside the United States is an infringement of the exclusive right to distribute copies or phono-records under section 106.” 17 U. S. C. §602(a)(1) (2006 ed., Supp. V) (emphasis added). See also §602(a) (1994 ed.). We pointed out that this section makes importation an infringement of the “exclusive right to distribute . . . under 106.” We noted that §109(a)’s “first sale” doctrine limits the scope of the §106 exclusive distribution right. We took as given the fact that the products at issue had at least once been sold. And we held that consequently, importation of the copyrighted labels does not violate §602(a)(1). 523 U. S., at 145. In reaching this conclusion we endorsed Bobbs-Merrill and its statement that the copyright laws were not “intended to create a right which would permit the holder of the copyright to fasten, by notice in a book . . . a restriction upon the subsequent alienation of the subject-matter of copyright after the owner had parted with the title to one who had acquired full dominion over it.” 210 U. S., at 349–350. We also explained why we rejected the claim that our interpretation would make §602(a)(1) pointless. Those advancing that claim had pointed out that the 1976 Copyright Act amendments retained a prior anti-piracy provision, prohibiting the importation of pirated copies. Qual- ity King, supra, at 146. Thus, they said, §602(a)(1) must prohibit the importation of lawfully made copies, for to allow the importation of those lawfully made copies after a first sale, as Quality King’s holding would do, would leave §602(a)(1) without much to prohibit. It would become superfluous, without any real work to do. We do not believe that this argument is a strong one. Under Quality King’s interpretation, §602(a)(1) would still forbid importing (without permission, and subject to the exceptions in §602(a)(3)) copies lawfully made abroad, for example, where (1) a foreign publisher operating as the licensee of an American publisher prints copies of a book overseas but, prior to any authorized sale, seeks to send them to the United States; (2) a foreign printer or other manufacturer (if not the “owner” for purposes of §109(a), e.g., before an authorized sale) sought to send copyrighted goods to the United States; (3) “a book publisher transports copies to a wholesaler” and the wholesaler (not yet the owner) sends them to the United States, see Copyright Law Revision, pt. 4, at 211 (giving this example); or (4) a foreign film distributor, having leased films for distri- bution, or any other licensee, consignee, or bailee sought to send them to the United States. See, e.g., 2 Nimmer on Copyright §8.12[B][1][a], at 8–159 (“Section 109(a) provides that the distribution right may be exercised solely with respect to the initial disposition of copies of a work, not to prevent or restrict the resale or other further transfer of possession of such copies”). These examples show that §602(a)(1) retains significance. We concede it has less significance than the dissent believes appropriate, but the dissent also adopts a construction of §106(3) that “significantly curtails” §109(a)’s effect, post, at 26, and so limits the scope of that provision to a similar, or even greater, degree. In Quality King we rejected the “superfluous” argument for similar reasons. But, when rejecting it, we said that, where an author gives exclusive American distribution rights to an American publisher and exclusive British distribution rights to a British publisher, “presumably only those [copies] made by the publisher of the United States edition would be ‘lawfully made under this title’ within the meaning of §109(a).” 523 U. S., at 148 (emphasis added). Wiley now argues that this phrase in the Quality King opinion means that books published abroad (under license) must fall outside the words “lawfully made under this title” and that we have consequently already given those words the geographical interpretation that it favors. We cannot, however, give the Quality King statement the legal weight for which Wiley argues. The language “lawfully made under this title” was not at issue in Qual- ity King; the point before us now was not then fully argued; we did not canvas the considerations we have here set forth; we there said nothing to suggest that the example assumes a “first sale”; and we there hedged our state- ment with the word “presumably.” Most importantly, the statement is pure dictum. It is dictum contained in a rebuttal to a counterargument. And it is unnecessary dictum even in that respect. Is the Court having once written dicta calling a tomato a vegetable bound to deny that it is a fruit forever after? To the contrary, we have written that we are not necessarily bound by dicta should more complete argument demonstrate that the dicta is not correct. Central Va. Community College v. Katz, 546 U.S. 356, 363 (2006) (“[W]e are not bound to follow our dicta in a prior case in which the point now at issue was not fully debated”); Humphrey’s Executor v. United States, 295 U.S. 602, 627–628 (1935) (rejecting, under stare decisis, dicta, “which may be followed if sufficiently persuasive but which are not controlling”). And, given the bit part that our Quality King statement played in our Quality King decision, we believe the view of stare decisis set forth in these opinions applies to the matter now before us. Second, Wiley and the dissent argue (to those who consider legislative history) that the Act’s legislative history supports their interpretation. But the historical events to which it points took place more than a decade before the enactment of the Act and, at best, are inconclusive. During the 1960’s, representatives of book, record, and film industries, meeting with the Register of Copyrights to discuss copyright revision, complained about the difficulty of dividing international markets. Copyright Law Revision Discussion and Comments on Report of the Register of Copyrights on the General Revision of the U. S. Copyright Law, 88th Cong., 1st Sess., pt. 2, p. 212 (Comm. Print 1963) (English editions of “particular” books “fin[d]” their “way into this country”); id., at 213 (works “publi[shed] in a country where there is no copyright protection of any sort” are put into “the free stream of commerce” and “shipped to the United States”); ibid. (similar concern in respect to films). The then-Register of Copyrights, Abraham Kaminstein, found these examples “very troubl[ing].” Ibid. And the Copyright Office released a draft provision that it said “deals with the matter of the importation for distribution in the United States of foreign copies that were made under proper authority but that, if sold in the United States, would be sold in contravention of the rights of the copyright owner who holds the exclusive right to sell copies in the United States.” Id., pt. 4, at 203. That draft version, without reference to §106, simply forbids unauthorized imports. It said: “Importation into the United States of copies or records of a work for the purpose of distribution to the public shall, if such articles are imported without the authority of the owner of the exclusive right to distrib- ute copies or records under this title, constitute an infringement of copyright actionable under section 35 [ 17 U. S. C. §501].” Id., Preliminary Draft for Revised U. S. Copyright Law and Discussions and Comments, 88th Cong., 2d Sess., pt. 3, pp. 32–33 (Comm. Print 1964). In discussing the draft, some of those present expressed concern about its effect on the “first sale” doctrine. For example, Irwin Karp, representing the Authors League of America asked, “If a German jobber lawfully buys cop- ies from a German publisher, are we not running into the problem of restricting his transfer of his lawfully obtained copies?” Id., pt. 4, at 211. The Copyright Office representative replied, “This could vary from one situation to another, I guess. I should guess, for example, that if a book publisher transports [i.e., does not sell] copies to a wholesaler [i.e., a nonowner], this is not yet the kind of transaction that exhausts the right to control disposition.” Ibid. (emphasis added). The Office later withdrew the draft, replacing it with a draft, which, by explicitly referring to §106, was similar to the provision that became law, now §602(a)(1). The Office noted in a report that, under the new draft, importation of a copy (without permission) “would violate the exclusive rights of the U. S. copyright owner . . . where the copyright owner had authorized the making of copies in a foreign country for distribution only in that country.” Id., pt. 6, at 150. Still, that part of the report says nothing about the “first sale” doctrine, about §109(a), or about the five words, “lawfully made under this title.” And neither the report nor its accompanying 1960’s draft answers the question before us here. Cf. Quality King, 523 U. S., at 145 (without those five words, the import clause, via its reference to §106, imports the “first sale” doctrine). But to ascertain the best reading of §109(a), rather than dissecting the remarks of industry representatives concerning §602 at congressional meetings held 10 years before the statute was enacted, see post, at 13–16, we would give greater weight to the congressional report accompanying §109(a), written a decade later when Congress passed the new law. That report says: “Section 109(a) restates and confirms the principle that, where the copyright owner has transferred ownership of a particular copy or phonorecord of a work, the person to whom the copy or phonorecord is transferred is entitled to dispose of it by sale, rental, or any other means. Under this principle, which has been established by the court decisions and . . . the present law, the copyright owner’s exclusive right of public distribution would have no effect upon anyone who owns ‘a particular copy or phonorecord lawfully made under this title’ and who wishes to transfer it to someone else or to destroy it. . . . . . “To come within the scope of section 109(a), a copy or phonorecord must have been ‘lawfully made under this title,’ though not necessarily with the copyright owner’s authorization. For example, any resale of an illegally ‘pirated’ phonorecord would be an infringement but the disposition of a phonorecord legally made under the compulsory licensing provisions of section 115 would not.” H. R. Rep. No. 94–1476, at 79 (emphasis added). Accord, S. Rep. No. 94–473, pp. 71–72 (1975). This history reiterates the importance of the “first sale” doctrine. See, e.g., Copyright Law Revision, 1964 Revision Bill with Discussions and Comments, 89th Cong., 1st Sess., pt. 5, p. 66 (Comm. Print 1965) (“[F]ull ownership of a lawfully-made copy authorizes its owner to dispose of it freely”). It explains, as we have explained, the nongeographical purposes of the words “lawfully made under this title.” Part II–B, supra. And it says nothing about geography. Nor, importantly, did §109(a)’s predecessor provision. See supra, at 12. This means that, contrary to the dissent’s suggestion, any lack of legislative history pertaining to the “first sale” doctrine only tends to bolster our position that Congress’ 1976 revision did not intend to create a drastic geographical change in its revision to that provision. See post, at 18, n. 13. We consequently believe that the legislative history, on balance, supports the non- geographical interpretation. Third, Wiley and the dissent claim that a nongeographical interpretation will make it difficult, perhaps impos- sible, for publishers (and other copyright holders) to divide foreign and domestic markets. We concede that is so. A publisher may find it more difficult to charge different prices for the same book in different geographic markets. But we do not see how these facts help Wiley, for we can find no basic principle of copyright law that suggests that publishers are especially entitled to such rights. The Constitution describes the nature of American copyright law by providing Congress with the power to “secur[e]” to “[a]uthors” “for limited [t]imes” the “exclusive [r]ight to their . . . [w]ritings.” Art. I, §8, cl. 8. The Founders, too, discussed the need to grant an author a limited right to exclude competition. Compare Letter from Thomas Jefferson to James Madison (July 31, 1788), in 13 Papers of Thomas Jefferson 440, 442–443 (J. Boyd ed. 1956) (arguing against any monopoly) with Letter from James Madison to Thomas Jefferson (Oct. 17, 1788), in 14 id., at 16, 21 (J. Boyd ed. 1958) (arguing for a limited monopoly to secure production). But the Constitution’s language nowhere suggests that its limited exclusive right should include a right to divide markets or a concomitant right to charge different purchasers different prices for the same book, say to increase or to maximize gain. Neither, to our knowledge, did any Founder make any such suggestion. We have found no precedent suggesting a legal preference for interpretations of copyright statutes that would provide for market divisions. Cf. Copyright Law Revision, pt. 2, at 194 (statement of Barbara Ringer, Copyright Office) (division of territorial markets was “primarily a matter of private contract”). To the contrary, Congress enacted a copyright law that (through the “first sale” doctrine) limits copyright holders’ ability to divide domestic markets. And that limitation is consistent with antitrust laws that ordinarily forbid market divisions. Cf. Palmer v. BRG of Ga., Inc., 498 U.S. 46, 49–50 (1990) (per curiam) (“[A]greements between competitors to allocate territories to minimize competition are illegal”). Whether copyright owners should, or should not, have more than ordinary commercial power to divide international markets is a matter for Congress to decide. We do no more here than try to determine what decision Congress has taken. Fourth, the dissent and Wiley contend that our decision launches United States copyright law into an unprecedented regime of “international exhaustion.” Post, at 18–23; Brief for Respondent 45–46. But they point to nothing indicative of congressional intent in 1976. The dissent also claims that it is clear that the United States now opposes adopting such a regime, but the Solicitor General as amicus has taken no such position in this case. In fact, when pressed at oral argument, the Solicitor General stated that the consequences of Wiley’s reading of the statute (perpetual downstream control) were “worse” than those of Kirtsaeng’s reading (restriction of market segmentation). Tr. of Oral Arg. 51. And the dissent’s reliance on the Solicitor General’s position in Quality King is under- mined by his agreement in that case with our reading of §109(a). Brief for United States as Amicus Curiae in Quality King, O. T. 1996, No. 1470, p. 30 (“When . . . Congress wishes to make the location of manufacture relevant to Copyright Act protection, it does so expressly”); ibid. (calling it “distinctly unlikely” that Congress would have provided an incentive for overseas manufacturing). Moreover, the exhaustion regime the dissent apparently favors would provide that “the sale in one country of a good” does not “exhaus[t] the intellectual-property owner’s right to control the distribution of that good elsewhere.” Post, at 18–19. But our holding in Quality King that §109(a) is a defense in U. S. courts even when “the first sale occurred abroad,” 523 U. S., at 145, n. 14, has already significantly eroded such a principle. IV For these reasons we conclude that the considerations supporting Kirtsaeng’s nongeographical interpretation of the words “lawfully made under this title” are the more persuasive. The judgment of the Court of Appeals is reversed, and the case is remanded for further proceedings consistent with this opinion. It is so ordered.

568.US.2012_11-184

The Civil Service Reform Act of 1978 (CSRA) permits a federal employee subjected to a particularly serious personnel action such as a discharge or demotion to appeal her agency’s decision to the Merit Systems Protection Board (MSPB or Board). Such an appeal may allege that the agency had insufficient cause for taking the action under the CSRA itself; but the appeal may also or instead charge the agency with discrimination prohibited by a federal statute. See 5 U. S. C. §7702(a)(1). When an employee alleges that a personnel action appealable to the MSPB was based on discrimination, her case is known as a “mixed case.” See 29 CFR §1614.302. Mixed cases are governed by special procedures set out in the CSRA and regulations of the MSPB and Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC). Under those procedures, an employee may initiate a mixed case by filing a discrimination complaint with the agency. If the agency decides against the employee, she may either appeal the agency’s decision to the MSPB or sue the agency in district court. Alternatively, the employee can bypass the agency and bring her mixed case directly to the MSPB. If the MSPB upholds the personnel action, whether in the first instance or after the agency has done so, the employee is entitled to seek judicial review. Section 7703(b)(1) of the CSRA provides that petitions for review of MSPB decisions “shall be filed in the . . . Federal Circuit,” except as provided in §7703(b)(2). Section 7703(b)(2) instructs that “[c]ases of discrimination subject to the provisions of [§7702] shall be filed under [the enforcement provision of a listed antidiscrimination statute].” Those enforcement provisions all authorize suit in federal district court. The “cases of discrimination subject to the provisions of §7702” are those in which an employee “(A) has been affected by an action which [she] may appeal to the [MSPB], and (B) alleges that a basis for the action was discrimination prohibited by” a listed federal statute; in other words, “mixed cases.” In 2005, while an employee of the Department of Labor (DOL or agency), petitioner Carolyn Kloeckner filed a complaint with the agency’s civil rights office, alleging that DOL had engaged in unlawful sex and age discrimination by subjecting her to a hostile work environment. Following applicable EEOC regulations, DOL completed an internal investigation and report, and Kloeckner requested a hearing before an EEOC administrative judge. While the EEOC case was pending, Kloeckner was fired. Because Kloeckner believed that DOL’s decision to fire her was based on unlawful discrimination, she now had a “mixed case.” Kloeckner originally brought her mixed case directly to the MSPB. Concerned about duplicative discovery expenses between her EEOC and MSPB cases, she moved to amend her EEOC complaint to include her claim of discriminatory removal and asked the MSPB to dismiss her case without prejudice for four months to allow the EEOC process to go forward. Both motions were granted. In September 2006, the MSPB dismissed her appeal without prejudice to her right to refile by January 18, 2007. The EEOC case, however, continued until April 2007, when the EEOC judge terminated the proceeding as a sanction for Kloeckner’s bad-faith discovery conduct and returned the case to DOL for a final decision. In October, DOL ruled against Kloeckner on all of her claims. Kloeckner appealed to the Board in November 2007. The Board dismissed Kloeckner’s appeal as untimely, viewing it as an effort to reopen her old MSPB case months after the January 18 deadline. Kloeckner then brought this action against DOL in Federal District Court, alleging unlawful discrimination. The court dismissed the complaint for lack of jurisdiction. It held that, because the MSPB dismissed Kloeckner’s claims on procedural grounds, she should have sought review in the Federal Circuit under §7703(b)(1); in the court’s view, the only discrimination cases that could go to district court pursuant to §7703(b)(2) were those the MSPB had decided on the merits. The Eighth Circuit affirmed. Held: A federal employee who claims that an agency action appealable to the MSPB violates an antidiscrimination statute listed in §7702(a)(1) should seek judicial review in district court, not the Federal Circuit, regardless whether the MSPB decided her case on procedural grounds or on the merits. Pp. 7–14. (a) Two sections of the CSRA, read naturally, direct employees like Kloeckner to district court. Begin with § 7703, which governs judicial review of MSPB rulings. Section 7703(b)(1) provides that petitions to review the Board’s final decisions should be filed in the Federal Circuit—“[e]xcept as provided in paragraph (2) of this subsection.” Section 7703(b)(2) then provides that “[c]ases of discrimination subject to the provisions of [§7702]” “shall be filed under” the enforcement provision of a listed antidiscrimination statute. Each of the referenced enforcement provisions authorizes an action in federal district court. Thus, “[c]ases of discrimination subject to the provisions of [§7702]” shall be filed in district court. Turn next to §7702, which provides that the cases “subject to [its] provisions” are cases in which a federal employee “has been affected by an action which [she] may appeal to the [MSPB],” and “alleges that a basis for the action was discrimination prohibited by” a listed federal statute. The “cases of discrimination subject to” §7702 are therefore mixed cases. Putting §7703 and §7702 together, mixed cases shall be filed in district court. That is where Kloeckner’s case should have been, and indeed was, filed. Regardless whether the MSPB dismissed her claim on the merits or threw it out as untimely, she brought the kind of case that the CSRA routes to district court. Pp. 7–8. (b) The Government’s alternative view—that the CSRA directs the MSPB’s merits decisions to district court, while channeling its procedural rulings to the Federal Circuit—is not supported by the statute. According to the Government, that bifurcated scheme, though not specifically prescribed in the CSRA, lies hidden in the statute’s timing requirements. But the Government cannot explain why Congress would have constructed such an obscure path to such a simple result. And taking the Government’s analysis one step at a time makes it no more plausible. Pp. 8–13. 639 F.3d 834, reversed and remanded. Kagan, J., delivered the opinion for a unanimous Court.

A federal employee subjected to an adverse personnel action such as a discharge or demotion may appeal her agency’s decision to the Merit Systems Protection Board (MSPB or Board). See 5 U. S. C. §§7512, 7701. In that challenge, the employee may claim, among other things, that the agency discriminated against her in violation of a federal statute. See §7702(a)(1). The question presented in this case arises when the MSPB dismisses an appeal alleging discrimination not on the merits, but on procedural grounds. Should an employee seeking judicial review then file a petition in the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, or instead bring a suit in district court under the applicable antidiscrimination law? We hold she should go to district court. I A The Civil Service Reform Act of 1978 (CSRA), 5 U. S. C. §1101 et seq., establishes a framework for evaluating per- sonnel actions taken against federal employees. That statutory framework provides graduated procedural protections depending on an action’s severity. If (but only if) the action is particularly serious—involving, for example, a removal from employment or a reduction in grade or pay—the affected employee has a right to appeal the agency’s decision to the MSPB, an independent adjudicator of federal employment disputes.[1] See §§1204, 7512, 7701. Such an appeal may merely allege that the agency had insufficient cause for taking the action under the CSRA; but the appeal may also or instead charge the agency with discrimination prohibited by another federal statute, such as Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, 42 U. S. C. §2000e et seq., or the Age Discrimination in Employment Act of 1967, 29 U. S. C. §621 et seq. See 5 U. S. C. §7702(a)(1). When an employee complains of a personnel action serious enough to appeal to the MSPB and alleges that the action was based on discrimination, she is said (by pertinent regulation) to have brought a “mixed case.” See 29 CFR §1614.302 (2012). The CSRA and regulations of the MSPB and Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) set out special procedures to govern such a case—different from those used when the employee either challenges a serious personnel action under the CSRA alone or attacks a less serious action as discriminatory. See 5 U. S. C. §§7702, 7703(b)(2) (2006 ed. and Supp. V); 5 CFR pt. 1201, subpt. E (2012); 29 CFR pt. 1614, subpt. C. A federal employee bringing a mixed case may pro- ceed in a variety of ways. She may first file a discrim- ination complaint with the agency itself, much as an employee challenging a personnel practice not appealable to the MSPB could do. See 5 CFR §1201.154(a); 29 CFR §1614.302(b). If the agency decides against her, the employee may then either take the matter to the MSPB or bypass further administrative review by suing the agency in district court. See 5 CFR §1201.154(b); 29 CFR §1614.302(d)(1)(i). Alternatively, the employee may initiate the process by bringing her case directly to the MSPB, forgoing the agency’s own system for evaluating discrimination charges. See 5 CFR §1201.154(a); 29 CFR §1614.302(b). If the MSPB upholds the personnel action (whether in the first instance or after the agency has done so), the employee again has a choice: She may request additional administrative process, this time with the EEOC, or else she may seek judicial review. See 5 U. S. C. §§7702(a)(3), (b); 5 CFR §1201.161; 29 CFR §1614.303. The question in this case concerns where that judicial review should take place. Section 7703 of the CSRA governs judicial review of the MSPB’s decisions. Section 7703(b)(1) gives the basic rule: “Except as provided in paragraph (2) of this subsection, a petition to review a . . . final decision of the Board shall be filed in the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit.” Section 7703(b)(2) then spells out the exception: “Cases of discrimination subject to the provisions of section 7702 of this title shall be filed under [the enforcement sections of the Civil Rights Act, Age Discrimination in Employment Act, and Fair Labor Standards Act], as applicable. Notwithstanding any other provision of law, any such case filed under any such section must be filed within 30 days after the date the individual filing the case received notice of the judicially reviewable action under such section 7702.” The enforcement provisions of the antidiscrimination statutes listed in this exception all authorize suit in fed- eral district court. See 42 U. S. C. §§2000e–16(c), 2000e–5(f); 29 U. S. C. §633a(c); §216(b); see also Elgin v. Department of Treasury, 567 U. S. ___, ___ (2012) (slip op., at 9–10). Section 7702 describes and provides for the “cases of discrimination” referenced in §7703(b)(2)’s exception. In relevant part, §7702(a)(1) states: “[I]n the case of any employee . . . who— “(A) has been affected by an action which the employee . . . may appeal to the Merit Systems Protection Board, and “(B) alleges that a basis for the action was discrimination prohibited by [specified antidiscrimination statutes], “the Board shall, within 120 days of the filing of the appeal, decide both the issue of discrimination and the appealable action in accordance with the Board’s appellate procedures.” The “cases of discrimination” in §7703(b)(2)’s exception, in other words, are mixed cases, in which an employee challenges as discriminatory a personnel action appealable to the MSPB. The parties here dispute whether, in light of these interwoven statutory provisions, an employee should go to the Federal Circuit (pursuant to the general rule of §7703(b)(1)), or instead to a district court (pursuant to the exception in §7703(b)(2)), when the MSPB has dismissed her mixed case on procedural grounds. B Petitioner Carolyn Kloeckner used to work at the Department of Labor (DOL or agency). In June 2005, while still an employee, she filed a complaint with the agency’s civil rights office, alleging that DOL had engaged in unlawful sex and age discrimination by subjecting her to a hostile work environment. At that point, Kloeckner’s case was not appealable to the MSPB because she had not suffered a sufficiently serious personnel action (e.g., a removal or demotion). See supra, at 1–2. Her claim thus went forward not under the special procedures for mixed cases, but under the EEOC’s regulations for all other charges of discrimination. See 29 CFR pt. 1614, subpts. A, D. In line with those rules, the agency completed an internal investigation and report in June 2006, and Kloeckner requested a hearing before an EEOC administrative judge. The next month, DOL fired Kloeckner. A removal from employment is appealable to the MSPB, see supra, at 1–2, and Kloeckner believed the agency’s action was discriminatory; she therefore now had a mixed case. As permitted by regulation, see supra, at 3, she initially elected to file that case with the MSPB. Her claim of discriminatory removal, however, raised issues similar to those in her hostile work environment case, now pending before an EEOC judge; as a result, she became concerned that she would incur duplicative discovery expenses. To address that problem, she sought leave to amend her EEOC complaint to include her claim of discriminatory removal, and she asked the MSPB to dismiss her case without prejudice for four months to allow the EEOC process to go forward. See App. 13, 50–51. Both of those motions were granted. The EEOC judge accepted the amendment,[2] and on September 18, 2006, the MSPB dismissed her appeal “without prejudice to [her] right to refile . . . either (A) within 30 days after a decision is rendered in her EEOC case; or (B) by January 18, 2007—whichever occurs first.” Id., at 5. Discovery continued in the EEOC proceeding well past the MSPB’s January 18 deadline. In April, the EEOC judge found that Kloeckner had engaged in bad-faith conduct in connection with discovery. As a sanction, the judge terminated the EEOC proceeding and returned Kloeckner’s case to DOL for a final decision. Six months later, in October 2007, DOL issued a ruling rejecting all of Kloeckner’s claims. See id., at 10–49. Kloeckner appealed DOL’s decision to the Board in November 2007. That appeal was filed within 30 days, the usual window for seeking MSPB review of an agency’s determination of a mixed case. See 5 CFR §1201.154(a); 29 CFR §1614.302(d)(1)(ii). But the MSPB declined to treat Kloeckner’s filing as an ordinary appeal of such an agency decision. Instead, the Board viewed it as an effort to reopen her old MSPB case—many months after the January 18 deadline for doing so had expired. The Board therefore dismissed Kloeckner’s appeal as untimely. See App. 53–57. Kloeckner then brought this action against DOL in Federal District Court, alleging unlawful discrimination. The District Court dismissed the complaint for lack of jurisdiction. See Kloeckner v. Solis, Civ. Action No. 4:09CV804 (ED Mo., Feb. 18, 2010). Relying on the Eighth Circuit’s ruling in Brumley v. Levinson, 991 F.2d 801 (1993) (per curiam), the court held that because the MSPB had dismissed Kloeckner’s claims on procedural grounds, she should have sought review in the Federal Circuit under §7703(b)(1); in the court’s view, the only discrimination cases that could go to district court pursuant to §7703(b)(2) were those the MSPB had decided on the merits. The Eighth Circuit affirmed on the same reasoning. See 639 F.3d 834 (2011). We granted certiorari, 565 U. S. ___ (2012), to resolve a Circuit split on whether an employee seeking judicial review should proceed in the Federal Circuit or in a district court when the MSPB has dismissed her mixed case on procedural grounds.[3] We now reverse the Eighth Circuit’s decision. II As the above account reveals, the intersection of fed- eral civil rights statutes and civil service law has produced a complicated, at times confusing, process for resolving claims of discrimination in the federal workplace. But even within the most intricate and complex systems, some things are plain. So it is in this case, where two sections of the CSRA, read naturally, direct employees like Kloeckner to district court. Begin with §7703, which governs judicial review of the MSPB’s rulings. As already noted, see supra, at 3–4, §7703(b)(1) provides that petitions to review the Board’s final decisions should be filed in the Federal Circuit—“[e]xcept as provided in paragraph (2) of this subsection.” Paragraph (2), i.e., §7703(b)(2), then sets out a different rule for one category of cases—“[c]ases of discrimination subject to the provisions of section 7702 of this title.” Such a case, paragraph (2) instructs, “shall be filed under” the enforcement provision of an enumerated antidiscrimination statute. And each of those enforcement provisions authorizes an action in federal district court. See supra, at 3–4. So “[c]ases of discrimination subject to the provisions of section 7702” shall be filed in district court. Turn next to §7702, which identifies the cases “subject to [its] provisions.” As also stated earlier, §7702(a)(1) de- scribes cases in which a federal employee “(A) has been affected by an action which [she] may appeal to the Merit Systems Protection Board, and (B) alleges that a basis for the action was discrimination prohibited by” a listed federal statute. The subsection thus describes what we (adopting the lingo of the applicable regulations) have called “mixed cases.” See 29 CFR §1614.302. Those are the “cases of discrimination subject to” the rest of §7702’s provisions. Now just put §7703 and §7702 together—say, in the form of a syllogism, to make the point obvious. Under §7703(b)(2), “cases of discrimination subject to [§7702]” shall be filed in district court. Under §7702(a)(1), the “cases of discrimination subject to [§7702]” are mixed cases—those appealable to the MSPB and alleging discrimination. Ergo, mixed cases shall be filed in district court. And so that is where Kloeckner’s case should have been filed (as indeed it was). No one here contests that Kloeckner brought a mixed case—that she was affected by an action (i.e., removal) appealable to the MSPB and that she alleged discrimination prohibited by an enumerated fed- eral law. And under the CSRA’s terms, that is all that matters. Regardless whether the MSPB dismissed her claim on the merits or instead threw it out as untimely, Kloeckner brought the kind of case that the CSRA routes, in crystalline fashion, to district court. III The Government offers an alternative view (as did the Eighth Circuit)—that the CSRA directs the MSPB’s merits decisions to district court, while channeling its procedural rulings to the Federal Circuit. According to the Government, that bifurcated scheme, though not prescribed in the CSRA in so many words, lies hidden in the statute’s timing requirements. But we return from the Government’s mazelike tour of the CSRA persuaded only that the merits-procedure distinction is a contrivance, found nowhere in the statute’s provisions on judicial review. The Government’s argument has two necessary steps. First, the Government claims that §7703(b)(2)’s exception to Federal Circuit jurisdiction applies only when the MSPB’s decision in a mixed case is a “judicially review- able action” under §7702. Second, the Government asserts that the Board’s dismissal of a mixed case on procedural grounds does not qualify as such a “judicially reviewable action.” We describe in turn the way the Government arrives at each of these conclusions. The first step of the Government’s argument derives from §7703(b)(2)’s second sentence. Right after stating that “cases of discrimination subject to [§7702]” shall be filed under specified antidiscrimination statutes (i.e., shall be filed in district court), §7703(b)(2) provides: “Notwithstanding any other provision of law, any such case filed under any such [statute] must be filed within 30 days after the date the individual filing the case received notice of the judicially reviewable action under section 7702.” The Government reads that sentence to establish an ad- ditional prerequisite for taking a case to district court, instead of to the Federal Circuit. To fall within the §7703(b)(2) exception, the Government says, it is not enough that a case qualify as a “case of discrimination subject to [§7702]”; in addition, the MSPB’s decision must count as a “judicially reviewable action.” See Brief for United States 20–21. If the MSPB’s decision is not a “judicially reviewable action”—a phrase the Government characterizes as a “term of art in this context,” Tr. of Oral Arg. 28—the ruling still may be subject to judicial review (i.e., “judicially reviewable” in the ordinary sense), but only in the Federal Circuit. The Government’s second step—that the Board’s pro- cedural rulings are not “judicially reviewable actions”—begins with the language of §7702(a)(3). That provision, the Government states, “defines for the most part which MSPB decisions qualify as ‘judicially reviewable actions[s]’ ” by “providing that ‘[a]ny decision of the Board under paragraph (1) of this subsection shall be a judicially reviewable action as of’ the date of the decision.” Brief for Respondent 21 (quoting §7702(a)(3); emphasis and brackets added by Government). From there, the Govern- ment moves on to the cross-referenced paragraph—§7702(a)(1)—which states, among other things, that the Board “shall, within 120 days of [the employee’s filing], decide both the issue of discrimination and the appealable action in accordance with the Board’s appellate procedures.” According to the Government, the Board only “decide[s] . . . the issue of discrimination” when it rules on the merits, rather than on procedural grounds. On that view, a procedural decision is not in fact a “decision of the Board under paragraph (1),” which means that it also is not a “judicially reviewable action” under §7702(a)(3). See Brief for Respondent 21–22. And so (returning now to the first step of the Government’s argument), judicial review of a procedural decision can occur only in the Federal Circuit, and not in district court. If you need to take a deep breath after all that, you’re not alone. It would be hard to dream up a more round- about way of bifurcating judicial review of the MSPB’s rulings in mixed cases. If Congress had wanted to send merits decisions to district court and procedural dismissals to the Federal Circuit, it could just have said so. The Government has offered no reason for Congress to have constructed such an obscure path to such a simple result. And taking the Government’s analysis one step at a time makes it no more plausible than as a gestalt. The Government’s initial move is to read §7703(b)(2)’s second sentence as adding a requirement for a case to fall within the exception to Federal Circuit jurisdiction. But that sentence does no such thing; it is nothing more than a filing deadline. Consider each sentence of §7703(b)(2) in turn. The first sentence defines which cases should be brought in district court, rather than in the Federal Circuit; here, the full description is “[c]ases of discrimination subject to the provisions of section 7702”—to wit, mixed cases. The second sentence then states when those cases should be brought: “any such case . . . must be filed within 30 days” of the date the employee “received notice of the judicially reviewable action.” The reference to a “judicially reviewable action” in that sentence does important work: It sets the clock running for when a case that belongs in district court must be filed there. What it does not do is to further define which timely-brought cases belong in dis- trict court instead of in the Federal Circuit. Describing those cases is the first sentence’s role. Proof positive that the Government misreads §7703(b)(2) comes from considering what the phrase “ju- dicially reviewable action” would mean under its theory. In normal legal parlance, to say that an agency action is not “judicially reviewable” is to say simply that it is not subject to judicial review—that, for one or another reason, it cannot be taken to a court. But that ordinary understanding will not work for the Government here, because it wants to use the phrase to help determine which of two courts should review a decision, rather than whether judicial review is available at all. In the Government’s alternate universe, then, to say that an agency action is not “judicially reviewable” is to say that it is subject to judicial review in the Federal Circuit (even though not in district court). Small wonder that the Government must call the phrase “judicially reviewable action” a “term of art,” supra, at 9: On a natural reading, the phrase defines cases amenable to judicial review, rather than routes those cases as between two courts. And even were we to indulge the Government that far, we could not accept the second step of its analysis. At that stage, remember, the Government contends that under §7702 only decisions on the merits qualify as “judicially reviewable actions.” The language on which the Government principally relies, stated again, is as follows: “[T]he Board shall, within 120 days of [the employee’s filing], decide both the issue of discrimination and the appealable action.” But that provision, too, is only a timing requirement; it is designed to ensure that the Board act promptly on employees’ complaints. We see no reason to think that embedded within that directive is a limitation on the class of “judicially reviewable actions.” Nor (even were we to indulge the Government on that point as well) can we find the particular restriction the Government urges. According to the Government, the MSPB does not “decide . . . the issue of discrimination” when it dismisses a mixed case on procedural grounds. But that phrase cannot bear the weight the Government places on it. All the phrase signifies is that the Board should dispose of the issue in some way, whether by actually adjudicating it or by holding that it was not properly raised. Indeed, were the Government right, §7702(a)’s statement that the Board “shall” decide the issue of discrimination would appear to bar procedural dismissals, requiring the Board to resolve on the merits even untimely complaints. No one (least of all the Government, which here is defending a procedural ruling) thinks that a plausible congressional command. Another section of the statute—§7702(e)(1)(B)—puts the final nail in the coffin bearing the Government’s argument. That section states: “[I]f at any time after the 120th day following [an employee’s filing] with the Board . . . , there is no judicially reviewable action[,] . . . an employee shall be entitled to file a civil action” in district court under a listed antidiscrimination statute. That provision, as the Government notes, is designed “to save employees from being held in perpetual uncertainty by Board inaction.” Brief for Respondent 28. But if, as the Government insists, a procedural ruling is not a “judicially reviewable action,” then the provision would have another, surprising effect—essentially blowing up the Government’s argument from the inside. In that event, an employee whose suit the Board had dismissed on procedural grounds could bring suit in district court under 7702(e)(1)(B) (so long as 120 days had elapsed from her Board filing), because she would have received “no judicially reviewable action.” And what’s more, she could do so even many years later, because the statute’s usual 30-day filing deadline begins to run only upon “notice of [a] judicially reviewable action.” §7703(b)(2). So an argument intended to keep employees like Kloeckner out of district court would paradoxically, and nonsensically, result in giving them all the time in the world to file suit there. Responding to this unwelcome outcome, the Government offers us an exit route: We should avoid “absurd results,” the Government urges, by applying §7702(e)(1)(B) only to “cases over which the Board continues to exert jurisdiction.” Brief for Respondent 27, 28, n. 4. But as the Government admits, that “gloss on the statute is not found in the text,” Tr. of Oral Arg. 50; the Government’s remedy requires our reading new words into the statute. We think a better option lies at hand. If we reject the Government’s odd view of “judicially reviewable actions,” then no absurdity arises in the first place: §7702(e)(1)(B) would have no bearing on any case the MSPB dismissed within 120 days, whatever the grounds. It is the Government’s own misreading that creates the need to “fix” §7702(e)(1)(B); take that away and the provision serves, as it was intended, only as a remedy for Board inaction.[4] IV A federal employee who claims that an agency action appealable to the MSPB violates an antidiscrimination statute listed in §7702(a)(1) should seek judicial review in district court, not in the Federal Circuit. That is so whether the MSPB decided her case on procedural grounds or instead on the merits. Kloeckner therefore brought her suit in the right place. We reverse the con- trary judgment of the Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit, and remand the case for further proceedings consistent with this opinion. It is so ordered. Notes 1 The actions entitling an employee to appeal a case to the MSPB include “(1) a removal; (2) a suspension for more than 14 days; (3) a reduction in grade; (4) a reduction in pay; and (5) a furlough.” 5 U. S. C. §7512. 2 Neither the CSRA nor any regulation explicitly authorizes an EEOC judge to consider the legality of a removal or other serious personnel action before the Board has done so. See supra, at 2–3. Nonetheless, the EEOC has approved that approach when the issues the personnel action raises are “firmly enmeshed” in an ongoing EEOC proceeding in order to avoid “delay[ing] justice and creat[ing] unnecessary proce-dural complications.” Burton v. Espy, Appeal No. 01932449, 1994 WL 748214, *12 (EEOC, Oct. 28, 1994); see also Myvett v. Poteat, Appeal No. 0120103671, 2011 WL 6122516, *2 (EEOC, Nov. 21, 2011). We express no view on the propriety of this practice. 3 Compare 639 F.3d 834 (CA8 2011) (case below) (Federal Circuit); Ballentine v. MSPB, 738 F.2d 1244 (CA Fed. 1984) (same), with Harms v. IRS, 321 F.3d 1001 (CA10 2003) (district court); Downey v. Runyon, 160 F.3d 139 (CA2 1998) (same). 4 The Government supplements its tortuous reading of the CSRA’s text with an appeal to one of the statute’s purposes—in its words, “ensuring that the Federal Circuit would develop a uniform body of case law governing federal personnel issues.” Brief for Respondent 32. We have previously recognized that Congress, through the CSRA, sought to avoid “unnecessary layer[s] of judicial review in lower federal courts, and encourag[e] more consistent judicial decisions.” United States v. Fausto, 484 U.S. 439, 449 (1988) (internal quotation marks and some bracketing omitted). But in this case, the Government’s argument about the necessity of Federal Circuit review runs into an inconvenient fact: When Congress passed the CSRA, the Federal Circuit did not exist, and §7703(b)(1) thus provided, as the general rule, that a federal employee should appeal a Board decision to 1 of the 12 Courts of Appeals or the Court of Claims. See Civil Service Reform Act of 1978, 92Stat. 1143. Moreover, the Government’s own approach would leave many cases involving federal employment issues in district court. If the MSPB rejects on the merits a complaint alleging that an agency violated the CSRA as well as an antidiscrimination law, the suit will come to district court for a decision on both questions. See Williams v. Department of Army, 715 F.2d 1485, 1491 (CA Fed. 1983) (en banc). In any event, even the most formidable argument concerning the statute’s purposes could not overcome the clarity we find in the statute’s text.

570.US.595

Coy Koontz, Sr., whose estate is represented here by petitioner, sought permits to develop a section of his property from respondent St. Johns River Water Management District (District), which, consistent with Florida law, requires permit applicants wishing to build on wetlands to offset the resulting environmental damage. Koontz offered to mitigate the environmental effects of his development proposal by deeding to the District a conservation easement on nearly three-quarters of his property. The District rejected Koontz’s proposal and informed him that it would approve construction only if he (1) reduced the size of his development and, inter alia, deeded to the District a conservation easement on the resulting larger remainder of his property or (2) hired contractors to make improvements to District-owned wetlands several miles away. Believing the District’s demands to be excessive in light of the environmental effects his proposal would have caused, Koontz filed suit under a state law that provides money damages for agency action that is an “unreasonable exercise of the state’s police power constituting a taking without just compensation.” The trial court found the District’s actions unlawful because they failed the requirements of Nollan v. California Coastal Comm’n, 483 U.S. 825, and Dolan v. City of Tigard, 512 U.S. 374. Those cases held that the government may not condition the approval of a land-use permit on the owner’s relinquishment of a portion of his property unless there is a nexus and rough proportionality between the government’s demand and the effects of the proposed land use. The District Court of Appeal affirmed, but the State Supreme Court reversed on two grounds. First, it held that petitioner’s claim failed because, unlike in Nollan or Dolan, the District denied the application. Second, the State Supreme Court held that a demand for money cannot give rise to a claim under Nollan and Dolan. Held: 1. The government’s demand for property from a land-use permit applicant must satisfy the Nollan/Dolan requirements even when it denies the permit. Pp. 6–14. (a) The unconstitutional conditions doctrine vindicates the Constitution’s enumerated rights by preventing the government from coercing people into giving them up, and Nollan and Dolan represent a special application of this doctrine that protects the Fifth Amendment right to just compensation for property the government takes when owners apply for land-use permits. The standard set out in Nollan and Dolan reflects the danger of governmental coercion in this context while accommodating the government’s legitimate need to offset the public costs of development through land use exactions. Dolan, supra, at 391; Nollan, supra, at 837. Pp. 6–8. (b) The principles that undergird Nollan and Dolan do not change depending on whether the government approves a permit on the condition that the applicant turn over property or denies a permit because the applicant refuses to do so. Recognizing such a distinction would enable the government to evade the Nollan/Dolan limitations simply by phrasing its demands for property as conditions precedent to permit approval. This Court’s unconstitutional conditions cases have long refused to attach significance to the distinction between conditions precedent and conditions subsequent. See, e.g., Frost & Frost Trucking Co. v. Railroad Comm’n of Cal., 271 U.S. 583, 592–593. It makes no difference that no property was actually taken in this case. Extortionate demands for property in the land-use permitting context run afoul of the Takings Clause not because they take property but because they impermissibly burden the right not to have property taken without just compensation. Nor does it matter that the District might have been able to deny Koontz’s application outright without giving him the option of securing a permit by agreeing to spend money improving public lands. It is settled that the unconstitutional conditions doctrine applies even when the government threatens to withhold a gratuitous benefit. See e.g., United States v. American Library Assn., Inc., 539 U.S. 194, 210. Pp. 8–11. (c) The District concedes that the denial of a permit could give rise to a valid Nollan/Dolan claim, but urges that this Court should not review this particular denial because Koontz sued in the wrong court, for the wrong remedy, and at the wrong time. Most of its arguments raise questions of state law. But to the extent that respondent alleges a federal obstacle to adjudication of petitioner’s claim, the Florida courts can consider respondent’s arguments in the first instance on remand. Finally, the District errs in arguing that because it gave Koontz another avenue to obtain permit approval, this Court need not decide whether its demand for offsite improvements satisfied Nollan and Dolan. Had Koontz been offered at least one alternative that satisfied Nollan and Dolan, he would not have been subjected to an unconstitutional condition. But the District’s offer to approve a less ambitious project does not obviate the need to apply Nollan and Dolan to the conditions it imposed on its approval of the project Koontz actually proposed. Pp. 12–14. 2. The government’s demand for property from a land-use permit applicant must satisfy the Nollan/Dolan requirements even when its demand is for money. Pp. 14–22. (a) Contrary to respondent’s argument, Eastern Enterprises v. Apfel, 524 U.S. 498, where five Justices concluded that the Takings Clause does not apply to government-imposed financial obligations that “d[o] not operate upon or alter an identified property interest,” id., at 540 (Kennedy, J., concurring in judgment and dissenting in part), does not control here, where the demand for money did burden the ownership of a specific parcel of land. Because of the direct link between the government’s demand and a specific parcel of real property, this case implicates the central concern of Nollan and Dolan: the risk that the government may deploy its substantial power and discretion in land-use permitting to pursue governmental ends that lack an essential nexus and rough proportionality to the effects of the proposed use of the property at issue. Pp. 15–18. (b) The District argues that if monetary exactions are subject to Nollan/Dolan scrutiny, then there will be no principled way of distinguishing impermissible land-use exactions from property taxes. But the District exaggerates both the extent to which that problem is unique to the land-use permitting context and the practical difficulty of distinguishing between the power to tax and the power to take by eminent domain. It is beyond dispute that “[t]axes and user fees . . . are not ‘takings,’ ” Brown v. Legal Foundation of Wash., 538 U.S. 216, 243, n. 2, yet this Court has repeatedly found takings where the government, by confiscating financial obligations, achieved a result that could have been obtained through taxation, e.g., id., at 232. Pp. 18–21. (c) The Court’s holding that monetary exactions are subject to scrutiny under Nollan and Dolan will not work a revolution in land use law or unduly limit the discretion of local authorities to implement sensible land use regulations. The rule that Nollan and Dolan apply to monetary exactions has been the settled law in some of our Nation’s most populous States for many years, and the protections of those cases are often redundant with the requirements of state law. Pp. 21–22. 77 So. 3d 1220, reversed and remanded. Alito, J., delivered the opinion of the Court, in which Roberts, C. J., and Scalia, Kennedy, and Thomas, JJ., joined. Kagan, J., filed a dissenting opinion, in which Ginsburg, Breyer, and Sotomayor, JJ., joined.

Our decisions in Nollan v. California Coastal Comm’n, 483 U. S. 825 (1987) , and Dolan v. City of Tigard, 512 U. S. 374 (1994) , provide important protection against the misuse of the power of land-use regulation. In those cases, we held that a unit of government may not condition the approval of a land-use permit on the owner’s relinquishment of a portion of his property unless there is a “nexus” and “rough proportionality” between the government’s demand and the effects of the proposed land use. In this case, the St. Johns River Water Management District (District) believes that it circumvented Nollan and Dolan because of the way in which it structured its handling of a permit application submitted by Coy Koontz, Sr., whose estate is represented in this Court by Coy Koontz, Jr. [ 1 ] The District did not approve his application on the condition that he surrender an interest in his land. Instead, the District, after suggesting that he could obtain approval by signing over such an interest, denied his application because he refused to yield. The Florida Supreme Court blessed this maneuver and thus effectively interred those important decisions. Because we conclude that Nollan and Dolan cannot be evaded in this way, the Florida Supreme Court’s decision must be reversed. I A In 1972, petitioner purchased an undeveloped 14.9-acre tract of land on the south side of Florida State Road 50, a divided four-lane highway east of Orlando. The property is located less than 1,000 feet from that road’s intersection with Florida State Road 408, a tolled expressway that is one of Orlando’s major thoroughfares. A drainage ditch runs along the property’s western edge, and high-voltage power lines bisect it into northern and southern sections. The combined effect of the ditch, a 100foot wide area kept clear for the power lines, the highways, and other construction on nearby parcels is to isolate the northern section of petitioner’s property from any other undeveloped land. Although largely classified as wetlands by the State, the northern section drains well; the most significant standing water forms in ruts in an unpaved road used to access the power lines. The natural topography of the property’s southern section is somewhat more diverse, with a small creek, forested uplands, and wetlands that sometimes have water as much as a foot deep. A wildlife survey found evidence of animals that often frequent developed areas: raccoons, rabbits, several species of bird, and a turtle. The record also indicates that the land may be a suitable habitat for opossums. The same year that petitioner purchased his property, Florida enacted the Water Resources Act, which divided the State into five water management districts and authorized each district to regulate “construction that connects to, draws water from, drains water into, or is placed in or across the waters in the state.” 1972 Fla. Laws ch. 72–299, pt. IV, §1(5), pp. 1115, 1116 (codified as amended at Fla. Stat. §373.403(5) (2010)). Under the Act, a landowner wishing to undertake such construction must obtain from the relevant district a Management and Storage of Surface Water (MSSW) permit, which may impose “such reasonable conditions” on the permit as are “necessary to assure” that construction will “not be harmful to the water resources of the district.” 1972 Fla. Laws §4(1), at 1118 (codified as amended at Fla. Stat. §373.413(1)). In 1984, in an effort to protect the State’s rapidly diminishing wetlands, the Florida Legislature passed the Warren S. Henderson Wetlands Protection Act, which made it illegal for anyone to “dredge or fill in, on, or over sur- face waters” without a Wetlands Resource Management (WRM) permit. 1984 Fla. Laws ch. 84–79, pt. VIII, §403.905(1), pp. 204–205. Under the Henderson Act, permit applicants are required to provide “reasonable assurance” that proposed construction on wetlands is “not contrary to the public interest,” as defined by an enumerated list of criteria. See Fla. Stat. §373.414(1). Consistent with the Henderson Act, the St. Johns River Water Management District, the district with jurisdiction over petitioner’s land, requires that permit applicants wishing to build on wetlands offset the resulting environmental damage by creating, enhancing, or preserving wetlands elsewhere. Petitioner decided to develop the 3.7-acre northern section of his property, and in 1994 he applied to the District for MSSW and WRM permits. Under his proposal, petitioner would have raised the elevation of the northernmost section of his land to make it suitable for a building, graded the land from the southern edge of the building site down to the elevation of the high-voltage electrical lines, and installed a dry-bed pond for retaining and gradually releasing stormwater runoff from the building and its parking lot. To mitigate the environmental effects of his proposal, petitioner offered to foreclose any possible future development of the approximately 11acre southern section of his land by deeding to the District a conservation easement on that portion of his property. The District considered the 11acre conservation easement to be inadequate, and it informed petitioner that it would approve construction only if he agreed to one of two concessions. First, the District proposed that petitioner reduce the size of his development to 1 acre and deed to the District a conservation easement on the remaining 13.9 acres. To reduce the development area, the District suggested that petitioner could eliminate the dry-bed pond from his proposal and instead install a more costly subsurface stormwater management system beneath the building site. The District also suggested that petitioner install retaining walls rather than gradually sloping the land from the building site down to the elevation of the rest of his property to the south. In the alternative, the District told petitioner that he could proceed with the development as proposed, build- ing on 3.7 acres and deeding a conservation easement to the government on the remainder of the property, if he also agreed to hire contractors to make improvements to District-owned land several miles away. Specifically, peti- tioner could pay to replace culverts on one parcel or fill in ditches on another. Either of those projects would have enhanced approximately 50 acres of District-owned wetlands. When the District asks permit applicants to fund offsite mitigation work, its policy is never to require any particular offsite project, and it did not do so here. Instead, the District said that it “would also favorably consider” alternatives to its suggested offsite mitigation projects if petitioner proposed something “equivalent.” App. 75. Believing the District’s demands for mitigation to be excessive in light of the environmental effects that his building proposal would have caused, petitioner filed suit in state court. Among other claims, he argued that he was entitled to relief under Fla. Stat. §373.617(2), which allows owners to recover “monetary damages” if a state agency’s action is “an unreasonable exercise of the state’s police power constituting a taking without just compensation.” B The Florida Circuit Court granted the District’s mo- tion to dismiss on the ground that petitioner had not ade- quately exhausted his state-administrative remedies, but the Florida District Court of Appeal for the Fifth Circuit re- versed. On remand, the State Circuit Court held a 2-day bench trial. After considering testimony from several ex- perts who examined petitioner’s property, the trial court found that the property’s northern section had already been “seriously degraded” by extensive construction on the surrounding parcels. App. to Pet. for Cert. D–3. In light of this finding and petitioner’s offer to dedicate nearly three-quarters of his land to the District, the trial court concluded that any further mitigation in the form of payment for offsite improvements to District property lacked both a nexus and rough proportionality to the environmental impact of the proposed construction. Id., at D–11. It accordingly held the District’s actions unlawful under our decisions in Nollan and Dolan. The Florida District Court affirmed, 5 So. 3d 8 (2009), but the State Supreme Court reversed, 77 So. 3d 1220 (2011). A majority of that court distinguished Nollan and Dolan on two grounds. First, the majority thought it significant that in this case, unlike Nollan or Dolan, the District did not approve petitioner’s application on the condition that he accede to the District’s demands; in- stead, the District denied his application because he refused to make concessions. 77 So. 3d, at 1230. Second, the majority drew a distinction between a demand for an interest in real property (what happened in Nollan and Dolan) and a demand for money. 77 So. 3d, at 1229– 1230. The majority acknowledged a division of authority over whether a demand for money can give rise to a claim under Nollan and Dolan, and sided with those courts that have said it cannot. 77 So. 3d, at 1229–1230. Compare, e.g., McClung v. Sumner, 548 F. 3d 1219, 1228 (CA9 2008), with Ehrlich v. Culver City, 12 Cal. 4th 854, 876, 911 P. 2d 429, 444 (1996); Flower Mound v. Stafford Estates Ltd. Partnership, 135 S. W. 3d 620, 640–641 (Tex. 2004). Two justices concurred in the result, arguing that petitioner had failed to exhaust his administrative remedies as re- quired by state law before bringing an inverse condem- nation suit that challenges the propriety of an agency action. 77 So. 3d, at 1231–1232; see Key Haven Associated Enterprises, Inc. v. Board of Trustees of Internal Improvement Trust Fund, 427 So. 2d 153, 159 (Fla. 1982). Recognizing that the majority opinion rested on a question of federal constitutional law on which the lower courts are divided, we granted the petition for a writ of certiorari, 568 U. S. ___ (2012), and now reverse. II A We have said in a variety of contexts that “the government may not deny a benefit to a person because he ex- ercises a constitutional right.” Regan v. Taxation With Representation of Wash., 461 U. S. 540, 545 (1983) . See also, e.g., Rumsfeld v. Forum for Academic and Institutional Rights, Inc., 547 U. S. 47 –60 (2006); Rutan v. Republican Party of Ill., 497 U. S. 62, 78 (1990) . In Perry v. Sindermann, 408 U. S. 593 (1972) , for example, we held that a public college would violate a professor’s freedom of speech if it declined to renew his contract because he was an outspoken critic of the college’s administration. And in Memorial Hospital v. Maricopa County, 415 U. S. 250 (1974) , we concluded that a county impermissibly burdened the right to travel by extending healthcare benefits only to those indigent sick who had been residents of the county for at least one year. Those cases reflect an overarching principle, known as the unconstitutional condi- tions doctrine, that vindicates the Constitution’s enumerated rights by preventing the government from coercing people into giving them up. Nollan and Dolan “involve a special application” of this doctrine that protects the Fifth Amendment right to just compensation for property the government takes when owners apply for land-use permits. Lingle v. Chevron U. S. A. Inc., 544 U. S. 528, 547 (2005) ; Dolan, 512 U. S., at 385 (invoking “the well-settled doctrine of ‘unconstitutional conditions’ ”). Our decisions in those cases reflect two realities of the permitting process. The first is that land-use permit applicants are especially vulnerable to the type of coercion that the unconstitutional conditions doctrine prohibits because the government often has broad discretion to deny a permit that is worth far more than property it would like to take. By conditioning a building permit on the owner’s deeding over a public right-of- way, for example, the government can pressure an owner into voluntarily giving up property for which the Fifth Amendment would otherwise require just compensation. See id., at 384; Nollan, 483 U. S., at 831. So long as the building permit is more valuable than any just compensation the owner could hope to receive for the right-of-way, the owner is likely to accede to the government’s demand, no matter how unreasonable. Extortionate demands of this sort frustrate the Fifth Amendment right to just compensation, and the unconstitutional conditions doctrine prohibits them. A second reality of the permitting process is that many proposed land uses threaten to impose costs on the public that dedications of property can offset. Where a building proposal would substantially increase traffic congestion, for example, officials might condition permit approval on the owner’s agreement to deed over the land needed to widen a public road. Respondent argues that a similar rationale justifies the exaction at issue here: petitioner’s proposed construction project, it submits, would destroy wetlands on his property, and in order to compensate for this loss, respondent demands that he enhance wet- lands elsewhere. Insisting that landowners internalize the negative externalities of their conduct is a hallmark of responsible land-use policy, and we have long sustained such regulations against constitutional attack. See Village of Euclid v. Ambler Realty Co., 272 U. S. 365 (1926) . Nollan and Dolan accommodate both realities by allowing the government to condition approval of a permit on the dedication of property to the public so long as there is a “nexus” and “rough proportionality” between the prop- erty that the government demands and the social costs of the applicant’s proposal. Dolan, supra, at 391; Nollan, 483 U. S., at 837. Our precedents thus enable permitting authorities to insist that applicants bear the full costs of their proposals while still forbidding the government from engaging in “out-and-out . . . extortion” that would thwart the Fifth Amendment right to just compensation. Ibid. (internal quotation marks omitted). Under Nollan and Dolan the government may choose whether and how a per- mit applicant is required to mitigate the impacts of a proposed development, but it may not leverage its legitimate interest in mitigation to pursue governmental ends that lack an essential nexus and rough proportionality to those impacts. B The principles that undergird our decisions in Nollan and Dolan do not change depending on whether the government approves a permit on the condition that the applicant turn over property or denies a permit because the applicant refuses to do so. We have often concluded that denials of governmental benefits were impermissible under the unconstitutional conditions doctrine. See, e.g., Perry, 408 U. S., at 597 (explaining that the government “may not deny a benefit to a person on a basis that infringes his constitutionally protected interests” (emphasis added)); Memorial Hospital, 415 U. S. 250 (finding unconstitutional condition where government denied healthcare benefits). In so holding, we have recognized that regardless of whether the government ultimately succeeds in pressuring someone into forfeiting a constitutional right, the unconstitutional conditions doctrine forbids burdening the Constitution’s enumerated rights by coercively withholding benefits from those who exercise them. A contrary rule would be especially untenable in this case because it would enable the government to evade the limitations of Nollan and Dolan simply by phrasing its demands for property as conditions precedent to permit approval. Under the Florida Supreme Court’s approach, a government order stating that a permit is “approved if” the owner turns over property would be subject to Nollan and Dolan, but an identical order that uses the words “denied until” would not. Our unconstitutional condi- tions cases have long refused to attach significance to the distinction between conditions precedent and conditions subsequent. See Frost & Frost Trucking Co. v. Railroad Comm’n of Cal., 271 U. S. 583 –593 (1926) (invalidating regulation that required the petitioner to give up a constitutional right “as a condition precedent to the enjoyment of a privilege”); Southern Pacific Co. v. Denton, 146 U. S. 202, 207 (1892) (invalidating statute “requiring the corporation, as a condition precedent to obtaining a per- mit to do business within the State, to surrender a right and privilege secured to it by the Constitution”). See also Flower Mound, 135 S. W. 3d, at 639 (“The government cannot sidestep constitutional protections merely by rephrasing its decision from ‘only if’ to ‘not unless’ ”). To do so here would effectively render Nollan and Dolan a dead letter. The Florida Supreme Court puzzled over how the government’s demand for property can violate the Takings Clause even though “ ‘no property of any kind was ever taken,’ ” 77 So. 3d, at 1225 (quoting 5 So. 3d, at 20 (Griffin, J., dissenting)); see also 77 So. 3d, at 1229–1230, but the unconstitutional conditions doctrine provides a ready answer. Extortionate demands for property in the land-use permitting context run afoul of the Takings Clause not because they take property but because they impermis- sibly burden the right not to have property taken without just compensation. As in other unconstitutional condi- tions cases in which someone refuses to cede a constitutional right in the face of coercive pressure, the impermissible denial of a governmental benefit is a constitutionally cog- nizable injury. Nor does it make a difference, as respondent suggests, that the government might have been able to deny petitioner’s application outright without giving him the option of securing a permit by agreeing to spend money to improve public lands. See Penn Central Transp. Co. v. New York City, 438 U. S. 104 (1978) . Virtually all of our unconstitutional conditions cases involve a gratuitous governmental benefit of some kind. See, e.g., Regan, 461 U. S. 540 (tax benefits); Memorial Hospital, 415 U. S. 250 (healthcare); Perry, 408 U. S. 593 (public employment); United States v. Butler, 297 U. S. 1, 71 (1936) (crop payments); Frost, supra (business license). Yet we have repeatedly rejected the argument that if the government need not confer a benefit at all, it can withhold the benefit because someone refuses to give up constitutional rights. E.g., United States v. American Library Assn., Inc., 539 U. S. 194, 210 (2003) (“[T]he government may not deny a benefit to a person on a basis that infringes his constitutionally protected . . . freedom of speech even if he has no entitlement to that benefit” (emphasis added and inter- nal quotation marks omitted)); Wieman v. Updegraff, 344 U. S. 183, 191 (1952) (explaining in unconstitutional conditions case that to focus on “the facile generalization that there is no constitutionally protected right to public employment is to obscure the issue”). Even if respondent would have been entirely within its rights in denying the permit for some other reason, that greater authority does not imply a lesser power to condition permit approval on petitioner’s forfeiture of his constitutional rights. See Nollan, 483 U. S., at 836–837 (explaining that “[t]he evident constitutional propriety” of prohibiting a land use “disappears . . . if the condition substituted for the prohibition utterly fails to further the end advanced as the justification for the prohibition”). That is not to say, however, that there is no relevant difference between a consummated taking and the denial of a permit based on an unconstitutionally extortionate demand. Where the permit is denied and the condition is never imposed, nothing has been taken. While the un- constitutional conditions doctrine recognizes that this burdens a constitutional right, the Fifth Amendment man- dates a particular remedy—just compensation—only for takings. In cases where there is an excessive demand but no taking, whether money damages are available is not a question of federal constitutional law but of the cause of action—whether state or federal—on which the landowner relies. Because petitioner brought his claim pursuant to a state law cause of action, the Court has no occasion to discuss what remedies might be available for a Nollan/Dolan unconstitutional conditions violation either here or in other cases. C At oral argument, respondent conceded that the denial of a permit could give rise to a valid claim under Nollan and Dolan, Tr. of Oral Arg. 33–34, but it urged that we should not review the particular denial at issue here because petitioner sued in the wrong court, for the wrong remedy, and at the wrong time. Most of respondent’s objections to the posture of this case raise questions of Florida procedure that are not ours to decide. See Mullaney v. Wilbur, 421 U. S. 684, 691 (1975) ; Murdock v. Memphis, 20 Wall. 590, 626 (1875). But to the extent that respondent suggests that the posture of this case creates some federal obstacle to adjudicating petitioner’s unconstitutional conditions claim, we remand for the Florida courts to consider that argument in the first instance. Respondent argues that we should affirm because, rather than suing for damages in the Florida trial court as authorized by Fla. Stat. §373.617, petitioner should have first sought judicial review of the denial of his permit in the Florida appellate court under the State’s Administrative Procedure Act, see §§120.68(1), (2) (2010). The Flor-ida Supreme Court has said that the appellate court is the “proper forum to resolve” a “claim that an agency has applied a . . . statute or rule in such a way that the aggrieved party’s constitutional rights have been violated,” Key Haven Associated Enterprises, 427 So. 2d, at 158, and respondent has argued throughout this litigation that petitioner brought his unconstitutional conditions claim in the wrong forum. Two members of the Florida Supreme Court credited respondent’s argument, 77 So. 3d, at 1231–1232, but four others refused to address it. We decline respondent’s invitation to second-guess a State Supreme Court’s treatment of its own procedural law. Respondent also contends that we should affirm because petitioner sued for damages but is at most entitled to an injunction ordering that his permit issue without any conditions. But we need not decide whether federal law authorizes plaintiffs to recover damages for unconstitutional conditions claims predicated on the Takings Clause because petitioner brought his claim under state law. Florida law allows property owners to sue for “damages” whenever a state agency’s action is “an unreasonable ex- ercise of the state’s police power constituting a taking without just compensation.” Fla. Stat. Ann. §373.617. Whether that provision covers an unconstitutional conditions claim like the one at issue here is a question of state law that the Florida Supreme Court did not address and on which we will not opine. For similar reasons, we decline to reach respondent’s argument that its demands for property were too indefinite to give rise to liability under Nollan and Dolan. The Florida Supreme Court did not reach the question whether respondent issued a demand of sufficient concreteness to trigger the special protections of Nollan and Dolan. It relied instead on the Florida District Court of Appeals’ characterization of respondent’s behavior as a demand for Nollan/Dolan purposes. See 77 So. 3d, at 1224 (quoting 5 So. 3d, at 10). Whether that characterization is correct is beyond the scope of the questions the Court agreed to take up for review. If preserved, the issue remains open on remand for the Florida Supreme Court to address. This Court therefore has no occasion to consider how concrete and specific a demand must be to give rise to liability un- der Nollan and Dolan. Finally, respondent argues that we need not decide whether its demand for offsite improvements satisfied Nollan and Dolan because it gave petitioner another avenue for obtaining permit approval. Specifically, respondent said that it would have approved a revised permit application that reduced the footprint of petitioner’s proposed construction site from 3.7 acres to 1 acre and placed a conservation easement on the remaining 13.9 acres of petitioner’s land. Respondent argues that regardless of whether its demands for offsite mitigation satisfied Nollan and Dolan, we must separately consider each of petitioner’s options, one of which did not require any of the offsite work the trial court found objectionable. Respondent’s argument is flawed because the option to which it points—developing only 1 acre of the site and granting a conservation easement on the rest—involves the same issue as the option to build on 3.7 acres and perform offsite mitigation. We agree with respondent that, so long as a permitting authority offers the landowner at least one alternative that would satisfy Nollan and Dolan, the landowner has not been subjected to an unconstitutional condition. But respondent’s suggestion that we should treat its offer to let petitioner build on 1 acre as an alternative to offsite mitigation misapprehends the gov- ernmental benefit that petitioner was denied. Petitioner sought to develop 3.7 acres, but respondent in effect told petitioner that it would not allow him to build on 2.7 of those acres unless he agreed to spend money improving public lands. Petitioner claims that he was wrongfully denied a permit to build on those 2.7 acres. For that reason, respondent’s offer to approve a less ambitious building project does not obviate the need to determine whether the demand for offsite mitigation satisfied Nollan and Dolan. III We turn to the Florida Supreme Court’s alternative holding that petitioner’s claim fails because respondent asked him to spend money rather than give up an easement on his land. A predicate for any unconstitutional conditions claim is that the government could not have constitutionally ordered the person asserting the claim to do what it attempted to pressure that person into doing. See Rumsfeld, 547 U. S., at 59–60. For that reason, we began our analysis in both Nollan and Dolan by observing that if the government had directly seized the easements it sought to obtain through the permitting process, it would have committed a per se taking. See Dolan, 512 U. S., at 384; Nollan, 483 U. S., at 831. The Florida Su- preme Court held that petitioner’s claim fails at this first step because the subject of the exaction at issue here was money rather than a more tangible interest in real prop- erty. 77 So. 3d, at 1230. Respondent and the dissent take the same position, citing the concurring and dissenting opinions in Eastern Enterprises v. Apfel, 524 U. S. 498 (1998) , for the proposition that an obligation to spend money can never provide the basis for a takings claim. See post, at 5–8 (opinion of Kagan, J.). We note as an initial matter that if we accepted this argument it would be very easy for land-use permitting officials to evade the limitations of Nollan and Dolan. Because the government need only provide a permit applicant with one alternative that satisfies the nexus and rough proportionality standards, a permitting authority wishing to exact an easement could simply give the owner a choice of either surrendering an easement or making a payment equal to the easement’s value. Such so-called “in lieu of” fees are utterly commonplace, Rosenberg, The Changing Culture of American Land Use Regulation: Paying for Growth with Impact Fees, 59 S. M. U. L. Rev. 177, 202–203 (2006), and they are functionally equivalent to other types of land use exactions. For that reason and those that follow, we reject respondent’s argument and hold that so-called “monetary exactions” must satisfy the nexus and rough proportionality requirements of Nollan and Dolan. A In Eastern Enterprises, supra, the United States retroactively imposed on a former mining company an obligation to pay for the medical benefits of retired miners and their families. A four-Justice plurality concluded that the statute’s imposition of retroactive financial liability was so arbitrary that it violated the Takings Clause. Id., at 529–537. Although Justice Kennedy concurred in the result on due process grounds, he joined four other Justices in dissent in arguing that the Takings Clause does not apply to government-imposed financial obligations that “d[o] not operate upon or alter an identified property interest.” Id., at 540 (opinion concurring in judgment and dissenting in part); see id., at 554–556 (Breyer, J., dissenting) (“The ‘private property’ upon which the [Takings] Clause traditionally has focused is a specific interest in physical or intellectual property”). Relying on the concurrence and dissent in Eastern Enterprises, respondent argues that a requirement that petitioner spend money improving public lands could not give rise to a taking. Respondent’s argument rests on a mistaken premise. Unlike the financial obligation in Eastern Enterprises, the demand for money at issue here did “operate upon . . . an identified property interest” by directing the owner of a particular piece of property to make a monetary payment. Id., at 540 (opinion of Kennedy, J.). In this case, unlike Eastern Enterprises, the monetary obligation burdened petitioner’s ownership of a specific parcel of land. In that sense, this case bears resemblance to our cases holding that the government must pay just compensation when it takes a lien—a right to receive money that is secured by a particular piece of property. See Armstrong v. United States, 364 U. S. 40 –49 (1960); Louisville Joint Stock Land Bank v. Radford, 295 U. S. 555 –602 (1935); United States v. Security Industrial Bank, 459 U. S. 70 –78 (1982); see also Palm Beach Cty. v. Cove Club Investors Ltd., 734 So. 2d 379, 383–384 (1999) (the right to receive income from land is an interest in real property under Florida law). The fulcrum this case turns on is the direct link between the government’s demand and a spe- cific parcel of real property. [ 2 ] Because of that direct link, this case implicates the central concern of Nollan and Dolan: the risk that the government may use its substantial power and discretion in land-use permitting to pursue governmental ends that lack an essential nexus and rough proportionality to the effects of the proposed new use of the specific property at issue, thereby diminishing without justification the value of the property. In this case, moreover, petitioner does not ask us to hold that the government can commit a regulatory taking by directing someone to spend money. As a result, we need not apply Penn Central’s “essentially ad hoc, factual inquir[y],” 438 U. S., at 124, at all, much less extend that “already difficult and uncertain rule” to the “vast category of cases” in which someone believes that a regulation is too costly. Eastern Enterprises, 524 U. S., at 542 (opinion of Kennedy, J.). Instead, petitioner’s claim rests on the more limited proposition that when the government commands the relinquishment of funds linked to a specific, identifiable property interest such as a bank account or parcel of real property, a “per se [takings] approach” is the proper mode of analysis under the Court’s precedent. Brown v. Legal Foundation of Wash., 538 U. S. 216, 235 (2003) . Finally, it bears emphasis that petitioner’s claim does not implicate “normative considerations about the wisdom of government decisions.” Eastern Enterprises, 524 U. S., at 545 (opinion of Kennedy, J.). We are not here concerned with whether it would be “arbitrary or unfair” for respondent to order a landowner to make improvements to public lands that are nearby. Id., at 554 (Breyer, J., dissenting). Whatever the wisdom of such a policy, it would transfer an interest in property from the landowner to the government. For that reason, any such demand would amount to a per se taking similar to the taking of an easement or a lien. Cf. Dolan, 512 U. S., at 384; Nollan, 483 U. S., at 831. B Respondent and the dissent argue that if monetary exactions are made subject to scrutiny under Nollan and Dolan, then there will be no principled way of distinguishing impermissible land-use exactions from property taxes. See post, at 9–10. We think they exaggerate both the extent to which that problem is unique to the land-use permitting context and the practical difficulty of distinguishing between the power to tax and the power to take by eminent domain. It is beyond dispute that “[t]axes and user fees . . . are not ‘takings.’ ” Brown, supra, at 243, n. 2 (Scalia, J., dissenting). We said as much in County of Mobile v. Kimball, 102 U. S. 691, 703 (1881) , and our cases have been clear on that point ever since. United States v. Sperry Corp., 493 U. S. 52 , n. 9 (1989); see A. Magnano Co. v. Hamilton, 292 U. S. 40, 44 (1934) ; Dane v. Jackson, 256 U. S. 589, 599 (1921) ; Henderson Bridge Co. v. Henderson City, 173 U. S. 592 –615 (1899). This case therefore does not affect the ability of governments to impose property taxes, user fees, and similar laws and regulations that may impose financial burdens on property owners. At the same time, we have repeatedly found takings where the government, by confiscating financial obligations, achieved a result that could have been obtained by imposing a tax. Most recently, in Brown, supra, at 232, we were unanimous in concluding that a State Supreme Court’s seizure of the interest on client funds held in escrow was a taking despite the unquestionable constitutional propriety of a tax that would have raised exactly the same revenue. Our holding in Brown followed from Phillips v. Washington Legal Foundation, 524 U. S. 156 (1998) , and Webb’s Fabulous Pharmacies, Inc. v. Beckwith, 449 U. S. 155 (1980) , two earlier cases in which we treated confiscations of money as takings despite their functional similarity to a tax. Perhaps most closely analogous to the present case, we have repeatedly held that the government takes property when it seizes liens, and in so ruling we have never considered whether the government could have achieved an economically equivalent result through taxation. Armstrong, 364 U. S. 40 ; Louisville Joint Stock Land Bank, 295 U. S. 555 . Two facts emerge from those cases. The first is that the need to distinguish taxes from takings is not a creature of our holding today that monetary exactions are subject to scrutiny under Nollan and Dolan. Rather, the problem is inherent in this Court’s long-settled view that property the government could constitutionally demand through its taxing power can also be taken by eminent domain. Second, our cases show that teasing out the difference between taxes and takings is more difficult in theory than in practice. Brown is illustrative. Similar to respondent in this case, the respondents in Brown argued that extending the protections of the Takings Clause to a bank account would open a Pandora’s Box of constitutional chal- lenges to taxes. Brief for Respondents Washington Legal Foundation et al. 32 and Brief for Respondent Justices of the Washington Supreme Court 22, in Brown v. Legal Foundation of Wash., O. T. 2002, No. 01–1325. But also like respondent here, the Brown respondents never claimed that they were exercising their power to levy taxes when they took the petitioners’ property. Any such argument would have been implausible under state law; in Washington, taxes are levied by the legislature, not the courts. See 538 U. S., at 242, n. 2 (Scalia, J., dissenting). The same dynamic is at work in this case because Flor- ida law greatly circumscribes respondent’s power to tax. See Fla. Stat. Ann. §373.503 (authorizing respondent to impose ad valorem tax on properties within its jurisdiction); §373.109 (authorizing respondent to charge permit application fees but providing that such fees “shall not exceed the cost . . . for processing, monitoring, and inspecting for compliance with the permit”). If respondent had argued that its demand for money was a tax, it would have effectively conceded that its denial of petitioner’s permit was improper under Florida law. Far from making that concession, respondent has maintained throughout this litigation that it considered petitioner’s money to be a substitute for his deeding to the public a conservation easement on a larger parcel of undeveloped land. [ 3 ] This case does not require us to say more. We need not decide at precisely what point a land-use permitting charge denominated by the government as a “tax” becomes “so arbitrary . . . that it was not the exertion of taxation but a confiscation of property.” Brushaber v. Union Pacific R. Co., 240 U. S. 1 –25 (1916). For present purposes, it suffices to say that despite having long recognized that “the power of taxation should not be confused with the power of eminent domain,” Houck v. Little River Drainage Dist., 239 U. S. 254, 264 (1915) , we have had little trouble distinguishing between the two. C Finally, we disagree with the dissent’s forecast that our decision will work a revolution in land use law by depriving local governments of the ability to charge reasonable permitting fees. Post, at 8. Numerous courts—including courts in many of our Nation’s most populous States—have confronted constitutional challenges to monetary exactions over the last two decades and applied the standard from Nollan and Dolan or something like it. See, e.g., Northern Ill. Home Builders Assn. v. County of Du Page, 165 Ill. 2d. 25, 31–32, 649 N. E. 2d 384, 388–389 (1995); Home Builders Assn. v. Beavercreek, 89 Ohio St. 3d 121, 128, 729 N. E. 2d 349, 356 (2000); Flower Mound, 135 S. W. 3d, at 640–641. Yet the “significant practical harm” the dissent predicts has not come to pass. Post, at 8. That is hardly surprising, for the dissent is correct that state law normally provides an independent check on excessive land use permitting fees. Post, at 11. The dissent criticizes the notion that the Federal Constitution places any meaningful limits on “whether one town is overcharging for sewage, or another is setting the price to sell liquor too high.” Post, at 9. But only two pages later, it identifies three constraints on land use permitting fees that it says the Federal Constitution imposes and suggests that the additional protections of Nollan and Dolan are not needed. Post, at 11. In any event, the dissent’s argument that land use permit applicants need no further protection when the government demands money is really an argument for overruling Nollan and Dolan. After all, the Due Process Clause protected the Nollans from an unfair allocation of public burdens, and they too could have argued that the government’s demand for property amounted to a taking under the Penn Central framework. See Nollan, 483 U. S., at 838. We have repeatedly rejected the dissent’s contention that other constitutional doctrines leave no room for the nexus and rough proportionality requirements of Nollan and Dolan. Mindful of the special vulnerability of land use permit applicants to extortionate demands for money, we do so again today. * * * We hold that the government’s demand for property from a land-use permit applicant must satisfy the requirements of Nollan and Dolan even when the government denies the permit and even when its demand is for money. The Court expresses no view on the merits of petitioner’s claim that respondent’s actions here failed to comply with the principles set forth in this opinion and those two cases. The Florida Supreme Court’s judgment is reversed, and this case is remanded for further proceedings not inconsistent with this opinion. It is so ordered. Notes 1 For ease of reference, this opinion refers to both men as “petitioner.” 2 Thus, because the proposed offsite mitigation obligation in this case was tied to a particular parcel of land, this case does not implicate the question whether monetary exactions must be tied to a particular parcel of land in order to constitute a taking. That is so even whenthe demand is considered “outside the permitting process.” Post, at 8 (Kagan, J., dissenting). The unconstitutional conditions analysis requires us to set aside petitioner’s permit application, not his ownership of a particular parcel of real property. 3 Citing cases in which state courts have treated similar governmental demands for money differently, the dissent predicts that courts will “struggle to draw a coherent boundary” between taxes and excessive demands for money that violate Nollan and Dolan. Post, at 9–10. But the cases the dissent cites illustrate how the frequent need to decide whether a particular demand for money qualifies as a tax under state law, and the resulting state statutes and judicial precedents on point, greatly reduce the practical difficulty of resolving the same issue in federal constitutional cases like this one.

568.US.503

The Federal Tort Claims Act (FTCA) waives the Government’s sovereign immunity from tort suits, 28 U. S. C. §1346(b)(1), but excepts from the waiver certain intentional torts, including battery, §2680(h). The FTCA, as originally enacted, afforded tort victims a remedy against the United States, but did not preclude suit against the alleged tortfeasor as sole or joint defendant. Several agency-specific statutes postdating the FTCA, however, immunized certain federal employees from personal liability for torts committed in the course of their official duties. One such statute, the Gonzalez Act, makes the remedy against the United States under the FTCA preclusive of any suit against armed forces medical personnel. 10 U. S. C. §1089(a). The Act also provides that, “[f]or purposes of this section,” the intentional tort exception to the FTCA “shall not apply to any cause of action arising out of a negligent or wrongful act or omission in the performance of medical . . . functions.” §1089(e). Congress subsequently enacted comprehensive legislation, the Federal Employees Liability Reform and Tort Compensation Act (Liability Reform Act), which makes the FTCA’s remedy against the United States exclusive for torts committed by federal employees acting within the scope of their employment, 28 U. S. C. §2679(b)(1). Under the Liability Reform Act, federal employees are shielded without regard to agency affiliation or line of work. Petitioner Levin suffered injuries as a result of cataract surgery performed at a U. S. Naval Hospital. He filed suit, naming the United States and the surgeon as defendants and asserting, inter alia, a claim of battery, based on his alleged withdrawal of consent to operate shortly before the surgery took place. Finding that the surgeon had acted within the scope of his employment, the District Court released him and substituted the United States as sole defendant. The Government moved to dismiss the battery claim, relying on the FTCA’s intentional tort exception. Levin countered that the Gonzalez Act, in particular, §1089(e), renders that exception inapplicable when a plaintiff alleges medical battery by a military physician. The District Court granted the Government’s motion to dismiss. Affirming, the Ninth Circuit concluded that §1089(e) served only to buttress the immunity from personal liability granted military medical personnel in §1089(a), and did not negate the FTCA’s intentional tort exception. Held: The Gonzalez Act direction in §1089(e) abrogates the FTCA’s intentional tort exception and therefore permits Levin’s suit against the United States alleging medical battery by a Navy doctor acting within the scope of his employment. Pp. 8–15. (a) To determine whether the Government’s immunity is waived for batteries, the Court looks to §1089(e)’s language, “giving the ‘words used’ their ‘ordinary meaning.’ ” Moskal v. United States, 498 U.S. 103, 108. Levin claims that the operative clause of §1089(e), which provides that the FTCA’s intentional tort exception “shall not apply” to medical malpractice claims, is qualified by the provision’s introductory clause “[f]or purposes of this section,” which confines the operative clause to claims alleging malpractice by personnel in the armed forces and the other agencies specified in the Gonzalez Act. The Government, in contrast, argues that §1089(e)’s introductory clause instructs courts to pretend, “[f]or purposes of” the Gonzalez Act, that §2680(h) does not secure the Government against liability for intentional torts, including battery, even though §2680(h) does provide that shelter. The choice between the parties’ dueling constructions is not a difficult one. Section 1089(e)’s operative clause states, in no uncertain terms, that the FTCA’s intentional tort exception, §2680(h), “shall not apply,” and §1089(e)’s introductory clause confines the abrogation of §2680(h) to medical personnel employed by the agencies listed in the Gonzalez Act. Had Congress wanted to adopt the Government’s counterfactual interpretation, it could have used more precise language, as it did in §1089(c), a subsection adjacent to §1089(e). Pp. 8–11. (b) Under the Government’s interpretation of §1089(e), the Liability Reform Act would displace much of the Gonzalez Act. That reading conflicts with the view the Government stated in United States v. Smith, 499 U.S. 160. There, the question was whether a person injured abroad due to a military doctor’s negligence may seek compensation from the doctor in a U. S. court, for the FTCA gave them no recourse against the Government on a “claim arising in a foreign country,” 28 U. S. C. §2680(k). In arguing that such persons also lacked recourse to a suit against the doctor, the Government contended that the Liability Reform Act made “[t]he remedy against the United States” under the FTCA “exclusive.” §2679(b)(1). This interpretation, the Government argued, would not override the Gonzalez Act, which would continue to serve two important functions: Title 10 U. S. C. §1089(f)(1) would authorize indemnification of individual military doctors sued abroad where foreign law might govern; and the Gonzalez Act would allow an FTCA suit against the United States if the doctor performed a procedure to which the plaintiff did not consent. Adopting the Government’s construction, the Court held that §2679(b)(1) grants all federal employees, including medical personnel, immunity for acts within the scope of their employment, even when the FTCA provides no remedy against the United States. 499 U. S., at 166. Under the Government’s current reading of §1089(e), the Liability Reform Act overrides the Gonzalez Act except in the atypical circumstances in which indemnification of the doctor under §1089(f)(1) remains possible, while under Levin’s reading, the Gonzalez Act does just what the Government said it did in Smith. Pp. 11–13. (c) The Government attempts to inject ambiguity into §1089(e) by claiming that 38 U. S. C. §7316, a parallel statute that confers immunity on medical personnel of the Department of Veterans Affairs, expresses Congress’ intent to abrogate §2680(h) with the unmistakable clarity the Gonzalez Act lacks. But this Court sees nothing dispositively different about the wording of the two provisions, and neither did the Government when it argued in the District Court that §1089(e) and §7316(f) are functionally indistinguishable. Pp. 13–14. 663 F.3d 1059, reversed and remanded. Ginsburg, J., delivered the opinion of the Court, which was unanimous except insofar as Scalia, J., did not join footnotes 6 and 7.

§1089(e)”). We agree with the Government’s earlier view, and not with the freshly minted revision. * * * For the reasons stated, we hold that the Gonzalez Act direction in 10 U. S. C. §1089(e) abrogates the FTCA’s intentional tort exception and therefore permits Levin’s suit against the United States alleging medical battery by a Navy doctor acting within the scope of his employment. Accordingly, we reverse the judgment of the Court of Appeals and remand the case for further proceedings consistent with this opinion. It is so ordered. Notes 1 * Justice Scalia joins this opinion, except as to footnotes 6 and 7. 2 This shorthand description is not entirely accurate. Section 2680(h) does not remove from the FTCA’s waiver all intentional torts, e.g., conversion and trespass, and it encompasses certain torts, e.g., misrepresentation, that may arise out of negligent conduct. See United States v. Neustadt, 366 U.S. 696, 702 (1961). 3 The agency-specific statutes were patterned on the Federal Drivers Act, 75Stat. 539, 28 U. S. C. §§2679(b)–(e) (1970 ed.), passed in 1961 and amended in 1988 by Pub. L. 100–694, §5(b), 102Stat. 4564. The Drivers Act made an action against the United States under the FTCA the “exclusive” remedy for “personal injury . . . resulting from the operation by any employee of the Government of any motor vehicle while acting within the scope of his office or employment.” §2679(b). Statutes conferring immunity on medical personnel of the Department of Veterans Affairs, 79Stat. 1156, 38 U. S. C. §4116 (1970 ed.), now codified at 38 U. S. C. §7316 (2006 ed.), and the Public Health Service, 84Stat. 1870, 42 U. S. C. §233 (2006 ed.), followed in 1965 and 1970, respectively. In 1976, in addition to the Gonzalez Act, Congress enacted a statute immunizing medical personnel of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, 90Stat. 1988, 42 U. S. C. §2458a (1982 ed.), now codified at 51 U. S. C. §20137 (2006 ed., Supp. IV). And in 1980, it enacted a personal immunity statute covering medical personnel of the Department of State, 94Stat. 2155, 22 U. S. C. §2702 (2006 ed.). 4 In full, §1089(a) reads: “The remedy against the United States provided by sections 1346(b) and 2672 of title 28 for damages for personal injury, including death, caused by the negligent or wrongful act or omission of any physician, dentist, nurse, pharmacist, or paramedical or other supporting personnel (including medical and dental technicians, nursing assistants, and therapists) of the armed forces, the National Guard while engaged in training or duty under section 316, 502, 503, 504, or 505 of title 32, the Department of Defense, the Armed Forces Retirement Home, or the Central Intelligence Agency in the performance of medical, dental, or related health care functions (including clinical studies and investigations) while acting within the scope of his duties or employment therein or therefor shall hereafter be exclusive of any other civil action or proceeding by reason of the same subject matter against such physician, dentist, nurse, pharmacist, or paramedical or other supporting personnel (or the estate of such person) whose act or omission gave rise to such action or proceeding. This subsection shall also apply if the physician, dentist, nurse, pharmacist, or paramedical or other supporting personnel (or the estate of such person) involved is serving under a personal services contract entered into under section 1091 of this title.” 5 In accord with the Ninth Circuit, the Government maintains that sovereign immunity is never waived absent unequivocal congressional statement to that effect. See Brief for United States 14–15 (citing FAA v. Cooper, 566 U. S. ___, ___ (2012) (slip op., at 5)); United States v. Bormes, 568 U. S. ___, ___ (2012) (slip op., at 4). Levin, on the other hand, urges that, in view of the FTCA’s sweeping waiver of immunity, §1346(b)(1), exceptions to that waiver, contained in §2680, should not be accorded an unduly generous interpretation. See Brief for Court-Appointed Amicus Curiae in Support of Petitioner 40 (citing Dolan v. Postal Service, 546 U.S. 481, 492 (2006)). We need not settle this dispute. For the reasons stated, infra this page and 9–14, we conclude that §1089(e) meets the unequivocal waiver standard. 6 We appointed James A. Feldman to brief and argue the position of the petitioner as amicus curiae. 568 U. S. ___ (2012). Amicus Feldman has ably discharged his assigned responsibilities and the Court thanks him for his well stated arguments. 7 Corroborating this plain reading, the Senate Report on the Gonzalez Act explains that §1089(e) was enacted to “nullify a provision of the Federal Tort Claims Act which would otherwise exclude any action for assault and battery” from FTCA coverage. S. Rep. No. 94–1264, p. 9 (1976). 8 See S. Rep. No. 100–215, p. 171 (1987) (§7316(f) was “patterned after” §1089(e)).

568.US.78

Petitioner Los Angeles County Flood Control District (District) operates a “municipal separate storm sewer system” (MS4), a drainage system that collects, transports, and discharges storm water. Because storm water is often heavily polluted, the Clean Water Act (CWA) and its implementing regulations require certain MS4 operators to obtain a National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (NPDES) permit before discharging storm water into navigable waters. The District has such a permit for its MS4. Respondents Natural Resources Defense Council, Inc. (NRDC) and Santa Monica Baykeeper (Baykeeper) filed a citizen suit against the District and others under §505 of the CWA, 33 U. S. C. §1365, alleging, among other things, that water-quality measurements from monitoring stations within the Los Angeles and San Gabriel Rivers demonstrated that the District was violating the terms of its permit. The District Court granted summary judgment to the District on these claims, concluding that the record was insufficient to warrant a finding that the MS4 had discharged storm water containing the standards-exceeding pollutants detected at the downstream monitoring stations. The Ninth Circuit reversed in relevant part. The court held that the District was liable for the discharge of pollutants that, in the court’s view, occurred when the polluted water detected at the monitoring stations flowed out of the concrete-lined portions of the rivers, where the monitoring stations are located, into lower, unlined portions of the same rivers. Held: The flow of water from an improved portion of a navigable waterway into an unimproved portion of the same waterway does not qualify as a “discharge of a pollutant” under the CWA. See South Fla. Water Management Dist. v. Miccosukee Tribe, 541 U.S. 95, 109–112 (holding that the transfer of polluted water between “two parts of the same water body” does not constitute a discharge of pollutants under the CWA). The Ninth Circuit’s decision cannot be squared with this holding. The NRDC and Baykeeper alternatively argue that, based on the terms of the District’s NPDES permit, the exceedances detected at the monitoring stations sufficed to establish the District’s liability under the CWA for its upstream discharges. This argument, which failed below, is not embraced within the narrow question on which certiorari was granted. The Court therefore does not address it. Pp. 3–5. 673 F.3d 880, reversed and remanded. Ginsburg, J., delivered the opinion of the Court, in which Roberts, C. J., and Scalia, Kennedy, Thomas, Breyer, Sotomayor, and Kagan, JJ., joined. Alito, J., concurred in the judgment.

The Court granted review in this case limited to a single question: Under the Clean Water Act (CWA), 86 Stat. 816, as amended, 33 U. S. C. §1251 et seq., does the flow of water out of a concrete channel within a river rank as a “discharge of a pollutant”? In this Court, the parties and the United States as amicus curiae agree that the answer to this question is “no.” They base this accord on South Fla. Water Management Dist. v. Miccosukee Tribe, 541 U.S. 95, 109–112 (2004), in which we accepted that pumping polluted water from one part of a water body into another part of the same body is not a discharge of pol- lutants under the CWA. Adhering to the view we took in Miccosukee, we hold that the parties correctly answered the sole question presented in the negative. The decision in this suit rendered by the Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit is inconsistent with our determination. We therefore reverse that court’s judgment. Petitioner Los Angeles County Flood Control District (District) operates a “municipal separate storm sewer system” (MS4)—a drainage system that collects, transports, and discharges storm water. See 40 CFR §122.26(b)(8) (2012). See also §122.26(b)(13) (“Storm water means storm water runoff, snow melt runoff, and surface runoff and drainage.”). Because storm water is often heavily polluted, see 64 Fed. Reg. 68724–68727 (1999), the CWA and its implementing regulations require the operator of an MS4 serving a population of at least 100,000 to obtain a National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (NPDES) permit before discharging storm water into navigable waters. See 33 U. S. C. §§1311(a), 1342(p)(2)(C), and (D); 40 CFR §§122.26(a)(3), (b)(4), (b)(7). The District first obtained a NPDES permit for its MS4 in 1990; thereafter, the permit was several times renewed. Natural Resources Defense Council, Inc. v. County of Los Angeles, 673 F.3d 880, 886 (CA9 2011). Respondents Natural Resources Defense Council, Inc. (NRDC) and Santa Monica Baykeeper (Baykeeper) filed a citizen suit against the District and several other defendants under §505 of the CWA, 33 U. S. C. §1365. They alleged, among other things, that water-quality measurements from monitoring stations located within the Los Angeles and San Gabriel Rivers demonstrated that the District was violating the terms of its permit. The District Court granted summary judgment to the District on these claims. It was undisputed, the District Court acknowledged, that “data from the Los Angeles River and San Gabriel River [monitoring] stations indicate[d] that water quality standards ha[d] repeatedly been exceeded for a number of pollutants, including aluminum, copper, cyanide, fecal coliform bacteria, and zinc.” App. to Pet. for Cert. 108. But numerous entities other than the District, the court added, discharge into the rivers upstream of the monitoring stations. See id., at 115–116. See also 673 F. 3d, at 889 (observing that the pollutants of “thousands of permitted dischargers” reach the rivers). The record was insufficient, the District Court concluded, to warrant a finding that the District’s MS4 had discharged storm water containing the standards-exceeding pollutants detected at the downstream monitoring stations. The Ninth Circuit reversed in relevant part. The monitoring stations for the Los Angeles and San Gabriel Rivers, the Court of Appeals said, are located in “concrete channels” constructed for flood-control purposes. Id., at 900. See also id., at 889 (describing the monitoring stations’ location). Based on this impression, the Court of Appeals held that a discharge of pollutants occurred under the CWA when the polluted water detected at the monitoring stations “flowed out of the concrete channels” and entered downstream portions of the waterways lacking concrete linings. Id., at 900. Because the District exer- cises control over the concrete-lined portions of the rivers, the Court of Appeals held, the District is liable for the discharges that, in the appellate court’s view, occur when water exits those concrete channels. See id., at 899–901. We granted certiorari on the following question: Under the CWA, does a “discharge of pollutants” occur when polluted water “flows from one portion of a river that is navigable water of the United States, through a concrete channel or other engineered improvement in the river,” and then “into a lower portion of the same river”? Pet. for Cert. i. See 567 U. S. ___ (2012). As noted above, see supra, at 1, the parties, as well as the United States as amicus curiae, agree that the answer to this question is “no.” That agreement is hardly surprising, for we held in Miccosukee that the transfer of polluted water between “two parts of the same water body” does not constitute a discharge of pollutants under the CWA. 541 U. S., at 109–112. We derived that determination from the CWA’s text, which defines the term “discharge of a pollutant” to mean “any addition of any pollutant to navigable waters from any point source.” 33 U. S. C. §1362(12) (emphasis added). Under a common understanding of the meaning of the word “add,” no pollutants are “added” to a water body when water is merely transferred between different portions of that water body. See Webster’s Third New International Dictionary 24 (2002) (“add” means “to join, annex, or unite (as one thing to another) so as to bring about an increase (as in number, size, or importance) or so as to form one aggregate”). “As the Second Circuit [aptly] put it . . . , ‘[i]f one takes a ladle of soup from a pot, lifts it above the pot, and pours it back into the pot, one has not “added” soup or anything else to the pot.’ ” Miccosukee, 541 U. S., at 109–110 (quoting Catskill Mountains Chapter of Trout Unlimited, Inc. v. New York, 273 F.3d 481, 492 (CA2 2001)). In Miccosukee, polluted water was removed from a ca- nal, transported through a pump station, and then de- posited into a nearby reservoir. 541 U. S., at 100. We held that this water transfer would count as a discharge of pollutants under the CWA only if the canal and the reservoir were “meaningfully distinct water bodies.” Id., at 112. It follows, a fortiori, from Miccosukee that no discharge of pollutants occurs when water, rather than being removed and then returned to a water body, simply flows from one portion of the water body to another. We hold, therefore, that the flow of water from an improved portion of a navigable waterway into an unimproved portion of the very same waterway does not qualify as a discharge of pollutants under the CWA. Because the decision below cannot be squared with that holding, the Court of Appeals’ judgment must be reversed.[1] The NRDC and Baykeeper urge that the Court of Appeals reached the right result, albeit for the wrong reason. The monitoring system proposed by the District and written into its permit showed numerous instances in which water-quality standards were exceeded. Under the permit’s terms, the NRDC and Baykeeper maintain, the ex- ceedances detected at the instream monitoring stations are by themselves sufficient to establish the District’s liability under the CWA for its upstream discharges. See Brief for Respondents 33–62.[2] This argument failed below. See 673 F. 3d, at 898, 901; App. to Pet. for Cert. 100–102. It is not embraced within, or even touched by, the narrow question on which we granted certiorari. We therefore do not address, and indicate no opinion on, the issue the NRDC and Baykeeper seek to substitute for the question we took up for review. * * * For the reasons stated, the judgment of the Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit is reversed, and the case is remanded. It is so ordered. Justice Alito concurs in the judgment. Notes 1 The NRDC, Baykeeper, and the United States contend—contrary to the District—that the Court of Appeals understood that no discharge of pollutants occurs when water flows from an improved into an unimproved portion of a navigable waterway. They suggest that the Court of Appeals misperceived the facts, erroneously believing that the monitoring stations for the Los Angeles and San Gabriel Rivers “were sampling water from a portion of the MS4 that was distinct from the rivers themselves and from which discharges through an outfall to the rivers subsequently occurred.” Brief for United States as Amicus Curiae 18. See also Brief for Respondents 30–31 (“The court of appeals’ statements suggest it believed the monitoring stations sampled polluted stormwater from the District’s MS4 before, not after, discharge to the Los Angeles and San Gabriel Rivers.”). Whatever the source of the Court of Appeals’ error, all parties agree that the court’s analysis was erroneous. 2 Shortly before oral argument in this case, a renewed permit was approved for the District’s MS4. Unlike the District’s prior permit, which required only instream monitoring, the renewed permit requires end-of-pipe monitoring at individual MS4 discharge points. See id., at 20–21; Reply Brief 5, n. 2.

568.US.115

Petitioner Lozman’s floating home was a house-like plywood structure with empty bilge space underneath the main floor to keep it afloat. He had it towed several times before deciding on a marina owned by the city of Riviera Beach (City). After various disputes with Lozman and unsuccessful efforts to evict him from the marina, the City brought a federal admiralty lawsuit in rem against the floating home, seeking a lien for dockage fees and damages for trespass. Lozman moved to dismiss the suit for lack of admiralty jurisdiction. The District Court found the floating home to be a “vessel” under the Rules of Construction Act, which defines a “vessel” as including “every description of watercraft or other artificial contrivance used, or capable of being used, as a means of transportation on water,” 1 U. S. C. §3, concluded that admiralty jurisdiction was proper, and awarded the City dockage fees and nominal damages. The Eleventh Circuit affirmed, agreeing that the home was a “vessel” since it was “capable” of movement over water despite petitioner’s subjective intent to remain moored indefinitely. Held: 1. This case is not moot. The District Court ordered the floating home sold, and the City purchased the home at auction and had it destroyed. Before the sale, the court ordered the City to post a bond to ensure Lozman could obtain monetary relief if he prevailed. P. 3. 2. Lozman’s floating home is not a §3 “vessel.” Pp. 3–15. (a) The Eleventh Circuit found the home “capable of being used . . . as a means of transportation on water” because it could float and proceed under tow and its shore connections did not render it incapable of transportation. This interpretation is too broad. The definition of “transportation,” the conveyance of persons or things from one place to another, must be applied in a practical way. Stewart v. Dutra Constr. Co., 543 U.S. 481, 496. Consequently, a structure does not fall within the scope of the statutory phrase unless a reasonable observer, looking to the home’s physical characteristics and activities, would consider it designed to a practical degree for carrying people or things over water. Pp. 3–5. (b) But for the fact that it floats, nothing about Lozman’s home suggests that it was designed to any practical degree to transport persons or things over water. It had no steering mechanism, had an unraked hull and rectangular bottom 10 inches below the water, and had no capacity to generate or store electricity. It also lacked self-propulsion, differing significantly from an ordinary houseboat. Pp. 5–6. (c) This view of the statute is consistent with its text, precedent, and relevant purposes. The statute’s language, read naturally, lends itself to that interpretation: The term “contrivance” refers to something “employed in contriving to effect a purpose”; “craft” explains that purpose as “water carriage and transport”; the addition of “water” to “craft” emphasizes the point; and the words, “used, or capable of being used, as a means of transportation on water,” drive the point home. Both Evansville & Bowling Green Packet Co. v. Chero Cola Bottling Co., 271 U.S. 19, and Stewart, supra, support this conclusion. Evansville involved a wharfboat floated next to a dock, used to transfer cargo, and towed to harbor each winter; and Stewart involved a dredge used to remove silt from the ocean floor, which carried a captain and crew and could be navigated only by manipulating anchors and cables or by being towed. Water transportation was not the primary purpose of either structure; neither was in motion at relevant times; and both were sometimes attached to the ocean bottom or to land. However, Stewart’s dredge, which was regularly, but not primarily, used to transport workers and equipment over water, fell within the statutory definition while Evansville’s wharfboat, which was not designed to, and did not, serve a transportation function, did not. Lower court cases, on balance, also tend to support this conclusion. Further, the purposes of major federal maritime statutes—e.g., admiralty provisions provide special attachment procedures lest a vessel avoid liability by sailing away, recognize that sailors face special perils at sea, and encourage shipowners to engage in port-related commerce—reveal little reason to classify floating homes as “vessels.” Finally, this conclusion is consistent with state laws in States where floating home owners have congregated in communities. Pp. 6–11. (d) Several important arguments made by the City and its amici are unavailing. They argue that a purpose-based test may introduce a subjective element into “vessel” determinations. But the Court has considered only objective evidence, looking to the views of a reasonable observer and the physical attributes and behavior of the structure. They also argue against using criteria that are too abstract, complex, or open-ended. While this Court’s approach is neither perfectly precise nor always determinative, it is workable and consistent and should offer guidance in a significant number of borderline cases. And contrary to the dissent’s suggestion, the Court sees nothing to be gained by a remand. Pp. 11–14. (e) The City’s additional argument that Lozman’s floating home was actually used for transportation over water is similarly unpersuasive. P. 14. 649 F.3d 1259, reversed. Breyer, J., delivered the opinion of the Court, in which Roberts, C. J., and Scalia, Thomas, Ginsburg, Alito, and Kagan, JJ., joined. Sotomayor, J., filed a dissenting opinion, in which Kennedy, J., joined.

The Rules of Construction Act defines a “vessel” as in- cluding “every description of watercraft or other artificial contrivance used, or capable of being used, as a means of transportation on water.” 1 U. S. C. §3. The question before us is whether petitioner’s floating home (which is not self-propelled) falls within the terms of that definition. In answering that question we focus primarily upon the phrase “capable of being used.” This term encompasses “practical” possibilities, not “merely . . . theoretical” ones. Stewart v. Dutra Constr. Co., 543 U.S. 481, 496 (2005). We believe that a reasonable observer, looking to the home’s physical characteristics and activities, would not consider it to be designed to any practical degree for carrying people or things on water. And we consequently conclude that the floating home is not a “vessel.” I In 2002 Fane Lozman, petitioner, bought a 60-foot by 12-foot floating home. App. 37, 71. The home consisted of a house-like plywood structure with French doors on three sides. Id., at 38, 44. It contained a sitting room, bedroom, closet, bathroom, and kitchen, along with a stairway leading to a second level with office space. Id., at 45–66. An empty bilge space underneath the main floor kept it afloat. Id., at 38. (See Appendix, infra, for a photograph.) After buying the floating home, Lozman had it towed about 200 miles to North Bay Village, Florida, where he moored it and then twice more had it towed between nearby marinas. In 2006 Lozman had the home towed a further 70 miles to a marina owned by the city of Riviera Beach (City), respondent, where he kept it docked. Brief for Respondent 5. After various disputes with Lozman and unsuccessful efforts to evict him from the marina, the City brought this federal admiralty lawsuit in rem against the floating home. It sought a maritime lien for dockage fees and damages for trespass. See Federal Maritime Lien Act, 46 U. S. C. §31342 (authorizing federal maritime lien against vessel to collect debts owed for the provision of “necessaries to a vessel”); 28 U. S. C. §1333(1) (civil admiralty jurisdiction). See also Leon v. Galceran, 11 Wall. 185 (1871); The Rock Island Bridge, 6 Wall. 213, 215 (1867). Lozman, acting pro se, asked the District Court to dismiss the suit on the ground that the court lacked admi- ralty jurisdiction. See 2 Record, Doc. 64. After summary judgment proceedings, the court found that the floating home was a “vessel” and concluded that admiralty jurisdiction was consequently proper. Pet. for Cert. 42a. The judge then conducted a bench trial on the merits and awarded the City $3,039.88 for dockage along with $1 in nominal damages for trespass. Id., at 49a. On appeal the Eleventh Circuit affirmed. Riviera Beach v. That Certain Unnamed Gray, Two-Story Vessel Approximately Fifty-Seven Feet in Length, 649 F.3d 1259 (2011). It agreed with the District Court that the home was a “vessel.” In its view, the home was “capable” of movement over water and the owner’s subjective intent to remain moored “indefinitely” at a dock could not show the con- trary. Id., at 1267–1269. Lozman sought certiorari. In light of uncertainty among the Circuits about application of the term “capable” we granted his petition. Compare De La Rosa v. St. Charles Gaming Co., 474 F.3d 185, 187 (CA5 2006) (structure is not a “vessel” where “physically,” but only “theoretical[ly],” “capable of sailing,” and owner intends to moor it indef- initely as floating casino), with Board of Comm’rs of Or- leans Levee Dist. v. M/V Belle of Orleans, 535 F.3d 1299, 1311–1312 (CA11 2008) (structure is a “vessel” where capable of moving over water under tow, “albeit to her detriment,” despite intent to moor indefinitely). See also 649 F. 3d, at 1267 (rejecting views of Circuits that “ ‘focus on the intent of the shipowner’ ”). II At the outset we consider one threshold matter. The District Court ordered the floating home sold to satisfy the City’s judgment. The City bought the home at public auction and subsequently had it destroyed. And, after the parties filed their merits briefs, we ordered further briefing on the question of mootness in light of the home’s destruction. 567 U. S. ___ (2012). The parties now have pointed out that, prior to the home’s sale, the District Court ordered the City to post a $25,000 bond “to secure Mr. Lozman’s value in the vessel.” 1 Record, Doc. 20, p. 2. The bond ensures that Lozman can obtain monetary relief if he ultimately prevails. We consequently agree with the parties that the case is not moot. III A We focus primarily upon the statutory phrase “capable of being used . . . as a means of transportation on water.” 1 U. S. C. §3. The Court of Appeals found that the home was “capable” of transportation because it could float, it could proceed under tow, and its shore connections (power cable, water hose, rope lines) did not “ ‘rende[r]’ ” it “ ‘practically incapable of transportation or movement.’ ” 649 F. 3d, at 1266 (quoting Belle of Orleans, supra, at 1312, in turn quoting Stewart, 543 U. S., at 494). At least for argument’s sake we agree with the Court of Appeals about the last-mentioned point, namely that Lozman’s shore connections did not “ ‘render’ ” the home “ ‘practically incapable of transportation.’ ” But unlike the Eleventh Circuit, we do not find these considerations (even when combined with the home’s other characteristics) sufficient to show that Lozman’s home was a “vessel.” The Court of Appeals recognized that it had applied the term “capable” broadly. 649 F. 3d, at 1266. Indeed, it pointed with approval to language in an earlier case, Burks v. American River Transp. Co., 679 F.2d 69 (1982), in which the Fifth Circuit said: “ ‘No doubt the three men in a tub would also fit within our definition, and one probably could make a convincing case for Jonah inside the whale.’ ” 649 F. 3d, at 1269 (brackets omitted) (quoting Burks, supra, at 75). But the Eleventh Circuit’s interpretation is too broad. Not every floating structure is a “vessel.” To state the obvious, a wooden washtub, a plastic dishpan, a swimming platform on pontoons, a large fishing net, a door taken off its hinges, or Pinocchio (when inside the whale) are not “vessels,” even if they are “artificial contrivance[s]” capable of floating, moving under tow, and incidentally carrying even a fair-sized item or two when they do so. Rather, the statute applies to an “artificial contrivance . . . capable of being used . . . as a means of transportation on water.” 1 U. S. C. §3 (emphasis added). “[T]ransportation” involves the “conveyance (of things or persons) from one place to another.” 18 Oxford English Dictionary 424 (2d ed. 1989) (OED). Accord, N. Webster, An American Dictionary of the English Language 1406 (C. Goodrich & N. Porter eds. 1873) (“[t]he act of transporting, carrying, or conveying from one place to another”). And we must apply this definition in a “practical,” not a “theoretical,” way. Stewart, supra, at 496. Consequently, in our view a structure does not fall within the scope of this statutory phrase unless a reasonable observer, looking to the home’s phys- ical characteristics and activities, would consider it designed to a practical degree for carrying people or things over water. B Though our criterion is general, the facts of this case illustrate more specifically what we have in mind. But for the fact that it floats, nothing about Lozman’s home suggests that it was designed to any practical degree to transport persons or things over water. It had no rudder or other steering mechanism. 649 F. 3d, at 1269. Its hull was unraked, ibid., and it had a rectangular bottom 10 inches below the water. Brief for Petitioner 27; App. 37. It had no special capacity to generate or store electricity but could obtain that utility only through ongoing connections with the land. Id., at 40. Its small rooms looked like ordinary nonmaritime living quarters. And those inside those rooms looked out upon the world, not through watertight portholes, but through French doors or ordinary windows. Id., at 44–66. Although lack of self-propulsion is not dispositive, e.g., The Robert W. Parsons, 191 U.S. 17, 31 (1903), it may be a relevant physical characteristic. And Lozman’s home differs significantly from an ordinary houseboat in that it has no ability to propel itself. Cf. 33 CFR §173.3 (2012) (“Houseboat means a motorized vessel . . . designed primarily for multi-purpose accommodation spaces with low freeboard and little or no foredeck or cockpit” (emphasis added)). Lozman’s home was able to travel over water only by being towed. Prior to its arrest, that home’s travel by tow over water took place on only four occasions over a period of seven years. Supra, at 2. And when the home was towed a significant distance in 2006, the towing company had a second boat follow behind to prevent the home from swinging dangerously from side to side. App. 104. The home has no other feature that might suggest a design to transport over water anything other than its own furnishings and related personal effects. In a word, we can find nothing about the home that could lead a reasonable observer to consider it designed to a practical degree for “transportation on water.” C Our view of the statute is consistent with its text, precedent, and relevant purposes. For one thing, the statute’s language, read naturally, lends itself to that interpretation. We concede that the statute uses the word “every,” referring to “every description of watercraft or other artificial contrivance.” 1 U. S. C. §3 (emphasis added). But the term “contrivance” refers to “something contrived for, or employed in contriving to effect a purpose.” 3 OED 850 (def. 7). The term “craft” explains that purpose as “water carriage and transport.” Id., at 1104 (def. V(9)(b)) (de- fining “craft” as a “vesse[l] . . . for” that purpose). The ad-dition of the word “water” to “craft,” yielding the term “watercraft,” emphasizes the point. And the next few words, “used, or capable of being used, as a means of transportation on water,” drive the point home. For another thing, the bulk of precedent supports our conclusion. In Evansville & Bowling Green Packet Co. v. Chero Cola Bottling Co., 271 U.S. 19 (1926), the Court held that a wharfboat was not a “vessel.” The wharfboat floated next to a dock; it was used to transfer cargo from ship to dock and ship to ship; and it was connected to the dock with cables, utility lines, and a ramp. Id., at 21. At the same time, it was capable of being towed. And it was towed each winter to a harbor to avoid river ice. Id., at 20–21. The Court reasoned that, despite the annual movement under tow, the wharfboat “was not used to carry freight from one place to another,” nor did it “encounter perils of navigation to which craft used for transportation are exposed.” Id., at 22. (See Appendix, infra, for photograph of a period wharfboat). The Court’s reasoning in Stewart also supports our conclusion. We there considered the application of the statutory definition to a dredge. 543 U. S., at 494. The dredge was “a massive floating platform” from which a suspended clamshell bucket would “remov[e] silt from the ocean floor,” depositing it “onto one of two scows” floating alongside the dredge. Id., at 484. Like more traditional “seagoing vessels,” the dredge had, e.g., “a captain and crew, navigational lights, ballast tanks, and a crew dining area.” Ibid. Unlike more ordinary vessels, it could navigate only by “manipulating its anchors and cables” or by being towed. Ibid. Nonetheless it did move. In fact it moved over water “every couple of hours.” Id., at 485. We held that the dredge was a “vessel.” We wrote that §3’s definition “merely codified the meaning that the term ‘vessel’ had acquired in general maritime law.” Id., at 490. We added that the question of the “watercraft’s use ‘as a means of transportation on water’ is . . . practical,” and not “merely . . . theoretical.” Id., at 496. And we pointed to cases holding that dredges ordinarily “served a waterborne transportation function,” namely that “in performing their work they carried machinery, equipment, and crew over water.” Id., at 491–492 (citing, e.g., Butler v. Ellis, 45 F.2d 951, 955 (CA4 1930)). As the Court of Appeals pointed out, in Stewart we also wrote that §3 “does not require that a watercraft be used primarily for that [transportation] purpose,” 543 U. S., at 495; that a “watercraft need not be in motion to qualify as a vessel,” ibid.; and that a structure may qualify as a vessel even if attached—but not “permanently” attached—to the land or ocean floor. Id., at 493–494. We did not take these statements, however, as implying a universal set of sufficient conditions for application of the definition. Rather, they say, and they mean, that the statutory definition may (or may not) apply—not that it automatically must apply—where a structure has some other primary purpose, where it is stationary at relevant times, and where it is attached—but not permanently attached—to land. After all, a washtub is normally not a “vessel” though it does not have water transportation as its primary purpose, it may be stationary much of the time, and it might be attached—but not permanently attached—to land. More to the point, water transportation was not the primary purpose of either Stewart’s dredge or Evansville’s wharfboat; neither structure was “in motion” at relevant times; and both were sometimes attached (though not permanently attached) to the ocean bottom or to land. Nonetheless Stewart’s dredge fell within the statute’s definition while Evansville’s wharfboat did not. The basic difference, we believe, is that the dredge was regularly, but not primarily, used (and designed in part to be used) to transport workers and equipment over water while the wharfboat was not designed (to any practical degree) to serve a transportation function and did not do so. Compare Cope v. Vallette Dry Dock Co., 119 U.S. 625 (1887) (floating drydock not a “vessel” because permanently fixed to wharf), with Jerome B. Grubart, Inc. v. Great Lakes Dredge & Dock Co., 513 U.S. 527, 535 (1995) (barge sometimes attached to river bottom to use as a work platform remains a “vessel” when “at other times it was used for transportation”). See also ibid. (citing Great Lakes Dredge & Dock Co. v. Chicago, 3 F.3d 225, 229 (CA7 1993) (“[A] craft is a ‘vessel’ if its purpose is to some reasonable degree ‘the transportation of passengers, cargo, or equipment from place to place across navigable waters’ ”)); Cope, supra, at 630 (describing “hopper-barge,” as potentially a “vessel” because it is a “navigable structure[,] used for the purpose of transportation”); cf. 1 Benedict on Admiralty §164, p. 10–6 (7th rev. ed. 2012) (maritime jurisdiction proper if “the craft is a navigable structure intended for maritime transportation”). Lower court cases also tend, on balance, to support our conclusion. See, e.g., Bernard v. Binnings Constr. Co., 741 F.2d 824, 828, n. 13, 832, n. 25 (CA5 1984) (work punt lacking features objectively indicating a transportation function not a “vessel,” for “our decisions make clear that the mere capacity to float or move across navigable waters does not necessarily make a structure a vessel”); Ruddiman v. A Scow Platform, 38 F. 158 (SDNY 1889) (scow, though “capable of being towed . . . though not without some difficulty, from its clumsy structure” just a floating box, not a “vessel,” because “it was not designed or used for the purpose of navigation,” not engaged “in the transportation of persons or cargo,” and had “no motive power, no rudder, no sails”). See also 1 T. Schoenbaum, Admi- ralty and Maritime Law §3–6, p. 155 (5th ed. 2011) (courts have found that “floating dry-dock[s],” “floating platforms, barges, or rafts used for construction or repair of piers, docks, bridges, pipelines and other” similar facilities are not “vessels”); E. Benedict, American Admiralty §215, p. 116 (3d rev. ed. 1898) (defining “vessel” as a “ ‘machine adapted to transportation over rivers, seas, and oceans’ ”). We recognize that some lower court opinions can be read as endorsing the “anything that floats” approach. See Miami River Boat Yard, Inc. v. 60’ Houseboat, 390 F.2d 596, 597 (CA5 1968) (so-called “houseboat” lacking self-propulsion); Sea Village Marina, LLC v. A 1980 Carlcraft Houseboat, No. 09–3292, 2009 WL 3379923, *5–*6 (D NJ, Oct. 19, 2009) (following Miami River Boat Yard); Hudson Harbor 79th Street Boat Basin, Inc. v. Sea Casa, 469 F. Supp. 987, 989 (SDNY 1979) (same). Cf. Holmes v. Atlantic Sounding Co., 437 F.3d 441 (CA5 2006) (floating dormitory); Summerlin v. Massman Constr. Co., 199 F.2d 715 (CA4 1952) (derrick anchored in the river engaged in building a bridge is a vessel). For the reasons we have stated, we find such an approach inappropriate and inconsistent with our precedents. Further, our examination of the purposes of major federal maritime statutes reveals little reason to classify floating homes as “vessels.” Admiralty law, for example, provides special attachment procedures lest a vessel avoid liability by sailing away. 46 U. S. C. §§31341–31343 (2006 ed. and Supp. IV). Liability statutes such as the Jones Act recognize that sailors face the special “ ‘perils of the sea.’ ” Chandris, Inc. v. Latsis, 515 U.S. 347, 354, 373 (1995) (referring to “ ‘vessel[s] in navigation’ ”). Certain admiralty tort doctrines can encourage shipowners to engage in port-related commerce. E.g., 46 U. S. C. §30505; Executive Jet Aviation, Inc. v. Cleveland, 409 U.S. 249, 269–270 (1972). And maritime safety statutes subject vessels to U. S. Coast Guard inspections. E.g., 46 U. S. C. §3301. Lozman, however, cannot easily escape liability by sailing away in his home. He faces no special sea dangers. He does not significantly engage in port-related commerce. And the Solicitor General tells us that to adopt a version of the “anything that floats” test would place unneces- sary and undesirable inspection burdens upon the Coast Guard. Brief for United States as Amicus Curiae 29, n. 11. Finally, our conclusion is consistent with state laws in States where floating home owners have congregated in communities. See Brief for Seattle Floating Homes As- sociation et al. as Amici Curiae 1. A Washington State environmental statute, for example, defines a floating home (for regulatory purposes) as “a single-family dwelling unit constructed on a float, that is moored, anchored, or otherwise secured in waters, and is not a vessel, even though it may be capable of being towed.” Wash. Rev. Code Ann. §90.58.270(5)(b)(ii) (Supp. 2012). A California statute defines a floating home (for tax purposes) as “a floating structure” that is “designed and built to be used, or is modified to be used, as a stationary waterborne residential dwelling,” and which (unlike a typical houseboat), has no independent power generation, and is dependent on shore utilities. Cal. Health & Safety Code Ann. §18075.55(d) (West 2006). These States, we are told, treat structures that meet their “floating home” definitions like ordinary land-based homes rather than like vessels. Brief for Seattle Floating Homes Association 2. Consistency of interpretation of related state and federal laws is a virtue in that it helps to create simplicity making the law easier to understand and to follow for lawyers and for nonlawyers alike. And that consideration here supports our conclusion. D The City and supporting amici make several important arguments that warrant our response. First, they ar- gue against use of any purpose-based test lest we introduce into “vessel” determinations a subjective element—namely, the owner’s intent. That element, they say, is often “unverifiable” and too easily manipulated. Its introduction would “foment unpredictability and invite gamesmanship.” Brief for Respondent 33. We agree with the City about the need to eliminate the consideration of evidence of subjective intent. But we cannot agree that the need requires abandonment of all criteria based on “purpose.” Cf. Stewart, 543 U. S., at 495 (discussing transportation purpose). Indeed, it is difficult, if not impossible, to determine the use of a human “contrivance” without some consideration of human purposes. At the same time, we have sought to avoid subjective elements, such as owner’s intent, by permitting consideration only of objective evidence of a waterborne transportation purpose. That is why we have referred to the views of a reasonable observer. Supra, at 1. And it is why we have looked to the physical attributes and behavior of the structure, as objective manifestations of any relevant purpose, and not to the subjective intent of the owner. Supra, at 5–6. We note that various admiralty treatises refer to the use of purpose-based tests without any suggestion that administration of those tests has introduced too much subjectivity into the vessel-determination process. 1 Benedict on Admiralty §164; 1 Admiralty and Maritime Law §3–6. Second, the City, with support of amici, argues against the use of criteria that are too abstract, complex, or open-ended. Brief for Respondent 28–29. A court’s jurisdiction, e.g., admiralty jurisdiction, may turn on application of the term “vessel.” And jurisdictional tests, often applied at the outset of a case, should be “as simple as possible.” Hertz Corp. v. Friend, 559 U. S. ___, ___ (2010) (slip op., at 1). We agree with the last-mentioned sentiment. And we also understand that our approach is neither perfectly pre-cise nor always determinative. Satisfaction of a design-based or purpose-related criterion, for example, is not always sufficient for application of the statutory word “vessel.” A craft whose physical characteristics and activities objectively evidence a waterborne transportation purpose or function may still be rendered a nonvessel by later physical alterations. For example, an owner might take a structure that is otherwise a vessel (even the Queen Mary) and connect it permanently to the land for use, say, as a hotel. See Stewart, supra, at 493–494. Further, changes over time may produce a new form, i.e., a newly designed structure—in which case it may be the new de-sign that is relevant. See Kathriner v. Unisea, Inc., 975 F.2d 657, 660 (CA9 1992) (floating processing plant was no longer a vessel where a “large opening [had been] cut into her hull”). Nor is satisfaction of the criterion always a necessary condition, see Part IV, infra. It is conceivable that an owner might actually use a floating structure not designed to any practical degree for transportation as, say, a ferry boat, regularly transporting goods and persons over water. Nonetheless, we believe the criterion we have used, taken together with our example of its application here, should offer guidance in a significant number of borderline cases where “capacity” to transport over water is in doubt. Moreover, borderline cases will always exist; they require a method for resolution; we believe the method we have used is workable; and, unlike, say, an “anything that floats” test, it is consistent with statutory text, purpose, and precedent. Nor do we believe that the dissent’s approach would prove any more workable. For example, the dissent suggests a relevant distinction between an own- er’s “clothes and personal effects” and “large appliances (like an oven or a refrigerator).” Post, at 8 (opinion of Sotomayor, J.). But a transportation function need not turn on the size of the items in question, and we believe the line between items being transported from place to place (e.g., cargo) and items that are mere appurtenances is the one more likely to be relevant. Cf. Benedict, American Admiralty §222, at 121 (“A ship is usually described as consisting of the ship, her tackle, apparel, and furniture . . .”). Finally, the dissent and the Solicitor General (as amicus for Lozman) argue that a remand is warranted for further factfinding. See post, at 10–12; Brief for United States as Amicus Curiae 29–31. But neither the City nor Lozman makes such a request. Brief for Respondent 18, 49, 52. And the only potentially relevant factual dispute the dis- sent points to is that the home suffered serious damage during a tow. Post, at 10–11. But this would add support to our ultimate conclusion that this floating home was not a vessel. We consequently see nothing to be gained by a remand. IV Although we have focused on the phrase “capable of be- ing used” for transportation over water, the statute also includes as a “vessel” a structure that is actually “used” for that transportation. 1 U. S. C. §3 (emphasis added). And the City argues that, irrespective of its design, Lozman’s floating home was actually so used. Brief for Respondent 32. We are not persuaded by its argument. We are willing to assume for argument’s sake that sometimes it is possible actually to use for water transportation a structure that is in no practical way designed for that purpose. See supra, at 12–13. But even so, the City cannot show the actual use for which it argues. Lozman’s floating home moved only under tow. Before its arrest, it moved significant distances only twice in seven years. And when it moved, it carried, not passengers or cargo, but at the very most (giving the benefit of any factual ambiguity to the City) only its own furnishings, its owner’s personal effects, and personnel present to assure the home’s safety. 649 F. 3d, at 1268; Brief for Respondent 32; Tr. of Oral Arg. 37–38. This is far too little actual “use” to bring the floating home within the terms of the statute. See Evansville, 271 U. S., at 20–21 (wharfboat not a “vessel” even though “[e]ach winter” it “was towed to [a] harbor to protect it from ice”); see also Roper v. United States, 368 U.S. 20, 23 (1961) (“Unlike a barge, the S. S. Harry Lane was not moved in order to transport commodities from one location to another”). See also supra, at 6–11. V For these reasons, the judgment of the Court of Appeals is reversed. It is so ordered. APPENDIX Petitioner’s floating home. App. 69. 50- by 200-foot wharf boat in Evansville, Indiana, on Nov. 13, 1918. H. R. Doc. No. 1521, 65th Cong., 3d Sess., Illustration No. 13 (1918).

570.US.48

Respondent attorneys submitted several state Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests to the South Carolina DMV, seeking names and addresses of thousands of individuals in order to solicit clients for a lawsuit they had pending against several South Carolina car dealerships for violation of a state law that protects car purchasers from dealership actions that are “arbitrary, in bad faith, or unconscionable.” Using the personal information provided by the DMV, respondents sent over 34,000 car purchasers letters, which were headed “ADVERTISING MATERIAL,” explained the lawsuit, and asked recipients to return an enclosed reply card if they wanted to participate in the case. Petitioners, South Carolina residents, sued respondents for violating the federal Driver’s Privacy Protection Act of 1994 (DPPA) by obtaining, disclosing, and using petitioners’ personal information from motor vehicle records for bulk solicitation without their express consent. Respondents moved to dismiss, claiming that the information was properly released under a DPPA exception permitting disclosure of personal information “for use in connection with any civil, criminal, administrative, or arbitral proceeding,” including “investigation in anticipation of litigation.” 18 U. S. C. §2721(b)(4). The District Court held that respondents’ letters were not solicitations and that the use of information fell within (b)(4)’s litigation exception. The Fourth Circuit affirmed, concluding that the letters were solicitation, but that the solicitation was intertwined with conduct that satisfied the (b)(4) exception. Held: An attorney’s solicitation of clients is not a permissible purpose covered by the (b)(4) litigation exception. Pp. 6–29. (a) State DMVs generally require someone seeking a driver’s license or registering a vehicle to disclose detailed personal information such as name, address, telephone number, Social Security number, and medical information. The DPPA—responding to a threat from stalkers and criminals who could acquire state DMV information, and concerns over the States’ common practice of selling such information to direct marketing and solicitation businesses—bans disclosure, absent a driver’s consent, of “personal information,” e.g., names, addresses, or telephone numbers, as well as “highly restricted personal information,” e.g., photographs, social security numbers, and medical or disability information, §2725(4), unless 1 of 14 exemptions applies. Subsection (b)(4) permits disclosure of both personal information and highly restricted personal information, while subsection (b)(12) permits disclosure only of personal information. Pp. 6–8. (b) Respondents’ solicitation of prospective clients is neither a use “in connection with” litigation nor “investigation in anticipation of litigation” under (b)(4). Pp. 8–15. (1) The phrase “in connection with” provides little guidance without a limiting principle consistent with the DPPA’s purpose and its other provisions. See New York State Conference of Blue Cross & Blue Shield Plans v. Travelers Ins. Co., 514 U.S. 645, 656. Such a consistent interpretation is also required because (b)(4) is an exception to both the DPPA’s general ban on disclosure of “personal information” and the ban on release of “highly restricted personal information.” An exception to a general policy statement is “usually read . . . narrowly in order to preserve the [provision’s] primary operation.” Commissioner v. Clark, 489 U.S. 726, 739. Reading (b)(4) to permit disclosure of personal information when there is any connection between protected information and a potential legal dispute would substantially undermine the DPPA’s purpose of protecting a right to privacy in motor vehicle records. Subsection (b)(4)’s “in connection with” language must have a limit, and a logical and necessary conclusion is that an attorney’s solicitation of prospective clients falls outside of that limit. Pp. 9–11. (2) An attorney’s solicitation of new clients is distinct from an attorney’s conduct on behalf of his client or the court. Solicitation “by a lawyer of remunerative employment is a business transaction,” Ohralik v. Ohio State Bar Assn., 436 U.S. 447, 457, and state bars treat solicitation as discrete professional conduct. Excluding solicitation from the meaning of “in connection with” litigation draws support from (b)(4)’s examples of permissible litigation uses—“service of process, investigation in anticipation of litigation, and the execution or enforcement of judgments and orders”—which all involve an attorney’s conduct as an officer of the court, not a commercial actor. Similarly, “investigation in anticipation of litigation” is best understood to allow background research to determine if there is a supportable theory for a complaint or a theory sufficient to avoid sanctions for filing a frivolous lawsuit, or to help locate witnesses for deposition or trial. Pp. 11–14. (3) This reading is also supported by the fact that (b)(4) allows use of the most sensitive personal information. Permitting its use in solicitation is so substantial an intrusion on privacy it must not be assumed, without clear and explicit language, absent here, that Congress intended to exempt attorneys from DPPA liability in this regard. Pp. 14–15. (c) Limiting (b)(4)’s reach also respects the statutory purpose and design evident in subsection (b)(12), which allows solicitation only of persons who have given express consent to have their names and addresses disclosed for this purpose. Subsection (b)(12) implements an important objective of the DPPA—to restrict disclosure of personal information in motor vehicle records to businesses for the purpose of direct marketing and solicitation. Other exceptions should not be construed to interfere with this objective unless the text commands it. Reading (b)(4)’s “in connection with” phrase to include solicitation would permit an attorney to use personal information from the state DMV to send bulk solicitations to prospective clients without their express consent, thus creating significant tension between the DPPA’s litigation and solicitation exceptions. Pp. 15–19. (d) Such a reading of (b)(4) could also affect the interpretation of the (b)(6) exception, which allows an insurer and certain others to obtain DMV information for use “in connection with . . . underwriting,” and the (b)(10) exception, which permits disclosure and use of personal information “in connection with” the operation of private toll roads. Pp. 19–20. (e) Respondents contend that a line can be drawn between mere trolling for clients and their solicitation, which was tied to a specific legal dispute, but that is not a tenable distinction. The DPPA supports drawing the line at solicitation. Solicitation can aid an attorney in bringing a lawsuit or increasing its size, but the question is whether or not lawyers can use personal information protected under the DPPA for this purpose. The mere fact that respondents complied with state bar rules governing solicitations also does not resolve whether they were entitled to access personal information from the state DMV database for that purpose. In determining whether obtaining, using, or disclosing personal information is for the prohibited purpose of solicitation, the proper inquiry is whether the defendant’s purpose was to solicit, which might be evident from the communication itself or from the defendant’s course of conduct. When that is the predominant purpose, (b)(4) does not entitle attorneys to DPPA-protected information even when solicitation is to aggregate a class action. Attorneys also have other alternatives to aggregate a class, including, e.g. soliciting plaintiffs through traditional and permitted advertising. And they may obtain DPPA-protected information for a proper investigative use. Although the Fourth Circuit held that the letters here were solicitations, it found the communications nonetheless exempt under (b)(4) because they were “inextricably intertwined” with permissible litigation purposes. If however, the use of DPPA-protected personal information has the predominant purpose of solicitation, it would not be protected by (b)(4). A remand is necessary for the court to apply the proper standard to determine the predominant purpose of respondents’ letters. Pp. 20–26. (f) There is no work for the rule of lenity to do here, because the DPPA’s text and structure resolve any ambiguity in (b)(4)’s phrases “in connection with” and “investigation in anticipation of litigation.” Pp. 26–27. (g) On remand, the courts below must determine whether respondents’ letters, viewed objectively, had the predominant purpose of solicitation, and may address whether respondents’ conduct was permissible under (b)(1)’s governmental-function exception and any other defenses that have been properly preserved. Pp. 27–29. 675 F.3d 281, vacated and remanded. Kennedy, J., delivered the opinion of the Court, in which Roberts, C. J., and Thomas, Breyer, and Alito, JJ., joined. Ginsburg, J., filed a dissenting opinion, in which Scalia, Sotomayor, and Kagan, JJ., joined.

Concerned that personal information collected by States in the licensing of motor vehicle drivers was being released—even sold—with resulting loss of privacy for many persons, Congress provided federal statutory protection. It enacted the Driver’s Privacy Protection Act of 1994, referred to here as the DPPA. See 18 U. S. C. §§2721–2725. The DPPA regulates the disclosure of personal information contained in the records of state motor vehicle de- partments (DMVs). Disclosure of personal information is prohibited unless for a purpose permitted by an ex-ception listed in 1 of 14 statutory subsections. See §§2721(b)(1)–(14). This case involves the interpretation of one of those exceptions, subsection (b)(4). The exception in (b)(4) permits obtaining personal information from a state DMV for use “in connection with” judicial and administrative proceedings, including “investigation in anticipation of litigation.” §2721(b)(4). The question presented is whether an attorney’s solicitation of clients for a lawsuit falls within the scope of (b)(4). Respondents are trial lawyers licensed to practice in South Carolina. They obtained names and addresses of thousands of individuals from the South Carolina DMV in order to send letters to find plaintiffs for a lawsuit they had filed against car dealers for violations of South Carolina law. Petitioners, South Carolina residents whose information was obtained and used without their consent, sued respondents for violating the DPPA. Respondents claimed the solicitation letters were permitted under subsection (b)(4). In light of the text, structure, and purpose of the DPPA, the Court now holds that an attorney’s solicitation of clients is not a permissible purpose covered by the (b)(4) litigation exception. I A The State of South Carolina, to protect purchasers of motor vehicles, enacted the South Carolina Regulation of Manufacturers, Distributors, and Dealers Act (MDDA). In June 2006, respondent attorneys were approached by car purchasers who complained about administrative fees charged by car dealerships in certain South Carolina counties, allegedly in violation of the MDDA. The state statute prohibits motor vehicle dealers from engaging in “any action which is arbitrary, in bad faith, or unconscionable and which causes damage to any of the parties or to the public.” S. C. Code Ann. §56–15–40(1) (2006). The MDDA provides that “one or more may sue for the benefit of the whole” where an action is “one of common or general interest to many persons or when the parties are numerous and it is impracticable to bring them all before the court.” §56–15–110(2). On June 23, 2006, one of the respondent attorneys submitted a state Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request to the South Carolina DMV to determine if charging illegal administrative fees was a common practice so that a lawsuit could be brought as a representative action under the MDDA. The attorney’s letter to the DMV requested information regarding “[p]rivate purchases of new or used automobiles in Spartanburg County during the week of May 1–7, 2006, including the name, address, and telephone number of the buyer, dealership where purchased, type of vehicle purchased, and date of purchase.” App. 57. The letter explained that the request was made “in anticipation of litigation . . . pursuant to the exception in 18 USC §2721(b)(4) of the Driver’s Privacy Protection Act.” Ibid. The South Carolina DMV provided the requested information. On August 24, 2006, respondents submitted a second FOIA request to the DMV, also asserting that it was made “in anticipation of litigation . . . pursuant to the exception in 18 USC §2721(b)(4),” for car purchasers in five additional counties during the same week. Id., at 67. On August 29, 2006, respondents filed suit in South Carolina state court on behalf of four of the consumers who originally contacted them. The case is referred to here, and by the parties, as the Herron suit. The complaint in the Herron suit named 51 dealers as defendants and invoked the MDDA’s “group action” provision to assert claims “for the benefit of all South Carolina car buyers wh[o] paid administrative fees,” id., at 128, to those dealers during the same time period. Some of the dealer defendants in the Herron suit filed motions to dismiss for lack of standing because none of the named plaintiffs purchased cars from them. On October 26, 2006, while the motions to dismiss were pending, respondents submitted a new FOIA request to the South Carolina DMV. That request, again citing subsection (b)(4) of the DPPA, sought to locate additional car buyers who could serve as plaintiffs against the dealers who had moved to dismiss. On October 31, 2006, respondents filed an amended complaint, which added four named plaintiffs and increased the number of defendant dealers from 51 to 324. As before, defendant dealerships that had not engaged in transactions with any of the now eight named plaintiffs filed motions to dismiss for lack of standing. On January 3, 2007, using the personal information they had obtained from the South Carolina DMV, respondents sent a mass mailing to find car buyers to serve as additional plaintiffs in the litigation against the dealers. Later in January, respondents made three more FOIA requests to the South Carolina DMV seeking personal information concerning people who had purchased cars from an additional 31 dealerships, again citing the (b)(4) exception. The South Carolina DMV granted all the requests. On January 23, respondents mailed a second round of letters to car buyers whose personal information had been disclosed by the DMV. Respondents sent additional rounds of letters on March 1, March 5, and May 8. Each of the five separate mailings was sent to different recipients. In total, respondents used the information obtained through their FOIA requests to send letters to over 34,000 car purchasers in South Carolina. This opinion refers to the communications sent by respondents simply as the “letters.” The letters, all essentially the same, had the heading “ADVERTISING MATERIAL.” The letters explained the lawsuit against the South Carolina dealers and asked recipients to contact the respondent-lawyers if interested in participating in the case. Attached to the letter was a reply card that asked a few questions about the recipient’s contact information and car purchase and ended with the sentence “I am interested in participating” followed by a signature line. The text of the letter and reply are set out in full in the Appendix, infra. In accordance with South Carolina Rule of Professional Conduct 7.3 (2012), which regulates the solicitation of prospective clients, respondents filed a copy of the letter and a list of recipients’ names and addresses with the South Carolina Office of Disciplinary Counsel. In June 2007, respondents sought to amend their complaint to add 247 plaintiffs. The court denied leave to amend and held the named plaintiffs had standing to sue only those dealerships from which they had purchased automobiles and any alleged co-conspirators. In September 2007, respondents filed two new lawsuits on behalf of the additional car buyers. Those subsequent cases were consolidated with the Herron suit. All claims against dealerships without a corresponding plaintiff-purchaser were dropped. B In the case now before the Court, petitioners are South Carolina residents whose personal information was obtained by respondents from the South Carolina DMV and used without their consent to send solicitation letters asking them to join the lawsuits against the car dealerships. Petitioner Edward Maracich received one of the letters in March 2007. While his personal information had been disclosed to respondents because he was one of many buyers from a particular dealership, Maracich also happened to be the dealership’s director of sales and marketing. Petitioners Martha Weeks and John Tanner received letters from respondents in May 2007. In response to the letter, Tanner called Richard Harpootlian, one of the respondent attorneys listed on the letter. According to Tanner, Harpootlian made an aggressive sales pitch to sign Tanner as a client for the lawsuit without asking about the circumstances of his purchase. In 2009, petitioners filed the instant putative class- action lawsuit in the United States District Court for the District of South Carolina. The complaint alleged that respondents had violated the DPPA by obtaining, disclosing, and using personal information from motor vehicle records for bulk solicitation without the express consent of petitioners and the other class members. Respondents moved to dismiss. The information, they contended, was subject to disclosure because it falls within two statutory exceptions in the DPPA: (b)(1), pertaining to governmental functions, and (b)(4), pertaining to litigation. On cross-motions for summary judgment, the District Court held as a matter of law that respondents’ letters were not solicitations and that the use of information fell within the (b)(4) litigation exception. App. to Pet. for Cert. 61a. The District Court also found that respondents’ use of personal information was permitted under the (b)(1) governmental-function exception. The Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit affirmed. Unlike the District Court, it found that the letters were “solicitation[s]” within the meaning of the DPPA; but it held further that when “solicitation is an accepted and expected element of, and is inextricably intertwined with, conduct satisfying the litigation exception under the DPPA, such solicitation is not actionable.” 675 F. 3d 281, 284 (2012). This Court granted certiorari to address whether the solicitation of clients is a permissible purpose for obtaining personal information from a state DMV under the DPPA’s (b)(4) exception. 567 U. S. ___ (2012). II To obtain a driver’s license or register a vehicle, state DMVs, as a general rule, require an individual to disclose detailed personal information, including name, home address, telephone number, Social Security number, and medical information. See Reno v. Condon, 528 U. S. 141, 143 (2000) . The enactment of the DPPA responded to at least two concerns over the personal information contained in state motor vehicle records. The first was a growing threat from stalkers and criminals who could acquire personal information from state DMVs. The second concern related to the States’ common practice of selling personal information to businesses engaged in direct marketing and solicitation. To address these concerns, the DPPA “establishes a regulatory scheme that restricts the States’ ability to disclose a driver’s personal information without the driver’s consent.” Id., at 144. The DPPA provides that, unless one of its exceptions applies, a state DMV “shall not knowingly disclose or otherwise make available” “personal information” and “highly restricted personal information.” §§2721(a)(1)–(2). “[P]ersonal information” is “information that identifies an individual, including [a] . . . driver identification number, name, address . . . , [or] telephone number, . . . but does not include information on vehicular accidents, driving violations, and driver’s status.” §2725(3). “[H]ighly restricted personal information” is defined as “an individual’s photograph or image, social security number, [and] medical or disability information.” §2725(4). The DPPA makes it unlawful “for any person knowingly to obtain or disclose personal information, from a motor vehicle record, for any use not permitted under section 2721(b) of this title.” §2722(a). A person “who knowingly obtains, discloses or uses personal information, from a motor vehicle record, for a purpose not permitted under this chapter shall be liable to the individual to whom the information pertains.” §2724(a). The DPPA’s disclosure ban is subject to 14 exceptions set forth in §2721(b), for which personal information “may be disclosed.” The two exceptions most relevant for the purpose of this case are the litigation exception in subsection (b)(4) and the solicitation exception in (b)(12). The (b)(4) litigation exception is one of the four provisions permitting disclosure not only of personal information but also of highly restricted personal information. §2721(b)(4); §2725(4). It provides that information may be disclosed: “For use in connection with any civil, criminal, administrative, or arbitral proceeding in any Federal, State, or local court or agency or before any self-regulatory body, including the service of process, investigation in anticipation of litigation, and the exe- cution or enforcement of judgments and orders, or pur- suant to an order of a Federal, State, or local court.” The (b)(12) solicitation exception provides that certain personal information, not including highly restricted personal information, may be disclosed: “For bulk distribution for surveys, marketing, or solicitations if the State has obtained the express consent of the person to whom such personal information pertains.” The solicitation exception was originally enacted as an opt-out provision, allowing state DMVs to disclose personal information for purposes of solicitation only if the DMV gave individuals an opportunity to prohibit such disclosures. §2721(b)(12) (1994 ed.). In 1999, Congress changed to an opt-in regime, requiring a driver’s affirmative consent before solicitations could be sent. See Condon, supra, at 144–145. III Respondents’ liability depends on whether their use of personal information acquired from the South Carolina DMV to solicit clients constitutes a permissible purpose under the DPPA. The District Court held that respondents’ conduct was permissible both under the (b)(1) and (b)(4) exceptions. The Court of Appeals ruled that the conduct here was permissible under (b)(4); but, unlike the District Court, it did not address the alternative argument that the conduct was also permissible under (b)(1). As in the Court of Appeals, only the (b)(4) exception is discussed here. A Respondents claim they were entitled to obtain and use petitioners’ personal information based on two of the phrases in (b)(4). First, disclosure of personal information is permitted for use “in connection with any civil, criminal, administrative, or arbitral proceeding.” §2721(b)(4). Second, a use in connection with litigation includes “investigation in anticipation of litigation.” Ibid. Respondents contend that the solicitation of prospective clients, especially in the circumstances of this case, is both a use “in connection with” litigation and “investigation in anticipation of litigation.” 1 If considered in isolation, and without reference to the structure and purpose of the DPPA, (b)(4)’s exception allowing disclosure of personal information “for use in connection with any civil, criminal, administrative, or arbitral proceeding,” and for “investigation in anticipation of litigation,” is susceptible to a broad interpretation. That language, in literal terms, could be interpreted to its broadest reach to include the personal information that respondents obtained here. But if no limits are placed on the text of the exception, then all uses of personal information with a remote relation to litigation would be exempt under (b)(4). The phrase “in connection with” is essentially “indeterminat[e]” because connections, like relations, “ ‘stop nowhere.’ ” New York State Conference of Blue Cross & Blue Shield Plans v. Travelers Ins. Co., 514 U. S. 645, 655 (1995) . So the phrase “in connection with” provides little guidance without a limiting principle consistent with the structure of the statute and its other provisions. See id., at 656 (“We simply must go beyond the unhelpful text and the frustrating difficulty of defining [‘connection with’], and look instead to the objectives of the ERISA statute”); see also California Div. of Labor Standards Enforcement v. Dillingham Constr., N. A., Inc., 519 U. S. 316, 335 (1997) (“But applying the ‘relate to’ provision according to its terms was a project doomed to failure, since, as many a curbstone philosopher has observed, everything is related to everything else”). An interpretation of (b)(4) that is consistent with the statutory framework and design is also required because (b)(4) is an exception to both the DPPA’s general prohibition against disclosure of “personal information” and its ban on release of “highly restricted personal information.” §§2721(a)(1)–(2). An exception to a “general statement of policy” is “usually read . . . narrowly in order to preserve the primary operation of the provision.” Commissioner v. Clark, 489 U. S. 726, 739 (1989) . It is true that the DPPA’s 14 exceptions permit disclosure of personal information in a range of circumstances. Unless commanded by the text, however, these exceptions ought not operate to the farthest reach of their linguistic possibilities if that result would contravene the statutory design. Cf. Cowan v. Ernest Codelia, P. C., 149 F. Supp. 2d 67 (SDNY 2001) (rejecting an argument by defense counsel that obtaining from the DMV the home address of the assistant district attorney to send her a harassing letter was a permissible use “in connection with” the ongoing criminal proceeding under (b)(4)). If (b)(4) were read to permit disclosure of personal information whenever any connection between the protected information and a potential legal dispute could be shown, it would undermine in a substantial way the DPPA’s purpose of protecting an individual’s right to privacy in his or her motor vehicle records. The “in connection with” language in (b)(4) must have a limit. A logical and necessary conclusion is that an attorney’s solicitation of prospective clients falls outside of that limit. The proposition that solicitation is a distinct form of conduct, separate from the conduct in connection with litigation permitted under (b)(4) is demonstrated: by the words of the statute itself; by formal rules issued by bar organizations and governing boards; and by state statutes and regulations that govern and direct attorneys with reference to their duties in litigation, to their clients, and to the public. As this opinion explains in more detail, the statute itself, in (b)(12), treats bulk solicitation absent consent as a discrete act that the statute prohibits. And the limited examples of permissible litigation purposes provided in (b)(4) are distinct from the ordinary commercial purpose of solicitation. Canons of ethics used by bar associations treat solicitation as a discrete act, an act subject to specific regulation. And state statutes, including statutes of the State of South Carolina, treat solicitation as a discrete subject for regulation and governance of the profession. It would contradict the idea that solicitation is defined conduct apart from litigation to treat it as simply another aspect of the litigation duties set out in (b)(4). 2 An attorney’s solicitation of new clients is distinct from other aspects of the legal profession. “It is no less true than trite that lawyers must operate in a three-fold capacity, as self-employed businessmen as it were, as trusted agents of their clients, and as assistants to the court in search of a just solution to disputes.” Cohen v. Hurley, 366 U. S. 117, 124 (1961) , overruled on other grounds, Spevack v. Klein, 385 U. S. 511 (1967) . Unlike an attorney’s conduct performed on behalf of his client or the court, “solicitation by a lawyer of remunerative employment is a business transaction.” Ohralik v. Ohio State Bar Assn., 436 U. S. 447, 457 (1978) ; see also Zauderer v. Office of Disciplinary Counsel of Supreme Court of Ohio, 471 U. S. 626, 637 (1985) (attorney solicitation “ ‘propose[s] a commercial transaction’ ”). The “pecuniary motivation of the lawyer who solicits a particular representation” may even “create special problems of conflict of interest.” Ohralik, supra, at 461, n. 19. The distinction between solicitation and an attorney’s other duties is also recognized and regulated by state bars or their governing bodies, which treat solicitation as discrete professional conduct. See, e.g., Cal. Rule Prof. Conduct 1–400 (2013); N. Y. Rule Prof. Conduct 7.3 (2012–2013); Tex. Disciplinary Rules Prof. Conduct 7.02–7.03 (2013); Va. Rule Prof. Conduct 7.3 (Supp. 2012). That, indeed, was true here. Respondents were required by the South Carolina rules of ethics to include certain language in their solicitation letters and to file copies with the South Carolina Office of Disciplinary Counsel. See S. C. Rule Prof. Conduct 7.3. Given the difference between an attorney’s commercial solicitation of clients and his duties as an officer of the court, the proper reading of (b)(4) is that solicitation falls outside of the litigation exception. And when (b)(4) is interpreted not to give attorneys the privilege of using protected personal information to propose a commercial transaction, the statute is limited by terms and categories that have meaning in the regular course of professional practice. The exclusion of solicitation from the meaning of “in connection with” litigation draws further support from the examples of permissible litigation uses in (b)(4). The familiar canon of noscitur a sociis, the interpretive rule that “words and people are known by their companions,” Gutierrez v. Ada, 528 U. S. 250, 255 (2000) , provides instruction in this respect. Under this rule, the phrases “in connection with” and “investigation in anticipation of litigation,” which are “capable of many meanings,” Jarecki v. G. D. Searle & Co., 367 U. S. 303, 307 (1961) , can be construed in light of their accompanying words in order to avoid giving the statutory exception “unintended breadth,” ibid.; see also United States v. Williams, 553 U. S. 285, 294 (2008) (the canon of noscitur a sociis “counsels that a word is given more precise content by the neighboring words with which it is associated”). The examples of uses “in connection with” litigation that Congress provided in (b)(4) include “the service of process, investigation in anticipation of litigation, and the execution or enforcement of judgments and orders, or pursuant to an order of a Federal, State, or local court.” §2721(b)(4). These uses involve an attorney’s conduct when acting in the capacity as an officer of the court, not as a commercial actor. The listed examples are steps that ensure the integrity and efficiency of an existing or imminent legal proceeding. This may include contacting persons who are already involved in the litigation or who are necessary parties or witnesses. These steps are different from the ordinary business purpose of solicitation. Here, as will be the case for most solicitations, the attorneys acted without court authorization or supervision and cast a wide net, sending letters to over 30,000 car purchasers to let them know the attorneys’ names and the attorneys’ interest in performing legal services for them. The examples in (b)(4) confirm, and are all consistent with, protecting the professional responsibilities that counsel, or the court, must discharge in the proper conduct of litigation. These are quite distinct from the separate subject, the separate professional conduct, of soliciting clients. The examples suggest that the litigation exception has a limited scope to permit the use of highly restricted personal information when it serves an integral purpose in a particular legal proceeding. In light of the types of conduct permitted by the subsection, the “in connection with” language should not be read to include commercial solicitations by an attorney. Similarly, “investigation in anticipation of litigation” is best understood to allow background research to determine whether there is a supportable theory for a complaint, a theory sufficient to avoid sanctions for filing a frivolous lawsuit, or to locate witnesses for deposition or trial testimony. An interpretation of “investigation” to include commercial solicitation of new clients would expand the language in a way inconsistent with the limited uses given as examples in the statutory text. It must be noted also that the phrase “in anticipation of litigation” is not a standalone phrase. It modifies, and necessarily narrows, the word “investigation.” To use the phrase “in anticipation of litigation” without that qualification is to extend the meaning of the statute far beyond its text. 3 An additional reason to hold that (b)(4) does not permit solicitation of clients is because the exception allows use of the most sensitive kind of information, including medical and disability history and Social Security numbers. To permit this highly personal information to be used in solicitation is so substantial an intrusion on privacy it must not be assumed, without language more clear and explicit, that Congress intended to exempt attorneys from DPPA liability in this regard. Subsection (b)(4) is one of only four exceptions in the statute that permit disclosure of “highly restricted personal information,” including a person’s image, Social Security number, and medical and disability information. See §2721(a)(2); §2725(4). The other three exceptions that permit access to highly restricted personal information include: use by the government, including law enforcement, see §2721(b)(1); use by an insurer in claim investigation and antifraud activities, see §2721(b)(6); and use by an employer to obtain or verify information as required by law, see §2721(b)(9). None of these exceptions are written to authorize private individuals to acquire the most restricted personal information in bulk merely to propose a commercial transaction for their own financial benefit. If (b)(4) permitted access to highly restricted personal information for an attorney’s own commercial ends with- out governmental authorization or without consent of the holder of the driver’s license, the result would be so sig- nificant a departure from these other exceptions that it counsels against adopting this interpretation of the statute. While the (b)(4) exception allows this sensitive information to be used for investigation in anticipation of litigation and in the litigation itself, there is no indication Congress wanted to provide attorneys with a special concession to obtain medical information and Social Security numbers for the purpose of soliciting new business. B Limiting the reach of (b)(4) to foreclose solicitation of clients also respects the statutory design of the DPPA. The use of protected personal information for the purpose of bulk solicitation is addressed explicitly by the text of (b)(12). Congress was aware that personal information from motor vehicle records could be used for solicitation, and it permitted it in circumstances that it defined, with the specific safeguard of consent by the person contacted. So the absence of the term “solicitation” in (b)(4) is telling. Subsection (b)(12) allows solicitation only of those persons who have given express consent to have their names and addresses disclosed for this purpose. If (b)(4) were to be interpreted to allow solicitation without consent, then the structure of the Act, and the purpose of (b)(12), would be compromised to a serious degree. It is necessary and required that an interpretation of a phrase of uncertain reach is not confined to a single sentence when the text of the whole statute gives instruction as to its meaning. United States Nat. Bank of Ore. v. Independent Ins. Agents of America, Inc., 508 U. S. 439, 455 (1993) (“ ‘[I]n expounding a statute, we must not be guided by a single sentence or member of a sentence, but look to the provisions of the whole law, and to its object and policy’ ” (quoting United States v. Heirs of Boisdoré, 8 How. 113, 122 (1849))). The “in connection with” language of (b)(4) therefore must be construed within the context of the DPPA as a whole, including its other exceptions. This is not to say, as petitioners contend, that this is a straightforward application of the specific (qualified solicitation permission in (b)(12)) controlling the general (the undefined reach of “in connection with” and “investigation in anticipation of litigation” in (b)(4)). As between the two exceptions at issue here, it is not clear that one is always more specific than the other. For while (b)(12) is more specific with respect to solicitation, (b)(4) is more specific with respect to litigation. The DPPA’s 14 permissible use exceptions, moreover, are not in all contexts mutually exclusive. The better reading is that each exception addresses different conduct which may, on occasion, overlap. For example, certain uses of personal information by a court may be exempt either under (b)(1) or (b)(4). If conduct falls within the explicit or unambiguous scope of one exception, all other potentially applicable exceptions need not be satisfied. So the question is not which of the two exceptions controls but whether respondents’ conduct falls within the litigation exception at all. As to this question, petitioners are correct that the existence of the separate provision governing solicitation provides necessary context for defining the scope of (b)(4). As discussed above, the text of (b)(4) indicates that the exception is best read not to include solicitation as a use “in connection with” litigation. But even if there were any doubt on this point, the statutory design of the DPPA as a whole, including the (b)(12) exception governing solicitations, provides additional instruction for construing this provision. For this reason, it is relevant that “ ‘Congress has enacted a comprehensive scheme and has deliberately targeted specific problems with specific solutions.’ ” RadLAX Gateway Hotel, LLC v. Amalgamated Bank, 566 U. S.___, ___ (2012) (slip op., at 5). Subsection (b)(12) implements an important objective of the DPPA—to restrict disclosure of personal information contained in motor vehicle records to businesses for the purpose of direct marketing and solicitation. The DPPA was enacted in part to respond to the States’ common practice of selling personal information to businesses that used it for marketing and solicitations. See Condon, 528 U. S., at 143 (“Congress found that many States . . . sell this personal information to individuals and businesses”); id., at 148 (“The motor vehicle information which the States have historically sold is used by insurers, manufacturers, direct marketers, and others engaged in interstate commerce to contact drivers with customized solicitations”). Congress chose to protect individual privacy by requiring a state DMV to obtain the license holder’s express consent before permitting the disclosure, acquisition, and use of personal information for bulk solicitation. The importance of the consent requirement is highlighted by Congress’ decision in 1999 to change the statutory mechanism that allowed individuals protected by the Act to opt out to one requiring them to opt in. See id., at 144–145; see also §§350(c)–(e), 113Stat. 1025. Direct marketing and solicitation present a particular concern not only because these activities are of the ordinary commercial sort but also because contacting an individual is an affront to privacy even beyond the fact that a large number of persons have access to the personal information. The DPPA’s (b)(5) exception illustrates this concern by permitting disclosure of personal information for use in research activities “so long as the personal information is not published, redisclosed, or used to contact individuals.” §2721(b)(5). Because (b)(12) represents Congress’ decision to target the problem of bulk solicitation with the requirement of express consent, other exceptions should not be construed to interfere with this statutory mechanism unless the text commands it. This is not to suggest that (b)(12) is an overriding rule that controls all other exceptions. It would not be necessary to consider (b)(12) if another statutory exception applied to the relevant conduct. The relevance of (b)(12), however, is that it can be used as additional evidence of the DPPA’s statutory design to interpret exceptions whose breadth and application are uncertain. Here, the phrase “in connection with” litigation in the (b)(4) exception, as a matter of normal usage and common understanding, does not encompass an attorney’s commercial use of DPPA-protected personal information to solicit new clients. This and the other reasons given above lead to the conclusion that it would be incorrect to interpret the text of this exception to include an attorney’s commercial solicitation as a use “in connection with” litigation. And, unlike (b)(12), the (b)(4) exception does not require obtaining an individual’s express consent before disclosing and using personal information contained in state motor vehicle records. If the “in connection with” language of (b)(4) were read broadly to include solicitation, an attorney could acquire personal information from the state DMV to send bulk solicitations to prospective clients without their express consent. This would create significant tension in the DPPA between the litigation and solicitation exceptions. That inconsistency and the concomitant undermining of the statutory design are avoided by interpreting (b)(4) so it does not authorize the use of personal information for the purpose of soliciting clients. See A. Scalia & B. Garner, Reading Law: The Interpretation of Legal Texts 180 (2012) (“The provisions of a text should be interpreted in a way that renders them compatible, not contradictory. . . . [T]here can be no justification for needlessly rendering provisions in conflict if they can be interpreted harmoniously”). C If the phrase “in connection with” in (b)(4) included solicitation by lawyers, then a similar reach for that phrase could apply to other exceptions, resulting in further frustration of the Act’s design. Subsection (b)(6) allows an insurer and certain other parties to obtain DMV information for use “in connection with . . . underwriting.” §2721(b)(6). If that phrase extended to solicitation, then personal information protected by the DPPA could be used to solicit new customers for underwriting without their consent. It is most doubtful that Congress intended to exempt insurers from the consent requirement for bulk solicitations. The DPPA, in subsection (b)(10), permits disclosure and use of personal information “in connection with” the operation of private toll roads. If the phrase were interpreted to extend to all solicitations without consent, then the owner of a private toll road could send targeted mass advertisings or direct marketing letters by using the protected personal information obtained from state motor vehicle records. This, too, would take away much of the force and effect of the (b)(12) restriction on bulk solicitation without the express consent of the person contacted. When Congress did intend the phrase “in connection with” to permit conduct otherwise subject to the express consent requirement in (b)(12), it did so in explicit terms. An illustration can be found in the interplay between (b)(2) and (b)(12) of the DPPA. As has been noted, (b)(12) prohibits disclosure of protected personal information for the purpose of sending bulk distribution of surveys without the express consent of the recipients. Subsection (b)(2), however, permits disclosure of personal information “[f]or use in connection with matters of . . . motor vehicle market research activities, including survey research.” §2721(b)(2). So what the DPPA prohibits in (b)(12) it explicitly allows in (b)(2), but it does so by repeating the same word, “survey,” in the text of both provisions. If the “in connection with” language alone were sufficient to include “surveys” within (b)(2), the phrase “survey research” would be mere surplusage. Instead, the explicit reference to “survey” in (b)(2) was necessary to make clear that Congress had created an exception to the (b)(12)’s consent requirement for one particular type of survey. When it comes to the prohibition on “solicitations” in (b)(12), however, that word is not repeated in the text of (b)(4). This leads to the inference that Congress did not intend (b)(4) to include “solicitations” and thus to override the express consent requirement of (b)(12). IV A Respondents concede that (b)(4) does not permit attorneys to use personal information acquired from a state DMV to find new business in the absence of any connection to a particular transaction, occurrence, or defect. They contend, however, that a line can be drawn between mere trolling for clients (which is not permitted) and solicitation tied to a specific legal dispute (which, respondents argue, is permitted). While some solicitations may have a close relationship with existing proceedings, there is no principled way to classify some solicitations as acceptable and others as unacceptable for the purpose of (b)(4). Even if solicitation were permitted only after a lawyer has a client or filed a lawsuit, attorneys would be able to circumvent this limitation with ease by the simple device of filing a placeholder lawsuit. All an attorney would need is one friend or family member as his client before being able to gain access to DPPA-protected personal information to solicit persons to fill in as plaintiffs. Solicitation of new plaintiffs to keep defendants in a lawsuit that would otherwise be dismissed for lack of standing is no different in substance from solicitation to initiate a lawsuit. Here, at any rate, the state court found that plaintiffs had standing to sue the dealerships from which they had purchased automobiles and any alleged co-conspirators. See 675 F. 3d, at 287, n. 3. This can undermine the argument that solicitation of additional plaintiffs was somehow necessary for the lawsuit to continue. Drawing the line between solicitations related to an existing proceeding and those that are not is not a tenable distinction. The proper solution is to draw the line at solicitation itself. The structure of the DPPA supports this distinction. If solicitation were deemed a permissible purpose under (b)(4), even when limited to a particular lawsuit, tension would remain between the (b)(12) solicitation exception, which requires express consent, and the (b)(4) litigation exception, which does not. The two statutory provisions are consistent if solicitation is excluded from the activity permitted in (b)(4). Of course solicitation can aid an attorney in bringing a lawsuit or in increasing its size. The question, however, is whether or not lawyers can use personal information protected under the DPPA for this purpose. Petitioners and other state residents have no real choice but to disclose their personal information to the state DMV, including highly restricted personal information. The use of that information by private actors to send direct commercial solicitations without the license holder’s consent is a substantial intrusion on the individual privacy the Act protects. For the reasons already discussed, a proper interpretation of a use “in connection with” litigation under (b)(4) in light of the DPPA’s text and structure does not include solicitation. The fact that an attorney complies with state bar rules governing solicitations also does not resolve whether he is entitled to access the state DMV database for that purpose under the DPPA. There is no provision of South Carolina law that either permits or requires attorneys to use DPPA-protected information to solicit potential clients. Even if such a provision existed, under the Supremacy Clause, it would not protect respondents from DPPA liability unless their conduct fell within one of the Act’s exceptions. A person is liable under the DPPA if he “knowingly obtains, discloses or uses personal information, from a motor vehicle record, for a purpose not permitted” by one of the statutory exceptions. §2724(a). In determining whether obtaining, using, or disclosing the personal information is for the prohibited purpose of solicitation, the proper inquiry is whether the defendant had the predominant purpose to solicit. Because, in some cases, a communication sent with DPPA-protected information may serve more than one objective, a court must discern whether solicitation is its predominant purpose. That purpose might be evident from the communication itself. In other instances the defendant’s whole course of conduct will be relevant in determining whether solicitation was the predominant purpose of the act alleged to be wrongful. Close cases may arise. Where a communication seeks to provide class notice or locate a witness, for example, the fact that the attorney provides contact information for a reply likely would not make the communication an improper solicitation. And the fact that a letter follows the state bar rules governing attorney solicitations, although relevant, will not be dispositive. For example, if the predominant purpose of a letter was not to solicit a new client, but rather to ask a witness investigatory questions or to secure her testimony at trial, adherence to state bar solicitation rules would not subject the sender to DPPA liability. Subsequent conduct, in some cases, may show that solicitation in fact was the predominant purpose of an earlier act; and, of course, even if an initial request was proper, a later use may be a violation. Where a reason- able observer could discern that the predominant purpose of obtaining, using, or disclosing protected personal information was to initiate or propose a business trans- action with a prospective client, (b)(4) does not exempt the solicitation. Respondents contend that even if solicitation of clients is impermissible as a general rule, solicitation to aggregate a class action suit is permitted under (b)(4). Where the predominant purpose is solicitation, however, (b)(4) does not entitle attorneys to obtain and use DPPA-protected information. To the extent the solicitation of plaintiffs can help attorneys bring a larger class action, there are alternatives that do not sacrifice an individual’s privacy in his or her motor vehicle records. An attorney, pursuant to a court order, could send class notice. Class notice may prompt a class member to join the lawsuit, but it also serves the important purpose of protecting the rights of absent class members and ensures that any decision will be binding on the class. Class notice sent on the instruction of the court also does not raise the same concerns that attorneys are acting only in their own commercial interest. But respondents here did not obtain or use the protected personal information to send class no- tices or comply with a court order. The letters made no mention of ethical obligations to outstanding group members or the consequences of not joining the suit. As the Court of Appeals noted, respondents “failed to indicate to recipients that they may already be de facto clients of the Lawyers, that is, persons whose interests were already protected by the senders.” 675 F. 3d, at 293. Had respondents received a court order, they might have been able to rely on the explicit language in (b)(4) permitting uses of information “pursuant to an order of a Federal, State, or local court.” §2721(b)(4). But because respondents had no court order authorizing their conduct, this opinion need not address whether it would be proper for a court to order attorneys to obtain DPPA-protected personal information to solicit plaintiffs. Attorneys are free to solicit plaintiffs through traditional and permitted advertising without obtaining personal information from a state DMV. Here, the attorneys could also have complied with (b)(12) and limited their solicitation to those individuals who had expressly consented, or respondents could have requested consent through the DPPA’s waiver procedure. See §2721(d). In light of these and other alternatives, attorneys are not without the necessary means to aggregate a class of plaintiffs. What they may not do, however, is to acquire highly restricted personal information from state DMV records to send bulk solicitations without express consent from the targeted recipients. This is not to suggest that attorneys may not obtain DPPA-protected personal information for a proper investigatory purpose. Where respondents obtained petitioners’ personal information to discern the extent of the alleged misconduct or identify particular defendants, those FOIA requests appear permissible under (b)(4) as “investigation in anticipation of litigation.” Solicitation of new business, however, is not “investigation” within the meaning of (b)(4). And acquiring petitioners’ personal information for a legitimate investigatory purpose does not entitle respondents to then use that same information to send direct solicitations. Each distinct disclosure or use of personal information acquired from a state DMV must be permitted by the DPPA. See §2724(a) (“A person who knowingly obtains, discloses or uses personal information, from a motor vehicle record, for a purpose not permitted under this chapter shall be liable to the individual to whom the information pertains”); see also §2721(c). If the statute were to operate otherwise, obtaining personal information for one permissible use would entitle attorneys to use that same information at a later date for any other purpose. For example, a lawyer could obtain personal information to locate witnesses for a lawsuit and then use those same names and addresses later to send direct marketing letters about a book he wrote. B The Court of Appeals held that the letters here were solicitations, finding that “a reasonable recipient would almost certainly have understood the message to be a solicitation from a lawyer.” Id., at 293. The court noted as relevant that respondents themselves took steps to follow South Carolina bar rules governing attorney solicitations and rejected respondents’ description of the letters as investigatory in nature, given that “[n]o mention was made of an investigation into certain practices other than the implicit suggestion of investigation during a ‘free consultation.’ ” Ibid. The included reply card did not alter the Court of Appeals’ finding that the communications were solicitations rather than investigation. Only those interested in joining the lawsuit were directed to fill out the card and the only place to sign the card was under the phrase “I am interested in participating.” See Appendix, infra, at 31. The card asked for data regarding vehicle purchases relevant to initiate the representation of the prospective clients. But although the Court of Appeals found that the letters were solicitations, it held the communications nonetheless exempt under (b)(4) because they were “inextricably intertwined” with permissible litigation purposes. 675 F. 3d, at 284. As explained above, however, if the use of DPPA-protected personal information has the predominant purpose of solicitation, that use is not protected by (b)(4). A remand is necessary for application of the proper standard because the Court of Appeals could conclude, in light of the content of the communications, taken with other evidence in the record, that respondents’ letters had the predominant purpose to solicit clients. On remand, the Court of Appeals should determine whether the record shows that the communications sought, or were used, to develop the factual basis of the Herron complaint, locate witnesses, identify additional defendants, or perform any other investigative function related to the litigation. Even if so, the question is whether solicitation was the predominant purpose for sending the letters. V This case does not involve the statutory section imposing criminal liability, which is written in different terms than the civil remedies provision. See §2723(a) (“A person who knowingly violates this chapter shall be fined under this title”). As to civil liability, the amount of damages sought in the complaint is based on the number of persons, over 30,000 individuals, whose personal and highly sensitive information was disclosed and who were solicited. Whether the civil damages provision in §2724, after a careful and proper interpretation, would permit an award in this amount, and if so whether principles of due process and other doctrines that protect against excessive awards would come into play, is not an issue argued or presented in this case. In this framework, there is no work for the rule of lenity to do. This Court has held that “the rule of lenity only applies if, after considering text, structure, history, and purpose, there remains a grievous ambiguity or uncertainty in the statute such that the Court must simply guess as to what Congress intended.” Barber v. Thomas, 560 U. S. ___, ___ (2010) (slip op., at 13) (citation and internal quotation marks omitted). But here, as discussed, the surrounding text and structure of the DPPA resolve any ambiguity in phrases “in connection with” and “investigation in anticipation of litigation” in (b)(4). Only where “the language or history of [the statute] is uncertain” after looking to “the particular statutory language, . . . the design of the statute as a whole and to its object and policy,” does the rule of lenity serve to give further guidance. Crandon v. United States, 494 U. S. 152, 158 (1990) . “The rule [of lenity] comes into operation at the end of the process of construing what Congress has expressed, not at the beginning as an overriding consideration of being lenient to wrongdoers.” See Callanan v. United States, 364 U. S. 587, 596 (1961) . There is no room for the rule of lenity where the text and structure of the DPPA require an interpretation of (b)(4) that does not reach out to include an attorney’s solicitation of clients. VI Solicitation of prospective clients is not a permissible use “in connection with” litigation or “investigation in anticipation of litigation” under (b)(4) of the DPPA. As a result, the Court of Appeals erred in granting respondents summary judgment without first determining whether the communications had the predominant purpose of solicitation. And since the solicited persons did not give express consent to the disclosure or use of their personal information for this purpose, the (b)(12) exception does not apply. On remand, the Court of Appeals, or the District Court, must determine whether respondents’ letters, viewed objectively, had the predominant purpose of solicitation. The Court of Appeals’ finding that these letters were solicitations can be the basis for the further conclusion that solicitation was the predominant purpose of their transmission. Because the Court of Appeals applied the wrong standard in finding these solicitations exempt under (b)(4), however, the Court remands for application of the proper standard. Further proceedings also may be required to determine whether the initial act of obtaining petitioners’ personal information was permitted under the DPPA. The Court of Appeals and the District Court seem to have agreed that the first two FOIA requests were made in order for respondents to decide whether to file the MDDA lawsuit as a group action and to identify the highest volume dealers. App. 39a. If, in light of this opinion, the courts on remand adhere to the determination that the first two FOIA requests were exempt under (b)(4), the later uses and dis- closures of that information, nevertheless, may be independ- ent violations of the DPPA. If the use of petitioners’ personal information to send the letters in this case is deemed to be a violation of the Act, then the courts can decide if it remains relevant and necessary, for liability and damages purposes, to determine whether the last four FOIA requests were also in violation of the DPPA. Assuming violations of the DPPA are established, questions regarding the calculation and assessment of damages then can be considered. Neither this Court nor the Court of Appeals has considered whether respondents’ conduct was permissible under the (b)(1) governmental-function exception. Whether solicitation would be permitted conduct under (b)(1) is not resolved by this case. This case turns on the interpretation of “in connection with” litigation and “investigation in anticipation of litigation,” phrases not included in (b)(1). Where personal information is used for the predominant purpose of solicitation, the fact that the solicitation itself may serve a governmental function is not relevant to the interpretation of (b)(4). It may, however, be relevant to the (b)(1) inquiry. Respondents’ argument that they were authorized under state law to act as private attorneys general on behalf of the State is properly addressed under (b)(1). Arguments related to (b)(1) and other defenses, to the extent they have been preserved and are still proper to consider, must be for further proceedings on remand. This Court now holds that sending communications for the predominant purpose of solicitation is not a use of personal information exempt from DPPA liability under (b)(4). The judgment of the Court of Appeals is vacated, and the case is remanded for further proceedings consistent with this opinion. It is so ordered.

568.US.371

Petitioner Marx filed suit, alleging that General Revenue Corporation (GRC) violated the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act (FDCPA) by harassing and falsely threatening her in order to collect on a debt. The District Court ruled against Marx and awarded GRC costs pursuant to Federal Rule of Civil Procedure (FRCP) 54(d)(1), which gives district courts discretion to award costs to prevailing defendants “[u]nless a federal statute . . . provides otherwise.” Marx sought to vacate the award, arguing that the court’s discretion under Rule 54(d)(1) was displaced by 15 U. S. C. §1692k(a)(3), which provides, in pertinent part, that “[o]n a finding by the court that an action under this section was brought in bad faith and for the purpose of harassment, the court may award to the defendant attorney’s fees reasonable in relation to the work expended and costs.” The District Court rejected Marx’s argument. The Tenth Circuit affirmed, in pertinent part, agreeing that costs are allowed under the Rule and concluding that nothing in the statute’s text, history, or purpose indicates that it was meant to displace the Rule. Held: Section §1692k(a)(3) is not contrary to, and, thus, does not displace a district court’s discretion to award costs under, Rule 54(d)(1). Pp. 4–16. (a) Rule 54(d)(1) gives courts discretion to award costs to prevailing parties, but this discretion can be displaced by a federal statute or FRCP that “provides otherwise,” i.e., is “contrary” to Rule 54(d)(1). Contrary to the argument of Marx and the United States, as amicus, language of the original 1937 version of the Rule does not suggest that any “express provision” for costs should displace Rule 54(d)(1), regardless of whether it is contrary to the Rule. Pp. 4–7. (b) Section 1692k(a)(3)’s language and context demonstrate that the provision is not contrary to Rule 54(d)(1). Pp. 7–15. (1) GRC argues that since §1692k(a)(3) does not address whether costs may be awarded in an FDCPA case brought in good faith, it does not set forth a standard that is contrary to the Rule and therefore does not displace the presumption that a court has discretion to award costs. Marx and the United States concede that the statute does not expressly limit a court’s discretion to award costs under the Rule, but argue that it does so by negative implication. They claim that unless §1692k(a)(3) sets forth the exclusive basis on which to award costs, the phrase “and costs” would be superfluous with Rule 54(d)(1). And the United States also argues that §1692k(a)(3)’s more specific cost statute displaces Rule 54(d)(1)’s more general rule. Pp. 7–9. (2) The argument of Marx and the United States depends critically on whether §1692k(a)(3)’s allowance of costs creates a negative implication that costs are unavailable in any other circumstances. The expressio unius canon that they invoke does not apply “unless it is fair to suppose that Congress considered the unnamed possibility and meant to say no to it,” Barnhart v. Peabody Coal Co., 537 U.S. 149, 168, and can be overcome by “contrary indications that adopting a particular rule or statute was probably not meant to signal any exclusion,” United States v. Vonn, 535 U.S. 55, 65. Here, context indicates that Congress did not intend §1692k(a)(3) to foreclose courts from awarding costs under the Rule. First, under the American Rule, each litigant generally pays his own attorney’s fees, but the Court has long recognized that federal courts have inherent power to award attorney’s fees in a narrow set of circumstances, e.g., when a party brings an action in bad faith. The statute is thus best read as codifying a court’s pre-existing authority to award both attorney’s fees and costs. Next, §1692k(a)(3)’s second sentence must be understood in light of its first, which provides an award of attorney’s fees and costs, but to prevailing plaintiffs. By adding “and costs” to the second sentence, Congress foreclosed the argument that defendants can only recover attorney’s fees when plaintiffs bring an action in bad faith and removed any doubt that defendants may recover costs as well as attorney’s fees in such cases. Finally, §1692k(a)(3)’s language sharply contrasts with that of other statutes in which Congress has placed conditions on awarding costs to prevailing defendants. See, e.g., 28 U. S. C. §1928. Pp. 9–12. (3) Even assuming that their surplusage argument is correct, the canon against surplusage is not absolute. First, the canon “assists only where a competing interpretation gives effect to every clause and word of a statute.” Microsoft Corp. v. i4i Ltd. Partnership, 564 U. S. ___, ___. Here, no interpretation of §1692k(a)(3) gives effect to every word. Second, redundancy is not unusual in statutes addressing costs. See, e.g., 12 U. S. C. §2607(d)(5). Finally, the canon is strongest when an interpretation would render superfluous another part of the same statutory scheme. Because §1692k(a)(3) is not part of Rule 54(d)(1), the force of this canon is diminished. Pp. 13–14. (4) Lastly, contrary to the United States’ claim that specific cost-shifting standards displace general ones, the context of the statute indicates that Congress was simply confirming the background presumption that courts may award to defendants attorney’s fees and costs when the plaintiff brings an action in bad faith. Because Marx did not bring this suit in bad faith, the specific provision is not applicable. Pp. 14–15. 668 F.3d 1174, affirmed. Thomas, J., delivered the opinion of the Court, in which Roberts, C. J., and Scalia, Kennedy, Ginsburg, Breyer, and Alito, JJ., joined. Sotomayor, J., filed a dissenting opinion, in which Kagan, J., joined.

Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 54(d)(1) gives district courts discretion to award costs to prevailing defendants “[u]nless a federal statute . . . provides otherwise.” The Fair Debt Collection Practices Act (FDCPA), 91Stat. 881, 15 U. S. C. §1692k(a)(3), provides that “[o]n a finding by the court that an action under this section was brought in bad faith and for the purpose of harassment, the court may award to the defendant attorney’s fees reasonable in relation to the work expended and costs.” This case presents the question whether §1692k(a)(3) “provides otherwise” than Rule 54(d)(1). We conclude that §1692k(a)(3) does not “provid[e] otherwise,” and thus a district court may award costs to prevailing defendants in FDCPA cases without finding that the plaintiff brought the case in bad faith and for the purpose of harassment. I Petitioner Olivea Marx defaulted on a student loan guaranteed by EdFund, a division of the California Student Aid Commission. In September 2008, EdFund hired respondent General Revenue Corporation (GRC) to collect the debt. One month later, Marx filed an FDCPA enforcement action against GRC.[1] Marx alleged that GRC had violated the FDCPA by harassing her with phone calls several times a day and falsely threatening to garnish up to 50% of her wages and to take the money she owed directly from her bank account. Shortly after the complaint was filed, GRC made an offer of judgment under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 68 to pay Marx $1,500, plus reasonable attorney’s fees and costs, to settle any claims she had against it. Marx did not respond to the offer. She subsequently amended her complaint to add a claim that GRC unlawfully sent a fax to her workplace that requested information about her employment status. Following a 1-day bench trial, the District Court found that Marx had failed to prove any violation of the FDCPA. As the prevailing party, GRC submitted a bill of costs seeking $7,779.16 in witness fees, witness travel expenses, and deposition transcript fees. The court disallowed several items of costs and, pursuant to Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 54(d)(1), ordered Marx to pay GRC $4,543.03. Marx filed a motion to vacate the award of costs, arguing that the court lacked authority to award costs under Rules 54(d)(1) and 68(d) because 15 U. S. C. §1692k(a)(3) sets forth the exclusive basis for awarding costs in FDCPA cases.[2] Section 1692k(a)(3) provides, in relevant part: “On a finding by the court that an action under this section was brought in bad faith and for the purpose of harassment, the court may award to the defendant attorney’s fees reasonable in relation to the work expended and costs.” Marx argued that because the court had not found that she brought the case in bad faith and for the purpose of harassment, GRC was not entitled to costs. The Dis- trict Court rejected Marx’s argument, concluding that §1692k(a)(3) does not displace a court’s discretion to award costs under Rule 54(d)(1) and that costs should also be awarded under Rule 68(d). The Tenth Circuit affirmed but agreed only with part of the District Court’s reasoning. In particular, the court disagreed that costs were allowed under Rule 68(d). 668 F.3d 1174, 1182 (2011). It explained that “Rule 68 applies only where the district court enters judgment in favor of a plaintiff” for less than the amount of the settlement offer and not where the plaintiff loses outright. Ibid. (citing Delta Air Lines, Inc. v. August, 450 U.S. 346, 352 (1981)). Because the District Court had not entered judgment in favor of Marx, the court concluded that costs were not allowed under Rule 68(d). 668 F. 3d, at 1182. Nevertheless, the court found that costs were allowed under Rule 54(d)(1), which grants district courts discretion to award costs to prevailing parties unless a federal statute or the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure provide otherwise. Id., at 1178, 1182. After describing the “venerable” presumption that prevailing parties are entitled to costs, id., at 1179, the court concluded that nothing in the text, history, or purpose of §1692k(a)(3) indicated that it was meant to displace Rule 54(d)(1), id., at 1178–1182. Judge Lucero dissented, arguing that “[t]he only sensible reading of [§1692k(a)(3)] is that the district court may only award costs to a defendant” upon finding that the action was brought in bad faith and for the purpose of harassment and that to read it otherwise rendered the phrase “and costs” superfluous. Id., at 1187 (emphasis in original). We granted certiorari, 566 U. S. ___ (2012), to resolve a conflict among the Circuits regarding whether a prevailing defendant in an FDCPA case may be awarded costs where the lawsuit was not brought in bad faith and for the purpose of harassment. Compare 668 F. 3d, at 1182 (case below), with Rouse v. Law Offices of Rory Clark, 603 F.3d 699, 701 (CA9 2010). We now affirm the judgment of the Tenth Circuit. II As in all statutory construction cases, we “ ‘assum[e] that the ordinary meaning of [the statutory] language accurately expresses the legislative purpose.’ ” Hardt v. Re- liance Standard Life Ins. Co., 560 U. S. ___, ___ (2010) (slip op., at 8) (quoting Gross v. FBL Financial Services, Inc., 557 U.S. 167, 175 (2009) (alteration in original)). In this case, we must construe both Rule 54(d)(1) and §1692k(a)(3) and assess the relationship between them. A Rule 54(d)(1) is straightforward. It provides, in relevant part: “Unless a federal statute, these rules, or a court or- der provides otherwise, costs—other than attorney’s fees—should be allowed to the prevailing party.” As the Tenth Circuit correctly recognized, Rule 54(d)(1) codifies a venerable presumption that prevailing parties are entitled to costs.[3] Notwithstanding this presumption, the word “should” makes clear that the decision whether to award costs ultimately lies within the sound discretion of the district court. See Taniguchi v. Kan Pacific Saipan, Ltd., 566 U. S. ___, ___ (2012) (slip op., at 4) (“Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 54(d) gives courts the discretion to award costs to prevailing parties”). Rule 54(d)(1) also makes clear, however, that this discretion can be displaced by a federal statute or a Federal Rule of Civil Procedure that “provides otherwise.” A statute “provides otherwise” than Rule 54(d)(1) if it is “contrary” to the Rule. See 10 J. Moore, Moore’s Federal Practice §54.101[1][c], p. 54–159 (3d ed. 2012) (hereinafter 10 Moore’s). Because the Rule grants district courts discretion to award costs, a statute is contrary to the Rule if it limits that discretion. A statute may limit a court’s dis- cretion in several ways, and it need not expressly state that it is displacing Rule 54(d)(1) to do so. For instance, a statute providing that “plaintiffs shall not be liable for costs” is contrary to Rule 54(d)(1) because it precludes a court from awarding costs to prevailing defendants. See, e.g., 7 U. S. C. §18(d)(1) (“The petitioner shall not be liable for costs in the district court”). Similarly, a statute providing that plaintiffs may recover costs only under certain conditions is contrary to Rule 54(d) because it precludes a court from awarding costs to prevailing plaintiffs when those conditions have not been satisfied. See, e.g., 28 U. S. C. §1928 (“[N]o costs shall be included in such judgment, unless the proper disclaimer has been filed in the United States Patent and Trademark Office”). Importantly, not all statutes that provide for costs are contrary to Rule 54(d)(1). A statute providing that “the court may award costs to the prevailing party,” for example, is not contrary to the Rule because it does not limit a court’s discretion. See 10 Moore’s §54.101[1][c], at 54–159 (“A number of statutes state simply that the court may award costs in its discretion. Such a provision is not con- trary to Rule 54(d)(1) and does not displace the court’s discretion under the Rule”). Marx and the United States as amicus curiae suggest that any statute that specifically provides for costs displaces Rule 54(d)(1), regardless of whether it is contrary to the Rule. Brief for Petitioner 17; Brief for United States as Amicus Curiae 11–12 (hereinafter Brief for United States). The United States relies on the original 1937 version of Rule 54(d)(1), which provided, “ ‘Except when express provision therefor is made either in a statute of the United States or in these rules, costs shall be allowed as of course to the prevailing party unless the court otherwise directs.’ ” Id., at 12 (quoting Rule). Though the Rules Committee updated the language of Rule 54(d)(1) in 2007, the change was “stylistic only.” Advisory Committee’s Notes, 28 U. S. C. App., p. 734 (2006 ed., Supp. V). Accordingly, the United States asserts that any “express provision” for costs should displace Rule 54(d)(1). We are not persuaded, however, that the original version of Rule 54(d) should be interpreted as Marx and the United States suggest. The original language was meant to ensure that Rule 54(d) did not displace existing costs provisions that were contrary to the Rule. Under the prior language, statutes that simply permitted a court to award costs did not displace the Rule. See 6 J. Moore, Moore’s Federal Practice §54.71[1], p. 54–304 (2d ed. 1996) (“[W]hen permissive language is used [in a statute regarding costs] the district court may, pursuant to Rule 54(d), exercise a sound discretion relative to the allowance of costs”). Rather, statutes had to set forth a standard for awarding costs that was different from Rule 54(d)(1) in order to displace the Rule. See Friedman v. Ganassi, 853 F.2d 207, 210 (CA3 1988) (holding that 15 U. S. C. §77k(e) is not an “express provision” under Rule 54(d) because it does not provide an “alternative standard” for awarding taxable costs). The original version of Rule 54(d) is consistent with our conclusion that a statute must be contrary to Rule 54(d)(1) in order to displace it.[4] B We now turn to whether §1692k(a)(3) is contrary to Rule 54(d)(1). The language of §1692k(a)(3) and the context surrounding it persuade us that it is not. 1 The second sentence of §1692k(a)(3) provides: “On a finding by the court that an action under this section was brought in bad faith and for the purpose of harassment, the court may award to the defendant attorney’s fees reasonable in relation to the work expended and costs.”[5] GRC contends that the statute does not address whether costs may be awarded in this case—where the plaintiff brought the case in good faith—and thus it does not set forth a standard for awarding costs that is contrary to Rule 54(d)(1). In its view, Congress intended §1692k(a)(3) to deter plaintiffs from bringing nuisance lawsuits. It, therefore, expressly provided that when plaintiffs bring an action in bad faith and for the purpose of harassment, the court may award attorney’s fees and costs to the defendant. The statute does address this type of case—i.e., cases in which the plaintiff brings the action in bad faith and for the purpose of harassment. But it is silent where bad faith and purpose of harassment are absent, and silence does not displace the background rule that a court has discretion to award costs. Marx and the United States take the contrary view. They concede that the language does not expressly limit a court’s discretion to award costs under Rule 54(d)(1), Brief for Petitioner 10; Brief for United States 19, but argue that it does so by negative implication. Invoking the expressio unius canon of statutory construction, they contend that by specifying that a court may award attorney’s fees and costs when an action is brought in bad faith and for the purpose of harassment, Congress intended to preclude a court from awarding fees and costs when bad faith and purpose of harassment are absent. They further argue that unless §1692k(a)(3) sets forth the exclusive basis on which a court may award costs, the phrase “and costs” would be superfluous. According to this argument, Congress would have had no reason to specify that a court may award costs when a plaintiff brings an action in bad faith if it could have nevertheless awarded costs under Rule 54(d)(1). Finally, the United States argues that §1692k(a)(3) is a more specific cost statute that displaces Rule 54(d)(1)’s more general rule. The context surrounding §1692k(a)(3) persuades us that GRC’s interpretation is correct. 2 The argument of Marx and the United States depends critically on whether §1692k(a)(3)’s allowance of costs creates a negative implication that costs are unavailable in any other circumstances. The force of any negative implication, however, depends on context. We have long held that the expressio unius canon does not apply “unless it is fair to suppose that Congress considered the unnamed possibility and meant to say no to it,” Barnhart v. Peabody Coal Co., 537 U.S. 149, 168 (2003), and that the canon can be overcome by “contrary indications that adopting a particular rule or statute was probably not meant to signal any exclusion,” United States v. Vonn, 535 U.S. 55, 65 (2002). In this case, context persuades us that Congress did not intend §1692k(a)(3) to foreclose courts from awarding costs under Rule 54(d)(1). First, the background presumptions governing attorney’s fees and costs are a highly relevant contextual feature. As already explained, under Rule 54(d)(1) a prevailing party is entitled to recover costs from the losing party unless a federal statute, the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, or a court order “provides otherwise.” The opposite presumption exists with respect to attorney’s fees. Under the “bedrock principle known as the ‘ “American Rule,” ’ ” “[e]ach litigant pays his own attorney’s fees, win or lose, unless a statute or contract provides otherwise.” Hardt, 560 U. S., at ___ (slip op., at 9) (quoting Ruckelshaus v. Sierra Club, 463 U.S. 680, 683 (1983)). Notwithstanding the American Rule, however, we have long recognized that federal courts have inherent power to award attorney’s fees in a narrow set of circumstances, including when a party brings an action in bad faith. See Chambers v. NASCO, Inc., 501 U.S. 32, 45–46 (1991) (explaining that a court has inherent power to award attorney’s fees to a party whose litigation efforts directly benefit others, to sanction the willful disobedience of a court order, and to sanction a party who has acted in bad faith, vexatiously, wantonly, or for oppressive reasons); Alyeska Pipeline Service Co. v. Wilderness Society, 421 U.S. 240, 257–259 (1975) (same). It is undisputed that §1692k(a)(3) leaves the background rules for attorney’s fees intact. The statute provides that when the plaintiff brings an action in bad faith, the court may award attorney’s fees to the defendant. But, as noted, a court has inherent power to award fees based on a litigant’s bad faith even without §1692k(a)(3). See Chambers, supra, at 45–46. Because §1692k(a)(3) codifies the background rule for attorney’s fees, it is dubious to infer congressional intent to override the background rule with respect to costs. The statute is best read as codifying a court’s pre-existing authority to award both attorney’s fees and costs.[6] Next, the second sentence of §1692k(a)(3) must be understood in light of the sentence that precedes it.[7] The first sentence of §1692k(a)(3) provides that defendants who violate the FDCPA are liable for the plaintiff’s attorney’s fees and costs. The second sentence of §1692k(a)(3) similarly provides that plaintiffs who bring an action in bad faith and for the purpose of harassment may be liable for the defendant’s fees and costs. If Congress had excluded “and costs” in the second sen- tence, plaintiffs might have argued that the expression of costs in the first sentence and the exclusion of costs in the second meant that defendants could only recover attorney’s fees when plaintiffs bring an action in bad faith. By adding “and costs” to the second sentence, Congress foreclosed that argument, thereby removing any doubt that defendants may recover costs as well as attorney’s fees when plaintiffs bring suits in bad faith. See Ali v. Federal Bureau of Prisons, 552 U.S. 214, 226 (2008) (explaining that a phrase is not superfluous if used to “remove . . . doubt” about an issue); Fort Stewart Schools v. FLRA, 495 U.S. 641, 646 (1990) (explaining that “technically unnecessary” examples may have been “inserted out of an abundance of caution”). The fact that there might have been a negative implication that costs are precluded, depending on whether Congress included or excluded the phrase “and costs,” weighs against giving effect to any implied limitation. Finally, the language in §1692k(a)(3) sharply contrasts with other statutes in which Congress has placed conditions on awarding costs to prevailing defendants. See, e.g., 28 U. S. C. §1928 (“[N]o costs shall be included in such judgment, unless the proper disclaimer has been filed in the United States Patent and Trademark Office prior to the commencement of the action” (emphasis added)); 42 U. S. C. §1988(b) (“[I]n any action brought against a judicial officer . . . such officer shall not be held liable for any costs . . . unless such action was clearly in excess of such officer’s jurisdiction” (emphasis added)). Although Congress need not use explicit language to limit a court’s discretion under Rule 54(d)(1), its use of explicit language in other statutes cautions against inferring a limitation in §1692k(a)(3). These statutes confirm that Congress knows how to limit a court’s discretion under Rule 54(d)(1) when it so desires. See Small v. United States, 544 U.S. 385, 398 (2005) (Thomas, J., dissent- ing) (explaining that “Congress’ explicit use of [language] in other provisions shows that it specifies such restrictions when it wants to do so”). Had Congress intended the second sentence of §1692k(a)(3) to displace Rule 54(d)(1), it could have easily done so by using the word “only” before setting forth the condition “[o]n a finding by the court that an action . . . was brought in bad faith and for the purpose of harassment . . . .”[8] 3 As the above discussion suggests, we also are not persuaded by Marx’s objection that our interpretation renders the phrase “and costs” superfluous. As noted, supra, at 11, the phrase “and costs” would not be superfluous if Congress included it to remove doubt that defendants may recover costs when plaintiffs bring suits in bad faith. But even assuming that our interpretation renders the phrase “and costs” superfluous, that would not alter our conclusion. The canon against surplusage is not an absolute rule, see Arlington Central School Dist. Bd. of Ed. v. Murphy, 548 U.S. 291, 299, n. 1 (2006) (“While it is generally presumed that statutes do not contain surplusage, instances of surplusage are not unknown”); Connecticut Nat. Bank v. Germain, 503 U.S. 249, 253 (1992) (“Redundancies across statutes are not unusual events in drafting . . . ”), and it has considerably less force in this case. First, the canon against surplusage “assists only where a competing interpretation gives effect to every clause and word of a statute.” Microsoft Corp. v. i4i Ltd. Partnership, 564 U. S. ___, ___ (2011) (slip op., at 12) (internal quotation marks omitted). But, in this case, no interpretation of §1692k(a)(3) gives effect to every word. Both Marx and the United States admit that a court has inherent power to award attorney’s fees to a defendant when the plaintiff brings an action in bad faith. Because there was, consequently, no need for Congress to specify that courts have this power, §1692k(a)(3) is superfluous insofar as it addresses attorney’s fees. In light of this redundancy, we are not overly concerned that the reference to costs may be redundant as well. Second, redundancy is “hardly unusual” in statutes addressing costs. See id., at ___ (slip op., at 13). Numerous statutes overlap with Rule 54(d)(1). See, e.g., 12 U. S. C. §2607(d)(5) (“[T]he court may award to the prevailing party the court costs of the action”); §5565(b) (2006 ed., Supp. V) (“the [Consumer Financial Protection] Bureau . . . may recover its costs in connection with prosecuting such action if [it] . . . is the prevailing party in the action”); 15 U. S. C. §6104(d) (2006 ed.) (“The court . . . may award costs of suit and reasonable fees for attorneys and expert witnesses to the prevailing party”); §7706(f)(4) (“In the case of any successful action . . . the court, in its discretion, may award the costs of the action”); §7805(b)(3) (“[T]he court may award to the prevailing party costs”); §8131(2) (2006 ed., Supp. V) (“The court may also, in its discretion, award costs and attorneys fees to the prevailing party”); 29 U. S. C. §431(c) (2006 ed.) (“The court . . . may, in its discretion . . . allow a reasonable attorney’s fee to be paid by the defendant, and costs of the action”); 42 U. S. C. §3612(p) (“[T]he court . . . in its discretion, may allow the prevailing party . . . a reasonable attorney’s fee and costs”); §3613(c)(2) (“[T]he court, in its discretion, may allow the prevailing party . . . a reasonable attorney’s fee and costs”); 47 U. S. C. §551(f)(2) (“[T]he court may award . . . other litigation costs reasonably incurred”). Finally, the canon against surplusage is strongest when an interpretation would render superfluous another part of the same statutory scheme. Cf. United States v. Jica- rilla Apache Nation, 564 U. S. ___, ___ (2011) (slip op., at 22) (“ ‘As our cases have noted in the past, we are hesitant to adopt an interpretation of a congressional enactment which renders superfluous another portion of that same law’ ” (quoting Mackey v. Lanier Collection Agency & Service, Inc., 486 U.S. 825, 837 (1988))). Because §1692k(a)(3) is not part of Rule 54(d)(1), the force of this canon is diminished. 4 Lastly, the United States contends that §1692k(a)(3) “establishes explicit cost-shifting standards that displace Rule 54(d)(1)’s more general default standard.” Brief for United States 17; see also EC Term of Years Trust v. United States, 550 U.S. 429, 433 (2007) (“ ‘[A] precisely drawn, detailed statute pre-empts more general remedies’ ” (quoting Brown v. GSA, 425 U.S. 820, 834 (1976))). Were we to accept the argument that §1692k(a)(3) has a negative implication, this argument might be persuasive. But the context of §1692k(a)(3) indicates that Congress was simply confirming the background rule that courts may award to defendants attorney’s fees and costs when the plaintiff brings an action in bad faith. The statute speaks to one type of case—the case of the bad-faith and harassing plaintiff. Because Marx did not bring this suit in bad faith, this case does not “fal[l] within the ambit of the more specific provision.” Brief for United States 13; see also RadLAX Gateway Hotel, LLC v. Amalgamated Bank, 566 U. S. ___, ___ (2012) (slip op., at 9) (“When the conduct at issue falls within the scope of both provisions, the specific presumptively governs . . .” (emphasis in original)).[9] Accordingly, this canon is inapplicable. III Because we conclude that the second sentence of §1692k(a)(3) is not contrary to Rule 54(d)(1), and, thus, does not displace a district court’s discretion to award costs under the Rule, we need not address GRC’s alternative argument that costs were required under Rule 68. The judgment of the Court of Appeals is affirmed. It is so ordered. Notes 1 The FDCPA is a consumer protection statute that prohibits certain abusive, deceptive, and unfair debt collection practices. See 15 U. S. C. §1692. The FDCPA’s private-enforcement provision, §1692k, author-izes any aggrieved person to recover damages from “any debt collector who fails to comply with any provision” of the FDCPA. §1692k(a). 2 Under Rule 68(d), if a defendant makes a settlement offer, and the plaintiff rejects it and later obtains a judgment that is less favorable than the one offered her, the plaintiff must pay the costs incurred by the defendant after the offer was made. See Fed. Rule Civ. Proc. 68(d) (“If the judgment that the offeree finally obtains is not more favorable than the unaccepted offer, the offeree must pay the costs incurred after the offer was made”). 3 Prior to the adoption of the federal rules, prevailing parties were entitled to costs as of right in actions at law while courts had discretion to award costs in equity proceedings. See Ex parte Peterson, 253 U.S. 300, 317–318 (1920) (“While in equity proceedings the allowance and imposition of costs is, unless controlled by statute or rule of court, a matter of discretion, it has been uniformly held that in actions at law the prevailing party is entitled to costs as of right, except in those few cases where by express statutory provision or by established principles costs are denied” (citation omitted)); Mansfield, C. & L. M. R. Co. v. Swan, 111 U.S. 379, 387 (1884) (“[B]y the long established practice and universally recognized rule of the common law, in actions at law, the prevailing party is entitled to recover a judgment for costs . . . ”). 4 The dissent provides no stable definition of “provides otherwise.” First, it argues that a statute “provides otherwise” if it is “different” from Rule 54(d)(1). Post, at 2 (opinion of Sotomayor, J.). That interpretation renders the Rule meaningless because every statute is “dif-ferent” insofar as it is not an exact copy of the Rule. Next, it argues that a statute “provides otherwise” if it is an “ ‘express provision’ relating to costs.” Post, at 2–3. Under that view, a statute providing that “the court may award costs to the prevailing party” would “provide otherwise.” We do not think such a statute provides otherwise—it provides “same-wise,” and the treatise on which the dissent relies supports our view. See 10 C. Wright, A. Miller, & M. Kane, Federal Practice and Procedure §2670, p. 258 (3d ed. 1998 and Supp. 2012) (“[Statutes that] are permissive in character . . . are not inconsistent with the discretion given the district court by Rule 54(d)”). Finally,the dissent seems to implicitly accept that “otherwise” means “to the contrary” in the course of arguing that a doctor’s instruction to take medication “ ‘in the morning’ ” would supersede an instruction on the medication label to “ ‘take [it] twice a day unless otherwise directed,’ ” because the patient would understand the doctor’s advice to mean that he should take the medicine “once a day, each morning.” Post, at 4. If the patient understands the doctor to mean “once a day, each morning,” we agree that such advice would “provide otherwise,” because the doctor’s order would be “contrary” to the label’s instruction. For the reasons set forth in Part II–B, however, we are not convinced that §1692k(a)(3) is “contrary” to Rule 54(d)(1). 5 It is undisputed that GRC is not entitled to costs under §1692k(a)(3) because the District Court did not find that Marx brought this action in bad faith. But Rule 54(d)(1) independently authorizes district courts to award costs to prevailing parties. The question in this case is not whether costs are allowed under §1692k(a)(3) but whether §1692k(a)(3) precludes an award of costs under Rule 54(d)(1). 6 Indeed, had Congress intended §1692k(a)(3) to foreclose a court’s discretion to award costs, it could not have chosen a more circuitous way to do so. The statute sets forth the circumstances in which a court “may” award costs. But under Marx’s and the United States’ view, the only consequence of the statute is to set forth the circumstances in which it may not award costs. 7 Section 1692k(a) provides: “Except as otherwise provided by this section, any debt collector who fails to comply with any provision of this subchapter with respect to any person is liable to such person in an amount equal to the sum of— “(1) any actual damages sustained by such person as a result of such failure; “(2)(A) in the case of any action by an individual, such additional damages as the court may allow, but not exceeding $1,000; or “(B) in the case of a class action, (i) such amount for each named plaintiff as could be recovered under subparagraph (A), and (ii) such amount as the court may allow for all other class members, without regard to a minimum individual recovery, not to exceed the lesser of $500,000 or 1 per centum of the net worth of the debt collector; and “(3) in the case of any successful action to enforce the foregoing liability, the costs of the action, together with a reasonable attorney’s fee as determined by the court. On a finding by the court that an action under this section was brought in bad faith and for the purpose of harassment, the court may award to the defendant attorney’s fees reasonable in relation to the work expended and costs.” 8 Marx also suggests that §1692k(a)(3) is similar to the PipelineSafety Act, 49 U. S. C. §60121(b), which provides: “The court may award costs to a prevailing defendant when the action is unreasonable, frivolous, or meritless.” We have never had occasion to interpret §60121(b) and its interaction with Rule 54(d)(1). 9 Marx, the United States, and GRC also spar over the purpose of §1692k(a)(3). Brief for Petitioner 14–16; Brief for United States 21–28; Reply Brief 11–14; Brief for Respondent 30–43. Marx and the United States contend that Congress intended to limit a court’s discretion to award costs to prevailing defendants because FDCPA plaintiffs are often poor and may be deterred from challenging unlawful debt collection practices by the possibility of being held liable for the defendant’s costs. This purposive argument cannot overcome the language and context of §1692k(a)(3), but even if it could, we find it unpersuasive. Rule 54(d)(1) does not require courts to award costs to prevailing defendants. District courts may appropriately consider an FDCPA plaintiff’s indigency in deciding whether to award costs. See Badillo v. Central Steel & Wire Co., 717 F.2d 1160, 1165 (CA7 1983) (“[I]t is within the discretion of the district court to consider a plaintiff’s indigency in denying costs under Rule 54(d)”).

569.US.435

After his 2009 arrest on first- and second-degree assault charges, respondent King was processed through a Wicomico County, Maryland, facility, where booking personnel used a cheek swab to take a DNA sample pursuant to the Maryland DNA Collection Act (Act). The swab was matched to an unsolved 2003 rape, and King was charged with that crime. He moved to suppress the DNA match, arguing that the Act violated the Fourth Amendment, but the Circuit Court Judge found the law constitutional. King was convicted of rape. The Maryland Court of Appeals set aside the conviction, finding unconstitutional the portions of the Act authorizing DNA collection from felony arrestees. Held: When officers make an arrest supported by probable cause to hold for a serious offense and bring the suspect to the station to be detained in custody, taking and analyzing a cheek swab of the arrestee’s DNA is, like fingerprinting and photographing, a legitimate police booking procedure that is reasonable under the Fourth Amendment. Pp. 3–28. (a) DNA testing may “significantly improve both the criminal justice system and police investigative practices,” District Attorney’s Office for Third Judicial Dist. v. Osborne, 557 U.S. 52, 55, by making it “possible to determine whether a biological tissue matches a suspect with near certainty,” id., at 62. Maryland’s Act authorizes law enforcement authorities to collect DNA samples from, as relevant here, persons charged with violent crimes, including first-degree assault. A sample may not be added to a database before an individual is arraigned, and it must be destroyed if, e.g., he is not convicted. Only identity information may be added to the database. Here, the officer collected a DNA sample using the common “buccal swab” procedure, which is quick and painless, requires no “surgical intrusio[n] beneath the skin,” Winston v. Lee, 470 U.S. 753, 760, and poses no threat to the arrestee’s “health or safety,” id., at 763. Respondent’s identification as the rapist resulted in part through the operation of the Combined DNA Index System (CODIS), which connects DNA laboratories at the local, state, and national level, and which standardizes the points of comparison, i.e., loci, used in DNA analysis. Pp. 3–7. (b) The framework for deciding the issue presented is well established. Using a buccal swab inside a person’s cheek to obtain a DNA sample is a search under the Fourth Amendment. And the fact that the intrusion is negligible is of central relevance to determining whether the search is reasonable, “the ultimate measure of the constitutionality of a governmental search,” Vernonia School Dist. 47J v. Acton, 515 U.S. 646, 652. Because the need for a warrant is greatly diminished here, where the arrestee was already in valid police custody for a serious offense supported by probable cause, the search is analyzed by reference to “reasonableness, not individualized suspicion,” Samson v. California, 547 U.S. 843, 855, n. 4, and reasonableness is determined by weighing “the promotion of legitimate governmental interests” against “the degree to which [the search] intrudes upon an individual’s privacy,” Wyoming v. Houghton, 526 U.S. 295, 300. Pp. 7–10. (c) In this balance of reasonableness, great weight is given to both the significant government interest at stake in the identification of arrestees and DNA identification’s unmatched potential to serve that interest. Pp. 10–23. (1) The Act serves a well-established, legitimate government interest: the need of law enforcement officers in a safe and accurate way to process and identify persons and possessions taken into custody. “[P]robable cause provides legal justification for arresting a [suspect], and for a brief period of detention to take the administrative steps incident to arrest,” Gerstein v. Pugh, 420 U.S. 103, 113–114; and the “validity of the search of a person incident to a lawful arrest” is settled, United States v. Robinson, 414 U.S. 218, 224. Individual suspicion is not necessary. The “routine administrative procedure[s] at a police station house incident to booking and jailing the suspect” have different origins and different constitutional justifications than, say, the search of a place not incident to arrest, Illinois v. Lafayette, 462 U.S. 640, 643, which depends on the “fair probability that contraband or evidence of a crime will be found in a particular place,” Illinois v. Gates, 462 U.S. 213, 238. And when probable cause exists to remove an individual from the normal channels of society and hold him in legal custody, DNA identification plays a critical role in serving those interests. First, the government has an interest in properly identifying “who has been arrested and who is being tried.” Hiibel v. Sixth Judicial Dist. Court of Nev., Humboldt Cty., 542 U.S. 177, 191. Criminal history is critical to officers who are processing a suspect for detention. They already seek identity information through routine and accepted means: comparing booking photographs to sketch artists’ depictions, showing mugshots to potential witnesses, and comparing fingerprints against electronic databases of known criminals and unsolved crimes. The only difference between DNA analysis and fingerprint databases is the unparalleled accuracy DNA provides. DNA is another metric of identification used to connect the arrestee with his or her public persona, as reflected in records of his or her actions that are available to the police. Second, officers must ensure that the custody of an arrestee does not create inordinate “risks for facility staff, for the existing detainee population, and for a new detainee.” Florence v. Board of Chosen Freeholders of County of Burlington, 566 U. S. ___, ___. DNA allows officers to know the type of person being detained. Third, “the Government has a substantial interest in ensuring that persons accused of crimes are available for trials.” Bell v. Wolfish, 441 U.S. 520, 534. An arrestee may be more inclined to flee if he thinks that continued contact with the criminal justice system may expose another serious offense. Fourth, an arrestee’s past conduct is essential to assessing the danger he poses to the public, which will inform a court’s bail determination. Knowing that the defendant is wanted for a previous violent crime based on DNA identification may be especially probative in this regard. Finally, in the interests of justice, identifying an arrestee as the perpetrator of some heinous crime may have the salutary effect of freeing a person wrongfully imprisoned. Pp. 10–18. (2) DNA identification is an important advance in the techniques long used by law enforcement to serve legitimate police concerns. Police routinely have used scientific advancements as standard procedures for identifying arrestees. Fingerprinting, perhaps the most direct historical analogue to DNA technology, has, from its advent, been viewed as a natural part of “the administrative steps incident to arrest.” County of Riverside v. McLaughlin, 500 U.S. 44, 58. However, DNA identification is far superior. The additional intrusion upon the arrestee’s privacy beyond that associated with fingerprinting is not significant, and DNA identification is markedly more accurate. It may not be as fast as fingerprinting, but rapid fingerprint analysis is itself of recent vintage, and the question of how long it takes to process identifying information goes to the efficacy of the search for its purpose of prompt identification, not the constitutionality of the search. Rapid technical advances are also reducing DNA processing times. Pp. 18–23. (d) The government interest is not outweighed by respondent’s privacy interests. Pp. 23–28. (1) By comparison to the substantial government interest and the unique effectiveness of DNA identification, the intrusion of a cheek swab to obtain a DNA sample is minimal. Reasonableness must be considered in the context of an individual’s legitimate privacy expectations, which necessarily diminish when he is taken into police custody. Bell, supra, at 557. Such searches thus differ from the so-called special needs searches of, e.g., otherwise law-abiding motorists at checkpoints. See Indianapolis v. Edmond, 531 U.S. 32. The reasonableness inquiry considers two other circumstances in which particularized suspicion is not categorically required: “diminished expectations of privacy [and a] minimal intrusion.” Illinois v. McArthur, 531 U.S. 326, 330. An invasive surgery may raise privacy concerns weighty enough for the search to require a warrant, notwithstanding the arrestee’s diminished privacy expectations, but a buccal swab, which involves a brief and minimal intrusion with “virtually no risk, trauma, or pain,” Schmerber v. California, 384 U.S. 757, 771, does not increase the indignity already attendant to normal incidents of arrest. Pp. 23–26. (2) The processing of respondent’s DNA sample’s CODIS loci also did not intrude on his privacy in a way that would make his DNA identification unconstitutional. Those loci came from noncoding DNA parts that do not reveal an arrestee’s genetic traits and are unlikely to reveal any private medical information. Even if they could provide such information, they are not in fact tested for that end. Finally, the Act provides statutory protections to guard against such invasions of privacy. Pp. 26–28. 425 Md. 550, 42 A.3d 549, reversed. Kennedy, J., delivered the opinion of the Court, in which Roberts, C. J., and Thomas, Breyer, and Alito, JJ., joined. Scalia, J., filed a dissenting opinion, in which Ginsburg, Sotomayor, and Kagan, JJ., joined.

In 2003 a man concealing his face and armed with a gun broke into a woman’s home in Salisbury, Maryland. He raped her. The police were unable to identify or apprehend the assailant based on any detailed description or other evidence they then had, but they did obtain from the victim a sample of the perpetrator’s DNA. In 2009 Alonzo King was arrested in Wicomico County, Maryland, and charged with first- and second-degree assault for menacing a group of people with a shotgun. As part of a routine booking procedure for serious offenses, his DNA sample was taken by applying a cotton swab or filter paper—known as a buccal swab—to the inside of his cheeks. The DNA was found to match the DNA taken from the Salisbury rape victim. King was tried and convicted for the rape. Additional DNA samples were taken from him and used in the rape trial, but there seems to be no doubt that it was the DNA from the cheek sample taken at the time he was booked in 2009 that led to his first having been linked to the rape and charged with its commission. The Court of Appeals of Maryland, on review of King’s rape conviction, ruled that the DNA taken when King was booked for the 2009 charge was an unlawful seizure because obtaining and using the cheek swab was an unreasonable search of the person. It set the rape conviction aside. This Court granted certiorari and now reverses the judgment of the Maryland court. I When King was arrested on April 10, 2009, for menac-ing a group of people with a shotgun and charged in state court with both first- and second-degree assault, he was processed for detention in custody at the Wicomico County Central Booking facility. Booking personnel used a cheek swab to take the DNA sample from him pursuant to provisions of the Maryland DNA Collection Act (or Act). On July 13, 2009, King’s DNA record was uploaded to the Maryland DNA database, and three weeks later, on August 4, 2009, his DNA profile was matched to the DNA sample collected in the unsolved 2003 rape case. Once the DNA was matched to King, detectives presented the forensic evidence to a grand jury, which indicted him for the rape. Detectives obtained a search warrant and took a second sample of DNA from King, which again matched the evidence from the rape. He moved to suppress the DNA match on the grounds that Maryland’s DNA collection law violated the Fourth Amendment. The Circuit Court Judge upheld the statute as constitutional. King pleaded not guilty to the rape charges but was convicted and sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole. In a divided opinion, the Maryland Court of Appeals struck down the portions of the Act authorizing collection of DNA from felony arrestees as unconstitutional. The majority concluded that a DNA swab was an unreasonable search in violation of the Fourth Amendment because King’s “expectation of privacy is greater than the State’s purported interest in using King’s DNA to identify him.” 425 Md. 550, 561, 42 A.3d 549, 556 (2012). In reach- ing that conclusion the Maryland Court relied on the deci-sions of various other courts that have concluded that DNA identification of arrestees is impermissible. See, e.g., People v. Buza, 129 Cal. Rptr. 3d 753 (App. 2011) (offi-cially depublished); Mario W. v. Kaipio, 228 Ariz. 207, 265 P.3d 389 (App. 2011). Both federal and state courts have reached differing conclusions as to whether the Fourth Amendment prohibits the collection and analysis of a DNA sample from persons arrested, but not yet convicted, on felony charges. This Court granted certiorari, 568 U. S. ___ (2012), to address the question. King is the respondent here. II The advent of DNA technology is one of the most significant scientific advancements of our era. The full potential for use of genetic markers in medicine and science is still being explored, but the utility of DNA identification in the criminal justice system is already undisputed. Since the first use of forensic DNA analysis to catch a rapist and murderer in England in 1986, see J. Butler, Fundamentals of Forensic DNA Typing 5 (2009) (hereinafter Butler), law enforcement, the defense bar, and the courts have acknowledged DNA testing’s “unparalleled ability both to exonerate the wrongly convicted and to identify the guilty. It has the potential to significantly improve both the criminal justice system and police investigative practices.” District Attorney’s Office for Third Judicial Dist. v. Osborne, 557 U.S. 52, 55 (2009). A The current standard for forensic DNA testing relies on an analysis of the chromosomes located within the nucleus of all human cells. “The DNA material in chromosomes is composed of ‘coding’ and ‘noncoding’ regions. The coding regions are known as genes and contain the information necessary for a cell to make proteins. . . . Non-protein-coding regions . . . are not related directly to making proteins, [and] have been referred to as ‘junk’ DNA.” Butler 25. The adjective “junk” may mislead the layperson, for in fact this is the DNA region used with near certainty to identify a person. The term apparently is intended to indicate that this particular noncoding region, while useful and even dispositive for purposes like identity, does not show more far-reaching and complex characteristics like genetic traits. Many of the patterns found in DNA are shared among all people, so forensic analysis focuses on “repeated DNA sequences scattered throughout the human genome,” known as “short tandem repeats” (STRs). Id., at 147–148. The alternative possibilities for the size and frequency of these STRs at any given point along a strand of DNA are known as “alleles,” id., at 25; and multiple alleles are analyzed in order to ensure that a DNA profile matches only one individual. Future refinements may improve pres- ent technology, but even now STR analysis makes it “possible to determine whether a biological tissue matches a suspect with near certainty.” Osborne, supra, at 62. The Act authorizes Maryland law enforcement author-ities to collect DNA samples from “an individual who is charged with . . . a crime of violence or an attempt to commit a crime of violence; or . . . burglary or an attempt to commit burglary.” Md. Pub. Saf. Code Ann. §2–504(a)(3)(i) (Lexis 2011). Maryland law defines a crime of violence to include murder, rape, first-degree assault, kidnaping, arson, sexual assault, and a variety of other serious crimes. Md. Crim. Law Code Ann. §14–101 (Lexis 2012). Once taken, a DNA sample may not be processed or placed in a database before the individual is arraigned (unless the individual consents). Md. Pub. Saf. Code Ann. §2–504(d)(1) (Lexis 2011). It is at this point that a judicial officer ensures that there is probable cause to detain the arrestee on a qualifying serious offense. If “all qualifying criminal charges are determined to be unsupported by probable cause . . . the DNA sample shall be immediately destroyed.” §2–504(d)(2)(i). DNA samples are also destroyed if “a criminal action begun against the individual . . . does not result in a conviction,” “the conviction is finally reversed or vacated and no new trial is permitted,” or “the individual is granted an unconditional pardon.” §2–511(a)(1). The Act also limits the information added to a DNA database and how it may be used. Specifically, “[o]nly DNA records that directly relate to the identification of individuals shall be collected and stored.” §2–505(b)(1). No purpose other than identification is permissible: “A person may not willfully test a DNA sample for information that does not relate to the identification of indi-viduals as specified in this subtitle.” §2–512(c). Tests for familial matches are also prohibited. See §2–506(d) (“A person may not perform a search of the statewide DNA data base for the purpose of identification of an offender in connection with a crime for which the offender may be a biological relative of the individual from whom the DNA sample was acquired”). The officers involved in taking and analyzing respondent’s DNA sample complied with the Act in all respects. Respondent’s DNA was collected in this case using a common procedure known as a “buccal swab.” “Buccal cell collection involves wiping a small piece of filter paper or a cotton swab similar to a Q-tip against the inside cheek of an individual’s mouth to collect some skin cells.” Butler 86. The procedure is quick and painless. The swab touches inside an arrestee’s mouth, but it requires no “surgical intrusio[n] beneath the skin,” Winston v. Lee, 470 U.S. 753, 760 (1985), and it poses no “threa[t] to the health or safety” of arrestees, id., at 763. B Respondent’s identification as the rapist resulted in part through the operation of a national project to standardize collection and storage of DNA profiles. Authorized by Congress and supervised by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Combined DNA Index System (CODIS) connects DNA laboratories at the local, state, and national level. Since its authorization in 1994, the CODIS system has grown to include all 50 States and a number of federal agencies. CODIS collects DNA profiles provided by local laboratories taken from arrestees, convicted offenders, and forensic evidence found at crime scenes. To participate in CODIS, a local laboratory must sign a memorandum of understanding agreeing to adhere to quality standards and submit to audits to evaluate compliance with the federal standards for scientifically rigorous DNA testing. Butler 270. One of the most significant aspects of CODIS is the standardization of the points of comparison in DNA analysis. The CODIS database is based on 13 loci at which the STR alleles are noted and compared. These loci make possible extreme accuracy in matching individual samples, with a “random match probability of approximately 1 in 100 trillion (assuming unrelated individuals).” Ibid. The CODIS loci are from the non-protein coding junk regions of DNA, and “are not known to have any association with a genetic disease or any other genetic predisposition. Thus, the information in the database is only useful for human identity testing.” Id., at 279. STR information is recorded only as a “string of numbers”; and the DNA identification is accompanied only by information denoting the laboratory and the analyst responsible for the submission. Id., at 270. In short, CODIS sets uniform national standards for DNA matching and then facilitates connections between local law enforcement agencies who can share more specific information about matched STR profiles. All 50 States require the collection of DNA from felony convicts, and respondent does not dispute the validity of that practice. See Brief for Respondent 48. Twenty-eight States and the Federal Government have adopted laws similar to the Maryland Act authorizing the collection of DNA from some or all arrestees. See Brief for State of California et al. as Amici Curiae 4, n. 1 (States Brief) (collecting state statutes). Although those statutes vary in their particulars, such as what charges require a DNA sample, their similarity means that this case implicates more than the specific Maryland law. At issue is a standard, expanding technology already in widespread use throughout the Nation. III A Although the DNA swab procedure used here presents a question the Court has not yet addressed, the framework for deciding the issue is well established. The Fourth Amendment, binding on the States by the Fourteenth Amendment, provides that “[t]he right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated.” It can be agreed that using a buccal swab on the inner tissues of a person’s cheek in order to obtain DNA samples is a search. Virtually any “intrusio[n] into the human body,” Schmerber v. California, 384 U.S. 757, 770 (1966), will work an invasion of “ ‘cherished personal security’ that is subject to constitutional scrutiny,” Cupp v. Murphy, 412 U.S. 291, 295 (1973) (quoting Terry v. Ohio, 392 U.S. 1, 24–25 (1968)). The Court has applied the Fourth Amendment to police efforts to draw blood, see Schmerber, supra; Missouri v. McNeely, 569 U. S. ___ (2013), scraping an arrestee’s fingernails to obtain trace evidence, see Cupp, supra, and even to “a breathalyzer test, which generally requires the production of alveolar or ‘deep lung’ breath for chemical analysis,” Skinner v. Railway Labor Executives’ Assn., 489 U.S. 602, 616 (1989). A buccal swab is a far more gentle process than a venipuncture to draw blood. It involves but a light touch on the inside of the cheek; and although it can be deemed a search within the body of the arrestee, it requires no “surgical intrusions beneath the skin.” Winston, 470 U. S., at 760. The fact than an intrusion is negligible is of central relevance to determining reasonableness, although it is still a search as the law defines that term. B To say that the Fourth Amendment applies here is the beginning point, not the end of the analysis. “[T]he Fourth Amendment’s proper function is to constrain, not against all intrusions as such, but against intrusions which are not justified in the circumstances, or which are made in an improper manner.” Schmerber, supra, at 768. “As the text of the Fourth Amendment indicates, the ultimate measure of the constitutionality of a governmental search is ‘reasonableness.’ ” Vernonia School Dist. 47J v. Acton, 515 U.S. 646, 652 (1995). In giving content to the inquiry whether an intrusion is reasonable, the Court has preferred “some quantum of individualized suspicion . . . [as] a prerequisite to a constitutional search or seizure. But the Fourth Amendment imposes no irreducible requirement of such suspicion.” United States v. Martinez-Fuerte, 428 U.S. 543, 560–561 (1976) (citation and footnote omitted). In some circumstances, such as “[w]hen faced with special law enforcement needs, diminished expectations of privacy, minimal intrusions, or the like, the Court has found that certain general, or individual, circumstances may render a warrantless search or seizure reasonable.” Illinois v. McArthur, 531 U.S. 326, 330 (2001). Those circumstances diminish the need for a warrant, either because “the public interest is such that neither a warrant nor probable cause is required,” Maryland v. Buie, 494 U.S. 325, 331 (1990), or because an individual is already on notice, for instance because of his employment, see Skinner, supra, or the conditions of his release from government custody, see Samson v. California, 547 U.S. 843 (2006), that some reasonable police intrusion on his pri-vacy is to be expected. The need for a warrant is perhaps least when the search involves no discretion that could properly be limited by the “interpo[lation of] a neutral magistrate between the citizen and the law enforcement officer.” Treasury Employees v. Von Raab, 489 U.S. 656, 667 (1989). The instant case can be addressed with this background. The Maryland DNA Collection Act provides that, in order to obtain a DNA sample, all arrestees charged with serious crimes must furnish the sample on a buccal swab applied, as noted, to the inside of the cheeks. The arrestee is already in valid police custody for a serious offense supported by probable cause. The DNA collection is not subject to the judgment of officers whose perspective might be “colored by their primary involvement in ‘the often competitive enterprise of ferreting out crime.’ ” Terry, supra, at 12 (quoting Johnson v. United States, 333 U.S. 10, 14 (1948)). As noted by this Court in a different but still instructive context involving blood testing, “[b]oth the circumstances justifying toxicological testing and the permissible limits of such intrusions are defined nar- rowly and specifically in the regulations that authorize them . . . . Indeed, in light of the standardized nature of the tests and the minimal discretion vested in those charged with administering the program, there are virtually no facts for a neutral magistrate to evaluate.” Skinner, supra, at 622. Here, the search effected by the buccal swab of respondent falls within the category of cases this Court has analyzed by reference to the proposition that the “touchstone of the Fourth Amendment is reasonableness, not individualized suspicion.” Samson, supra, at 855, n. 4. Even if a warrant is not required, a search is not beyond Fourth Amendment scrutiny; for it must be reasonable in its scope and manner of execution. Urgent government interests are not a license for indiscriminate police behavior. To say that no warrant is required is merely to acknowledge that “rather than employing a per se rule of unreasonableness, we balance the privacy-related and law enforcement-related concerns to determine if the intrusion was reasonable.” McArthur, supra, at 331. This application of “traditional standards of reasonableness” requires a court to weigh “the promotion of legitimate governmen- tal interests” against “the degree to which [the search] intrudes upon an individual’s privacy.” Wyoming v. Houghton, 526 U.S. 295, 300 (1999). An assessment of reasonableness to determine the lawfulness of requiring this class of arrestees to provide a DNA sample is central to the instant case. IV A The legitimate government interest served by the Maryland DNA Collection Act is one that is well established: the need for law enforcement officers in a safe and accurate way to process and identify the persons and possessions they must take into custody. It is beyond dispute that “probable cause provides legal justification for arresting a person suspected of crime, and for a brief period of detention to take the administrative steps incident to arrest.” Gerstein v. Pugh, 420 U.S. 103, 113–114 (1975). Also uncontested is the “right on the part of the Government, always recognized under English and American law, to search the person of the accused when legally arrested.” Weeks v. United States, 232 U.S. 383, 392 (1914), overruled on other grounds, Mapp v. Ohio, 367 U.S. 643 (1961). “The validity of the search of a person incident to a lawful arrest has been regarded as settled from its first enunciation, and has remained virtually unchallenged.” United States v. Robinson, 414 U.S. 218, 224 (1973). Even in that context, the Court has been clear that individual suspicion is not necessary, because “[t]he constitutionality of a search incident to an arrest does not depend on whether there is any indication that the person ar-rested possesses weapons or evidence. The fact of a lawful arrest, standing alone, authorizes a search.” Michigan v. DeFillippo, 443 U.S. 31, 35 (1979). The “routine administrative procedure[s] at a police sta-tion house incident to booking and jailing the suspect” derive from different origins and have different constitutional justifications than, say, the search of a place, Illinois v. Lafayette, 462 U.S. 640, 643 (1983); for the search of a place not incident to an arrest depends on the “fair probability that contraband or evidence of a crime will be found in a particular place,” Illinois v. Gates, 462 U.S. 213, 238 (1983). The interests are further different when an individual is formally processed into police custody. Then “the law is in the act of subjecting the body of the accused to its physical dominion.” People v. Chiagles, 237 N.Y. 193, 197, 142 N.E. 583, 584 (1923) (Cardozo, J.). When probable cause exists to remove an individual from the normal channels of society and hold him in legal custody, DNA identification plays a critical role in serving those interests. First, “[i]n every criminal case, it is known and must be known who has been arrested and who is being tried.” Hiibel v. Sixth Judicial Dist. Court of Nev., Humboldt Cty., 542 U.S. 177, 191 (2004). An individual’s identity is more than just his name or Social Security number, and the government’s interest in identification goes beyond ensuring that the proper name is typed on the indictment. Identity has never been considered limited to the name on the arrestee’s birth certificate. In fact, a name is of little value compared to the real interest in identification at stake when an individual is brought into custody. “It is a well recognized aspect of criminal conduct that the per-petrator will take unusual steps to conceal not only his conduct, but also his identity. Disguises used while committing a crime may be supplemented or replaced by changed names, and even changed physical features.” Jones v. Murray, 962 F.2d 302, 307 (CA4 1992). An “arrestee may be carrying a false ID or lie about his identity,” and “criminal history records . . . can be inaccurate or incomplete.” Florence v. Board of Chosen Freeholders of County of Burlington, 566 U. S. ___, ___ (2012) (slip op., at 16). A suspect’s criminal history is a critical part of his identity that officers should know when processing him for detention. It is a common occurrence that “[p]eople detained for minor offenses can turn out to be the most devious and dangerous criminals. Hours after the Oklahoma City bombing, Timothy McVeigh was stopped by a state trooper who noticed he was driving without a license plate. Police stopped serial killer Joel Rifkin for the same reason. One of the terrorists involved in the September 11 attacks was stopped and ticketed for speeding just two days before hijacking Flight 93.” Id., at ___ (slip op., at 14) (citations omitted). Police already seek this crucial identifying information. They use routine and accepted means as varied as comparing the suspect’s booking photograph to sketch artists’ depictions of persons of interest, showing his mugshot to potential witnesses, and of course making a computerized comparison of the arrestee’s fingerprints against electronic databases of known criminals and unsolved crimes. In this respect the only difference between DNA analysis and the accepted use of fingerprint databases is the unparalleled accuracy DNA provides. The task of identification necessarily entails searching public and police records based on the identifying information provided by the arrestee to see what is already known about him. The DNA collected from arrestees is an irrefutable identification of the person from whom it was taken. Like a fingerprint, the 13 CODIS loci are not themselves evidence of any particular crime, in the way that a drug test can by itself be evidence of illegal narcotics use. A DNA profile is useful to the police because it gives them a form of identification to search the records already in their valid possession. In this respect the use of DNA for identification is no different than matching an arrestee’s face to a wanted poster of a previously unidentified suspect; or matching tattoos to known gang symbols to reveal a criminal affiliation; or matching the arrestee’s fingerprints to those recovered from a crime scene. See Tr. of Oral Arg. 19. DNA is another metric of identification used to connect the arrestee with his or her public persona, as reflected in records of his or her actions that are available to the police. Those records may be linked to the arrestee by a variety of relevant forms of identification, including name, alias, date and time of previous convictions and the name then used, photograph, Social Security number, or CODIS profile. These data, found in official records, are checked as a routine matter to produce a more comprehensive record of the suspect’s complete identity. Finding occurrences of the arrestee’s CODIS profile in outstanding cases is consistent with this common practice. It uses a different form of identification than a name or fingerprint, but its function is the same. Second, law enforcement officers bear a responsibility for ensuring that the custody of an arrestee does not create inordinate “risks for facility staff, for the existing detainee population, and for a new detainee.” Florence, supra, at ___ (slip op., at 10). DNA identification can provide untainted information to those charged with de-taining suspects and detaining the property of any felon. For these purposes officers must know the type of person whom they are detaining, and DNA allows them to make critical choices about how to proceed. “Knowledge of identity may inform an officer that a suspect is wanted for another offense, or has a record of violence or mental disorder. On the other hand, knowing identity may help clear a suspect and al- low the police to concentrate their efforts elsewhere. Identity may prove particularly important in [certain cases, such as] where the police are investigating what appears to be a domestic assault. Officers called to investigate domestic disputes need to know whom they are dealing with in order to assess the situation, the threat to their own safety, and possible danger to the potential victim.” Hiibel, supra, at 186. Recognizing that a name alone cannot address this interest in identity, the Court has approved, for example, “a visual inspection for certain tattoos and other signs of gang affiliation as part of the intake process,” because “[t]he identification and isolation of gang members before they are admitted protects everyone.” Florence, supra, at ___ (slip op., at 11). Third, looking forward to future stages of criminal prosecution, “the Government has a substantial interest in ensuring that persons accused of crimes are available for trials.” Bell v. Wolfish, 441 U.S. 520, 534 (1979). A person who is arrested for one offense but knows that he has yet to answer for some past crime may be more inclined to flee the instant charges, lest continued contact with the criminal justice system expose one or more other serious offenses. For example, a defendant who had committed a prior sexual assault might be inclined to flee on a burglary charge, knowing that in every State a DNA sample would be taken from him after his conviction on the burglary charge that would tie him to the more serious charge of rape. In addition to subverting the administration of justice with respect to the crime of arrest, this ties back to the interest in safety; for a detainee who absconds from custody presents a risk to law enforcement officers, other detainees, victims of previous crimes, witnesses, and society at large. Fourth, an arrestee’s past conduct is essential to an assessment of the danger he poses to the public, and this will inform a court’s determination whether the individual should be released on bail. “The government’s interest in preventing crime by arrestees is both legitimate and compelling.” United States v. Salerno, 481 U.S. 739, 749 (1987). DNA identification of a suspect in a violent crime provides critical information to the police and judicial officials in making a determination of the arrestee’s future dangerousness. This inquiry always has entailed some scrutiny beyond the name on the defendant’s driver’s license. For example, Maryland law requires a judge to take into account not only “the nature and circumstances of the offense charged” but also “the defendant’s family ties, employment status and history, financial resources, reputation, character and mental condition, length of res-idence in the community.” 1 Md. Rules 4–216(f)(1)(A), (C) (2013). Knowing that the defendant is wanted for a previous violent crime based on DNA identification is especially probative of the court’s consideration of “the danger of the defendant to the alleged victim, another person, or the community.” Rule 4–216(f)(1)(G); see also 18 U. S. C. §3142 (2006 ed. and Supp. V) (similar requirements). This interest is not speculative. In considering laws to require collecting DNA from arrestees, government agencies around the Nation found evidence of numerous cases in which felony arrestees would have been identified as violent through DNA identification matching them to previous crimes but who later committed additional crimes because such identification was not used to detain them. See Denver’s Study on Preventable Crimes (2009) (three examples), online at http://www.denverda.org/DNA_ Documents/Denver%27s%20Preventable%20Crimes%20 Study.pdf (all Internet materials as visited May 31, 2013, and available in Clerk of Court’s case file); Chi-cago’s Study on Preventable Crimes (2005) (five exam- ples), online at http://www.denverda.org/DNA_Documents/ Arrestee_Database/Chicago%20Preventable%20Crimes- Final.pdf; Maryland Study on Preventable Crimes (2008) (three examples), online at http://www.denverda.org/DNA_ Documents/MarylandDNAarresteestudy.pdf. Present capabilities make it possible to complete a DNA identification that provides information essential to determining whether a detained suspect can be released pending trial. See, e.g., States Brief 18, n. 10 (“DNA identification database samples have been processed in as few as two days in California, although around 30 days has been average”). Regardless of when the initial bail decision is made, release is not appropriate until a further determination is made as to the person’s identity in the sense not only of what his birth certificate states but also what other records and data disclose to give that identity more meaning in the whole context of who the person really is. And even when release is permitted, the background identity of the suspect is necessary for determining what conditions must be met before release is allowed. If release is authorized, it may take time for the conditions to be met, and so the time before actual release can be substantial. For example, in the federal system, defendants released conditionally are detained on average for 112 days; those released on unsecured bond for 37 days; on personal recognizance for 36 days; and on other financial conditions for 27 days. See Dept. of Justice, Bureau of Justice Statistics, Compendium of Federal Justice Statistics 45 (NCJ–213476, Dec. 2006) online at http://bjs.gov/ content/pub/pdf/cfjs04.pdf. During this entire period, ad-ditional and supplemental data establishing more about the person’s identity and background can provide critical information relevant to the conditions of release and whether to revisit an initial release determination. The facts of this case are illustrative. Though the record is not clear, if some thought were being given to releasing the respondent on bail on the gun charge, a release that would take weeks or months in any event, when the DNA report linked him to the prior rape, it would be relevant to the conditions of his release. The same would be true with a supplemental fingerprint report. Even if an arrestee is released on bail, development of DNA identification revealing the defendant’s unknown violent past can and should lead to the revocation of his conditional release. See 18 U. S. C. §3145(a) (providing for revocation of release); see also States Brief 11–12 (discussing examples where bail and diversion determinations were reversed after DNA identified the arrestee’s vio- lent history). Pretrial release of a person charged with a dangerous crime is a most serious responsibility. It is reason-able in all respects for the State to use an accepted database to determine if an arrestee is the object of suspicion in other serious crimes, suspicion that may provide a strong incentive for the arrestee to escape and flee. Finally, in the interests of justice, the identification of an arrestee as the perpetrator of some heinous crime may have the salutary effect of freeing a person wrongfully imprisoned for the same offense. “[P]rompt [DNA] testing . . . would speed up apprehension of criminals before they commit additional crimes, and prevent the grotesque detention of . . . innocent people.” J. Dwyer, P. Neufeld, & B. Scheck, Actual Innocence 245 (2000). Because proper processing of arrestees is so important and has consequences for every stage of the criminal process, the Court has recognized that the “governmen- tal interests underlying a station-house search of the ar-restee’s person and possessions may in some circumstances be even greater than those supporting a search imme-diately following arrest.” Lafayette, 462 U. S., at 645. Thus, the Court has been reluctant to circumscribe the authority of the police to conduct reasonable booking searches. For example, “[t]he standards traditionally governing a search incident to lawful arrest are not . . . commuted to the stricter Terry standards.” Robinson, 414 U. S., at 234. Nor are these interests in identifica- tion served only by a search of the arrestee himself. “[I]nspection of an arrestee’s personal property may assist the police in ascertaining or verifying his identity.” Lafayette, supra, at 646. And though the Fifth Amendment’s protection against self-incrimination is not, as a general rule, governed by a reasonableness standard, the Court has held that “questions . . . reasonably related to the police’s administrative concerns . . . fall outside the protections of Miranda [v. Arizona, 384 U.S. 436 (1966)] and the answers thereto need not be suppressed.” Pennsylvania v. Muniz, 496 U.S. 582, 601–602 (1990). B DNA identification represents an important advance in the techniques used by law enforcement to serve le-gitimate police concerns for as long as there have been arrests, concerns the courts have acknowledged and approved for more than a century. Law enforcement agencies routinely have used scientific advancements in their standard procedures for the identification of arrestees. “Police had been using photography to capture the faces of criminals almost since its invention.” S. Cole, Suspect Identities 20 (2001). Courts did not dispute that practice, concluding that a “sheriff in making an arrest for a felony on a warrant has the right to exercise a discretion . . . , [if] he should deem it necessary to the safe-keeping of a prisoner, and to prevent his escape, or to enable him the more readily to retake the prisoner if he should escape, to take his photograph.” State ex rel. Bruns v. Clausmier, 154 Ind. 599, 601, 603, 57 N.E. 541, 542 (1900). By the time that it had become “the daily practice of the police officers and detectives of crime to use photographic pictures for the discovery and identification of criminals,” the courts likewise had come to the conclusion that “it would be [a] matter of regret to have its use unduly restricted upon any fanciful theory or constitutional privilege.” Shaffer v. United States, 24 App. D. C. 417, 426 (1904). Beginning in 1887, some police adopted more exacting means to identify arrestees, using the system of precise physical measurements pioneered by the French anthropologist Alphonse Bertillon. Bertillon identification consisted of 10 measurements of the arrestee’s body, along with a “scientific analysis of the features of the face and an exact anatomical localization of the various scars, marks, &c., of the body.” Defense of the Bertillon System, N. Y. Times, Jan. 20, 1896, p. 3. “[W]hen a prisoner was brought in, his photograph was taken according to the Bertillon system, and his body measurements were then made. The measurements were made . . . and noted down on the back of a card or a blotter, and the photograph of the prisoner was expected to be placed on the card. This card, therefore, furnished both the likeness and description of the prisoner, and was placed in the rogues’ gallery, and copies were sent to various cities where similar records were kept.” People ex rel. Jones v. Diehl, 53 App. Div. 645, 646, 65 N.Y.S. 801, 802 (1900). As in the present case, the point of taking this information about each arrestee was not limited to verifying that the proper name was on the indictment. These procedures were used to “facilitate the recapture of escaped prisoners,” to aid “the investigation of their past records and personal history,” and “to preserve the means of identification for . . . fu- ture supervision after discharge.” Hodgeman v. Olsen, 86 Wash. 615, 619, 150 P. 1122, 1124 (1915); see also McGovern v. Van Riper, 137 N. J. Eq. 24, 33–34, 43 A.2d 514, 519 (Ch. 1945) (“[C]riminal identification is said to have two main purposes: (1) The identification of the accused as the person who committed the crime for which he is being held; and, (2) the identification of the accused as the same person who has been previously charged with, or convicted of, other offenses against the criminal law”). Perhaps the most direct historical analogue to the DNA technology used to identify respondent is the familiar practice of fingerprinting arrestees. From the advent of this technique, courts had no trouble determining that fingerprinting was a natural part of “the administrative steps incident to arrest.” County of Riverside v. McLaughlin, 500 U.S. 44, 58 (1991). In the seminal case of United States v. Kelly, 55 F.2d 67 (CA2 1932), Judge Augustus Hand wrote that routine fingerprinting did not violate the Fourth Amendment precisely because it fit within the accepted means of processing an arrestee into custody: “Finger printing seems to be no more than an exten-sion of methods of identification long used in dealing with persons under arrest for real or supposed vio-lations of the criminal laws. It is known to be a very certain means devised by modern science to reach the desired end, and has become especially important in a time when increased population and vast aggregations of people in urban centers have rendered the notoriety of the individual in the community no longer a ready means of identification. . . . . . “We find no ground in reason or authority for interfering with a method of identifying persons charged with crime which has now become widely known and frequently practiced.” Id., at 69–70. By the middle of the 20th century, it was considered “elementary that a person in lawful custody may be required to submit to photographing and fingerprinting as part of routine identification processes.” Smith v. United States, 324 F.2d 879, 882 (CADC 1963) (Burger, J.) (citations omitted). DNA identification is an advanced technique superior to fingerprinting in many ways, so much so that to insist on fingerprints as the norm would make little sense to either the forensic expert or a layperson. The additional intrusion upon the arrestee’s privacy beyond that associated with fingerprinting is not significant, see Part V, infra, and DNA is a markedly more accurate form of identifying arrestees. A suspect who has changed his facial features to evade photographic identification or even one who has undertaken the more arduous task of altering his fingerprints cannot escape the revealing power of his DNA. The respondent’s primary objection to this analogy is that DNA identification is not as fast as fingerprinting, and so it should not be considered to be the 21st-century equivalent. See Tr. of Oral Arg. 53. But rapid analysis of fingerprints is itself of recent vintage. The FBI’s vaunted Integrated Automated Fingerprint Identification System (IAFIS) was only “launched on July 28, 1999. Prior to this time, the processing of . . . fingerprint submissions was largely a manual, labor-intensive process, taking weeks or months to process a single submission.” Federal Bureau of Investigation, Integrated Automated Fingerprint Identification System, online at http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ fingerprints_biometrics/iafis/iafis. It was not the advent of this technology that rendered fingerprint analysis constitutional in a single moment. The question of how long it takes to process identifying information obtained from a valid search goes only to the efficacy of the search for its purpose of prompt identification, not the constitutionality of the search. Cf. Ontario v. Quon, 560 U. S. ___, ___ (2010) (slip op., at 15). Given the importance of DNA in the identification of police records pertaining to arrestees and the need to refine and confirm that identity for its important bearing on the decision to continue release on bail or to impose of new conditions, DNA serves an essential purpose despite the existence of delays such as the one that occurred in this case. Even so, the delay in processing DNA from arrestees is being reduced to a substantial degree by rapid technical advances. See, e.g., At-torney General DeWine Announces Significant Drop in DNA Turnaround Time (Jan. 4, 2013) (DNA processing time reduced from 125 days in 2010 to 20 days in 2012), online at http://ohioattorneygeneral.gov/Media/News-Releases/January- 2013/Attorney-General-DeWine-Announces-Significant- Drop; Gov. Jindal Announces Elimination of DNA Backlog, DNA Unit Now Operating in Real Time (Nov. 17, 2011) (average DNA report time reduced from a year or more in 2009 to 20 days in 2011), online at http:// www.gov.state.la.us/index.cfm?md=newsroom&tmp=detail&articleID=3102. And the FBI has already begun testing devices that will enable police to process the DNA of arrestees within 90 minutes. See Brief for National District Attorneys Association as Amicus Curiae 20–21; Tr. of Oral Arg. 17. An assessment and understanding of the reasonableness of this minimally invasive search of a person detained for a serious crime should take account of these technical advances. Just as fingerprinting was constitutional for generations prior to the introduction of IAFIS, DNA identification of arrestees is a permissible tool of law enforcement today. New technology will only further improve its speed and therefore its effectiveness. And, as noted above, actual release of a serious offender as a routine matter takes weeks or months in any event. By identifying not only who the arrestee is but also what other available records disclose about his past to show who he is, the police can ensure that they have the proper person under arrest and that they have made the necessary arrangements for his custody; and, just as important, they can also prevent suspicion against or prosecution of the innocent. In sum, there can be little reason to question “the legitimate interest of the government in knowing for an absolute certainty the identity of the person arrested, in knowing whether he is wanted elsewhere, and in ensuring his identification in the event he flees prosecution.” 3 W. LaFave, Search and Seizure §5.3(c), p. 216 (5th ed. 2012). To that end, courts have confirmed that the Fourth Amendment allows police to take certain routine “administrative steps incident to arrest—i.e., . . . book[ing], photograph[ing], and fingerprint[ing].” McLaughlin, 500 U. S., at 58. DNA identification of arrestees, of the type approved by the Maryland statute here at issue, is “no more than an extension of methods of identification long used in dealing with persons under arrest.” Kelly, 55 F. 2d, at 69. In the balance of reasonableness required by the Fourth Amendment, therefore, the Court must give great weight both to the significant government interest at stake in the identification of arrestees and to the unmatched potential of DNA identification to serve that interest. V A By comparison to this substantial government interest and the unique effectiveness of DNA identification, the intrusion of a cheek swab to obtain a DNA sample is a minimal one. True, a significant government interest does not alone suffice to justify a search. The government interest must outweigh the degree to which the search in-vades an individual’s legitimate expectations of privacy. In considering those expectations in this case, however, the necessary predicate of a valid arrest for a serious offense is fundamental. “Although the underlying command of the Fourth Amendment is always that searches and seizures be reasonable, what is reasonable depends on the context within which a search takes place.” New Jersey v. T. L. O., 469 U.S. 325, 337 (1985). “[T]he legitimacy of certain privacy expectations vis-à-vis the State may depend upon the individual’s legal relationship with the State.” Vernonia School Dist. 47J, 515 U. S., at 654. The reasonableness of any search must be considered in the context of the person’s legitimate expectations of privacy. For example, when weighing the invasiveness of urinalysis of high school athletes, the Court noted that “[l]egitimate privacy expectations are even less with regard to student athletes. . . . Public school locker rooms, the usual sites for these activities, are not notable for the privacy they afford.” Id., at 657. Likewise, the Court has used a context-specific benchmark inapplicable to the public at large when “the expectations of privacy of covered employees are diminished by reason of their participa-tion in an industry that is regulated pervasively,” Skinner, 489 U. S., at 627, or when “the ‘operational realities of the workplace’ may render entirely reasonable certain work-related intrusions by supervisors and co-workers that might be viewed as unreasonable in other contexts,” Von Raab, 489 U. S., at 671. The expectations of privacy of an individual taken into police custody “necessarily [are] of a diminished scope.” Bell, 441 U. S., at 557. “[B]oth the person and the property in his immediate possession may be searched at the station house.” United States v. Edwards, 415 U.S. 800, 803 (1974). A search of the detainee’s person when he is booked into custody may “ ‘involve a relatively extensive exploration,’ ” Robinson, 414 U. S., at 227, including “requir[ing] at least some detainees to lift their genitals or cough in a squatting position,” Florence, 566 U. S., at ___ (slip op., at 13). In this critical respect, the search here at issue differs from the sort of programmatic searches of either the public at large or a particular class of regulated but otherwise law-abiding citizens that the Court has previously labeled as “ ‘special needs’ ” searches. Chandler v. Miller, 520 U.S. 305, 314 (1997). When the police stop a motorist at a checkpoint, see Indianapolis v. Edmond, 531 U.S. 32 (2000), or test a political candidate for illegal narcotics, see Chandler, supra, they intrude upon substantial expectations of privacy. So the Court has insisted on some purpose other than “to detect evidence of ordinary criminal wrongdoing” to justify these searches in the absence of individualized suspicion. Edmond, supra, at 38. Once an individual has been arrested on probable cause for a dangerous offense that may require detention before trial, however, his or her expectations of privacy and freedom from police scrutiny are reduced. DNA identification like that at issue here thus does not require consideration of any unique needs that would be required to justify searching the average citizen. The special needs cases, though in full accord with the result reached here, do not have a direct bearing on the issues presented in this case, because unlike the search of a citizen who has not been suspected of a wrong, a detainee has a reduced expectation of privacy. The reasonableness inquiry here considers two other circumstances in which the Court has held that particularized suspicion is not categorically required: “diminished expectations of privacy [and] minimal intrusions.” McArthur, 531 U. S., at 330. This is not to suggest that any search is acceptable solely because a person is in custody. Some searches, such as invasive surgery, see Winston, 470 U.S. 753, or a search of the arrestee’s home, see Chimel v. California, 395 U.S. 752 (1969), involve either greater intrusions or higher expectations of privacy than are present in this case. In those situations, when the Court must “balance the privacy-related and law enforcement-related concerns to determine if the intrusion was rea-sonable,” McArthur, supra, at 331, the privacy-related concerns are weighty enough that the search may require a warrant, notwithstanding the diminished expectations of privacy of the arrestee. Here, by contrast to the approved standard procedures incident to any arrest detailed above, a buccal swab involves an even more brief and still minimal intrusion. A gentle rub along the inside of the cheek does not break the skin, and it “involves virtually no risk, trauma, or pain.” Schmerber, 384 U. S., at 771. “A crucial factor in analyzing the magnitude of the intrusion . . . is the extent to which the procedure may threaten the safety or health of the individual,” Winston, supra, at 761, and nothing suggests that a buccal swab poses any physical danger whatsoever. A brief intrusion of an arrestee’s person is subject to the Fourth Amendment, but a swab of this nature does not increase the indignity already attendant to normal incidents of arrest. B In addition the processing of respondent’s DNA sam-ple’s 13 CODIS loci did not intrude on respondent’s privacy in a way that would make his DNA identification unconstitutional. First, as already noted, the CODIS loci come from noncoding parts of the DNA that do not reveal the genetic traits of the arrestee. While science can always progress further, and those progressions may have Fourth Amendment consequences, alleles at the CODIS loci “are not at present revealing information beyond identification.” Katsanis & Wagner, Characterization of the Standard and Recommended CODIS Markers, 58 J. Forensic Sci. S169, S171 (2013). The argument that the testing at issue in this case reveals any private medical information at all is open to dispute. And even if non-coding alleles could provide some information, they are not in fact tested for that end. It is undisputed that law enforcement officers analyze DNA for the sole purpose of generating a unique identifying number against which future samples may be matched. This parallels a similar safeguard based on actual practice in the school drug-testing context, where the Court deemed it “significant that the tests at issue here look only for drugs, and not for whether the student is, for example, epileptic, pregnant, or diabetic.” Vernonia School Dist. 47J, 515 U. S., at 658. If in the future police analyze samples to determine, for instance, an arrestee’s predisposition for a particular disease or other hereditary factors not relevant to identity, that case would present additional privacy concerns not present here. Finally, the Act provides statutory protections that guard against further invasion of privacy. As noted above, the Act requires that “[o]nly DNA records that directly relate to the identification of individuals shall be collected and stored.” Md. Pub. Saf. Code Ann. §2–505(b)(1). No purpose other than identification is permissible: “A person may not willfully test a DNA sample for information that does not relate to the identification of individuals as specified in this subtitle.” §2–512(c). This Court has noted often that “a ‘statutory or regulatory duty to avoid unwarranted disclosures’ generally allays . . . privacy concerns.” NASA v. Nelson, 562 U. S. ___, ___ (2011) (slip op., at 20) (quoting Whalen v. Roe, 429 U.S. 589, 605 (1977)). The Court need not speculate about the risks posed “by a system that did not contain comparable security provisions.” Id., at 606. In light of the scientific and statutory safeguards, once respondent’s DNA was lawfully collected the STR analysis of respondent’s DNA pursuant to CODIS procedures did not amount to a significant invasion of privacy that would render the DNA identification impermissible under the Fourth Amendment. * * * In light of the context of a valid arrest supported by probable cause respondent’s expectations of privacy were not offended by the minor intrusion of a brief swab of his cheeks. By contrast, that same context of arrest gives rise to significant state interests in identifying respondent not only so that the proper name can be attached to his charges but also so that the criminal justice system can make informed decisions concerning pretrial custody. Upon these considerations the Court concludes that DNA identification of arrestees is a reasonable search that can be considered part of a routine booking procedure. When officers make an arrest supported by probable cause to hold for a serious offense and they bring the suspect to the station to be detained in custody, taking and analyzing a cheek swab of the arrestee’s DNA is, like fingerprinting and photographing, a legitimate police booking procedure that is reasonable under the Fourth Amendment. The judgment of the Court of Appeals of Maryland is reversed. It is so ordered.

569.US.221

Virginia’s Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) grants Virginia citizens access to all public records, but grants no such right to non-Virginians. Petitioners McBurney and Hurlbert, citizens of States other than Virginia, filed records requests under the Act. After each petitioner’s request was denied, they filed a 42 U. S. C. §1983 suit seeking declaratory and injunctive relief for violations of the Privileges and Immunities Clause and, in Hurlbert’s case, the dormant Commerce Clause. The District Court granted Virginia’s motion for summary judgment, and the Fourth Circuit affirmed. Held: 1. Virginia’s FOIA does not violate the Privileges and Immunities Clause, which protects only those privileges and immunities that are “fundamental.” See Baldwin v. Fish and Game Comm’n of Mont., 436 U.S. 371, 382, 388. Pp. 3–12. (a) Hurlbert alleges that Virginia’s FOIA abridges his fundamental right to earn a living in his chosen profession—obtaining property records on behalf of his clients. While the Privileges and Immunities Clause protects the right of citizens to “ply their trade, practice their occupation, or pursue a common calling,” Hicklin v. Orbeck, 437 U.S. 518, 524, the Court has struck down laws as violating this privilege only when they were enacted for the protectionist purpose of burdening out-of-state citizens. See, e.g., Toomer v. Witsell, 334 U.S. 385, 395, 397. The Virginia FOIA’s citizen/noncitizen distinction has a nonprotectionist aim. Virginia’s FOIA exists to provide a mechanism for Virginia citizens to obtain an accounting from their public officials; noncitizens have no comparable need. Moreover, the distinction between citizens and noncitizens recognizes that citizens alone foot the bill for the fixed costs underlying recordkeeping in the Commonwealth. Any effect the Act has of preventing citizens of other States from making a profit by trading on information contained in state records is incidental. Pp. 4–6. (b) Hurlbert also alleges that Virginia’s FOIA abridges the right to own and transfer property in the Commonwealth. The right to take, hold, and dispose of property has long been seen as one of the privileges of citizenship. See, e.g., Paul v. Virginia, 8 Wall. 168, 180. However, Virginia law does not prevent noncitizens from obtaining documents necessary to the transfer of property. Records—like title and mortgage documents—maintained by the clerk of each circuit court are available to inspection by any person. Real estate tax assessment records are considered nonconfidential and are often posted online, a practice followed by the county from which Hurlbert sought records. Requiring a noncitizen to obtain records through the clerk’s office or on the Internet, instead of through a burdensome FOIA process, cannot be said to impose a significant burden on the ability to own or transfer property in Virginia. Pp. 6–8. (c) McBurney alleges that Virginia’s FOIA impermissibly burdens his access to public proceedings. The Privileges and Immunities Clause “secures citizens of one state the right to resort to the courts of another, equally with the citizens of the latter state,” Missouri Pacific R. Co. v. Clarendon Boat Oar Co., 257 U.S. 533, 535, but that “requirement is satisfied if the nonresident is given access . . . upon terms which . . . are reasonable and adequate for the enforcing of any rights he may have, even though they may not be . . . the same in extent as those accorded to resident citizens,” Canadian Northern R. Co. v. Eggen, 252 U.S. 553, 562. Virginia’s FOIA clearly does not deprive noncitizens of “reasonable and adequate” access to Commonwealth courts. Virginia’s court rules provide noncitizens access to nonpriviledged documents needed in litigation, and Virginia law gives citizens and noncitizens alike access to judicial records and to records pertaining directly to them. For example, McBurney utilized Virginia’s Government Data Collection and Dissemination Practices Act to receive much of the information he had sought in his FOIA request. Pp. 8–10. (d) Petitioners’ sweeping claim that the Virginia FOIA violates the Privileges and Immunities Clause because it denies them the right to access public information on equal terms with Commonwealth citizens is rejected because the right to access public information is not a “fundamental” privilege or immunity of citizenship. The Court has repeatedly stated that the Constitution does not guarantee the existence of FOIA laws. See, e.g., Los Angeles Police Dept. v. United Reporting Publishing Corp., 528 U.S. 32, 40. Moreover, no such right was recognized at common law or in the early Republic. Nor is such a sweeping right “basic to the maintenance or well-being of the Union.” Baldwin, supra, at 388. Pp. 10–12. 2. Virginia’s FOIA does not violate the dormant Commerce Clause. The “common thread” among this Court’s dormant Commerce Clause cases is that “the State interfered with the natural functioning of the interstate market either through prohibition or thorough burdensome regulation.” Hughes v. Alexandria Scrap Corp., 426 U.S. 794, 806. Virginia’s FOIA, by contrast, neither prohibits access to an interstate market nor imposes burdensome regulation on that market. Accordingly, this is not properly viewed as a dormant Commerce Clause case. Even shoehorned into the Court’s dormant Commerce Clause framework, however, Hurlbert’s claim would fail. Insofar as there is a “market” for public documents in Virginia, it is a market for a product that the Commonwealth has created and of which the Commonwealth is the sole manufacturer. A State does not violate the dormant Commerce Clause when, having created a market through a state program, it “limits benefits generated by [that] state program to those who fund the state treasury and whom the State was created to serve.” Reeves, Inc. v. Stake, 447 U.S. 429, 442. Pp. 12–14. 667 F.3d 454, affirmed. Alito, J., delivered the opinion for a unanimous Court. Thomas, J., filed a concurring opinion.

In this case, we must decide whether the Virginia Freedom of Information Act, Va. Code Ann. §2.2–3700 et seq., violates either the Privileges and Immunities Clause of Article IV of the Constitution or the dormant Commerce Clause. The Virginia Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), provides that “all public records shall be open to inspection and copying by any citizens of the Commonwealth,” but it grants no such right to non-Virginians. §2.2–3704(A) (Lexis 2011). Petitioners, who are citizens of other States, unsuccessfully sought information under the Act and then brought this constitutional challenge. We hold, however, that petitioners’ constitutional rights were not violated. By means other than the state FOIA, Virginia made available to petitioners most of the information that they sought, and the Commonwealth’s refusal to furnish the additional information did not abridge any constitutionally protected privilege or immunity. Nor did Virginia violate the dor- mant Commerce Clause. The state Freedom of Informa- tion Act does not regulate commerce in any meaningful sense, but instead provides a service that is related to state citizenship. For these reasons, we affirm the decision of the Court of Appeals rejecting petitioners’ constitutional claims. I Petitioners Mark J. McBurney and Roger W. Hurlbert are citizens of Rhode Island and California respectively. McBurney and Hurlbert each requested documents under the Virginia FOIA, but their requests were denied because of their citizenship. McBurney is a former resident of Virginia whose ex-wife is a Virginia citizen. After his ex-wife defaulted on her child support obligations, McBurney asked the Commonwealth’s Division of Child Support Enforcement to file a petition for child support on his behalf. The agency complied, but only after a 9-month delay. McBurney attributes that delay to agency error and says that it cost him nine months of child support. To ascertain the reason for the agency’s delay, McBurney filed a Virginia FOIA request seeking “all emails, notes, files, memos, reports, letters, policies, [and] opinions” pertaining to his family, along with all documents “regarding [his] application for child support” and all documents pertaining to the handling of child support claims like his. App. in No. 11–1099 (CA4), p. 39A. The agency denied McBurney’s request on the ground that he was not a Virginia citizen. McBurney later requested the same documents under Virginia’s Gov- ernment Data Collection and Dissemination Practices Act, Va. Code Ann. §2.2–3800 et seq., and through that re- quest he received most of the information he had sought that pertained specifically to his own case. He did not, however, receive any general policy information about how the agency handled claims like his. Hurlbert is the sole proprietor of Sage Information Services, a business that requests real estate tax records on clients’ behalf from state and local governments across the United States. In 2008, Hurlbert was hired by a land/title company to obtain real estate tax records for properties in Henrico County, Virginia. He filed a Virginia FOIA request for the documents with the Henrico County Real Estate Assessor’s Office, but his request was denied because he was not a Virginia citizen. Petitioners filed suit under 42 U. S. C. §1983, seeking declaratory and injunctive relief for violations of the Privileges and Immunities Clause and, in Hurlbert’s case, the dormant Commerce Clause. The District Court granted Virginia’s motion for summary judgment, McBurney v. Cuccinelli, 780 F. Supp. 2d 439 (ED Va. 2011), and the Court of Appeals affirmed, 667 F.3d 454 (CA4 2012). Like Virginia, several other States have enacted freedom of information laws that are available only to their citizens. See, e.g., Ala. Code §36–12–40 (2012 Cum. Supp.); Ark. Code Ann. §25–19–105 (2011 Supp.); Del. Code Ann., Tit. 29, §10003 (2012 Supp.); Mo. Rev. Stat. §109.180 (2012); N. H. Rev. Stat. Ann. §91–A:4 (West 2012); N. J. Stat. Ann. §47:1A–1 (West 2003); Tenn. Code Ann. §10–7–503 (2012). In Lee v. Minner, 458 F.3d 194 (2006), the Third Circuit held that this feature of Delaware’s FOIA violated the Privileges and Immunities Clause. We granted certiorari to resolve this conflict. 568 U. S. ___ (2012). II Under the Privileges and Immunities Clause, “[t]he Citizens of each State [are] entitled to all Privileges and Immunities of Citizens in the several States.” U. S. Const., Art. IV, §2, cl. 1. We have said that “[t]he object of the Privileges and Immunities Clause is to ‘strongly . . . constitute the citizens of the United States [as] one people,’ by ‘plac[ing] the citizens of each State upon the same footing with citizens of other States, so far as the advantages resulting from citizenship in those States are concerned.’ ” Lunding v. New York Tax Appeals Tribunal, 522 U.S. 287, 296 (1998) (quoting Paul v. Virginia, 8 Wall. 168, 180 (1869)). This does not mean, we have cautioned, that “state citizenship or residency may never be used by a State to distinguish among persons.” Baldwin v. Fish and Game Comm’n of Mont., 436 U.S. 371, 383 (1978). “Nor must a State always apply all its laws or all its services equally to anyone, resident or nonresident, who may request it so to do.” Ibid. Rather, we have long held that the Privileges and Immunities Clause protects only those privileges and immunities that are “fundamental.” See, e.g., id., at 382, 388. Petitioners allege that Virginia’s citizens-only FOIA provision violates four different “fundamental” privileges or immunities: the opportunity to pursue a common calling, the ability to own and transfer property, access to the Virginia courts, and access to public information. The first three items on that list, however, are not abridged by the Virginia FOIA, and the fourth—framed broadly—is not protected by the Privileges and Immunities Clause. A Hurlbert argues that Virginia’s citizens-only FOIA pro- vision abridges his ability to earn a living in his chosen profession, namely, obtaining property records from state and local governments on behalf of clients. He is correct that the Privileges and Immunities Clause protects the right of citizens to “ply their trade, practice their occupation, or pursue a common calling.” Hicklin v. Orbeck, 437 U.S. 518, 524 (1978); Supreme Court of N. H. v. Piper, 470 U.S. 274, 280 (1985) (“ ‘[O]ne of the privileges which the Clause guarantees to citizens of State A is that of doing business in State B on terms of substantial equality with the citizens of that State’ ”). But the Virginia FOIA does not abridge Hulbert’s ability to engage in a common calling in the sense prohibited by the Privileges and Immunities Clause. Rather, the Court has struck laws down as violating the privilege of pursuing a common calling only when those laws were enacted for the protectionist purpose of burdening out-of-state citizens. See, e.g., Hicklin, supra, (striking down as a violation of noncitizens’ privileges and immunities an “Alaska Hire” statute containing a resident hiring preference for all employment related to the development of the State’s oil and gas resources); Toomer v. Witsell, 334 U.S. 385, 395, 397 (1948) (striking down a South Carolina statute imposing a $2,500 license fee on out-of-state shrimping boats and only a $25 fee on in-state shrimping boats where petitioners alleged that the “purpose and effect of this statute . . . [was] not to conserve shrimp, but to exclude non-residents and thereby create a commercial monopoly for South Carolina residents,” and the “record cas[t] some doubt on” the State’s counterassertion that the statute’s “obvious purpose was to conserve its shrimp supply”); United Building & Constr. Trades Council of Camden Cty. v. Mayor and Council of Camden, 465 U.S. 208 (1984) (New Jersey municipal ordinance requiring that at least 40% of employees of contractors and subcontractors working on city construction projects be city residents facially burdened out-of-state citizens’ ability to pursue a common calling). In each case, the clear aim of the statute at issue was to advantage in-state workers and commercial interests at the expense of their out-of-state counterparts. Virginia’s FOIA differs sharply from those statutes. By its own terms, Virginia’s FOIA was enacted to “ensur[e] the people of the Commonwealth ready access to public records in the custody of a public body or its officers and employees, and free entry to meetings of public bodies wherein the business of the people is being conducted.” Va. Code Ann. §2.2–3700(B) (Lexis 2011). Hurlbert does not allege—and has offered no proof—that the challenged provision of the Virginia FOIA was enacted in order to provide a competitive economic advantage for Virginia citizens. Cf. Hillside Dairy Inc. v. Lyons, 539 U.S. 59, 67 (2003) (piercing a professedly nondiscriminatory statute to find economic protectionism). Rather, it seems clear that the distinction that the statute makes between citizens and noncitizens has a distinctly nonprotectionist aim. The state FOIA essentially represents a mechanism by which those who ultimately hold sovereign power (i.e., the citizens of the Commonwealth) may obtain an accounting from the public officials to whom they delegate the exercise of that power. See Va. Const., Art. I, §2; Va. Code Ann. §2.2–3700(B). In addition, the provision limiting the use of the state FOIA to Virginia citizens recognizes that Virginia taxpayers foot the bill for the fixed costs underlying recordkeeping in the Commonwealth. Tr. of Oral Arg. 53–54. The challenged provision of the state FOIA does not violate the Privileges and Immunities Clause simply because it has the incidental effect of preventing citizens of other States from making a profit by trading on in- formation contained in state records. While the Clause forbids a State from intentionally giving its own citizens a competitive advantage in business or employment, the Clause does not require that a State tailor its every action to avoid any incidental effect on out-of-state tradesmen. B Hurlbert next alleges that the challenged provision of the Virginia FOIA abridges the right to own and transfer property in the Commonwealth. Like the right to pursue a common calling, the right to “take, hold and dispose of property, either real or personal,” has long been seen as one of the privileges of citizenship. See Corfield v. Coryell, 6 F. Cas. 546, 552 (No. 3, 230) (CCED Pa. 1825); see also Paul, supra, at 180 (listing “the acquisition and enjoyment of property” among the privileges of citizenship). Thus, if a State prevented out-of-state citizens from accessing records—like title documents and mortgage records—that are necessary to the transfer of property, the State might well run afoul of the Privileges and Immunities Clause. Cf. State v. Grimes, 29 Nev. 50, 85, 84 P. 1061, 1073 (1906) (“Caveat emptor being the rule with us in the absence of a special agreement, it is just and essential to the protection of persons intending to purchase or take incumbrances that they be allowed the right of inspection”); Jackson ex dem. Center v. Campbell, 19 Johns. 281, 283 (N. Y. 1822) (the “plain intention” of the State’s property records system was “to give notice, through the medium of the county records, to persons about to purchase”). Virginia, however, does not prevent citizens of other States from obtaining such documents. Under Virginia law, “any records and papers of every circuit court that are maintained by the clerk of the circuit court shall be open to inspection by any person and the clerk shall, when requested, furnish copies thereof.” Va. Code Ann. §17.1–208 (Lexis 2010). Such records and papers include records of property transfers, like title documents, §55–106 (Lexis 2012); notices of federal tax liens and other federal liens against property, §55–142.1; notices of state tax liens against property, §58.1–314 (Lexis 2009) (state taxes generally), §58.1–908 (estate tax liens), §58.1–1805 (state taxes generally), §58.1–2021(A) (liens filed by agencies other than the Tax Commission); and notice of mortgages and other encumbrances, §8.01–241 (Lexis Supp. 2012). A similar flaw undermines Hurlbert’s claim that Vir- ginia violates the Privileges and Immunities Clause by pre- venting citizens of other States from accessing real estate tax assessment records. It is true that those records, while available to Virginia citizens under the state FOIA, are not required by statute to be made available to noncitizens. See Associated Tax Service, Inc. v. Fitzpatrick, 236 Va. 181, 183, 187, 372 S.E.2d 625, 627, 629 (1988).[1] But in fact Virginia and its subdivisions generally make even these less essential records readily available to all. These records are considered nonconfidential under Virginia law and, accordingly, they may be posted online. §58.1–3122.2 (Lexis 2009). Henrico County, from which Hurlbert sought real estate tax assessments, follows this practice,[2] as does almost every other county in the Commonwealth. Requiring noncitizens to conduct a few minutes of Internet research in lieu of using a relatively cumbersome state FOIA process cannot be said to impose any significant burden on noncitizens’ ability to own or transfer property in Virginia. C McBurney alleges that Virginia’s citizens-only FOIA provision impermissibly burdens his “access to public proceedings.” Brief for Petitioners 42. McBurney is correct that the Privileges and Immunities Clause “secures citizens of one State the right to resort to the courts of another, equally with the citizens of the latter State.” Missouri Pacific R. Co. v. Clarendon Boat Oar Co., 257 U.S. 533, 535 (1922). But petitioners do not suggest that the Virginia FOIA slams the courthouse door on noncitizens; rather, the most they claim is that the law creates “[a]n information asymmetry between adversaries based solely on state citizenship.” Brief for Petitioners 42. The Privileges and Immunities Clause does not require States to erase any distinction between citizens and non-citizens that might conceivably give state citizens some detectable litigation advantage. Rather, the Court has made clear that “the constitutional requirement is sat- isfied if the non-resident is given access to the courts of the State upon terms which in themselves are reasonable and adequate for the enforcing of any rights he may have, even though they may not be technically and precisely the same in extent as those accorded to resident citizens.” Canadian Northern R. Co. v. Eggen, 252 U.S. 553, 562 (1920). The challenged provision of the Virginia FOIA clearly does not deprive noncitizens of “reasonable and adequate” access to the Commonwealth’s courts. Virginia’s rules of civil procedure provide for both discovery, Va. Sup. Ct. Rule 4:1 (2012), and subpoenas duces tecum, Rule 4:9. There is no reason to think that those mechanisms are insufficient to provide noncitizens with any relevant, nonprivileged documents needed in litigation. Moreover, Virginia law gives citizens and noncitizens alike access to judicial records. Va. Code Ann. §17.1–208; see also Shenandoah Publishing House, Inc. v. Fanning, 235 Va. 253, 258, 368 S.E.2d 253, 256 (1988). And if Virginia has in its possession information about any person, whether a citizen of the Commonwealth or of another State, that person has the right under the Government Data Collection and Dissemination Practices Act to inspect that information. §2.2–3806(A)(3) (Lexis 2011). McBurney’s own case is illustrative. When his FOIA request was denied, McBurney was told that he should request the materials he sought pursuant to the Government Data Collection and Dissemination Practices Act. Upon placing a request under that Act, he ultimately received much of what he sought. Accordingly, Virginia’s citizens-only FOIA provision does not impermissibly burden noncitizens’ ability to access the Commonwealth’s courts. D Finally, we reject petitioners’ sweeping claim that the challenged provision of the Virginia FOIA violates the Privileges and Immunities Clause because it denies them the right to access public information on equal terms with citizens of the Commonwealth. We cannot agree that the Privileges and Immunities Clause covers this broad right. This Court has repeatedly made clear that there is no constitutional right to obtain all the information provided by FOIA laws. See Houchins v. KQED, Inc., 438 U.S. 1, 14 (1978) (plurality opinion) (“ ‘The Constitution itself is [not] a Freedom of Information Act’ ”); see also Los Angeles Police Dept. v. United Reporting Publishing Corp., 528 U.S. 32, 40 (1999) (the Government could decide “not to give out [this] information at all”); Sorrell v. IMS Health Inc., 564 U. S. ___, ___ (2011) (Breyer, J., dissenting) (slip op., at 8) (“[T]his Court has never found that the First Amendment prohibits the government from restricting the use of information gathered pursuant to a regulatory mandate”). It certainly cannot be said that such a broad right has “at all times, been enjoyed by the citizens of the several states which compose this Union, from the time of their becoming free, independent, and sovereign.” Corfield, 6 F. Cas., at 551. No such right was recognized at common law. See H. Cross, The People’s Right to Know 25 (1953) (“[T]he courts declared the primary rule that there was no general common law right in all persons (as citizens, taxpayers, electors or merely as persons) to inspect public records or documents”). Most founding-era English cases provided that only those persons who had a personal interest in non-judicial records were permitted to access them. See, e.g., King v. Shelley, 3 T. R. 141, 142, 100 Eng. Rep. 498, 499 (K. B. 1789) (Buller, J.) (“[O]ne man has no right to look into another’s title deeds and records, when he . . . has no interest in the deeds or rolls himself”); King v. Justices of Staffordshire, 6 Ad. & E. 84, 101, 112 Eng. Rep. 33, 39 (K. B. 1837) (“The utmost . . . that can be said on the ground of interest, is that the applicants have a rational curiosity to gratify by this inspection, or that they may thereby ascertain facts useful to them in advancing some ulterior measures in contemplation as to regulating county expenditure; but this is merely an interest in obtaining information on the general subject, and would furnish an equally good reason for permitting inspection of the records of any other county: there is not that direct and tangible interest, which is necessary to bring them within the rule on which the Court acts in granting inspection of public documents”). Nineteenth-century American cases, while less uniform, certainly do not support the proposition that a broad-based right to access public information was widely recognized in the early Republic. See, e.g., Cormack v. Wolcott, 37 Kan. 391, 394, 15 P. 245, 246 (1887) (denying mandamus to plaintiff seeking to compile abstracts of title records; “At common law, parties had no vested rights in the examination of a record of title, or other public records, save by some interest in the land or subject of record”); Brewer v. Watson, 71 Ala. 299, 305 (1882) (“The individual demanding access to, and inspection of public writings must not only have an interest in the matters to which they relate, a direct, tangible interest, but the inspection must be sought for some specific and legitimate purpose. The gratification of mere curiosity, or motives merely speculative will not entitle him to demand an examination of such writings”); Nadel, What are “Records” of Agency Which Must Be Made Available Under State Freedom of Information Act, 27 A. L. R. 4th 680, 687, §2[b] (1984) (“[A]t common law, a person requesting inspection of a public record was required to show an interest therein which would enable him to maintain or defend an action for which the document or record sought could furnish evidence or necessary information”). Nor is such a sweeping right “basic to the maintenance or well-being of the Union.” Baldwin, 436 U. S., at 388. FOIA laws are of relatively recent vintage. The federal FOIA was enacted in 1966, §1, 80Stat. 383, and Virginia’s counterpart was adopted two years later, 1968 Va. Acts ch. 479, p. 690. There is no contention that the Nation’s unity foundered in their absence, or that it is suffering now because of the citizens-only FOIA provisions that several States have enacted. III In addition to his Privileges and Immunities Clause claim, Hurlbert contends that Virginia’s citizens-only FOIA provision violates the dormant Commerce Clause. The Commerce Clause empowers Congress “[t]o regulate Commerce . . . among the several States.” Art. I, §8, cl. 3. The Commerce Clause does not expressly impose any constraints on “the several States,” and several Members of the Court have expressed the view that it does not do so. See General Motors Corp. v. Tracy, 519 U.S. 278, 312 (1997) (Scalia, J., concurring) (“[T]he so-called ‘negative’ Commerce Clause is an unjustified judicial intervention, not to be expanded beyond its existing domain”); United Haulers Assn. Inc. v. Oneida-Herkimer Solid Waste Management Authority, 550 U.S. 330, 349 (2007) (Thomas, J., concurring in judgment) (“The negative Commerce Clause has no basis in the Constitution and has proved unwork- able in practice”). Nonetheless, the Court has long inferred that the Commerce Clause itself imposes certain implicit limitations on state power. See, e.g., Cooley v. Board of Wardens of Port of Philadelphia ex rel. Soc. for Relief of Distressed Pilots, 12 How. 299, 318–319 (1852); cf. Gib- bons v. Ogden, 9 Wheat. 1, 209 (1824) (Marshall, C. J.) (dictum). Our dormant Commerce Clause jurisprudence “significantly limits the ability of States and localities to regulate or otherwise burden the flow of interstate commerce.” Maine v. Taylor, 477 U.S. 131, 151 (1986). It is driven by a concern about “economic protectionism—that is, regulatory measures designed to benefit in-state economic interests by burdening out-of-state competitors.” New Energy Co. of Ind. v. Limbach, 486 U.S. 269, 273–274 (1988); see also Philadelphia v. New Jersey, 437 U.S. 617, 624 (1978) (“The crucial inquiry . . . must be directed to determining whether [the challenged statute] is basically a protectionist measure, or whether it can fairly be viewed as a law directed to legitimate local concerns, with effects upon interstate commerce that are only incidental”). Virginia’s FOIA law neither “regulates” nor “burdens” interstate commerce; rather, it merely provides a service to local citizens that would not otherwise be available at all. The “common thread” among those cases in which the Court has found a dormant Commerce Clause violation is that “the State interfered with the natural functioning of the interstate market either through prohibition or through burdensome regulation.” Hughes v. Alexandria Scrap Corp., 426 U.S. 794, 806 (1976). Here, by contrast, Virginia neither prohibits access to an interstate market nor imposes burdensome regulation on that market. Rather, it merely creates and provides to its own citizens copies—which would not otherwise exist—of state records. As discussed above, the express purpose of Virginia’s FOIA law is to “ensur[e] the people of the Commonwealth ready access to public records in the custody of a public body or its officers and employees, and free entry to meetings of public bodies wherein the business of the people is being conducted.” Va. Code Ann. §2.2–3700(B). This case is thus most properly brought under the Privileges and Immunities Clause: It quite literally poses the question whether Virginia can deny out-of-state citizens a benefit that it has conferred on its own citizens. Cf. Missouri Pacific R. Co., 257 U. S., at 535 (analyzing whether the privilege of access to a State’s courts must be made available to out-of-state citizens equally with the citizens of the relevant State). Because it does not pose the question of the constitutionality of a state law that interferes with an interstate market through prohibition or burdensome regulations, this case is not governed by the dormant Commerce Clause. Even shoehorned into our dormant Commerce Clause framework, however, Hurlbert’s claim would fail. Insofar as there is a “market” for public documents in Virginia, it is a market for a product that the Commonwealth has created and of which the Commonwealth is the sole manufacturer. We have held that a State does not violate the dormant Commerce Clause when, having created a market through a state program, it “limits benefits generated by [that] state program to those who fund the state treasury and whom the State was created to serve.” Reeves, Inc. v. Stake, 447 U.S. 429, 442 (1980). “Such policies, while perhaps ‘protectionist’ in a loose sense, reflect the essential and patently unobjectionable purpose of state government—to serve the citizens of the State.” Ibid.; cf. Department of Revenue of Ky. v. Davis, 553 U.S. 328, 341 (2008) (“[A] government function is not susceptible to standard dormant Commerce Clause scrutiny owing to its likely motivation by legitimate objectives distinct from the simple economic protectionism the Clause abhors”). For these reasons, Virginia’s citizens-only FOIA provision does not violate the dormant Commerce Clause. * * * Because Virginia’s citizens-only FOIA provision neither abridges any of petitioners’ fundamental privileges and immunities nor impermissibly regulates commerce, petitioners’ constitutional claims fail. The judgment below is affirmed. It is so ordered. Notes 1 At oral argument, the Solicitor General of Virginia contended that, as a matter of Virginia law, Hurlbert “is entitled to the tax assessment data in the clerk’s office.” Tr. of Oral Arg. 38. Neither at oral argument nor in its briefs did Virginia cite any Virginia statute providing that real estate tax assessment records be filed in the clerk’s office. Virginia Code Ann. §58.1–3300 (Lexis 2009), which directs that “reassessment” records be filed with the clerk, may be the statute to which counsel referred, but without an official construction of the statute by Virginia’s Supreme Court—and, in light of the fact that petitioners have not been afforded an opportunity to rebut its importance—we do not rely upon it here. 2 See http://www.co.henrico.va.us/finance/disclaimer.html (as visited April 26, 2013, and available in Clerk of Court’s case file).

569.US.383

Rodney Henderson was found stabbed to death after leaving a party in Flint, Michigan, with respondent Floyd Perkins and Damarr Jones. Perkins was charged with murder. Jones, the key prosecution witness, testified that Perkins alone committed the murder while Jones looked on. Perkins, however, testified that Jones and Henderson left him during the evening, and that he later saw Jones with blood on his clothing. Perkins was convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole. His conviction became final in 1997. The Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996 (AEDPA) gives a state prisoner one year to file a federal habeas petition, starting from “the date on which the judgment became final.” 28 U. S. C. §2244(d)(1)(A). But if the petition alleges newly discovered evidence, the filing deadline is one year from “the date on which the factual predicate of the claim . . . could have been discovered through . . . due diligence.” §2244(d)(1)(D). More than 11 years after his conviction became final, Perkins filed his federal habeas petition, alleging, inter alia, ineffective assistance of trial counsel. To overcome AEDPA’s time limitations, he asserted newly discovered evidence of actual innocence, relying on three affidavits, the most recent dated July 16, 2002, each pointing to Jones as the murderer. The District Court found that, even if the affidavits could be characterized as evidence newly discovered, Perkins had failed to show diligence entitling him to equitable tolling of AEDPA’s limitations period. Alternatively, the court found, Perkins had not shown that, taking account of all the evidence, no reasonable juror would have convicted him. The Sixth Circuit reversed. Acknowledging that Perkins’ petition was untimely and that he had not diligently pursued his rights, the court held that Perkins’ actual-innocence claim allowed him to present his ineffective-assistance-of-counsel claim as if it had been filed on time. In so ruling, the court apparently considered Perkins’ delay irrelevant to appraisal of his actual-innocence claim. Held: 1. Actual innocence, if proved, serves as a gateway through which a petitioner may pass whether the impediment is a procedural bar, as it was in Schlup v. Delo, 513 U.S. 298, and House v. Bell, 547 U.S. 518, or expiration of the AEDPA statute of limitations, as in this case. Pp. 7–14. (a) Perkins, who waited nearly six years from the date of the 2002 affidavit to file his petition, maintains that an actual-innocence plea can overcome AEDPA’s one-year limitations period. This Court’s decisions support his view. The Court has not resolved whether a prisoner may be entitled to habeas relief based on a freestanding actual-innocence claim, Herrera v. Collins, 506 U.S. 390, 404–405, but it has recognized that a prisoner “otherwise subject to defenses of abusive or successive use of the writ may have his federal constitutional claim considered on the merits if he makes a proper showing of actual innocence,” id., at 404. The Court has applied this “fundamental miscarriage of justice exception” to overcome various procedural defaults, including, as most relevant here, failure to observe state procedural rules, such as filing deadlines. See Coleman v. Thompson, 501 U.S. 722, 750. The exception, the Court’s decisions bear out, survived AEDPA’s passage. See, e.g., Calderon v. Thompson, 523 U.S. 538, 558; House, 547 U. S., at 537–538. These decisions “see[k] to balance the societal interests in finality, comity, and conservation of scarce judicial resources with the individual interest in justice that arises in the extraordinary case.” Schlup, 513 U. S., at 324. Sensitivity to the injustice of incarcerating an innocent individual should not abate when the impediment is AEDPA’s statute of limitations. Pp. 7–9. (b) The State urges that recognition of a miscarriage of justice exception would render §2244(d)(1)(D) superfluous. That is not so, for AEDPA’s time limitations apply to the typical case in which no actual-innocence claim is made, while the exception applies to a severely confined category: cases in which new evidence shows “it is more likely than not that ‘no reasonable juror’ would have convicted [the petitioner],” Schlup, 513 U. S., at 329. Many petitions that could not pass through the actual-innocence gateway will be timely or not measured by §2244(d)(1)(D)’s triggering provision. Nor does Congress’ inclusion of a miscarriage of justice exception in §§2244(b)(2)(B) and 2254(e)(2) indicate an intent to preclude courts from applying the exception in §2244(d)(1)(D) cases. Congress did not simply incorporate the miscarriage of justice exception into §§2244(b)(2)(B) and 2254(e)(2). Rather, Congress constrained the exception’s application with respect to second-or-successive petitions and the holding of evidentiary hearings in federal court. The more rational inference to draw from the incorporation of a modified version of the exception into other provisions of AEDPA is that, in a case not governed by those provisions, the exception survived AEDPA’s passage intact and unrestricted. Pp. 9–14. 2. A federal habeas court, faced with an actual-innocence gateway claim, should count unjustifiable delay on a habeas petitioner’s part, not as an absolute barrier to relief, but as a factor in determining whether actual innocence has been reliably shown. A petitioner invoking the miscarriage of justice exception “must show that it is more likely than not that no reasonable juror would have convicted him in the light of the new evidence.” Schlup, 513 U. S., at 327. Unexplained delay in presenting new evidence bears on the determination whether the petitioner has made the requisite showing. Taking account of the delay in the context of the merits of a petitioner’s actual-innocence claim, rather than treating timeliness as a threshold inquiry, is tuned to the exception’s underlying rationale of ensuring “that federal constitutional errors do not result in the incarceration of innocent persons.” Herrera, 506 U. S., at 404. Pp. 14–16. 3. Here, the District Court’s appraisal of Perkins’ petition as insufficient to meet Schlup’s actual-innocence standard should be dispositive, absent cause, which this Court does not currently see, for the Sixth Circuit to upset that evaluation. Under Schlup’s demanding standard, the gateway should open only when a petition presents “evidence of innocence so strong that a court cannot have confidence in the outcome of the trial unless the court is also satisfied that the trial was free of nonharmless constitutional error.” 513 U. S., at 316. Pp. 16–17. 670 F.3d 665, vacated and remanded. Ginsburg, J., delivered the opinion of the Court, in which Kennedy, Breyer, Sotomayor, and Kagan, JJ., joined. Scalia, J., filed a dissenting opinion, in which Roberts, C. J., and Thomas, J., joined, and in which Alito, J., joined as to Parts I, II, and III.

This case concerns the “actual innocence” gateway to federal habeas review applied in Schlup v. Delo, 513 U.S. 298 (1995), and further explained in House v. Bell, 547 U.S. 518 (2006). In those cases, a convincing showing of actual innocence enabled habeas petitioners to overcome a procedural bar to consideration of the merits of their constitutional claims. Here, the question arises in the context of 28 U. S. C. §2244(d)(1), the statute of limitations on federal habeas petitions prescribed in the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996. Specifically, if the petitioner does not file her federal habeas peti- tion, at the latest, within one year of “the date on which the factual predicate of the claim or claims presented could have been discovered through the exercise of due diligence,” §2244(d)(1)(D), can the time bar be overcome by a convincing showing that she committed no crime? We hold that actual innocence, if proved, serves as a gateway through which a petitioner may pass whether the impediment is a procedural bar, as it was in Schlup and House, or, as in this case, expiration of the statute of limitations. We caution, however, that tenable actual-innocence gateway pleas are rare: “[A] petitioner does not meet the threshold requirement unless he persuades the district court that, in light of the new evidence, no juror, acting reasonably, would have voted to find him guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.” Schlup, 513 U. S., at 329; see House, 547 U. S., at 538 (emphasizing that the Schlup standard is “demanding” and seldom met). And in making an assessment of the kind Schlup envisioned, “the timing of the [petition]” is a factor bearing on the “reliability of th[e] evidence” purporting to show actual innocence. Schlup, 513 U. S., at 332. In the instant case, the Sixth Circuit acknowledged that habeas petitioner Perkins (respondent here) had filed his petition after the statute of limitations ran out, and had “failed to diligently pursue his rights.” Order in No. 09–1875, (CA6, Feb. 24, 2010), p. 2 (Certificate of Appealability). Nevertheless, the Court of Appeals reversed the decision of the District Court denying Perkins’ petition, and held that Perkins’ actual-innocence claim allowed him to pursue his habeas petition as if it had been filed on time. 670 F.3d 665, 670 (2012). The appeals court ap-parently considered a petitioner’s delay irrelevant to ap-praisal of an actual-innocence claim. See ibid. We vacate the Court of Appeals’ judgment and remand the case. Our opinion clarifies that a federal habeas court, faced with an actual-innocence gateway claim, should count unjustifiable delay on a habeas petitioner’s part, not as an absolute barrier to relief, but as a factor in determining whether actual innocence has been re- liably shown. See Brief for Respondent 45 (habeas court “could . . . hold the unjustified delay against the petitioner when making credibility findings as to whether the [actual-innocence] exception has been met”). I A On March 4, 1993, respondent Floyd Perkins attended a party in Flint, Michigan, in the company of his friend, Rodney Henderson, and an acquaintance, Damarr Jones. The three men left the party together. Henderson was later discovered on a wooded trail, murdered by stab wounds to his head. Perkins was charged with the murder of Henderson. At trial, Jones was the key witness for the prosecution. He testified that Perkins alone committed the murder while Jones looked on. App. 55. Chauncey Vaughn, a friend of Perkins and Henderson, testified that, prior to the murder, Perkins had told him he would kill Henderson, id., at 39, and that Perkins later called Vaughn, confessing to his commission of the crime. Id., at 36–38. A third witness, Torriano Player, also a friend of both Perkins and Henderson, testified that Perkins told him, had he known how Player felt about Henderson, he would not have killed Henderson. Id., at 74. Perkins, testifying in his own defense, offered a different account of the episode. He testified that he left Hender-son and Jones to purchase cigarettes at a convenience store. When he exited the store, Perkins related, Jones and Henderson were gone. Id., at 84. Perkins said that he then visited his girlfriend. Id., at 87. About an hour later, Perkins recalled, he saw Jones standing under a streetlight with blood on his pants, shoes, and plaid coat. Id., at 90. The jury convicted Perkins of first-degree murder. He was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole on October 27, 1993. The Michigan Court of Appeals affirmed Perkins’ conviction and sentence, and the Michigan Supreme Court denied Perkins leave to appeal on January 31, 1997. Perkins’ conviction became final on May 5, 1997. B Under the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996 (AEDPA), 110Stat. 1214, a state prisoner ordinarily has one year to file a federal petition for habeas corpus, starting from “the date on which the judgment became final by the conclusion of direct review or the ex-piration of the time for seeking such review.” 28 U. S. C. §2244(d)(1)(A). If the petition alleges newly discovered evidence, however, the filing deadline is one year from “the date on which the factual predicate of the claim or claims presented could have been discovered through the exercise of due diligence.” §2244(d)(1)(D). Perkins filed his federal habeas corpus petition on June 13, 2008, more than 11 years after his conviction became final. He alleged, inter alia, ineffective assistance on the part of his trial attorney, depriving him of his Sixth Amendment right to competent counsel. To overcome AEDPA’s time limitations, Perkins asserted newly discovered evidence of actual innocence. He relied on three affidavits, each pointing to Jones, not Perkins, as Henderson’s murderer. The first affidavit, dated January 30, 1997, was submitted by Perkins’ sister, Ronda Hudson. Hudson stated that she had heard from a third party, Louis Ford, that Jones bragged about stabbing Henderson and had taken his clothes to the cleaners after the murder. App. to Pet. for Cert. 54a–55a. The second affidavit, dated March 16, 1999, was subscribed to by Demond Louis, Chauncey Vaughn’s younger brother. Louis stated that, on the night of the murder, Jones confessed to him that he had just killed Henderson. Louis also described the clothes Jones wore that night, bloodstained orange shoes and orange pants, and a colorful shirt. Id., at 50a–53a. The next day, Louis added, he accompanied Jones, first to a dumpster where Jones disposed of the bloodstained shoes, and then to the cleaners. Finally, Perkins presented the July 16, 2002 affidavit of Linda Fleming, an employee at Pro-Clean Cleaners in 1993. She stated that, on or about March 4, 1993, a man matching Jones’s description entered the shop and asked her whether bloodstains could be removed from the pants and a shirt he brought in. The pants were orange, she recalled, and heavily stained with blood, as was the multicolored shirt left for cleaning along with the pants. Id., at 48a–49a. The District Court found the affidavits insufficient to entitle Perkins to habeas relief. Characterizing the affidavits as newly discovered evidence was “dubious,” the District Court observed, in light of what Perkins knew about the underlying facts at the time of trial. Id., at 29a. But even assuming qualification of the affidavits as evidence newly discovered, the District Court next explained, “[Perkins’] petition [was] untimely under §2244(d)(1)(D).” Ibid. “[If] the statute of limitations began to run as of the date of the latest of th[e] affidavits, July 16, 2002,” the District Court noted, then “absent tolling, [Perkins] had until July 16, 2003 in which to file his habeas petition.” Ibid. Perkins, however, did not file until nearly five years later, on June 13, 2008. Under Sixth Circuit precedent, the District Court stated, “a habeas petitioner who demonstrates a credible claim of actual innocence based on new evidence may, in ex-ceptional circumstances, be entitled to equitable tolling of habeas limitations.” Id., at 30a. But Perkins had not established exceptional circumstances, the District Court determined. In any event, the District Court observed, equitable tolling requires diligence and Perkins “ha[d] failed utterly to demonstrate the necessary diligence in exercising his rights.” Id., at 31a. Alternatively, the Dis-trict Court found that Perkins had failed to meet the strict standard by which pleas of actual innocence are mea-sured: He had not shown that, taking account of all the evidence, “it is more likely than not that no reasonable juror would have convicted him,” or even that the evidence was new. Id., at 30a–31a. Perkins appealed the District Court’s judgment. Al-though recognizing that AEDPA’s statute of limitations had expired and that Perkins had not diligently pursued his rights, the Sixth Circuit granted a certificate of appealability limited to a single question: Is reasonable diligence a precondition to relying on actual innocence as a gateway to adjudication of a federal habeas petition on the merits? Certificate of Appealability 2–3. On consideration of the certified question, the Court of Appeals reversed the District Court’s judgment. Adhering to Circuit precedent, Souter v. Jones, 395 F.3d 577, 597–602 (2005), the Sixth Circuit held that Perkins’ gateway actual-innocence allegations allowed him to present his ineffective-assistance-of-counsel claim as if it were filed on time. On remand, the Court of Appeals instructed, “the [D]istrict [C]ourt [should] fully consider whether Perkins assert[ed] a credible claim of actual innocence.” 670 F. 3d, at 676. We granted certiorari to resolve a Circuit conflict on whether AEDPA’s statute of limitations can be overcome by a showing of actual innocence. 568 U. S. ___ (2012). Compare, e.g., San Martin v. McNeil, 633 F.3d 1257, 1267–1268 (CA11 2011) (“A court . . . may consider an untimely §2254 petition if, by refusing to consider the petition for untimeliness, the court thereby would endorse a ‘fundamental miscarriage of justice’ because it would require that an individual who is actually innocent remain imprisoned.”), with, e.g., Escamilla v. Jungwirth, 426 F.3d 868, 871–872 (CA7 2005) (“Prisoners claiming to be innocent, like those contending that other events spoil the conviction, must meet the statutory requirement of timely action.”). See also Rivas v. Fischer, 687 F.3d 514, 548 (CA2 2012) (collecting cases). II A In Holland v. Florida, 560 U. S. ___ (2010), this Court addressed the circumstances in which a federal habeas petitioner could invoke the doctrine of “equitable tolling.” Holland held that “a [habeas] petitioner is entitled to equitable tolling only if he shows (1) that he has been pursuing his rights diligently, and (2) that some extraordinary circumstance stood in his way and prevented timely filing.” Id., at ___ (slip op., at 16–17) (internal quotation marks omitted). As the courts below comprehended, Perkins does not qualify for equitable tolling. In possession of all three affidavits by July 2002, he waited nearly six years to seek federal postconviction relief. “Such a delay falls far short of demonstrating the . . . diligence” required to entitle a petitioner to equitable tolling. App. to Pet. for Cert. 31a (District Court opinion). See also Certificate of Appealability 2. Perkins, however, asserts not an excuse for filing after the statute of limitations has run. Instead, he maintains that a plea of actual innocence can overcome AEDPA’s one-year statute of limitations. He thus seeks an equi-table exception to §2244(d)(1), not an extension of the time statutorily prescribed. See Rivas, 687 F. 3d, at 547, n. 42 (distinguishing from “equitable tolling” a plea to override the statute of limitations when actual innocence is shown). Decisions of this Court support Perkins’ view of the significance of a convincing actual-innocence claim. We have not resolved whether a prisoner may be entitled to habeas relief based on a freestanding claim of actual innocence. Herrera v. Collins, 506 U.S. 390, 404–405 (1993). We have recognized, however, that a prisoner “otherwise subject to defenses of abusive or successive use of the writ [of habeas corpus] may have his federal constitutional claim considered on the merits if he makes a proper showing of actual innocence.” Id., at 404 (citing Sawyer v. Whitley, 505 U.S. 333 (1992)). See also Murray v. Carrier, 477 U.S. 478, 496 (1986) (“[W]e think that in an extraordinary case, where a constitutional violation has probably resulted in the conviction of one who is actually innocent, a federal habeas court may grant the writ even in the absence of a showing of cause for the procedural default.”). In other words, a credible showing of actual innocence may allow a prisoner to pursue his constitu-tional claims (here, ineffective assistance of counsel) on the merits notwithstanding the existence of a procedural bar to relief. “This rule, or fundamental miscarriage of justice exception, is grounded in the ‘equitable discretion’ of habeas courts to see that federal constitutional errors do not result in the incarceration of innocent persons.” Herrera, 506 U. S., at 404. We have applied the miscarriage of justice exception to overcome various procedural defaults. These include “successive” petitions asserting previously rejected claims, see Kuhlmann v. Wilson, 477 U.S. 436, 454 (1986) (plurality opinion), “abusive” petitions asserting in a second petition claims that could have been raised in a first petition, see McCleskey v. Zant, 499 U.S. 467, 494–495 (1991), failure to develop facts in state court, see Keeney v. Tamayo-Reyes, 504 U.S. 1, 11–12 (1992), and failure to observe state procedural rules, including filing deadlines, see Coleman v. Thompson, 501 U.S. 722, 750 (1991); Carrier, 477 U. S., at 495–496. The miscarriage of justice exception, our decisions bear out, survived AEDPA’s passage. In Calderon v. Thompson, 523 U.S. 538 (1998), we applied the exception to hold that a federal court may, consistent with AEDPA, recall its mandate in order to revisit the merits of a decision. Id., at 558 (“The miscarriage of justice standard is altogether consistent . . . with AEDPA’s central concern that the merits of concluded criminal proceedings not be revisited in the absence of a strong showing of actual innocence.”). In Bousley v. United States, 523 U.S. 614, 622 (1998), we held, in the context of §2255, that actual in-nocence may overcome a prisoner’s failure to raise a constitutional objection on direct review. Most recently, in House, we reiterated that a prisoner’s proof of actual innocence may provide a gateway for federal habeas review of a procedurally defaulted claim of constitutional error. 547 U. S., at 537–538. These decisions “see[k] to balance the societal interests in finality, comity, and conservation of scarce judicial re-sources with the individual interest in justice that arises in the extraordinary case.” Schlup, 513 U. S., at 324. Sensitivity to the injustice of incarcerating an innocent individual should not abate when the impediment is AEDPA’s statute of limitations. As just noted, see supra, at 8, we have held that the miscarriage of justice exception applies to state procedural rules, including filing deadlines. Coleman, 501 U. S., at 750. A federal court may invoke the miscarriage of justice exception to justify consideration of claims defaulted in state court under state timeliness rules. See ibid. The State’s reading of AEDPA’s time prescription would thus accord greater force to a federal deadline than to a simi-larly designed state deadline. It would be passing strange to interpret a statute seeking to promote federalism and comity as requiring stricter enforcement of federal procedural rules than procedural rules established and enforced by the States. B The State ties to §2244(d)’s text its insistence that AEDPA’s statute of limitations precludes courts from considering late-filed actual-innocence gateway claims. “Section 2244(d)(1)(D),” the State contends, “forecloses any argument that a habeas petitioner has unlimited time to present new evidence in support of a constitutional claim.” Brief for Petitioner 17. That is so, the State maintains, because AEDPA prescribes a comprehensive system for determining when its one-year limitations period begins to run. “Included within that system,” the State observes, “is a specific trigger for the precise circumstance presented here: a constitutional claim based on new evidence.” Ibid. Section 2244(d)(1)(D) runs the clock from “the date on which the factual predicate of the claim . . . could have been discovered through the exercise of due diligence.” In light of that provision, the State urges, “there is no need for the courts to act in equity to provide additional time for persons who allege actual innocence as a gateway to their claims of constitutional error.” Ibid. Perkins’ request for an equitable exception to the statute of limitations, the State charges, would “rende[r] superfluous this carefully scripted scheme.” Id., at 18. The State’s argument in this regard bears blinders. AEDPA’s time limitations apply to the typical case in which no allegation of actual innocence is made. The miscarriage of justice exception, we underscore, applies to a severely confined category: cases in which new evidence shows “it is more likely than not that no reasonable ju- ror would have convicted [the petitioner].” Schlup, 513 U. S., at 329 (internal quotation marks omitted). Section 2244(d)(1)(D) is both modestly more stringent (because it requires diligence) and dramatically less stringent (because it requires no showing of innocence). Many petitions that could not pass through the actual-innocence gateway will be timely or not measured by §2244(d)(1)(D)’s triggering provision. That provision, in short, will hardly be rendered superfluous by recognition of the miscarriage of justice exception. The State further relies on provisions of AEDPA other than §2244(d)(1)(D), namely, §§2244(b)(2)(B) and 2254(e) (2), to urge that Congress knew how to incorporate the miscarriage of justice exception when it was so minded. Section 2244(b)(2)(B), the State observes, provides that a petitioner whose first federal habeas petition has already been adjudicated when new evidence comes to light may file a second-or-successive petition when, and only when, the facts underlying the new claim would “es-tablish by clear and convincing evidence that, but for constitutional error, no reasonable factfinder would have found the applicant guilty of the underlying offense.” §2244(b)(2)(B)(ii). And §2254(e)(2), which generally bars evidentiary hearings in federal habeas proceedings ini-tiated by state prisoners, includes an exception for pris-oners who present new evidence of their innocence. See §§2254(e)(2)(A)(ii), (B) (permitting evidentiary hearings in federal court if “the facts underlying the claim would be sufficient to establish by clear and convincing evidence that but for constitutional error, no reasonable factfinder would have found the applicant guilty of the underlying offense”). But Congress did not simply incorporate the miscarriage of justice exception into §§2244(b)(2)(B) and 2254(e)(2). Rather, Congress constrained the application of the exception. Prior to AEDPA’s enactment, a court could grant relief on a second-or-successive petition, then known as an “abusive” petition, if the petitioner could show that “a fundamental miscarriage of justice would result from a failure to entertain the claim.” McCleskey, 499 U. S., at 495. Section 2244(b)(2)(B) limits the exception to cases in which “the factual predicate for the claim could not have been discovered previously through the exercise of due diligence,” and the petitioner can establish that no reasonable factfinder “would have found [her] guilty of the underlying offense” by “clear and convincing evidence.” Congress thus required second-or-successive habeas petitioners attempting to benefit from the miscarriage of justice exception to meet a higher level of proof (“clear and convincing evidence”) and to satisfy a diligence requirement that did not exist prior to AEDPA’s passage. Likewise, petitioners asserting actual innocence pre-AEDPA could obtain evidentiary hearings in federal court even if they failed to develop facts in state court. See Keeney, 504 U. S., at 12 (“A habeas petitioner’s failure to develop a claim in state-court proceedings will be excused and a hearing mandated if he can show that a fundamental miscarriage of justice would result from failure to hold a federal evidentiary hearing.”). Under AEDPA, a petitioner seeking an evidentiary hearing must show diligence and, in addition, establish her actual innocence by clear and convincing evidence. §§2254(e)(2)(A)(ii), (B). Sections 2244(b)(2)(B) and 2254(e)(2) thus reflect Congress’ will to modify the miscarriage of justice exception with respect to second-or-successive petitions and the hold-ing of evidentiary hearings in federal court. These pro-visions do not demonstrate Congress’ intent to preclude courts from applying the exception, unmodified, to “the type of petition at issue here”—an untimely first federal habeas petition alleging a gateway actual-innocence claim. House, 547 U. S., at 539.[1] The more rational inference to draw from Congress’ incorporation of a modified version of the miscarriage of justice exception in §§2244(b)(2)(B) and 2254(e)(2) is simply this: In a case not governed by those provisions, i.e., a first petition for federal habeas relief, the miscarriage of justice exception survived AEDPA’s passage intact and unrestricted.[2] Our reading of the statute is supported by the Court’s opinion in Holland. “[E]quitable principles have traditionally governed the substantive law of habeas corpus,” Holland reminded, and affirmed that “we will not construe a statute to displace courts’ traditional equitable authority absent the clearest command.” 560 U. S., at ___ (slip op., at 13) (internal quotation marks omitted). The text of §2244(d)(1) contains no clear command countering the courts’ equitable authority to invoke the miscarriage of justice exception to overcome expiration of the statute of limitations governing a first federal habeas petition. As we observed in Holland, “AEDPA seeks to eliminate delays in the federal habeas review process. But AEDPA seeks to do so without undermining basic habeas corpus principles and while seeking to harmonize the new statute with prior law . . . . When Congress codified new rules governing this previously judicially managed area of law, it did so without losing sight of the fact that the writ of habeas corpus plays a vital role in protecting constitutional rights.” Id., at ___ (slip op., at 16) (citations and internal quotation marks omitted).[3] III Having rejected the State’s argument that §2244(d) (1)(D) precludes a court from entertaining an un- timely first federal habeas petition raising a convincing claim of actual innocence, we turn to the State’s further objection to the Sixth Circuit’s opinion. Even if a habeas petitioner asserting a credible claim of actual innocence may overcome AEDPA’s statute of limitations, the State argues, the Court of Appeals erred in finding that no threshold diligence requirement at all applies to Perkins’ petition. While formally distinct from its argument that §2244(d)(1)(D)’s text forecloses a late-filed claim alleging actual innocence, the State’s contention makes scant sense. Section 2244(d)(1)(D) requires a habeas petitioner to file a claim within one year of the time in which new evidence “could have been discovered through the exercise of due diligence.” It would be bizarre to hold that a habeas petitioner who asserts a convincing claim of actual innocence may overcome the statutory time bar §2244(d)(1)(D) erects, yet simultaneously encounter a court-fashioned diligence barrier to pursuit of her petition. See 670 F. 3d, at 673 (“Requiring reasonable diligence effectively makes the concept of the actual innocence gateway redundant, since petitioners . . . seek [an equitable exception only] when they were not reasonably diligent in complying with §2244(d)(1)(D).”). While we reject the State’s argument that habeas petitioners who assert convincing actual-innocence claims must prove diligence to cross a federal court’s threshold, we hold that the Sixth Circuit erred to the extent that it eliminated timing as a factor relevant in evaluating the reliability of a petitioner’s proof of innocence. To invoke the miscarriage of justice exception to AEDPA’s statute of limitations, we repeat, a petitioner “must show that it is more likely than not that no reasonable juror would have convicted him in the light of the new evidence.” Schlup, 513 U. S., at 327. Unexplained delay in presenting new evidence bears on the determination whether the petitioner has made the requisite showing. Perkins so acknowl-edges. See Brief for Respondent 52 (unjustified delay may figure in determining “whether a petitioner has made a sufficient showing of innocence”). As we stated in Schlup, “[a] court may consider how the timing of the submission and the likely credibility of [a petitioner’s] affiants bear on the probable reliability of . . . evidence [of actual innocence].” 513 U. S., at 332. See also House, 547 U. S., at 537. Considering a petitioner’s diligence, not discretely, but as part of the assessment whether actual innocence has been convincingly shown, attends to the State’s concern that it will be prejudiced by a prisoner’s untoward delay in proffering new evidence. The State fears that a prisoner might “lie in wait and use stale evidence to collaterally attack his conviction . . . when an elderly witness has died and cannot appear at a hearing to rebut new evidence.” Brief for Petitioner 25. The timing of such a petition, however, should seriously undermine the credibility of the actual-innocence claim. Moreover, the deceased witness’ prior testimony, which would have been subject to cross-examination, could be introduced in the event of a new trial. See Crawford v. Washington, 541 U.S. 36, 53–54 (2004) (recognizing exception to the Confrontation Clause where witness is unavailable and the defendant had a prior opportunity for cross-examination). And frivolous petitions should occasion instant dismissal. See 28 U. S. C. §2254 Rule 4. Focusing on the merits of a petitioner’s actual-innocence claim and taking account of delay in that context, rather than treating timeliness as a threshold inquiry, is tuned to the rationale underlying the miscarriage of justice exception—i.e., ensuring “that federal constitutional errors do not result in the incarceration of innocent persons.” Herrera, 506 U. S., at 404.[4] IV We now return to the case at hand. The District Court proceeded properly in first determining that Perkins’ claim was filed well beyond AEDPA’s limitations period and that equitable tolling was unavailable to Perkins because he could demonstrate neither exceptional circumstances nor diligence. See supra, at 5. The District Court then found that Perkins’ alleged newly discovered evidence, i.e., the information contained in the three affidavits, was “substantially available to [Perkins] at trial.” App. to Pet. for Cert. 31a. Moreover, the proffered evidence, even if “new,” was hardly adequate to show that, had it been presented at trial, no reasonable juror would have convicted Perkins. Id., at 30a–31a. The Sixth Circuit granted a certificate of appealability limited to the question whether reasonable diligence is a precondition to reliance on actual innocence as a gateway to adjudication of a federal habeas petition on the merits. We have explained that untimeliness, although not an unyielding ground for dismissal of a petition, does bear on the credibility of evidence proffered to show actual innocence. On remand, the District Court’s appraisal of Perkins’ petition as insufficient to meet Schlup’s actual-innocence standard should be dispositive, absent cause, which we do not currently see, for the Sixth Circuit to upset that evaluation. We stress once again that the Schlup standard is demanding. The gateway should open only when a petition presents “evidence of innocence so strong that a court cannot have confidence in the outcome of the trial unless the court is also satisfied that the trial was free of nonharmless constitutional error.” 513 U. S., at 316. * * * For the reasons stated, the judgment of the Sixth Circuit is vacated, and the case is remanded for further proceedings consistent with this opinion. It is so ordered. Notes 1 In House, we rejected the analogous argument that AEDPA re-placed the standard for actual-innocence gateway claims prescribed in Schlup v. Delo, 513 U.S. 298, 327 (1995) (petitioner “must show that it is more likely than not that no reasonable juror would have convicted him in the light of the new evidence”), with a “clear and convincing” evidence requirement. 547 U. S., at 539 (internal quotation marks omitted). As here, the State relied on §§2244(b)(2)(B)(ii) and 2254(e)(2) to support its argument. But “[n]either provision address[ed] the type of petition at issue . . . [,] a first federal habeas petition seeking consideration of defaulted claims based on a showing of actual innocence.” Ibid. Consequently, we held inapplicable to first petitions the stricter standard AEDPA prescribed for second-or-successive petitions. Ibid. 2 Prior to AEDPA, it is true, this Court had not ruled that a credible claim of actual innocence could supersede a federal statute of limitations. The reason why that is so is evident: Pre-AEDPA, petitions for federal habeas relief were not governed by any statute of limitations. Notably, we said in Coleman v. Thompson, 501 U.S. 722 (1991), that a petitioner who failed to comply with a timeliness requirement in state court could nevertheless plead her claims on the merits in federal court if she could show that “failure to consider the claims [would] result in a fundamental miscarriage of justice.” Id., at 750. 3 For eight pages, the dissent stridently insists that federal (although not state) statutes of limitations allow no exceptions not contained in the text. Well, not quite so, the dissent ultimately acknowledges. Post, at 8. Even AEDPA’s statute of limitations, the dissent admits, is subject to equitable tolling. But that is because equitable tolling “can be seen as a reasonable assumption of genuine legislative intent.” Post, at 9. Why is it not an equally reasonable assumption that Congress would want a limitations period to yield when what is at stake is a State’s incarceration of an individual for a crime, it has become clear, no reasonable person would find he committed? For all its bluster,the dissent agrees with the Court on a crucial point: Congress legis-lates against the backdrop of existing law. Post, at 10. At the timeof AEDPA’s enactment, multiple decisions of this Court applied the miscarriage of justice exception to overcome various threshold barriers to relief. See supra, at 7–9. It is hardly “unprecedented,” therefore, to conclude that “Congress intended or could have anticipated [a miscarriage of justice] exception” when it enacted AEDPA. Post, at 10–11. 4 We note one caveat: A showing that delay was part of a deliberate attempt to manipulate the case, say by waiting until a key prosecution witness died or was deported, might raise a different ground for withholding equitable relief. No such contention was presented here, however, so we do not discuss the point.

569.US.351

On April 23, 1993, respondent Burt Lancaster, a former police officer with a long history of severe mental-health problems, shot and killed his girlfriend. At his 1994 jury trial in Michigan state court, Lancaster asserted a defense of diminished capacity. Under then-prevailing Michigan Court of Appeals precedent, the diminished-capacity defense permitted a legally sane defendant to present evidence of mental illness to negate the specific intent required to commit a particular crime. Apparently unpersuaded by Lancaster’s defense, the jury convicted him of first-degree murder and a related firearm offense. Lancaster, however, later obtained federal habeas relief from these convictions. By the time of Lancaster’s retrial, the Michigan Supreme Court had rejected the diminished-capacity defense in its 2001 decision in Carpenter. Although the murder with which Lancaster was charged occurred several years before Carpenter was decided, the judge at his second trial applied Carpenter and therefore disallowed renewal of his diminished-capacity defense. Lancaster was again convicted. Affirming, the Michigan Court of Appeals rejected Lancaster’s argument that the trial court’s retroactive application of Carpenter vio- lated due process. Lancaster reasserted his due process claim in a federal habeas petition. The District Court denied the petition, but the Sixth Circuit reversed. Concluding that the Michigan Supreme Court’s 2001 rejection of the diminished-capacity defense was unforeseeable in April 1993, when Lancaster killed his girlfriend, the Sixth Circuit held that, by rejecting Lancaster’s due process claim, the Michigan Court of Appeals had unreasonably applied clearly established federal law. Held: Lancaster is not entitled to federal habeas relief. Pp. 4–15. (a) Under the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996 (AEDPA), Lancaster may obtain federal habeas relief only if the Michigan Court of Appeals, in rejecting his due process claim, unreasonably applied “clearly established Federal law, as determined by [this] Court.” 28 U. S. C. §2254(d)(1). This standard is “difficult to meet”: Lancaster must show that the Michigan Court of Appeals’ decision rested on “an error well understood and comprehended in existing law beyond any possibility for fairminded disagreement.” Harrington v. Richter, 562 U. S. ___, ___. To determine whether Lancaster has satisfied that demanding standard, the Court first considers two key decisions: Bouie v. City of Columbia, 378 U.S. 347, and Rogers v. Tennessee, 532 U.S. 451. It then considers whether the Michigan Court of Appeals’ decision qualifies as an unreasonable application of those decisions to Lancaster’s case. Pp. 4–5. (b) Bouie concerned African-American petitioners who had refused to leave a South Carolina drug store’s whites-only restaurant area after entering without notice that the store’s policy barred their entry. They were convicted under a South Carolina trespass statute pro- hibiting “ ‘entry upon the lands of another . . . after notice from the owner or tenant prohibiting such entry.’ ” 378 U. S., at 349–350. The South Carolina Supreme Court based its affirmance of the petitioners’ convictions on its prior decision in Mitchell, where the court held that the trespass statute reached both unauthorized entries and “the act of remaining on the premises of another after receiving notice to leave.” 378 U. S., at 350. Mitchell, however, was rendered 21 months after the petitioners’ arrest. This Court held that the Due Process Clause prohibited Mitchell’s retroactive application to the Bouie petitioners, stressing that Mitchell’s interpretation of the state trespass statute was “clearly at variance with the statutory language” and “ha[d] not the slightest support in prior South Carolina decisions.” 378 U. S., at 356. In Rogers, the petitioner contested the Tennessee Supreme Court’s retroactive abolition of the common-law “year and a day rule,” which barred a murder conviction “unless [the] victim had died by the defendant’s act within a year and a day of the act.” 532 U. S., at 453. This Court found no due process violation. “[J]udicial alteration of a common law doctrine of criminal law,” the Court held, “violates the principle of fair warning, and hence must not be given retroactive effect, only where [the alteration] is ‘unexpected and indefensible by reference to the law which had been expressed prior to the conduct in issue.’ ” Id., at 462. Judged by this standard, the retroactive abolition of the year and a day rule encountered no constitutional impediment. The rule was “widely viewed as an outdated relic of the common law,” had been routinely rejected by modern courts and legislators, and had been mentioned in reported Tennessee decisions “only three times, and each time in dicta.” Id., at 462–464. Pp. 6–8. (c) The Michigan Court of Appeals’ rejection of Lancaster’s due process claim does not represent an unreasonable application of the law this Court declared in Bouie and Rogers. Pp. 8–15. (1) The Michigan Court of Appeals first recognized the diminished-capacity defense in 1973. Two years later, the Michigan Legislature prescribed comprehensive requirements for defenses based on mental illness or retardation. In 1978, the Michigan Court of Appeals ruled that the diminished-capacity defense fit within the codified definition of insanity. The Michigan Supreme Court’s 2001 decision in Carpenter, however, rejected that position, holding that the diminished-capacity defense was not encompassed within the Michigan Legislature’s comprehensive scheme for mental-illness defenses and thus could not be invoked by criminal defendants. Pp. 8–12. (2) In light of this Court’s precedent and the history of Michigan’s diminished-capacity defense, the Michigan Court of Appeals’ decision applying Carpenter retroactively is not “an unreasonable application of . . . clearly established [f]ederal law.” 28 U. S. C. §2254(d)(1). This case is a far cry from Bouie, where the South Carolina Supreme Court unexpectedly expanded “narrow and precise statutory language” that, as written, did not reach the petitioners’ conduct. 378 U. S., at 352. In Carpenter, by contrast, the Michigan Supreme Court rejected a diminished-capacity defense that the court reasonably found to have no home in a comprehensive, on-point statute enacted by the Michigan Legislature. Although Lancaster’s due process claim is arguably less weak than the due process claim rejected in Rogers, the Court did not hold in Rogers that a newly announced judicial rule may be applied retroactively only if the rule it replaces was an “outdated relic” rarely appearing in a jurisdiction’s case law. 532 U. S., at 462–467. Distinguishing Rogers thus does little to bolster Lancaster’s argument that the Michigan Court of Appeals’ decision unreasonably applied clearly established federal law. This Court has never found a due process violation in circumstances remotely resembling Lancaster’s case—i.e., where a state supreme court, squarely addressing a particular issue for the first time, rejected a consistent line of lower court decisions based on the supreme court’s reasonable interpretation of the language of a controlling statute. Fairminded jurists could conclude that a state supreme court decision of that order is not “ ‘unexpected and indefensible by reference to [existing] law.’ ” Id., at 462. Pp. 12–15. 683 F.3d 740, reversed. Ginsburg, J., delivered the opinion for a unanimous Court.

Burt Lancaster was convicted in Michigan state court of first-degree murder and a related firearm offense. At the time the crime was committed, Michigan’s intermediate appellate court had repeatedly recognized “diminished capacity” as a defense negating the mens rea element of first-degree murder. By the time of Lancaster’s trial and conviction, however, the Michigan Supreme Court in People v. Carpenter, 464 Mich. 223, 627 N.W.2d 276 (2001), had rejected the defense. Lancaster asserts that retroactive application of the Michigan Supreme Court’s decision in Carpenter denied him due process of law. On habeas review, a federal court must assess a claim for relief under the demanding standard set by the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996 (AEDPA). Under that standard, Lancaster may gain relief only if the state-court decision he assails “was contrary to, or in- volved an unreasonable application of, clearly established Federal law, as determined by [this] Court.” 28 U. S. C. §2254(d)(1). We hold that Lancaster’s petition does not meet AEDPA’s requirement and that the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit erred in granting him federal habeas relief. I On April 23, 1993, Lancaster, a former police officer with a long history of severe mental-health problems, shot and killed his girlfriend in a shopping-plaza parking lot. At his 1994 jury trial in Michigan state court, Lancaster admitted that he had killed his girlfriend but asserted insanity and diminished-capacity defenses. Under then-prevailing Michigan Court of Appeals precedent, a defendant who pleaded diminished capacity, although he was legally sane, could “offer evidence of some mental abnormality to negate the specific intent required to commit a particular crime.” Carpenter, 464 Mich., at 232, 627 N. W. 2d, at 280. If a defendant succeeded in showing that mental illness prevented him from “form[ing] the specific state of mind required as an essential element of a crime,” he could “be convicted only of a lower grade of the offense not requiring that particular mental element.” Ibid. (internal quotation marks omitted). Apparently unpersuaded by Lancaster’s defenses, the jury convicted him of first-degree murder, in violation of Mich. Comp. Laws Ann. §750.316 (West 1991),[1] and possessing a firearm in the commission of a felony, in vio- lation of §750.227b (West Cum. Supp. 2004). Lancaster later obtained federal habeas relief from these convictions, however, because, in conflict with Batson v. Kentucky, 476 U.S. 79 (1986), the prosecutor had exercised a race-based peremptory challenge to remove a potential juror. See Lancaster v. Adams, 324 F.3d 423 (CA6 2003). Lancaster was retried in 2005. By that time, the Michigan Supreme Court had disapproved the “series of [Michigan Court of Appeals] decisions” recognizing the diminished-capacity defense. Carpenter, 464 Mich., at 235, 627 N. W. 2d, at 282. In rejecting the defense, Michigan’s high court observed that, in 1975, the Michigan Legislature had enacted “a comprehensive statutory scheme concerning de- fenses based on either mental illness or mental retardation.” Id., at 236, 627 N. W. 2d, at 282. That scheme, the Michigan Supreme Court concluded, “demonstrate[d] the Legislature’s intent to preclude the use of any evidence of a defendant’s lack of mental capacity short of legal insan- ity to avoid or reduce criminal responsibility.” Ibid. Although the murder with which Lancaster was charged occurred several years before the Michigan Supreme Court’s decision in Carpenter, the judge presiding at Lancaster’s second trial applied Carpenter’s holding and therefore disallowed renewal of Lancaster’s diminished-capacity defense. Following a bench trial, Lancaster was again convicted. The trial court imposed a sentence of life imprisonment for the first-degree murder conviction and a consecutive two-year sentence for the related firearm offense. Lancaster appealed, unsuccessfully, to the Michigan Court of Appeals. See App. to Pet. for Cert. 76a–78a. The appeals court rejected Lancaster’s argument that retro- active application of Carpenter to his case violated his right to due process. “[D]ue process concerns prevent retroactive application [of judicial decisions] in some cases,” the court acknowledged, “especially . . . where the decision is unforeseeable and has the effect of changing existing law.” App. to Pet. for Cert. 77a. But Carpenter “did not involve a change in the law,” the Court of Appeals reasoned, “because it concerned an unambiguous statute that was interpreted by the [Michigan] Supreme Court for the first time.” App. to Pet. for Cert. 77a. After the Michigan Supreme Court declined review, Lancaster reasserted his due process claim in a federal habeas petition filed under 28 U. S. C. §2254. The District Court denied the petition, 735 F. Supp. 2d 750 (ED Mich. 2010), but it granted a certificate of appealability, see 28 U. S. C. §2253(c). A divided panel of the Sixth Circuit reversed. 683 F.3d 740 (2012). The Michigan Supreme Court’s decision in Carpenter was unforeseeable, the Court of Appeals major- ity concluded, given (1) the Michigan Court of Appeals’ consistent recognition of the diminished-capacity defense; (2) the Michigan Supreme Court’s repeated references to the defense without casting a shadow of doubt on it; and (3) the inclusion of the diminished-capacity defense in the Michigan State Bar’s pattern jury instructions. 683 F. 3d, at 745–749. These considerations persuaded the Sixth Circuit majority that, in rejecting Lancaster’s due process claim, the Michigan Court of Appeals had unreasonably applied clearly established federal law. Id., at 752–753. Accordingly, the Sixth Circuit ruled that Lancaster was en- titled to a new trial at which he could present his diminished-capacity defense. Id., at 754. Dissenting, Chief Judge Batchelder concluded that the “Michigan Court of Appeals[’] denial of Lancaster’s due process claim was reasonable . . . because the diminished-capacity defense was not well-established in Michigan and its elimination was, therefore, foreseeable.” Id., at 755. This Court granted certiorari. 568 U. S. ___ (2013). II To obtain federal habeas relief under AEDPA’s strictures, Lancaster must establish that, in rejecting his due process claim, the Michigan Court of Appeals unreason- ably applied federal law clearly established in our decisions. See 28 U. S. C. §2254(d)(1).[2] This standard, we have explained, is “difficult to meet”: To obtain habeas corpus relief from a federal court, a state prisoner must show that the challenged state-court ruling rested on “an error well understood and comprehended in existing law beyond any possibility for fairminded disagreement.” Harrington v. Richter, 562 U. S. ___, ___ (2011) (slip op., at 12–13). To determine whether Lancaster has satisfied that demanding standard, we consider first two of this Court’s key decisions: Bouie v. City of Columbia, 378 U.S. 347 (1964), and Rogers v. Tennessee, 532 U.S. 451 (2001). We then consider whether the Michigan Court of Appeals’ decision qualifies as an unreasonable application of those decisions to the particular circumstances of Lancaster’s case.[3] A In Bouie, the African-American petitioners were convicted of trespass under South Carolina law after they refused to comply with orders to leave a drug store’s restaurant department, a facility reserved for white customers. 378 U. S., at 348–349. This Court held that the convictions violated the due process requirement that “a criminal statute give fair warning of the conduct which it prohibits.” Id., at 350. The state statute under which the petitioners were convicted, the Court emphasized, prohibited “entry upon the lands of another . . . after notice from the owner or tenant prohibiting such entry.” Id., at 349–350 (emphasis added and internal quotation marks omitted). It was undisputed that the petitioners were invited to enter the store and had received no notice that they were barred from the restaurant area before they occupied booth seats. Id., at 350. Nevertheless, the South Carolina Supreme Court affirmed the petitioners’ convictions based on its prior decision in Charleston v. Mitchell, 239 S. C. 376, 123 S.E.2d 512 (1961). Bouie, 378 U. S., at 350, n. 2. The Mitchell decision, which the South Carolina Supreme Court found dispositive, was rendered 21 months after the petitioners’ arrest. 378 U. S., at 348, 350, n. 2. Mitchell held that the trespass statute under which the petitioners were convicted reached not only unauthorized entries; it proscribed as well “the act of remaining on the premises of another after receiving notice to leave.” 378 U. S., at 350. We held that the Due Process Clause prohibited Mitchell’s retroactive application to the Bouie petitioners. In so ruling, we stressed that Mitchell’s interpretation of the South Carolina trespass statute was “clearly at variance with the statutory language” and “ha[d] not the slightest support in prior South Carolina decisions.” 378 U. S., at 356. Due process, we said, does not countenance an “unforeseeable and retroactive judicial expansion of narrow and precise statutory language.” Id., at 352. In Rogers, the petitioner contested the Tennessee Supreme Court’s retroactive abolition of the common-law “year and a day rule.” 532 U. S., at 453. That rule barred a murder conviction “unless [the] victim had died by the defendant’s act within a year and a day of the act.” Ibid. The victim in Rogers had died some 15 months after the petitioner stabbed him. Id., at 454. We held that the Tennessee Supreme Court’s refusal to adhere to the year and a day rule in the petitioner’s case did not violate due process. Id., at 466–467. The “due process limitations on the retroactive application of judicial decisions,” we explained, are not coextensive with the limitations placed on legislatures by the Constitution’s Ex Post Facto Clauses. Id., at 459. See also U. S. Const., Art. I, §9, cl. 3; id., §10, cl. 1; Calder v. Bull, 3 Dall. 386, 390 (1798) (seriatim opinion of Chase, J.) (describing four categories of laws prohibited by the Constitution’s Ex Post Facto Clauses). Strictly applying ex post facto principles to judicial decisionmaking, we recognized, “would place an unworkable and unacceptable restraint on normal judicial processes and would be incompatible with the resolution of uncertainty that marks any evolving legal system.” Rogers, 532 U. S., at 461. “[J]udicial alteration of a common law doctrine of criminal law,” we therefore held, “violates the principle of fair warning, and hence must not be given retroactive effect, only where [the alteration] is ‘unexpected and indefensible by reference to the law which had been expressed prior to the conduct in issue.’ ” Id., at 462 (quoting Bouie, 378 U. S., at 354). Judged by this standard, we explained, the retroactive abolition of the year and a day rule encountered no constitutional impediment. First, the rule was “widely viewed as an outdated relic of the common law” and had been “legislatively or judicially abolished in the vast majority of jurisdictions recently to have addressed the issue.” Rogers, 532 U. S., at 462–463. Second, the rule “had only the most tenuous foothold” in Tennessee, having been mentioned in reported Tennessee decisions “only three times, and each time in dicta.” Id., at 464. Abolishing the obsolete rule in Rogers’ case, we were satisfied, was not “the sort of unfair and arbitrary judicial action against which the Due Process Clause aims to protect.” Id., at 466–467. B 1 Does the Michigan Court of Appeals’ rejection of Lan- caster’s due process claim represent an unreasonable ap- plication of the law we declared in Bouie and Rogers? Addressing that question, we first summarize the history of the diminished-capacity defense in Michigan. The Michigan Court of Appeals first recognized the defense in People v. Lynch, 47 Mich. App. 8, 208 N.W.2d 656 (1973). See Carpenter, 464 Mich., at 233, 627 N. W. 2d, at 281. The defendant in Lynch was convicted of first-degree murder for starving her newborn daughter. 47 Mich. App., at 9, 208 N. W. 2d, at 656. On appeal, the defendant challenged the trial court’s exclusion of psychiatric testimony “bearing on [her] state of mind.” Id., at 14, 208 N. W. 2d, at 659. She sought to introduce this evidence not to show she was legally insane at the time of her child’s death.[4] Instead, her plea was that she lacked the mens rea necessary to commit first-degree murder. Ibid. Reversing the defendant’s conviction and remanding for a new trial, the Michigan Court of Appeals rejected the view “that mental capacity is an all or nothing matter and that only insanity . . . negates criminal intent.” Id., at 20, 208 N. W. 2d, at 662. Aligning itself with the “majority . . . view,” the court permitted defendants to present relevant psychiatric “testimony bearing on intent.” Id., at 20–21, 208 N. W. 2d, at 662–663. See also id., at 20, 208 N. W. 2d, at 662 (noting that “such medical proof” is “sometimes called proof of diminished or partial responsibility”). In 1975, two years after the Michigan Court of Appeals’ decision in Lynch, the Michigan Legislature enacted “a com- prehensive statutory scheme setting forth the requirements for and the effects of asserting a defense based on either mental illness or mental retardation.” Carpenter, 464 Mich., at 226, 627 N. W. 2d, at 277. See also 1975 Mich. Pub. Acts pp. 384–388. That legislation, which remained in effect at the time of the April 1993 shooting at issue here, provided that “[a] person is legally insane if, as a result of mental illness . . . or . . . mental retardation . . . that person lacks substantial capacity either to appreciate the wrongfulness of his conduct or to conform his con- duct to the requirements of law.” Id., at 386 (codified as amended, Mich. Comp. Laws Ann. §768.21a(1) (West 2000)). The legislature required defendants in felony cases to notify the prosecution and the court at least 30 days before trial of their intent to assert an insanity defense. 1975 Mich. Pub. Acts p. 385 (codified as amended, §768.20a(1)). Defendants raising an insanity defense, the legislature further provided, must submit to a court-ordered psychiatric examination. Id., at 385 (codified as amended, §768.20a(2)). The 1975 Act also introduced the verdict of “guilty but mentally ill” for defendants who suffer from mental illness but do not satisfy the legal definition of insanity. Id., at 387 (codified as amended, §768.36(1) (West Cum. Supp. 2013)). The legislature provided for the psychiatric evaluation and treatment of defendants found “guilty but mentally ill” but did not exempt them from the sentencing provisions applicable to defendants without mental illness. Id., at 387–388 (codified as amended, §§768.36(3)–(4)). Although the 1975 Act did not specifically address the defense of diminished capacity, the Michigan Court of Appeals ruled in 1978 that the defense “comes within th[e] codified definition of legal insanity.” People v. Mangia- pane, 85 Mich. App. 379, 395, 271 N.W.2d 240, 249. Therefore, the court held, a defendant claiming that he lacked the “mental capacity to entertain the specific intent required as an element of the crime with which he [was] charged” had to comply with the statutory procedural requirements applicable to insanity defenses, including the requirements of pretrial notice and submission to court-ordered examination. Ibid. Because the 1975 Act did not indicate which party bears the burden of proof on the issue of insanity, Michigan courts continued to apply the common-law burden-shifting framework in effect at the time of the insanity defense’s codification. See People v. McRunels, 237 Mich. App. 168, 172, 603 N.W.2d 95, 98 (1999). Under that framework, a criminal defendant bore the initial burden of present- ing some evidence of insanity, at which point the burden shifted to the prosecution to prove the defendant’s sanity beyond a reasonable doubt. See In re Certified Question, 425 Mich. 457, 465–466, 390 N.W.2d 620, 623–624 (1986); People v. Savoie, 419 Mich. 118, 126, 349 N.W.2d 139, 143 (1984). The Michigan Court of Appeals applied the same burden-shifting framework to the diminished-capacity defense. See People v. Denton, 138 Mich. App. 568, 571–572, 360 N.W.2d 245, 247–248 (1984). In 1994, however, the Michigan Legislature amended Mich. Comp. Laws Ann. §768.21a, the statute codifying the insanity defense, to provide that the defendant bears “the burden of proving the defense of insanity by a preponderance of the evidence.” 1994 Mich. Pub. Acts p. 252 (codified at §768.21a(3)). In Carpenter, the defendant argued that the trial court had erred by applying the 1994 Act to require him to establish his diminished-capacity defense by a preponderance of the evidence. 464 Mich., at 225–226, 235, 627 N. W. 2d, at 277, 282. Rejecting this contention, the Michigan Court of Appeals affirmed the defendant’s convictions. See People v. Carpenter, No. 204051, 1999 WL 33438799 (July 16, 1999) (per curiam). Consistent with its decision in Mangiapane, the court held that the 1994 statutory amendments applied to defendants raising the diminished-capacity defense, and it further held that requiring defendants to establish their diminished capacity by a preponderance of the evidence did not unconstitutionally relieve the prosecution of its burden to prove the mens rea elements of a crime beyond a reasonable doubt. Id., at *1–*2. In turn, the Michigan Supreme Court also affirmed, but it did so on an entirely different ground. As earlier stated, see supra, at 2–3, the court concluded that in no case could criminal defendants invoke the diminished-capacity defense, for that defense was not encompassed within the “comprehensive statutory scheme” the Michigan Legislature had enacted to govern defenses based on mental illness or retardation. Carpenter, 464 Mich., at 236, 627 N. W. 2d, at 282. Noting that previously it had “acknowledged in passing the concept of the diminished capacity defense,”[5] Michigan’s high court emphasized that it had “never specifically authorized . . . use [of the defense] in Michigan courts.” Id., at 232–233, 627 N. W. 2d, at 281. Squarely addressing the issue for the first time, the court concluded that the diminished-capacity defense was incompatible with the Michigan Legislature’s “conclusiv[e] determin[ation]” of the circumstances under which “mental incapacity can serve as a basis for relieving [a defendant] from criminal responsibility.” Id., at 237, 627 N. W. 2d, at 283. The statutory scheme enacted by the Michigan Legislature, the court held, “created an all or nothing insanity defense.” Ibid. But cf. supra, at 9. A defendant who is “mentally ill or retarded yet not legally insane,” the court explained, “may be found ‘guilty but mentally ill,’ ” but the legislature had foreclosed the use of “evidence of mental incapacity short of insanity . . . to avoid or reduce criminal responsibility by negating specific intent.” 464 Mich., at 237, 627 N. W. 2d, at 283. 2 The Michigan Court of Appeals concluded that applying Carpenter retroactively to Lancaster’s case did not violate due process, for Carpenter “concerned an unambiguous statute that was interpreted by the [Michigan] Supreme Court for the first time.” App. to Pet. for Cert. 77a. As earlier Michigan Court of Appeals decisions indicate, see supra, at 8–10, the bearing of the 1975 legislation on the diminished-capacity defense may not have been apparent pre-Carpenter. But in light of our precedent and the his- tory recounted above, see Part II–B–1, supra, the Michigan Court of Appeals’ decision applying Carpenter retroac- tively does not warrant disapprobation as “an unreasonable application of . . . clearly established [f]ederal law.” 28 U. S. C. §2254(d)(1). This case is a far cry from Bouie, where, unlike Rogers, the Court held that the retroactive application of a judicial decision violated due process. In Bouie, the South Caro- lina Supreme Court had unexpectedly expanded “narrow and precise statutory language” that, as written, did not reach the petitioners’ conduct. 378 U. S., at 352. In Carpenter, by contrast, the Michigan Supreme Court rejected a diminished-capacity defense that the court reasonably found to have no home in a comprehensive, on-point statute enacted by the Michigan Legislature. Carpenter thus presents the inverse of the situation this Court confronted in Bouie. Rather than broadening a statute that was narrow on its face, Carpenter disapproved lower court precedent recognizing a defense Michigan’s high court found, on close inspection, to lack statutory grounding. The situation we confronted in Bouie bears scant resemblance to this case, and our resolution of that controversy hardly makes disallowance of Lancaster’s diminished-capacity defense an unreasonable reading of this Court’s law. On the other hand, as the Sixth Circuit recognized, see 683 F. 3d, at 749–751, Lancaster’s argument against applying Carpenter retroactively is arguably less weak than the argument opposing retroactivity we rejected in Rogers. Unlike the year and a day rule at issue in Rogers, the diminished-capacity defense is not an “outdated relic of the common law” widely rejected by modern courts and legislators. 532 U. S., at 462. To the contrary, the Model Penal Code sets out a version of the defense. See ALI, Model Penal Code §4.02(1), pp. 216–217 (1985) (“Evidence that the defendant suffered from a mental disease or defect is admissible whenever it is relevant to prove that the defendant did or did not have a state of mind that is an element of the offense.”). See also id., Comment 2, at 219 (“The Institute perceived no justification for a limitation on evidence that may bear significantly on a determination of the mental state of the defendant at the time of the commission of the crime.”). And not long before the 1993 shooting at issue here, the American Bar Association had approved criminal-justice guidelines that (1) favored the admissibility of mental-health evidence offered to ne- gate mens rea, and (2) reported that a majority of States allowed presentation of such evidence in at least some circumstances. See ABA Criminal Justice Mental Health Standards §7–6.2, and Commentary, pp. 347–349, and n. 2 (1989). See also Clark v. Arizona, 548 U.S. 735, 800 (2006) (Kennedy, J., dissenting) (reporting that in 2006, “a substantial majority of the States” permitted the introduction of “mental-illness evidence to negate mens rea”). Furthermore, the year and a day rule was mentioned only three times in dicta in Tennessee reported decisions. Rogers, 532 U. S., at 464. The diminished-capacity defense, by contrast, had been adhered to repeatedly by the Michigan Court of Appeals. See supra, at 8–10. It had also been “ ‘acknowledged in passing’ ” in Michigan Supreme Court decisions and was reflected in the Michigan State Bar’s pattern jury instructions. 683 F. 3d, at 746–749 (quoting Carpenter, 464 Mich., at 232, 627 N. W. 2d, at 281). These considerations, however, are hardly sufficient to warrant federal habeas relief under 28 U. S. C. §2254(d)(1)’s demanding standard. See Williams v. Taylor, 529 U.S. 362, 410 (2000) (“[A]n unreasonable application of federal law is different from an incorrect appli- cation of federal law.”). Rogers did not hold that a newly announced judicial rule may be applied retroactively only if the rule it replaces was an “outdated relic” rarely appearing in a jurisdiction’s case law. 532 U. S., at 462–467. Distinguishing Rogers, a case in which we rejected a due process claim, thus does little to bolster Lancaster’s argument that the Michigan Court of Appeals’ decision unreasonably applied clearly established federal law. See Williams, 529 U. S., at 412 (the phrase “clearly established [f]ederal law” in §2254(d)(1) “refers to the holdings . . . of this Court’s decisions as of the time of the relevant state-court decision” (emphasis added)). This Court has never found a due process violation in circumstances remotely resembling Lancaster’s case—i.e., where a state supreme court, squarely addressing a particular issue for the first time, rejected a consistent line of lower court decisions based on the supreme court’s reasonable interpretation of the language of a controlling statute. Fairminded jurists could conclude that a state supreme court decision of that order is not “unexpected and indefensible by reference to [existing] law.” Rogers, 532 U. S., at 462 (internal quotation marks omitted). Lancaster therefore is not entitled to federal habeas relief on his due process claim. * * * For the reasons stated, the judgment of the Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit is Reversed. Notes 1 As relevant here, a homicide constitutes first-degree murder under Mich. Comp. Laws Ann. §750.316 if it is “wil[l]ful, deliberate, and premeditated.” 2 Title 28 U. S. C. §2254(d) provides that where, as here, a state prisoner’s habeas claim “was adjudicated on the merits in State court,” a federal court may not grant relief with respect to that claim unless the state court’s adjudication of the claim (1) “resulted in a decision that was contrary to, or involved an unreasonable application of, clearly established Federal law, as determined by the Supreme Court of the United States,” or (2) “resulted in a decision that was based on an unreasonable determination of the facts in light of the evidence presented in the State court proceeding.” Lancaster does not allege that the Michigan Court of Appeals’ decision “was based on an unreasonable determination of the facts” in his case, nor does he develop any ar-gument that the state court’s decision was “contrary to” this Court’s precedents. See Williams v. Taylor, 529 U.S. 362, 412–413 (2000) (a state-court decision is “contrary to” clearly established federal law if “the state court arrives at a conclusion opposite to that reached by this Court on a question of law or if the state court decides a case differently than this Court has on a set of materially indistinguishable facts”). The only question in this case, therefore, is whether the Michigan Court of Appeals unreasonably applied “clearly established [f]ederal law, as determined by [this] Court.” 28 U. S. C. §2254(d)(1). 3 Lancaster does not argue that the Michigan Supreme Court’s rejection of the diminished-capacity defense in People v. Carpenter, 464 Mich. 223, 627 N.W.2d 276 (2001), if applied only prospectively to defendants whose alleged offenses were committed after the decision was issued, would violate any constitutional provision. See Clark v. Arizona, 548 U.S. 735, 756–779 (2006) (rejecting due process challenge to Arizona’s restrictions on mental-disease and capacity evidence offered to negate mens rea). We therefore address only whether the Michigan Court of Appeals unreasonably applied clearly established federal law in upholding Carpenter’s retroactive application to Lancaster’s case. 4 At the time of Lynch, Michigan courts used a two-part test for insanity derived from the Michigan Supreme Court’s decision in People v. Durfee, 62 Mich. 487, 494, 29 N.W. 109, 112 (1886). The Durfee test asked “1) whether defendant knew what he was doing was right or wrong; and 2) if he did, did he have the power, the will power, to resist doing the wrongful act?” People v. Martin, 386 Mich. 407, 418, 192 N.W.2d 215, 220 (1971). See also Carpenter, 464 Mich., at 234, n. 7, 627 N. W. 2d, at 281, n. 7. 5 Carpenter cited three decisions in which the Michigan Supreme Court had previously mentioned the diminished-capacity defense: (1) People v. Lloyd, 459 Mich. 433, 450, 590 N.W.2d 738, 745 (1999) (per curiam), which held that defense counsel was not constitutionally ineffective in presenting a diminished-capacity defense rather than an insanity defense; (2) People v. Pickens, 446 Mich. 298, 329–331, 521 N.W.2d 797, 811–812 (1994), which rejected a defendant’s claim that his attorney rendered ineffective assistance by failing to pursue a diminished-capacity defense; and (3) People v. Griffin, 433 Mich. 860, 444 N.W.2d 139, 140 (1989) (per curiam), a summary order remanding a case to the trial court for a hearing on the defendant’s claim that the defendant’s attorney was ineffective “for failing to explore defenses of diminished capacity and insanity.” See Carpenter, 464 Mich., at 232–233, 627 N. W. 2d, at 281. See also 683 F.3d 740, 746–749, 751 (CA6 2012) (describing additional Michigan Supreme Court decisions that mention the diminished-capacity defense, but acknowledging that the Michigan Supreme Court “did not squarely address the validity of the defense until” its 2001 decision in Carpenter); App. to Brief for Respondent A–1, A–3 to A–4 (citing eight pre-Carpenter Michigan Supreme Court decisions mentioning the diminished-capacity defense).

569.US.50

The Federal Tort Claims Act (FTCA) waives the Government’s sovereign immunity from tort suits, but excepts from that waiver certain intentional torts, 28 U. S. C. §2680(h). Section §2680(h), in turn, contains a proviso that extends the waiver of immunity to claims for six intentional torts, including assault and battery, that are based on the “acts or omissions” of an “investigative or law enforcement officer” i.e., a federal officer “who is empowered by law to execute searches, to seize evidence, or to make arrests.” Petitioner Millbrook, a federal prisoner, sued the United States under the FTCA, alleging, inter alia, assault and battery by correctional officers. The District Court granted the Government summary judgment, and the Third Circuit affirmed, hewing to its precedent that the “law enforcement proviso” applies only to tortious conduct that occurs during the course of executing a search, seizing evidence, or making an arrest. Held: The law enforcement proviso extends to law enforcement officers’ acts or omissions that arise within the scope of their employment, regardless of whether the officers are engaged in investigative or law enforcement activity, or are executing a search, seizing evidence, or making an arrest. The proviso’s plain language supports this conclusion. On its face, the proviso applies where a claim arises out of one of six intentional torts and is related to the “acts or omissions” of an “investigative or law enforcement officer.” §2680(h). And by cross-referencing §1346(b), the proviso incorporates an additional requirement that the “acts or omissions” occur while the officer is “acting within the scope of his office or employment.” §1346(b)(1). Nothing in §2680(h)’s text supports further limiting the proviso to conduct arising out of searches, seizures of evidence, or arrests. The FTCA’s only reference to those terms is in §2680(h)’s definition of “investigative or law enforcement officer,” which focuses on the status of persons whose conduct may be actionable, not the types of activities that may give rise to a claim. This confirms that Congress intended immunity determinations to depend on a federal officer’s legal author-ity, not on a particular exercise of that authority. Nor does the pro-viso indicate that a waiver of immunity requires the officer to be engaged in investigative or law enforcement activity. The text never uses those terms. Had Congress intended to further narrow the waiver’s scope, it could have used language to that effect. See Ali v. Federal Bureau of Prisons, 552 U.S. 214, 227. Pp. 4−8. 477 Fed. Appx. 4, reversed and remanded. Thomas, J., delivered the opinion for a unanimous Court.

Petitioner Kim Millbrook, a prisoner in the custody of the Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP), alleges that correctional officers sexually assaulted and verbally threatened him while he was in their custody. Millbrook filed suit in Federal District Court under the Federal Tort Claims Act, 28 U. S. C. §§1346(b), 2671–2680 (FTCA or Act), which waives the Government’s sovereign immunity from tort suits, including those based on certain intentional torts committed by federal law enforcement officers, §2680(h). The District Court dismissed Millbrook’s action, and the Court of Appeals affirmed. The Court of Appeals held that, while the FTCA waives the United States’ sovereign immunity for certain intentional torts by law enforcement officers, it only does so when the tortious conduct occurs in the course of executing a search, seizing evidence, or making an arrest. Petitioner contends that the FTCA’s waiver is not so limited. We agree and reverse the judgment of the Court of Appeals.[1] I A The FTCA “was designed primarily to remove the sovereign immunity of the United States from suits in tort.” Levin v. United States, 568 U. S. ___, ___ (2013) (slip op., at 2) (internal quotation marks omitted). The Act gives federal district courts exclusive jurisdiction over claims against the United States for “injury or loss of property, or personal injury or death caused by the negligent or wrongful act or omission” of a federal employee “acting within the scope of his office or employment.” 28 U. S. C. §1346(b)(1). This broad waiver of sovereign immunity is subject to a number of exceptions set forth in §2680. One such exception, relating to intentional torts, preserves the Government’s immunity from suit for “[a]ny claim arising out of assault, battery, false imprisonment, false arrest, malicious prosecution, abuse of process, libel, slander, misrepresentation, deceit, or interference with contract rights.” §2680(h). We have referred to §2680(h) as the “intentional tort exception.” Levin, supra, at ___ (slip op., at 2) (internal quotation marks omitted). In 1974, Congress carved out an exception to §2680(h)’s preservation of the United States’ sovereign immunity for intentional torts by adding a proviso covering claims that arise out of the wrongful conduct of law enforcement officers. See Act of Mar. 16, 1974, Pub. L. 93–253, §2, 88Stat. 50. Known as the “law enforcement proviso,” this provision extends the waiver of sovereign immunity to claims for six intentional torts, including assault and battery, that are based on the “acts or omissions of investigative or law enforcement officers.” §2680(h). The proviso defines “ ‘investigative or law enforcement officer’ ” to mean “any officer of the United States who is empowered by law to execute searches, to seize evidence, or to make arrests for violations of Federal law.” Ibid. B On January 18, 2011, Millbrook filed suit against the United States under the FTCA, asserting claims of negligence, assault, and battery. In his complaint, Millbrook alleged that, on March 5, 2010, he was forced to per- form oral sex on a BOP correctional officer, while another officer held him in a choke hold and a third officer stood watch nearby. Millbrook claimed that the officers threatened to kill him if he did not comply with their demands. Millbrook alleged that he suffered physical injuries as a result of the incident and, accordingly, sought compensatory damages. The Government argued that the FTCA did not waive the United States’ sovereign immunity from suit on Millbrook’s intentional tort claims, because they fell within the intentional tort exception in §2680(h). The Government contended that §2680(h)’s law enforcement proviso did not save Millbrook’s claims because of the Third Circuit’s binding precedent in Pooler v. United States, 787 F.2d 868 (1986), which interpreted the proviso to apply only to tortious conduct that occurred during the course of “executing a search, seizing evidence, or making an ar- rest.” Id., at 872. The District Court agreed and granted summary judgment for the United States because the alleged conduct “did not take place during an arrest, search, or seizure of evidence.” Civ. Action No. 3:11–cv–00131 (MD Pa., Feb. 16, 2012), App. 96.[2] The Third Circuit affirmed. 477 Fed. Appx. 4, 5–6 (2012) (per curiam). We granted certiorari, 567 U. S. ___ (2012), to resolve a Circuit split concerning the circumstances under which intentionally tortious conduct by law enforcement officers can give rise to an actionable claim under the FTCA. Compare Pooler, supra; and Orsay v. United States Dept. of Justice, 289 F.3d 1125, 1136 (CA9 2002) (law enforcement proviso “reaches only those claims asserting that the tort occurred in the course of investigative or law enforcement activities” (emphasis added)); with Ignacio v. United States, 674 F.3d 252, 256 (CA4 2012) (holding that the law enforcement proviso “waives immunity whenever an investigative or law enforcement officer commits one of the specified intentional torts, regardless of whether the officer is engaged in investigative or law enforcement activity” (emphasis added)). II The FTCA waives the United States’ sovereign immu- nity for certain intentional torts committed by law enforcement officers. The portion of the Act relevant here provides: “The provisions of this chapter and section 1346(b) of this title shall not apply to— . . . . . “(h) Any claim arising out of assault, battery, false imprisonment, false arrest, malicious prosecution, abuse of process, libel, slander, misrepresentation, deceit, or interference with contract rights: Provided, That, with regard to acts or omissions of investigative or law enforcement officers of the United States Government, the provisions of this chapter and section 1346(b) of this title shall apply to any claim arising . . . out of assault, battery, false imprisonment, false arrest, abuse of process, or malicious prosecution.” 28 U. S. C. §2680(h). On its face, the law enforcement proviso applies where a claim both arises out of one of the proviso’s six intentional torts, and is related to the “acts or omissions” of an “investigative or law enforcement officer.” The proviso’s cross-reference to §1346(b) incorporates an additional requirement that the acts or omissions giving rise to the claim occur while the officer is “acting within the scope of his office or employment.” §1346(b)(1). The question in this case is whether the FTCA further limits the category of “acts or omissions” that trigger the United States’ liability.[3] The plain language of the law enforcement proviso answers when a law enforcement officer’s “acts or omissions” may give rise to an actionable tort claim under the FTCA. The proviso specifies that the conduct must arise from one of the six enumerated intentional torts and, by expressly cross-referencing §1346(b), indicates that the law enforcement officer’s “acts or omissions” must fall “within the scope of his office or employment.” §§2680(h), 1346(b)(1). Nothing in the text further qualifies the category of “acts or omissions” that may trigger FTCA liability. A number of lower courts have nevertheless read into the text additional limitations designed to narrow the scope of the law enforcement proviso. The Ninth Circuit, for instance, held that the law enforcement proviso does not apply unless the tort was “committed in the course of investigative or law enforcement activities.” Orsay, supra, at 1135. As noted, the Third Circuit construed the law enforcement proviso even more narrowly in holding that it applies only to tortious conduct by federal officers during the course of “executing a search, seizing evidence, or making an arrest.” Pooler, 787 F. 2d, at 872. Court-appointed amicus curiae (Amicus) similarly asks us to construe the proviso to waive “sovereign immunity only for torts committed by federal officers acting in their capacity as ‘investigative or law enforcement officers.’ ” Brief for Amicus 5. Under this approach, the conduct of federal officers would be actionable only when it “aris[es] out of searches, seizures of evidence, arrests, and closely related exercises of investigative or law-enforcement authority.” Ibid. None of these interpretations finds any support in the text of the statute. The FTCA’s only reference to “searches,” “seiz[ures of] evidence,” and “arrests” is found in the statutory definition of “investigative or law enforcement officer.” §2680(h) (defining “ ‘investigative or law enforcement officer’ ” to mean any federal officer who is “empowered by law to execute searches, to seize evidence, or to make arrests for violations of Federal law”). By its terms, this provision focuses on the status of persons whose conduct may be actionable, not the types of activities that may give rise to a tort claim against the United States. The proviso thus distinguishes between the acts for which immunity is waived (e.g., assault and battery), and the class of persons whose acts may give rise to an actionable FTCA claim. The plain text confirms that Congress intended immunity determinations to depend on a federal officer’s legal authority, not on a particular exercise of that authority. Consequently, there is no basis for concluding that a law enforcement officer’s intentional tort must oc- cur in the course of executing a search, seizing evidence, or making an arrest in order to subject the United States to liability. Nor does the text of the proviso provide any indication that the officer must be engaged in “investigative or law enforcement activity.” Indeed, the text never uses the term. Amicus contends that we should read the reference to “investigative or law-enforcement officer” as implicitly limiting the proviso to claims arising from actions taken in an officer’s investigative or law enforcement capacity. But there is no basis for so limiting the term when Congress has spoken directly to the circumstances in which a law enforcement officer’s conduct may expose the United States to tort liability. Under the proviso, an intentional tort is not actionable unless it occurs while the law enforcement officer is “acting within the scope of his office or employment.” §§2680(h), 1346(b)(1). Had Congress intended to further narrow the scope of the proviso, Congress could have limited it to claims arising from “acts or omissions of investigative or law enforcement officers acting in a law enforcement or investigative capacity.” See Ali v. Federal Bureau of Prisons, 552 U.S. 214, 227 (2008). Congress adopted similar limitations in neighboring provisions, see §2680(a) (referring to “[a]ny claim based upon an act or omission of an employee of the Government . . . in the execution of a statute or regulation” (emphasis added)), but did not do so here. We, therefore, decline to read such a limitation into unambiguous text. Jimenez v. Quarterman, 555 U.S. 113, 118 (2009) (“[W]hen the statutory language is plain, we must enforce it according to its terms”); Barnhart v. Sigmon Coal Co., 534 U.S. 438, 450 (2002) (“The inquiry ceases if the statutory language is unambiguous and the statutory scheme is coherent and consistent” (internal quotation marks omitted)). * * * We hold that the waiver effected by the law enforcement proviso extends to acts or omissions of law enforcement officers that arise within the scope of their employment, regardless of whether the officers are engaged in investigative or law enforcement activity, or are executing a search, seizing evidence, or making an arrest. Accord- ingly, we reverse the judgment of the Court of Appeals and remand the case for further proceedings consistent with this opinion. It is so ordered. Notes 1 Because no party defends the judgment, we appointed Jeffrey S. Bucholtz to brief and argue this case, as amicus curiae, in support of the judgment below. 568 U. S. ___ (2012). Amicus Bucholtz has ably discharged his assigned responsibilities, and the Court thanks him for his well-stated arguments. 2 The District Court also concluded that Millbrook failed to state an actionable negligence claim because “it is clear that the alleged assault and battery was intentional.” App. 96. This issue is not before us. 3 The Government conceded in the proceedings below that the correctional officer whose alleged conduct is at issue was acting within the scope of his employment and that the named correctional officers qualify as “investigative or law enforcement officers” within the meaning of the FTCA. App. 54–55, 84–85; Brief for United States 30. Accordingly, we express no opinion on either of these issues.

569.US.141

Respondent McNeely was stopped by a Missouri police officer for speeding and crossing the centerline. After declining to take a breath test to measure his blood alcohol concentration (BAC), he was arrested and taken to a nearby hospital for blood testing. The officer never attempted to secure a search warrant. McNeely refused to consent to the blood test, but the officer directed a lab technician to take a sample. McNeely’s BAC tested well above the legal limit, and he was charged with driving while intoxicated (DWI). He moved to suppress the blood test result, arguing that taking his blood without a warrant violated his Fourth Amendment rights. The trial court agreed, concluding that the exigency exception to the warrant requirement did not apply because, apart from the fact that McNeely’s blood alcohol was dissipating, no circumstances suggested that the officer faced an emergency. The State Supreme Court affirmed, relying on Schmerber v. California, 384 U.S. 757, in which this Court upheld a DWI suspect’s warrantless blood test where the officer “might reasonably have believed that he was confronted with an emergency, in which the delay necessary to obtain a warrant, under the circumstances, threatened ‘the destruction of evidence,’ ” id., at 770. This case, the state court found, involved a routine DWI investigation where no factors other than the natural dissipation of blood alcohol suggested that there was an emergency, and, thus, the nonconsensual warrantless test violated McNeely’s right to be free from unreasonable searches of his person. Held: The judgment is affirmed. 358 S.W.3d 65, affirmed. Justice Sotomayor delivered the opinion of the Court with respect to Parts I, II–A, II–B, and IV, concluding that in drunk-driving investigations, the natural dissipation of alcohol in the bloodstream does not constitute an exigency in every case sufficient to justify conducting a blood test without a warrant. Pp. 4–13, 20–23. (a) The principle that a warrantless search of the person is reasonable only if it falls within a recognized exception, see, e.g., United States v. Robinson, 414 U.S. 218, 224, applies here, where the search involved a compelled physical intrusion beneath McNeely’s skin and into his veins to obtain a blood sample to use as evidence in a criminal investigation. One recognized exception “applies when ‘ “the exigencies of the situation” make the needs of law enforcement so compelling that [a] warrantless search is objectively reasonable.’ ” Kentucky v. King, 563 U. S. ___, ___. This Court looks to the totality of circumstances in determining whether an exigency exits. See Brigham City v. Stuart, 547 U.S. 398, 406. Applying this approach in Schmerber, the Court found a warrantless blood test reasonable after considering all of the facts and circumstances of that case and carefully basing its holding on those specific facts, including that alcohol levels decline after drinking stops and that testing was delayed while officers transported the injured suspect to the hospital and investigated the accident scene. Pp. 4–8. (b) The State nonetheless seeks a per se rule, contending that exigent circumstances necessarily exist when an officer has probable cause to believe a person has been driving under the influence of alcohol because BAC evidence is inherently evanescent. Though a person’s blood alcohol level declines until the alcohol is eliminated, it does not follow that the Court should depart from careful case-by-case assessment of exigency. When officers in drunk-driving investigations can reasonably obtain a warrant before having a blood sample drawn without significantly undermining the efficacy of the search, the Fourth Amendment mandates that they do so. See McDonald v. United States, 335 U.S. 451, 456. Circumstances may make obtaining a warrant impractical such that the alcohol’s dissipation will support an exigency, but that is a reason to decide each case on its facts, as in Schmerber, not to accept the “considerable overgeneralization” that a per se rule would reflect, Richards v. Wisconsin, 520 U.S. 385, 393. Blood testing is different in critical respects from other destruction-of-evidence cases. Unlike a situation where, e.g., a suspect has control over easily disposable evidence, see Cupp v. Murphy, 412 U.S. 291, 296, BAC evidence naturally dissipates in a gradual and relatively predictable manner. Moreover, because an officer must typically take a DWI suspect to a medical facility and obtain a trained medical professional’s assistance before having a blood test conducted, some delay between the time of the arrest or accident and time of the test is inevitable regardless of whether a warrant is obtained. The State’s rule also fails to account for advances in the 47 years since Schmerber was decided that allow for the more expeditious processing of warrant applications, particularly in contexts like drunk-driving investigations where the evidence supporting probable cause is simple. The natural dissipation of alcohol in the blood may support an exigency finding in a specific case, as it did in Schmerber, but it does not do so categorically. Pp. 8–13. (c) Because the State sought a per se rule here, it did not argue that there were exigent circumstances in this particular case. The arguments and the record thus do not provide the Court with an adequate framework for a detailed discussion of all the relevant factors that can be taken into account in determining the reasonableness of acting without a warrant. It suffices to say that the metabolization of alcohol in the bloodstream and the ensuing loss of evidence are among the factors that must be considered in deciding whether a warrant is required. Pp. 20–23. Justice Sotomayor, joined by Justice Scalia, Justice Ginsburg, and Justice Kagan, concluded in Part III that other arguments advanced by the State and amici in support of a per se rule are unpersuasive. Their concern that a case-by-case approach to exigency will not provide adequate guidance to law enforcement officers may make the desire for a bright-line rule understandable, but the Fourth Amendment will not tolerate adoption of an overly broad categorical approach in this context. A fact-intensive, totality of the circumstances, approach is hardly unique within this Court’s Fourth Amendment jurisprudence. See, e.g., Illinois v. Wardlow, 528 U.S. 119, 123–125. They also contend that the privacy interest implicated here is minimal. But motorists’ diminished expectation of privacy does not diminish their privacy interest in preventing a government agent from piercing their skin. And though a blood test conducted in a medical setting by trained personnel is less intrusive than other bodily invasions, this Court has never retreated from its recognition that any compelled intrusion into the human body implicates significant, constitutionally protected privacy interests. Finally, the government’s general interest in combating drunk driving does not justify departing from the warrant requirement without showing exigent circumstances that make securing a warrant impractical in a particular case. Pp. 15–20. Sotomayor, J., announced the judgment of the Court and delivered the opinion of the Court with respect to Parts I, II–A, II–B, and IV, in which Scalia, Kennedy, Ginsburg, and Kagan, JJ., joined, and an opinion with respect to Parts II–C and III, in which Scalia, Ginsburg, and Kagan, JJ., joined. Kennedy, J., filed an opinion concurring in part. Roberts, C. J., filed an opinion concurring in part and dissenting in part, in which Breyer and Alito, JJ., joined. Thomas, J., filed a dissenting opinion.

. Recognizing that this Court’s decision in Schmerber v. California, 384 U.S. 757, “provide[d] the backdrop” to its analysis, the Missouri Supreme Court held that “Schmerber directs lower courts to engage in a totality of the circumstances analysis when determin- ing whether exigency permits a nonconsensual, warrantless blood draw.” 358 S. W. 3d, at 69, 74. The court further concluded that Schmerber “requires more than the mere dissipation of blood-alcohol evidence to support a warrantless blood draw in an alcohol-related case.” 358 S. W. 3d, at 70. According to the court, exigency depends heavily on the existence of additional “ ‘special facts,’ ” such as whether an officer was delayed by the need to investigate an ac- cident and transport an injured suspect to the hospital, as had been the case in Schmerber. 358 S. W. 3d, at 70, 74. Finding that this was “unquestionably a routine DWI case” in which no factors other than the natural dissi- pation of blood-alcohol suggested that there was an emergency, the court held that the nonconsensual warrantless blood draw violated McNeely’s Fourth Amendment right to be free from unreasonable searches of his person. Id., at 74–75. We granted certiorari to resolve a split of authority on the question whether the natural dissipation of alcohol in the bloodstream establishes a per se exigency that suffices on its own to justify an exception to the warrant requirement for nonconsensual blood testing in drunk-driving investigations.[2] See 567 U. S. ___ (2012). We now affirm. II A The Fourth Amendment provides in relevant part that “[t]he right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause.” Our cases have held that a warrantless search of the person is reasonable only if it falls within a recognized exception. See, e.g., United States v. Robinson, 414 U.S. 218, 224 (1973). That principle applies to the type of search at issue in this case, which involved a compelled physical intrusion beneath McNeely’s skin and into his veins to obtain a sample of his blood for use as evidence in a criminal investigation. Such an invasion of bodily integrity implicates an individual’s “most personal and deep-rooted expectations of privacy.” Winston v. Lee, 470 U.S. 753, 760 (1985); see also Skinner v. Railway Labor Executives’ Assn., 489 U.S. 602, 616 (1989). We first considered the Fourth Amendment restrictions on such searches in Schmerber, where, as in this case, a blood sample was drawn from a defendant suspected of driving while under the influence of alcohol. 384 U. S., at 758. Noting that “[s]earch warrants are ordinarily required for searches of dwellings,” we reasoned that “absent an emergency, no less could be required where intrusions into the human body are concerned,” even when the search was conducted following a lawful arrest. Id., at 770. We explained that the importance of requiring authorization by a “ ‘neutral and detached magistrate’ ” before allowing a law enforcement officer to “invade another’s body in search of evidence of guilt is indisputable and great.” Ibid. (quoting Johnson v. United States, 333 U.S. 10, 13–14 (1948)). As noted, the warrant requirement is subject to ex- ceptions. “One well-recognized exception,” and the one at issue in this case, “applies when the exigencies of the situation make the needs of law enforcement so compelling that a warrantless search is objectively reasonable under the Fourth Amendment.” Kentucky v. King, 563 U. S. ___, ___ (2011) (slip op., at 6) (internal quotation marks and brackets omitted). A variety of circumstances may give rise to an exigency sufficient to justify a warrantless search, including law enforcement’s need to provide emergency assistance to an occupant of a home, Michigan v. Fisher, 558 U.S. 45, 47–48 (2009) (per curiam), engage in “hot pursuit” of a fleeing suspect, United States v. San- tana, 427 U.S. 38, 42–43 (1976), or enter a burning building to put out a fire and investigate its cause, Michigan v. Tyler, 436 U.S. 499, 509–510 (1978). As is relevant here, we have also recognized that in some circumstances law enforcement officers may conduct a search without a warrant to prevent the imminent destruction of evidence. See Cupp v. Murphy, 412 U.S. 291, 296 (1973); Ker v. California, 374 U.S. 23, 40–41 (1963) (plurality opinion). While these contexts do not necessarily involve equiva- lent dangers, in each a warrantless search is potentially reasonable because “there is compelling need for official action and no time to secure a warrant.” Tyler, 436 U. S., at 509. To determine whether a law enforcement officer faced an emergency that justified acting without a warrant, this Court looks to the totality of circumstances. See Brigham City v. Stuart, 547 U.S. 398, 406 (2006) (finding officers’ entry into a home to provide emergency assistance “plainly reasonable under the circumstances”); Illinois v. Mc- Arthur, 531 U.S. 326, 331 (2001) (concluding that a warrantless seizure of a person to prevent him from returning to his trailer to destroy hidden contraband was reasonable “[i]n the circumstances of the case before us” due to exigency); Cupp, 412 U. S., at 296 (holding that a limited warrantless search of a suspect’s fingernails to preserve evidence that the suspect was trying to rub off was justified “[o]n the facts of this case”); see also Richards v. Wisconsin, 520 U.S. 385, 391–396 (1997) (rejecting a per se exception to the knock-and-announce requirement for felony drug investigations based on presumed exigency, and requiring instead evaluation of police conduct “in a particular case”). We apply this “finely tuned approach” to Fourth Amendment reasonableness in this context be- cause the police action at issue lacks “the traditional justification that . . . a warrant . . . provides.” Atwater v. Lago Vista, 532 U.S. 318, 347, n. 16 (2001). Absent that established justification, “the fact-specific nature of the reasonableness inquiry,” Ohio v. Robinette, 519 U.S. 33, 39 (1996), demands that we evaluate each case of alleged exigency based “on its own facts and circumstances.” Go-Bart Importing Co. v. United States, 282 U.S. 344, 357 (1931).[3] Our decision in Schmerber applied this totality of the circumstances approach. In that case, the petitioner had suffered injuries in an automobile accident and was taken to the hospital. 384 U. S., at 758. While he was there receiving treatment, a police officer arrested the petitioner for driving while under the influence of alcohol and ordered a blood test over his objection. Id., at 758–759. After explaining that the warrant requirement applied generally to searches that intrude into the human body, we concluded that the warrantless blood test “in the present case” was nonetheless permissible because the officer “might reasonably have believed that he was confronted with an emergency, in which the delay necessary to obtain a warrant, under the circumstances, threatened ‘the destruction of evidence.’ ” Id., at 770 (quoting Preston v. United States, 376 U.S. 364, 367 (1964)). In support of that conclusion, we observed that evidence could have been lost because “the percentage of alcohol in the blood begins to diminish shortly after drinking stops, as the body functions to eliminate it from the system.” 384 U. S., at 770. We added that “[p]articularly in a case such as this, where time had to be taken to bring the accused to a hospital and to investigate the scene of the accident, there was no time to seek out a magistrate and secure a warrant.” Id., at 770–771. “Given these special facts,” we found that it was appropriate for the police to act without a warrant. Id., at 771. We further held that the blood test at issue was a reasonable way to recover the evidence because it was highly effective, “involve[d] vir- tually no risk, trauma, or pain,” and was conducted in a reasonable fashion “by a physician in a hospital environment according to accepted medical practices.” Ibid. And in conclusion, we noted that our judgment that there had been no Fourth Amendment violation was strictly based “on the facts of the present record.” Id., at 772. Thus, our analysis in Schmerber fits comfortably within our case law applying the exigent circumstances exception. In finding the warrantless blood test reasonable in Schmerber, we considered all of the facts and circumstances of the particular case and carefully based our holding on those specific facts. B The State properly recognizes that the reasonableness of a warrantless search under the exigency exception to the warrant requirement must be evaluated based on the totality of the circumstances. Brief for Petitioner 28–29. But the State nevertheless seeks a per se rule for blood testing in drunk-driving cases. The State contends that whenever an officer has probable cause to believe an individual has been driving under the influence of alcohol, exigent circumstances will necessarily exist because BAC evidence is inherently evanescent. As a result, the State claims that so long as the officer has probable cause and the blood test is conducted in a reasonable manner, it is categorically reasonable for law enforcement to obtain the blood sample without a warrant. It is true that as a result of the human body’s natural metabolic processes, the alcohol level in a person’s blood begins to dissipate once the alcohol is fully absorbed and continues to decline until the alcohol is eliminated. See Skinner, 489 U. S., at 623; Schmerber, 384 U. S., at 770–771. Testimony before the trial court in this case indicated that the percentage of alcohol in an individual’s blood typically decreases by approximately 0.015 percent to 0.02 percent per hour once the alcohol has been fully absorbed. App. 47. More precise calculations of the rate at which alcohol dissipates depend on various individual characteristics (such as weight, gender, and alcohol tolerance) and the circumstances in which the alcohol was consumed. See Stripp, Forensic and Clinical Issues in Alcohol Analysis, in Forensic Chemistry Handbook 437–441 (L. Kobilinsky ed. 2012). Regardless of the exact elimination rate, it is sufficient for our purposes to note that because an individual’s alcohol level gradually declines soon after he stops drinking, a significant delay in testing will negatively affect the probative value of the results. This fact was essential to our holding in Schmerber, as we recognized that, under the circumstances, further delay in order to secure a warrant after the time spent investigating the scene of the accident and transporting the injured suspect to the hospital to receive treatment would have threatened the destruction of evidence. 384 U. S., at 770–771. But it does not follow that we should depart from careful case-by-case assessment of exigency and adopt the categorical rule proposed by the State and its amici. In those drunk-driving investigations where police officers can reasonably obtain a warrant before a blood sample can be drawn without significantly undermining the efficacy of the search, the Fourth Amendment mandates that they do so. See McDonald v. United States, 335 U.S. 451, 456 (1948) (“We cannot . . . excuse the absence of a search warrant without a showing by those who seek exemption from the constitutional mandate that the exigencies of the situation made [the search] imperative”). We do not doubt that some circumstances will make obtaining a warrant impractical such that the dissipation of alcohol from the bloodstream will support an exigency justifying a properly conducted warrantless blood test. That, however, is a reason to decide each case on its facts, as we did in Schmerber, not to accept the “considerable overgeneralization” that a per se rule would reflect. Richards, 520 U. S., at 393. The context of blood testing is different in critical respects from other destruction-of-evidence cases in which the police are truly confronted with a “ ‘now or never’ ” situation. Roaden v. Kentucky, 413 U.S. 496, 505 (1973). In contrast to, for example, circumstances in which the suspect has control over easily disposable evidence, see Georgia v. Randolph, 547 U.S. 103, 116, n. 6 (2006); Cupp, 412 U. S., at 296, BAC evidence from a drunk-driving suspect naturally dissipates over time in a gradual and relatively predictable manner. Moreover, because a police officer must typically transport a drunk-driving suspect to a medical facility and obtain the assistance of someone with appropriate medical training before conducting a blood test, some delay between the time of the arrest or accident and the time of the test is inevitable regardless of whether police officers are required to obtain a warrant. See State v. Shriner, 751 N.W.2d 538, 554 (Minn. 2008) (Meyer, J., dissenting). This reality undermines the force of the State’s contention, endorsed by the dissent, see post, at 3 (opinion of Thomas, J.), that we should recognize a categorical exception to the warrant requirement because BAC evidence “is actively being destroyed with every minute that passes.” Brief for Petitioner 27. Consider, for example, a situation in which the warrant process will not significantly increase the delay before the blood test is conducted because an officer can take steps to secure a warrant while the suspect is being transported to a medical facility by another officer. In such a circumstance, there would be no plausible justification for an exception to the warrant requirement. The State’s proposed per se rule also fails to account for advances in the 47 years since Schmerber was decided that allow for the more expeditious processing of warrant applications, particularly in contexts like drunk-driving investigations where the evidence offered to establish probable cause is simple. The Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure were amended in 1977 to permit federal magistrate judges to issue a warrant based on sworn testimony communicated by telephone. See 91Stat. 319. As amended, the law now allows a federal magistrate judge to con- sider “information communicated by telephone or other reliable electronic means.” Fed. Rule Crim. Proc. 4.1. States have also innovated. Well over a majority of States allow police officers or prosecutors to apply for search warrants remotely through various means, including telephonic or radio communication, electronic communication such as e-mail, and video conferencing.[4] And in addition to technology-based developments, jurisdictions have found other ways to streamline the warrant process, such as by using standard-form warrant applications for drunk-driving investigations.[5] We by no means claim that telecommunications inno- vations have, will, or should eliminate all delay from the warrant-application process. Warrants inevitably take some time for police officers or prosecutors to complete and for magistrate judges to review. Telephonic and electronic warrants may still require officers to follow time-consuming formalities designed to create an adequate record, such as preparing a duplicate warrant before calling the magistrate judge. See Fed. Rule Crim. Proc. 4.1(b)(3). And improvements in communications technology do not guarantee that a magistrate judge will be available when an officer needs a warrant after making a late-night arrest. But technological developments that enable police officers to secure warrants more quickly, and do so without undermining the neutral magistrate judge’s essential role as a check on police discretion, are relevant to an assessment of exigency. That is particularly so in this context, where BAC evidence is lost gradually and relatively predictably.[6] Of course, there are important countervailing concerns. While experts can work backwards from the BAC at the time the sample was taken to determine the BAC at the time of the alleged offense, longer intervals may raise questions about the accuracy of the calculation. For that reason, exigent circumstances justifying a warrantless blood sample may arise in the regular course of law enforcement due to delays from the warrant application process. But adopting the State’s per se approach would improperly ignore the current and future technological developments in warrant procedures, and might well diminish the incentive for jurisdictions “to pursue progressive approaches to warrant acquisition that preserve the protections afforded by the warrant while meeting the legitimate interests of law enforcement.” State v. Rodriguez, 2007 UT 15, ¶46, 156 P.3d 771, 779. In short, while the natural dissipation of alcohol in the blood may support a finding of exigency in a specific case, as it did in Schmerber, it does not do so categorically. Whether a warrantless blood test of a drunk-driving suspect is reasonable must be determined case by case based on the totality of the circumstances. C In an opinion concurring in part and dissenting in part, The Chief Justice agrees that the State’s proposed per se rule is overbroad because “[f]or exigent circumstances to justify a warrantless search . . . there must . . . be ‘no time to secure a warrant.’ ” Post, at 6 (quoting Tyler, 436 U. S., at 509). But The Chief Justice then goes on to suggest his own categorical rule under which a warrantless blood draw is permissible if the officer could not secure a warrant (or reasonably believed he could not secure a warrant) in the time it takes to transport the suspect to a hospital or similar facility and obtain medical assistance. Post, at 8–9. Although we agree that delay inherent to the blood-testing process is relevant to evaluating exigency, see supra, at 10, we decline to substitute The Chief Justice’s modified per se rule for our traditional totality of the circumstances analysis. For one thing, making exigency completely dependent on the window of time between an arrest and a blood test produces odd consequences. Under The Chief Justice’s rule, if a police officer serendipitously stops a suspect near an emergency room, the officer may conduct a noncon- sensual warrantless blood draw even if all agree that a warrant could be obtained with very little delay under the circumstances (perhaps with far less delay than an average ride to the hospital in the jurisdiction). The rule would also distort law enforcement incentives. As with the State’s per se rule, The Chief Justice’s rule might discourage efforts to expedite the warrant process because it categorically authorizes warrantless blood draws so long as it takes more time to secure a warrant than to obtain medical assistance. On the flip side, making the requirement of independent judicial oversight turn exclusively on the amount of time that elapses between an arrest and BAC testing could induce police departments and individual officers to minimize testing delay to the detriment of other values. The Chief Justice correctly observes that “[t]his case involves medical personnel drawing blood at a medical facility, not police officers doing so by the side of the road.” Post, at 6–7, n. 2. But The Chief Justice does not say that roadside blood draws are necessarily un- reasonable, and if we accepted The Chief Justice’s approach, they would become a more attractive option for the police. III The remaining arguments advanced in support of a per se exigency rule are unpersuasive. The State and several of its amici, including the United States, express concern that a case-by-case approach to exigency will not provide adequate guidance to law enforcement officers deciding whether to conduct a blood test of a drunk-driving suspect without a warrant. The Chief Justice and the dissent also raise this concern. See post, at 1, 9–10 (opinion of Roberts, C. J.); post, at 5–7 (opinion of Thomas, J.). While the desire for a bright-line rule is understandable, the Fourth Amendment will not tolerate adoption of an overly broad categorical approach that would dilute the warrant requirement in a context where significant privacy interests are at stake. Moreover, a case-by-case approach is hardly unique within our Fourth Amendment jurisprudence. Numerous police actions are judged based on fact-intensive, totality of the circumstances analyses rather than according to categorical rules, including in situations that are more likely to require police officers to make difficult split-second judgments. See, e.g., Illinois v. Wardlow, 528 U.S. 119, 123–125 (2000) (whether an officer has reasonable suspicion to make an investigative stop and to pat down a suspect for weapons under Terry v. Ohio, 392 U.S. 1 (1968)); Robinette, 519 U. S., at 39–40 (whether valid consent has been given to search); Tennessee v. Garner, 471 U.S. 1, 8–9, 20 (1985) (whether force used to effectuate a seizure, including deadly force, is reasonable). As in those contexts, we see no valid substitute for careful case-by-case evaluation of reasonableness here.[7] Next, the State and the United States contend that the privacy interest implicated by blood draws of drunk-driving suspects is relatively minimal. That is so, they claim, both because motorists have a diminished expectation of privacy and because our cases have repeatedly indicated that blood testing is commonplace in society and typically involves “virtually no risk, trauma, or pain.” Schmerber, 384 U. S., at 771. See also post, at 3, and n. 1 (opinion of Thomas, J.). But the fact that people are “accorded less privacy in . . . automobiles because of th[e] compelling governmental need for regulation,” California v. Carney, 471 U.S. 386, 392 (1985), does not diminish a motorist’s privacy interest in preventing an agent of the government from piercing his skin. As to the nature of a blood test conducted in a medical setting by trained personnel, it is concededly less intrusive than other bodily invasions we have found unreasonable. See Winston, 470 U. S., at 759–766 (surgery to remove a bullet); Rochin v. California, 342 U.S. 165, 172–174 (1952) (induced vomiting to extract narcotics capsules ingested by a suspect violated the Due Process Clause). For that reason, we have held that medically drawn blood tests are reasonable in appropriate circumstances. See Skinner, 489 U. S., at 618–633 (upholding warrantless blood testing of railroad employees involved in certain train accidents under the “special needs” doctrine); Schmerber, 384 U. S., at 770–772. We have never retreated, however, from our recognition that any compelled intrusion into the human body implicates significant, constitutionally protected privacy interests. Finally, the State and its amici point to the compelling governmental interest in combating drunk driving and contend that prompt BAC testing, including through blood testing, is vital to pursuit of that interest. They argue that is particularly so because, in addition to laws that make it illegal to operate a motor vehicle under the influence of alcohol, all 50 States and the District of Columbia have enacted laws that make it per se unlawful to operate a motor vehicle with a BAC of over 0.08 percent. See National Highway Traffic Safety Admin. (NHTSA), Al- cohol and Highway Safety: A Review of the State of Knowledge 167 (No. 811374, Mar. 2011) (NHTSA Review).[8] To enforce these provisions, they reasonably assert, accurate BAC evidence is critical. See also post, at 4–5 (opinion of Roberts, C. J.); post, at 4–5 (opinion of Thomas, J.). “No one can seriously dispute the magnitude of the drunken driving problem or the States’ interest in eradicating it.” Michigan Dept. of State Police v. Sitz, 496 U.S. 444, 451 (1990). Certainly we do not. While some progress has been made, drunk driving continues to exact a terrible toll on our society. See NHTSA, Traffic Safety Facts, 2011 Data 1 (No. 811700, Dec. 2012) (reporting that 9,878 people were killed in alcohol-impaired driving crashes in 2011, an average of one fatality every 53 minutes). But the general importance of the government’s interest in this area does not justify departing from the warrant requirement without showing exigent circumstances that make securing a warrant impractical in a particular case. To the extent that the State and its amici contend that applying the traditional Fourth Amendment totality-of-the-circumstances analysis to determine whether an exigency justified a warrantless search will undermine the governmental interest in preventing and prosecuting drunk-driving offenses, we are not convinced. As an initial matter, States have a broad range of legal tools to enforce their drunk-driving laws and to secure BAC evidence without undertaking warrantless nonconsensual blood draws. For example, all 50 States have adopted implied consent laws that require motorists, as a condition of operating a motor vehicle within the State, to consent to BAC testing if they are arrested or otherwise detained on suspicion of a drunk-driving offense. See NHTSA Review 173; supra, at 2 (describing Missouri’s implied consent law). Such laws impose significant consequences when a motorist withdraws consent; typically the motorist’s driver’s license is immediately suspended or revoked, and most States allow the motorist’s refusal to take a BAC test to be used as evidence against him in a subsequent criminal prosecution. See NHTSA Review 173–175; see also South Dakota v. Neville, 459 U.S. 553, 554, 563–564 (1983) (holding that the use of such an adverse inference does not violate the Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination). It is also notable that a majority of States either place significant restrictions on when police officers may obtain a blood sample despite a suspect’s refusal (often limiting testing to cases involving an accident resulting in death or serious bodily injury) or prohibit nonconsensual blood tests altogether.[9] Among these States, several lift restrictions on nonconsensual blood testing if law enforcement officers first obtain a search warrant or similar court order.[10] Cf. Bullcoming v. New Mexico, 564 U. S. ___, ___ (2011) (slip op., at 3) (noting that the blood test was obtained pursuant to a warrant after the petitioner refused a breath test). We are aware of no evidence indicating that restrictions on nonconsensual blood testing have compromised drunk-driving enforcement efforts in the States that have them. And in fact, field studies in States that permit nonconsensual blood testing pursuant to a warrant have suggested that, although warrants do impose administrative burdens, their use can reduce breath-test-refusal rates and improve law enforcement’s ability to recover BAC evidence. See NHTSA, Use of Warrants for Breath Test Refusal: Case Studies 36–38 (No. 810852, Oct. 2007). To be sure, “States [may] choos[e] to protect privacy beyond the level that the Fourth Amendment requires.” Virginia v. Moore, 553 U.S. 164, 171 (2008). But wide-spread state restrictions on nonconsensual blood testing provide further support for our recognition that compelled blood draws implicate a significant privacy interest. They also strongly suggest that our ruling today will not “severely hamper effective law enforcement.” Garner, 471 U. S., at 19. IV The State argued before this Court that the fact that alcohol is naturally metabolized by the human body creates an exigent circumstance in every case. The State did not argue that there were exigent circumstances in this particular case because a warrant could not have been obtained within a reasonable amount of time. In his testimony before the trial court, the arresting officer did not identify any other factors that would suggest he faced an emergency or unusual delay in securing a warrant. App. 40. He testified that he made no effort to obtain a search warrant before conducting the blood draw even though he was “sure” a prosecuting attorney was on call and even though he had no reason to believe that a magistrate judge would have been unavailable. Id., at 39, 41–42. The officer also acknowledged that he had obtained search warrants before taking blood samples in the past without difficulty. Id., at 42. He explained that he elected to forgo a warrant application in this case only because he believed it was not legally necessary to obtain a warrant. Id., at 39–40. Based on this testimony, the trial court concluded that there was no exigency and specifically found that, although the arrest took place in the middle of the night, “a prosecutor was readily available to apply for a search warrant and a judge was readily available to issue a warrant.” App. to Pet. for Cert. 43a.[11] The Missouri Supreme Court in turn affirmed that judgment, holding first that the dissipation of alcohol did not establish a per se exigency, and second that the State could not otherwise satisfy its burden of establishing exigent circumstances. 358 S. W. 3d, at 70, 74–75. In petitioning for certiorari to this Court, the State challenged only the first holding; it did not separately contend that the warrantless blood test was reasonable regardless of whether the natural dissipation of alcohol in a suspect’s blood categorically justifies dispensing with the warrant requirement. See Pet. for Cert. i. Here and in its own courts the State based its case on an insistence that a driver who declines to submit to testing after being arrested for driving under the influence of alcohol is always subject to a nonconsensual blood test without any precondition for a warrant. That is incorrect. Although the Missouri Supreme Court referred to this case as “unquestionably a routine DWI case,” 358 S. W. 3d, at 74, the fact that a particular drunk-driving stop is “routine” in the sense that it does not involve “ ‘special facts,’ ” ibid., such as the need for the police to attend to a car accident, does not mean a warrant is required. Other factors present in an ordinary traffic stop, such as the procedures in place for obtaining a warrant or the avail- ability of a magistrate judge, may affect whether the police can obtain a warrant in an expeditious way and therefore may establish an exigency that permits a warrantless search. The relevant factors in determining whether a warrantless search is reasonable, including the practical problems of obtaining a warrant within a timeframe that still preserves the opportunity to obtain reliable evidence, will no doubt vary depending upon the circumstances in the case. Because this case was argued on the broad proposition that drunk-driving cases present a per se exigency, the arguments and the record do not provide the Court with an adequate analytic framework for a detailed discussion of all the relevant factors that can be taken into account in determining the reasonableness of acting without a warrant. It suffices to say that the metabolization of alcohol in the bloodstream and the ensuing loss of evidence are among the factors that must be considered in deciding whether a warrant is required. No doubt, given the large number of arrests for this offense in different jurisdictions nationwide, cases will arise when anticipated delays in obtaining a warrant will justify a blood test without judicial authorization, for in every case the law must be concerned that evidence is being destroyed. But that inquiry ought not to be pursued here where the question is not properly before this Court. Having rejected the sole argument presented to us challenging the Missouri Supreme Court’s decision, we affirm its judgment. * * * We hold that in drunk-driving investigations, the natural dissipation of alcohol in the bloodstream does not con- stitute an exigency in every case sufficient to justify conducting a blood test without a warrant. The judgment of the Missouri Supreme Court is affirmed. It is so ordered. Notes 1 As a result of his two prior drunk-driving convictions, McNeely was charged with a class D felony under Missouri law, which carries a maximum imprisonment term of four years. See Mo. Ann. Stat. §§558.011, 577.023.1(5), 577.023.3 (West 2011). 2 Compare 358 S.W.3d 65 (2012) (case below), State v. Johnson, 744 N.W.2d 340 (Iowa 2008) (same conclusion), and State v. Rodriguez, 2007 UT 15, 156 P.3d 771 (same), with State v. Shriner, 751 N.W.2d 538 (Minn. 2008) (holding that the natural dissipation of blood-alcohol evidence alone constitutes a per se exigency), State v. Bohling, 173 Wis. 2d 529, 494 N.W.2d 399 (1993) (same); State v. Woolery, 116 Idaho 368, 775 P.2d 1210 (1989) (same). 3 We have recognized a limited class of traditional exceptions to the warrant requirement that apply categorically and thus do not require an assessment of whether the policy justifications underlying the ex-ception, which may include exigency-based considerations, are im-plicated in a particular case. See, e.g., California v. Acevedo, 500 U.S. 565, 569–570 (1991) (automobile exception); United States v. Robinson, 414 U.S. 218, 224–235 (1973) (searches of a person incident to a lawful arrest). By contrast, the general exigency exception, which asks whether an emergency existed that justified a warrantless search, naturally calls for a case-specific inquiry. 4 See Ala. Rule Crim. Proc. 3.8(b) (2012–2013); Alaska Stat. §12.35.015 (2012); Ariz. Rev. Stat. Ann. §§13–3914(C), 13–3915(D), (E) (West 2010); Ark. Code Ann. §16–82–201 (2005); Cal. Penal Code Ann. §1526(b) (West 2011); Colo. Rule Crim. Proc. 41(c)(3) (2012); Ga. Code Ann. §17–5–21.1 (2008); Haw. Rules Penal Proc. 41(h)–(i) (2013); Idaho Code §§19–4404, 19–4406 (Lexis 2004); Ind. Code §35–33–5–8 (2012); Iowa Code §§321J.10(3), 462A.14D(3) (2009) (limited to specific circumstances involving accidents); Kan. Stat. Ann. §§22–2502(a), 22–2504 (2011 Cum. Supp.); La. Code Crim. Proc. Ann., Arts. 162.1(B), (D) (West 2003); Mich. Comp. Laws Ann. §§780.651(2)–(6) (West 2006); Minn. Rules Crim. Proc. 33.05, 36.01–36.08 (2010 and Supp. 2013); Mont. Code Ann. §§46–5–221, 46–5–222 (2012); Neb. Rev. Stat. §§29–814.01, 29–814.03, 29–814.05 (2008); Nev. Rev. Stat. §§179.045(2), (4) (2011); N. H. Rev. Stat. Ann. §595–A:4–a (Lexis Supp. 2012); N. J. Rule Crim. Proc. 3:5–3(b) (2013); N. M. Rules Crim. Proc. 5–211(F)(3), (G)(3) (Supp. 2012); N. Y. Crim. Proc. Law Ann. §§690.35(1), 690.36(1), 690.40(3), 690.45(1), (2) (West 2009); N. C. Gen. Stat. Ann. §15A–245(a)(3) (Lexis 2011); N. D. Rules Crim. Proc. 41(c)(2)–(3) (2012–2013); Ohio Rules Crim. Proc. 41(C)(1)–(2) (2011); Okla. Stat. Ann., Tit. 22, §§1223.1, 1225(B) (West 2011); Ore. Rev. Stat. §§133.545(5)–(6) (2011); Pa. Rules Crim. Proc. 203(A), (C) (2012); S. D. Codified Laws §§23A–35–4.2, 23A–35–5, 23A–35–6 (2004); Utah Rule Crim. Proc. 40(l) (2012); Vt. Rules Crim. Proc. 41(c)(4), (g)(2) (Supp. 2012); Va. Code Ann. §19.2–54 (Lexis Supp. 2012); Wash. Super. Ct. Crim. Rule 2.3(c) (2002); Wis. Stat. §968.12(3) (2007–2008); Wyo. Stat. Ann. §31–6–102(d) (2011); see generally 2 W. LaFave, Search and Seizure §4.3(b), pp. 511–516, andn. 29 (4th ed. 2004) (describing oral search warrants and collecting state laws). Missouri requires that search warrants be in writing and does not permit oral testimony, thus excluding telephonic warrants. Mo. Ann. Stat. §§542.276.2(1), 542.276.3 (West Supp. 2012). State law does permit the submission of warrant applications “by facsimile or other electronic means.” §542.276.3. 5 During the suppression hearing in this case, McNeely entered into evidence a search-warrant form used in drunk-driving cases by the prosecutor’s office in Cape Girardeau County, where the arrest took place. App. 61–69. The arresting officer acknowledged that he had used such forms in the past and that they were “readily available.” Id., at 41–42. 6 The dissent claims that a “50-state survey [is] irrelevant to the actual disposition of this case” because Missouri requires written warrant applications. Post, at 8. But the per se exigency rule that the State seeks and the dissent embraces would apply nationally because it treats “the body’s natural metabolization of alcohol” as a sufficient basis for a warrantless search everywhere and always. Post, at 1. The technological innovations in warrant procedures that many Stateshave adopted are accordingly relevant to show that the per se rule is overbroad. 7 The dissent contends that officers in the field will be unable to apply the traditional totality of the circumstances test in this context because they will not know all of the relevant facts at the time of an arrest. See post, at 6. But because “[t]he police are presumably familiar with the mechanics and time involved in the warrant process in their particular jurisdiction,” post, at 8 (opinion of Roberts, C. J.), we expect that officers can make reasonable judgments about whether the warrant process would produce unacceptable delay under the circumstances. Reviewing courts in turn should assess those judgments “ ‘from the perspective of a reasonable officer on the scene, rather than with the 20/20 vision of hindsight.’ ” Ryburn v. Huff, 565 U. S. ___, ___ (2012) (per curiam) (slip op., at 8). 8 Pursuant to congressional directive, the NHTSA conditions federal highway grants on States’ adoption of laws making it a per se offense to operate a motor vehicle with a BAC of 0.08 percent or greater. See 23 U. S. C. §163(a); 23 CFR §1225.1 (2012). Several federal prohibitions on drunk driving also rely on the 0.08 percent standard. E.g., 32 CFR §§234.17(c)(1)(ii), 1903.4(b)(1)(i)–(ii); 36 CFR §4.23(a)(2). In addition, 32 States and the District of Columbia have adopted laws that impose heightened penalties for operating a motor vehicle at or above a BAC of 0.15 percent. See NHTSA Review 175. 9 See Ala. Code §32–5–192(c) (2010); Alaska Stat. §§28.35.032(a), 28.35.035(a) (2012); Ariz. Rev. Stat. Ann. §28–1321(D)(1) (West 2012); Ark. Code Ann. §§5–65–205(a)(1), 5–65–208(a)(1) (Supp. 2011);Conn. Gen. Stat. §§14–227b(b), 14–227c(b) (2011); Fla. Stat. Ann. §316.1933(1)(a) (West 2006); Ga. Code Ann. §§40–5–67.1(d), (d.1) (2011); Haw. Rev. Stat. §291E–15 (2009 Cum. Supp.), §§291E–21(a), 291E–33 (2007), §291E–65 (2009 Cum. Supp.); Iowa Code §§321J.9(1), 321J.10(1), 321J.10A(1) (2009); Kan. Stat. Ann. §§8–1001(b), (d) (2001); Ky. Rev. Stat. Ann. §189A.105(2) (Lexis Supp. 2012); La. Rev. Stat. Ann. §§32:666.A(1)(a)(i), (2) (Supp. 2013); Md. Transp. Code Ann. §§16–205.1(b)(i)(1), (c)(1) (Lexis 2012); Mass. Gen. Laws Ann., ch. 90, §§24(1)(e), (f)(1) (West 2012); Mich. Comp. Laws Ann. §257.625d(1) (West 2006); Miss. Code Ann. §63–11–21 (1973–2004); Mont. Code Ann. §§61–8–402(4), (5) (2011); Neb. Rev. Stat. §60–498.01(2) (2012Cum. Supp.), §60–6,210 (2010); N. H. Rev. Stat. Ann. §§265–A:14(I),265–A:16 (West 2012 Cum. Supp.); N. M. Stat. Ann. §66–8–111(A) (LexisNexis 2009); N. Y. Veh. & Traf. Law Ann. §§1194(2)(b)(1), 1194(3) (West 2011); N. D. Cent. Code Ann. §39–20–01.1(1) (Lexis Supp. 2011), §39–20–04(1) (Lexis 2008); Okla. Stat., Tit. 47, §753 (West Supp. 2013); Ore. Rev. Stat. §813.100(2) (2011); 75 Pa. Cons. Stat. §1547(b)(1) (2004); R. I. Gen. Laws §§31–27–2.1(b), 31–27–2.9(a) (Lexis 2010); S. C. Code Ann. §56–5–2950(B) (Supp. 2011); Tenn. Code Ann. §§55–10–406(a)(4), (f) (2012); Tex. Transp. Code Ann. §§724.012(b), 724.013 (West 2011); Vt. Stat. Ann., Tit. 23, §§1202(b), (f) (2007); Wash. Rev. Code §§46.20.308 (2)–(3), (5) (2012); W. Va. Code Ann. §17C–5–7 (Lexis Supp. 2012); Wyo. Stat. Ann. §31–6–102(d) (Lexis 2011). 10 See Ariz. Rev. Stat. Ann. §28–1321(D)(1) (West 2012); Ga. Code Ann. §§40–5–67.1(d), (d.1) (2011); Ky. Rev. Stat. Ann. §189A.105(2)(b) (Lexis Supp. 2012); Mich. Comp. Laws Ann. §257.625d(1) (West 2006); Mont. Code Ann. §61–8–402(5) (2011); N. M. Stat. Ann. §66–8–111(A) (LexisNexis 2009); N. Y. Veh. & Traf. Law Ann. §§1194(2)(b)(1), 1194(3) (West 2011); Ore. Rev. Stat. 813.320(2)(b) (2011); R. I. Gen. Laws §31–27–2.9(a) (Lexis 2010); Tenn. Code Ann. §55–10–406(a)(4) (2012); Vt. Stat. Ann., Tit. 23, §1202(f) (2007); Wash. Rev. Code §46.20.308(1) (2012); W. Va. Code Ann. §17C–5–7 (Supp. 2012) (as interpreted in State v. Stone, 229 W. Va. 271, ___, 728 S.E.2d 155, 167–168 (2012)); Wyo. Stat. Ann. §31–6–102(d) (2011); see also State v. Harris, 763 N.W.2d 269, 273–274 (Iowa 2009) (per curiam) (recognizing that Iowa law imposes a warrant requirement subject to a limited case-specific exigency exception). 11 No findings were made by the trial court concerning how long a warrant would likely have taken to issue under the circumstances. The minimal evidence presented on this point was not uniform. A second patrol officer testified that in a typical DWI case, it takes between 90 minutes and 2 hours to obtain a search warrant following an arrest. App. 53–54. McNeely, however, also introduced an exhibit documenting six recent search warrant applications for blood testing in Cape Girardeau County that had shorter processing times. Id., at 70.

569.US.184

Under the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA), a noncitizen convicted of an “aggravated felony” is not only deportable, 8 U. S. C. §1227(a)(2)(A)(iii), but also ineligible for discretionary relief. The INA lists as an “aggravated felony” “illicit trafficking in a controlled substance,” §1101(a)(43)(B), which, as relevant here, includes the conviction of an offense that the Controlled Substances Act (CSA) makes punishable as a felony, i.e., by more than one year’s imprisonment, see 18 U. S. C. §§924(c)(2), 3559(a)(5). A conviction under state law “constitutes a ‘felony punishable under the [CSA]’ only if it proscribes conduct punishable as a felony under that federal law.” Lopez v. Gonzales, 549 U.S. 47, 60. Petitioner Moncrieffe, a Jamaican citizen here legally, was found by police to have 1.3 grams of marijuana in his car. He pleaded guilty under Georgia law to possession of marijuana with intent to distribute. The Federal Government sought to deport him, reasoning that his conviction was an aggravated felony because possession of marijuana with intent to distribute is a CSA offense, 21 U. S. C. §841(a), punishable by up to five years’ imprisonment, §841(b)(1)(D). An Immigration Judge ordered Moncrieffe removed, and the Board of Immigration Appeals affirmed. The Fifth Circuit denied Moncrieffe’s petition for review, rejecting his reliance on §841(b)(4), which makes marijuana distribution punishable as a misdemeanor if the offense involves a small amount for no remuneration, and holding that the felony provision, §841(b)(1)(D), provides the default punishment for his offense. Held: If a noncitizen’s conviction for a marijuana distribution offense fails to establish that the offense involved either remuneration or more than a small amount of marijuana, it is not an aggravated felony under the INA. Pp. 4–22. (a) Under the categorical approach generally employed to determine whether a state offense is comparable to an offense listed in the INA, see, e.g., Nijhawan v. Holder, 557 U.S. 29, 33–38, the noncitizen’s actual conduct is irrelevant. Instead “the state statute defining the crime of conviction” is examined to see whether it fits within the “generic” federal definition of a corresponding aggravated felony. Gonzales v. Duenas-Alvarez, 549 U.S. 183, 186. The state offense is a categorical match only if a conviction of that offense “ ‘necessarily’ involved . . . facts equating to [the] generic [federal offense].” Shepard v. United States, 544 U.S. 13, 24. Because this Court examines what the state conviction necessarily involved and not the facts underlying the case, it presumes that the conviction “rested upon [nothing] more than the least of th[e] acts” criminalized, before determining whether even those acts are encompassed by the generic federal offense. Johnson v. United States, 559 U.S. 133, 137. Pp. 4–6. (b) The categorical approach applies here because “illicit trafficking in a controlled substance” is a “generic crim[e].” Nijhawan, 557 U. S., at 37. Thus, a state drug offense must meet two conditions: It must “necessarily” proscribe conduct that is an offense under the CSA, and the CSA must “necessarily” prescribe felony punishment for that conduct. Possession of marijuana with intent to distribute is clearly a federal crime. The question is whether Georgia law necessarily proscribes conduct punishable as a felony under the CSA. Title 21 U. S. C. §841(b)(1)(D) provides that, with certain exceptions, a violation of the marijuana distribution statute is punishable by “a term of imprisonment of not more than 5 years.” However, one of those exceptions, §841(b)(4), provides that “any person who violates [the statute] by distributing a small amount of marihuana for no remuneration shall be treated as” a simple drug possessor, i.e., as a misdemeanant. These dovetailing provisions create two mutually exclusive categories of punishment for CSA marijuana distribution offenses: one a felony, the other not. The fact of a conviction under Georgia’s statute, standing alone, does not reveal whether either remuneration or more than a small amount was involved, so Moncrieffe’s conviction could correspond to either the CSA felony or the CSA misdemeanor. Thus, the conviction did not “necessarily” involve facts that correspond to an offense punishable as a felony under the CSA. Pp. 6–9. (c) The Government’s contrary arguments are unpersuasive. The Government contends that §841(b)(4) is irrelevant because it is merely a mitigating sentencing factor, not an element of the offense. But that understanding is inconsistent with Carachuri-Rosendo v. Holder, 560 U. S. ___, which recognized that when Congress has chosen to define the generic federal offense by reference to punishment, it may be necessary to take account of federal sentencing factors too. The Government also asserts that any marijuana distribution conviction is presumptively a felony, but the CSA makes neither the felony nor the misdemeanor provision the default. The Government’s approach would lead to the absurd result that a conviction under a statute that punishes misdemeanor conduct only, such as §841(b)(4) itself, would nevertheless be a categorical aggravated felony. The Government’s proposed remedy for this anomaly—that noncitizens be given an opportunity during immigration proceedings to demonstrate that their predicate marijuana distribution convictions involved only a small amount of marijuana and no remuneration—is inconsistent with both the INA’s text and the categorical approach. The Government’s procedure would require the Nation’s overburdened immigration courts to conduct precisely the sort of post hoc investigation into the facts of predicate offenses long deemed undesirable, and would require uncounseled noncitizens to locate witnesses years after the fact. Finally, the Government’s concerns about the consequences of this decision are exaggerated. Escaping aggravated felony treatment does not mean escaping deportation, because any marijuana distribution offense will still render a noncitizen deportable as a controlled substances offender. Having been found not to be an aggravated felon, the noncitizen may seek relief from removal such as asylum or cancellation of removal, but the Attorney General may, in his discretion, deny relief if he finds that the noncitizen is actually a more serious drug trafficker. Pp. 9–21. 662 F.3d 387, reversed and remanded. Sotomayor, J., delivered the opinion of the Court, in which Roberts, C. J., and Scalia, Kennedy, Ginsburg, Breyer, and Kagan, JJ., joined. Thomas, J., and Alito, J., filed dissenting opinions.

The Immigration and Nationality Act (INA), 66Stat. 163, 8 U. S. C. §1101 et seq., provides that a noncitizen who has been convicted of an “aggravated felony” may be deported from this country. The INA also prohibits the Attorney General from granting discretionary relief from removal to an aggravated felon, no matter how compelling his case. Among the crimes that are classified as aggravated felonies, and thus lead to these harsh consequences, are illicit drug trafficking offenses. We must decide whether this category includes a state criminal statute that extends to the social sharing of a small amount of marijuana. We hold it does not. I A The INA allows the Government to deport various classes of noncitizens, such as those who overstay their visas, and those who are convicted of certain crimes while in the United States, including drug offenses. §1227. Ordinarily, when a noncitizen is found to be deportable on one of these grounds, he may ask the Attorney General for certain forms of discretionary relief from removal, like asylum (if he has a well-founded fear of persecution in his home country) and cancellation of removal (if, among other things, he has been lawfully present in the United States for a number of years). §§1158, 1229b. But if a noncitizen has been convicted of one of a narrower set of crimes classified as “aggravated felonies,” then he is not only deportable, §1227(a)(2)(A)(iii), but also ineligible for these discretionary forms of relief. See §§1158(b)(2)(A)(ii), (B)(i); §§1229b(a)(3), (b)(1)(C).[1] The INA defines “aggravated felony” to include a host of offenses. §1101(a)(43). Among them is “illicit trafficking in a controlled substance.” §1101(a)(43)(B). This general term is not defined, but the INA states that it “includ[es] a drug trafficking crime (as defined in section 924(c) of title 18).” Ibid. In turn, 18 U. S. C. §924(c)(2) defines “drug trafficking crime” to mean “any felony punishable under the Controlled Substances Act,” or two other statues not relevant here. The chain of definitions ends with §3559(a)(5), which provides that a “felony” is an offense for which the “maximum term of imprisonment authorized” is “more than one year.” The upshot is that a noncitizen’s conviction of an offense that the Controlled Substances Act (CSA) makes punishable by more than one year’s imprisonment will be counted as an “aggravated felony” for immigration purposes. A conviction under either state or federal law may qualify, but a “state offense constitutes a ‘felony punishable under the Controlled Substances Act’ only if it proscribes conduct punishable as a felony under that federal law.” Lopez v. Gonzales, 549 U.S. 47, 60 (2006). B Petitioner Adrian Moncrieffe is a Jamaican citizen who came to the United States legally in 1984, when he was three. During a 2007 traffic stop, police found 1.3 grams of marijuana in his car. This is the equivalent of about two or three marijuana cigarettes. Moncrieffe pleaded guilty to possession of marijuana with intent to distribute, a violation of Ga. Code Ann. §16–13–30(j)(1) (2007). Under a Georgia statute providing more lenient treatment to first-time offenders, §42–8–60(a) (1997), the trial court withheld entering a judgment of conviction or imposing any term of imprisonment, and instead required that Moncrieffe complete five years of probation, after which his charge will be expunged altogether.[2] App. to Brief for Petitioner 11–15. Alleging that this Georgia conviction constituted an aggravated felony, the Federal Government sought to deport Moncrieffe. The Government reasoned that possession of marijuana with intent to distribute is an offense under the CSA, 21 U. S. C. §841(a), punishable by up to five years’ imprisonment, §841(b)(1)(D), and thus an aggravated felony. An Immigration Judge agreed and ordered Moncrieffe removed. App. to Pet. for Cert. 14a–18a. The Board of Immigration Appeals (BIA) affirmed that conclusion on appeal. Id., at 10a–13a. The Court of Appeals denied Moncrieffe’s petition for review. The court rejected Moncrieffe’s reliance upon §841(b)(4), a provision that, in effect, makes marijuana distribution punishable only as a misdemeanor if the offense involves a small amount of marijuana for no remuneration. It held that in a federal criminal prosecution, “the default sentencing range for a marijuana distribution offense is the CSA’s felony provision, §841(b)(1)(D), rather than the misdemeanor provision.” 662 F.3d 387, 392 (CA5 2011). Because Moncrieffe’s Georgia offense penalized possession of marijuana with intent to distribute, the court concluded that it was “equivalent to a federal felony.” Ibid. We granted certiorari, 566 U. S. ___ (2012), to resolve a conflict among the Courts of Appeals with respect to whether a conviction under a statute that criminalizes conduct described by both §841’s felony provision and its misdemeanor provision, such as a statute that punishes all marijuana distribution without regard to the amount or remuneration, is a conviction for an offense that “proscribes conduct punishable as a felony under” the CSA.[3] Lopez, 549 U. S., at 60. We now reverse. II A When the Government alleges that a state conviction qualifies as an “aggravated felony” under the INA, we generally employ a “categorical approach” to determine whether the state offense is comparable to an offense listed in the INA. See, e.g., Nijhawan v. Holder, 557 U.S. 29, 33–38 (2009); Gonzales v. Duenas-Alvarez, 549 U.S. 183, 185–187 (2007). Under this approach we look “not to the facts of the particular prior case,” but instead to whether “the state statute defining the crime of conviction” categorically fits within the “generic” federal definition of a corresponding aggravated felony. Id., at 186 (citing Taylor v. United States, 495 U.S. 575, 599–600 (1990)). By “generic,” we mean the offenses must be viewed in the abstract, to see whether the state statute shares the nature of the federal offense that serves as a point of comparison. Accordingly, a state offense is a categorical match with a generic federal offense only if a conviction of the state offense “ ‘necessarily’ involved . . . facts equating to [the] generic [federal offense].” Shepard v. United States, 544 U.S. 13, 24 (2005) (plurality opinion). Whether the noncitizen’s actual conduct involved such facts “is quite irrelevant.” United States ex rel. Guarino v. Uhl, 107 F.2d 399, 400 (CA2 1939) (L. Hand, J.). Because we examine what the state conviction necessarily involved, not the facts underlying the case, we must presume that the conviction “rested upon [nothing] more than the least of th[e] acts” criminalized, and then determine whether even those acts are encompassed by the generic federal offense. Johnson v. United States, 559 U.S. 133, 137 (2010); see Guarino, 107 F. 2d, at 400. But this rule is not without qualification. First, our cases have addressed state statutes that contain several different crimes, each described separately, and we have held that a court may determine which particular offense the noncitizen was convicted of by examining the charging document and jury instructions, or in the case of a guilty plea, the plea agreement, plea colloquy, or “ ‘some comparable judicial record’ of the factual basis for the plea.” Nijhawan, 557 U. S., at 35 (quoting Shepard, 544 U. S., at 26). Sec- ond, our focus on the minimum conduct criminalized by the state statute is not an invitation to apply “legal imagination” to the state offense; there must be “a realistic probability, not a theoretical possibility, that the State would apply its statute to conduct that falls outside the generic definition of a crime.” Duenas-Alvarez, 549 U. S., at 193. This categorical approach has a long pedigree in our Nation’s immigration law. See Das, The Immigration Penalties of Criminal Convictions: Resurrecting Categorical Analysis in Immigration Law, 86 N. Y. U. L. Rev. 1669, 1688–1702, 1749–1752 (2011) (tracing judicial decisions back to 1913). The reason is that the INA asks what offense the noncitizen was “convicted” of, 8 U. S. C. §1227(a)(2)(A)(iii), not what acts he committed. “[C]on- viction” is “the relevant statutory hook.”[4] Carachuri-Rosendo v. Holder, 560 U. S. ___, ___ (2010) (slip op., at 16); see United States ex rel. Mylius v. Uhl, 210 F. 860, 862 (CA2 1914). B The aggravated felony at issue here, “illicit trafficking in a controlled substance,” is a “generic crim[e].” Nijhawan, 557 U. S., at 37. So the categorical approach applies. Ibid. As we have explained, supra, at 2–3, this aggravated felony encompasses all state offenses that “proscrib[e] conduct punishable as a felony under [the CSA].” Lopez, 549 U. S., at 60. In other words, to satisfy the categorical approach, a state drug offense must meet two conditions: It must “necessarily” proscribe conduct that is an offense under the CSA, and the CSA must “necessarily” prescribe felony punishment for that conduct. Moncrieffe was convicted under a Georgia statute that makes it a crime to “possess, have under [one’s] control, manufacture, deliver, distribute, dispense, administer, purchase, sell, or possess with intent to distribute mari- juana.” Ga. Code Ann. §16–13–30(j)(1). We know from his plea agreement that Moncrieffe was convicted of the last of these offenses. App. to Brief for Petitioner 11; Shepard, 544 U. S., at 26. We therefore must determine whether possession of marijuana with intent to distribute is “necessarily” conduct punishable as a felony under the CSA. We begin with the relevant conduct criminalized by the CSA. There is no question that it is a federal crime to “possess with intent to . . . distribute . . . a controlled substance,” 21 U. S. C. §841(a)(1), one of which is mari- juana, §812(c).[5] So far, the state and federal provisions correspond. But this is not enough, because the generically defined federal crime is “any felony punishable under the Controlled Substances Act,” 18 U. S. C. §924(c)(2), not just any “offense under the CSA.” Thus we must look to what punishment the CSA imposes for this offense. Section 841 is divided into two subsections that are relevant here: (a), titled “Unlawful acts,” which includes the offense just described, and (b), titled “Penalties.” Subsection (b) tells us how “any person who violates subsection (a)” shall be punished, depending on the circumstances of his crime (e.g., the type and quantity of controlled substance involved, whether it is a repeat offense).[6] Subsection (b)(1)(D) provides that if a person commits a violation of subsection (a) involving “less than 50 kilograms of marihuana,” then “such person shall, except as provided in paragraphs (4) and (5) of this subsection, be sentenced to a term of imprisonment of not more than 5 years,” i.e., as a felon. But one of the exceptions is important here. Paragraph (4) provides, “Notwithstanding paragraph (1)(D) of this subsection, any person who violates subsection (a) of this section by distributing a small amount of marihuana for no remuneration shall be treated as” a simple drug possessor, 21 U. S. C. §844, which for our purposes means as a misdemeanant.[7] These dovetailing provisions create two mutually exclusive categories of punishment for CSA marijuana distribution offenses: one a felony, and one not. The only way to know whether a marijuana distribution offense is “punishable as a felony” under the CSA, Lopez, 549 U. S., at 60, is to know whether the conditions described in paragraph (4) are present or absent. A conviction under the same Georgia statute for “sell[ing]” marijuana, for example, would seem to establish remuneration. The presence of remuneration would mean that paragraph (4) is not implicated, and thus that the conviction is necessarily for conduct punishable as a felony under the CSA (under paragraph (1)(D)). In contrast, the fact of a conviction for possession with intent to distribute marijuana, standing alone, does not reveal whether either remuneration or more than a small amount of marijuana was involved. It is possible neither was; we know that Georgia prosecutes this offense when a defendant possesses only a small amount of marijuana, see, e.g., Taylor v. State, 260 Ga. App. 890, 581 S.E.2d 386, 388 (2003) (6.6 grams), and that “distribution” does not require remuneration, see, e.g., Hadden v. State, 181 Ga. App. 628, 628–629, 353 S.E.2d 532, 533–534 (1987). So Moncrieffe’s conviction could correspond to either the CSA felony or the CSA misdemeanor. Ambiguity on this point means that the conviction did not “necessarily” involve facts that correspond to an offense punishable as a felony under the CSA. Under the categorical approach, then, Moncrieffe was not convicted of an aggravated felony. III A The Government advances a different approach that leads to a different result. In its view, §841(b)(4)’s misdemeanor provision is irrelevant to the categorical analysis because paragraph (4) is merely a “mitigating exception,” to the CSA offense, not one of the “elements” of the offense. Brief for Respondent 12. And because possession with intent to distribute marijuana is “presumptive[ly]” a felony under the CSA, the Government asserts, any state offense with the same elements is presumptively an aggravated felony. Id., at 37. These two contentions are related, and we reject both of them. First, the Government reads our cases to hold that the categorical approach is concerned only with the “elements” of an offense, so §841(b)(4) “is not relevant” to the categorical analysis. Id., at 20. It is enough to satisfy the categorical inquiry, the Government suggests, that the “elements” of Moncrieffe’s Georgia offense are the same as those of the CSA offense: (1) possession (2) of marijuana (a controlled substance), (3) with intent to distribute it. But that understanding is inconsistent with Carachuri-Rosendo, our only decision to address both “elements” and “sentencing factors.” There we recognized that when Congress has chosen to define the generic federal offense by reference to punishment, it may be necessary to take account of federal sentencing factors too. See 560 U. S., at ___ (slip op., at 3). In that case the relevant CSA offense was simple possession, which “becomes a ‘felony punishable under the [CSA]’ only because the sentencing factor of recidivism authorizes additional punishment beyond one year, the criterion for a felony.” Id., at ___ (Scalia, J., concurring in judgment) (slip op., at 2). We therefore called the generic federal offense “recidivist simple possession,” even though such a crime is not actually “a separate offense” under the CSA, but rather an “ ‘amalgam’ ” of offense elements and sentencing factors. Id., at ___, and n. 3, ___ (majority opinion) (slip op., at 3, and n. 3, 7). In other words, not only must the state offense of conviction meet the “elements” of the generic federal offense defined by the INA, but the CSA must punish that offense as a felony. Here, the facts giving rise to the CSA offense establish a crime that may be either a felony or a misdemeanor, depending upon the presence or absence of certain factors that are not themselves elements of the crime. And so to qualify as an aggravated felony, a conviction for the predicate offense must necessarily establish those factors as well. The Government attempts to distinguish Carachuri-Rosendo on the ground that the sentencing factor there was a “narrow” aggravating exception that turned a misdemeanor into a felony, whereas here §841(b)(4) is a narrow mitigation exception that turns a felony into a misdemeanor. Brief for Respondent 40–43. This argument hinges upon the Government’s second assertion: that any marijuana distribution conviction is “presumptively” a felony. But that is simply incorrect, and the Government’s argument collapses as a result. Marijuana distribution is neither a felony nor a misdemeanor until we know whether the conditions in paragraph (4) attach: Section 841(b)(1)(D) makes the crime punishable by five years’ imprisonment “except as provided” in paragraph (4), and §841(b)(4) makes it punishable as a misdemeanor “[n]otwithstanding paragraph (1)(D)” when only “a small amount of marihuana for no remuneration” is involved. (Emphasis added.) The CSA’s text makes neither provision the default. Rather, each is drafted to be exclusive of the other. Like the BIA and the Fifth Circuit, the Government believes the felony provision to be the default because, in practice, that is how federal criminal prosecutions for marijuana distribution operate. See 662 F. 3d, at 391–392; Matter of Aruna, 24 I. & N. Dec. 452, 456–457 (2008); Brief for Respondent 18–23. It is true that every Court of Appeals to have considered the question has held that a defendant is eligible for a 5-year sentence under §841(b)(1)(D) if the Government proves he possessed marijuana with the intent to distribute it, and that the Government need not negate the §841(b)(4) factors in each case. See, e.g., United States v. Outen, 286 F.3d 622, 636–639 (CA2 2002) (describing §841(b)(4) as a “mitigating exception”); United States v. Hamlin, 319 F.3d 666, 670–671 (CA4 2003) (collecting cases). Instead, the burden is on the defendant to show that he qualifies for the lesser sentence under §841(b)(4). Cf. id., at 671. We cannot discount §841’s text, however, which creates no default punishment, in favor of the procedural overlay or burdens of proof that would apply in a hypothetical federal criminal prosecution. In Carachuri-Rosendo, we rejected the Fifth Circuit’s “ ‘hypothetical approach,’ ” which examined whether conduct “ ‘could have been punished as a felony’ ‘had [it] been prosecuted in federal court.’ ” 560 U. S., at ___, ___ (slip op., at 8, 11).[8] The outcome in a hypothetical prosecution is not the relevant inquiry. Rather, our “more focused, categorical inquiry” is whether the record of conviction of the predicate offense necessarily establishes conduct that the CSA, on its own terms, makes punishable as a felony. Id., at ___ (slip op., at 16). The analogy to a federal prosecution is misplaced for another reason. The Court of Appeals cases the Government cites distinguished between elements and sentencing factors to determine which facts must be proved to a jury, in light of the Sixth Amendment concerns addressed in Apprendi v. New Jersey, 530 U.S. 466 (2000). The courts considered which “provision . . . states a complete crime upon the fewest facts,” Outen, 286 F. 3d, at 638, which was significant after Apprendi to identify what a jury had to find before a defendant could receive §841(b)(1)(D)’s maximum 5-year sentence. But those concerns do not apply in this context. Here we consider a “generic” federal offense in the abstract, not an actual federal offense being prosecuted before a jury. Our concern is only which facts the CSA relies upon to distinguish between felonies and misdemeanors, not which facts must be found by a jury as opposed to a judge, nor who has the burden of proving which facts in a federal prosecution.[9] Because of these differences, we made clear in Carachuri-Rosendo that, for purposes of the INA, a generic fed- eral offense may be defined by reference to both “ ‘elements’ in the traditional sense” and sentencing factors. 560 U. S., at ___, n. 3, ___ (slip op., at 3, n. 3, 7); see also id., at ___ (Scalia, J., concurring in judgment) (slip op., at 3) (describing the generic federal offense there as “the Controlled Substances Act felony of possession-plus-recidivism”). Indeed, the distinction between “elements” and “sentencing factors” did not exist when Congress added illicit drug trafficking to the list of aggravated felonies, Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1988, 102Stat. 4469–4470, and most courts at the time understood both §841(b)(1)(D) and §841(b)(4) to contain sentencing factors that draw the line between a felony and a misdemeanor. See, e.g., United States v. Campuzano, 905 F.2d 677, 679 (CA2 1990). Carachuri-Rosendo controls here. Finally, there is a more fundamental flaw in the Government’s approach: It would render even an undisputed misdemeanor an aggravated felony. This is “just what the English language tells us not to expect,” and that leaves us “very wary of the Government’s position.” Lopez, 549 U. S., at 54. Consider a conviction under a New York statute that provides, “A person is guilty of criminal sale of marihuana in the fifth degree when he knowingly and unlawfully sells, without consideration, [marihuana] of an aggregate weight of two grams or less; or one cigarette containing marihuana.” N. Y. Penal Law Ann. §221.35 (West 2008) (emphasis added). This statute criminalizes only the distribution of a small amount of marijuana for no remuneration, and so all convictions under the statute would fit within the CSA misdemeanor provision, §841(b)(4). But the Government would categorically deem a conviction under this statute to be an aggravated felony, because the statute contains the corresponding “elements” of (1) distributing (2) marijuana, and the Government believes all marijuana distribution offenses are punishable as felonies. The same anomaly would result in the case of a noncitizen convicted of a misdemeanor in federal court under §§841(a) and (b)(4) directly. Even in that case, under the Government’s logic, we would need to treat the federal misdemeanor conviction as an aggravated felony, because the conviction establishes elements of an offense that is presumptively a felony. This cannot be. “We cannot imagine that Congress took the trouble to incorporate its own statutory scheme of felonies and misdemeanors,” only to have courts presume felony treatment and ignore the very factors that distinguish felonies from misdemeanors. Lopez, 549 U. S., at 58. B Recognizing that its approach leads to consequences Congress could not have intended, the Government hedges its argument by proposing a remedy: Noncitizens should be given an opportunity during immigration proceedings to demonstrate that their predicate marijuana distribution convictions involved only a small amount of marijuana and no remuneration, just as a federal criminal defendant could do at sentencing. Brief for Respondent 35–39. This is the procedure adopted by the BIA in Matter of Castro Rodriguez, 25 I. & N. Dec. 698, 702 (2012), and endorsed by Justice Alito’s dissent, post, at 11–12. This solution is entirely inconsistent with both the INA’s text and the categorical approach. As noted, the relevant INA provisions ask what the noncitizen was “convicted of,” not what he did, and the inquiry in immigration proceedings is limited accordingly. 8 U. S. C. §§1227(a)(2)(A)(iii), 1229b(a)(3); see Carachuri-Rosendo, 560 U. S., at ___ (slip op., at 11). The Government cites no statutory authority for such case-specific factfinding in immigration court, and none is apparent in the INA. Indeed, the Government’s main categorical argument would seem to preclude this inquiry: If the Government were correct that “the fact of a marijuana-distribution conviction alone constitutes a CSA felony,” Brief for Respondent 37, then all marijuana distribution convictions would categorically be convictions of the drug trafficking aggravated felony, mandatory deportation would follow under the statute, and there would be no room for the Government’s follow-on factfinding procedure. The Government cannot have it both ways. Moreover, the procedure the Government envisions would require precisely the sort of post hoc investigation into the facts of predicate offenses that we have long deemed undesirable. The categorical approach serves “practical” purposes: It promotes judicial and administrative efficiency by precluding the relitigation of past convictions in minitrials conducted long after the fact. Chambers v. United States, 555 U.S. 122, 125 (2009); see also Mylius, 210 F., at 862–863. Yet the Government’s approach would have our Nation’s overburdened immigration courts entertain and weigh testimony from, for example, the friend of a noncitizen who may have shared a marijuana cigarette with him at a party, or the local police officer who recalls to the contrary that cash traded hands. And, as a result, two noncitizens, each “convicted of” the same offense, might obtain different aggravated felony determinations depending on what evidence remains available or how it is perceived by an individual immigration judge. The categorical approach was designed to avoid this “potential unfairness.” Taylor, 495 U. S., at 601; see also Mylius, 210 F., at 863. Furthermore, the minitrials the Government proposes would be possible only if the noncitizen could locate witnesses years after the fact, notwithstanding that during removal proceedings noncitizens are not guaranteed legal representation and are often subject to mandatory detention, §1226(c)(1)(B), where they have little ability to collect evidence. See Katzmann, The Legal Profession and the Unmet Needs of the Immigrant Poor, 21 Geo. J. Legal Ethics 3, 5–10 (2008); Brief for National Immigrant Justice Center et al. as Amici Curiae 5–18; Brief for Immigration Law Professors as Amici Curiae 27–32. A noncitizen in removal proceedings is not at all similarly situated to a defendant in a federal criminal prosecution. The Government’s suggestion that the CSA’s procedures could readily be replicated in immigration proceedings is therefore misplaced. Cf. Carachuri-Rosendo, 560 U. S., at ___ (slip op., at 14–15) (rejecting the Government’s argument that procedures governing determination of the recidivism sentencing factor could “be satisfied during the immigration proceeding”). The Government defends its proposed immigration court proceedings as “a subsequent step outside the categorical approach in light of Section 841(b)(4)’s ‘circumstance-specific’ nature.” Brief for Respondent 37. This argument rests upon Nijhawan, in which we considered another aggravated felony, “an offense that . . . involves fraud or deceit in which the loss to the victim or victims exceeds $10,000.” 8 U. S. C. §1101(a)(43)(M)(i). We held that the $10,000 threshold was not to be applied categorically as a required component of a generic offense, but instead called for a “circumstance-specific approach” that allows for an examination, in immigration court, of the “particular circumstances in which an offender committed the crime on a particular occasion.” Nijhawan, 557 U. S., at 38–40. The Government suggests the §841(b)(4) factors are like the monetary threshold, and thus similarly amenable to a circumstance-specific inquiry. We explained in Nijhawan, however, that unlike the provision there, “illicit trafficking in a controlled substance” is a “generic crim[e]” to which the categorical approach applies, not a circumstance-specific provision. Id., at 37; see also Carachuri-Rosendo, 560 U. S., at ___, n. 11 (slip op., at 12–13, n. 11). That distinction is evident in the structure of the INA. The monetary threshold is a limitation, written into the INA itself, on the scope of the aggravated felony for fraud. And the monetary threshold is set off by the words “in which,” which calls for a circumstance-specific examination of “the conduct involved ‘in’ the commission of the offense of conviction.” Nijhawan, 557 U. S., at 39. Locating this exception in the INA proper suggests an intent to have the relevant facts found in immigration proceedings. But where, as here, the INA incorporates other criminal statutes wholesale, we have held it “must refer to generic crimes,” to which the categorical approach applies. Id., at 37. Finally, the Government suggests that the immigration court’s task would not be so daunting in some cases, such as those in which a noncitizen was convicted under the New York statute previously discussed or convicted directly under §841(b)(4). True, in those cases, the record of conviction might reveal on its face that the predicate offense was punishable only as a misdemeanor. But most States do not have stand-alone offenses for the social sharing of marijuana, so minitrials concerning convictions from the other States, such as Georgia, would be inevitable.[10] The Government suggests that even in these other States, the record of conviction may often address the §841(b)(4) factors, because noncitizens “will be advised of the immigration consequences of a conviction,” as defense counsel is required to do under Padilla v. Kentucky, 559 U.S. 359 (2010), and as a result counsel can build an appropriate record when the facts are fresh. Brief for Respondent 38. Even assuming defense counsel “will” do something simply because it is required of effective counsel (an assumption experience does not always bear out), this argument is unavailing because there is no reason to believe that state courts will regularly or uniformly admit evidence going to facts, such as remuneration, that are irrelevant to the offense charged. In short, to avoid the absurd consequences that would flow from the Government’s narrow understanding of the categorical approach, the Government proposes a solution that largely undermines the categorical approach. That the only cure is worse than the disease suggests the Government is simply wrong. C The Government fears the consequences of our decision, but its concerns are exaggerated. The Government observes that, like Georgia, about half the States criminalize marijuana distribution through statutes that do not require remuneration or any minimum quantity of mari- juana. Id., at 26–28. As a result, the Government contends, noncitizens convicted of marijuana distribution offenses in those States will avoid “aggravated felony” determinations, purely because their convictions do not resolve whether their offenses involved federal felony conduct or misdemeanor conduct, even though many (if not most) prosecutions involve either remuneration or larger amounts of marijuana (or both). Escaping aggravated felony treatment does not mean escaping deportation, though. It means only avoiding mandatory removal. See Carachuri-Rosendo, 560 U. S., at ___ (slip op., at 17). Any marijuana distribution offense, even a misdemeanor, will still render a noncitizen deportable as a controlled substances offender. 8 U. S. C. §1227(a)(2)(B)(i). At that point, having been found not to be an aggravated felon, the noncitizen may seek relief from removal such as asylum or cancellation of removal, assuming he satisfies the other eligibility criteria. §§1158(b), 1229b(a)(1)–(2). But those forms of relief are discretionary. The Attorney General may, in his discretion, deny relief if he finds that the noncitizen is actually a member of one “of the world’s most dangerous drug cartels,” post, at 2 (opinion of Alito, J.), just as he may deny relief if he concludes the negative equities outweigh the positive equities of the noncitizen’s case for other reasons. As a result, “to the extent that our rejection of the Government’s broad understanding of the scope of ‘aggravated felony’ may have any practical effect on policing our Nation’s borders, it is a limited one.” Carachuri-Rosendo, 560 U. S., at ___ (slip op., at 17). In any event, serious drug traffickers may be adjudi- cated aggravated felons regardless, because they will likely be convicted under greater “trafficking” offenses that necessarily establish that more than a small amount of marijuana was involved. See, e.g., Ga. Code Ann. §16–13–31(c)(1) (Supp. 2012) (separate provision for trafficking in more than 10 pounds of marijuana). Of course, some offenders’ conduct will fall between §841(b)(4) conduct and the more serious conduct required to trigger a “trafficking” statute. Brief for Respondent 30. Those offenders may avoid aggravated felony status by operation of the categorical approach. But the Government’s objection to that underinclusive result is little more than an attack on the categorical approach itself.[11] We prefer this degree of imperfection to the heavy burden of relitigating old prosecutions. See supra, at 15–16. And we err on the side of underinclusiveness because ambiguity in criminal statutes referenced by the INA must be construed in the noncitizen’s favor. See Carachuri-Rosendo, 560 U. S., at ___ (slip op., at 17); Leocal v. Ashcroft, 543 U.S. 1, 11, n. 8 (2004). Finally, the Government suggests that our holding will frustrate the enforcement of other aggravated felony provisions, like §1101(a)(43)(C), which refers to a federal firearms statute that contains an exception for “antique firearm[s],” 18 U. S. C. §921(a)(3). The Government fears that a conviction under any state firearms law that lacks such an exception will be deemed to fail the categorical inquiry. But Duenas-Alvarez requires that there be “a realistic probability, not a theoretical possibility, that the State would apply its statute to conduct that falls outside the generic definition of a crime.” 549 U. S., at 193. To defeat the categorical comparison in this manner, a non- citizen would have to demonstrate that the State actu- ally prosecutes the relevant offense in cases involving an- tique firearms. Further, the Government points to §1101(a)(43)(P), which makes passport fraud an aggravated felony, except when the noncitizen shows he committed the offense to assist an immediate family member. But that exception is provided in the INA itself. As we held in Nijhawan, a circumstance-specific inquiry would apply to that provision, so it is not comparable. 557 U. S., at 37–38. * * * This is the third time in seven years that we have considered whether the Government has properly characterized a low-level drug offense as “illicit trafficking in a controlled substance,” and thus an “aggravated felony.” Once again we hold that the Government’s approach defies “the ‘commonsense conception’ ” of these terms. Carachuri-Rosendo, 560 U. S., at ___ (slip op., at 9) (quoting Lopez, 549 U. S., at 53). Sharing a small amount of marijuana for no remuneration, let alone possession with intent to do so, “does not fit easily into the ‘everyday understanding’ ” of “trafficking,” which “ ‘ordinarily . . . means some sort of commercial dealing.’ ” Carachuri-Rosendo, 560 U. S., at ___ (slip op., at 9) (quoting Lopez, 549 U. S., at 53–54). Nor is it sensible that a state statute that criminalizes conduct that the CSA treats as a misde- meanor should be designated an “aggravated felony.” We hold that it may not be. If a noncitizen’s conviction for a marijuana distribution offense fails to establish that the offense involved either remuneration or more than a small amount of marijuana, the conviction is not for an aggravated felony under the INA. The contrary judgment of the Court of Appeals is reversed, and the case is remanded for further proceedings consistent with this opinion. It is so ordered. Notes 1 In addition to asylum, a noncitizen who fears persecution may seek withholding of removal, 8 U. S. C. §1231(b)(3)(A), and deferral of removal under the Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (CAT), Art. 3, Dec. 10, 1984, S. Treaty Doc. No. 100–20, p. 20, 1465 U. N. T. S. 85; 8 CFR §1208.17(a) (2012). These forms of relief require the noncitizen to show a greater likelihood of persecution or torture at home than is necessary for asylum, but the Attorney General has no discretion to deny relief to a noncitizen who establishes his eligibility. A conviction of an aggravated felony has no effect on CAT eligibility, but will render a noncitizen ineligible for withholding of removal if he “has been sentenced to an aggregate term of imprisonment of at least 5 years” for any aggravated felonies. 8 U. S. C. §1231(b)(3)(B). 2 The parties agree that this resolution of Moncrieffe’s Georgia case is nevertheless a “conviction” as the INA defines that term, 8 U. S. C. §1101(a)(48)(A). See Brief for Petitioner 6, n. 2; Brief for Respondent 5, n. 2. 3 Compare 662 F.3d 387 (CA5 2011) (case below), Garcia v. Holder, 638 F.3d 511 (CA6 2011) (is an aggravated felony), and Julce v. Mukasey, 530 F.3d 30 (CA1 2008) (same), with Martinez v. Mukasey, 551 F.3d 113 (CA2 2008) (is not an aggravated felony), and Wilson v. Ashcroft, 350 F.3d 377 (CA3 2003) (same). 4 Carachuri-Rosendo construed a different provision of the INA that concerns cancellation of removal, which also requires determining whether the noncitizen has been “convicted of any aggravated felony.” 8 U. S. C. §1229b(a)(3) (emphasis added). Our analysis is the same in both contexts. 5 In full, 21 U. S. C. §841(a)(1) provides, “Except as authorized by this subchapter, it shall be unlawful for any person knowingly or intentionally— “(1) to manufacture, distribute, or dispense, or possess with intent to manufacture, distribute, or dispense, a controlled substance . . . .” 6 In pertinent part, §§841(b)(1)(D) and (b)(4) (2006 ed. and Supp. V) provide, “Except as otherwise provided in section 849, 859, 860, or 861 of this title, any person who violates subsection (a) of this section shall be sentenced as follows: . . . . . “[(1)](D) In the case of less than 50 kilograms of marihuana, except in the case of 50 or more marihuana plants regardless of weight, 10 kilograms of hashish, or one kilogram of hashish oil, such person shall, except as provided in paragraphs (4) and (5) of this subsection, be sentenced to a term of imprisonment of not more than 5 years, a fine not to exceed the greater of that authorized in accordance with the provisions of title 18 or $250,000 if the defendant is an individual or $1,000,000 if the defendant is other than an individual, or both. . . . . . . . . “(4) Notwithstanding paragraph (1)(D) of this subsection, any person who violates subsection (a) of this section by distributing a small amount of marihuana for no remuneration shall be treated as provided in section 844 of this title and section 3607 of title 18.” 7 Although paragraph (4) speaks only of “distributing” marijuana, the parties agree that it also applies to “the more inchoate offense of possession with intent to distribute that drug.” Matter of Castro Rodriguez, 25 I. & N. Dec. 698, 699, n. 2 (BIA 2012); see Brief for Petitioner 6, n. 2; Brief for Respondent 8, n. 5. The CSA does not define “small amount.” The BIA has suggested that 30 grams “serve[s] as a useful guidepost,” Castro Rodriguez, 25 I. & N. Dec., at 703, noting that the INA exempts from deportable controlled substances offenses “a single offense involving possession for one’s own use of 30 grams or less of marijuana,” 8 U. S. C. §1227(a)(2)(B)(i). The meaning of “small amount” is not at issue in this case, so we need not, and do not, define the term. 8 Justice Alito states that the statute “obviously” requires examination of whether “conduct associated with the state offense . . . would have supported a qualifying conviction under the federal CSA.” Post, at 3 (dissenting opinion) (emphasis added); see also post, at 8. But this echoes the Fifth Circuit’s approach in Carachuri-Rosendo. As noted in the text, our opinion explicitly rejected such reasoning based on conditional perfect formulations. See also, e.g., Carachuri-Rosendo, 560 U. S., at ___ (slip op., at 16) (criticizing approach that “focuses on facts known to the immigration court that could have but did not serve as the basis for the state conviction and punishment” (emphasis altered)). Instead, as we have explained, supra, at 10–11, our holding depended upon the fact that Carachuri-Rosendo’s conviction did not establish the fact necessary to distinguish between misdemeanor and felony punishment under the CSA. The same is true here. 9 The Government also cites 21 U. S. C. §885(a)(1), which provides that the Government need not “negative any exemption or exception set forth” in the CSA, and instead “the burden of going forward with the evidence with respect to any such exemption or exception shall be upon the person claiming its benefit.” Brief for Respondent 21. Even assuming §841(b)(4) is such an “exception,” §885(a)(1) applies, by its own terms, only to “any trial, hearing, or other proceeding under” the CSA itself, not to the rather different proceedings under the INA. 10 In addition to New York, it appears that 13 other States have separate offenses for §841(b)(4) conduct. See Cal. Health & Safety Code Ann. §11360(b) (West Supp. 2013); Colo. Rev. Stat. Ann. §18–18–406(5) (2012); Fla. Stat. §893.13(2)(b)(3) (2010); Ill. Comp. Stat., ch. 20, §§550/3, 550/4, 550/6 (West 2010); Iowa Code §124.410 (2009); Minn. Stat. §152.027(4)(a) (2010); N. M. Stat. Ann. §30–31–22(E) (Supp. 2011); Ohio Rev. Code Ann. §2925.03(C)(3)(h) (Lexis 2012 Cum. Supp.); Ore. Rev. Stat. §475.860(3) (2011); Pa. Stat. Ann., Tit. 35, §780–113(a)(31) (Purdon Supp. 2012); S. D. Codified Laws §22–42–7 (Supp. 2012); Tex. Health & Safety Code Ann. §481.120(b)(1) (West 2010); W. Va. Code Ann. §60A–4–402(c) (Lexis 2010). 11 Similarly, Justice Alito’s dissent suggests that he disagrees with the first premises of the categorical approach. He says it is a “strange and disruptive resul[t]” that “defendants convicted in different States for committing the same criminal conduct” might suffer different collateral consequences depending upon how those States define their statutes of conviction. Post, at 9. Yet that is the longstanding, natural result of the categorical approach, which focuses not on the criminal conduct a defendant “commit[s],” but rather what facts are necessarily established by a conviction for the state offense. Different state offenses will necessarily establish different facts. Some will track the “uni-form” federal definition of the generic offense, and some will not. Taylor v. United States, 495 U.S. 575, 590 (1990). Whatever disparity this may create as between defendants whose real-world conduct was the same, it ensures that all defendants whose convictions establish the same facts will be treated consistently, and thus predictably, under federal law. This was Taylor’s chief concern in adopting the categorical approach. See id., at 599–602.

570.US.472

The Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act (FDCA) requires manufacturers to gain Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approval before marketing any brand-name or generic drug in interstate commerce. 21 U. S. C. §355(a). Once a drug is approved, a manufacturer is prohibited from making any major changes to the “qualitative or quantitative formulation of the drug product, including active ingredients, or in the specifications provided in the approved application.” 21 CFR §314.70(b)(2)(i). Generic manufacturers are also prohibited from making any unilateral changes to a drug’s label. See §§314.94(a)(8)(iii), 314.150(b)(10). In 2004, respondent was prescribed Clinoril, the brand-name version of the nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drug (NSAID) sulindac, for shoulder pain. Her pharmacist dispensed a generic form of sulindac manufactured by petitioner Mutual Pharmaceutical. Respondent soon developed an acute case of toxic epidermal necrolysis. She is now severely disfigured, has physical disabilities, and is nearly blind. At the time of the prescription, sulindac’s label did not specifically refer to toxic epidermal necrolysis. By 2005, however, the FDA had recommended changing all NSAID labeling to contain a more explicit toxic epidermal necrolysis warning. Respondent sued Mutual in New Hampshire state court, and Mutual removed the case to federal court. A jury found Mutual liable on respondent’s design-defect claim and awarded her over $21 million. The First Circuit affirmed. As relevant, it found that neither the FDCA nor the FDA’s regulations pre-empted respondent’s design-defect claim. It distinguished PLIVA, Inc. v. Mensing, 564 U. S. ___—in which the Court held that failure-to-warn claims against generic manufacturers are pre-empted by the FDCA’s prohibition on changes to generic drug labels—by arguing that generic manufacturers facing design-defect claims could comply with both federal and state law simply by choosing not to make the drug at all. Held: State-law design-defect claims that turn on the adequacy of a drug’s warnings are pre-empted by federal law under PLIVA. Pp. 6–20. (a) Under the Supremacy Clause, state laws that conflict with federal law are “without effect.” Maryland v. Louisiana, 451 U.S. 725, 746. Even in the absence of an express pre-emption provision, a state law may be impliedly pre-empted where it is “impossible for a private party to comply with both state and federal requirements.” English v. General Elec. Co., 496 U.S. 72, 79. Here, it is impossible for Mutual to comply with both its federal-law duty not to alter sulindac’s label or composition and its state-law duty to either strengthen the warnings on sulindac’s label or change sulindac’s design. Pp. 6–13. (1) New Hampshire’s design-defect cause of action imposes affirmative duties on manufacturers, including a “duty to design [their products] reasonably safely for the uses which [they] can foresee.” Thibault v. Sears, Roebuck & Co., 118 N. H. 802, 809, 395 A.2d 843, 847. Pp. 7–8. (2) To assess whether a product’s design is “unreasonably dangerous to the user,” Vautour v. Body Masters Sports Industries, Inc., 147 N. H. 150, 153, 784 A.2d 1178, 1181, the New Hampshire Supreme Court employs a “risk-utility approach,” which asks whether the danger’s magnitude outweighs the product’s utility, id., at 154, 784 A. 2d, at 1182. The court has repeatedly identified three factors as germane to that inquiry: “the usefulness and desirability of the product to the public as a whole, whether the risk of danger could have been reduced without significantly affecting either the product’s effectiveness or manufacturing cost, and the presence and efficacy of a warning to avoid an unreasonable risk of harm from hidden dangers or from foreseeable uses.” Ibid. Increasing a drug’s “usefulness” or reducing its “risk of danger” would require redesigning the drug, since those factors are direct results of a drug’s chemical design and active ingredients. Here, however, redesign was not possible for two reasons. First, the FDCA requires a generic drug to have the same active ingredients, route of administration, dosage form, strength, and labeling as its brand-name drug equivalent. Second, because of sulindac’s simple composition, the drug is chemically incapable of being redesigned. Accordingly, because redesign was impossible, Mutual could only ameliorate sulindac’s “risk-utility” profile by strengthening its warnings. Thus, New Hampshire’s law ultimately required Mutual to change sulindac’s labeling. Pp. 9–13. (3) But PLIVA makes clear that federal law prevents generic drug manufacturers from changing their labels. See 564 U. S., at ___. Accordingly, Mutual was prohibited from taking the remedial action required to avoid liability under New Hampshire law. P. 13. (4) When federal law forbids an action required by state law, the state law is “without effect.” Maryland, supra, at 746. Because it was impossible for Mutual to comply with both state and federal law, New Hampshire’s warning-based design-defect cause of action is pre-empted with respect to FDA-approved drugs sold in interstate commerce. Pp. 13–14. (b) The First Circuit’s rationale—that Mutual could escape the impossibility of complying with both its federal- and state-law duties by choosing to stop selling sulindac—is incompatible with this Court’s pre-emption cases, which have presumed that an actor seeking to satisfy both federal- and state-law obligations is not required to cease acting altogether. Pp. 14–16. 678 F.3d 30, reversed. Alito, J., delivered the opinion of the Court, in which Roberts, C. J., and Scalia, Kennedy, and Thomas, JJ., joined. Breyer, J., filed a dissenting opinion, in which Kagan, J., joined. Sotomayor, J., filed a dissenting opinion, in which Ginsburg, J., joined.

We must decide whether federal law pre-empts the New Hampshire design-defect claim under which respondent Karen Bartlett recovered damages from petitioner Mutual Pharmaceutical, the manufacturer of sulindac, a generic nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drug (NSAID). New Hampshire law imposes a duty on manufacturers to ensure that the drugs they market are not unreasonably unsafe, and a drug’s safety is evaluated by reference to both its chemical properties and the adequacy of its warnings. Because Mutual was unable to change sulindac’s composition as a matter of both federal law and basic chemistry, New Hampshire’s design-defect cause of action effectively required Mutual to change sulindac’s labeling to provide stronger warnings. But, as this Court recognized just two Terms ago in PLIVA, Inc. v. Mensing, 564 U. S. ___ (2011), federal law prohibits generic drug manufacturers from independently changing their drugs’ labels. Accordingly, state law imposed a duty on Mutual not to comply with federal law. Under the Supremacy Clause, state laws that require a private party to violate federal law are pre-empted and, thus, are “without effect.” Maryland v. Louisiana, 451 U. S. 725, 746 (1981) . The Court of Appeals’ solution—that Mutual should simply have pulled sulindac from the market in order to comply with both state and federal law—is no solution. Rather, adopting the Court of Appeals’ stop-selling rationale would render impossibility pre-emption a dead letter and work a revolution in this Court’s pre-emption case law. Accordingly, we hold that state-law design-defect claims that turn on the adequacy of a drug’s warnings are pre-empted by federal law under PLIVA. We thus reverse the decision of the Court of Appeals below. I Under the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act (FDCA), ch. 675, 52Stat. 1040, as amended, 21 U. S. C. §301 et seq., drug manufacturers must gain approval from the United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA) before marketing any drug in interstate commerce. §355(a). In the case of a new brand-name drug, FDA approval can be secured only by submitting a new-drug application (NDA). An NDA is a compilation of materials that must include “full reports of [all clinical] investigations,” §355(b)(1)(A), relevant nonclinical studies, and “any other data or information relevant to an evaluation of the safety and effectiveness of the drug product obtained or otherwise received by the applicant from any source,” 21 CFR §§314.50(d)(2) and (5)(iv) (2012). The NDA must also include “the labeling proposed to be used for such drug,” 21 U. S. C. §355(b)(1)(F); 21 CFR §314.50(c)(2)(i), and “a discussion of why the [drug’s] benefits exceed the risks under the conditions stated in the labeling,” 21 CFR §314.50(d)(5)(viii); §314.50(c)(2)(ix). The FDA may approve an NDA only if it determines that the drug in question is “safe for use” under “the conditions of use prescribed, recommended, or suggested in the proposed labeling thereof.” 21 U. S. C. §355(d). In order for the FDA to consider a drug safe, the drug’s “probable therapeutic benefits must outweigh its risk of harm.” FDA v. Brown & Williamson Tobacco Corp., 529 U. S. 120, 140 (2000) . The process of submitting an NDA is both onerous and lengthy. See Report to Congressional Requesters, Government Accountability Office, Nov. 2006, New Drug Development, 26 Biotechnology L. Rep. 82, 94 (2007) (A typical NDA spans thousands of pages and is based on clinical trials conducted over several years). In order to provide a swifter route for approval of generic drugs, Congress passed the Drug Price Competition and Patent Term Restoration Act of 1984, 98Stat. 1585, popularly known as the “Hatch-Waxman Act.” Under Hatch-Waxman, a generic drug may be approved without the same level of clinical testing required for approval of a new brand-name drug, provided the generic drug is identical to the already-approved brand-name drug in several key respects. First, the proposed generic drug must be chemically equivalent to the approved brand-name drug: it must have the same “active ingredient” or “active ingredients,” “route of administration,” “dosage form,” and “strength” as its brand-name counterpart. 21 U. S. C. §§355(j)(2)(A)(ii) and (iii). Second, a proposed generic must be “bioequivalent” to an approved brand-name drug. §355(j)(2)(A)(iv). That is, it must have the same “rate and extent of absorption” as the brand-name drug. §355(j)(8)(B). Third, the generic drug manufacturer must show that “the labeling proposed for the new drug is the same as the labeling approved for the [approved brand-name] drug.” §355(j)(2)(A)(v). Once a drug—whether generic or brand-name—is approved, the manufacturer is prohibited from making any major changes to the “qualitative or quantitative formulation of the drug product, including active ingredients, or in the specifications provided in the approved application.” 21 CFR §314.70(b)(2)(i). Generic manufacturers are also prohibited from making any unilateral changes to a drug’s label. See §§314.94(a)(8)(iii), 314.150(b)(10) (approval for a generic drug may be withdrawn if the generic drug’s label “is no longer consistent with that for [the brand-name] drug”). II In 1978, the FDA approved a nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory pain reliever called “sulindac” under the brand name Clinoril. When Clinoril’s patent expired, the FDA approved several generic sulindacs, including one manufactured by Mutual Pharmaceutical. 678 F. 3d 30, 34 (CA1 2012) (case below); App. to Pet. for Cert. 144a–145a. In a very small number of patients, NSAIDs—including both sulindac and popular NSAIDs such as ibuprofen, naproxen, and Cox2-inhibitors—have the serious side effect of causing two hypersensitivity skin reactions characterized by necrosis of the skin and of the mucous membranes: toxic epidermal necrolysis, and its less severe cousin, Stevens-Johnson Syndrome. 678 F. 3d, at 34, 43–44; Dorland’s Illustrated Medical Dictionary 1872 (31st ed. 2007); Physicians’ Desk Reference 146–147, 597 (6th ed. 2013); Friedman, Orlet, Still, & Law, Toxic Epidermal Necrolysis Due to Administration of Celecobix (Celebrex), 95 Southern Medical J. 1213, 1213–1214 (2002). In December 2004, respondent Karen L. Bartlett was prescribed Clinoril for shoulder pain. Her pharmacist dispensed a generic form of sulindac, which was manufactured by petitioner Mutual Pharmaceutical. Respondent soon developed an acute case of toxic epidermal necrolysis. The results were horrific. Sixty to sixty-five percent of the surface of respondent’s body deteriorated, was burned off, or turned into an open wound. She spent months in a medically induced coma, underwent 12 eye surgeries, and was tube-fed for a year. She is now severely disfigured, has a number of physical disabilities, and is nearly blind. At the time respondent was prescribed sulindac, the drug’s label did not specifically refer to Stevens-Johnson Syndrome or toxic epidermal necrolysis, but did warn that the drug could cause “severe skin reactions” and “[f]atalities.” App. 553; 731 F. Supp. 2d 135, 142 (NH 2010) (internal quotation marks omitted). However, Stevens-Johnson Syndrome and toxic epidermal necrolysis were listed as potential adverse reactions on the drug’s package insert. 678 F. 3d, at 36, n. 1. In 2005—once respondent was already suffering from toxic epidermal necrolysis—the FDA completed a “comprehensive review of the risks and benefits, [including the risk of toxic epidermal necrolysis], of all approved NSAID products.” Decision Letter, FDA Docket No. 2005P-0072/CP1, p. 2 (June 22, 2006), online at http://www.fda.gov/ohrms/dockets/ dockets/05p0072/05p-0072-pav0001-vol1.pdf (as visited June 18, 2013, and available in Clerk of Court’s case file). As a result of that review, the FDA recommended changes to the labeling of all NSAIDs, including sulindac, to more explicitly warn against toxic epidermal necrolysis. App. 353–354, 364, 557–561, 580, and n. 8. Respondent sued Mutual in New Hampshire state court, and Mutual removed the case to federal court. Respondent initially asserted both failure-to-warn and design-defect claims, but the District Court dismissed her failure-to-warn claim based on her doctor’s “admi[ssion] that he had not read the box label or insert.” 678 F. 3d, at 34. After a 2-week trial on respondent’s design-defect claim, a jury found Mutual liable and awarded respondent over $21 million in damages. The Court of Appeals affirmed. 678 F. 3d 30. As relevant, it found that neither the FDCA nor the FDA’s regulations pre-empted respondent’s design-defect claims. It distinguished PLIVA, Inc. v. Mensing, 564 U. S. ___ —in which the Court held that failure-to-warn claims against generic manufacturers are pre-empted by the FDCA’s prohibition on changes to generic drug labels—by arguing that generic manufacturers facing design-defect claims could simply “choose not to make the drug at all” and thus comply with both federal and state law. 678 F. 3d, at 37. We granted certiorari. 568 U. S. ___ (2012). III The Supremacy Clause provides that the laws and treaties of the United States “shall be the supreme Law of the Land . . . any Thing in the Constitution or Laws of any State to the Contrary notwithstanding.” U. S. Const., Art. VI, cl. 2. Accordingly, it has long been settled that state laws that conflict with federal law are “without effect.” Maryland v. Louisiana, 451 U. S., at 746; McCulloch v. Maryland, 4 Wheat. 316, 427 (1819). See also Gade v. National Solid Wastes Management Assn., 505 U. S. 88, 108 (1992) (“[U]nder the Supremacy Clause, from which our pre-emption doctrine is derived, any state law, however clearly within a State’s acknowledged power, which interferes with or is contrary to federal law, must yield” (internal quotation marks omitted)). Even in the absence of an express pre-emption provision, the Court has found state law to be impliedly pre-empted where it is “impossible for a private party to comply with both state and federal requirements.” English v. General Elec. Co., 496 U. S. 72, 79 (1990) . See also Florida Lime & Avocado Growers, Inc. v. Paul, 373 U. S. 132 –143 (1963) (“A holding of federal exclusion of state law is inescapable and requires no inquiry into congressional design where compliance with both federal and state regulations is a physical impossibility for one engaged in interstate commerce”). In the instant case, it was impossible for Mutual to comply with both its state-law duty to strengthen the warnings on sulindac’s label and its federal-law duty not to alter sulindac’s label. Accordingly, the state law is pre-empted. A We begin by identifying petitioner’s duties under state law. As an initial matter, respondent is wrong in asserting that the purpose of New Hampshire’s design- defect cause of action “is compensatory, not regulatory.” Brief for Respondent 19. Rather, New Hampshire’s design-defect cause of action imposes affirmative duties on manufacturers. Respondent is correct that New Hampshire has adopted the doctrine of strict liability in tort as set forth in Section 402A of the Restatement (Second) of Torts. See 2 Restatement (Second) of Torts §402A (1963 and 1964) (hereinafter Restatement 2d). See Buttrick v. Arthur Lessard & Sons, Inc., 110 N. H. 36, 37–39, 260 A. 2d 111, 112–113 (1969). Under the Restatement—and consequently, under New Hampshire tort law—“[o]ne who sells any product in a defective condition unreasonably dangerous to the user or consumer or to his property is subject to liability for physical harm thereby caused” even though he “has exercised all possible care in the preparation and sale of the product.” Restatement 2d §402A, at 347–348. But respondent’s argument conflates what we will call a “strict-liability” regime (in which liability does not depend on negligence, but still signals the breach of a duty) with what we will call an “absolute-liability” regime (in which liability does not reflect the breach of any duties at all, but merely serves to spread risk). New Hampshire has adopted the former, not the latter. Indeed, the New Hampshire Supreme Court has consistently held that the manu-facturer of a product has a “duty to design his product reasonably safely for the uses which he can foresee.” Thibault v. Sears, Roebuck & Co., 118 N. H. 802, 809, 395 A. 2d 843, 847 (1978). See also Reid v. Spadone Mach. Co., 119 N. H. 457, 465, 404 A. 2d 1094, 1099 (1979) (“In New Hampshire, the manufacturer is under a general duty to design his product reasonably safely for the uses which he can foresee” (internal quotation marks omitted)); Chellman v. Saab-Scania AB, 138 N. H. 73, 78, 637 A. 2d 148, 150 (1993) (“The duty to warn is part of the general duty to design, manufacture and sell products that are reasonably safe for their foreseeable uses”); cf. Simoneau v. South Bend Lathe, Inc., 130 N. H. 466, 469, 543 A. 2d 407, 409 (1988) (“We limit the application of strict tort liability in this jurisdiction by continuing to emphasize that liability without negligence is not liability without fault”); Price v. BIC Corp., 142 N. H. 386, 390, 702 A. 2d 330, 333 (1997) (cautioning “that the term ‘unreasonably dangerous’ should not be interpreted so broadly as to impose absolute liability on manufacturers or make them insurers of their products”). Accordingly, respondent is incorrect in arguing that New Hampshire’s strict-liability system “imposes no substantive duties on manufacturers.” Brief for Respondent 19. [ 1 ] B That New Hampshire tort law imposes a duty on manufacturers is clear. Determining the content of that duty requires somewhat more analysis. As discussed below in greater detail, New Hampshire requires manufacturers to ensure that the products they design, manufacture, and sell are not “unreasonably dangerous.” The New Hampshire Supreme Court has recognized that this duty can be satisfied either by changing a drug’s design or by changing its labeling. Since Mutual did not have the option of changing sulindac’s design, New Hampshire law ultimately required it to change sulindac’s labeling. Respondent argues that, even if New Hampshire law does impose a duty on drug manufacturers, that duty does not encompass either the “duty to change sulindac’s design” or the duty “to change sulindac’s labeling.” Brief for Respondent 30 (capitalization and emphasis deleted). That argument cannot be correct. New Hampshire imposes design-defect liability only where “the design of the product created a defective condition unreasonably dangerous to the user.” Vautour v. Body Masters Sports Industries, Inc., 147 N. H. 150, 153, 784 A. 2d 1178, 1181 (2001); Chellman, supra, at 77, 637 A. 2d, at 150. To determine whether a product is “unreasonably dangerous,” the New Hampshire Supreme Court employs a “risk-utility approach” under which “a product is defective as designed if the magnitude of the danger outweighs the utility of the product.” Vautour, supra, at 154, 784 A. 2d, at 1182 (internal quotation marks omitted). That risk-utility approach requires a “multifaceted balancing process involving evaluation of many conflicting factors.” Ibid. (internal quotation marks omitted); see also Thibault, supra, at 809, 395 A. 2d, at 847 (same). While the set of factors to be considered is ultimately an open one, the New Hampshire Supreme Court has repeatedly identified three factors as germane to the risk-utility inquiry: “the usefulness and desirability of the product to the public as a whole, whether the risk of danger could have been reduced without significantly affecting either the product’s effectiveness or manufacturing cost, and the presence and efficacy of a warning to avoid an unreasonable risk of harm from hidden dangers or from foreseeable uses.” Vautour, supra, at 154, 784 A. 2d, at 1182; see also Price, supra, at 389, 702 A. 2d, at 333 (same); Chellman, supra, at 77–78, 637 A. 2d, at 150 (same). In the drug context, either increasing the “usefulness” of a product or reducing its “risk of danger” would require redesigning the drug: A drug’s usefulness and its risk of danger are both direct results of its chemical design and, most saliently, its active ingredients. See 21 CFR §201.66(b)(2) (2012) (“Active ingredient means any component that is intended to furnish pharmacological activity or other direct effect in the diagnosis, cure, mitiga- tion, treatment, or prevention of disease, or to affect the structure of any function of the body of humans” (italics deleted)). In the present case, however, redesign was not possible for two reasons. First, the FDCA requires a generic drug to have the same active ingredients, route of adminis-tration, dosage form, strength, and labeling as the brand-name drug on which it is based. 21 U. S. C. §§355(j)(2)(A)(ii)–(v) and (8)(B); 21 CFR §320.1(c). Consequently, the Court of Appeals was correct to recognize that “Mutual cannot legally make sulindac in another composition.” 678 F. 3d, at 37. Indeed, were Mutual to change the composition of its sulindac, the altered chemical would be a new drug that would require its own NDA to be marketed in interstate commerce. See 21 CFR §310.3(h) (giving examples of when the FDA considers a drug to be new, including cases involving “newness for drug use of any substance which composes such drug, in whole or in part”). Second, because of sulindac’s simple composition, the drug is chemically incapable of being redesigned. See 678 F. 3d, at 37 (“Mutual cannot legally make sulindac in another composition (nor it is apparent how it could alter a one-molecule drug anyway)”). Given the impossibility of redesigning sulindac, the only way for Mutual to ameliorate the drug’s “risk-utility” profile—and thus to escape liability—was to strengthen “the presence and efficacy of [sulindac’s] warning” in such a way that the warning “avoid[ed] an unreasonable risk of harm from hidden dangers or from foreseeable uses.” Vautour, supra, at 154, 784 A. 2d, at 1182. See also Chellman, 138 N. H., at 78, 637 A. 2d, at 150 (“The duty to warn is part of the general duty to design, manufacture and sell products that are reasonably safe for their foreseeable uses. If the design of a product makes a warning necessary to avoid an unreasonable risk of harm from a foreseeable use, the lack of warning or an ineffective warning causes the product to be defective and unreasonably dangerous” (citation omitted)). Thus, New Hampshire’s design-defect cause of action imposed a duty on Mutual to strengthen sulindac’s warnings. For these reasons, it is unsurprising that allegations that sulindac’s label was inadequate featured prominently at trial. Respondent introduced into evidence both the label for Mutual’s sulindac at the time of her injuries and the label as revised in 2005 (after respondent had suffered her injuries). App. 553–556. Her counsel’s opening statement informed the jury that “the evidence will show you that Sulindac was unreasonably dangerous and had an inadequate warning, as well. . . . You will hear much more evidence about why this label was inadequate in relation to this case.” Tr. 110–112 (Aug. 17, 2010). And, the District Court repeatedly instructed the jury that it should evaluate sulindac’s labeling in determining whether Mutual’s sulindac was unreasonably dangerous. See App. 514 (jury instruction that the jury should find “a defect in design” only if it found that “Sulindac was unreasonably dangerous and that a warning was not present and effective to avoid that unreasonable danger”); ibid. (jury instruction that no design defect exists if “a warning was present and effective to avoid that unreasonable danger”). Finally, the District Court clarified in its order and opinion denying Mutual’s motion for judgment as a matter of law that the adequacy of sulindac’s labeling had been part of what the jury was instructed to consider. 760 F. Supp. 2d 220, 231 (2011) (“if the jury found that sulin-dac’s risks outweighed its benefits, then it could consider whether the warning—regardless of its adequacy—re-duced those risks . . . to such an extent that it eliminated the unreasonable danger”). [ 2 ] Thus, in accordance with New Hampshire law, the jury was presented with evidence relevant to, and was instructed to consider, whether Mutual had fulfilled its duty to label sulindac adequately so as to render the drug not “unreasonably dangerous.” In holding Mutual liable, the jury determined that Mutual had breached that duty. C The duty imposed by federal law is far more readily apparent. As PLIVA made clear, federal law prevents generic drug manufacturers from changing their labels. See 564 U. S., at ___ (slip op., at 10) (“Federal drug regulations, as interpreted by the FDA, prevented the Manufacturers from independently changing their generic drugs’ safety labels”). See also 21 U. S. C. §355(j)(2)(A)(v) (“[T]he labeling proposed for the new drug is the same as the labeling approved for the [approved brand-name] drug”); 21 CFR §§314.94(a)(8)(iii), 314.150(b)(10) (approval for a generic drug may be withdrawn if the generic drug’s label “is no longer consistent with that for [the brand-name] drug”). Thus, federal law prohibited Mutual from taking the remedial action required to avoid liability under New Hampshire law. D When federal law forbids an action that state law requires, the state law is “without effect.” Maryland, 451 U. S., at 746. Because it is impossible for Mutual and other similarly situated manufacturers to comply with both state and federal law, [ 3 ] New Hampshire’s warning-based design-defect cause of action is pre-empted with respect to FDA-approved drugs sold in interstate commerce. [ 4 ] IV The Court of Appeals reasoned that Mutual could escape the impossibility of complying with both its federal- and state-law duties by “choos[ing] not to make [sulindac] at all.” 678 F. 3d, at 37. We reject this “stop-selling” rationale as incompatible with our pre-emption jurisprudence. Our pre-emption cases presume that an actor seeking to satisfy both his federal- and state-law obligations is not required to cease acting altogether in order to avoid liability. Indeed, if the option of ceasing to act defeated a claim of impossibility, impossibility pre-emption would be “all but meaningless.” 564 U. S., at ___ (slip op., at 14). The incoherence of the stop-selling theory becomes plain when viewed through the lens of our previous cases. In every instance in which the Court has found impossibility pre-emption, the “direct conflict” between federal- and state-law duties could easily have been avoided if the regulated actor had simply ceased acting. PLIVA is an obvious example: As discussed above, the PLIVA Court held that state failure-to-warn claims were pre-empted by the FDCA because it was impossible for drug manufacturers like PLIVA to comply with both the state-law duty to label their products in a way that rendered them reasonably safe and the federal-law duty not to change their drugs’ labels. Id., at ___ (slip op., at 11). It would, of course, have been possible for drug manufacturers like PLIVA to pull their products from the market altogether. In so doing, they would have avoided liability under both state and federal law: such manufacturers would neither have labeled their products in a way that rendered them unsafe nor impermissibly changed any federally approved label. In concluding that “it was impossible for the Manufacturers to comply with both their state-law duty to change the label and their federal law duty to keep the label the same,” id., at ___ (slip op., at 12), the Court was undeterred by the prospect that PLIVA could have complied with both state and federal requirements by simply leaving the market. The Court of Appeals decision below had found that Mensing’s state-law failure-to-warn claims escaped pre-emption based on the very same stop-selling rationale the First Circuit relied on in this case. See Mensing v. Wyeth, Inc., 588 F. 3d 603, 611 (CA8 2009) (“[G]eneric defendants were not compelled to market metoclopramide. If they realized their label was insufficient . . . they could have simply stopped selling the product”). Moreover, Mensing advanced the stop-selling rationale in its petition for rehearing, which this Court denied. PLIVA, supra; Pet. for Reh’g in No. 09–993 etc., p. 2. Nonetheless, this Court squarely determined that it had been “impossible” for PLIVA to comply with both its state and federal duties. 564 U. S., at ___ (slip op., at 12). [ 5 ] Adopting the First Circuit’s stop-selling rationale would mean that not only PLIVA, but also the vast majority—if not all—of the cases in which the Court has found impossibility pre-emption, were wrongly decided. Just as the prospect that a regulated actor could avoid liability under both state and federal law by simply leaving the market did not undermine the impossibility analysis in PLIVA, so it is irrelevant to our analysis here. V The dreadful injuries from which products liabilities cases arise often engender passionate responses. Today is no exception, as Justice Sotomayor’s dissent (hereinafter the dissent) illustrates. But sympathy for respondent does not relieve us of the responsibility of following the law. The dissent accuses us of incorrectly assuming “that federal law gives pharmaceutical companies a right to sell a federally approved drug free from common-law liability,” post, at 1, but we make no such assumption. Rather, as discussed at length above, see supra, at 8–13, we hold that state-law design-defect claims like New Hampshire’s that place a duty on manufacturers to render a drug safer by either altering its composition or altering its labeling are in conflict with federal laws that prohibit manufacturers from unilaterally altering drug composition or labeling. The dissent is quite correct that federal law establishes no safe-harbor for drug companies—but it does prevent them from taking certain remedial measures. Where state law imposes a duty to take such remedial measures, it “actual[ly] conflict[s] with federal law” by making it “ ‘impos-sible for a private party to comply with both state and federal requirements.’ ” Freightliner Corp. v. Myrick, 514 U. S. 280, 287 (1995) (quoting English, 496 U. S., at 78–79). The dissent seems to acknowledge that point when it concedes that, “if federal law requires a particular product label to include a complete list of ingredients while state law specifically forbids that labeling practice, there is little question that state law ‘must yield.’ ” Post, at 6–7 (quoting Felder v. Casey, 487 U. S. 131, 138 (1988) ). What the dissent does not see is that that is this case: Federal law requires a very specific label for sulindac, and state law forbids the use of that label. The dissent responds that New Hampshire law “merely create[s] an incentive” to alter sulindac’s label or composition, post, at 7, but does not impose any actual “legal obligation,” post, at 13. The contours of that argument are difficult to discern. Perhaps the dissent is drawing a distinction between common-law “exposure to liability,” post, at 12, and a statutory “legal mandate,” ibid. But the distinction between common law and statutory law is irrelevant to the argument at hand: In violating a common-law duty, as surely as by violating a statutory duty, a party contravenes the law. While it is true that, in a certain sense, common-law duties give a manufacturer the choice “between exiting the market or continuing to sell while knowing it may have to pay compensation to consumers injured by its product,” post, at 16, statutory “mandate[s]” do precisely the same thing: They require a manufacturer to choose between leaving the market and accepting the consequences of its actions (in the form of a fine or other sanction). See generally Calabresi & Melamed, Property Rules, Liability Rules, and Inalienability: One View of the Cathedral, 85 Harv. L. Rev. 1089 (1972) (discussing liability rules). And, in any event, PLIVA—which the dissent agrees involved a state-law “requirement that conflicted with federal law,” post, at 13—dealt with common-law failure-to-warn claims, see PLIVA, supra, at ___ (slip op., at 4). Because PLIVA controls the instant case, the dissent is reduced to fighting a rearguard action against its reasoning despite ostensibly swearing fealty to its holding. To suggest that Bates v. Dow Agrosciences LLC, 544 U. S. 431 (2005) , is to the contrary is simply misleading. The dissent is correct that Bates held a Texas state-law design-defect claim not to be pre-empted. But, it did so because the design-defect claim in question was not a “requirement ‘for labeling or packaging’ ” and thus fell outside the class of claims covered by the express pre-emption provision at issue in that case. Id., at 443–444 (emphasis in original). Indeed, contrary to the impression one might draw from the dissent, post, at 12–13, the Bates Court actually blessed the lower court’s determination that the State’s design-defect claim imposed a pre-emptable “requirement”: “The Court of Appeals did, however, correctly hold that the term ‘requirements’ in §136v(b) reaches beyond positive enactments, such as statutes and regulations, to embrace common-law duties.” Bates, supra, at 443. The dissent offers no compelling reason why the “common-law duty” in this case should not similarly be viewed as a “requirement.” We agree, of course, that “determining precisely what, if any, specific requirement a state common-law claim imposes is important.” Post, at 12, n. 5. As Bates makes clear, “[t]he proper inquiry calls for an examination of the elements of the common-law duty at issue; it does not call for speculation as to whether a jury verdict will prompt the manu-facturer to take any particular action.” 544 U. S., at 445 (citation omitted). Here, as we have tried to make clear, the duty to ensure that one’s products are not “unreasonably dangerous” imposed by New Hampshire’s design-defect cause of action, Vautour, 147 N. H., at 153, 784 A. 2d, at 1181, involves a duty to make one of several changes. In cases where it is impossible—in fact or by law—to alter a product’s design (and thus to increase the product’s “usefulness” or decrease its “risk of danger”), the duty to render a product “reasonably safe” boils down to a duty to ensure “the presence and efficacy of a warning to avoid an unreasonable risk of harm from hidden dangers or from foreseeable uses.” Id., at 154, 784 A. 2d, at 1182. The duty to redesign sulindac’s label was thus a part of the common-law duty at issue—not merely an action Mutual might have been prompted to take by the adverse jury verdict here. Finally, the dissent laments that we have ignored “Congress’ explicit efforts to preserve state common-law liability.” Post, at 26. We have not. Suffice to say, the Court would welcome Congress’ “explicit” resolution of the difficult pre-emption questions that arise in the prescription drug context. That issue has repeatedly vexed the Court—and produced widely divergent views—in recent years. See, e.g., Wyeth v. Levine, 555 U. S. 555 (2009) ; PLIVA, 564 U. S. ___. As the dissent concedes, however, the FDCA’s treatment of prescription drugs includes neither an express pre-emption clause (as in the vaccine context, 42 U. S. C. §300aa–22(b)(1)), nor an express non-pre-emption clause (as in the over-the-counter drug context, 21 U. S. C. §§379r(e), 379s(d)). In the absence of that sort of “explicit” expression of congressional intent, we are left to divine Congress’ will from the duties the statute imposes. That federal law forbids Mutual to take actions required of it by state tort law evinces an intent to pre-empt. * * * This case arises out of tragic circumstances. A combination of factors combined to produce the rare and devastating injuries that respondent suffered: the FDA’s decision to approve the sale of sulindac and the warnings that accompanied the drug at the time it was prescribed, the decision by respondent’s physician to prescribe sulindac despite its known risks, and Congress’ decision to regulate the manufacture and sale of generic drugs in a way that reduces their cost to patients but leaves generic drug manufacturers incapable of modifying either the drugs’ compositions or their warnings. Respondent’s situation is tragic and evokes deep sympathy, but a straightforward application of pre-emption law requires that the judgment below be reversed. It is so ordered. Notes 1 We can thus save for another day the question whether a trueabsolute-liability state-law system could give rise to impossibilitypre-emption. As we have noted, most common-law causes of action for negligence and strict liability do not exist merely to spread risk, but rather impose affirmative duties. See Riegel v. Medtronic, Inc., –324 (2008) (“In [Medtronic, Inc. v. Lohr, ], five Justices concluded that common-law causes of action for negligence and strict liability do impose ‘requirement[s]’ and would be pre-empted by federal requirements specific to a medical device. . . . We adhere to that view”); id., at 324 (“Absent other indication, reference to a State’s ‘requirements’ includes its common-law duties. As the plurality opinion said in Cipollone [v. Liggett Group, (1992)], common-law liability is ‘premised on the existence of a legal duty,’ and a tort judgment therefore establishes that the defendant has violated a state-law obligation”). 2 That Mutual’s liability turned on the adequacy of sulindac’s warnings is not unusual. Rather, New Hampshire—like a large majority of States—has adopted comment k to §402A of the Restatement (Second) of Torts, which recognizes that it is “especially common in the field of drugs” for products to be “incapable of being made safe for their intended and ordinary use.” Restatement 2d, at 353; Bellotte v. Zayre Corp.,116 N. H. 52, 54–55, 352 A. 2d 723, 725 (1976). Under comment k, “[s]uch a product, properly prepared, and accompanied by proper directions and warning, is not defective, nor is it unreasonably dangerous.” Restatement 2d, at 353–354. This Court has previously noted that, as of 1986, “a large number of courts” took comment k to mean that manufacturers “did not face strict liability for side effects of properly manufactured prescription drugs that were accompanied by adequate warnings.” Bruesewitz v. Wyeth, 562 U. S. ___, ___, n. 41 (2011) (slip op., at 10, n. 41). Mutual withdrew its comment k defense “for purposes of the trial of this matter.” Defendant’s Notice of Withdrawal of Defenses, in Case No. 08–cv–358–JL (D NH), p. 1. However, as noted above, bothrespondent and the trial court injected the broader question of the adequacy of sulindac’s label into the trial proceedings. 3 Justice Breyer argues that it is not “literally impossible” for Mutual to comply with both state and federal law because it could escape liability “either by not doing business in the relevant State or by paying the state penalty, say damages, for failing to comply with, as here, a state-law tort standard.” Post, at 1 (dissenting opinion). But, as dis-cussed below, infra, at 15–16—leaving aside the rare case in which state or federal law actually requires a product to be pulled from the market—our pre-emption cases presume that a manufacturer’s ability to stop selling does not turn impossibility into possibility. See, e.g., Florida Lime & Avocado Growers, Inc. v. Paul, (There would be “impossibility of dual compliance” where “federal orders forbade the picking and marketing of any avocado testingmore than 7% oil, while the California test excluded from the State any avocado measuring less than 8% oil content”). And, of course, PLIVA, Inc. v. Mensing, 564 U. S. ___ (2011), forecloses any argument that impossibility is defeated by the prospect that a manufacturer could “pa[y] the state penalty” for violating a state-law duty; that prospect would have defeated impossibility in PLIVA as well. See id., at ___ (slip op., at 12) (“[I]t was impossible for the Manufacturers to comply with both their state-law duty to change the label and their federal law duty to keep the label the same”). To hold otherwise would render impossibility pre-emption “all but meaningless.” Id., at ___ (slip op.,at 14). 4 We do not address state design-defect claims that parallel the federal misbranding statute. The misbranding statute requires a manufac-turer to pull even an FDA-approved drug from the market when it is “dangerous to health” even if “used in the dosage or manner, or with the frequency or duration prescribed, recommended, or suggested in the labeling thereof.” ; cf. Bates v. Dow Agrosciences LLC, (state-law pesticide labeling requirement not pre-empted under express pre-emption provision, provided it was “equivalent to, and fully consistent with, [federal] misbranding provisions”). The parties and the Government appear to agree that a drug is misbranded under federal law only when liability is based on new and scientifically significant information that was not before the FDA. Because the jury was not asked to find whether new evidence concerning sulindac that had not been made available to the FDA rendered sulindac so dangerous as to be misbranded under the federal misbranding statute, the misbranding provision is not applicable here. Cf. 760 F. Supp. 2d 220, 233 (NH 2011) (most of respondent’s experts’ testimony was “drawn directly from the medical literature or published FDA analyses”). 5 Respondent attempts to distinguish this case from PLIVA, arguing that “[w]here, as in PLIVA, state law imposes an affirmative duty on a manufacturer to improve the product’s label, suspending sales does not comply with the state-law duty; it merely offers an indirect means of avoiding liability for noncompliance with that duty.” Brief for Respondent 39. But that difference is purely semantic: the state-law duty in PLIVA to amend metoclopramide’s label could just as easily have been phrased as a duty not to sell the drug without adequate warnings. At least where a State imposes liability based on a balancing of a product’s harms and benefits in light of its labeling—rather than directly prohibiting the product’s sale—the mere fact that a manufacturer may avoid liability by leaving the market does not defeat a claim of impossibility.

569.US.564

Respondent Sutter, a pediatrician, provided medical services to petitioner Oxford Health Plans’ insureds under a fee-for-services contract that required binding arbitration of contractual disputes. He nonetheless filed a proposed class action in New Jersey Superior Court, alleging that Oxford failed to fully and promptly pay him and other physicians with similar Oxford contracts. On Oxford’s motion, the court compelled arbitration. The parties agreed that the arbitrator should decide whether their contract authorized class arbitration, and he concluded that it did. Oxford filed a motion in federal court to vacate the arbitrator’s decision, claiming that he had “exceeded [his] powers” under §10(a)(4) of the Federal Arbitration Act (FAA), 9 U. S. C. §1 et. seq. The District Court denied the motion, and the Third Circuit affirmed. After this Court decided Stolt-Nielsen S. A. v. AnimalFeeds Int’l Corp., 559 U. S. 662—holding that an arbitrator may employ class procedures only if the parties have authorized them—the arbitrator reaffirmed his conclusion that the contract approves class arbitration. Oxford renewed its motion to vacate that decision under §10(a)(4). The District Court denied the motion, and the Third Circuit affirmed. Held: The arbitrator’s decision survives the limited judicial review allowed by §10(a)(4). Pp. 4−9. (a) A party seeking relief under §10(a)(4) bears a heavy burden. “It is not enough . . . to show that the [arbitrator] committed an error—or even a serious error.” Stolt-Nielsen, 559 U. S., at 671. Because the parties “bargained for the arbitrator’s construction of their agreement,” an arbitral decision “even arguably construing or applying the contract” must stand, regardless of a court’s view of its (de)merits. Eastern Associated Coal Corp. v. Mine Workers, 531 U.S. 57, 62. Thus, the sole question on judicial review is whether the arbitrator interpreted the parties’ contract, not whether he construed it correctly. Here, the arbitrator twice did what the parties asked: He considered their contract and decided whether it reflected an agreement to permit class proceedings. That suffices to show that he did not exceed his powers under §10(a)(4). Pp. 4−6. (b) Stolt-Neilsen does not support Oxford’s contrary view. There, the parties stipulated that they had not reached an agreement on class arbitration, so the arbitrators did not construe the contract, and did not identify any agreement authorizing class proceedings. This Court thus found not that they had misinterpreted the contract but that they had abandoned their interpretive role. Here, in stark contrast, the arbitrator did construe the contract, and did find an agreement to permit class arbitration. So to overturn his decision, this Court would have to find that he misapprehended the parties’ intent. But §10(a)(4) bars that course: It permits courts to vacate an arbitral decision only when the arbitrator strayed from his delegated task of interpreting a contract, not when he performed that task poorly. Oxford’s remaining arguments go to the merits of the arbitrator’s contract interpretation and are thus irrelevant under §10(a)(4). Pp. 6−9. 675 F.3d 215, affirmed. Kagan, J., delivered the opinion for a unanimous Court. Alito, J., filed a concurring opinion, in which Thomas, J., joined.

Class arbitration is a matter of consent: An arbitrator may employ class procedures only if the parties have au-thorized them. See Stolt-Nielsen S. A. v. AnimalFeeds Int’l Corp., 559 U.S. 662, 684 (2010). In this case, an arbitrator found that the parties’ contract provided for class arbitration. The question presented is whether in doing so he “exceeded [his] powers” under §10(a)(4) of the Federal Arbitration Act (FAA or Act), 9 U. S. C. §1 et seq. We conclude that the arbitrator’s decision survives the limited judicial review §10(a)(4) allows. I Respondent John Sutter, a pediatrician, entered into a contract with petitioner Oxford Health Plans, a health in-surance company. Sutter agreed to provide medical care to members of Oxford’s network, and Oxford agreed to pay for those services at prescribed rates. Several years later, Sutter filed suit against Oxford in New Jersey Superior Court on behalf of himself and a proposed class of other New Jersey physicians under contract with Oxford. The complaint alleged that Oxford had failed to make full and prompt payment to the doctors, in violation of their agree-ments and various state laws. Oxford moved to compel arbitration of Sutter’s claims, relying on the following clause in their contract: “No civil action concerning any dispute arising under this Agreement shall be instituted before any court, and all such disputes shall be submitted to final and binding arbitration in New Jersey, pursuant to the rules of the American Arbitration Association with one arbitrator.” App. 15–16. The state court granted Oxford’s motion, thus referring the suit to arbitration. The parties agreed that the arbitrator should decide whether their contract authorized class arbitration, and he determined that it did. Noting that the question turned on “construction of the parties’ agreement,” the arbitrator focused on the text of the arbitration clause quoted above. Id., at 30. He reasoned that the clause sent to arbitration “the same universal class of disputes” that it barred the parties from bringing “as civil actions” in court: The “intent of the clause” was “to vest in the arbitration process everything that is prohibited from the court process.” Id., at 31. And a class action, the arbitrator continued, “is plainly one of the possible forms of civil action that could be brought in a court” absent the agreement. Ibid. Accordingly, he concluded that “on its face, the arbitration clause . . . expresses the parties’ intent that class arbitration can be maintained.” Id., at 32. Oxford filed a motion in federal court to vacate the arbitrator’s decision on the ground that he had “exceeded [his] powers” under §10(a)(4) of the FAA. The District Court denied the motion, and the Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit affirmed. See 05–CV–2198, 2005 WL 6795061 (D NJ, Oct. 31, 2005), aff’d, 227 Fed. Appx. 135 (2007). While the arbitration proceeded, this Court held in Stolt-Nielsen that “a party may not be compelled under the FAA to submit to class arbitration unless there is a contractual basis for concluding that the party agreed to do so.” 559 U. S., at 684. The parties in Stolt-Nielsen had stipulated that they had never reached an agreement on class arbitration. Relying on §10(a)(4), we vacated the arbitrators’ decision approving class proceedings because, in the absence of such an agreement, the arbitrators had “simply . . . imposed [their] own view of sound policy.” Id., at 672. Oxford immediately asked the arbitrator to reconsider his decision on class arbitration in light of Stolt-Nielsen. The arbitrator issued a new opinion holding that Stolt-Nielsen had no effect on the case because this agreement authorized class arbitration. Unlike in Stolt-Nielsen, the arbitrator explained, the parties here disputed the meaning of their contract; he had therefore been required “to construe the arbitration clause in the ordinary way to glean the parties’ intent.” App. 72. And in performing that task, the arbitrator continued, he had “found that the arbitration clause unambiguously evinced an intention to allow class arbitration.” Id., at 70. The arbitrator con-cluded by reconfirming his reasons for so construing the clause. Oxford then returned to federal court, renewing its effort to vacate the arbitrator’s decision under §10(a)(4). Once again, the District Court denied the motion, and the Third Circuit affirmed. The Court of Appeals first underscored the limited scope of judicial review that §10(a)(4) allows: So long as an arbitrator “makes a good faith attempt” to interpret a contract, “even serious errors of law or fact will not subject his award to vacatur.” 675 F.3d 215, 220 (2012). Oxford could not prevail under that standard, the court held, because the arbitrator had “endeavored to give effect to the parties’ intent” and “articulate[d] a contractual basis for his decision.” Id., at 223–224. Oxford’s objections to the ruling were “simply dressed-up arguments that the arbitrator interpreted its agreement erroneously.” Id., at 224. We granted certiorari, 568 U. S. ___ (2012), to address a circuit split on whether §10(a)(4) allows a court to vacate an arbitral award in similar circumstances.[1] Holding that it does not, we affirm the Court of Appeals. II Under the FAA, courts may vacate an arbitrator’s decision “only in very unusual circumstances.” First Options of Chicago, Inc. v. Kaplan, 514 U.S. 938, 942 (1995). That limited judicial review, we have explained, “maintain[s] arbitration’s essential virtue of resolving disputes straightaway.” Hall Street Associates, L. L. C. v. Mattel, Inc., 552 U.S. 576, 588 (2008). If parties could take “full-bore legal and evidentiary appeals,” arbitration would become “merely a prelude to a more cumbersome and time-consuming judicial review process.” Ibid. Here, Oxford invokes §10(a)(4) of the Act, which authorizes a federal court to set aside an arbitral award “where the arbitrator[] exceeded [his] powers.” A party seeking relief under that provision bears a heavy burden. “It is not enough . . . to show that the [arbitrator] committed an error—or even a serious error.” Stolt-Nielsen, 559 U. S., at 671. Because the parties “bargained for the arbitra-tor’s construction of their agreement,” an arbitral decision “even arguably construing or applying the contract” must stand, regardless of a court’s view of its (de)merits. Eastern Associated Coal Corp. v. Mine Workers, 531 U.S. 57, 62 (2000) (quoting Steelworkers v. Enterprise Wheel & Car Corp., 363 U.S. 593, 599 (1960); Paperworkers v. Misco, Inc., 484 U.S. 29, 38 (1987); internal quotation marks omitted). Only if “the arbitrator act[s] outside the scope of his contractually delegated authority”—issuing an award that “simply reflect[s] [his] own notions of [economic] justice” rather than “draw[ing] its essence from the con-tract”—may a court overturn his determination. Eastern Associated Coal, 531 U. S., at 62 (quoting Misco, 484 U. S., at 38). So the sole question for us is whether the arbitrator (even arguably) interpreted the parties’ contract, not whether he got its meaning right or wrong.[2] And we have already all but answered that question just by summarizing the arbitrator’s decisions, see supra, at 2–3; they are, through and through, interpretations of the parties’ agreement. The arbitrator’s first ruling recited the “question of construction” the parties had submitted to him: “whether [their] Agreement allows for class action arbitration.” App. 29–30. To resolve that matter, the arbitrator focused on the arbitration clause’s text, analyzing (whether correctly or not makes no difference) the scope of both what it barred from court and what it sent to arbitration. The arbitrator concluded, based on that textual exegesis, that the clause “on its face . . . expresses the parties’ intent that class action arbitration can be maintained.” Id., at 32. When Oxford requested reconsideration in light of Stolt-Nielsen, the arbitrator explained that his prior decision was “concerned solely with the par-ties’ intent as evidenced by the words of the arbitration clause itself.” App. 69. He then ran through his textual analysis again, and reiterated his conclusion: “[T]he text of the clause itself authorizes” class arbitration. Id., at 73. Twice, then, the arbitrator did what the parties had asked: He considered their contract and decided whether it reflected an agreement to permit class proceedings. That suffices to show that the arbitrator did not “exceed[ ] [his] powers.” §10(a)(4). Oxford’s contrary view relies principally on Stolt-Nielsen. As noted earlier, we found there that an arbitration panel exceeded its powers under §10(a)(4) when it ordered a party to submit to class arbitration. See supra, at 3. Oxford takes that decision to mean that “even the ‘high hurdle’ of Section 10(a)(4) review is overcome when an arbitrator imposes class arbitration without a sufficient contractual basis.” Reply Brief 5 (quoting Stolt-Nielsen, 559 U. S., at 671). Under Stolt-Nielson, Oxford asserts, a court may thus vacate “as ultra vires” an arbitral decision like this one for misconstruing a contract to approve class proceedings. Reply Brief 7. But Oxford misreads Stolt-Nielsen: We overturned the arbitral decision there because it lacked any contractual basis for ordering class procedures, not because it lacked, in Oxford’s terminology, a “sufficient” one. The parties in Stolt-Nielsen had entered into an unusual stipulation that they had never reached an agreement on class arbitration. See 559 U. S., at 668–669, 673. In that circumstance, we noted, the panel’s decision was not—indeed, could not have been—“based on a determination regarding the parties’ intent.” Id., at 673, n. 4; see id., at 676 (“Th[e] stipulation left no room for an inquiry regarding the parties’ intent”). Nor, we continued, did the panel attempt to ascertain whether federal or state law established a “default rule” to take effect absent an agreement. Id., at 673. Instead, “the panel simply imposed its own conception of sound policy” when it ordered class proceedings. Id., at 675. But “the task of an arbitrator,” we stated, “is to interpret and enforce a contract, not to make public policy.” Id., at 672. In “impos[ing] its own policy choice,” the panel “thus exceeded its powers.” Id., at 677. The contrast with this case is stark. In Stolt-Nielsen, the arbitrators did not construe the parties’ contract, and did not identify any agreement authorizing class proceedings. So in setting aside the arbitrators’ decision, we found not that they had misinterpreted the contract, but that they had abandoned their interpretive role. Here, the arbitrator did construe the contract (focusing, per usual, on its language), and did find an agreement to permit class arbitration. So to overturn his decision, we would have to rely on a finding that he misapprehended the par-ties’ intent. But §10(a)(4) bars that course: It permits courts to vacate an arbitral decision only when the arbitrator strayed from his delegated task of interpreting a contract, not when he performed that task poorly. Stolt-Nielsen and this case thus fall on opposite sides of the line that §10(a)(4) draws to delimit judicial review of arbitral decisions. The remainder of Oxford’s argument addresses merely the merits: The arbitrator, Oxford contends at length, badly misunderstood the contract’s arbitration clause. See Brief for Petitioner 21–28. The key text, again, goes as follows: “No civil action concerning any dispute arising under this Agreement shall be instituted before any court, and all such disputes shall be submitted to final and binding arbitration.” App. 15–16. The arbitrator thought that clause sent to arbitration all “civil action[s]” barred from court, and viewed class actions as falling within that category. See supra, at 2. But Oxford points out that the provision submits to arbitration not any “civil action[s],” but instead any “dispute arising under” the agreement. And in any event, Oxford claims, a class action is not a form of “civil action,” as the arbitrator thought, but merely a procedural device that may be available in a court. At bottom, Oxford maintains, this is a garden-variety arbi-tration clause, lacking any of the terms or features that would indicate an agreement to use class procedures. We reject this argument because, and only because, it is not properly addressed to a court. Nothing we say in this opinion should be taken to reflect any agreement with the arbitrator’s contract interpretation, or any quarrel with Oxford’s contrary reading. All we say is that convincing a court of an arbitrator’s error—even his grave error—is not enough. So long as the arbitrator was “arguably construing” the contract—which this one was—a court may not correct his mistakes under §10(a)(4). Eastern Associated Coal, 531 U. S., at 62 (internal quotation marks omitted). The potential for those mistakes is the price of agreeing to arbitration. As we have held before, we hold again: “It is the arbitrator’s construction [of the contract] which was bargained for; and so far as the arbitrator’s decision concerns construction of the contract, the courts have no business overruling him because their interpretation of the contract is different from his.” Enterprise Wheel, 363 U.S. at 599. The arbitrator’s construction holds, however good, bad, or ugly. In sum, Oxford chose arbitration, and it must now live with that choice. Oxford agreed with Sutter that an arbitrator should determine what their contract meant, including whether its terms approved class arbitration. The arbitrator did what the parties requested: He provided an interpretation of the contract resolving that disputed issue. His interpretation went against Oxford, maybe mistakenly so. But still, Oxford does not get to rerun the matter in a court. Under §10(a)(4), the question for a judge is not whether the arbitrator construed the parties’ contract correctly, but whether he construed it at all. Because he did, and therefore did not “exceed his powers,” we cannot give Oxford the relief it wants. We accordingly affirm the judgment of the Court of Appeals. It is so ordered. Notes 1 Compare 675 F.3d 215 (CA3 2012) (case below) (vacatur not proper), and Jock v. Sterling Jewelers Inc., 646 F.3d 113 (CA2 2011) (same), with Reed v. Florida Metropolitan Univ., Inc., 681 F.3d 630 (CA5 2012) (vacatur proper). 2 We would face a different issue if Oxford had argued below that the availability of class arbitration is a so-called “question of arbitrability.” Those questions—which “include certain gateway matters, such as whether parties have a valid arbitration agreement at all or whethera concededly binding arbitration clause applies to a certain type of controversy”—are presumptively for courts to decide. Green Tree Financial Corp. v. Bazzle, 539 U.S. 444, 452 (2003) (plurality opinion). A court may therefore review an arbitrator’s determination of such a matter de novo absent “clear[] and unmistakabl[e]” evidence that the parties wanted an arbitrator to resolve the dispute. AT&T Technologies, Inc. v. Communications Workers, 475 U.S. 643, 649 (1986). Stolt-Nielsen made clear that this Court has not yet decided whether the availability of class arbitration is a question of arbitrability. See 559 U. S., at 680. But this case gives us no opportunity to do so because Oxford agreed that the arbitrator should determine whether its contract with Sutter authorized class procedures. See Brief for Petitioner 38, n. 9 (conceding this point). Indeed, Oxford submitted that issue to the arbitrator not once, but twice—and the second time after Stolt-Nielsen flagged that it might be a question of arbitrability.

569.US.530

Petitioner Peugh was convicted of five counts of bank fraud for conduct that occurred in 1999 and 2000. At sentencing, he argued that the Ex Post Facto Clause required that he be sentenced under the 1998 version of the Federal Sentencing Guidelines in effect at the time of his offenses rather than under the 2009 version in effect at the time of sentencing. Under the 1998 Guidelines, Peugh’s sentencing range was 30 to 37 months, but the 2009 Guidelines assigned more severe consequences to his acts, yielding a range of 70 to 87 months. The District Court rejected Peugh’s ex post facto claim and sentenced him to 70 months’ imprisonment. The Seventh Circuit affirmed. Held: The judgment is reversed, and the case is remanded. 675 F.3d 736, reversed and remanded. Justice Sotomayor delivered the opinion of the Court, except as to Part III–C, concluding that the Ex Post Facto Clause is violated when a defendant is sentenced under Guidelines promulgated after he committed his criminal acts and the new version provides a higher sentencing range than the version in place at the time of the offense. Pp. 4–13, 15–20. (a) Though no longer mandatory, see United States v. Booker, 543 U.S. 220, the Guidelines still play an important role in sentencing procedures. A district court must begin “by correctly calculating the applicable Guidelines range,” Gall v. United States, 552 U.S. 38, 49, and then consider the parties’ arguments and factors specified in 18 U. S. C. §3553(a). 552 U. S., at 49–50. The court “may not presume that the Guidelines range is reasonable,” id., at 50, and must explain the basis for its sentence on the record, ibid. On appeal, a sentence is reviewed for reasonableness under an abuse-of-discretion standard. Id., at 51. A district court is to apply the Guidelines “in effect on the date the defendant is sentenced,” §3553(a)(4)(A)(ii), but, per the Guidelines, is to use the Guidelines in effect on the date the offense was committed should the Guidelines in effect on the sentencing date be found to violate the Ex Post Facto Clause. Pp. 4–7. (b) The Constitution forbids the passage of ex post facto laws, a category including, as relevant here, “[e]very law that changes the punishment, and inflicts a greater punishment, than the law annexed to the crime, when committed.” Calder v. Bull, 3 Dall. 386, 390. The “scope of this Latin phrase” is given “substance by an accretion of case law.” Dobbert v. Florida, 432 U.S. 282, 292. The touchstone of the inquiry is whether a given change in law presents a “ ‘sufficient risk of increasing the measure of punishment attached to the covered crimes.’ ” Garner v. Jones, 529 U.S. 244, 250. Pp. 7–8. (c) The most relevant prior decision is Miller v. Florida, 482 U.S. 423. There, the Court found an ex post facto violation when the petitioner was sentenced under Florida’s new sentencing guidelines, which yielded a higher sentencing range than the guidelines in place at the time of his crime. The pre-existing guidelines would have required the sentencing judge to provide clear and convincing reasons in writing for any departure, and the sentence would have been reviewable on appeal. But under the new guidelines, a sentence within the guidelines range required no explanation and was unreviewable. Variation in the sentence, though possible, was burdensome; so in the ordinary case, a defendant would receive a within-guidelines sentence. Thus, increasing the applicable guidelines range created a significant risk of a higher sentence. The same principles apply to the post-Booker federal sentencing scheme, which aims to achieve uniformity by ensuring that sentencing decisions are anchored by the Guidelines. Normally, a “judge will use the Guidelines range as the starting point in the analysis and impose a sentence within the range.” Freeman v. United States, 564 U. S. ___, ___. That the court may impose a sentence outside that range does not deprive the Guidelines of force as the framework for sentencing. Uniformity is also promoted by appellate review for reasonableness with the Guidelines as a benchmark. Appellate courts may presume a within-Guidelines sentence is reasonable, see Rita v. United States, 551 U.S. 338, 347, and may “consider the extent of the deviation” from the Guidelines as part of their reasonableness review, Gall, 552 U. S., at 51. The sentencing regime also puts in place procedural hurdles that, in practice, make imposition of a non-Guidelines sentence less likely. Florida’s scheme and the federal regime differ, but those differences are not dispositive. Common sense indicates that the federal system generally will steer district courts to more within-Guidelines sentences, and considerable empirical evidence suggests that the Guidelines have that effect. A retrospective increase in an applicable Guidelines range thus creates a sufficient risk of a higher sentence to constitute an ex post facto violation. Pp. 9–13. (d) The Government’s contrary arguments are unpersuasive. Its principal claim is that the Sentencing Guidelines lack sufficient legal effect to attain the status of a “law” within the meaning of the Ex Post Facto Clause. Changes in law need not bind a sentencing authority for there to be an ex post facto violation, and “[t]he presence of discretion does not displace the protections of [that] Clause.” Garner, 529 U. S., at 253. As for contrasts between the Federal Guidelines and the Florida system in Miller, the difference between the two systems is one in degree, not in kind. The attributes of post-Booker sentencing fail to show that the Guidelines are but one among many persuasive sources a sentencing court may consult in making a decision. Recognizing an ex post facto violation here is consistent with post-Booker Sixth Amendment cases. The Court’s Sixth Amendment cases, which focus on when a given finding of fact is required to make a defendant legally eligible for a more severe penalty, are distinct from its ex post facto cases, which focus on whether a change in law creates a “significant risk” of a higher sentence. The Booker remedy was designed, and has been subsequently calibrated, to exploit precisely this distinction: promoting sentencing uniformity while avoiding a Sixth Amendment violation. Nothing in this case undoes the holdings of such cases as Booker, Rita, and Gall. Pp. 15–19. Sotomayor, J., delivered the opinion of the Court, except as to Part III–C. Ginsburg, Breyer, and Kagan, JJ., joined that opinion in full, and Kennedy, J., joined except as to Part III–C. Thomas, J., filed a dissenting opinion, in which Roberts, C. J., and Scalia and Alito, JJ., joined as to Parts I and II–C. Alito, J., filed a dissenting opinion, in which Scalia, J., joined.

(internal quotation marks and alterations omitted)). Such a retrospective increase in the measure of punishment raises clear ex post facto concerns. We have previously recognized, for instance, that a defendant charged with an increased punishment for his crime is likely to feel enhanced pressure to plead guilty. See Carmell, 529 U. S., at 534, n. 24; Weaver, 450 U. S., at 32. This pressure does not disappear simply because the Guidelines range is advisory; the defendant will be aware that the range is intended to, and usually does, exert controlling influence on the sentence that the court will impose. We are therefore not persuaded by the argument advanced by the Government and also suggested by the dissent that the animating principles of the Ex Post Facto Clause are not implicated by this case. While the Government argues that the Sentencing Commission is insulated from legislative interference, see Brief for United States 42–44, our precedents make clear that the coverage of the Ex Post Facto Clause is not limited to legislative acts, see Garner, 529 U. S., at 247, 257 (recognizing that a change in a parole board’s rules could, given an adequate showing, run afoul of the Ex Post Facto Clause). It is true that we held, in Irizarry v. United States, 553 U.S. 708, 713–714 (2008), that a defendant does not have an “expectation subject to due process protection” that he will be sentenced within the Guidelines range. But, contrary to the dissent’s view, see post, at 11–13, the Ex Post Facto Clause does not merely protect reliance interests. It also reflects principles of “fundamental justice.” Carmell, 529 U. S., at 531.[7] IV The Government’s principal argument that there is no constitutional violation in this case is that the Sentencing Guidelines lack sufficient legal effect to attain the sta- tus of a “law” within the meaning of the Ex Post Facto Clause. Whereas the pre-Booker Guidelines “ha[d] the force and effect of laws,” Booker, 543 U. S., at 234, the post-Booker Guidelines, the Government contends, have lost that status due to their advisory nature. The dissent echoes this argument. Post, at 1–3, 6–8. The distinction that the Government draws is necessar- ily a fine one, because our precedents firmly establish that changes in law need not bind a sentencing authority in order to violate the Ex Post Facto Clause. So, for example, a law can run afoul of the Clause even if it does not alter the statutory maximum punishment attached to a crime. In Lindsey v. Washington, 301 U.S. 397, this Court considered an ex post facto challenge to a Washington law altering the statutory penalty for grand larceny from a range of 0 to 15 years’ imprisonment to a mandatory term of 15 years’ imprisonment. Although the upper boundary of the sentencing court’s power to punish remained unchanged, it was enough that the petitioners were “deprived of all opportunity to receive a sentence which would give them freedom from custody and control prior to the expiration of the 15-year term.” Id., at 402 (emphasis added). In addition, our cases make clear that “[t]he presence of discretion does not displace the protections of the Ex Post Facto Clause.” Garner, 529 U. S., at 253. In a series of cases, for example, this Court has considered the validity under the Ex Post Facto Clause of state laws altering the terms on which discretionary parole or early release was available to prisoners. See Garner, 529 U.S. 244; Morales, 514 U.S. 499; Weaver, 450 U.S. 24. Although these cases reached differing conclusions with respect to whether there was an ex post facto violation, in none of them did we indicate that the mere fact that the prisoner was not guaranteed parole but rather received it at the will of the parole board was fatal to his claim. See Garner, 529 U. S., at 253; Morales, 514 U. S., at 508–510, and n. 6; Weaver, 450 U. S., at 30–31. The Government does not challenge these holdings but rather argues, in essence, that the Guidelines are too much like guideposts and not enough like fences to give rise to an ex post facto violation. It contrasts the Sentenc- ing Guidelines with the Florida system at issue in Miller, which, the Government indicates, really did place “a substantial legislative constraint on the judge’s exercise of sentencing discretion.” Brief for United States 21. But as we have explained at length, the difference between the federal system and the scheme the Court considered in Miller is one in degree, not in kind. The Florida system did not achieve its “binding legal effect,” Brief for United States 22, by mandating a within-guidelines sentence in every case. Rather, it achieved its “binding legal effect” through a set of procedural rules and standards for appellate review that, in combination, encouraged district courts to sentence within the guidelines. See Miller, 482 U. S., at 432–433. We have detailed all of the ways in which the federal sentencing regime after Booker does the same.[8] The Government elaborates its argument that the Sentencing Guidelines do not have adequate legal force to constitute an ex post facto violation by reviewing the various features of the post-Booker sentencing regime that, in its view, tend to render the Guidelines purely advisory. As we have noted, district courts may not presume that a within-Guidelines sentence is reasonable; they may “in appropriate cases impose a non-Guidelines sentence based on a disagreement with the Commission’s views,” Pepper, 562 U. S., at ___ (slip op., at 23); and all sentences are reviewed under a deferential abuse-of-discretion standard. See supra, at 5–6. While the Government accurately describes several attributes of federal sentencing after Booker, the conclusion it draws by isolating these features of the system is ultimately not supportable. On the Government’s account, the Guidelines are just one among many persuasive sources a sentencing court can consult, no different from a “policy paper.” Brief for United States 28. The Government’s argument fails to acknowledge, however, that district courts are not required to consult any policy paper in order to avoid reversible procedural error; nor must they “consider the extent of [their] deviation” from a given policy paper and “ensure that the justification is suffi- ciently compelling to support the degree of the variance,” Gall, 552 U. S., at 50. Courts of appeals, in turn, are not permitted to presume that a sentence that comports with a particular policy paper is reasonable; nor do courts of appeals, in considering whether the district court’s sentence was reasonable, weigh the extent of any departure from a given policy paper in determining whether the district court abused its discretion, see id., at 51. It is simply not the case that the Sentencing Guidelines are merely a volume that the district court reads with academic interest in the course of sentencing. Of course, as the Government and the dissent point out, notwithstanding a rule that retrospective application of a higher Guidelines range violates the Ex Post Facto Clause, sentencing courts will be free to give careful consideration to the current version of the Guidelines as representing the most recent views of the agency charged by Congress with developing sentencing policy. See post, at 8 (citing Demaree, 459 F. 3d, at 795). But this does not render our holding “purely semantic.” Id., at 795. District courts must begin their sentencing analysis with the Guidelines in effect at the time of the offense and use them to calculate the sentencing range correctly; and those Guidelines will anchor both the district court’s discretion and the appellate review process in all of the ways we have described. The newer Guidelines, meanwhile, will have the status of one of many reasons a district court might give for deviating from the older Guidelines, a status that is simply not equivalent for ex post facto purposes. Finally, the Government contends that a rule that the Ex Post Facto Clause is violated by the application of an increased Guidelines range would be in tension with this Court’s post-Booker cases and, indeed, would “largely undo . . . the Booker remedy” for the Sixth Amendment violation found there. Brief for United States 35. If the Guidelines are binding enough to trigger an ex post facto violation, the argument goes, then they must be binding enough to trigger a Sixth Amendment violation as well. The Government’s argument assumes that the Sixth Amendment and the Ex Post Facto Clause share a common boundary; that only where judge-found facts are the basis of a higher sentence in a manner that raises Sixth Amendment concerns can a set of sentencing rules be sufficiently determinate to run afoul of the Ex Post Facto Clause. But the Sixth Amendment and Ex Post Facto Clause inquiries are analytically distinct. Our Sixth Amendment cases have focused on when a given finding of fact is required to make a defendant legally eligible for a more severe penalty. Our ex post facto cases, in contrast, have focused on whether a change in law creates a “significant risk” of a higher sentence; here, whether a sentence in conformity with the new Guidelines is substantially likely. The Booker remedy was designed, and has been subsequently calibrated, to exploit precisely this distinction: it is intended to promote sentencing uniformity while avoiding a Sixth Amendment violation. In light of the statistics invoked by petitioner, see supra, at 12–13, it appears so far to be achieving this balance. Nothing that we say today “undo[es]” the holdings of Booker, Rita, Gall, Kimbrough, or our other recent sentencing cases. * * * The arguments put forward by the Government and the dissent cannot unseat the conclusion that Peugh’s case falls within Calder’s third category of ex post facto violations. “[T]he Ex Post Facto Clause forbids the [government] to enhance the measure of punishment by altering the substantive ‘formula’ used to calculate the applicable sentencing range.” Morales, 514 U. S., at 505. That is precisely what the amended Guidelines did here. Doing so created a “significant risk” of a higher sentence for Peugh, Garner, 529 U. S., at 251, and offended “one of the principal interests that the Ex Post Facto Clause was designed to serve, fundamental justice,” Carmell, 529 U. S., at 531.[9] For these reasons, we reverse the judgment of the Seventh Circuit and remand the case for further proceedings consistent with this opinion. It is so ordered. Notes 1 *Justice Kennedy joins this opinion except as to Part III–C. 2 Compare United States v. Demaree, 459 F.3d 791, 795 (CA7 2006), with United States v. Wetherald, 636 F.3d 1315, 1321–1322 (CA11 2011); United States v. Ortiz, 621 F.3d 82, 87 (CA2 2010); United States v. Lewis, 606 F.3d 193, 199–203 (CA4 2010); United States v. Lanham, 617 F.3d 873, 889–890 (CA6 2010); United States v. Turner, 548 F.3d 1094, 1099–1100 (CADC 2008). 3 We have left open the question whether “closer [appellate] review [of a non-Guidelines sentence] may be in order when the sentencing judge varies from the Guidelines based solely on the judge’s view that the Guidelines range ‘fails properly to reflect §3553(a) considerations’ even in a mine-run case.” Kimbrough, 552 U. S., at 109 (quoting Rita, 551 U. S., at 351). Resolution of this case does not require us to assess the merits of this issue. 4 Justice Thomas, raising the issue on his own initiative, would reject our established Ex Post Facto Clause framework. Post, at 9–13. We decline to revisit settled precedent, and we reject Justice Thomas’ assertion that our case law has become “unworkab[le],” post, at 9, simply because it requires case-by-case judgments. 5 Miller employed a “substantial disadvantage” test that this Court has since abandoned. See California Dept. of Corrections v. Morales, 514 U.S. 499, 506–507, n. 3 (1995). The relevant question is whether the change in law creates a “ ‘sufficient’ ” or “significant” risk of increasing the punishment for a given crime. Garner v. Jones, 529 U.S. 244, 250, 251 (2000). As we have made clear, however, the result in Miller remains sound. See Morales, 514 U. S., at 506–507, n. 3. 6 The Government does not dispute these statistics. It argues instead that by relying on aggregated data, Peugh glosses over the fact that non-Guidelines sentences are more common for certain crimes and that some individual judges are less likely to follow the Guidelines than others. Brief for United States 49–50. But these arguments do not refute the basic point that the applicable Guidelines channel sentences toward the specified range, even if they do not fix them within it. 7 Of course, “while the principle of unfairness helps explain and shape the Clause’s scope, it is not a doctrine unto itself, invalidating laws under the Ex Post Facto Clause by its own force.” Carmell, 529 U. S., at 533, n. 23. 8 The Government likens the Sentencing Guidelines system to the Parole Commission’s Parole Release Guidelines, which established an advisory framework for parole decisions, see United States Parole Comm’n v. Geraghty, 445 U.S. 388, 391 (1980), and argues that Miller indicated that retrospectively applying more stringent parole guidelines would not have constituted an ex post facto violation. The issue ofthe constitutional validity of the retrospective application of the parole guidelines, however, was not before the Court in Miller. While the Miller Court did state that lower court cases discussing the federal parole guidelines were “inapposite” to its discussion of the Florida guidelines, 482 U. S., at 434–435, it had no occasion to address whether changes to the parole guidelines generated an ex post facto problem. 9 There may be cases in which the record makes clear that the District Court would have imposed the same sentence under the older, more lenient Guidelines that it imposed under the newer, more punitive ones. In such a case, the ex post facto error may be harmless. See Chapman v. California, 386 U.S. 18 (1967). Here, however, the Government does not argue that any ex post facto violation was harmless. And indeed, any such argument would fail in light of the fact that the District Court rejected Peugh’s ex post facto claim in keeping with Circuit precedent, applied the new Guidelines, and indicated at sentencing that “a sentence within the [G]uideline range is the most appropriate sentence in this case.” App. 30, 100.

569.US.329

In 1997, the United Kingdom (U. K.), newly under Labour Party rule, imposed a one-time “windfall tax” on 32 U. K. companies privatized between 1984 and 1996 by the Conservative government. The companies had been sold to private parties through an initial sale of shares, known as a “flotation.” Some of the companies were required to continue providing services for a fixed period at the same rates they had offered under government control. Many of those companies became dramatically more efficient and earned substantial profits in the process. Petitioner PPL Corporation (PPL), part owner of a privatized U. K. company subject to the windfall tax, claimed a credit for its share of the bill in its 1997 federal income-tax return, relying on Internal Revenue Code §901(b)(1), which states that any “income, war profits, and excess profits taxes” paid overseas are creditable against U. S. income taxes. Treasury Regulation §1.901–2(a)(1) interprets this section to mean that a foreign tax is creditable if its “predominant character” “is that of an income tax in the U. S. sense.” The Commissioner of Internal Revenue (Commissioner) rejected PPL’s claim, but the Tax Court held that the U. K. windfall tax was creditable for U. S. tax purposes under §901. The Third Circuit reversed. Held: The U. K. tax is creditable under §901. Pp. 4–14. (a) Treasury Regulation §1.901–2, which codifies longstanding doctrine dating back to Biddle v. Commissioner, 302 U.S. 573, 578–579 (1938), provides the relevant legal standard. First, a tax’s “predominant character,” or the normal manner in which a tax applies, is controlling. See id., at 579. Thus, a foreign tax that operates as an income, war profits, or excess profits tax for most taxpayers is generally creditable. Second, foreign tax creditability depends not on the way a foreign government characterizes its tax but on whether the tax, if enacted in the U. S., would be an income, war profits, or excess profits tax. See §1.901–2(a)(1)(ii). Giving further form to these principles, §1.901–2(a)(3)(i) explains that a foreign tax’s predominant character is that of a U. S. income tax “[i]f . . . the foreign tax is likely to reach net gain in the normal circumstances in which it applies.” Three tests set forth in the regulations provide guidance in making this assessment, see §1.901–2(b)(1). The tests indicate that net gain consists of realized gross receipts reduced by significant costs and expenses attributable to such gross receipts, in combination known as net income. A foreign tax that reaches net income, or profits, is creditable. Pp. 4–7. (b) The U. K. windfall tax’s predominant character is that of an excess profits tax, a category of income tax in the U. S. sense. The Labour government’s conception of “profit-making value” as a backward-looking analysis of historic profits is not a typical valuation method. Rather, it is a tax on realized net income disguised as a tax on the difference between two values, one of which is a fictitious value calculated using an imputed price-to-earnings ratio. The substance of the windfall tax confirms this conclusion. When rearranged, the U. K’s formula demonstrates that the windfall tax is economically equivalent to the difference between the profits each company actually earned and the amount the Labour government believed it should have earned given its flotation value. For most of the relevant companies, the U. K. formula’s substantive effect was to impose a 51.71 percent tax on all profits above a threshold, a classic excess profits tax. The Commissioner claims that any algebraic rearrangement is improper because U. S. courts must take the foreign tax rate as written and accept whatever tax base the foreign tax purports to adopt. But such a rigid construction cannot be squared with the black-letter principle that “tax law deals in economic realities, not legal abstractions.” Commissioner v. Southwest Exploration Co., 350 U.S. 308, 315. Given the artificiality of the U. K.’s calculation method, this Court follows substance over form and recognizes that the windfall tax is nothing more than a tax on actual profits above a threshold. Pp. 7–11. (c) The Commissioner’s additional arguments in support of his position are similarly unpersuasive. Pp. 11–14. 665 F.3d 60, reversed. Thomas, J., delivered the opinion for a unanimous Court. Sotomayor, J., filed a concurring opinion.

In 1997, the United Kingdom (U. K.) imposed a one-time “windfall tax” on 32 U. K. companies privatized between 1984 and 1996. This case addresses whether that tax is creditable for U. S. tax purposes. Internal Revenue Code §901(b)(1) states that any “income, war profits, and excess profits taxes” paid overseas are creditable against U. S. income taxes. 26 U. S. C. §901(b)(1). Treasury Regulations interpret this section to mean that a foreign tax is creditable if its “predominant character” “is that of an income tax in the U. S. sense.” Treas. Reg. §1.901–2(a)(1)(ii), 26 CFR §1.901–2(a)(1) (1992). Consistent with precedent and the Tax Court’s analysis below, we apply the predominant character test using a commonsense approach that considers the substantive effect of the tax. Under this approach, we hold that the U. K. tax is credit-able under §901 and reverse the judgment of the Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit. I A During the 1980’s and 1990’s, the U. K.’s Conservative Party controlled Parliament and privatized a number of government-owned companies. These companies were sold to private parties through an initial sale of shares, known as a “flotation.” As part of privatization, many com-panies were required to continue providing services at the same rates they had offered under government control for a fixed period, typically their first four years of private operation. As a result, the companies could only increase profits during this period by operating more efficiently. Responding to market incentives, many of the companies became dramatically more efficient and earned substantial profits in the process. The U. K.’s Labour Party, which had unsuccessfully opposed privatization, used the companies’ profitability as a campaign issue against the Conservative Party. In part because of campaign promises to tax what it characterized as undue profits, the Labour Party defeated the Conservative Party at the polls in 1997. Prior to coming to power, Labour Party leaders hired accounting firm Arthur Andersen to structure a tax that would capture excess, or “windfall,” profits earned during the initial years in which the companies were prohibited from increasing rates. Par-liament eventually adopted the tax, which applied only to the regulated companies that were prohibited from raising their rates. See Finance (No. 2) Act, 1997, ch. 58, pt. I, cls. 1 and 2(5) (Eng.) (U. K. Windfall Tax Act). It imposed a 23 percent tax on any “windfall” earned by such companies. Id., cl. 1(2). A separate schedule “se[t] out how to quantify the windfall from which a company was benefitting.” Id., cl. 1(3). See id., sched. 1. In the proceedings below, the parties stipulated that the following formula summarizes the tax imposed by the Labour Party: D equals the number of days a company was subject to rate regulation (also known as the “initial period”), P equals the total profits earned during the initial period, and FV equals the flotation value, or market capitalization value after sale. For 27 of the 32 companies subject to the tax, the number of days in the initial period was 1,461 days (or four years). Of the remaining five companies, one had no tax liability because it did not earn any windfall profits. Three had initial periods close to four years (1,463, 1,456, and 1,380 days). The last was privatized shortly before the Labour Party took power and had an initial period of only 316 days. The number 9 in the formula was characterized as a price-to-earnings ratio and was selected because it represented the lowest average price-to-earnings ratio of the 32 companies subject to the tax during the relevant period.[1] See id., sched. 1, §1, cl. 2(3); Brief for Respondent 7. The statute expressly set its value, and that value was the same for all companies. U. K. Windfall Tax Act, sched. 1, §1, cl. 2(3). The only variables that changed in the windfall tax formula for all the companies were profits (P) and flotation value (FV); the initial period (D) varied for only a few of the companies subject to the tax. The Labour government asserted that the term [365 × (P ∕ D) × 9] represented what the flotation value should have been given the assumed price-to-earnings ratio of 9. Thus, it claimed (and the Commissioner here reiterates) that the tax was simply a 23 percent tax on the difference between what the companies’ flotation values should have been and what they actually were. B Petitioner PPL Corporation (PPL) was an owner, through a number of subsidiaries, of 25 percent of South Western Electricity plc, 1 of 12 government-owned elec-tric companies that were privatized in 1990 and that were subject to the tax. See 135 T.C. 304, 307, App. (2010) (diagram of PPL corporate structure in 1997). South Western Electricity’s total U. K. windfall tax burden was £90,419,265. In its 1997 federal income-tax return, PPL claimed a credit under §901 for its share of the bill. The Commissioner of Internal Revenue (Commissioner) rejected the claim, but the Tax Court held that the U. K. wind- fall tax was creditable for U. S. tax purposes under §901. See id., at 342. The Third Circuit reversed. 665 F.3d 60, 68 (2011). We granted certiorari, 568 U. S. ___ (2012), to resolve a Circuit split concerning the windfall tax’s creditability under §901. Compare 665 F. 3d, at 68, with Entergy Corp. & Affiliated Subsidiaries v. Commissioner, 683 F.3d 233, 239 (CA5 2012). II Internal Revenue Code §901(b)(1) provides that “[i]n the case of . . . a domestic corporation, the amount of any income, war profits, and excess profits taxes paid or accrued during the taxable year to any foreign country or to any possession of the United States” shall be creditable.[2] Under relevant Treasury Regulations, “[a] foreign levy is an income tax if and only if . . . [t]he predominant character of that tax is that of an income tax in the U. S. sense.” 26 CFR §1.901–2(a)(1). The parties agree that Treasury Regulation §1.901–2 applies to this case. That regulation codifies longstanding doctrine dating back to Biddle v. Commissioner, 302 U.S. 573, 578–579 (1938), and provides the relevant legal standard. The regulation establishes several principles relevant to our inquiry. First, the “predominant character” of a tax, or the normal manner in which a tax applies, is controlling. See id., at 579 (“We are here concerned only with the ‘standard’ or normal tax”). Under this principle, a for-eign tax that operates as an income, war profits, or excess profits tax in most instances is creditable, even if it may affect a handful of taxpayers differently. Creditability is an all or nothing proposition. As the Treasury Regulations confirm, “a tax either is or is not an income tax, in its entirety, for all persons subject to the tax.” 26 CFR §1.901–2(a)(1). Second, the way a foreign government characterizes its tax is not dispositive with respect to the U. S. creditability analysis. See §1.901–2(a)(1)(ii) (foreign tax creditable if predominantly “an income tax in the U. S. sense”). In Biddle, the Court considered the creditability of certain U. K. taxes on stock dividends under the substantively identical predecessor to §901. The Court recognized that “there is nothing in [the statute’s] language to suggest that in allowing the credit for foreign tax payments, a shifting standard was adopted by reference to foreign characterizations and classifications of tax legislation.” 302 U. S., at 578–579. See also United States v. Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co., 493 U.S. 132, 145 (1989) (noting in interpreting 26 U. S. C. §902 that Biddle is particularly applicable “where a contrary interpretation would leave” tax interpretation “to the varying tax policies of foreign tax authorities”); Heiner v. Mellon, 304 U.S. 271, 279, and n. 7 (1938) (state-law definitions generally not controlling in federal tax context). Instead of the foreign government’s characterization of the tax, the crucial inquiry is the tax’s economic effect. See Biddle, supra, at 579 (inquiry is “whether [a tax] is the substantial equivalent of payment of the tax as those terms are used in our own statute”). In other words, foreign tax creditability depends on whether the tax, if enacted in the U. S., would be an income, war profits, or excess profits tax. Giving further form to these principles, Treasury Regulation §1.901–2(a)(3)(i) explains that a foreign tax’s predominant character is that of a U. S. income tax “[i]f . . . the foreign tax is likely to reach net gain in the normal circumstances in which it applies.” The regulation then sets forth three tests for assessing whether a foreign tax reaches net gain. A tax does so if, “judged on the basis of its predominant character, [it] satisfies each of the realization, gross receipts, and net income requirements set forth in paragraphs (b)(2), (b)(3) and (b)(4), respectively, of this section.” §1.901–2(b)(1).[3] The tests indicate that net gain (also referred to as net income) consists of realized gross receipts reduced by significant costs and expenses attrib-utable to such gross receipts. A foreign tax that reaches net income, or profits, is creditable. III A It is undisputed that net income is a component of the U. K.’s “windfall tax” formula. See Brief for Respondent 23 (“The windfall tax takes into account a company’s prof-its during its four-year initial period”). Indeed, annual profit is a variable in the tax formula. U. K. Windfall Tax Act, sched. 1, §1, cls. 2(2) and 5. It is also undisputed that there is no meaningful difference for our purposes in the accounting principles by which the U. K. and the U. S. calculate profits. See Brief for Petitioners 47. The dis-agreement instead centers on how to characterize the tax formula the Labour Party adopted. The Third Circuit, following the Commissioner’s lead, believed it could look no further than the tax formula that the Parliament enacted and the way in which the Labour government characterized it. Under that view, the windfall tax must be considered a tax on the difference between a company’s flotation value (the total amount investors paid for the company when the government sold it) and an imputed “profit-making value,” defined as a company’s “average annual profit during its ‘initial period’ . . . times 9, the assumed price-to-earnings ratio.” 665 F. 3d, at 65. So characterized, the tax captures a portion of the difference between the price at which each company was sold and the price at which the Labour government believed each company should have been sold given the actual profits earned during the initial period. Relying on this characterization, the Third Circuit believed the windfall tax failed at least the Treasury Regulation’s realization and gross receipts tests because it reached some artificial form of valuation instead of profits. See id., at 67, and n. 3. In contrast, PPL’s position is that the substance of the windfall tax is that of an income tax in the U. S. sense. While recognizing that the tax ostensibly is based on the difference between two values, it argues that every “vari-able” in the windfall tax formula except for profits and flotation value is fixed (at least with regard to 27 of the 32 companies). PPL emphasizes that the only way the Labour government was able to calculate the imputed “profit-making value” at which it claimed companies should have been privatized was by looking after the fact at the actual profits earned by each company. In PPL’s view, it matters not how the U. K. chose to arrange the formula or what it claimed to be taxing, because a tax based on profits above some threshold is an excess profits tax, regardless of how it is mathematically arranged or what labels foreign law places on it. PPL, thus, contends that the windfall taxes it paid meet the Treasury Regulation’s tests and are credit-able under §901. We agree with PPL and conclude that the predominant character of the windfall tax is that of an excess profits tax, a category of income tax in the U. S. sense. It is important to note that the Labour government’s conception of “profit-making value” as a backward-looking analysis of historic profits is not a recognized valuation method; instead, it is a fictitious value calculated using an imputed price-to-earnings ratio. At trial, one of PPL’s expert witnesses explained that “ ‘9 is not an accurate P/E multiple, and it is not applied to current or expected future earnings.’ ” 135 T. C., at 326, n. 17 (quoting testimony). Instead, the windfall tax is a tax on realized net income disguised as a tax on the difference between two values, one of which is completely fictitious. See App. 251, Report ¶1.7 (“[T]he value in profit making terms described in the wording of the act . . . is not a real value: it is rather a construct based on realised profits that would not have been known at the date of privatisation”). The substance of the windfall tax confirms the accuracy of this observation. As already noted, the parties stipulated that the windfall tax could be calculated as follows: This formula can be rearranged algebraically to the following formula, which is mathematically and substantively identical:[4] The next step is to substitute the actual number of days for D. For 27 of the 32 companies subject to the windfall tax, the number of days was identical, 1,461 (or four years). Inserting that amount for D in the formula yields the following: Simplifying the formula by multiplying and dividing numbers reduces the formula to: As noted, FV represents the value at which each company was privatized. FV is then divided by 9, the arbitrary “price-to-earnings ratio” applied to every company. The economic effect is to convert flotation value into the profits a company should have earned given the assumed price-to-earnings ratio. See 135 T. C., at 327 (“ ‘In effect, the way the tax works is to say that the amount of profits you’re allowed in any year before you’re subject to tax is equal to one-ninth of the flotation price. After that, profits are deemed excess, and there is a tax’ ” (quoting testimony from the treasurer of South Western Electricity plc)). The annual profits are then multiplied by 4.0027, giving the total “acceptable” profits (as opposed to windfall profit) that each company’s flotation value entitled it to earn during the initial period given the artificial price-to-earnings ratio of 9. This fictitious amount is finally subtracted from actual profits, yielding the excess profits, which were taxed at an effective rate of 51.71 percent. The rearranged tax formula demonstrates that the windfall tax is economically equivalent to the difference between the profits each company actually earned and the amount the Labour government believed it should have earned given its flotation value. For the 27 companies that had 1,461-day initial periods, the U. K. tax formula’s substantive effect was to impose a 51.71 percent tax on all profits earned above a threshold. That is a classic excess profits tax. See, e.g., Act of Mar. 3, 1917, ch. 159, Tit. II, §201, 39Stat. 1000 (8 percent tax imposed on excess profits exceeding the sum of $5,000 plus 8 percent of invested capital). Of course, other algebraic reformulations of the windfall tax equation are possible. See 665 F. 3d, at 66; Brief for Anne Alstott et al. as Amici Curiae 21–23 (Alstott Brief). The point of the reformulation is not that it yields a particular percentage (51.75 percent for most of the companies). Rather, the algebraic reformulations illustrate the economic substance of the tax and its interrelationship with net income. The Commissioner argues that any algebraic rearrangement is improper, asserting that U. S. courts must take the foreign tax rate as written and accept whatever tax base the foreign tax purports to adopt. Brief for Respondent 28. As a result, the Commissioner claims that the analysis begins and ends with the Labour government’s choice to characterize its tax base as the difference between “profit-making value” and flotation value. Such a rigid construction is unwarranted. It cannot be squared with the black-letter principle that “tax law deals in economic realities, not legal abstractions.” Commissioner v. Southwest Exploration Co., 350 U.S. 308, 315 (1956). Given the artificiality of the U. K.’s method of calculating purported “value,” we follow substance over form and recognize that the windfall tax is nothing more than a tax on actual profits above a threshold. B We find the Commissioner’s other arguments unpersuasive as well. First, the Commissioner attempts to buttress the argument that the windfall tax is a tax on value by noting that some U. S. gift and estate taxes use actual, past profits to estimate value. Brief for Respondent 17–18 (citing 26 CFR §20.2031–3 (2012) and 26 U. S. C. §2032A). This argument misses the point. In the case of valuation for gift and estate taxes, past income may be used to estimate future income streams. But, it is future revenue-earning potential, reduced to market value, that is subject to taxation. The windfall profits tax, by contrast, undisputedly taxed past, realized net income alone. The Commissioner contends that the U. K. was not trying to establish valuation as of the 1997 date on which the windfall tax was enacted but instead was attempting to derive a proper flotation valuation as of each company’s flotation date. Brief for Respondent 21. The Commissioner asserts that there was no need to estimate future in- come (as in the case of the gift or estate recipient) because actual revenue numbers for the privatized companies were available. Ibid. That argument also misses the mark. It is true, of course, that the companies might have been privatized at higher flotation values had the government recognized how efficient—and thus how profitable—the companies would become. But, the windfall tax requires an underlying concept of value (based on actual ex post earnings) that would be alien to any valuer. Taxing ac-tual, realized net income in hindsight is not the same as considering past income for purposes of estimating future earning potential. The Commissioner’s reliance on Example 3 to the Treasury Regulation’s gross receipts test is also misplaced. Id., at 37–38; 26 CFR §1.901–2(b)(3)(ii), Ex. 3. That example posits a petroleum tax in which “gross receipts from extraction income are deemed to equal 105 percent of the fair market value of petroleum extracted. This computation is designed to produce an amount that is greater than the fair market value of actual gross receipts.” Ibid. Under the example, a tax based on inflated gross receipts is not creditable. The Third Circuit believed that the same type of algebraic rearrangement used above could also be used to rearrange a tax imposed on Example 3. It hypothesized: “Say that the tax rate on the hypothetical extraction tax is 20%. It is true that a 20% tax on 105% of receipts is mathematically equivalent to a 21% tax on 100% of receipts, the latter of which would satisfy the gross receipts requirement. PPL proposes that we make the same move here, increasing the tax rate from 23% to 51.75% so that there is no multiple of receipts in the tax base. But if the regulation allowed us to do that, the example would be a nullity. Any tax on a multiple of receipts or profits could satisfy the gross receipts requirement, because we could reduce the starting point of its tax base to 100% of gross receipts by imagining a higher tax rate.” 665 F. 3d, at 67. The Commissioner reiterates the Third Circuit’s argument. Brief for Respondent 37–38. There are three basic problems with this approach. As the Fifth Circuit correctly recognized, there is a difference between imputed and actual receipts. “Example 3 hypothesizes a tax on the extraction of petroleum where the income value of the petroleum is deemed to be . . . deliberately greater than actual gross receipts.” Entergy Corp., 683 F. 3d, at 238. In contrast, the windfall tax depends on actual figures. Ibid. (“There was no need to calculate imputed gross receipts; gross receipts were actually known”). Example 3 simply addresses a different foreign taxation issue. The argument also incorrectly equates imputed gross receipts under Example 3 with net income. See 665 F. 3d, at 67 (“[a]ny tax on a multiple of receipts or profits”). As noted, a tax is creditable only if it applies to realized gross receipts reduced by significant costs and expenses attributable to such gross receipts. 26 CFR §1.901–2(b)(4)(i). A tax based solely on gross receipts (like the Third Circuit’s analysis) would be noncreditable because it would fail the Treasury Regulation’s net income requirement. Finally, even if expenses were subtracted from imputed gross receipts before a tax was imposed, the effect of inflating only gross receipts would be to inflate revenue while holding expenses (the other component of net income) constant. A tax imposed on inflated income minus actual expenses is not the same as a tax on net income.[5] For these reasons, a tax based on imputed gross receipts is not creditable. But, as the Fifth Circuit explained in rejecting the Third Circuit’s analysis, Example 3 is “faci-ally irrelevant” to the analysis of the U. K. windfall tax, which is based on true net income. Entergy Corp., supra, at 238.[6] * * * The economic substance of the U. K. windfall tax is that of a U. S. income tax. The tax is based on net income, and the fact that the Labour government chose to characterize it as a tax on the difference between two values is not dispositive under Treasury Regulation §1.901–2. Therefore, the tax is creditable under §901. The judgment of the Third Circuit is reversed. It is so ordered. Notes 1 A price-to-earnings ratio “is defined as the stock price divided by annual earnings per share. It is typically calculated by dividing the current stock price by the sum of the previous four quarters of earnings.” 3 New Palgrave Dictionary of Money & Finance 176 (1992). 2 Prior to enactment of what is now §901, income earned overseas was subject to taxes not only in the foreign country but also in the United States. See Burnet v. Chicago Portrait Co., 285 U.S. 1, 7 (1932). The relevant text making “income, war-profits and excess-profits taxes” creditable has not changed since 1918. See Revenue Act of 1918, §§222(a)(1), 238(a), 40Stat. 1073, 1080. 3 The relevant provisions provide as follows: “A foreign tax satisfies the realization requirement if, judged on the basis of its predominant character, it is imposed—(A) Upon or subsequent to the occurrence of events (‘realization events’) that would result in the realization of income under the income tax provisions of the Internal Revenue Code.” 26 CFR §1.901–2(b)(2)(i). “A foreign tax satisfies the gross receipts requirement if, judged on the basis of its predominant character, it is imposed on the basis of—(A) Gross receipts; or (B) Gross receipts computed under a method that is likely to produce an amount that is not greater than fair market value.” §1.901–2(b)(3)(i). “A foreign tax satisfies the net income requirement if, judged on the basis of its predominant character, the base of the tax is computed by reducing gross receipts . . . to permit—(A) Recovery of the significant costs and expenses (including significant capital expenditures) attributable, under reasonable principles, to such gross receipts; or (B) Recovery of such significant costs and expenses computed under a method that is likely to produce an amount that approximates, or is greater than, recovery of such significant costs and expenses.” §1.901–2(b)(4)(i). 4 The rearrangement requires only basic algebraic manipulation. First, because order of operations does not matter for multiplication and division, the formula is rearranged to the following: Next, everything outside the brackets is multiplied by and everything inside the brackets is multiplied by the inverse, . The effect is the same as multiplication by the number one (since = 1). That multiplication yields the formula in the text. 5 Mathematically, the Third Circuit’s hypothetical was incomplete. It should have been: 20% [ 105% (Gross Receipts) − Expenses ] = Tax But 105% of gross receipts minus expenses is not net income. Thus, the 20% tax is not a tax on net income and is not creditable. 6 An amici brief argues that because two companies had initial periods substantially shorter than four years, the predominant character of the U. K. windfall tax was not a tax on income in the U. S. sense. See Alstott Brief 29 (discussing Railtrack Group plc and British Energy plc). The argument amounts to a claim that two outliers changed the predominant character of the U. K. tax. See 135 T.C. 304, 340, n. 33 (2010) (rejecting this view). The Commissioner admitted at oral argument that it did not preserve this argument, a fact reflected in its briefing before this Court and in the Third Circuit. See Tr. of Oral Arg. 35–36; Opening Brief for Appellant and Reply Brief for Appellant in No. 11–1069 (CA3). We therefore express no view on its merits.

568.US.57

Respondent Valencia Gonzales, a death row inmate in Arizona, sought federal habeas relief. His counsel moved to stay the proceedings, contending that Gonzales’ mental incompetence prevented him from rationally communicating with or assisting counsel, and that Gonzales was thus entitled to a stay because, under the Ninth Circuit’s Rohan decision, what is now 18 U. S. C. §3599(a)(2) requires a stay when a petitioner is adjudged incompetent. The District Court denied a stay, finding that the claims before it were record based or resolvable as a matter of law and thus would not benefit from Gonzales’ input. Gonzales thereafter sought a writ of mandamus in the Ninth Circuit. Applying Rohan and its recent decision in Nash—which gave habeas petitioners a right to competence even on record-based appeals—the court granted the writ, concluding that §3599 gave Gonzales the right to a stay pending a competency determination. Respondent Sean Carter, a death row inmate in Ohio, initiated federal habeas proceedings but eventually moved for a competency determination and stay of the proceedings. The District Court granted the motion and found Carter incompetent to assist counsel. Applying the Ninth Circuit’s Rohan test, it determined that Carter’s assistance was required to develop four of his exhausted claims. It thus dismissed his habeas petition without prejudice and prospectively tolled the statute of limitations. On appeal, the Sixth Circuit, relying in part on Rees v. Peyton, 384 U.S. 312 (Rees I), located a statutory right to competence in 18 U. S. C. §4241, and found that a court could employ that provision whenever a capital habeas petitioner seeks to forgo his petition. It thus ordered that Carter’s petition be stayed indefinitely with respect to any claims requiring his assistance. Held: 1. Section 3599 does not provide a state prisoner a right to suspension of his federal habeas proceedings when he is adjudged incompetent. Pp. 5–12. (a) The assertion of such a right lacks any basis in the provision’s text. Section 3599 guarantees federal habeas petitioners on death row the right to federally funded counsel, §3599(a)(2), and sets out various requirements that appointed counsel must meet, §§3599(b)–(e), but it does not direct district courts to stay proceedings when petitioners are found incompetent. The assertion is also difficult to square with the Court’s constitutional precedents. If the Sixth Amendment right carried with it an implied right to competence, the right to competence at trial would flow from that Amendment, not from the right to due process, see Cooper v. Oklahoma, 517 U.S. 348, 354. But while the benefits flowing from the right to counsel at trial could be affected if an incompetent defendant is unable to communicate with his attorney, this Court has never said that the right to competence derives from the right to counsel. And the Court will not assume or infer that Congress intended to depart from such precedent and locate a right to competence in federal habeas proceedings within the right to counsel. See Merck & Co. v. Reynolds, 559 U. S. ___, ___. Pp. 5–7. (b) The Ninth Circuit identified its rule in Rohan, concluding there that a petitioner’s mental incompetency could “eviscerate the statutory right to counsel” in federal habeas proceedings. But given the backward-looking, record-based nature of §2254 proceedings, counsel can generally provide effective representation to a habeas petitioner regardless of the petitioner’s competence. Rees I, supra, Rees v. Peyton, 386 U.S. 989, and Rees v. Superintendent of the Va. State Penitentiary, 516 U. S 802, which involved an incompetent death row inmate’s attempt to withdraw his certiorari petition, offer no support for federal habeas petitioners seeking to stay district court proceedings or for the Ninth Circuit’s opinions in Rohan, Nash, or this case. The Ninth Circuit’s interpretation is also not supported by McFarland v. Scott, 512 U.S. 849, 858, in which this Court held that a district court could stay an execution after a capital prisoner had invoked his right to counsel but before he had filed his habeas petition. In contrast, Gonzales is seeking to stay the District Court’s proceedings, and he sought a stay more than six years after initiating his habeas petition, certainly ample time for his attorney to research and present the claims. Pp. 7–12. 2. Section 4241 also does not provide a statutory right to competence during federal habeas proceedings. The Sixth Circuit based its conclusion largely on a misreading of Rees I, which did not recognize such a right. Moreover, §4241 does not even apply to habeas proceedings. By its terms, it applies only to trial proceedings prior to sentencing and “at any time after the commencement of probation or supervised release.” Federal habeas proceedings, however, commence after sentencing, and federal habeas petitioners are incarcerated, not on probation. Furthermore, §4241, like the rest of Title 18 generally, applies exclusively to federal defendants, not to state prisoners like Carter. Finally, §4241(a) authorizes a district court to grant a motion for a competency determination if there is reasonable cause to believe that the defendant’s mental incompetence renders him “unable to understand . . . the proceedings against him or to assist properly in his defense,” while a §2254 habeas proceeding is a civil action against a state-prison warden, in which the petitioner collaterally attacks his conviction in an earlier state trial. Pp. 12–14. 3. For purposes of resolving these cases, it is sufficient to address the outer limits of the district court’s discretion to issue stays; it is unnecessary to determine the precise contours of that discretion. In Gonzales’ case, the District Court did not abuse its discretion in denying a stay after finding that Gonzales’ claims were all record based or resolvable as a matter of law, regardless of his competence. Review of a petitioner’s record-based claims subject to §2254(d) is limited to the record before the state court that heard the case on the merits. Any evidence that Gonzales might have would be inadmissible. In Carter’s case, three of his claims do not warrant a stay because they were adjudicated on the merits in state postconviction proceedings and thus subject to review under §2254(d). Thus, extrarecord evidence that he might have concerning these claims would be inadmissible. It is unclear from the record whether he exhausted his fourth claim. If it was exhausted, it too would be record based. But even if it was both unexhausted and not procedurally defaulted, an indefinite stay would be inappropriate, since such a stay would permit petitioners to “frustrate [the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996’s] goal of finality by dragging out indefinitely their federal habeas review.” Rhines v. Weber, 544 U.S. 269, 277–278. Pp. 14–18. 623 F.3d 1242, No. 10–930, reversed; 644 F.3d 329, No. 11–218, reversed and remanded. Thomas, J., delivered the opinion for a unanimous Court. Notes 1 Together with No. 11–218, Tibbals, Warden v. Carter, on certiorari to the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit.

These two cases present the question whether the incompetence of a state prisoner requires suspension of the prisoner’s federal habeas corpus proceedings. We hold that neither 18 U. S. C. §3599 nor 18 U. S. C. §4241 provides such a right and that the Courts of Appeals for the Ninth and Sixth Circuits both erred in holding that district courts must stay federal habeas proceedings when petitioners are adjudged incompetent. I A Ernest Valencia Gonzales was convicted by an Arizona jury of felony murder, armed robbery, aggravated assault, first-degree burglary, and theft. The convictions arose from Gonzales’ repeated stabbing of Darrel and Deborah Wagner in front of their 7-year-old son during a burglary of the Wagners’ home. Darrel Wagner died from the stabbing, while Deborah Wagner survived but spent five days in intensive care. The trial court sentenced Gonzales to death on the murder charge and to various prison terms for the other crimes. After exhausting state remedies, Gonzales filed a petition for a writ of habeas corpus in Federal District Court on November 15, 1999. While the petition was pending, Gonzales’ appointed counsel moved to stay the proceedings, contending that Gonzales was no longer capable of rationally communicating with or assisting counsel. He argued that mental incompetence entitled Gonzales to a stay under Ninth Circuit precedent. See Rohan v. Woodford, 334 F.3d 803 (2003). In Rohan, the Ninth Circuit held that the federal statute guaranteeing state capital prisoners a right to counsel in federal habeas proceedings, 21 U. S. C. §848(q)(4)(B) (2000 ed.) (now codified as 18 U. S. C. §3599(a)(2)), could not “be faithfully enforced unless courts ensure that a petitioner is competent,” 334 F. 3d, at 813. Rohan thus concluded that “where an incompetent capital habeas petitioner raises claims that could potentially benefit from his ability to communicate rationally, refusing to stay proceedings pending restoration of competence denies him his statutory right to assistance of counsel, whether or not counsel can identify with precision the information sought.” Id., at 819. Applying Rohan, the District Court denied a stay after concluding that the claims properly before it were record based or resolvable as a matter of law and thus would not benefit from Gonzales’ input. The court found it unnec-essary to determine whether Gonzales was incompetent, though it did find that he possessed “at least a limited capacity for rational communication.” Gonzales v. Schriro, 617 F. Supp. 2d 849, 863 (Ariz. 2008). Gonzales thereafter filed an emergency petition for a writ of mandamus in the Ninth Circuit. While Gonzales’ petition was pending, the Ninth Circuit decided Nash v. Ryan, 581 F.3d 1048 (2009), which held that habeas petitioners have a right to competence on appeal, even though appeals are entirely record based. Id., at 1050 (“While an appeal is record-based, that does not mean that a habeas petitioner in a capital case is relegated to a nonexistent role. Meaningful assistance of appellate counsel may require rational communication between counsel and a habeas petitioner”). Applying Nash and Rohan, the court granted the writ of mandamus, concluding that even though Gonzales’ “exhausted claims are record-based or legal in nature, he is entitled to a stay pending a competency determination” under 18 U. S. C. §3599. In re Gonzales, 623 F.3d 1242, 1244 (2010). We granted certiorari to determine whether §3599 provides a statutory right to competence in federal habeas proceedings. 565 U. S. ___ (2012). B Sean Carter was convicted by an Ohio jury of aggra-vated murder, aggravated robbery, and rape, and sentenced to death for anally raping his adoptive grandmother, Veader Prince, and stabbing her to death. After exhausting his state-court appeals, Carter initiated federal habeas proceedings on March 19, 2002, in the Northern District of Ohio. Carter eventually filed a third amended petition, along with a motion requesting a competency determi-nation and a stay of the proceedings. The District Court granted the motion. Following several psychiatric evaluations and a com-petency determination, the District Court found Carter incompetent to assist counsel. Applying the Ninth Circuit’s test in Rohan, it determined that Carter’s assistance was required to develop four of his exhausted claims. As a result, the court dismissed his habeas petition without prejudice and prospectively tolled the statute of limitations. Carter v. Bradshaw, 583 F. Supp. 2d 872, 884 (2008). The State appealed. The Sixth Circuit acknowledged that “[f]ederal habeas petitioners facing the death penalty for state criminal convictions do not enjoy a constitutional right to competence.” Carter v. Bradshaw, 644 F.3d 329, 332 (2011). It nevertheless located a statutory right to competence in §4241, relying, in part, on this Court’s decision in Rees v. Peyton, 384 U.S. 312 (1966) (per curiam) (Rees I ).[1] 644 F. 3d, at 332. The Sixth Circuit explained: “By applying section 4241 to habeas actions, Rees addresses the situation where a habeas petitioner awaiting the death penalty may seek to forego any collateral attacks on his conviction or sentence, and defines a statutory right for the petitioner to be competent enough to (1) understand the nature and consequences of the proceedings against him, and (2) assist properly in his defense.” Id., at 333. The court concluded that “[a]nytime a capital habeas petitioner affirmatively seeks to forego his habeas petition, whether by action or inaction, . . . a district court may employ section 4241.” Id., at 334. The court therefore amended the District Court’s judgment and ordered that Carter’s petition be stayed in-definitely with respect to any claims that required his assistance. Id., at 336–337. Judge Rogers dissented, arguing that there was no constitutional or statutory basis for the court’s decision. Id., at 337–342. We granted certiorari to determine whether §4241 provides a statutory right to competence in federal habeas proceedings. 565 U. S. ___ (2012). II Both the Ninth and Sixth Circuits have concluded that death row inmates pursuing federal habeas are entitled to a suspension of proceedings when found incompetent. The Ninth Circuit located this right in §3599, while the Sixth Circuit located it in §4241. Neither section provides such a right. A Section 3599(a)(2) guarantees federal habeas petitioners on death row the right to federally funded counsel.[2] The statute provides that petitioners who are “financially unable to obtain adequate representation . . . shall be entitled to the appointment of one or more attorneys.” Appointed attorneys are required to have experience in death penalty litigation, §§3599(b)–(d), and, once appointed, are directed to “represent the defendant throughout every subsequent stage of available judicial proceedings,” §3599(e). The statute also gives district courts the power to authorize funding for “investigative, expert, or other services” as are “reasonably necessary for the representation of the defendant.” §3599(f). But §3599 does not direct district courts to stay proceedings when habeas petitioners are found incompetent.[3] In addition to lacking any basis in the statutory text, the assertion that the right to counsel implies a right to competence is difficult to square with our constitutional precedents. The right to counsel is located in the Sixth Amendment. (“In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right . . . to have the Assistance of Counsel for his defence.”) If the right to counsel carried with it an implied right to competence, the right to competence at trial would flow from the Sixth Amendment. But “[w]e have repeatedly and consistently recognized that ‘the criminal trial of an incompetent defendant violates due process,’ ” not the Sixth Amendment. Cooper v. Oklahoma, 517 U.S. 348, 354 (1996) (quoting Medina v. California, 505 U.S. 437, 453 (1992); emphasis added); see also Drope v. Missouri, 420 U.S. 162, 172 (1975) (“[T]he failure to observe procedures adequate to protect a defendant’s right not to be tried or convicted while incompetent to stand trial deprives him of his due process right to a fair trial” (citing Pate v. Robinson, 383 U.S. 375, 385 (1966))). It stands to reason that the benefits flowing from the right to counsel at trial could be affected if an incompe-tent defendant is unable to communicate with his attorney. For example, an incompetent defendant would be unable to assist counsel in identifying witnesses and deciding on a trial strategy. For this reason, “[a] defendant may not be put to trial unless he ‘ “has sufficient present ability to consult with his lawyer with a reasonable degree of rational understanding . . . [and] a rational as well as factual understanding of the proceedings against him.” ’ ” Cooper, supra, at 354 (quoting Dusky v. United States, 362 U.S. 402 (1960) (per curiam)). Notwithstanding the connection between the right to competence at trial and the right to counsel at trial, we have never said that the right to competence derives from the right to counsel. We will not assume or infer that Congress intended to depart from our precedents and locate a right to competence in federal habeas proceedings within the right to counsel. “We normally assume that, when Congress enacts statutes, it is aware of relevant judicial precedent.” Merck & Co. v. Reynolds, 559 U. S. ___, ___ (2010) (slip op., at 12). The Ninth Circuit located a statutory right to competence in §3599. 623 F. 3d, at 1245 (citing Rohan, 334 F.3d 803, and Nash, 581 F. 3d 1048). Because Rohan is the Ninth Circuit’s controlling precedent, we briefly address that decision. In Rohan, a habeas petitioner asserted a right to com-petency based both on the Due Process Clause and on 21 U. S. C. §848(q)(4)(B) (2000 ed.). After discussing the history of the common law, which prohibited the indictment, trial and execution of mentally incompetent defendants,[4] the Court of Appeals stated that the petitioner’s due process claim raised “substantial” “constitutional ques-tions.” Rohan, 334 F. 3d, at 814. This conclusion is puzzling in light of the Ninth Circuit’s acknowledgment that there is “no constitutional right to counsel on habeas,” id., at 810 (citing Murray v. Giarratano, 492 U.S. 1, 10 (1989) (plurality opinion)), and that “there is no due process right to collateral review at all,” 334 F. 3d, at 810 (citing United States v. MacCollom, 426 U.S. 317, 323 (1976) (plurality opinion)). The Ninth Circuit was simply incorrect in suggesting that, in this case, there might be a constitutional concern—much less a “substantial” one—raised by the petitioner’s due process claim. Invoking the canon of constitutional avoidance, the Ninth Circuit gave the petitioner the practical benefit of a due process right to competence in federal habeas proceedings through its interpretation of §848(q)(4)(B).[5] 334 F. 3d, at 814. In analyzing that statute, the Rohan court relied on a Ninth Circuit en banc opinion in Calderon v. United States Dist. Court for Central Dist. of Cal., 163 F.3d 530 (1998) (Kelly V), overruled in unrelated part, Woodford v. Garceau, 538 U.S. 202 (2003), which held that a prisoner’s incompetence is grounds for equitably tolling the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996’s (AEDPA) 1-year statute of limitations for filing habeas petitions. The Rohan court purported to be bound by the “rationale” of Kelly V—that a prisoner’s incompetence could “eviscerate the statutory right to counsel,”[6] Kelly V, supra, at 541—and concluded that “[i]f a petitioner’s statutory rights depend on his ability to communicate rationally, compelling him to pursue relief while incompetent is no less an infringement than dismissing his late petition.” 334 F. 3d, at 814. We are not persuaded by the Ninth Circuit’s assertion that a habeas petitioner’s mental incompetency could “evis-cerate the statutory right to counsel” in federal habeas proceedings. Given the backward-looking, record-based nature of most federal habeas proceedings, counsel can generally provide effective representation to a habeas petitioner regardless of the petitioner’s competence. Indeed, where a claim is “adjudicated on the merits in State court proceedings,” 28 U. S. C. §2254(d) (2006 ed.), counsel should, in most circumstances, be able to identify whether the “adjudication . . . resulted in a decision that was contrary to, or involved an unreasonable application of, clearly established Federal law, as determined by the Supreme Court of the United States,” §2254(d)(1), without any evi-dence outside the record. See Cullen v. Pinholster, 563 U. S. ___, ___ (2011) (slip op., at 9) (“[R]eview under [28 U. S. C.] §2254(d)(1) is limited to the record that was before the state court that adjudicated the claim on the merits. . . . This backward-looking language requires an examination of the state-court decision at the time it was made. It follows that the record under review is limited to the record in existence at that same time—i.e., the record before the state court”). Attorneys are quite capable of reviewing the state-court record, identifying legal errors, and marshaling relevant arguments, even without their clients’ assistance. Rohan also cited Rees I, 384 U.S. 312, in support of its conclusion. 334 F. 3d, at 815. In Rees I, a state inmate on death row filed a petition for a writ of habeas corpus in District Court, alleging that the state-court conviction violated his constitutional rights. 384 U. S., at 313. The District Court denied his petition, and the Court of Appeals affirmed. Ibid. Shortly after Rees’ counsel filed a petition for certiorari with this Court, Rees directed his counsel to withdraw the petition and to forgo any further proceedings. Counsel advised the Court that he could not accede to these instructions without a psychiatric evaluation of Rees, because there was some doubt as to Rees’ mental competency. Ibid. In response, the Court directed the District Court to determine Rees’ mental competence. Id., at 313–314. After the District Court conducted a hearing and found Rees incompetent, the Court issued a one-sentence order directing that the petition for certiorari be “held without action.” Rees v. Peyton, 386 U.S. 989 (1967) (Rees II ).[7] When Rees died several decades later, the Court dismissed the petition. Rees v. Superintendent of Va. State Penitentiary, 516 U.S. 802 (1995) (Rees III ). The Ninth Circuit concluded that “[t]he record in Rees II shows that incompetence is grounds for staying habeas proceedings.” Rohan, supra, at 815. This conclusion is unwarranted. Rees I concerned whether an incompetent habeas petitioner may withdraw his certiorari petition, and it provides no clear answer even to that question. Likewise, the unique, one-sentence order in Rees II offered no rationale for the decision to hold Rees’ petition. As a result, Rees offers no support for federal habeas petitioners seeking to stay district court proceedings or for the Ninth Circuit’s opinions in Rohan, Nash, or this case.[8] Gonzales barely defends the Ninth Circuit’s interpretation of §3599.[9] He offers a single, halfhearted argument in support of the Ninth Circuit’s opinion based on our statement in McFarland v. Scott, 512 U.S. 849, 858 (1994), that “the right to counsel necessarily includes a right for that counsel meaningfully to research and present a defendant’s habeas claims.” But McFarland was addressing whether a district court could issue a stay of execution after a capital prisoner had filed a request for counsel but before he had filed his habeas petition. Id., at 854–858. We held that a district court may stay a capital prisoner’s execution once the prisoner has invoked his statutory right to counsel. Id., at 859. McFarland has no relevance here where Gonzales is not seeking a stay of execution, but rather a stay of the District Court’s proceedings. Moreover, Gonzales moved for a stay more than six years after initiating his habeas petition. This was certainly ample time for his attorney to research and present the claims. For the foregoing reasons, we hold that §3599 does not provide federal habeas petitioners with a “statutory right” to competence.[10] B The Sixth Circuit reached the same conclusion as the Ninth Circuit but located the statutory right to competence during habeas proceedings in 18 U. S. C. §4241. Relying largely on Rees I, the Sixth Circuit concluded that §4241 provides a statutory right to competence. 644 F. 3d, at 333. But as discussed, Part II–A, supra, Rees I did not recognize a statutory right to competence in federal ha-beas proceedings.[11] Moreover, §4241 does not even apply to such proceedings. Section 4241(a) provides: “At any time after the commencement of a prosecution for an offense and prior to the sentencing of the defendant, or at any time after the commencement of probation or supervised release and prior to the completion of the sentence, the defendant or the attorney for the Government may file a motion for a hearing to determine the mental competency of the defendant. The court shall grant the motion, or shall order such a hearing on its own motion, if there is reasonable cause to believe that the defendant may presently be suf-fering from a mental disease or defect rendering him mentally incompetent to the extent that he is unable to understand the nature and consequences of the proceedings against him or to assist properly in his defense.” By its own terms, §4241 applies only to trial proceedings prior to sentencing and “at any time after the commencement of probation or supervised release.” Federal habeas proceedings, however, commence after sentencing, and federal habeas petitioners, by definition, are incarcerated, not on probation. Furthermore, §4241, like the rest of Title 18 generally, applies exclusively to federal defendants and probationers subject to prosecution by the United States. Carter is not, and does not claim to be, a federal defendant. Rather, he is a state prisoner challenging the basis of his conviction in a federal civil action. See Blair v. Martel, 645 F.3d 1151, 1155 (CA9 2011) (“By its own terms, §4241 does not apply unless a federal criminal defendant is on trial or is released on probation”). Finally, §4241(a) authorizes the district court to grant a motion for a competency determination if there is reasonable cause to believe that the defendant’s mental incompetence renders him “unable to understand the nature and consequences of the proceedings against him or to assist properly in his defense.” (Emphasis added.) See also §4241(d).[12] A habeas proceeding under §2254, however, is not a “proceedin[g] against” the habeas petitioner; this, on the other hand, is a civil action against the warden of the state prison. And, a federal habeas petitioner does not mount a “defense” to the government’s prosecution. Rather, the petitioner collaterally attacks his conviction at an earlier state trial. Accordingly, the statutory right to competence provided in §4241 is simply inapplicable to federal habeas proceedings. We would address Carter’s arguments in defense of the Sixth Circuit’s decision, but, there are none. Carter’s brief informed us that “[t]his Court need not consider the statutory argument with which the [petitioner’s] brief begins—i.e., that there is no ‘statutory right’ under 18 U. S. C. §4241 to be competent in habeas proceedings.” Brief for Respondent in No. 11–218, p. 15. Apparently, Carter found the Sixth Circuit’s reasoning indefensible. We agree. III Both Gonzales and Carter argued at length in their briefs and at oral argument that district courts have the equitable power to stay proceedings when they determine that habeas petitioners are mentally incompetent.[13] Neither petitioner disputes that “[d]istrict courts . . . ordinarily have authority to issue stays, where such a stay would be a proper exercise of discretion.” Rhines v. Weber, 544 U.S. 269, 276 (2005) (citation omitted); see also Enelow v. New York Life Ins. Co., 293 U.S. 379, 382 (1935) (explaining that a district court may stay a case “pending before it by virtue of its inherent power to control the progress of the cause so as to maintain the orderly processes of justice”). Similarly, both petitioners agree that “AEDPA does not deprive district courts of [this] authority.” Rhines, supra, at 276. Petitioners and respondents disagree, however, about the types of situations in which a stay would be appropriate and about the permissible duration of a competency-based stay. We do not presume that district courts need unsolicited advice from us on how to manage their dockets. Rather, the decision to grant a stay, like the decision to grant an evidentiary hearing, is “generally left to the sound discretion of district courts.” Schriro v. Landrigan, 550 U.S. 465, 473 (2007). For pur-poses of resolving these cases, it is unnecessary to determine the precise contours of the district court’s discretion to issue stays. We address only its outer limits. A In Gonzales’ case, the District Court correctly found that all of Gonzales’ properly exhausted claims were record based or resolvable as a matter of law, irrespective of Gonzales’ competence.[14] 617 F. Supp. 2d, at 863; see also State v. Gonzales, 181 Ariz. 502, 509–515, 892 P.2d 838, 845–851 (1995) (adjudicating Gonzales’ claims on the merits). The court therefore denied Gonzales’ motion for a stay. The District Court did not abuse its discretion in so holding, because a stay is not generally warranted when a petitioner raises only record-based claims subject to 28 U. S. C. §2254(d). As previously noted, review of such claims “is limited to the record that was before the state court that adjudicated the claim on the merits.” Pin-holster, 563 U. S., at ___ (slip op., at 9). Accordingly, any evidence that a petitioner might have would be inadmis-sible. Ibid. (“[T]he record under review is limited to the record in existence at that same time—i.e., the record before the state court”). Because federal habeas is “a ‘guard against extreme malfunctions in the state criminal justice systems,’ not a substitute for ordinary error correction through appeal,” the types of errors redressable under §2254(d) should be apparent from the record. Harrington v. Richter, 562 U. S. ___, ___ (2011) (slip op., at 13) (quoting Jackson v. Virginia, 443 U.S. 307, 332, n. 5 (1979) (Stevens, J., concurring in judgment)). Counsel can read the record. B In Carter’s case, the District Court concluded that four of Carter’s claims could potentially benefit from Carter’s assistance.[15] However, three of these claims were adjudicated on the merits in state postconviction proceedings and, thus, were subject to review under §2254(d). See State v. Carter, No. 99–T–0133, 2000 Ohio App. LEXIS 5935, *5–*13 (Dec. 15, 2000). Any extrarecord evidence that Carter might have concerning these claims would therefore be inadmissible. Pinholster, supra, at ___. Consequently, these claims do not warrant a stay. It is unclear from the record whether Carter exhausted the fourth claim.[16] If that claim was exhausted, it too would be record based. But even if Carter could show that the claim was both unexhausted and not procedurally defaulted,[17] an indefinite stay would be inappropriate. “AEDPA’s acknowledged purpose” is to “ ‘reduc[e] delays in the execution of state and federal criminal sentences.’ ” Schriro, supra, at 475 (quoting Woodford, 538 U. S., at 206). “Staying a federal habeas petition frustrates AEDPA’s objective of encouraging finality by allowing a petitioner to delay the resolution of the federal proceedings.” Rhines, 544 U. S., at 277. In the context of discussing stay and abeyance procedures, we observed: “[N]ot all petitioners have an incentive to obtain federal relief as quickly as possible. In particular, capital petitioners might deliberately engage in dilatory tactics to prolong their incarceration and avoid execution of the sentence of death. Without time limits [on stays], petitioners could frustrate AEDPA’s goal of finality by dragging out indefinitely their federal ha-beas review.” Id., at 277–278. The same principle obtains in the context of competency-based stays. At some point, the State must be allowed to defend its judgment of conviction.[18] If a district court concludes that the petitioner’s claim could substantially benefit from the petitioner’s assistance, the district court should take into account the likelihood that the petitioner will regain competence in the foreseeable future. Where there is no reasonable hope of competence, a stay is inappropriate and merely frustrates the State’s attempts to defend its presumptively valid judgment. IV The judgment of the Ninth Circuit is reversed. We vacate the judgment of the Sixth Circuit and remand the case for proceedings consistent with this opinion. It is so ordered. Notes 1 In Rees, we held indefinitely a petition for certiorari after an in-competent capital inmate sought to withdraw his petition prior to our review. 384 U. S., at 313–314. See infra, at 12–14. 2 “In any postconviction proceeding under [ 28 U. S. C. §2254 or §2255], seeking to vacate or set aside a death sentence, any defendant who is or becomes financially unable to obtain adequate representation or investigative, expert, or other reasonably necessary services shall be entitled to the appointment of one or more attorneys and the furnishing of such other services in accordance with subsections (b) through (f ).” 18 U. S. C. §3599(a)(2). 3 In fact, §3599(e), which contains the section’s sole reference to “competency,” cuts against the Ninth Circuit’s conclusion. That section provides that appointed attorneys “shall also represent the defendant in such competency proceedings and proceedings for executive or other clemency as may be available to the defendant.” We doubt that Congress would have authorized counsel to represent inmates in postconviction competency proceedings only if the inmates were competent. 4 Blackstone explained the common-law rule as follows: “[I]f a man in his sound memory commits a capital offence, and before arraignment for it, he becomes mad, he ought not to be arraigned for it; because he is not able to plead to it with that advice and caution that he ought. And if, after he has pleaded, the prisoner becomes mad, he shall not be tried; for how can he make his defence? If, after he be tried and found guilty, he loses his senses before judgment, judgment shall not be pronounced; and if, after judgment, he becomes of nonsane memory, execution shall be stayed: for peradventure, says the human-ity of the English law, had the prisoner been of sound memory, he might have alleged something in stay of judgment or execution.” 4 W. Blackstone, Commentaries on the Laws of England 24–25 (1769). 5 As noted supra, at 2, §848(q)(4)(B) has been superseded by 18 U. S. C. §3599(a)(2). 6 It is unclear how Kelly V’s determination that mental incompetence is grounds for AEDPA equitable tolling could possibly control the outcome in Rohan, which had nothing to do with AEDPA’s statute of limitations. The relevant questions for equitable tolling purposes are whether the petitioner has “ ‘been pursuing his rights diligently’ ” and whether “ ‘some extraordinary circumstance stood in his way.’ ” Holland v. Florida, 560 U. S. ___, ___ (2010) (slip op., at 16–17) (quoting Pace v. DiGuglielmo, 544 U.S. 408, 418 (2005)). But the propriety of equitably tolling AEDPA’s statute of limitations in the case of a men-tally incompetent petitioner has nothing to do with the statutory right to counsel. The Ninth Circuit has held that habeas petitioners who do not have a statutory right to counsel (i.e., all habeas petitioners other than those on death row) may still avail themselves of equitable tolling if they are mentally incompetent. See, e.g., Bills v. Clark, 628 F.3d 1092, 1097 (2010) (establishing standard for deciding equitable tolling claims predicated on mental incompetence); Laws v. Lamarque, 351 F.3d 919, 924–925 (2003) (recognizing that mental incompetence can give rise to equitable tolling for AEDPA’s statute of limitations). 7 This order was issued after the Clerk of the Court spoke with the attorneys for Virginia and for the petitioner and proposed that the Court hold the petition indefinitely. See Memorandum from John F. Davis, Clerk of Court, to The Chief Justice (Mar. 31, 1967); see also Crocker, Not To Decide Is To Decide: The U. S. Supreme Court’s Thirty-Year Struggle With One Case About Competency To Waive Death Penalty Appeals, 49 Wayne L. Rev. 885, 916 (2004). Although Virginia originally opposed the idea of an indefinite stay, see Memorandum for Respondent in Rees v. Peyton, O. T. 1966, No. 9, Misc., pp. 2–3 (Mar. 14, 1967), it eventually accepted the proposal, see Memorandum from John F. Davis, supra, at 2 (“In summary, counsel for both parties do not really present any objection to the procedure proposed in the case, but neither of them accepts it with enthusiasm”). 8 Moreover, we note that Rees is a pre-AEDPA case. To whatever, extent Rees can be read to provide guidance in the habeas context, that guidance must pass muster under AEDPA. 9 See Brief for Respondent in No. 10–930, p. 13 (“The State and the Solicitor General argue that the federal habeas right-to-counsel provision, 18 U. S. C. §3599(a)(2), should not be interpreted to create a ‘right to competence’ . . . . However, that is not the question presented in this case. The issue is whether courts have authority to issue a stay, not whether capital habeas petitioners enjoy a freestanding ‘right to com-petence,’ or what the contours of such a right may be. The Court need not reach that question in order to uphold the discretionary, and temporary, stay of proceedings issued in this case”). Notwithstanding Gon-zales’ attempt to rewrite the question presented, we granted certiorari on the following question: “Did the Ninth Circuit err when it held that 18 U. S. C. §3599(a)(2)—which provides that an indigent capital state inmate pursuing federal habeas relief ‘shall be entitled to the appointment of one or more attorneys’—impliedly entitles a death row inmate to stay the federal habeas proceedings he initiated if he is not competent to assist counsel? 10 Gonzales suggests that 28 U. S. C. §2251 supports the Ninth Circuit’s decision. But §2251 merely provides district courts with the statutory authority to stay state-court proceedings pending the resolution of federal habeas proceedings. Section 2251 says nothing about whether a habeas petitioner is entitled to a stay of the district court’s proceedings pending his return to competence. 11 The Sixth Circuit made much of the fact that Rees I cited 18 U. S. C. §§4244–4245, the predecessors of §4241. But that citation provides no support for a statutory right to competence. In Rees I,as part of our direction to the District Court, we said that it would“be appropriate for the District Court to subject Rees to psychiatric and other appropriate medical examinations and, so far as necessary, to temporary federal hospitalization for this purpose. Cf. 18 U. S. C. §§4244–4245 (1964 ed.).” 384 U. S., at 314. The citation to §§4244–4245 did nothing more than point the District Court to those sections of the Criminal Code that set forth the proper procedures for conducting a competency hearing. There would have been little point in this Court’s directing the District Court to reinvent the wheel when §4244 already provided a rubric for conducting such a hearing. 12 Section 4241(d) provides, in relevant part: “If, after the hearing, the court finds by a preponderance of the evidence that the defendant is presently suffering from a mental dis-ease or defect rendering him mentally incompetent to the extent that he is unable to understand the nature and consequences of the proceedings against him or to assist properly in his defense, the court shall commit the defendant to the custody of the Attorney General.” (Emphasis added.) 13 This argument is especially curious coming from Gonzales, because the District Court denied his request for a stay. For Gonzales to prevail on his “equitable discretion” theory, Tr. of Oral Arg. in No. 10–930, p. 33, we would have to conclude that the District Court abused its discretion in denying the stay. But Gonzales has not argued that the District Court abused its discretion by denying his stay motion. Gon-zales’ arguments, thus, have little to do with the facts of his case. 14 Gonzales alleges that the trial judge refused to recuse himself; that he was prejudiced by the presence of the victim’s wife in the courtroom during jury selection and following her testimony; that the wife’s in-court identification was tainted; that there was insufficient evidence to support two aggravating factors found by the judge; and that Arizona’s statutory death penalty scheme unconstitutionally precludes the sen-tencer from considering all mitigating evidence. 15 Claim one alleges that Carter was incompetent to stand trial and was unlawfully removed from the trial proceedings. Claims two, five, and six are ineffective-assistance-of-counsel claims. 16 The fourth claim alleges ineffective assistance of appellate counsel for not raising trial counsel’s failure to pursue the competency-at-trial issue. It is unclear from the record whether Carter presented this claim to the Ohio Court of Appeals on state postconviction review, and there is no mention of this claim in that court’s opinion. In the District Court, the State argued that certain claims were procedurally de-faulted, see Carter v. Bradshaw, 583 F. Supp. 2d 872, 880 (ND Ohio 2008), but the court deferred ruling on this argument. The State was likely referring to claim four. We, therefore, leave the resolution of this claim to the District Court on remand. 17 In Cullen v. Pinholster, 563 U. S. ___, ___ (2011) (slip op., at 14, n. 10), we did “not decide where to draw the line between new claims and claims adjudicated on the merits.” 18 Our opinion today does not implicate the prohibition against “ ‘carrying out a sentence of death upon a prisoner who is insane.’ ” Panetti v. Quarterman, 551 U.S. 930, 934 (2007) (quoting Ford v. Wainwright, 477 U.S. 399, 409–410 (1986)).

570.US.178

Petitioner, without being placed in custody or receiving Miranda warnings, voluntarily answered some of a police officer’s questions about a murder, but fell silent when asked whether ballistics testing would match his shotgun to shell casings found at the scene of the crime. At petitioner’s murder trial in Texas state court, and over his objection, the prosecution used his failure to answer the question as evidence of guilt. He was convicted, and both the State Court of Appeals and Court of Criminal Appeals affirmed, rejecting his claim that the prosecution’s use of his silence in its case in chief violated the Fifth Amendment. Held: The judgment is affirmed. 369 S.W.3d 176, affirmed. Justice Alito, joined by The Chief Justice and Justice Kennedy, concluded that petitioner’s Fifth Amendment claim fails because he did not expressly invoke the privilege in response to the officer’s question. Pp. 3−12. (a) To prevent the privilege against self-incrimination from shielding information not properly within its scope, a witness who “ ‘desires the protection of the privilege . . . must claim it’ ” at the time he relies on it. Minnesota v. Murphy, 465 U.S. 420, 427. This Court has recognized two exceptions to that requirement. First, a criminal defendant need not take the stand and assert the privilege at his own trial. Griffin v. California, 380 U.S. 609, 613–615. Petitioner’s silence falls outside this exception because he had no comparable unqualified right not to speak during his police interview. Second, a witness’ failure to invoke the privilege against self-incrimination must be excused where governmental coercion makes his forfeiture of the privilege involuntary. See, e.g., Miranda v. Arizona, 384 U.S. 436, 467−468, and n. 37. Petitioner cannot benefit from this principle because it is undisputed that he agreed to accompany the officers to the station and was free to leave at any time. Pp. 3−6. (b) Petitioner seeks a third exception to the express invocation requirement for cases where the witness chooses to stand mute rather than give an answer that officials suspect would be incriminating, but this Court’s cases all but foreclose that argument. A defendant normally does not invoke the privilege by remaining silent. See Roberts v. United States, 445 U.S. 552, 560. And the express invocation requirement applies even when an official has reason to suspect that the answer to his question would incriminate the witness. See Murphy, supra, at 427−428. For the same reasons that neither a witness’ silence nor official suspicion is sufficient by itself to relieve a witness of the obligation to expressly invoke the privilege, they do not do so together. The proposed exception also would be difficult to reconcile with Berghuis v. Thompkins, 560 U.S. 370, where this Court held in the closely related context of post-Miranda silence that a defendant failed to invoke his right to cut off police questioning when he remained silent for 2 hours and 45 minutes. Id., at ___. Petitioner claims that reliance on the Fifth Amendment privilege is the most likely explanation for silence in a case like his, but such silence is “insolubly ambiguous.” See Doyle v. Ohio, 426 U.S. 610, 617. To be sure, petitioner might have declined to answer the officer’s question in reliance on his constitutional privilege. But he also might have done so because he was trying to think of a good lie, because he was embarrassed, or because he was protecting someone else. Not every such possible explanation for silence is probative of guilt, but neither is every possible explanation protected by the Fifth Amendment. Petitioner also suggests that it would be unfair to require a suspect unschooled in the particulars of legal doctrine to do anything more than remain silent in order to invoke his “right to remain silent.” But the Fifth Amendment guarantees that no one may be “compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself,” not an unqualified “right to remain silent.” In any event, it is settled that forfeiture of the privilege against self-incrimination need not be knowing. Murphy, 465 U. S., at 427–428. Pp. 6−10. (c) Petitioner’s argument that applying the express invocation requirement in this context will be unworkable is also unpersuasive. The Court has long required defendants to assert the privilege in order to subsequently benefit from it, and this rule has not proved difficult to apply in practice. Pp. 10−12. Justice Thomas, joined by Justice Scalia, concluded that petitioner’s claim would fail even if he invoked the privilege because the prosecutor’s comments regarding his precustodial silence did not compel him to give self-incriminating testimony. Griffin v. California, 380 U.S. 609, in which this Court held that the Fifth Amendment prohibits a prosecutor or judge from commenting on a defendant’s failure to testify, should not be extended to a defendant’s silence during a precustodial interview because Griffin “lacks foundation in the Constitution’s text, history, or logic.” See Mitchell v. United States, 526 U.S. 314, 341 (Thomas, J., dissenting). Pp. 1−2. Alito, J., announced the judgment of the Court and delivered an opinion, in which Roberts, C. J., and Kennedy, J., joined. Thomas, J., filed an opinion concurring in the judgment, in which Scalia, J., joined. Breyer, J., filed a dissenting opinion, in which Ginsburg, Sotomayor, and Kagan, JJ., joined.

in which The Chief Justice and Justice Kennedy join. Without being placed in custody or receiving Miranda warnings, petitioner voluntarily answered the questions of a police officer who was investigating a murder. But petitioner balked when the officer asked whether a ballistics test would show that the shell casings found at the crime scene would match petitioner’s shotgun. Petitioner was subsequently charged with murder, and at trial prosecutors argued that his reaction to the officer’s question suggested that he was guilty. Petitioner claims that this argument violated the Fifth Amendment, which guarantees that “[n]o person . . . shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself.” Petitioner’s Fifth Amendment claim fails because he did not expressly invoke the privilege against self-incrimination in response to the officer’s question. It has long been settled that the privilege “generally is not self-executing” and that a witness who desires its protection “ ‘must claim it.’ ” Minnesota v. Murphy, 465 U. S. 420, 425, 427 (1984) (quoting United States v. Monia, 317 U. S. 424, 427 (1943)). Although “no ritualistic formula is necessary in order to invoke the privilege,” Quinn v. United States, 349 U. S. 155, 164 (1955), a witness does not do so by simply standing mute. Because petitioner was required to assert the privilege in order to benefit from it, the judgment of the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals rejecting petitioner’s Fifth Amendment claim is affirmed. I On the morning of December 18, 1992, two brothers were shot and killed in their Houston home. There were no witnesses to the murders, but a neighbor who heard gunshots saw someone run out of the house and speed away in a dark-colored car. Police recovered six shotgun shell casings at the scene. The investigation led police to petitioner, who had been a guest at a party the victims hosted the night before they were killed. Police visited petitioner at his home, where they saw a dark blue car in the driveway. He agreed to hand over his shotgun for ballistics testing and to accompany police to the station for questioning. Petitioner’s interview with the police lasted approximately one hour. All agree that the interview was noncustodial, and the parties litigated this case on the assumption that he was not read Miranda warnings. See Mi- randa v. Arizona, 384 U. S. 436 (1966). For most of the interview, petitioner answered the officer’s questions. But when asked whether his shotgun “would match the shells recovered at the scene of the murder,” App. 17, petitioner declined to answer. Instead, petitioner “[l]ooked down at the floor, shuffled his feet, bit his bottom lip, cl[e]nched his hands in his lap, [and] began to tighten up.” Id., at 18. After a few moments of silence, the officer asked additional questions, which petitioner answered. Ibid. Following the interview, police arrested petitioner on outstanding traffic warrants. Prosecutors soon concluded that there was insufficient evidence to charge him with the murders, and he was released. A few days later, police obtained a statement from a man who said he had heard petitioner confess to the killings. On the strength of that additional evidence, prosecutors decided to charge peti- tioner, but by this time he had absconded. In 2007, police discovered petitioner living in the Houston area under an assumed name. Petitioner did not testify at trial. Over his objection, prosecutors used his reaction to the officer’s question dur- ing the 1993 interview as evidence of his guilt. The jury found petitioner guilty, and he received a 20-year sentence. On direct appeal to the Court of Appeals of Texas, petitioner argued that prosecutors’ use of his silence as part of their case in chief violated the Fifth Amendment. The Court of Appeals rejected that argument, reasoning that petitioner’s prearrest, pre-Miranda silence was not “compelled” within the meaning of the Fifth Amendment. 368 S. W. 3d 550, 557–559 (2011). The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals took up this case and affirmed on the same ground. 369 S. W. 3d 176 (2012). We granted certiorari, 568 U. S. ___ (2013), to resolve a division of authority in the lower courts over whether the prosecution may use a defendant’s assertion of the privilege against self-incrimination during a noncustodial police interview as part of its case in chief. Compare, e.g., United States v. Rivera, 944 F. 2d 1563, 1568 (CA11 1991), with United States v. Moore, 104 F. 3d 377, 386 (CADC 1997). But because petitioner did not invoke the privilege during his interview, we find it unnecessary to reach that question. II A The privilege against self-incrimination “is an exception to the general principle that the Government has the right to everyone’s testimony.” Garner v. United States, 424 U. S. 648, 658, n. 11 (1976). To prevent the privilege from shielding information not properly within its scope, we have long held that a witness who “ ‘desires the protection of the privilege . . . must claim it’ ” at the time he relies on it. Murphy, 465 U. S., at 427 (quoting Monia, 317 U. S., at 427). See also United States ex rel. Vajtauer v. Commissioner of Immigration, 273 U. S. 103, 113 (1927). That requirement ensures that the Government is put on notice when a witness intends to rely on the privilege so that it may either argue that the testimony sought could not be self-incriminating, see Hoffman v. United States, 341 U. S. 479, 486 (1951), or cure any potential self-incrimination through a grant of immunity, see Kastigar v. United States, 406 U. S. 441, 448 (1972). The express invocation requirement also gives courts tasked with evaluating a Fifth Amendment claim a contemporaneous record establishing the witness’ reasons for refusing to answer. See Roberts v. United States, 445 U. S. 552, 560, n. 7 (1980) (“A witness may not employ the privilege to avoid giving testimony that he simply would prefer not to give”); Hutcheson v. United States, 369 U. S. 599, 610–611 (1962) (declining to treat invocation of due process as proper assertion of the privilege). In these ways, insisting that witnesses expressly invoke the privilege “assures that the Government obtains all the information to which it is entitled.” Garner, supra, at 658, n. 11. We have previously recognized two exceptions to the requirement that witnesses invoke the privilege, but neither applies here. First, we held in Griffin v. California, 380 U. S. 609, 613–615 (1965), that a criminal defendant need not take the stand and assert the privilege at his own trial. That exception reflects the fact that a criminal defendant has an “absolute right not to testify.” Turner v. United States, 396 U. S. 398, 433 (1970) (Black, J., dissenting); see United States v. Patane, 542 U. S. 630, 637 (2004) (plurality opinion). Since a defendant’s reasons for remaining silent at trial are irrelevant to his constitutional right to do so, requiring that he expressly invoke the privilege would serve no purpose; neither a showing that his testimony would not be self-incriminating nor a grant of immunity could force him to speak. Because pe- titioner had no comparable unqualified right during his interview with police, his silence falls outside the Griffin exception. Second, we have held that a witness’ failure to invoke the privilege must be excused where governmental coercion makes his forfeiture of the privilege involuntary. Thus, in Miranda, we said that a suspect who is subjected to the “inherently compelling pressures” of an unwarned custodial interrogation need not invoke the privilege. 384 U. S., at 467–468, and n. 37. Due to the uniquely coercive nature of custodial interrogation, a suspect in custody cannot be said to have voluntarily forgone the privilege “unless [he] fails to claim [it] after being suitably warned.” Murphy, supra, at 429–430. For similar reasons, we have held that threats to withdraw a governmental benefit such as public employment sometimes make exercise of the privilege so costly that it need not be affirmatively asserted. Garrity v. New Jersey, 385 U.S. 493, 497 (1967) (public employment). See also Lefkowitz v. Cunningham, 431 U.S. 801, 802–804 (1977) (public office); Lefkowitz v. Turley, 414 U. S. 70, 84–85 (1973) (public contracts). And where assertion of the privilege would itself tend to incriminate, we have allowed witnesses to exercise the privilege through silence. See, e.g., Leary v. United States, 395 U. S. 6, 28–29 (1969) (no requirement that taxpayer complete tax form where doing so would have revealed income from illegal activities); Albertson v. Subversive Activities Control Bd., 382 U. S. 70, 77–79 (1965) (members of the Communist Party not required to complete registration form “where response to any of the form’s questions . . . might involve [them] in the admission of a crucial element of a crime”). The principle that unites all of those cases is that a witness need not expressly invoke the privilege where some form of official compulsion denies him “a ‘free choice to admit, to deny, or to refuse to answer.’ ” Garner, 424 U. S., at 656–657 (quoting Lisenba v. California, 314 U. S. 219, 241 (1941)). Petitioner cannot benefit from that principle because it is undisputed that his interview with police was voluntary. As petitioner himself acknowledges, he agreed to accompany the officers to the station and “was free to leave at any time during the interview.” Brief for Petitioner 2–3 (internal quotation marks omitted). That places petitioner’s situation outside the scope of Miranda and other cases in which we have held that various forms of governmental coercion prevented defendants from voluntarily invoking the privilege. The dissent elides this point when it cites our precedents in this area for the proposition that “[c]ircumstances, rather than explicit invocation, trigger the protection of the Fifth Amendment.” Post, at 7–8 (opinion of Breyer, J.). The critical question is whether, under the “circumstances” of this case, petitioner was deprived of the ability to voluntarily invoke the Fifth Amendment. He was not. We have before us no allegation that petitioner’s failure to assert the privilege was involuntary, and it would have been a simple matter for him to say that he was not answering the officer’s question on Fifth Amendment grounds. Because he failed to do so, the prosecution’s use of his noncustodial silence did not violate the Fifth Amendment. B Petitioner urges us to adopt a third exception to the in- vocation requirement for cases in which a witness stands mute and thereby declines to give an answer that of- ficials suspect would be incriminating. Our cases all but foreclose such an exception, which would needlessly burden the Government’s interests in obtaining testimony and prosecuting criminal activity. We therefore decline petitioner’s invitation to craft a new exception to the “general rule” that a witness must assert the privilege to subsequently benefit from it. Murphy, 465 U. S., at 429. Our cases establish that a defendant normally does not invoke the privilege by remaining silent. In Roberts v. United States, 445 U. S. 552, for example, we rejected the Fifth Amendment claim of a defendant who remained silent throughout a police investigation and received a harsher sentence for his failure to cooperate. In so ruling, we explained that “if [the defendant] believed that his failure to cooperate was privileged, he should have said so at a time when the sentencing court could have determined whether his claim was legitimate.” Id., at 560. See also United States v. Sullivan, 274 U. S. 259, 263–264 (1927); Vajtauer, 273 U. S., at 113.[1] A witness does not expressly invoke the privilege by standing mute. We have also repeatedly held that the express invocation requirement applies even when an official has reason to suspect that the answer to his question would incrim- inate the witness. Thus, in Murphy we held that the defendant’s self-incriminating answers to his probation of- ficer were properly admitted at trial because he failed to invoke the privilege. 465 U. S., at 427–428. In reaching that conclusion, we rejected the notion “that a witness must ‘put the Government on notice by formally availing himself of the privilege’ only when he alone ‘is reasonably aware of the incriminating tendency of the questions.’ ” Id., at 428 (quoting Roberts, supra, at 562, n.* (Brennan, J., concurring)). See also United States v. Kordel, 397 U. S. 1, 7 (1970).[2] Petitioner does not dispute the vitality of either of those lines of precedent but instead argues that we should adopt an exception for cases at their intersection. Thus, petitioner would have us hold that although neither a wit- ness’ silence nor official suspicions are enough to excuse the express invocation requirement, the invocation requirement does not apply where a witness is silent in the face of official suspicions. For the same reasons that neither of those factors is sufficient by itself to relieve a witness of the obligation to expressly invoke the privilege, we conclude that they do not do so together. A contrary result would do little to protect those genuinely relying on the Fifth Amendment privilege while placing a needless new burden on society’s interest in the admission of evidence that is probative of a criminal defendant’s guilt. Petitioner’s proposed exception would also be very difficult to reconcile with Berghuis v. Thompkins, 560 U. S. 370 (2010). There, we held in the closely related context of post-Miranda silence that a defendant failed to invoke the privilege when he refused to respond to police questioning for 2 hours and 45 minutes. 560 U. S., at ___ (slip op., at 3, 8–10). If the extended custodial silence in that case did not invoke the privilege, then surely the momentary silence in this case did not do so either. Petitioner and the dissent attempt to distinguish Berg- huis by observing that it did not concern the admissi- bility of the defendant’s silence but instead involved the admissibility of his subsequent statements. Post, at 8–9 (opinion of Breyer, J.). But regardless of whether prosecutors seek to use silence or a confession that follows, the logic of Berghuis applies with equal force: A suspect who stands mute has not done enough to put police on notice that he is relying on his Fifth Amendment privilege.[3] In support of their proposed exception to the invocation requirement, petitioner and the dissent argue that reliance on the Fifth Amendment privilege is the most likely explanation for silence in a case such as this one. Reply Brief 17; see post, at 9–10 (Breyer, J., dissenting). But whatever the most probable explanation, such silence is “insolubly ambiguous.” See Doyle, v. Ohio, 426 U. S. 610, 617 (1976). To be sure, someone might decline to answer a police officer’s question in reliance on his constitutional privilege. But he also might do so because he is trying to think of a good lie, because he is embarrassed, or because he is protecting someone else. Not every such possible explanation for silence is probative of guilt, but neither is every possible explanation protected by the Fifth Amendment. Petitioner alone knew why he did not answer the officer’s question, and it was therefore his “burden . . . to make a timely assertion of the privilege.” Garner, 424 U. S., at 655. At oral argument, counsel for petitioner suggested that it would be unfair to require a suspect unschooled in the particulars of legal doctrine to do anything more than remain silent in order to invoke his “right to remain silent.” Tr. of Oral Arg. 26–27; see post, at 10 (Breyer, J., dissenting); Michigan v. Tucker, 417 U. S. 433, 439 (1974) (observing that “virtually every schoolboy is familiar with the concept, if not the language” of the Fifth Amendment). But popular misconceptions notwithstanding, the Fifth Amendment guarantees that no one may be “compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself”; it does not establish an unqualified “right to remain silent.” A witness’ constitutional right to refuse to answer questions depends on his reasons for doing so, and courts need to know those reasons to evaluate the merits of a Fifth Amendment claim. See Hoffman, 341 U. S., at 486–487.[4] In any event, it is settled that forfeiture of the privilege against self-incrimination need not be knowing. Murphy, 465 U. S., at 427–428; Garner, supra, at 654, n. 9. Statements against interest are regularly admitted into evidence at criminal trials, see Fed. Rule of Evid. 804(b)(3), and there is no good reason to approach a defendant’s silence any differently. C Finally, we are not persuaded by petitioner’s arguments that applying the usual express invocation requirement where a witness is silent during a noncustodial police interview will prove unworkable in practice. Petitioner and the dissent suggest that our approach will “unleash complicated and persistent litigation” over what a suspect must say to invoke the privilege, Reply Brief 18; see post, at 11–12 (opinion of Breyer, J.), but our cases have long required that a witness assert the privilege to subsequently benefit from it. That rule has not proved difficult to apply. Nor did the potential for close cases dissuade us from adopting similar invocation requirements for suspects who wish to assert their rights and cut off police questioning during custodial interviews. Berghuis, 560 U. S., at ___ (slip op., at 8–10) (requiring suspect to unambiguously assert privilege against self-incrimination to cut off custodial questioning); Davis v. United States, 512 U. S. 452, 459 (1994) (same standard for assertions of the right to counsel). Notably, petitioner’s approach would produce its own line-drawing problems, as this case vividly illustrates. When the interviewing officer asked petitioner if his shotgun would match the shell casings found at the crime scene, petitioner did not merely remain silent; he made movements that suggested surprise and anxiety. At precisely what point such reactions transform “silence” into expressive conduct would be a difficult and recurring question that our decision allows us to avoid. We also reject petitioner’s argument that an express invocation requirement will encourage police officers to “ ‘unfairly “tric[k]” ’ ” suspects into cooperating. Reply Brief 21 (quoting South Dakota v. Neville, 459 U. S. 553, 566 (1983)). Petitioner worries that officers could unduly pressure suspects into talking by telling them that their silence could be used in a future prosecution. But as petitioner himself concedes, police officers “have done nothing wrong” when they “accurately stat[e] the law.” Brief for Petitioner 32. We found no constitutional infirmity in government officials telling the defendant in Murphy that he was required to speak truthfully to his parole officer, 465 U. S., at 436–438, and we see no greater danger in the interview tactics petitioner identifies. So long as police do not deprive a witness of the ability to voluntarily invoke the privilege, there is no Fifth Amendment violation. * * * Before petitioner could rely on the privilege against self-incrimination, he was required to invoke it. Because he failed to do so, the judgment of the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals is affirmed. It is so ordered. Notes 1 The dissent argues that in these cases “neither the nature of the questions nor the circumstances of the refusal to answer them provided any basis to infer a tie between the silence and the Fifth Amendment.” Post, at 5–6 (opinion of Breyer, J.). But none of our precedents suggests that governmental officials are obliged to guess at the meaning of a witness’ unexplained silence when implicit reliance on the Fifth Amendment seems probable. Roberts does not say as much, despite its holding that the defendant in that case was required to explain the Fifth Amendment basis for his failure to cooperate with an investigation that led to his prosecution. 445 U. S., at 559. 2 Our cases do not support the distinction the dissent draws between silence and the failure to invoke the privilege before making incriminating statements. See post, at 7 (Breyer, J., dissenting). For example, Murphy, a case in which the witness made incriminating statements after failing to invoke the privilege, repeatedly relied on Robertsand Vajtauer—two cases in which witnesses remained silent and did not make incriminating statements. 465 U. S., at 427, 429, 455–456, n. 20. Similarly, Kordel cited Vajtauer, among other cases, for the proposition that the defendant’s “failure at any time to assert the constitutional privilege leaves him in no position to complain now that he was compelled to give testimony against himself.” 397 U. S., at 10, and n. 18. 3 Petitioner is correct that due process prohibits prosecutors from pointing to the fact that a defendant was silent after he heard Miranda warnings, Doyle v. Ohio, 426 U. S. 610, 617–618 (1976), but that rule does not apply where a suspect has not received the warnings’ implicit promise that any silence will not be used against him, Jenkins v. Anderson, 447 U. S. 231, 240 (1980). 4 The dissent suggests that officials in this case had no “special need to know whether the defendant sought to rely on the protections of the Fifth Amendment.” Post, at 4 (opinion of Breyer, J.). But we have never said that the government must demonstrate such a need on a case-by-case basis for the invocation requirement to apply. Any such rule would require judicial hypothesizing about the probable strategic choices of prosecutors, who often use immunity to compel testimony from witnesses who invoke the Fifth Amendment.

568.US.145

The reimbursement amount health care providers receive for inpatient services rendered to Medicare beneficiaries is adjusted upward for hospitals that serve a disproportionate share of low-income patients. The adjustment amount is determined in part by the percentage of a hospital’s patients who are eligible for Supplemental Security Income (SSI), called the SSI fraction. Each year, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) calculates the SSI fraction for an eligible hospital and submits that number to the hospital’s “fiscal intermediary,” a Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) contractor. The intermediary computes the reimbursement amount due and then sends the hospital a Notice of Program Reimbursement (NPR). A provider dissatisfied with the determination has a right to appeal to the Provider Reimbursement Review Board (PRRB or Board) within 180 days of receiving the NPR. 42 U. S. C. §1395oo(a)(3). By regulation, the Secretary of HHS authorized the PRRB to extend the 180-day limit, for good cause, up to three years. See 42 CFR 405.1841(b) (2007). The Baystate Medical Center—not a party here—timely appealed its SSI fraction calculation for each year from 1993 through 1996. The PRRB found that errors in CMS’s methodology resulted in a systematic undercalculation of the disproportionate share adjustment and corresponding underpayments to providers. In March 2006, the Board’s Baystate decision was made public. Within 180 days, respondent hospitals filed a complaint with the Board, challenging their adjustments for 1987 through 1994. Acknowledging that their challenges were more than a decade out of time, they urged that equitable tolling of the limitations period was in order due to CMS’s failure to tell them about the computation error. The PRRB held that it lacked jurisdiction, reasoning that it had no equitable powers save those legislation or regulation might confer. On judicial review, the District Court dismissed the hospitals’ claims. The D. C. Circuit reversed. The presumption that statutory limitations periods are generally subject to equitable tolling, the court concluded, applied to the 180-day time limit because nothing in §1395oo(a)(3) indicated that Congress intended to disallow such tolling. Held: 1. The 180-day limitation in §1395oo(a)(3) is not “jurisdictional.” Pp. 6–9. (a) Unless Congress has “clearly state[d]” that a statutory limitation is jurisdictional, the restriction should be treated “as nonjurisdictional.” Arbaugh v. Y & H Corp., 546 U.S. 500, 515–516. “[C]ontext, including this Court’s interpretations of similar provisions in many years past,” is probative of whether Congress intended a particular provision to rank as jurisdictional. Reed Elsevier, Inc. v. Muchnick, 559 U. S. ___, ___. If §1395oo(a)(3) were jurisdictional, the 180-day time limit could not be enlarged by agency or court. Section 1395oo(a)(3) hardly reveals a design to preclude any regulatory extension. The provision instructs that a provider “may obtain a hearing” by filing “a request . . . within 180 days after notice of the intermediary’s final determination.” It “does not speak in jurisdictional terms.” Zipes v. Trans World Airlines, Inc., 455 U.S. 385, 394. This Court has repeatedly held that filing deadlines ordinarily are not jurisdictional; indeed, they have been described as “quintessential claim-processing rules.” Henderson v. Shinseki, 562 U. S. ___, ___. Pp. 6–8. (b) Court-appointed amicus urges that §1395oo(a)(3) should be classified as a jurisdictional requirement based on its proximity to §§1395oo(a)(1) and (a)(2), both jurisdictional requirements, amicus asserts. But a requirement that would otherwise be nonjurisdictional does not become jurisdictional simply because it is in a section of a statute that also contains jurisdictional provisions. Gonzalez v. Thaler, 565 U. S. ___, ___. Amicus also urges that the Medicare Act’s express grant of authority for the Secretary to extend the time for beneficiary appeals implies the absence of such leeway for §1395oo(a)(3)’s provider appeals. In support, amicus relies on the general rule that Congress’s use of “certain language in one part of the statute and different language in another” can indicate that “different meanings were intended,” Sosa v. Alvarez-Machain, 542 U.S. 692, 711, n. 9. But that interpretive guide, like other canons of construction, is “no more than [a] rul[e] of thumb” that can tip the scales when a statute could be read in multiple ways. Connecticut Nat. Bank v. Germain, 503 U.S. 249, 253. Here, §1395oo(a)’s limitation is most sensibly characterized as nonjurisdictional. Pp. 8–9. 2. The Secretary’s regulation is a permissible interpretation of §1395oo(a)(3). Pp. 10–14. (a) Congress vested in the Secretary large rulemaking authority to administer Medicare. A court lacks authority to undermine the Secretary’s regime unless her regulation is “arbitrary, capricious, or manifestly contrary to the statute.” Chevron U. S. A. Inc. v. Natural Resources Defense Council, Inc., 467 U.S. 837, 844. Here, the regulation survives inspection under that deferential standard. The Secretary brought to bear practical experience in superintending the huge program generally, and the PRRB in particular, in maintaining a three-year outer limit for intermediary determination challenges. A court must uphold her judgment as long as it is a permissible construction of the statute, even if the court would have interpreted the statute differently absent agency regulation. Pp. 10–11. (b) A presumption of equitable tolling generally applies to suits against the United States, Irwin v. Department of Veterans Affairs, 498 U.S. 89, 95–96, but application of this presumption is not in order for §1395oo(a)(3). This Court has never applied Irwin’s presumption to an agency’s internal appeal deadline. The presumption was adopted in part on the premise that “[s]uch a principle is likely to be a realistic assessment of legislative intent.” Irwin, 498 U. S., at 95. That premise is inapt in the context of providers’ administrative appeals under the Medicare Act. For nearly 40 years the Secretary has prohibited the Board from extending the 180-day deadline, except as provided by regulation. In the six times §1395oo has been amended since 1974, Congress has left untouched the 180-day provision and the Secretary’s rulemaking authority. Furthermore, the statutory scheme, which applies to sophisticated institutional providers, is not designed to be “ ‘unusually protective’ of claimants.” Bowen v. City of New York, 476 U.S. 467, 480. Nor is the scheme one “in which laymen, unassisted by trained lawyers, initiate the process.” Zipes, 455 U. S., at 397. The hospitals ultimately argue that the Secretary’s regulations fail to adhere to “fundamentals of fair play.” FCC v. Pottsville Broadcasting Co., 309 U.S. 134, 143. They point to 42 CFR §405.1885(b)(3), which permits reopening of an intermediary’s reimbursement determination “at any time” if the determination was procured by fraud or fault of the provider. But this Court has explained that giving intermediaries more time to discover overpayments than providers have to discover underpayments may be justified by the “administrative realities” of the system: a few dozen fiscal intermediaries are charged with issuing tens of thousands of NPRs, while each provider can concentrate on a single NPR, its own. Your Home Visiting Nurse Services, Inc. v. Shalala, 525 U.S. 449, 455, 456. Pp. 11–14. 642 F.3d 1145, reversed and remanded. Ginsburg, J., delivered the opinion for a unanimous Court. Sotomayor, J., filed a concurring opinion.

This case concerns the time within which health care providers may file an administrative appeal from the initial determination of the reimbursement due them for inpatient services rendered to Medicare beneficiaries. Government contractors, called fiscal intermediaries, receive cost reports annually from care providers and notify them of the reimbursement amount for which they qualify. A provider dissatisfied with the fiscal intermediary’s determination may appeal to an administrative body named the Provider Reimbursement Review Board (PRRB or Board). The governing statute, §602(h)(l)(D), 97Stat. 165, 42 U. S. C. §1395oo(a)(3), sets a 180-day limit for filing appeals from the fiscal intermediary to the PRRB. By a regulation promulgated in 1974, the Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) authorized the Board to extend the 180-day limitation, for good cause, up to three years.[1] The providers in this case are hospitals who appealed to the PRRB more than ten years after expiration of the 180-day statutory deadline. They assert that the Secretary’s failure to disclose information that made the fiscal intermediary’s reimbursement calculation incorrect prevented them from earlier appealing to the Board. Three positions have been briefed and argued regarding the time for providers’ appeals to the PRRB. First, a Court-appointed amicus curiae has urged that the 180-day limitation is “jurisdictional,” and therefore cannot be enlarged at all by agency or court. Second, the Government maintains that the Secretary has the prerogative to set an outer limit of three years for appeals to the Board. And third, the hos- pitals argue that the doctrine of equitable tolling applies, stopping the 180-day clock during the time the Secretary concealed the information that made the fiscal interme- diary’s reimbursement determinations incorrect. We hold that the statutory 180-day limitation is not “jurisdictional,” and that the Secretary reasonably construed the statute to permit a regulation extending the time for a provider’s appeal to the PRRB to three years. We further hold that the presumption in favor of equitable tolling does not apply to administrative appeals of the kind here at issue. I The Medicare program covers certain inpatient services that hospitals provide to Medicare beneficiaries. Providers are reimbursed at a fixed amount per patient, regardless of the actual operating costs they incur in rendering these services. But the total reimbursement amount is adjusted upward for hospitals that serve a disproportionate share of low-income patients. This adjustment is made because hospitals with an unusually high percentage of low-income patients generally have higher per-patient costs; such hospitals, Congress therefore found, should receive higher reimbursement rates. See H. R. Rep. No. 99–241, pt. 1, p. 16 (1985). The amount of the disproportionate share adjustment is determined in part by the percentage of the patients served by the hospital who are eligible for Supplemental Security Income (SSI) payments, a percentage commonly called the SSI fraction. 42 U. S. C. §1395ww(d) (2006 ed. and Supp. V). At the end of each year, providers participating in Medicare submit cost reports to contractors acting on behalf of HHS known as fiscal intermediaries. Also at year end, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) cal- culates the SSI fraction for each eligible hospital and submits that number to the intermediary for that hospital. Using these numbers to determine the total payment due, the intermediary issues a Notice of Program Reimbursement (NPR) informing the provider how much it will be paid for the year. If a provider is dissatisfied with the intermediary’s re- imbursement determination, the statute gives it the right to file a request for a hearing before the PRRB within 180 days of receiving the NPR. §1395oo(a)(3) (2006 ed.) In 1974, the Secretary promulgated a regulation, after notice and comment rulemaking, permitting the Board to extend the 180-day time limit upon a showing of good cause; the regulation further provides that “no such extension shall be granted by the Board if such request is filed more than 3 years after the date the notice of the intermediary’s determination is mailed to the provider.” 39 Fed. Reg. 34517 (1974) (codified in 42 CFR §405.1841(b) (2007)).[2] For many years, CMS released only the results of its SSI fraction calculations and not the underlying data.[3] The Baystate Medical Center—a hospital not party to this case—timely appealed the calculation of its SSI fraction for each year from 1993 through 1996. Eventually, the PRRB determined that CMS had omitted several categories of SSI data from its calculations and was using a flawed process to determine the number of low-income beneficiaries treated by hospitals. These errors caused a systematic undercalculation of the disproportionate share adjustment, resulting in underpayments to the providers. Baystate Medical Center v. Leavitt, 545 F. Supp. 2d 20, 26–30 (DC 2008); see id., at 57–58 (concluding that CMS failed to use “the best available data”). The methodological errors revealed by the Board’s Bay- state decision would have yielded similarly reduced payments to all providers for which CMS had calculated an SSI fraction. In March 2006, the Board’s decision in the Baystate case was made public. Within 180 days, the hospitals in this case filed a complaint with the Board seeking to challenge their disproportionate share adjustments for the years 1987 through 1994. The hospitals acknowledged that their challenges, unlike Baystate’s timely contest, were more than a decade out of time. But equitable tolling of the limitations period was in order, they urged, due to CMS’s failure to inform the hospitals that their SSI fractions had been based on faulty data. The PRRB held that it lacked jurisdiction over the hospitals’ complaint, reasoning that it had no equitable powers save those legislation or regulation might confer, and that the Secretary’s regulation permitted it to excuse late appeals only for good cause, with three years as the outer limit. On judicial review, the District Court dismissed the hospitals’ claims for relief, holding that nothing in the statute suggests that “Congress intended to authorize equitable tolling.” 686 F. Supp. 2d 55, 70 (DC 2010). The Court of Appeals reversed. 642 F.3d 1145 (CADC 2011). It relied on the presumption that statutory limitations periods are generally subject to equitable tolling and reasoned that “ ‘the same rebuttable presumption of equitable tolling applicable to suits against private defendants should also apply to suits against the United States.’ ” Id., at 1148 (quoting Irwin v. Department of Veterans Affairs, 498 U.S. 89, 95–96 (1990)). The presumption applies to the 180-day time limit for provider appeals from re- imbursement determinations, the Court of Appeals held, finding nothing in the statutory provision for PRRB review indicating that Congress intended to disallow equi- table tolling. 642 F. 3d, at 1149–1151. We granted the Secretary’s petition for certiorari, 567 U. S. ___ (2012), to resolve a conflict among the Courts of Appeals over whether the 180-day time limit in 42 U. S. C. §1395oo(a)(3) constricts the Board’s jurisdiction. Compare 642 F.3d 1145 (case below); Western Medical Enterprises, Inc. v. Heckler, 783 F.2d 1376, 1379–1380 (CA9 1986) (180-day limit is not jurisdictional and the Secretary may extend it for good cause), with Alacare Home Health Servs., Inc. v. Sullivan, 891 F.2d 850, 855–856 (CA11 1990) (statute of limitations is jurisdictional and the Secretary lacked authority to promulgate good-cause exception); St. Joseph’s Hospital of Kansas City v. Heckler, 786 F.2d 848, 852–853 (CA8 1986) (same). Beyond the jurisdictional inquiry,[4] the Secretary asked us to determine whether the Court of Appeals erred in concluding that equitable tolling applies to providers’ Medicare reimbursement appeals to the PRRB, notwithstanding the Secretary’s regulation barring such appeals after three years. II A Characterizing a rule as jurisdictional renders it unique in our adversarial system. Objections to a tribunal’s ju- risdiction can be raised at any time, even by a party that once conceded the tribunal’s subject-matter jurisdiction over the controversy. Tardy jurisdictional objections can therefore result in a waste of adjudicatory resources and can disturbingly disarm litigants. See Henderson v. Shinseki, 562 U. S. ___, ___ (2011) (slip op., at 5); Arbaugh v. Y & H Corp., 546 U.S. 500, 514 (2006). With these untoward consequences in mind, “we have tried in recent cases to bring some discipline to the use” of the term “jurisdiction.” Henderson, 562 U. S., at ___ (slip op., at 5); see also Steel Co. v. Citizens for Better Environment, 523 U.S. 83, 90 (1998) (jurisdiction has been a “word of many, too many, meanings” (internal quotation marks omitted)). To ward off profligate use of the term “jurisdiction,” we have adopted a “readily administrable bright line” for determining whether to classify a statutory limitation as jurisdictional. Arbaugh, 546 U. S., at 516. We inquire whether Congress has “clearly state[d]” that the rule is jurisdictional; absent such a clear statement, we have cautioned, “courts should treat the restriction as nonjurisdictional in character.” Id., at 515–516; see also Gonzalez v. Thaler, 565 U. S. ___, ___ (2012) (slip op., at 6); Henderson, 562 U. S., at ___ (slip op., at 6). This is not to say that Congress must incant magic words in order to speak clearly. We consider “context, including this Court’s inter- pretations of similar provisions in many years past,” as probative of whether Congress intended a particular provision to rank as jurisdictional. Reed Elsevier, Inc. v. Muchnick, 559 U.S. 154, 168 (2010); see also John R. Sand & Gravel Co. v. United States, 552 U.S. 130, 133–134 (2008). We reiterate what it would mean were we to type the gov- erning statute, 42 U. S. C. §1395oo(a)(3), “jurisdictional.” Under no circumstance could providers engage PRRB re- view more than 180 days after notice of the fiscal inter- mediary’s final determination. Not only could there be no equitable tolling. The Secretary’s regulation providing for a good-cause extension, see supra, at 3, would fall as well. The language Congress used hardly reveals a design to preclude any regulatory extension. Section 1395oo(a)(3) instructs that a provider of services “may obtain a hearing” by the Board regarding its reimbursement amount if “such provider files a request for a hearing within 180 days after notice of the intermediary’s final determination.” This provision “does not speak in jurisdictional terms.” Zipes v. Trans World Airlines, Inc., 455 U.S. 385, 394 (1982). Indeed, it is less “jurisdictional” in tone than the provision we held to be nonjurisdictional in Henderson. There, the statute provided that a veteran seeking Veterans Court review of the Department of Veterans Affairs’ determination of disability benefits “shall file a notice of appeal . . . within 120 days.” 562 U. S., at ___ (slip op., at 9) (quoting 38 U. S. C. §7266(a) (emphasis added)). Section 1395oo(a)(3), by contrast, contains neither the mandatory word “shall” nor the appellation “notice of appeal,” words with jurisdictional import in the context of 28 U. S. C. §2107’s limitations on the time for appeal from a district court to a court of appeals. See Bowles v. Russell, 551 U.S. 205, 214 (2007). Key to our decision, we have repeatedly held that filing deadlines ordinarily are not jurisdictional; indeed, we have described them as “quintessential claim-processing rules.” Henderson, 562 U. S., at ___ (slip op., at 6); see also Scarborough v. Principi, 541 U.S. 401, 414 (2004) (filing deadline for fee applications under Equal Access to Justice Act); Kontrick v. Ryan, 540 U.S. 443, 454 (2004) (filing deadlines for objecting to debtor’s discharge in bank- ruptcy); Honda v. Clark, 386 U.S. 484, 498 (1967) (filing deadline for claims under the Trading with the Enemy Act). This case is scarcely the exceptional one in which a “cen- tury’s worth of precedent and practice in American courts” rank a time limit as jurisdictional. Bowles, 551 U. S., at 209, n. 2; cf. Kontrick, 540 U. S., at 454 (a time limitation may be emphatic, yet not jurisdictional). B Amicus urges that the three requirements in §1395oo(a) are specifications that together define the limits of the PRRB’s jurisdiction. Subsection (a)(1) specifies the claims providers may bring to the Board, and subsection (a)(2) sets forth an amount-in-controversy requirement. These are jurisdictional requirements, amicus asserts, so we should read the third specification, subsection (a)(3)’s 180-day limitation, as also setting a jurisdictional requirement. Last Term, we rejected a similar proximity-based argument. A requirement we would otherwise classify as nonjurisdictional, we held, does not become jurisdictional simply because it is placed in a section of a statute that also contains jurisdictional provisions. Gonzalez, 565 U. S., at ___ (slip op., at 11); see Weinberger v. Salfi, 422 U.S. 749, 763–764 (1975) (statutory provision at issue contained three requirements for judicial review, only one of which was jurisdictional). Amicus also argues that the 180-day time limit for pro- vider appeals to the PRRB should be viewed as jurisdictional because Congress could have expressly made the provision nonjurisdictional, and indeed did so for other time limits in the Medicare Act. Amicus notes particularly that when Medicare beneficiaries request the Secretary to reconsider a benefits determination, the statute gives them a time limit of 180 days or “such additional time as the Secretary may allow.” 42 U. S. C. §1395ff(b)(1)(D)(i); see also §1395ff(b)(1)(D)(ii) (permitting Medicare beneficiary to request a hearing by the Secretary within “time limits” the Secretary “shall establish in regulations”). We have recognized, as a general rule, that Congress’s use of “certain language in one part of the statute and different language in another” can indicate that “different meanings were intended.” Sosa v. Alvarez-Machain, 542 U.S. 692, 711, n. 9 (2004) (internal quotation marks omitted). Amicus notes this general rule in urging that an express grant of authority for the Secretary to extend the time for beneficiary appeals implies the absence of such leeway for provider appeals. But the interpretive guide just identified, like other canons of construction, is “no more than [a] rul[e] of thumb” that can tip the scales when a statute could be read in multiple ways. Connecticut Nat. Bank v. Germain, 503 U.S. 249, 253 (1992). For the reasons earlier stated, see supra, at 6–8, we are persuaded that the time limi- tation in §1395oo(a) is most sensibly characterized as a nonjurisdictional prescription. The limitation therefore does not bar the modest extension contained in the Secretary’s regulation. III We turn now to the question whether §1395oo(a)(3)’s 180-day time limit for a provider to appeal to the PRRB is subject to equitable tolling. A Congress vested in the Secretary large rulemaking authority to administer the Medicare program. The PRRB may adopt rules and procedures only if “not inconsistent” with the Medicare Act or “regulations of the Secretary.” 42 U. S. C. §1395oo(e). Concerning the 180-day period for an appeal to the Board from an intermediary’s reimbursement determination, the Secretary’s regulation im- plementing §1395oo, adopted after notice and comment, speaks in no uncertain terms: “A request for a Board hearing filed after [the 180-day time limit] shall be dismissed by the Board, except that for good cause shown, the time limit may be extended. However, no such extension shall be granted by the Board if such request is filed more than 3 years after the date the notice of the intermediary’s determination is mailed to the provider.” 42 CFR §405.1841(b) (2007). The Secretary allowed only a distinctly limited extension of time to appeal to the PRRB, cognizant that “the Board is burdened by an immense caseload,” and that “procedural rules requiring timely filings are indispens- able devices for keeping the machinery of the reimbursement appeals process running smoothly.” High Country Home Health, Inc. v. Thompson, 359 F.3d 1307, 1310 (CA10 2004). Imposing equitable tolling to permit appeals barred by the Secretary’s regulation would essentially gut the Secretary’s requirement that an appeal to the Board “shall be dismissed” if filed more than 180 days after the NPR, unless the provider shows “good cause” and requests an extension no later than three years after the NPR. A court lacks authority to undermine the regime established by the Secretary unless her regulation is “arbitrary, capricious, or manifestly contrary to the statute.” Chevron U. S. A. Inc. v. Natural Resources Defense Council, Inc., 467 U.S. 837, 844 (1984). The Secretary’s regulation, we are satisfied, survives inspection under that deferential standard. As HHS has explained, “[i]t is in the interest of providers and the pro- gram that, at some point, intermediary determinations and the resulting amount of program payment due the provider or the program become no longer open to correction.” CMS, Medicare: Provider Reimbursement Manual, pt. 1, ch. 29, §2930, p. 29–73 (rev. no. 372, 2011); cf. Taylor v. Freeland & Kronz, 503 U.S. 638, 644 (1992) (“Deadlines may lead to unwelcome results, but they prompt parties to act and produce finality.”). The Secretary brought to bear practical experience in superintending the huge pro- gram generally, and the PRRB in particular, in maintaining three years as the outer limit. A court must uphold the Secretary’s judgment as long as it is a permissible construction of the statute, even if it differs from how the court would have interpreted the statute in the absence of an agency regulation. National Cable & Telecommunications Assn. v. Brand X Internet Services, 545 U.S. 967, 980 (2005); see also Chevron, 467 U. S., at 843, n. 11. B Rejecting the Secretary’s position, the Court of Appeals relied principally on this Court’s decision in Irwin, 498 U. S., at 95–96. Irwin concerned the then 30-day time period for filing suit against a federal agency under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, 42 U. S. C. §2000e–16(c) (1988 ed.). We held in Irwin that “the same rebut- table presumption of equitable tolling applicable to suits against private defendants should also apply to suits against the United States.” 498 U. S., at 95–96. Irwin itself, and equitable-tolling cases we have considered both pre- and post-Irwin, have generally involved time limits for filing suit in federal court. See, e.g., Holland v. Flor- ida, 560 U. S. ___ (2010) (one-year limitation for filing application for writ of habeas corpus); Rotella v. Wood, 528 U.S. 549 (2000) (four-year period for filing civil RICO suit); United States v. Beggerly, 524 U.S. 38 (1998) (12-year period to bring suit under Quiet Title Act); Lampf, Pleva, Lipkind, Prupis & Petigrow v. Gilbertson, 501 U.S. 350 (1991) (one- and three-year periods for commencing civil action under §10(b) of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934); Honda v. Clark, 386 U.S. 484 (1967) (60-day period for filing suit under Trading with the Enemy Act); Kendall v. United States, 107 U.S. 123 (1883) (six-year period for filing suit in Court of Claims). Courts in those cases rendered in the first instance the decision whether equity required tolling. This case is of a different order. We have never applied the Irwin presumption to an agency’s internal appeal dead- line, here the time a provider has to appeal an inter- mediary’s reimbursement determination to the PRRB. Cf. United States v. Brockamp, 519 U.S. 347, 350 (1997) (assuming, arguendo, that Irwin presumption applied to time limit for filing an administrative claim for a tax re- fund, but concluding based on statutory text, structure, and purpose that there was “good reason to believe that Congress did not want the equitable tolling doctrine to apply”). The presumption of equitable tolling was adopted in part on the premise that “[s]uch a principle is likely to be a realistic assessment of legislative intent.” Irwin, 498 U. S., at 95. But that premise is inapt in the context of providers’ administrative appeals under the Medicare Act. The Act, until 1972, provided no avenue for providers to obtain administrative or judicial review. When Congress first directed the Secretary to establish the PRRB, Congress simultaneously imposed the 180-day deadline, with no statutory exceptions. For nearly 40 years the Secre- tary has prohibited the Board from extending that deadline, except as provided by regulation. And until the D. C. Circuit’s decision in this case, no court had ever read equitable tolling into §1395oo(a)(3) or the Secretary’s implementation of that provision. Congress amended §1395oo six times since 1974, each time leaving untouched the 180-day administrative appeal provision and the Secretary’s rulemaking authority. At no time did Congress express disapproval of the three-year outer time limit set by the Secretary for an extension upon a showing of good cause. See Commodity Futures Trading Comm’n v. Schor, 478 U.S. 833, 846 (1986) (“[W]hen Congress revisits a statute giving rise to a longstanding administrative interpretation without pertinent change, the congressional failure to revise or repeal the agency’s interpretation is persuasive evidence that the interpretation is the one in- tended by Congress.” (internal quotation marks omitted)). We note, furthermore, that unlike the remedial statutes at issue in many of this Court’s equitable-tolling decisions, see Irwin, 498 U. S., at 91; Bowen v. City of New York, 476 U.S. 467, 480 (1986); Zipes, 455 U. S., at 398, the statu- tory scheme before us is not designed to be “ ‘unusually protective’ of claimants.” Bowen, 476 U. S., at 480. Nor is it one “in which laymen, unassisted by trained lawyers, initiate the process.” Zipes, 455 U. S., at 397 (internal quotation marks omitted). The Medicare payment system in question applies to “sophisticated” institutional pro- viders assisted by legal counsel, and “generally capable of identifying an underpayment in [their] own NPR within the 180-day time period specified in 42 U. S. C. §1395oo(a)(3).” Your Home Visiting Nurse Services, Inc. v. Shalala, 525 U.S. 449, 456 (1999). As repeat players who elect to participate in the Medicare system, providers can hardly claim lack of notice of the Secretary’s regulations. The hospitals ultimately argue that the Secretary’s regulations fail to adhere to the “fundamentals of fair play.” FCC v. Pottsville Broadcasting Co., 309 U.S. 134, 143 (1940). They point, particularly, to 42 CFR §405.1885(b)(3) (2012), which permits reopening of an intermediary’s reimbursement determination “at any time if it is established that such determination . . . was procured by fraud or similar fault of any party to the determination.”[5] We considered a similar alleged inequity in Your Home and explained that it was justified by the “administrative realities” of the provider reimbursement appeal system. 525 U. S., at 455. There are only a few dozen fiscal intermediaries and they are charged with issuing tens of thousands of NPRs, while each provider can concentrate on a single NPR, its own. Id., at 456. The Secretary, Your Home concluded, could reasonably believe that this asymmetry justifies giving the intermediaries more time to discover overpayments than the providers have to discover underpayments. Moreover, the fraud exception allowing indefinite reopening does apply to an intermediary if it “procured” a Board decision by “fraud or similar fault.” Although an intermediary is not a party to its own determination, it does rank as a party in proceedings before the Board. 42 CFR §405.1843(a).[6] * * * We hold, in sum, that the 180-day statutory deadline for administrative appeals to the PRRB, contained in 42 U. S. C. §1395oo(a)(3), is not “jurisdictional.” Therefore the Secretary lawfully exercised her rulemaking authority in providing for a three-year “good cause” extension. We further hold that the equitable tolling presumption our Irwin decision approved for suits brought in court does not similarly apply to administrative appeals of the kind here considered, and that the Secretary’s regulation, 42 CFR §405.1841(b), is a permissible interpretation of the statute. The judgment of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit is therefore reversed, and the case is remanded for further proceedings consistent with this opinion. It is so ordered. Notes 1 The agency was called the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare until 1979, but for simplicity’s sake we refer to it as HHS throughout this opinion. 2 In 2008, after this case commenced, the Secretary replaced the 1974 regulation with a new prescription limiting “good cause” to “extraordinary circumstances beyond [the provider’s] control (such as a natural or other catastrophe, fire, or strike).” 73 Fed. Reg. 30250 (2008) (codified in 42 CFR §405.1836(b) (2012)). The new regulation retains the strict three-year cutoff for all claims. §405.1836(c)(2). The parties agree that this case is governed by the 1974 regulation, and our opinion today addresses only that regulation. 3 In §951 of the Medicare Prescription Drug, Improvement, and Modernization Act of 2003, 117Stat. 2427, Congress required the Secretary to furnish hospitals with the data necessary to compute their own disproportionate share adjustment. Pursuant to this congressional mandate, the Secretary has adopted procedures for turning over the SSI data to hospitals upon request. 70 Fed. Reg. 47438 (2005). 4 Because no party takes the view that the statutory 180-day time limit is jurisdictional, we appointed John F. Manning to brief and argue this position as amicus curiae. 567 U. S. ___ (2012). Amicus Manning has ably discharged his assigned responsibilities and the Court thanks him for his well-stated arguments. 5 Because neither the Secretary nor the intermediary counts as a party to the intermediary’s determination, 42 CFR §405.1805, providers alone are subject to this exception to the time limitation. 6 The fraud exception apart, reopening time is limited to three years. §405.1885(a). Within that time, reopening may be sought by the intermediary, the Board, the Secretary, or the provider. Thus an intermediary determination or Board decision could not be reopened if, outside the three-year window, the Secretary discovered errors in calculating the SSI fraction that resulted in overpayments to providers.

569.US.369

The National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act of 1986 (NCVIA or Act) established a no-fault compensation system to stabilize the vaccine market and expedite compensation to injured parties. Bruesewitz v. Wyeth LLC, 562 U. S. ___, ___–___. Under the Act, “[a] proceeding for compensation” is “initiated” by “service upon the Secretary” of Health and Human Services and “the filing of a petition containing” specified documentation with the clerk of the Court of Federal Claims, who then “immediately” forwards the petition for assignment to a special master. 42 U. S. C. §300aa–11(a)(1). An attorney may not charge a fee for “services in connection with [such] a petition,” §300aa–15(e)(3), but a court may award attorney’s fees and costs “incurred [by a claimant] in any proceeding on” an unsuccessful “petition filed under section 300aa–11,” if that petition “was brought in good faith and there was a reasonable basis for the claim for which the petition was brought,” §300aa–15(e)(1). In 1997, shortly after receiving her third Hepatitis-B vaccine, respondent Cloer began to experience symptoms that eventually led to a multiple sclerosis (MS) diagnosis in 2003. In 2004, she learned of a link between MS and the Hepatitis-B vaccine, and in 2005, she filed a claim for compensation under the NCVIA, alleging that the vaccine caused or exacerbated her MS. After reviewing the petition and its supporting documentation, the Chief Special Master concluded that Cloer’s claim was untimely because the Act’s 36-month limitations period began to run when she had her first MS symptoms in 1997. The Federal Circuit ultimately agreed that Cloer’s petition was untimely. Cloer then sought attorney’s fees and costs (collectively, fees). The en banc Federal Circuit found that she was entitled to recover fees on her untimely petition. Held: An untimely NCVIA petition may qualify for an award of attorney’s fees if it is filed in good faith and there is a reasonable basis for its claim. Pp. 6–13. (a) As in any statutory construction case, this Court proceeds from the understanding that “[u]nless otherwise defined, statutory terms are generally interpreted in accordance with their ordinary meaning.” BP America Production Co. v. Burton, 549 U.S. 84, 91. Nothing in either the NCVIA’s attorney’s fees provision, which ties eligibility to “any proceeding on such petition” and refers specifically to “a petition filed under section 300aa–11,” or the referenced §300aa–11 suggests that the reason for the subsequent dismissal of a petition, such as its untimeliness, nullifies the initial filing. As the term “filed” is commonly understood, an application is filed “when it is delivered to, and accepted by, the appropriate court officer for placement into the official record.” Artuz v. Bennett, 531 U.S. 4, 8. Applying this ordinary meaning to the text at issue, it is clear that an NCVIA petition delivered to the court clerk, forwarded for processing, and adjudicated in a proceeding before a special master is a “petition filed under section 300aa–11.” So long as it was brought in good faith and with a reasonable basis, it is eligible for an award of attorney’s fees, even if it is ultimately unsuccessful. Had Congress intended otherwise, it could have easily limited fee awards to timely petitions. The Government’s argument that the 36-month limitations period is a statutory prerequisite for filing lacks textual support. First, there is no cross-reference to the Act’s limitations provision in its fees provision, §300aa–15(e), or the referenced §300aa–11(a)(1). Second, reading the provision to provide that “no petition may be filed for compensation” late, as the Government asks, would require the Court to conclude that a petition like Cloer’s, which was “filed” under that term’s ordinary meaning but was later found to be untimely, was never filed at all. This Court’s “inquiry ceases [where, as here,] ‘the statutory language is unambiguous and “the statutory scheme is coherent and consistent.” ’ ” Barnhart v. Sigmon Coal Co., 534 U.S. 438, 450. The Government’s contrary position is also inconsistent with the fees provision’s purpose, which was to avoid “limit[ing] petitioners’ ability to obtain qualified assistance” by making awards available for “non-prevailing, good-faith claims.” H. R. Rep. No. 99–908, pt. 1, p. 22. Pp. 6–10. (b) The Government’s two additional lines of argument for barring the award of attorney’s fees for untimely petitions are unpersuasive. First, the canon of construction favoring strict construction of waivers of sovereign immunity, the presumption favoring the retention of familiar common-law principles, and the policy argument that the NCVIA should be construed so as to minimize complex and costly fees litigation must all give way when, as here, the statute’s words “are unambiguous.” Connecticut Nat. Bank v. Germain, 503 U.S. 249, 253–254. Second, even if the NCVIA’s plain text requires that special masters occasionally carry out “shadow trials” to determine whether late petitions were brought in good faith and with a reasonable basis, that is not such an absurd burden as to require departure from the words of the Act. This is especially true where Congress has specifically provided for such “shadow trials” by permitting the award of attorney’s fees “in any proceeding [on an unsuccessful] petition” if such petition was brought in good faith and with a reasonable basis. §300aa–15(e)(1). Pp. 10–13. 675 F.3d 1358, affirmed. Sotomayor, J., delivered the opinion of the Court, in which Roberts, C. J., and Kennedy, Ginsburg, Breyer, Alito, and Kagan, JJ., joined, and in which Scalia and Thomas, JJ., joined as to all but Part II–B.

plain meaning and would produce an absurd result,” Milavetz, Gallop & Milavetz, P. A. v. United States, 559 U.S. 229, 252 (2010). In contrast, giving the Act’s fees provision its plain meaning would produce no such absurd result. It would simply allow petitioners to recover attorney’s fees for untimely petitions. 6 If the NCVIA’s limitations period were jurisdictional, then we might reach a different conclusion because the Chief Special Master would have lacked authority to act on Dr. Cloer’s untimely petition in the first place. But the Government chose not to seek certiorari from the Federal Circuit’s en banc decision holding that the period is nonjurisdictional, see Cloer v. Secretary of Health and Human Servs., 654 F.3d 1332, 1341–1344 (2011), and the Government now acknowledges that the NCVIA contains no “clear statement” that §300aa–16’s filing deadlines carry jurisdictional consequences. See Reply Brief 7 (discussing Sebelius v. Auburn Regional Medical Center, 568 U. S. ___ (2013)). 7 Dr. Cloer’s petition was published, and remains, in the Federal Register. See 70 Fed. Reg. 73011, 73014 (2005). 8 See, e.g., Wells v. Secretary of Dept. of Health and Human Servs., 28 Fed. Cl. 647, 649–651 (1993); Rydzewski v. Secretary of Dept. of Health and Human Servs., No. 99–571V, 2008 WL 382930, *2–*6 (Fed. Cl., Jan. 29, 2008) (opinion of Moran, Special Master); Hamrick v. Secretary of Health and Human Servs., No. 99–683V, 2007 WL 4793152, *2–*3, *5–*9 (Fed. Cl., Nov. 19, 2007) (opinion of Moran, Special Master).

570.US.729

Investments for the employee pension fund of the State of New York and its local governments are chosen by the fund’s sole trustee, the State Comptroller. After the Comptroller’s general counsel recommended against investing in a fund managed by FA Technology Ventures, the general counsel received anonymous e-mails demanding that he recommend the investment and threatening, if he did not, to disclose information about the general counsel’s alleged affair to his wife, government officials, and the media. Some of the e-mails were traced to the home computer of petitioner Sekhar, a managing partner of FA Technology Ventures. Petitioner was convicted of attempted extortion, in violation of the Hobbs Act, 18 U. S. C. §1951(a), which defines “extortion” to mean “the obtaining of property from another, with his consent, induced by wrongful use of actual or threatened force, violence, or fear, or under color of official right,” §1951(b)(2). The jury specified that the property petitioner attempted to extort was the general counsel’s recommendation to approve the investment. The Second Circuit affirmed. Held: Attempting to compel a person to recommend that his employer approve an investment does not constitute “the obtaining of property from another” under the Hobbs Act. Pp. 3–9. (a) Absent other indication, “Congress intends to incorporate the well-settled meaning of the common-law terms it uses.” Neder v. United States, 527 U.S. 1, 23. As far as is known, no case predating the Hobbs Act—English, federal, or state—ever identified conduct such as that charged here as extortionate. Extortion required the obtaining of items of value, typically cash, from the victim. The Act’s text confirms that obtaining property requires “not only the deprivation but also the acquisition of property.” Scheidler v. National Organization for Women, Inc., 537 U.S. 393, 404. The property extorted must therefore be transferable—that is, capable of passing from one person to another, a defining feature lacking in the alleged property here. The genesis of the Hobbs Act reinforces that conclusion. Congress borrowed nearly verbatim the definition of extortion from a 1909 New York statute but did not copy the coercion provision of that statute. And in 1946, the time of the borrowing, New York courts had consistently held that the sort of interference with rights that occurred here was coercion. Finally, this Court’s own precedent demands reversal of petitioner’s convictions. See id., at 404–405. Pp. 3–8. (b) The Government’s defense of the theory of conviction is unpersuasive. No fluent speaker of English would say that “petitioner obtained and exercised the general counsel’s right to make a recommendation,” any more than he would say that a person “obtained and exercised another’s right to free speech.” He would say that “petitioner forced the general counsel to make a particular recommendation,” just as he would say that a person “forced another to make a statement.” Adopting the Government’s theory here would not only make nonsense of words; it would collapse the longstanding distinction between extortion and coercion and ignore Congress’s choice to penalize one but not the other. See Scheidler, supra, at 409. Pp. 8–9. 683 F.3d 436, reversed. Scalia, J., delivered the opinion of the Court, in which Roberts, C. J., and Thomas, Ginsburg, Breyer, and Kagan, JJ., joined. Alito, J., filed an opinion concurring in the judgment, in which Kennedy and Sotomayor, JJ., joined.

We consider whether attempting to compel a person to recommend that his employer approve an investment con- stitutes “the obtaining of property from another” under 18 U. S. C. §1951(b)(2). I New York’s Common Retirement Fund is an employee pension fund for the State of New York and its local governments. As sole trustee of the Fund, the State Comptroller chooses Fund investments. When the Comptroller decides to approve an investment he issues a “Commitment.” A Commitment, however, does not actually bind the Fund. For that to happen, the Fund and the recipient of the investment must enter into a limited partnership agreement. 683 F. 3d 436, 438 (CA2 2012). Petitioner Giridhar Sekhar was a managing partner of FA Technology Ventures. In October 2009, the Comptroller’s office was considering whether to invest in a fund managed by that firm. The office’s general counsel made a written recommendation to the Comptroller not to invest in the fund, after learning that the Office of the New York Attorney General was investigating another fund managed by the firm. The Comptroller decided not to issue a Commitment and notified a partner of FA Technology Ventures. That partner had previously heard rumors that the general counsel was having an extramarital affair. The general counsel then received a series of anony- mous e-mails demanding that he recommend moving for- ward with the investment and threatening, if he did not, to disclose information about his alleged affair to his wife, government officials, and the media. App. 59–61. The general counsel contacted law enforcement, which traced some of the e-mails to petitioner’s home computer and other e-mails to offices of FA Technology Ventures. Petitioner was indicted for, and a jury convicted him of, attempted extortion, in violation of the Hobbs Act, 18 U. S. C. §1951(a). That Act subjects a person to criminal liability if he “in any way or degree obstructs, delays, or affects commerce or the movement of any article or commodity in commerce, by robbery or extortion or attempts or conspires so to do.” §1951(a). The Act defines “extortion” to mean “the obtaining of property from another, with his consent, induced by wrongful use of actual or threatened force, violence, or fear, or under color of official right.” §1951(b)(2). [ 1 ] On the verdict form, the jury was asked to specify the property that petitioner attempted to extort: (1) “the Commitment”; (2) “the Comptroller’s approval of the Commitment”; or (3) “the General Counsel’s recommendation to approve the Commitment.” App. 141–142. The jury chose only the third option. The Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit affirmed the conviction. The court held that the general counsel “had a property right in rendering sound legal advice to the Comptroller and, specifically, to recommend—free from threats—whether the Comptroller should issue a Commitment for [the funds].” 683 F. 3d, at 441. The court concluded that petitioner not only attempted to deprive the general counsel of his “property right,” but that petitioner also “attempted to exercise that right by forcing the General Counsel to make a recommendation determined by [petitioner].” Id., at 442. We granted certiorari. 568 U. S. ___ (2013). II A Whether viewed from the standpoint of the common law, the text and genesis of the statute at issue here, or the jurisprudence of this Court’s prior cases, what was charged in this case was not extortion. It is a settled principle of interpretation that, absent other indication, “Congress intends to incorporate the well-settled meaning of the common-law terms it uses.” Neder v. United States, 527 U. S. 1, 23 (1999) . “[W]here Congress borrows terms of art in which are accumulated the legal tradition and meaning of centuries of practice, it presumably knows and adopts the cluster of ideas that were attached to each borrowed word in the body of learning from which it was taken and the meaning its use will convey to the judicial mind unless otherwise instructed.” Morissette v. United States, 342 U. S. 246, 263 (1952) . Or as Justice Frankfurter colorfully put it, “if a word is obviously transplanted from another legal source, whether the common law or other legislation, it brings the old soil with it.” Some Reflections on the Reading of Statutes, 47 Colum. L. Rev. 527, 537 (1947). The Hobbs Act punishes “extortion,” one of the oldest crimes in our legal tradition, see E. Coke, The Third Part of the Institutes of the Laws of England 148–150 (1648) (reprint 2008). The crime originally applied only to extortionate action by public officials, but was later extended by statute to private extortion. See 4 C. Torcia, Wharton’s Criminal Law §§695, 699 (14th ed. 1981). As far as is known, no case predating the Hobbs Act—English, federal, or state—ever identified conduct such as that charged here as extortionate. Extortion required the obtaining of items of value, typically cash, from the victim. See, e.g., People v. Whaley, 6 Cow. 661 (N. Y. Sup. Ct. 1827) (justice of the peace properly indicted for extorting money); Commonwealth v. Bagley, 24 Mass. 279 (1828) (officer properly convicted for demanding a fee for letting a man out of prison); Commonwealth v. Mitchell, 66 Ky. 25 (1867) (jailer properly indicted for extorting money from pris- oner); Queen v. Woodward, 11 Mod. 137, 88 Eng. Rep. 949 (K. B. 1707) (upholding indictment for extorting “money and a note”). It did not cover mere coercion to act, or to refrain from acting. See, e.g., King v. Burdett, 1 Ld. Raym. 149, 91 Eng. Rep. 996 (K. B. 1696) (dictum) (extortion consisted of the “taking of money for the use of the stalls,” not the deprivation of “free liberty to sell [one’s] wares in the market according to law”). The text of the statute at issue confirms that the alleged property here cannot be extorted. Enacted in 1946, the Hobbs Act defines its crime of “extortion” as “the ob- taining of property from another, with his consent, induced by wrongful use of actual or threatened force, violence, or fear, or under color of official right.” 18 U. S. C. §1951(b)(2) (emphasis added). Obtaining property requires “not only the deprivation but also the acquisition of property.” Scheidler v. National Organization for Women, Inc., 537 U. S. 393, 404 (2003) (citing United States v. Enmons, 410 U. S. 396, 400 (1973) ). That is, it requires that the victim “part with” his property, R. Perkins & R. Boyce, Criminal Law 451 (3d ed. 1982), and that the extortionist “gain possession” of it, Scheidler, supra, at 403, n. 8; see also Webster’s New International Dictionary 1682 (2d ed. 1949) (defining “obtain”); Murray, Note, Protesters, Extortion, and Coercion: Preventing RICO from Chilling First Amendment Freedoms, 75 Notre Dame L. Rev. 691, 706 (1999) (Murray). The property extorted must therefore be transferable—that is, capable of passing from one person to another. The alleged property here lacks that defining feature. [ 2 ] The genesis of the Hobbs Act reinforces that conclusion. The Act was modeled after §850 of the New York Penal Law (1909), which was derived from the famous Field Code, a 19th-century model penal code, see 4 Commissioners of the Code, Penal Code of the State of New York §613, p. 220 (1865) (reprint 1998). Congress borrowed, nearly verbatim, the New York statute’s definition of extortion. See Scheidler, 537 U. S., at 403. The New York statute contained, in addition to the felony crime of extortion, a new (that is to say, nonexistent at common law) misdemeanor crime of coercion. Whereas the former required, as we have said, “ ‘the criminal acquisition of . . . property,’ ” ibid., the latter required merely the use of threats “to compel another person to do or to abstain from doing an act which such other such person has a legal right to do or to abstain from doing.” N. Y. Penal Law §530 (1909), earlier codified in N. Y. Penal Code §653 (1881). Congress did not copy the coercion provision. The omission must have been deliberate, since it was perfectly clear that extortion did not include coercion. At the time of the borrowing (1946), New York courts had consistently held that the sort of interference with rights that occurred here was coercion. See, e.g., People v. Ginsberg, 262 N. Y. 556, 188 N. E. 62 (1933) (per curiam) (compelling store owner to become a member of a trade association and to remove advertisements); People v. Scotti, 266 N. Y. 480, 195 N. E. 162 (App. Div. 1934) (compelling victim to enter into agreement with union); People v. Kaplan, 240 App. Div. 72, 74–75, 269 N. Y. S. 161, 163–164, aff’d, 264 N. Y. 675, 191 N. E. 621 (1934) (compelling union members to drop lawsuits against union leadership). [ 3 ] And finally, this Court’s own precedent similarly demands reversal of petitioner’s convictions. In Scheidler, we held that protesters did not commit extortion under the Hobbs Act, even though they “interfered with, disrupted, and in some instances completely deprived” abortion clinics of their ability to run their business. 537 U. S., at 404–405. We reasoned that the protesters may have deprived the clinics of an “alleged property right,” but they did not pursue or receive “ ‘something of value from’ ” the clinics that they could then “exercise, transfer, or sell” themselves. Id., at 405. The opinion supported its holding by citing the three New York coercion cases discussed above. See id., at 405–406. This case is easier than Scheidler, where one might at least have said that physical occupation of property amounted to obtaining that property. The deprivation alleged here is far more abstract. Scheidler rested its decision, as we do, on the term “obtaining.” Id., at 402, n. 6. The principle announced there—that a defendant must pursue something of value from the victim that can be exercised, transferred, or sold—applies with equal force here. [ 4 ] Whether one considers the personal right at issue to be “property” in a broad sense or not, it certainly was not obtainable property under the Hobbs Act. [ 5 ] B The Government’s shifting and imprecise characterization of the alleged property at issue betrays the weakness of its case. According to the jury’s verdict form, the “property” that petitioner attempted to extort was “the General Counsel’s recommendation to approve the Commitment.” App. 142. But the Government expends minuscule effort in defending that theory of conviction. And for good reason—to wit, our decision in Cleveland v. United States, 531 U. S. 12 (2000) , which reversed a business owner’s mail-fraud conviction for “obtaining money or property” through misrepresentations made in an application for a video-poker license issued by the State. We held that a “license” is not “property” while in the State’s hands and so cannot be “obtained” from the State. Id., at 20–22. Even less so can an employee’s yet-to-be-issued recommendation be called obtainable property, and less so still a yet-to-be-issued recommendation that would merely ap- prove (but not effect) a particular investment. Hence the Government’s reliance on an alternative, more sophisticated (and sophistic) description of the property. Instead of defending the jury’s description, the Gov- ernment hinges its case on the general counsel’s “intangible property right to give his disinterested legal opinion to his client free of improper outside interference.” Brief for United States 39. But what, exactly, would the petitioner have obtained for himself? A right to give his own disinterested legal opinion to his own client free of improper interference? Or perhaps, a right to give the general counsel’s disinterested legal opinion to the general counsel’s client? Either formulation sounds absurd, because it is. Clearly, petitioner’s goal was not to acquire the general coun- sel’s “intangible property right to give disinterested legal advice.” It was to force the general counsel to offer advice that accorded with petitioner’s wishes. But again, that is coercion, not extortion. See Murray 721–722. No fluent speaker of English would say that “petitioner obtained and exercised the general counsel’s right to make a recommendation,” any more than he would say that a person “obtained and exercised another’s right to free speech.” He would say that “petitioner forced the general counsel to make a particular recommendation,” just as he would say that a person “forced another to make a statement.” Adopting the Government’s theory here would not only make nonsense of words; it would collapse the longstanding distinction between extortion and coercion and ignore Congress’s choice to penalize one but not the other. See Scheidler, supra, at 409. That we cannot do. The judgment of the Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit is reversed. It is so ordered. Notes 1 Petitioner was also convicted of several counts of interstate transmission of extortionate threats, in violation of . Under §875(d), a person is criminally liable if he, “with intent to extort from any person, firm, association, or corporation, any money or other thing of value, transmits in interstate or foreign commerce any communication containing any threat to injure the property or reputation of the addressee.” In this case, both parties concede that the definition of “extortion” under the Hobbs Act also applies to the §875(d) counts. We express no opinion on the validity of that concession. 2 It may well be proper under the Hobbs Act for the Government to charge a person who obtains money by threatening a third party, who obtains funds belonging to a corporate or governmental entity by threatening the entity’s agent, see 2 J. Bishop, Criminal Law §408, p. 334, and n. 3 (9th ed. 1923) (citing State v. Moore, 1 Ind. 548 (1849)), or who obtains “goodwill and customer revenues” by threatening a market competitor, see, e.g., United States v. Zemek, 634 F. 2d 1159, 1173 (CA9 1980). Each of these might be considered “obtaining property from another.” We need not consider those situations, however, because the Government did not charge any of them here. 3 Also revealing, the New York code prohibited conspiracy “[t]o prevent another from exercising a lawful trade or calling, or doing any other lawful act, by force, threats, intimidation.” N. Y. Penal Law §580(5) (1909) (emphasis added). That separate codification, which Con-gress did not adopt, is further evidence that the New York crime of extortion (and hence the federal crime) did not reach interference with a person’s right to ply a lawful trade, similar to the right claimed here. Seeking to extract something from the void, the Government relies on cases that interpret a provision of the New York code definingthe kinds of threats that qualify as threats to do “unlawful injury to the person or property,” which is what the extortion statute requires. See N. Y. Penal Code §553 (1881); N. Y. Penal Law §851 (1909). Those cases held that they include threats to injure a business by preventing the return of workers from a strike, People v. Barondess, 133 N. Y. 649, 31 N. E. 240, 241–242 (1892) (per curiam), and threats to terminate a person’s employment, People ex rel. Short v. Warden, 145 App. Div. 861, 130 N. Y. S. 698, 700–701 (1911), aff’d, 206 N. Y. 632, 99 N. E. 1116 (1912) (per curiam). Those cases are entirely inapposite here, where the issue is not what constitutes a qualifying threat but what constitutes obtainable property. 4 The Government’s attempt to distinguish Scheidler is unconvinc-ing. In its view, had the protesters sought to force the clinics to pro-vide services other than abortion, extortion would have been a proper charge. Petitioner committed extortion here, the Government says, because he did not merely attempt to prevent the general counsel from giving a recommendation but tried instead to force him to issue one. That distinction is, not to put too fine a point on it, nonsensical. It is coercion, not extortion, when a person is forced to do something and when he is forced to do nothing. See, e.g., N. Y. Penal Law §530 (1909) (it is a misdemeanor to coerce a “person to do or to abstain from doing an act”). Congress’s enactment of the Hobbs Act did not, through the phrase “obtaining of property from another,” suddenly transform every act that coerces affirmative conduct into a crime punishable for up to 20 years, while leaving those who “merely” coerce inaction immune from federal punishment. 5 The concurrence contends that the “right to make [a] recommendation” is not property. Post, at 4 (Alito, J., concurring in judgment). We are not sure of that. If one defines property to include anything of value, surely some rights to make recommendations would qualify—for example, a member of the Pulitzer Prize Committee’s right to recommend the recipient of the prize. I suppose that a prominent journalist would not give up that right (he cannot, of course, transfer it) for a significant sum of money—so it must be valuable. But the point relevant to the present case is that it cannot be transferred, so it cannot be the object of extortion under the statute.

570.US.529

The Voting Rights Act of 1965 was enacted to address entrenched racial discrimination in voting, “an insidious and pervasive evil which had been perpetuated in certain parts of our country through unremitting and ingenious defiance of the Constitution.” South Carolina v. Katzenbach, 383 U.S. 301, 309. Section 2 of the Act, which bans any “standard, practice, or procedure” that “results in a denial or abridgement of the right of any citizen . . . to vote on account of race or color,” 42 U. S. C. §1973(a), applies nationwide, is permanent, and is not at issue in this case. Other sections apply only to some parts of the country. Section 4 of the Act provides the “coverage formula,” defining the “covered jurisdictions” as States or political subdivisions that maintained tests or devices as prerequisites to voting, and had low voter registration or turnout, in the 1960s and early 1970s. §1973b(b). In those covered jurisdictions, §5 of the Act provides that no change in voting procedures can take effect until approved by specified federal authorities in Washington, D. C. §1973c(a). Such approval is known as “preclearance.” The coverage formula and preclearance requirement were initially set to expire after five years, but the Act has been reauthorized several times. In 2006, the Act was reauthorized for an additional 25 years, but the coverage formula was not changed. Coverage still turned on whether a jurisdiction had a voting test in the 1960s or 1970s, and had low voter registration or turnout at that time. Shortly after the 2006 reauthorization, a Texas utility district sought to bail out from the Act’s coverage and, in the alternative, challenged the Act’s constitutionality. This Court resolved the challenge on statutory grounds, but expressed serious doubts about the Act’s continued constitutionality. See Northwest Austin Municipal Util. Dist. No. One v. Holder, 557 U.S. 193. Petitioner Shelby County, in the covered jurisdiction of Alabama, sued the Attorney General in Federal District Court in Washington, D. C., seeking a declaratory judgment that sections 4(b) and 5 are facially unconstitutional, as well as a permanent injunction against their enforcement. The District Court upheld the Act, finding that the evidence before Congress in 2006 was sufficient to justify reauthorizing §5 and continuing §4(b)’s coverage formula. The D. C. Circuit affirmed. After surveying the evidence in the record, that court accepted Congress’s conclusion that §2 litigation remained inadequate in the covered jurisdictions to protect the rights of minority voters, that §5 was therefore still necessary, and that the coverage formula continued to pass constitutional muster. Held: Section 4 of the Voting Rights Act is unconstitutional; its formula can no longer be used as a basis for subjecting jurisdictions to preclearance. Pp. 9–25. (a) In Northwest Austin, this Court noted that the Voting Rights Act “imposes current burdens and must be justified by current needs” and concluded that “a departure from the fundamental principle of equal sovereignty requires a showing that a statute’s disparate geographic coverage is sufficiently related to the problem that it targets.” 557 U. S., at 203. These basic principles guide review of the question presented here. Pp. 9–17. (1) State legislation may not contravene federal law. States retain broad autonomy, however, in structuring their governments and pursuing legislative objectives. Indeed, the Tenth Amendment reserves to the States all powers not specifically granted to the Federal Government, including “the power to regulate elections.” Gregory v. Ashcroft, 501 U.S. 452, 461–462. There is also a “fundamental principle of equal sovereignty” among the States, which is highly pertinent in assessing disparate treatment of States. Northwest Austin, supra, at 203. The Voting Rights Act sharply departs from these basic principles. It requires States to beseech the Federal Government for permission to implement laws that they would otherwise have the right to enact and execute on their own. And despite the tradition of equal sovereignty, the Act applies to only nine States (and additional counties). That is why, in 1966, this Court described the Act as “stringent” and “potent,” Katzenbach, 383 U. S., at 308, 315, 337. The Court nonetheless upheld the Act, concluding that such an “uncommon exercise of congressional power” could be justified by “exceptional conditions.” Id., at 334. Pp. 9–12. (2) In 1966, these departures were justified by the “blight of racial discrimination in voting” that had “infected the electoral process in parts of our country for nearly a century,” Katzenbach, 383 U. S., at 308. At the time, the coverage formula—the means of linking the exercise of the unprecedented authority with the problem that warranted it—made sense. The Act was limited to areas where Congress found “evidence of actual voting discrimination,” and the covered jurisdictions shared two characteristics: “the use of tests and devices for voter registration, and a voting rate in the 1964 presidential election at least 12 points below the national average.” Id., at 330. The Court explained that “[t]ests and devices are relevant to voting discrimination because of their long history as a tool for perpetrating the evil; a low voting rate is pertinent for the obvious reason that widespread disenfranchisement must inevitably affect the number of actual voters.” Ibid. The Court therefore concluded that “the coverage formula [was] rational in both practice and theory.” Ibid. Pp. 12–13. (3) Nearly 50 years later, things have changed dramatically. Largely because of the Voting Rights Act, “[v]oter turnout and registration rates” in covered jurisdictions “now approach parity. Blatantly discriminatory evasions of federal decrees are rare. And minority candidates hold office at unprecedented levels.” Northwest Austin, supra, at 202. The tests and devices that blocked ballot access have been forbidden nationwide for over 40 years. Yet the Act has not eased §5’s restrictions or narrowed the scope of §4’s coverage formula along the way. Instead those extraordinary and unprecedented features have been reauthorized as if nothing has changed, and they have grown even stronger. Because §5 applies only to those jurisdictions singled out by §4, the Court turns to consider that provision. Pp. 13–17. (b) Section 4’s formula is unconstitutional in light of current conditions. Pp. 17–25. (1) In 1966, the coverage formula was “rational in both practice and theory.” Katzenbach, supra, at 330. It looked to cause (discriminatory tests) and effect (low voter registration and turnout), and tailored the remedy (preclearance) to those jurisdictions exhibiting both. By 2009, however, the “coverage formula raise[d] serious constitutional questions.” Northwest Austin, supra, at 204. Coverage today is based on decades-old data and eradicated practices. The formula captures States by reference to literacy tests and low voter registration and turnout in the 1960s and early 1970s. But such tests have been banned for over 40 years. And voter registration and turnout numbers in covered States have risen dramatically. In 1965, the States could be divided into those with a recent history of voting tests and low voter registration and turnout and those without those characteristics. Congress based its coverage formula on that distinction. Today the Nation is no longer divided along those lines, yet the Voting Rights Act continues to treat it as if it were. Pp. 17–18. (2) The Government attempts to defend the formula on grounds that it is “reverse-engineered”—Congress identified the jurisdictions to be covered and then came up with criteria to describe them. Katzenbach did not sanction such an approach, reasoning instead that the coverage formula was rational because the “formula . . . was relevant to the problem.” 383 U. S., at 329, 330. The Government has a fallback argument—because the formula was relevant in 1965, its continued use is permissible so long as any discrimination remains in the States identified in 1965. But this does not look to “current political conditions,” Northwest Austin, supra, at 203, instead relying on a comparison between the States in 1965. But history did not end in 1965. In assessing the “current need[ ]” for a preclearance system treating States differently from one another today, history since 1965 cannot be ignored. The Fifteenth Amendment is not designed to punish for the past; its purpose is to ensure a better future. To serve that purpose, Congress—if it is to divide the States—must identify those jurisdictions to be singled out on a basis that makes sense in light of current conditions. Pp. 18–21. (3) Respondents also rely heavily on data from the record compiled by Congress before reauthorizing the Act. Regardless of how one looks at that record, no one can fairly say that it shows anything approaching the “pervasive,” “flagrant,” “widespread,” and “rampant” discrimination that clearly distinguished the covered jurisdictions from the rest of the Nation in 1965. Katzenbach, supra, at 308, 315, 331. But a more fundamental problem remains: Congress did not use that record to fashion a coverage formula grounded in current conditions. It instead re-enacted a formula based on 40-year-old facts having no logical relation to the present day. Pp. 21–22. 679 F.3d 848, reversed. Roberts, C. J., delivered the opinion of the Court, in which Scalia, Kennedy, Thomas, and Alito, JJ., joined. Thomas, J., filed a concurring opinion. Ginsburg, J., filed a dissenting opinion, in which Breyer, Sotomayor, and Kagan, JJ., joined.

The Voting Rights Act of 1965 employed extraordinary measures to address an extraordinary problem. Section 5 of the Act required States to obtain federal permission before enacting any law related to voting—a drastic departure from basic principles of federalism. And §4 of the Act applied that requirement only to some States—an equally dramatic departure from the principle that all States enjoy equal sovereignty. This was strong medicine, but Congress determined it was needed to address entrenched racial discrimination in voting, “an insidious and pervasive evil which had been perpetuated in certain parts of our country through unremitting and ingenious defiance of the Constitution.” South Carolina v. Katzenbach, 383 U. S. 301, 309 (1966) . As we explained in upholding the law, “exceptional conditions can justify legislative measures not otherwise appropriate.” Id., at 334. Reflecting the unprecedented nature of these measures, they were scheduled to expire after five years. See Voting Rights Act of 1965, §4(a), 79Stat. 438. Nearly 50 years later, they are still in effect; indeed, they have been made more stringent, and are now scheduled to last until 2031. There is no denying, however, that the conditions that originally justified these measures no longer characterize voting in the covered jurisdictions. By 2009, “the racial gap in voter registration and turnout [was] lower in the States originally covered by §5 than it [was] nationwide.” Northwest Austin Municipal Util. Dist. No. One v. Holder, 557 U. S. 193 –204 (2009). Since that time, Census Bureau data indicate that African-American voter turnout has come to exceed white voter turnout in five of the six States originally covered by §5, with a gap in the sixth State of less than one half of one percent. See Dept. of Commerce, Census Bureau, Re-ported Voting and Registration, by Sex, Race and His-panic Origin, for States (Nov. 2012) (Table 4b). At the same time, voting discrimination still exists; no one doubts that. The question is whether the Act’s extraordinary measures, including its disparate treatment of the States, continue to satisfy constitutional requirements. As we put it a short time ago, “the Act imposes current burdens and must be justified by current needs.” Northwest Austin, 557 U. S., at 203. I A The Fifteenth Amendment was ratified in 1870, in the wake of the Civil War. It provides that “[t]he right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude,” and it gives Congress the “power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.” “The first century of congressional enforcement of the Amendment, however, can only be regarded as a failure.” Id., at 197. In the 1890s, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Virginia began to enact literacy tests for voter registration and to employ other methods designed to prevent African-Americans from voting. Katzenbach, 383 U. S., at 310. Congress passed statutes outlawing some of these practices and facilitating litigation against them, but litigation remained slow and expensive, and the States came up with new ways to discriminate as soon as existing ones were struck down. Voter registration of African-Americans barely improved. Id., at 313–314. Inspired to action by the civil rights movement, Congress responded in 1965 with the Voting Rights Act. Section 2 was enacted to forbid, in all 50 States, any “standard, practice, or procedure . . . imposed or applied . . . to deny or abridge the right of any citizen of the United States to vote on account of race or color.” 79Stat. 437. The current version forbids any “standard, practice, or procedure” that “results in a denial or abridgement of the right of any citizen of the United States to vote on account of race or color.” 42 U. S. C. §1973(a). Both the Federal Government and individuals have sued to enforce §2, see, e.g., Johnson v. De Grandy, 512 U. S. 997 (1994) , and injunctive relief is available in appropriate cases to block voting laws from going into effect, see 42 U. S. C. §1973j(d). Section 2 is permanent, applies nationwide, and is not at issue in this case. Other sections targeted only some parts of the country. At the time of the Act’s passage, these “covered” jurisdictions were those States or political subdivisions that had maintained a test or device as a prerequisite to voting as of November 1, 1964, and had less than 50 percent voter registration or turnout in the 1964 Presidential election. §4(b), 79Stat. 438. Such tests or devices included literacy and knowledge tests, good moral character requirements, the need for vouchers from registered voters, and the like. §4(c), id., at 438–439. A covered jurisdiction could “bail out” of coverage if it had not used a test or device in the preceding five years “for the purpose or with the effect of denying or abridging the right to vote on account of race or color.” §4(a), id., at 438. In 1965, the covered States included Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina, and Virginia. The additional covered subdivisions included 39 counties in North Carolina and one in Arizona. See 28 CFR pt. 51, App. (2012). In those jurisdictions, §4 of the Act banned all such tests or devices. §4(a), 79Stat. 438. Section 5 provided that no change in voting procedures could take effect until it was approved by federal authorities in Washington, D. C.—either the Attorney General or a court of three judges. Id., at 439. A jurisdiction could obtain such “preclearance” only by proving that the change had neither “the purpose [nor] the effect of denying or abridging the right to vote on account of race or color.” Ibid. Sections 4 and 5 were intended to be temporary; they were set to expire after five years. See §4(a), id., at 438; Northwest Austin, supra, at 199. In South Carolina v. Katzenbach, we upheld the 1965 Act against constitutional challenge, explaining that it was justified to address “voting discrimination where it persists on a pervasive scale.” 383 U. S., at 308. In 1970, Congress reauthorized the Act for another five years, and extended the coverage formula in §4(b) to jurisdictions that had a voting test and less than 50 percent voter registration or turnout as of 1968. Voting Rights Act Amendments of 1970, §§3–4, 84Stat. 315. That swept in several counties in California, New Hampshire, and New York. See 28 CFR pt. 51, App. Congress also extended the ban in §4(a) on tests and devices nationwide. §6, 84Stat. 315. In 1975, Congress reauthorized the Act for seven more years, and extended its coverage to jurisdictions that had a voting test and less than 50 percent voter registration or turnout as of 1972. Voting Rights Act Amendments of 1975, §§101, 202, 89Stat. 400, 401. Congress also amended the definition of “test or device” to include the practice of providing English-only voting materials in places where over five percent of voting-age citizens spoke a single language other than English. §203, id., at 401–402. As a result of these amendments, the States of Alaska, Arizona, and Texas, as well as several counties in California, Flor-ida, Michigan, New York, North Carolina, and South Da-kota, became covered jurisdictions. See 28 CFR pt. 51, App. Congress correspondingly amended sections 2 and 5 to forbid voting discrimination on the basis of membership in a language minority group, in addition to discrimination on the basis of race or color. §§203, 206, 89Stat. 401, 402. Finally, Congress made the nationwide ban on tests and devices permanent. §102, id., at 400. In 1982, Congress reauthorized the Act for 25 years, but did not alter its coverage formula. See Voting Rights Act Amendments, 96Stat. 131. Congress did, however, amend the bailout provisions, allowing political subdivisions of covered jurisdictions to bail out. Among other prerequisites for bailout, jurisdictions and their subdivisions must not have used a forbidden test or device, failed to receive preclearance, or lost a §2 suit, in the ten years prior to seeking bailout. §2, id., at 131–133. We upheld each of these reauthorizations against constitutional challenge. See Georgia v. United States, 411 U. S. 526 (1973) ; City of Rome v. United States, 446 U. S. 156 (1980) ; Lopez v. Monterey County, 525 U. S. 266 (1999) . In 2006, Congress again reauthorized the Voting Rights Act for 25 years, again without change to its coverage formula. Fannie Lou Hamer, Rosa Parks, and Coretta Scott King Voting Rights Act Reauthorization and Amend-ments Act, 120Stat. 577. Congress also amended §5 to prohibit more conduct than before. §5, id., at 580– 581; see Reno v. Bossier Parish School Bd., 528 U. S. 320, 341 (2000) (Bossier II); Georgia v. Ashcroft, 539 U. S. 461, 479 (2003) . Section 5 now forbids voting changes with “any discriminatory purpose” as well as voting changes that diminish the ability of citizens, on account of race, color, or language minority status, “to elect their preferred candidates of choice.” 42 U. S. C. §§1973c(b)–(d). Shortly after this reauthorization, a Texas utility district brought suit, seeking to bail out from the Act’s cover- age and, in the alternative, challenging the Act’s constitutionality. See Northwest Austin, 557 U. S., at 200–201. A three-judge District Court explained that only a State or political subdivision was eligible to seek bailout under the statute, and concluded that the utility district was not a political subdivision, a term that encompassed only “counties, parishes, and voter-registering subunits.” Northwest Austin Municipal Util. Dist. No. One v. Mukasey, 573 F. Supp. 2d 221, 232 (DC 2008). The District Court also rejected the constitutional challenge. Id., at 283. We reversed. We explained that “ ‘normally the Court will not decide a constitutional question if there is some other ground upon which to dispose of the case.’ ” Northwest Austin, supra, at 205 (quoting Escambia County v. McMillan, 466 U. S. 48, 51 (1984) (per curiam)). Concluding that “underlying constitutional concerns,” among other things, “compel[led] a broader reading of the bailout provision,” we construed the statute to allow the utility district to seek bailout. Northwest Austin, 557 U. S., at 207. In doing so we expressed serious doubts about the Act’s con-tinued constitutionality. We explained that §5 “imposes substantial federalism costs” and “differentiates between the States, despite our his- toric tradition that all the States enjoy equal sovereignty.” Id., at 202, 203 (internal quotation marks omitted). We also noted that “[t]hings have changed in the South. Voter turnout and registration rates now approach parity. Blatantly discriminatory evasions of federal decrees are rare. And minority candidates hold office at unprece-dented levels.” Id., at 202. Finally, we questioned whether the problems that §5 meant to address were still “concentrated in the jurisdictions singled out for preclearance.” Id., at 203. Eight Members of the Court subscribed to these views, and the remaining Member would have held the Act unconstitutional. Ultimately, however, the Court’s construction of the bailout provision left the constitutional issues for another day. B Shelby County is located in Alabama, a covered jurisdiction. It has not sought bailout, as the Attorney General has recently objected to voting changes proposed from within the county. See App. 87a–92a. Instead, in 2010, the county sued the Attorney General in Federal District Court in Washington, D. C., seeking a declaratory judgment that sections 4(b) and 5 of the Voting Rights Act are facially unconstitutional, as well as a permanent injunction against their enforcement. The District Court ruled against the county and upheld the Act. 811 F. Supp. 2d 424, 508 (2011). The court found that the evidence before Congress in 2006 was sufficient to justify reauthorizing §5 and continuing the §4(b) coverage formula. The Court of Appeals for the D. C. Circuit affirmed. In assessing §5, the D. C. Circuit considered six primary categories of evidence: Attorney General objections to voting changes, Attorney General requests for more information regarding voting changes, successful §2 suits in covered jurisdictions, the dispatching of federal observers to monitor elections in covered jurisdictions, §5 preclearance suits involving covered jurisdictions, and the deterrent effect of §5. See 679 F. 3d 848, 862–863 (2012). After extensive analysis of the record, the court accepted Congress’s conclusion that §2 litigation remained inadequate in the covered jurisdictions to protect the rights of minority voters, and that §5 was therefore still necessary. Id., at 873. Turning to §4, the D. C. Circuit noted that the evidence for singling out the covered jurisdictions was “less robust” and that the issue presented “a close question.” Id., at 879. But the court looked to data comparing the number of successful §2 suits in the different parts of the country. Coupling that evidence with the deterrent effect of §5, the court concluded that the statute continued “to single out the jurisdictions in which discrimination is concentrated,” and thus held that the coverage formula passed constitutional muster. Id., at 883. Judge Williams dissented. He found “no positive cor-relation between inclusion in §4(b)’s coverage formula and low black registration or turnout.” Id., at 891. Rather, to the extent there was any correlation, it actually went the other way: “condemnation under §4(b) is a marker of higher black registration and turnout.” Ibid. (emphasis added). Judge Williams also found that “[c]overed jurisdictions have far more black officeholders as a proportion of the black population than do uncovered ones.” Id., at 892. As to the evidence of successful §2 suits, Judge Williams disaggregated the reported cases by State, and concluded that “[t]he five worst uncovered jurisdictions . . . have worse records than eight of the covered jurisdictions.” Id., at 897. He also noted that two covered jurisdictions—Arizona and Alaska—had not had any successful reported §2 suit brought against them during the entire 24 years covered by the data. Ibid. Judge Williams would have held the coverage formula of §4(b) “irrational” and unconstitutional. Id., at 885. We granted certiorari. 568 U. S. ___ (2012). II In Northwest Austin, we stated that “the Act imposes current burdens and must be justified by current needs.” 557 U. S., at 203. And we concluded that “a departure from the fundamental principle of equal sovereignty requires a showing that a statute’s disparate geographic coverage is sufficiently related to the problem that it targets.” Ibid. These basic principles guide our review of the question before us. [ 1 ] A The Constitution and laws of the United States are “the supreme Law of the Land.” U. S. Const., Art. VI, cl. 2. State legislation may not contravene federal law. The Federal Government does not, however, have a general right to review and veto state enactments before they go into effect. A proposal to grant such authority to “negative” state laws was considered at the Constitutional Convention, but rejected in favor of allowing state laws to take effect, subject to later challenge under the Supremacy Clause. See 1 Records of the Federal Convention of 1787, pp. 21, 164–168 (M. Farrand ed. 1911); 2 id., at 27–29, 390–392. Outside the strictures of the Supremacy Clause, States retain broad autonomy in structuring their governments and pursuing legislative objectives. Indeed, the Constitution provides that all powers not specifically granted to the Federal Government are reserved to the States or citizens. Amdt. 10. This “allocation of powers in our federal system preserves the integrity, dignity, and residual sovereignty of the States.” Bond v. United States, 564 U. S. ___, ___ (2011) (slip op., at 9). But the federal balance “is not just an end in itself: Rather, federalism secures to citizens the liberties that derive from the diffusion of sovereign power.” Ibid. (internal quotation marks omitted). More specifically, “ ‘the Framers of the Constitution intended the States to keep for themselves, as provided in the Tenth Amendment, the power to regulate elections.’ ” Gregory v. Ashcroft, 501 U. S. 452 –462 (1991) (quoting Sugarman v. Dougall, 413 U. S. 634, 647 (1973) ; some internal quotation marks omitted). Of course, the Federal Government retains significant control over federal elections. For instance, the Constitution authorizes Congress to establish the time and manner for electing Senators and Representatives. Art. I, §4, cl. 1; see also Arizona v. Inter Tribal Council of Ariz., Inc., ante, at 4–6. But States have “broad powers to determine the conditions under which the right of suffrage may be exercised.” Carrington v. Rash, 380 U. S. 89, 91 (1965) (internal quotation marks omitted); see also Arizona, ante, at 13–15. And “[e]ach State has the power to prescribe the qualifications of its officers and the manner in which they shall be chosen.” Boyd v. Nebraska ex rel. Thayer, 143 U. S. 135, 161 (1892) . Drawing lines for congressional districts is likewise “primarily the duty and responsibility of the State.” Perry v. Perez, 565 U. S. ___, ___ (2012) (per curiam) (slip op., at 3) (internal quotation marks omitted). Not only do States retain sovereignty under the Constitution, there is also a “fundamental principle of equal sovereignty” among the States. Northwest Austin, supra, at 203 (citing United States v. Louisiana, 363 U. S. 1, 16 (1960) ; Lessee of Pollard v. Hagan, 3 How. 212, 223 (1845); and Texas v. White, 7 Wall. 700, 725–726 (1869); emphasis added). Over a hundred years ago, this Court explained that our Nation “was and is a union of States, equal in power, dignity and authority.” Coyle v. Smith, 221 U. S. 559, 567 (1911) . Indeed, “the constitutional equality of the States is essential to the harmonious operation of the scheme upon which the Republic was organized.” Id., at 580. Coyle concerned the admission of new States, and Katzenbach rejected the notion that the principle operated as a bar on differential treatment outside that context. 383 U. S., at 328–329. At the same time, as we made clear in Northwest Austin, the fundamental principle of equal sovereignty remains highly pertinent in assessing subsequent disparate treatment of States. 557 U. S., at 203. The Voting Rights Act sharply departs from these basic principles. It suspends “all changes to state election law—however innocuous—until they have been precleared by federal authorities in Washington, D. C.” Id., at 202. States must beseech the Federal Government for permission to implement laws that they would otherwise have the right to enact and execute on their own, subject of course to any injunction in a §2 action. The Attorney General has 60 days to object to a preclearance request, longer if he requests more information. See 28 CFR §§51.9, 51.37. If a State seeks preclearance from a three-judge court, the process can take years. And despite the tradition of equal sovereignty, the Act applies to only nine States (and several additional counties). While one State waits months or years and expends funds to implement a validly enacted law, its neighbor can typically put the same law into effect immediately, through the normal legislative process. Even if a noncovered jurisdiction is sued, there are important differences between those proceedings and preclearance proceedings; the preclearance proceeding “not only switches the burden of proof to the supplicant jurisdiction, but also applies substantive standards quite different from those governing the rest of the nation.” 679 F. 3d, at 884 (Williams, J., dissenting) (case below). All this explains why, when we first upheld the Act in 1966, we described it as “stringent” and “potent.” Katzenbach, 383 U. S., at 308, 315, 337. We recognized that it “may have been an uncommon exercise of congressional power,” but concluded that “legislative measures not oth-erwise appropriate” could be justified by “exceptional con-ditions.” Id., at 334. We have since noted that the Act “authorizes federal intrusion into sensitive areas of state and local policymaking,” Lopez, 525 U. S., at 282, and represents an “extraordinary departure from the traditional course of relations between the States and the Federal Government,” Presley v. Etowah County Comm’n, 502 U. S. 491 –501 (1992). As we reiterated in Northwest Austin, the Act constitutes “extraordinary legislation otherwise unfamiliar to our federal system.” 557 U. S., at 211. B In 1966, we found these departures from the basic features of our system of government justified. The “blight of racial discrimination in voting” had “infected the electoral process in parts of our country for nearly a century.” Katzenbach, 383 U. S., at 308. Several States had enacted a variety of requirements and tests “specifically designed to prevent” African-Americans from voting. Id., at 310. Case-by-case litigation had proved inadequate to prevent such racial discrimination in voting, in part because States “merely switched to discriminatory devices not covered by the federal decrees,” “enacted difficult new tests,” or simply “defied and evaded court orders.” Id., at 314. Shortly before enactment of the Voting Rights Act, only 19.4 percent of African-Americans of voting age were registered to vote in Alabama, only 31.8 percent in Louisiana, and only 6.4 percent in Mississippi. Id., at 313. Those figures were roughly 50 percentage points or more below the figures for whites. Ibid. In short, we concluded that “[u]nder the compulsion of these unique circumstances, Congress responded in a permissibly decisive manner.” Id., at 334, 335. We also noted then and have emphasized since that this extra-ordinary legislation was intended to be temporary, set to expire after five years. Id., at 333; Northwest Austin, supra, at 199. At the time, the coverage formula—the means of linking the exercise of the unprecedented authority with the problem that warranted it—made sense. We found that “Congress chose to limit its attention to the geographic areas where immediate action seemed necessary.” Katzenbach, 383 U. S., at 328. The areas where Congress found “evidence of actual voting discrimination” shared two characteristics: “the use of tests and devices for voter registration, and a voting rate in the 1964 presidential election at least 12 points below the national average.” Id., at 330. We explained that “[t]ests and devices are relevant to voting discrimination because of their long history as a tool for perpetrating the evil; a low voting rate is pertinent for the obvious reason that widespread disenfranchisement must inevitably affect the number of actual voters.” Ibid. We therefore concluded that “the coverage formula [was] rational in both practice and theory.” Ibid. It accurately reflected those jurisdictions uniquely characterized by voting discrimination “on a pervasive scale,” linking coverage to the devices used to effectuate discrimination and to the resulting disenfranchisement. Id., at 308. The formula ensured that the “stringent remedies [were] aimed at areas where voting discrimination ha[d] been most flagrant.” Id., at 315. C Nearly 50 years later, things have changed dramati-cally. Shelby County contends that the preclearance re-quirement, even without regard to its disparate coverage, is now unconstitutional. Its arguments have a good deal of force. In the covered jurisdictions, “[v]oter turnout and registration rates now approach parity. Blatantly discriminatory evasions of federal decrees are rare. And minority candidates hold office at unprecedented levels.” Northwest Austin, 557 U. S., at 202. The tests and devices that blocked access to the ballot have been forbidden nationwide for over 40 years. See §6, 84Stat. 315; §102, 89Stat. 400. Those conclusions are not ours alone. Congress said the same when it reauthorized the Act in 2006, writing that “[s]ignificant progress has been made in eliminating first generation barriers experienced by minority voters, including increased numbers of registered minority voters, minority voter turnout, and minority representation in Congress, State legislatures, and local elected offices.” §2(b)(1), 120Stat. 577. The House Report elaborated that “the number of African-Americans who are registered and who turn out to cast ballots has increased significantly over the last 40 years, particularly since 1982,” and noted that “[i]n some circumstances, minorities register to vote and cast ballots at levels that surpass those of white voters.” H. R. Rep. No. 109–478, p. 12 (2006). That Report also explained that there have been “significant increases in the number of African-Americans serving in elected offices”; more specifically, there has been approximately a 1,000 percent increase since 1965 in the number of African-American elected officials in the six States originally covered by the Voting Rights Act. Id., at 18. The following chart, compiled from the Senate and House Reports, compares voter registration numbers from 1965 to those from 2004 in the six originally covered States. These are the numbers that were before Congress when it reauthorized the Act in 2006: 1965 2004 White Black Gap White Black Gap Alabama 69.2 19.3 49.9 73.8 72.9 0.9 Georgia 62.[6] 27.4 35.2 63.5 64.2 -0.7 Louisiana 80.5 31.6 48.9 75.1 71.1 4.0 Mississippi 69.9 6.7 63.2 72.3 76.1 -3.8 South Carolina 75.7 37.3 38.4 74.4 71.1 3.3 Virginia 61.1 38.3 22.8 68.2 57.4 10.8 See S. Rep. No. 109–295, p. 11 (2006); H. R. Rep. No. 109–478, at 12. The 2004 figures come from the Census Bureau. Census Bureau data from the most recent election indicate that African-American voter turnout exceeded white voter turnout in five of the six States originally covered by §5, with a gap in the sixth State of less than one half of one percent. See Dept. of Commerce, Census Bureau, Reported Voting and Registration, by Sex, Race and Hispanic Origin, for States (Table 4b). The preclearance statistics are also illuminating. In the first decade after enactment of §5, the Attorney General objected to 14.2 percent of proposed voting changes. H. R Rep. No. 109–478, at 22. In the last decade before reenactment, the Attorney General objected to a mere 0.16 percent. S. Rep. No. 109–295, at 13. There is no doubt that these improvements are in large part because of the Voting Rights Act. The Act has proved immensely successful at redressing racial discrimination and integrating the voting process. See §2(b)(1), 120Stat. 577. During the “Freedom Summer” of 1964, in Philadelphia, Mississippi, three men were murdered while working in the area to register African-American voters. See United States v. Price, 383 U. S. 787, 790 (1966) . On “Bloody Sunday” in 1965, in Selma, Alabama, police beat and used tear gas against hundreds marching in sup- port of African-American enfranchisement. See Northwest Austin, supra, at 220, n. 3 (Thomas, J., concurring in judgment in part and dissenting in part). Today both of those towns are governed by African-American mayors. Problems remain in these States and others, but there is no denying that, due to the Voting Rights Act, our Nation has made great strides. Yet the Act has not eased the restrictions in §5 or narrowed the scope of the coverage formula in §4(b) along the way. Those extraordinary and unprecedented features were reauthorized—as if nothing had changed. In fact, the Act’s unusual remedies have grown even stronger. When Congress reauthorized the Act in 2006, it did so for another 25 years on top of the previous 40—a far cry from the initial five-year period. See 42 U. S. C. §1973b(a)(8). Congress also expanded the prohibitions in §5. We had previously interpreted §5 to prohibit only those redistricting plans that would have the purpose or effect of worsening the position of minority groups. See Bossier II, 528 U. S., at 324, 335–336. In 2006, Congress amended §5 to prohibit laws that could have favored such groups but did not do so because of a discriminatory purpose, see 42 U. S. C. §1973c(c), even though we had stated that such broadening of §5 coverage would “exacerbate the substantial federalism costs that the preclearance procedure already exacts, perhaps to the extent of raising concerns about §5’s constitutionality,” Bossier II, supra, at 336 (citation and internal quotation marks omitted). In addition, Congress expanded §5 to prohibit any voting law “that has the purpose of or will have the effect of diminishing the ability of any citizens of the United States,” on account of race, color, or language minority status, “to elect their preferred candidates of choice.” §1973c(b). In light of those two amendments, the bar that covered jurisdictions must clear has been raised even as the conditions justifying that requirement have dramatically improved. We have also previously highlighted the concern that “the preclearance requirements in one State [might] be unconstitutional in another.” Northwest Austin, 557 U. S., at 203; see Georgia v. Ashcroft, 539 U. S., at 491 (Kennedy, J., concurring) (“considerations of race that would doom a redistricting plan under the Fourteenth Amendment or §2 [of the Voting Rights Act] seem to be what save it under §5”). Nothing has happened since to alleviate this troubling concern about the current application of §5. Respondents do not deny that there have been improvements on the ground, but argue that much of this can be attributed to the deterrent effect of §5, which dissuades covered jurisdictions from engaging in discrimination that they would resume should §5 be struck down. Under this theory, however, §5 would be effectively immune from scrutiny; no matter how “clean” the record of covered jurisdictions, the argument could always be made that it was deterrence that accounted for the good behavior. The provisions of §5 apply only to those jurisdictions singled out by §4. We now consider whether that coverage formula is constitutional in light of current conditions. III A When upholding the constitutionality of the coverage formula in 1966, we concluded that it was “rational in both practice and theory.” Katzenbach, 383 U. S., at 330. The formula looked to cause (discriminatory tests) and ef- fect (low voter registration and turnout), and tailored the remedy (preclearance) to those jurisdictions exhibiting both. By 2009, however, we concluded that the “coverage formula raise[d] serious constitutional questions.” Northwest Austin, 557 U. S., at 204. As we explained, a statute’s “current burdens” must be justified by “current needs,” and any “disparate geographic coverage” must be “sufficiently related to the problem that it targets.” Id., at 203. The coverage formula met that test in 1965, but no longer does so. Coverage today is based on decades-old data and eradicated practices. The formula captures States by reference to literacy tests and low voter registration and turnout in the 1960s and early 1970s. But such tests have been banned nationwide for over 40 years. §6, 84Stat. 315; §102, 89Stat. 400. And voter registration and turnout numbers in the covered States have risen dramatically in the years since. H. R. Rep. No. 109–478, at 12. Racial disparity in those numbers was compelling evidence justifying the preclearance remedy and the coverage formula. See, e.g., Katzenbach, supra, at 313, 329–330. There is no longer such a disparity. In 1965, the States could be divided into two groups: those with a recent history of voting tests and low voter registration and turnout, and those without those characteristics. Congress based its coverage formula on that distinction. Today the Nation is no longer divided along those lines, yet the Voting Rights Act continues to treat it as if it were. B The Government’s defense of the formula is limited. First, the Government contends that the formula is “reverse-engineered”: Congress identified the jurisdictions to be covered and then came up with criteria to describe them. Brief for Federal Respondent 48–49. Under that reasoning, there need not be any logical relationship be-tween the criteria in the formula and the reason for coverage; all that is necessary is that the formula happen to capture the jurisdictions Congress wanted to single out. The Government suggests that Katzenbach sanctioned such an approach, but the analysis in Katzenbach was quite different. Katzenbach reasoned that the coverage formula was rational because the “formula . . . was relevant to the problem”: “Tests and devices are relevant to voting discrimination because of their long history as a tool for perpetrating the evil; a low voting rate is pertinent for the obvious reason that widespread disenfranchisement must inevitably affect the number of actual voters.” 383 U. S., at 329, 330. Here, by contrast, the Government’s reverse- engineering argument does not even attempt to demonstrate the continued relevance of the formula to the problem it targets. And in the context of a decision as significant as this one—subjecting a disfavored subset of States to “extraordinary legislation otherwise unfamiliar to our federal system,” Northwest Austin, supra, at 211—that failure to establish even relevance is fatal. The Government falls back to the argument that because the formula was relevant in 1965, its continued use is permissible so long as any discrimination remains in the States Congress identified back then—regardless of how that discrimination compares to discrimination in States unburdened by coverage. Brief for Federal Respondent 49–50. This argument does not look to “current political conditions,” Northwest Austin, supra, at 203, but instead relies on a comparison between the States in 1965. That comparison reflected the different histories of the North and South. It was in the South that slavery was upheld by law until uprooted by the Civil War, that the reign of Jim Crow denied African-Americans the most basic freedoms, and that state and local governments worked tirelessly to disenfranchise citizens on the basis of race. The Court invoked that history—rightly so—in sustaining the disparate coverage of the Voting Rights Act in 1966. See Katzenbach, supra, at 308 (“The constitutional propriety of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 must be judged with reference to the historical experience which it reflects.”). But history did not end in 1965. By the time the Act was reauthorized in 2006, there had been 40 more years of it. In assessing the “current need[ ]” for a preclearance system that treats States differently from one another today, that history cannot be ignored. During that time, largely because of the Voting Rights Act, voting tests were abolished, disparities in voter registration and turnout due to race were erased, and African-Americans attained political office in record numbers. And yet the coverage formula that Congress reauthorized in 2006 ignores these developments, keeping the focus on decades-old data rel-evant to decades-old problems, rather than current data reflecting current needs. The Fifteenth Amendment commands that the right to vote shall not be denied or abridged on account of race or color, and it gives Congress the power to enforce that command. The Amendment is not designed to punish for the past; its purpose is to ensure a better future. See Rice v. Cayetano, 528 U. S. 495, 512 (2000) (“Consistent with the design of the Constitution, the [Fifteenth] Amendment is cast in fundamental terms, terms transcending the particular controversy which was the immediate impetus for its enactment.”). To serve that purpose, Congress—if it is to divide the States—must identify those jurisdictions to be singled out on a basis that makes sense in light of current conditions. It cannot rely simply on the past. We made that clear in Northwest Austin, and we make it clear again today. C In defending the coverage formula, the Government, the intervenors, and the dissent also rely heavily on data from the record that they claim justify disparate coverage. Congress compiled thousands of pages of evidence before reauthorizing the Voting Rights Act. The court below and the parties have debated what that record shows—they have gone back and forth about whether to compare covered to noncovered jurisdictions as blocks, how to disaggregate the data State by State, how to weigh §2 cases as evidence of ongoing discrimination, and whether to consider evidence not before Congress, among other issues. Compare, e.g., 679 F. 3d, at 873–883 (case below), with id., at 889–902 (Williams, J., dissenting). Regardless of how to look at the record, however, no one can fairly say that it shows anything approaching the “pervasive,” “flagrant,” “widespread,” and “rampant” discrimination that faced Congress in 1965, and that clearly distinguished the covered jurisdictions from the rest of the Nation at that time. Katzenbach, supra, at 308, 315, 331; Northwest Austin, 557 U. S., at 201. But a more fundamental problem remains: Congress did not use the record it compiled to shape a coverage formula grounded in current conditions. It instead reenacted a formula based on 40-year-old facts having no logical relation to the present day. The dissent relies on “second-generation barriers,” which are not impediments to the casting of ballots, but rather electoral arrangements that affect the weight of minority votes. That does not cure the problem. Viewing the preclearance requirements as targeting such efforts simply highlights the irrationality of continued reliance on the §4 coverage formula, which is based on voting tests and access to the ballot, not vote dilution. We cannot pretend that we are reviewing an updated statute, or try our hand at updating the statute ourselves, based on the new record compiled by Congress. Contrary to the dissent’s contention, see post, at 23, we are not ignoring the record; we are simply recognizing that it played no role in shaping the statutory formula before us today. The dissent also turns to the record to argue that, in light of voting discrimination in Shelby County, the county cannot complain about the provisions that subject it to preclearance. Post, at 23–30. But that is like saying that a driver pulled over pursuant to a policy of stopping all redheads cannot complain about that policy, if it turns out his license has expired. Shelby County’s claim is that the coverage formula here is unconstitutional in all its applications, because of how it selects the jurisdictions sub-jected to preclearance. The county was selected based on that formula, and may challenge it in court. D The dissent proceeds from a flawed premise. It quotes the famous sentence from McCulloch v. Maryland, 4 Wheat. 316, 421 (1819), with the following emphasis: “Let the end be legitimate, let it be within the scope of the constitution, and all means which are appropriate, which are plainly adapted to that end, which are not prohibited, but consist with the letter and spirit of the constitution, are constitutional.” Post, at 9 (emphasis in dissent). But this case is about a part of the sentence that the dissent does not emphasize—the part that asks whether a legislative means is “consist[ent] with the letter and spirit of the constitution.” The dissent states that “[i]t cannot tenably be maintained” that this is an issue with regard to the Voting Rights Act, post, at 9, but four years ago, in an opinion joined by two of today’s dissenters, the Court expressly stated that “[t]he Act’s preclearance requirement and its coverage formula raise serious constitutional questions.” Northwest Austin, supra, at 204. The dissent does not explain how those “serious constitutional questions” became untenable in four short years. The dissent treats the Act as if it were just like any other piece of legislation, but this Court has made clear from the beginning that the Voting Rights Act is far from ordinary. At the risk of repetition, Katzenbach indicated that the Act was “uncommon” and “not otherwise appropriate,” but was justified by “exceptional” and “unique” conditions. 383 U. S., at 334, 335. Multiple decisions since have reaffirmed the Act’s “extraordinary” nature. See, e.g., Northwest Austin, supra, at 211. Yet the dissent goes so far as to suggest instead that the preclearance requirement and disparate treatment of the States should be upheld into the future “unless there [is] no or almost no evidence of unconstitutional action by States.” Post, at 33. In other ways as well, the dissent analyzes the ques- tion presented as if our decision in Northwest Austin never happened. For example, the dissent refuses to con- sider the principle of equal sovereignty, despite Northwest Austin’s emphasis on its significance. Northwest Austin also emphasized the “dramatic” progress since 1965, 557 U. S., at 201, but the dissent describes current levels of discrimination as “flagrant,” “widespread,” and “pervasive,” post, at 7, 17 (internal quotation marks omitted). Despite the fact that Northwest Austin requires an Act’s “disparate geographic coverage” to be “sufficiently related” to its targeted problems, 557 U. S., at 203, the dissent maintains that an Act’s limited coverage actually eases Congress’s burdens, and suggests that a fortuitous relationship should suffice. Although Northwest Austin stated definitively that “current burdens” must be justified by “current needs,” ibid., the dissent argues that the coverage formula can be justified by history, and that the required showing can be weaker on reenactment than when the law was first passed. There is no valid reason to insulate the coverage for-mula from review merely because it was previously enacted 40 years ago. If Congress had started from scratch in 2006, it plainly could not have enacted the present coverage formula. It would have been irrational for Congress to distinguish between States in such a fundamental way based on 40-year-old data, when today’s statistics tell an entirely different story. And it would have been irrational to base coverage on the use of voting tests 40 years ago, when such tests have been illegal since that time. But that is exactly what Congress has done. * * * Striking down an Act of Congress “is the gravest and most delicate duty that this Court is called on to perform.” Blodgett v. Holden, 275 U. S. 142, 148 (1927) (Holmes, J., concurring). We do not do so lightly. That is why, in 2009, we took care to avoid ruling on the constitutionality of the Voting Rights Act when asked to do so, and instead resolved the case then before us on statutory grounds. But in issuing that decision, we expressed our broader concerns about the constitutionality of the Act. Congress could have updated the coverage formula at that time, but did not do so. Its failure to act leaves us today with no choice but to declare §4(b) unconstitutional. The formula in that section can no longer be used as a basis for subjecting jurisdictions to preclearance. Our decision in no way affects the permanent, nationwide ban on racial discrimination in voting found in §2. We issue no holding on §5 itself, only on the coverage formula. Congress may draft another formula based on current conditions. Such a formula is an initial prerequisite to a determination that exceptional conditions still exist justifying such an “extraordinary departure from the traditional course of relations between the States and the Federal Government.” Presley, 502 U. S., at 500–501. Our country has changed, and while any racial discrimination in voting is too much, Congress must ensure that the legislation it passes to remedy that problem speaks to current conditions. The judgment of the Court of Appeals is reversed. It is so ordered. Notes 1 Both the Fourteenth and s were at issue in Northwest Austin, see Juris. Statement i, and Brief for Federal Appellee 29–30, in Northwest Austin Municipal Util. Dist. No. One v. Holder, O. T. 2008, No. 08–322, and accordingly Northwest Austin guides our review under both Amendments in this case.

568.US.106

Petitioner Smith claimed that conspiracy charges brought against him for his role in an illegal drug business, see 21 U. S. C. §846 and 18 U. S. C. §1962(d), were barred by 18 U. S. C. §3282’s 5-year statute of limitations. The District Court instructed the jury to convict Smith of each conspiracy count if the Government had proved beyond a reasonable doubt that the conspiracies existed, that Smith was a member of those conspiracies, and that the conspiracies continued within the applicable statute-of-limitations period. As to the affirmative defense of withdrawal from the conspiracy, the court instructed the jury that once the Government proved that Smith was a member of the conspiracy, Smith had the burden to prove withdrawal outside the statute of limitations by a preponderance of the evidence. Smith was convicted, and the D. C. Circuit affirmed. Held: A defendant bears the burden of proving a defense of withdrawal. Pp. 3–8. (a) Allocating to the defendant the burden of proving withdrawal does not violate the Due Process Clause. Unless an affirmative defense negates an element of the crime, the Government has no constitutional duty to overcome the defense beyond a reasonable doubt. See Dixon v. United States, 548 U.S. 1, 6. Withdrawal does not negate an element of the conspiracy crimes charged here, but instead presupposes that the defendant committed the offense. Withdrawal terminates a defendant’s liability for his co-conspirators’ postwithdrawal acts, but he remains guilty of conspiracy. Withdrawal that occurs beyond the statute-of-limitations period provides a complete defense to prosecution, but does not render the underlying conduct noncriminal. Thus, while union of withdrawal with a statute-of-limitations defense can free a defendant of criminal liability, it does not place upon the prosecution a constitutional responsibility to prove that he did not withdraw. As with other affirmative defenses, the burden is on him. Pp. 3–6. (b) Although Congress may assign the Government the burden of proving the nonexistence of withdrawal, it did not do so here. Because Congress did not address the burden of proof for withdrawal in 21 U. S. C. §846 or 18 U. S. C. §1962(d), it is presumed that Congress intended to preserve the common-law rule that affirmative defenses are for the defendant to prove. Dixon, supra, at 13–14. The analysis does not change when withdrawal is the basis for a statute-of-limitations defense. In that circumstance, the Government need only prove that the conspiracy continued past the statute-of-limitations period. A conspiracy continues until it is terminated or, as to a particular defendant, until that defendant withdraws. And the burden of establishing withdrawal rests upon the defendant. Pp. 6–8. 651 F.3d 30, affirmed. Scalia, J., delivered the opinion for a unanimous Court.

Upon joining a criminal conspiracy, a defendant’s membership in the ongoing unlawful scheme continues until he withdraws. A defendant who withdraws outside the relevant statute-of-limitations period has a complete defense to prosecution. We consider whether, when the defend- ant produces some evidence supporting such a defense, the Government must prove beyond a reasonable doubt that he did not withdraw outside the statute-of-limitations period. I Petitioner Calvin Smith was indicted for crimes connected to his role in an organization that distributed cocaine, crack cocaine, heroin, and marijuana in Washington, D. C., for about a decade. The 158-count indictment charged Smith and 16 alleged co-conspirators with conspiring to run, and actually running, an illegal drug business, as well as with committing acts of violence, including 31 murders, to further their goals. Smith was tried alongside five codefendants. A jury of the United States District Court for the District of Columbia convicted him of (1) conspiracy to distribute narcotics and to possess narcotics with the intent to distribute them, in violation of 21 U. S. C. §846; (2) Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO) conspiracy, in violation of 18 U. S. C. §1962(d); (3) murder in connection with a contin- uing criminal enterprise, in violation of 21 U. S. C. §848(e)(1)(A); and (4) four counts of murder while armed, in violation of D. C. Code §§22–2401 and 22–3202 (1996).[1] At issue here are Smith’s conspiracy convictions. Before trial, Smith moved to dismiss the conspiracy counts as barred by the applicable 5-year statute of limitations, 18 U. S. C. §3282, because he had spent the last six years of the charged conspiracies in prison for a felony conviction. The court denied his motion and Smith renewed his statute-of-limitations defense at trial. In the final jury charge, the court instructed the jury to convict Smith of each conspiracy count if the Government had proved beyond a reasonable doubt that the conspiracies existed, that Smith was a member of those conspiracies, and that the conspiracies “continued in existence within five years” before the indictment. App. 289a, 300a. After it began deliberations, the jury asked the court what to do in the event that a defendant withdrew from the conspiracies outside the relevant limitations period.[2] Smith had not yet raised an affirmative defense of withdrawal, so the court for the first time instructed the jury on the defense. The court explained that “[t]he relevant date for purposes of determining the statute of limitations is the date, if any, on which a conspiracy concludes or a date on which that defendant withdrew from that conspiracy.” Id., at 328a. It defined withdrawal as “affirmative acts inconsistent with the goals of the conspiracy” that “were communicated to the defendant’s coconspirators in a manner reasonably calculated to reach those conspirators.” “Withdrawal,” the court instructed, “must be un- equivocal.” Ibid. Over the defense’s objection, the court told the jury that “[o]nce the government has proven that a defendant was a member of a conspiracy, the burden is on the defendant to prove withdrawal from a conspiracy by a preponderance of the evidence.” Ibid. The jury then convicted Smith of the conspiracy crimes. As relevant here, the Court of Appeals affirmed Smith’s conspiracy convictions. Recognizing that the Circuits are divided on which party bears the burden of proving or dis- proving a defense of withdrawal prior to the limitations period, the court concluded that the defendant bears the burden of proof and that such a disposition does not violate the Due Process Clause. United States v. Moore, 651 F.3d 30, 89–90 (CADC 2011) (per curiam). We granted certiorari. 567 U. S. ___ (2012). II Petitioner’s claim lies at the intersection of a withdrawal defense and a statute-of-limitations defense. He asserts that once he presented evidence that he ended his membership in the conspiracy prior to the statute-of-limitations period, it became the Government’s burden to prove that his individual participation in the conspiracy persisted within the applicable five-year window. This position draws support neither from the Constitution (as discussed in this Part II), nor from the conspiracy and limitations statutes at issue (as discussed in Part III, infra). Establishing individual withdrawal was a burden that rested firmly on the defendant regardless of when the purported withdrawal took place. Allocating to a defendant the burden of proving withdrawal does not violate the Due Process Clause. While the Government must prove beyond a reasonable doubt “every fact necessary to constitute the crime with which [the de- fendant] is charged,” In re Winship, 397 U.S. 358, 364 (1970), “[p]roof of the nonexistence of all affirmative defenses has never been constitutionally required,” Patterson v. New York, 432 U.S. 197, 210 (1977). The State is foreclosed from shifting the burden of proof to the defendant only “when an affirmative defense does negate an element of the crime.” Martin v. Ohio, 480 U.S. 228, 237 (1987) (Powell, J., dissenting). Where instead it “excuse[s] conduct that would otherwise be punishable,” but “does not controvert any of the elements of the offense itself,” the Government has no constitutional duty to overcome the defense beyond a reasonable doubt. Dixon v. United States, 548 U.S. 1, 6 (2006). Withdrawal does not negate an element of the conspir- acy crimes charged here. The essence of conspiracy is “the combination of minds in an unlawful purpose.” United States v. Hirsch, 100 U.S. 33, 34 (1879). To convict a de- fendant of narcotics or RICO conspiracy, the Govern- ment must prove beyond a reasonable doubt that two or more people agreed to commit a crime covered by the specific conspiracy statute (that a conspiracy existed) and that the defendant knowingly and willfully participated in the agreement (that he was a member of the conspiracy).[3] Far from contradicting an element of the offense, withdrawal presupposes that the defendant committed the offense. Withdrawal achieves more modest ends than exoneration. Since conspiracy is a continuing offense, United States v. Kissel, 218 U.S. 601, 610 (1910), a defendant who has joined a conspiracy continues to violate the law “through every moment of [the conspiracy’s] existence,” Hyde v. United States, 225 U.S. 347, 369 (1912), and he becomes responsible for the acts of his co-conspirators in pursuit of their common plot, Pinkerton v. United States, 328 U.S. 640, 646 (1946). Withdrawal terminates the defendant’s liability for postwithdrawal acts of his co-conspirators, but he remains guilty of conspiracy. Withdrawal also starts the clock running on the time within which the defendant may be prosecuted, and provides a complete defense when the withdrawal occurs beyond the applicable statute-of-limitations period.[4] A complete defense, however, is not necessarily one that establishes the defendant’s innocence. For example, we have held that although self-defense may entirely excuse or justify aggravated murder, “the elements of aggravated murder and self-defense [do not] overlap in the sense that evidence to prove the latter will often tend to negate the former.” Martin, supra, at 234; see Leland v. Oregon, 343 U.S. 790, 794–796 (1952) (same for insanity defense). Likewise, although the statute of limitations may inhibit prosecution, it does not render the underlying conduct noncriminal. Commission of the crime within the statute-of-limitations period is not an element of the conspiracy offense. See United States v. Cook, 17 Wall. 168, 180 (1872). The Government need not allege the time of the offense in the indictment, id., at 179–180, and it is up to the defendant to raise the limitations defense, Biddinger v. Commissioner of Police of City of New York, 245 U.S. 128, 135 (1917). A statute-of-limitations defense does not call the criminality of the defendant’s conduct into question, but rather reflects a policy judgment by the legis- lature that the lapse of time may render criminal acts ill suited for prosecution. See, e.g., Toussie v. United States, 397 U.S. 112, 114–115 (1970). Thus, although union of withdrawal with a statute-of-limitations defense can free the defendant of criminal liability, it does not place upon the prosecution a constitutional responsibility to prove that he did not withdraw. As with other affirmative defenses, the burden is on him. III Of course, Congress may choose to assign the Government the burden of proving the nonexistence of withdrawal, even if that is not constitutionally required. It did not do so here. “[T]he common-law rule was that affirmative defenses . . . were matters for the defendant to prove.” Martin, supra, at 235; see 4 W. Blackstone, Commentaries on the Laws of England 201 (1769). Because Congress did not address in 21 U. S. C. §846 or 18 U. S. C. §1962(d) the burden of proof for withdrawal, we presume that Con- gress intended to preserve the common-law rule. Dixon, 548 U. S., at 13–14. That Congress left the traditional burden of proof undisturbed is both practical and fair. “ ‘[W]here the facts with regard to an issue lie peculiarly in the knowledge of a party,’ ” that party is best situated to bear the burden of proof. Id., at 9. On the matter of withdrawal, the in- formational asymmetry heavily favors the defendant. Pas- sive nonparticipation in the continuing scheme is not enough to sever the meeting of minds that constitutes the conspiracy. “[T]o avert a continuing criminality” there must be “affirmative action . . . to disavow or defeat the purpose” of the conspiracy. Hyde, supra, at 369. The defendant knows what steps, if any, he took to dissociate from his confederates. He can testify to his act of withdrawal or direct the court to other evidence substantiating his claim.[5] It would be nearly impossible for the Gov- ernment to prove the negative that an act of with- drawal never happened. See 9 J. Wigmore, Evidence §2486, p. 288 (J. Chadbourn rev. 1981) (“It is often said that the burden is upon the party having in form the affirmative allegation”). Witnesses with the primary power to refute a withdrawal defense will often be beyond the Government’s reach: The defendant’s co-conspirators are likely to invoke their right against self-incrimination rather than explain their unlawful association with him. Here again, the analysis does not change when withdrawal is the basis for a statute-of-limitations defense. To be sure, we have held that the Government must prove the time of the conspiracy offense if a statute-of-limitations defense is raised. Grunewald v. United States, 353 U.S. 391, 396 (1957). But the Government satisfied that burden here when it proved that the conspiracy continued past the statute-of-limitations period. For the offense in these conspiracy prosecutions was not the initial act of agreement, but the banding-together against the law effected by that act, which continues until termination of the conspiracy or, as to a particular defendant, until that defendant’s withdrawal. And as we have discussed, the burden of establishing that withdrawal rests upon the defendant. Petitioner’s claim that assertion of a statute-of-limitations defense shifts that burden is incompatible with the established proposition that a defendant’s membership in the conspiracy, and his responsibility for its acts, endures even if he is entirely inactive after joining it. (“As he has started evil forces he must withdraw his support from them or incur the guilt of their continuance.” Hyde, 225 U. S., at 369–370.) For as a practical matter, the only way the Government would be able to establish a failure to withdraw would be to show active participation in the conspiracy during the limitations period. * * * Having joined forces to achieve collectively more evil than he could accomplish alone, Smith tied his fate to that of the group. His individual change of heart (assuming it occurred) could not put the conspiracy genie back in the bottle. We punish him for the havoc wreaked by the unlawful scheme, whether or not he remained actively involved. It is his withdrawal that must be active, and it was his burden to show that. The judgment of the Court of Appeals is affirmed. It is so ordered. Notes 1 On appeal, the D. C. Circuit remanded two of the murder counts for the District Court to conduct an evidentiary hearing regarding whether Smith received ineffective assistance of counsel as to those convictions. United States v. Moore, 651 F.3d 30, 89 (2011) (per curiam). 2 The note to the judge inquired: “ ‘If we find that the Narcotics or RICO conspiracies continued after the relevant date under the statute of limitations, but that a particular defendant left the conspiracy before the relevant date under the statute of limitations, must we find that defendant not guilty? ’ ” App. 174a. 3 Narcotics conspiracy under 21 U. S. C. §846 criminalizes “con-spir[ing] to commit any offense” under the Controlled SubstancesAct, including the knowing distribution of, or possession with intent to distribute, controlled substances, §841(a)(1). Section 1962(d) of Title 18 makes it unlawful to “conspire to violate” RICO, which makes it unlawful, among other things, “for any person employed by or associated with any enterprise engaged in, or the activities of which affect, interstate or foreign commerce, to conduct or participate, directly or indirectly, in the conduct of such enterprise’s affairs through a pattern of racketeering activity,” §1962(c). 4 The conspiracy statutes at issue here do not contain their own limitations periods, but are governed by §3282(a), which provides: “Except as otherwise expressly provided by law, no person shall be prosecuted, tried, or punished for any offense, not capital, unless the indictment is found or the information is instituted within five years next after such offense shall have been committed.” At the time petitioner was in-dicted, §3282 contained no subsections; what was the full text of the sec-tion is now subsection (a). 5 Here, Smith introduced a stipulation of his dates spent incarcerated, as well as “testimonial evidence showing that he was no longer a member of the charged conspiracies during his incarceration.” Brief for Petitioner 3. The jury found that this did not establish by a preponderance of the evidence an affirmative act of withdrawal.

568.US.588

The Class Action Fairness Act of 2005 (CAFA) gives federal district courts original jurisdiction over class actions in which, among other things, the matter in controversy exceeds $5 million in sum or value, 28 U. S. C. §§1332(d)(2), (5), and provides that to determine whether a matter exceeds that amount the “claims of the individual class members must be aggregated,” §1332(d)(6). When respondent Knowles filed a proposed class action in Arkansas state court against petitioner Standard Fire Insurance Company, he stipulated that he and the class would seek less than $5 million in damages. Pointing to CAFA, petitioner removed the case to the Federal District Court, but it remanded to the state court, concluding that the amount in controversy fell below the CAFA threshold in light of Knowles’ stipulation, even though it found that the amount would have fallen above the threshold absent the stipulation. The Eighth Circuit declined to hear petitioner’s appeal. Held: Knowles’ stipulation does not defeat federal jurisdiction under CAFA. Pp. 3−7. (a) Here, the precertification stipulation can tie Knowles’ hands because stipulations are binding on the party who makes them, see Christian Legal Soc. Chapter of Univ. of Cal., Hastings College of Law v. Martinez, 561 U. S. ___. However, the stipulation does not speak for those Knowles purports to represent, for a plaintiff who files a proposed class action cannot legally bind members of the proposed class before the class is certified. See Smith v. Bayer Corp., 564 U. S. ___, ___. Because Knowles lacked authority to concede the amount in controversy for absent class members, the District Court wrongly concluded that his stipulation could overcome its finding that the CAFA jurisdictional threshold had been met. Pp. 3−4. (b) Knowles concedes that federal jurisdiction cannot be based on contingent future events. Yet, because a stipulation must be binding and a named plaintiff cannot bind precertification class members, the amount he stipulated is in effect contingent. CAFA does not forbid a federal court to consider the possibility that a nonbinding, amount-limiting, stipulation may not survive the class certification process. To hold otherwise would, for CAFA jurisdictional purposes, treat a nonbinding stipulation as if it were binding, exalt form over substance, and run counter to CAFA’s objective: ensuring “Federal court consideration of interstate cases of national importance.” §2(b)(2), 119Stat. 5. It may be simpler for a federal district court to value the amount in controversy on the basis of a stipulation, but ignoring a nonbinding stipulation merely requires the federal judge to do what she must do in cases with no stipulation: aggregate the individual class members’ claims. While individual plaintiffs may avoid removal to federal court by stipulating to amounts that fall below the federal jurisdictional threshold, the key characteristic of such stipulations—missing here—is that they are legally binding on all plaintiffs. Pp. 4−7. Vacated and remanded. Breyer, J., delivered the opinion for a unanimous Court.

The Class Action Fairness Act of 2005 (CAFA) provides that the federal “district courts shall have original jurisdiction” over a civil “class action” if, among other things, the “matter in controversy exceeds the sum or value of $5,000,000.” 28 U. S. C. §§1332(d)(2), (5). The statute adds that “to determine whether the matter in controversy exceeds the sum or value of $5,000,000,” the “claims of the individual class members shall be aggregated.” §1332(d)(6). The question presented concerns a class-action plaintiff who stipulates, prior to certification of the class, that he, and the class he seeks to represent, will not seek damages that exceed $5 million in total. Does that stipulation remove the case from CAFA’s scope? In our view, it does not. I In April 2011 respondent, Greg Knowles, filed this proposed class action in an Arkansas state court against petitioner, the Standard Fire Insurance Company. Knowles claimed that, when the company had made certain homeowner’s insurance loss payments, it had un-lawfully failed to include a general contractor fee. And Knowles sought to certify a class of “hundreds, and pos-sibly thousands” of similarly harmed Arkansas policyholders. App. to Pet. for Cert. 66. In describing the relief sought, the complaint says that the “Plaintiff and Class stipulate they will seek to recover total aggregate damages of less than five million dollars.” Id., at 60. An attached affidavit stipulates that Knowles “will not at any time during this case . . . seek damages for the class . . . in excess of $5,000,000 in the aggregate.” Id., at 75. On May 18, 2011, the company, pointing to CAFA’s jurisdictional provision, removed the case to Federal District Court. See 28 U. S. C. §1332(d); §1453. Knowles argued for remand on the ground that the District Court lacked jurisdiction. He claimed that the “sum or value” of the “amount in controversy” fell beneath the $5 million threshold. App. to Pet. for Cert. 2. On the basis of evidence presented by the company, the District Court found that that the “sum or value” of the “amount in contro-versy” would, in the absence of the stipulation, have fallen just above the $5 million threshold. Id., at 2, 8. Nonetheless, in light of Knowles’ stipulation, the court concluded that the amount fell beneath the threshold. The court con-sequently ordered the case remanded to the state court. Id., at 15. The company appealed from the remand order, but the Eighth Circuit declined to hear the appeal. Id., at 1. See 28 U. S. C. §1453(c)(1) (2006 ed., Supp. V) (providing discretion to hear an appeal from a remand order). The company petitioned for a writ of certiorari. And, in light of divergent views in the lower courts, we granted the writ. Compare Frederick v. Hartford Underwriters Ins. Co., 683 F.3d 1242, 1247 (CA10 2012) (a proposed class-action representative’s “attempt to limit damages in the complaint is not dispositive when determining the amount in controversy”); with Rolwing v. Nestle Holdings, Inc., 666 F.3d 1069, 1072 (CA8 2012) (a precertification “binding stipulation limiting damages sought to an amount not exceeding $5 million can be used to defeat CAFA jurisdiction”). II CAFA provides the federal district courts with “original jurisdiction” to hear a “class action” if the class has more than 100 members, the parties are minimally diverse, and the “matter in controversy exceeds the sum or value of $5,000,000.” 28 U. S. C. §§1332(d)(2), (5)(B). To “determine whether the matter in controversy” exceeds that sum, “the claims of the individual class members shall be aggregated.” §1332(d)(6). And those “class members” include “persons (named or unnamed) who fall within the definition of the proposed or certified class.” §1332(d) (1)(D) (emphasis added). As applied here, the statute tells the District Court to determine whether it has jurisdiction by adding up the value of the claim of each person who falls within the definition of Knowles’ proposed class and determine whether the resulting sum exceeds $5 million. If so, there is jurisdiction and the court may proceed with the case. The District Court in this case found that resulting sum would have exceeded $5 million but for the stipulation. And we must decide whether the stipulation makes a critical difference. In our view, it does not. Our reason is a simple one: Stipulations must be binding. See 9 J. Wigmore, Evidence §2588, p. 821 (J. Chadbourn rev. 1981) (defining a “judicial admission or stipulation” as an “express waiver made . . . by the party or his attorney conceding for the purposes of the trial the truth of some alleged fact” (emphasis deleted)); Christian Legal Soc. Chapter of Univ. of Cal., Hast- ings College of Law v. Martinez, 561 U. S. ___, ___ (2010) (slip op., at 10) (describing a stipulation as “ ‘binding and conclusive’ ” and “ ‘not subject to subsequent variation’ ” (quoting 83 C. J. S., Stipulations §93 (2000))); 9 Wigmore, supra, §2590, at 822 (the “vital feature” of a judicial admission is “universally conceded to be its conclusiveness upon the party making it”). The stipulation Knowles prof-fered to the District Court, however, does not speak for those he purports to represent. That is because a plaintiff who files a proposed class action cannot legally bind members of the proposed class before the class is certified. See Smith v. Bayer Corp., 564 U. S. ___, ___ (2011) (slip op., at 15) (“Neither a proposed class action nor a rejected class action may bind nonparties”); id., at ___ (slip op., at 13) (“ ‘[A] nonnamed class member is [not] a party to the class-action litigation before the class is certified’ ” (quoting Devlin v. Scardelletti, 536 U.S. 1, 16, n. 1 (2002) (Scalia, J., dissenting))); Brief for Respondent 12 (conceding that “a damages limitation . . . cannot have a binding effect on the merits of absent class members’ claims unless and until the class is certified”). Because his precertification stipulation does not bind anyone but himself, Knowles has not reduced the value of the putative class members’ claims. For jurisdictional purposes, our inquiry is limited to examining the case “as of the time it was filed in state court,” Wisconsin Dept. of Corrections v. Schacht, 524 U.S. 381, 390 (1998). At that point, Knowles lacked the authority to concede the amount-in-controversy issue for the absent class members. The Federal District Court, therefore, wrongly concluded that Knowles’ precertification stipulation could overcome its finding that the CAFA jurisdictional threshold had been met. Knowles concedes that “[f]ederal jurisdiction cannot be based on contingent future events.” Brief for Respondent 20. Yet the two legal principles to which we have just referred—that stipulations must be binding and that a named plaintiff cannot bind precertification class members—mean that the amount to which Knowles has stipulated is in effect contingent. If, for example, as Knowles’ complaint asserts, “hundreds, and possibly thousands” of persons in Arkansas have similar claims, App. to Pet. for Cert. 66, and if each of those claims places a significant sum in controversy, the state court might certify the class and permit the case to proceed, but only on the condition that the stipulation be excised. Or a court might find that Knowles is an inadequate representative due to the artificial cap he purports to impose on the class’ recovery. E.g., Back Doctors Ltd. v. Metropolitan Property & Cas. Ins. Co., 637 F.3d 827, 830–831 (CA7 2011) (noting a class representative’s fiduciary duty not to “throw away what could be a major component of the class’s recovery”). Similarly, another class mem- ber could intervene with an amended complaint (without a stipulation), and the District Court might permit the action to proceed with a new representative. See 5 A. Conte & H. Newberg, Class Actions §16:7, p. 154 (4th ed. 2002) (“[M]embers of a class have a right to intervene if their interests are not adequately represented by existing parties”). Even were these possibilities remote in Knowles’ own case, there is no reason to think them farfetched in other cases where similar stipulations could have more dramatic amount-lowering effects. The strongest counterargument, we believe, takes a syl-logistic form: First, this complaint contains a presently nonbinding stipulation that the class will seek damages that amount to less than $5 million. Second, if the state court eventually certifies that class, the stipulation will bind those who choose to remain as class members. Third, if the state court eventually insists upon modification of the stipulation (thereby permitting class members to obtain more than $5 million), it will have in effect created a new, different case. Fourth, CAFA, however, permits the federal court to consider only the complaint that the plaintiff has filed, i.e., this complaint, not a new, modified (or amended) complaint that might eventually emerge. Our problem with this argument lies in its conclusion. We do not agree that CAFA forbids the federal court to consider, for purposes of determining the amount in controversy, the very real possibility that a nonbinding, amount-limiting, stipulation may not survive the class certification process. This potential outcome does not re-sult in the creation of a new case not now before the federal court. To hold otherwise would, for CAFA jurisdictional purposes, treat a nonbinding stipulation as if it were binding, exalt form over substance, and run directly counter to CAFA’s primary objective: ensuring “Federal court consideration of interstate cases of national impor-tance.” §2(b)(2), 119Stat. 5. It would also have the ef- fect of allowing the subdivision of a $100 million action into 21 just-below-$5-million state-court actions simply by including nonbinding stipulations; such an outcome would squarely conflict with the statute’s objective. We agree with Knowles that a federal district court might find it simpler to value the amount in controversy on the basis of a stipulation than to aggregate the value of the individual claims of all who meet the class description. We also agree that, when judges must decide jurisdictional matters, simplicity is a virtue. See Hertz Corp. v. Friend, 559 U.S. 77, 94 (2010). But to ignore a nonbinding stipulation does no more than require the federal judge to do what she must do in cases without a stipulation and what the statute requires, namely “aggregat[e]” the “claims of the individual class members.” 28 U. S. C. §1332(d)(6). Knowles also points out that federal courts permit individual plaintiffs, who are the masters of their complaints, to avoid removal to federal court, and to obtain a remand to state court, by stipulating to amounts at issue that fall below the federal jurisdictional requirement. That is so. See St. Paul Mercury Indemnity Co. v. Red Cab Co., 303 U.S. 283, 294 (1938) (“If [a plaintiff] does not desire to try his case in the federal court he may resort to the expedi-ent of suing for less than the jurisdictional amount, and though he would be justly entitled to more, the defendant cannot remove”). But the key characteristic about those stipulations is that they are legally binding on all plaintiffs. See 14AA C. Wright, A. Miller, & E. Cooper, Fed-eral Practice and Procedure §3702.1, p. 335 (4th ed. 2011) (federal court, as condition for remand, can insist on a “binding affidavit or stipulation that the plaintiff will continue to claim less than the jurisdictional amount” (em-phasis added)). That essential feature is missing here, as Knowles cannot yet bind the absent class. Knowles argues in the alternative that a stipulation is binding to the extent it limits attorney’s fees so that the amount in controversy remains below the CAFA threshold. We do not consider this issue because Knowles’ stipulation did not provide for that option. In sum, the stipulation at issue here can tie Knowles’ hands, but it does not resolve the amount-in-controversy question in light of his inability to bind the rest of the class. For this reason, we believe the District Court, when following the statute to aggregate the proposed class members’ claims, should have ignored that stipulation. Because it did not, we vacate the judgment below and remand the case for further proceedings consistent with this opinion. It is so ordered.

569.US.614

The Red River Compact (or Compact) is a congressionally sanctioned agreement that allocates water rights within the Red River basin among the States of Oklahoma, Texas, Arkansas, and Louisiana. The area it governs is divided into five separate subdivisions called “Reaches,” each of which is further divided into smaller “subbasins.” At issue here are rights under the Compact to water located in Oklahoma’s portion of Reach II, subbasin 5. In Reach II, the Compact—recognizing that Louisiana lacks suitable reservoir sites to store water during high flow periods and that the upstream States (Texas, Oklahoma, and Arkansas) were unwilling to release their own stored water for the benefit of a downstream State—granted control over the water in four upstream subbasins (subbasins 1 through 4) to the States in which each subbasin is located and required that water in a fifth subbasin, subbasin 5, be allowed to flow to Louisiana at certain minimum levels. Section 5.05(b)(1) of the Compact gives the States “equal rights” to the use of subbasin 5’s waters when the flow is 3,000 cubic feet per second (CFS) or more, “provided no state is entitled to more than 25 percent of the water in excess of 3,000 [CFS].” Under the Compact, States are also entitled to continue with their intrastate water administration. Petitioner Tarrant Regional Water District (Tarrant) is a Texas state agency responsible for providing water to north-central Texas and its rapidly growing population. After unsuccessfully attempting to purchase water from Oklahoma and others, Tarrant sought a water resource permit from the Oklahoma Water Resources Board (OWRB), respondents here, to take surface water from a tributary of the Red River at a point located in Oklahoma’s portion of subbasin 5 of Reach II. Knowing that the OWRB would likely deny its permit application because of Oklahoma water laws that effectively prevent out-of-state applicants from taking or diverting water from within Oklahoma’s borders, Tarrant filed suit in federal court simultaneously with its permit application, seeking to enjoin the OWRB’s enforcement of the state statutes on grounds that they were pre-empted by federal law in the form of the Compact and violated the Commerce Clause by discriminating against interstate commerce in water. The District Court granted summary judgment for the OWRB, and the Tenth Circuit affirmed. Held: 1. The Compact does not pre-empt the Oklahoma water statutes. Pp. 9–22. (a) Tarrant claims that §5.05(b)(1) creates a borderless common in subbasin 5 in which each of the signatory States may cross each other’s boundaries to access a shared pool of water. Tarrant observes that §5.05(b)(1)’s “equal rights” language grants each State an equal entitlement to subbasin 5’s waters, subject to a 25 percent cap, and argues that its silence concerning state lines indicates that the Compact’s drafters did not intend the provision to allocate water according to state borders. The OWRB counters that §5.05(b)(1)’s “equal rights” afford each State an equal opportunity to use subbasin 5’s excess water within each State’s own borders, but that its silence on cross-border rights indicates that the Compact’s drafters had no intention to create any such rights in the signatory States. Pp. 9–11. (b) Because interstate compacts are construed under contract-law principles, see Texas v. New Mexico, 482 U.S. 124, 128, the Court begins by examining the Compact’s express terms as the best indication of the parties’ intent. However, §5.05(b)(1)’s silence is, at the very least, ambiguous regarding cross-border rights under the Compact, so the Court turns to other interpretive tools to shed light on the drafters’ intent. Three things persuade the Court that the Compact did not grant cross-border rights: the well-established principle that States do not easily cede their sovereign powers; the fact that other interstate water compacts have treated cross-border rights explicitly; and the parties’ course of dealing. Pp. 11–22. (1) The sovereign States possess an “absolute right to all their navigable waters and the soils under them for their own common use.” Martin v. Lessee of Waddell, 16 Pet. 367, 410. So, for example, “ ‘[a] court deciding a question of title to [a] bed of navigable water [within a State’s boundaries] must . . . begin with a strong presumption’ against defeat of a State’s title.” United States v. Alaska, 521 U.S. 1, 34. It follows, then, that “[i]f any inference at all is to be drawn from” silence in compacts touching on the States’ authority to control their waters, “it is that each State was left to regulate the activities of her own citizens.” Virginia v. Maryland, 540 U.S. 56, 67. Tarrant contends that §5.05(b)(1)’s silence infers that the signatory States dispensed with the core state prerogative to control water within its borders. But since States rarely relinquish their sovereign powers, the better understanding is that there would be a clear indication of such devolution, not inscrutable silence. Tarrant counters that its interpretation would not intrude on any sovereign prerogative of Oklahoma, which would retain its authority to regulate the water within its borders. But adopting Tarrant’s reading would necessarily entail assuming that Oklahoma and three other States silently surrendered substantial control over their waters when they agreed to the Compact. Pp. 14–16. (2) Looking to the customary practices employed in other interstate compacts also helps in ascertaining the parties’ intent. See, e.g., Alabama v. North Carolina, 560 U.S. 330, ___. Many compacts feature unambiguous language permitting signatory States to cross each other’s borders to fulfill obligations under the compacts, and many provide for the terms and mechanics of how such relationships will operate. The absence of comparable provisions in the Red River Compact strongly suggests that cross-border rights were never intended to be part of the agreement. Tarrant claims that not all interstate compacts have such explicit language, but cites only one such compact, and even it sets out a detailed scheme that would apply to any contemplated diversions. Similarly, even if §2.05(d) of the Compact, which gives “[e]ach Signatory State . . . the right to” “[u]se the bed and banks of the Red River and its tributaries to convey stored water, imported or exported water, and water apportioned according to this Compact,” is read to establish cross-border diversions, it does so through express language, not through an inference from silence. Pp. 16–20. (3) The parties’ conduct under the Compact also undermines Tarrant’s position. See Alabama v. North Carolina, 560 U. S., at ___. Once the Compact was approved in 1980, no signatory State pressed for a cross-border diversion until Tarrant filed suit in 2007. And Tarrant’s earlier offer to purchase water from Oklahoma was a strange decision if Tarrant believed the Compact entitled it to demand water without payment. Nor is there any indication that Tarrant, any other Texas agency, or Texas itself previously made any mention of cross-border rights within the Compact; and none of the other signatory States has ever made such a claim. P. 20. (4) Tarrant’s remaining arguments—that its interpretation is necessary to realize the “structure and purpose of Reach II”; and that §5.05(b)(1)’s 25 percent cap on each State’s access to subbasin 5’s ex-cess water implies that if a State cannot access sufficient water within its borders to meet the cap, it must be able to cross borders to reach that water—are unpersuasive. Pp. 20–22. 2. The Oklahoma water statutes also do not run afoul of the Commerce Clause. Tarrant claims that the statutes discriminate against interstate commerce by preventing water left unallocated under the Compact from being distributed out of State. But Tarrant’s assumption that some water is left “unallocated” is incorrect. The interpretive comment for Article V of the Compact makes clear that when the flow is above 3,000 CFS, “all states are free to use whatever amount of water they can put to beneficial use,” subject to the requirement that if the amount of available water cannot satisfy all of those uses, “each state will honor the other’s right to 25% of the excess flow.” If more than 25 percent of subbasin 5’s water is located in Oklahoma, that water is not “unallocated”; rather, it is allocated to Oklahoma unless and until another State calls for an accounting and Oklahoma is asked to refrain from utilizing more than its entitled share. Pp. 22–24. 656 F.3d 1222, affirmed. Sotomayor, J., delivered the opinion for a unanimous Court.

The Red River Compact, (or Compact), 94Stat. 3305, allocates water rights among the States within the Red River basin as it winds through Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas, and Louisiana. Petitioner Tarrant Regional Water District (Tarrant), a Texas agency, claims that it is entitled to acquire water under the Compact from within Oklahoma and that therefore the Compact pre-empts several Oklahoma statutes that restrict out-of-state diversions of water. In the alternative, Tarrant argues that the Oklahoma laws are unconstitutional restrictions on interstate commerce. We hold that Tarrant’s claims lack merit. I A The Red River (or River) begins in the Llano Estacado Mesa on the border between New Mexico and Texas. From this broad plain, it first runs through the Texas Panhandle and then marks the border between Texas and Oklahoma. It continues in an easterly direction until it reaches the shared border with Arkansas. Once the River enters Arkansas, it turns southward and flows into Louisiana, where it empties into the Mississippi and Atchafalaya Rivers. As an important geographic feature of this region, the Red River has lent its name to a valley, a Civil War campaign, and a famed college football rivalry between the Longhorns of Texas and the Sooners of Oklahoma. But college pride has not been the only source of controversy between Texas and Oklahoma regarding the Red River. The River has been the cause of numerous historical conflicts between the two States, leading to a mobilization of their militias at one time, Oklahoma v. Texas, 258 U.S. 574, 580 (1922), and the declaration of martial law along a stretch of the River by Oklahoma Governor “Alfalfa Bill” Murray at another, see Okla. H. Res. 1121, 50th Legislature, 2d Sess. (2006) (resolution commemorating “Alfalfa Bill” Murray’s actions during the “Red River Bridge War”). Such disputes over the River and its waters are a natural result of the River’s distribution of water flows. The River’s course means that upstream States like Oklahoma and Texas may appropriate substantial amounts of water from both the River and its tributaries to the disadvantage of downstream States like Arkansas and especially Lou-isiana, which lacks sufficiently large reservoirs to store water. Absent an agreement among the States, disputes over the allocation of water are subject to equitable apportionment by the courts, Arizona v. California, 460 U.S. 605, 609 (1983), which often results in protracted and costly legal proceedings. Thus in 1955, to forestall future disputes over the River and its water, Congress authorized the States of Arkansas, Louisiana, Oklahoma, and Texas to negotiate a compact to apportion the water of the Red River basin among themselves. See Act of Aug. 11, 1955, Pub. L. 346, 69Stat. 654. These negotiations lasted over 20 years and finally culminated in the signing of the Red River Compact in 1978. Congress approved the Compact in 1980, transforming it into federal law. See Act of Dec. 22, 1980, 94Stat. 3305; Compact, 1 App. 7–51. One of the Compact’s principal purposes was “[t]o provide an equitable apportionment among the Signatory States of the water of the Red River and its tributaries.” §1.01(b), id., at 9. The Compact governs the allocation of water along the Red River and its tributaries from the New Mexico and Texas border to its terminus in Louisiana. §§2.12(a)–(e), id., at 13. This stretch is divided into five separate subdivisions called “Reach[es],” ibid., each of which is further divided into smaller “subbasins,” see, e.g., §§5.01–5.05, id., at 22–26 (describing subbasins 1 through 5 of Reach II). (See Appendix A, infra, for a map.) At issue in this case are rights under the Compact to water located in Oklahoma’s portion of subbasin 5 of Reach II, which occupies “that portion of the Red River, together with its tributaries, from Denison Dam down to the Arkansas-Louisiana state boundary, excluding all tributaries included in the other four subbasins of Reach II.” §5.05(a), 1 App. 24–25. (See Appendix B, infra, for a map.) The Compact’s interpretive comments[1] explain that during negotiations, Reach II posed the greatest difficulty to the parties’ efforts to reach agreement. Comment on Art. V, 1 App. 27. The problem was that Louisiana, the farthest downstream State, lacks suitable reservoir sites and therefore cannot store water during high flow periods to meet its future needs. The upstream States (Texas, Oklahoma, and Arkansas), which control the River’s flow, were unwilling to release water stored within their own reservoirs for the benefit of any downstream States, like Louisiana. Without any such release, there would be no guaranteed flow of water to Louisiana. The provisions of the Compact relating to Reach II were crafted to address this problem. To this end, Reach II was divided into five subbasins. The upstream subbasins, numbered 1 through 4, were drawn to end at “existing, authorized or proposed last downstream major damsites,” see, e.g., §5.01(a), id., at 22, on the tributaries leading to the Red River before reaching the main stem of the River. These dams allow the parties managing them to control water along the tributaries before it travels farther downstream and joins the flow of the main stem of the River. For the most part, the Compact granted control over the water in these subbasins to the States in which each subbasin is located.[2] The remaining subbasin, subbasin 5, instead requires that water be allowed to flow to Louisiana through the main stem of the River at certain minimum levels, assuring Louisiana an allocation of the River’s waters and solving its flowthrough problem. The provision of the Compact central to the present dispute is §5.05(b)(1), which sets the following allocation during times of normal flow: “(1) The Signatory States shall have equal rights to the use of runoff originating in subbasin 5 and undesignated water flowing into subbasin 5, so long as the flow of the Red River at the Arkansas-Louisiana state boundary is 3,000 cubic feet per second [hereinafter CFS] or more, provided no state is entitled to more than 25 percent of the water in excess of 3,000 [CFS].”[3] Id., at 25. In these normal circumstances (i.e., when flows at the Arkansas-Louisiana border are above 3,000 CFS), this provision and its interpretive comment make clear that “all states are free to use whatever amount of water they can put to beneficial use.” Comment on Art. V, id., at 30. But if the amount of water above 3,000 CFS cannot satisfy all such uses, then “each state will honor the other’s right to 25% of the excess flow.” Ibid. However, when the flow of the River diminishes at the Arkansas-Louisiana border, the upstream States must permit more water to reach Louisiana.[4] Subbasin 5’s allocation scheme allows upstream States to keep the water that they have stored, but also ensures that Louisiana will receive a steady supply of water from the Red River, with each upstream State contributing during times of low flow. To ensure that its apportionments are honored, the Compact includes an accounting provision, but an accounting is not mandatory “until one or more affected states deem the accounting necessary.” §2.11, id., at 13; see Comment on Art. II, id., at 15–16. This is because the “extensive gaging and record keeping required” to carry out such an accounting would impose “a significant financial burden on the involved states.” Id., at 16. Given these costs, the signatory States did “not envisio[n] that it w[ould] be undertaken as a routine matter.” Ibid. Indeed, it appears that no State has ever asked for such an accounting in the Compact’s history. See Brief for Respondents 45; Reply Brief 11–12. While the Compact allocates water rights among its signatories, it also provides that it should not “be deemed to . . . [i]nterfere with or impair the right or power of any Signatory State to regulate within its boundaries the appropriation, use, and control of water, or quality of water, not inconsistent with its obligations under this Compact.” §2.10, 1 App. 12. Rather, “[s]ubject to the general constraints of water availability and the apportionment of the Compact, each state [remains] free to continue its existing internal water administration.” Comment on Art. II, id., at 14. Even during periods of water shortage, “no attempt is made to specify the steps that will be taken [by States to ensure water deliveries]; it is left to the state’s internal water administration.” Ibid. B In the years since the Red River Compact was ratified by Congress, the region’s population has increased dramatically. In particular, the population of the Dallas-Fort Worth metropolitan area in north Texas has grown from roughly 5.1 million inhabitants in 2000 to almost 6.4 million in 2010, a jump of over 23 percent and among the largest in the United States during this period. See Dept. of Commerce, Census Bureau, P. Mackun & S. Wilson, Population Distribution and Change: 2000 to 2010 (Mar. 2011). This growth has strained regional water supplies, and north Texas’ need for water has been exacerbated in recent years by a long and costly drought. See generally Galbraith, A Drought More Than Texas-Size, International Herald Tribune, Oct. 3, 2011, p. 4. Against this backdrop, petitioner Tarrant, a Texas state agency responsible for providing water to north-central Texas (including the cities of Fort Worth, Arlington, and Mansfield), has endeavored to secure new sources of water for the area it serves. From 2000 to 2002, Tarrant, along with several other Texas water districts, offered to purchase water from Oklahoma and the Choctaw and Chickasaw Nations. See 2 App. 336–382. But these negotiations were unsuccessful and Tarrant eventually abandoned these efforts. Because Texas’ need for water only continued to grow, Tarrant settled on a new course of action. In 2007, Tarrant sought a water resource permit from the Oklahoma Water Resources Board (OWRB),[5] respondents here, to take 310,000 acre feet[6] per year of surface water from the Kiamichi River, a tributary of the Red River located in Oklahoma. Tarrant proposed to divert the Kiamichi River, at a point located in subbasin 5 of Reach II, before it discharges into the Red River and, according to Tarrant, becomes too saline for potable use. Tarrant knew, however, that Oklahoma would likely deny its permits because various state laws (collectively, the Oklahoma water statutes) effectively prevent out-of-state applicants from taking or diverting water from within Oklahoma’s borders. These statutes include a requirement that the OWRB consider, when evaluating an application to take water out of State, whether that water “could feasibly be transported to alleviate water short- ages in the State of Oklahoma.” Okla. Stat., Tit. 82, §105.12(A)(5) (West 2013). The statutes also require that no permit issued by the OWRB to use water outside of the State shall “[i]mpair the ability of the State of Oklahoma to meet its obligations under any interstate stream compact.” §105.12A(B)(1). A separate provision creates a permitting review process that applies only to out-of- state water users. §105.12(F). Oklahoma also requires legislative approval for out-of-state water-use permits, §105.12A(D), and further provides that “[w]ater use within Oklahoma . . . be developed to the maximum extent feasible for the benefit of Oklahoma so that out-of-state downstream users will not acquire vested rights therein to the detriment of the citizens of this state,” §1086.1(A)(3). Interpreting these laws, Oklahoma’s attorney general has concluded that “we consider the proposition unrealistic that an out-of-state user is a proper permit applicant before the [OWRB]” because “[w]e can find no intention to create the possibility that such a valuable resource as water may become bound, without compensation, to use by an out-of-state user.” 1 App. 118. When Tarrant filed its permit application, it also filed suit against respondents in Federal District Court. As relevant here, Tarrant sought to enjoin enforcement of the Oklahoma water statutes by the OWRB. Tarrant argued that the statutes, and the interpretation of them adopted by Oklahoma’s attorney general, were pre-empted by federal law and violated the Commerce Clause by discriminating against interstate commerce in water. The District Court granted summary judgment for the OWRB on both of Tarrant’s claims. See No. CIV–07–0045–HE, 2010 WL 2817220, *4 (WD Okla., July 16, 2010); No. CIV–07–0045–HE (WD Okla., Nov. 18, 2009), App. to Pet. for Cert. 72a–73a, 2009 WL 3922803, *8. The Tenth Circuit affirmed. 656 F.3d 1222, 1250 (2011).[7] We granted Tarrant’s petition for a writ of certiorari, 568 U. S. ___ (2013), and now affirm the judgment of the Tenth Circuit. II A Tarrant claims that under §5.05(b)(1) of the Compact, it has the right to cross state lines and divert water from Oklahoma located in subbasin 5 of Reach II and that the Oklahoma water statutes interfere with its ability to exercise that right. Section 5.05(b)(1) provides: “The Signatory States shall have equal rights to the use of runoff originating in subbasin 5 and undesignated water following into subbasin 5, so long as the flow of the Red River at the Arkansas-Louisiana state boundary is 3,000 [CFS] or more, provided no state is entitled to more than 25 percent of the water in excess of 3,000 [CFS].” 1 App. 25. In Tarrant’s view, this provision essentially creates a borderless common in which each of the four signatory States may cross each other’s boundaries to access a shared pool of water. Tarrant reaches this interpretation in two steps. First, it observes that §5.05(b)(1)’s “equal rights” language grants each State an equal entitlement to the waters of subbasin 5, subject to a 25 percent cap. Second, Tarrant argues §5.05(b)(1)’s silence concerning state lines indicates that the Compact’s drafters did not intend to allocate water according to state borders in this section. According to Tarrant, “the ‘25 percent’ language [of §5.05(b)(1)] makes clear that, in exercising its ‘equal rights’ to the common pool of water, no State may take more than a one-quarter share,” Reply Brief 3, but any of the signatory States may “cross state lines to obtain [its] shar[e] of Subbasin 5 waters,” Brief for Petitioner 32. The OWRB disputes this reading. In its view, the “equal rights” promised by §5.05(b)(1) afford each State an equal opportunity to make use of the excess water within subbasin 5 of Reach II but only within each State’s own borders. This is because the OWRB reads §5.05(b)(1)’s silence differently from Tarrant. The OWRB interprets that provision’s absence of language granting any cross-border rights to indicate that the Compact’s drafters had no intention to create any such rights in the signatory States. Unraveling the meaning of §5.05(b)(1)’s silence with respect to state lines is the key to resolving whether the Compact pre-empts the Oklahoma water statutes.[8] If §5.05(b)(1)’s silence means that state borders are irrelevant to the allocation of water in subbasin 5 of Reach II, then the Oklahoma water laws at issue conflict with the cross-border rights created by federal law in the form of the Compact and must be pre-empted. But if §5.05(b)(1)’s silence instead reflects a background understanding on the part of the Compact’s drafters that state borders were to be respected within the Compact’s allocation, then the Oklahoma statutes do not conflict with the Compact’s allocation of water. B Interstate compacts are construed as contracts under the principles of contract law. Texas v. New Mexico, 482 U.S. 124, 128 (1987). So, as with any contract, we begin by examining the express terms of the Compact as the best indication of the intent of the parties, see also Montana v. Wyoming, 563 U. S. ___, ___, and n. 4, ___, (2011) (slip op., at 5, and n. 4, 17); Restatement (Second) of Contracts §203(b) (1979). Tarrant argues that because other provisions of the Compact reference state borders, §5.05(b)(1)’s silence with respect to state lines must mean that the Compact’s drafters intended to permit cross-border diversions. For example, §5.03(b), which governs subbasin 3 of Reach II, provides that “[t]he States of Oklahoma and Arkansas shall have free and unrestricted use of the water of this subbasin within their respective states, subject, however, to the limitation that Oklahoma shall allow a quantity of water equal to . . . 40 percent of the total runoff originating below the following existing, authorized or proposed last major downstream damsites in Okla- homa to flow into Arkansas.” 1 App. 23–24 (emphasis added). Section 6.03(b), which covers subbasin 3 of Reach III, similarly provides that “Texas and Louisiana within their respective boundaries shall each have the unrestricted use of the water of this subbasin subject to the following [conditions].” Id., at 33 (emphasis added). Thus, §5.03(b) and §6.03(b) mimic §5.05(b)(1) in allocating water rights within a subbasin, but differ in that they make explicit ref-erence to water use “within” state boundaries. Relying on the expressio unius canon of construction, Tarrant finds that §5.05(b)’s silence regarding borders is significant because “ ‘[w]here Congress includes particular language in one section of a statute but omits it in another section of the same Act, it is generally presumed [that] Congress acts intentionally and purposely in the disparate inclusion or exclusion.’ ” Brief for Petitioner 29 (quoting Russello v. United States, 464 U.S. 16, 23 (1983)). But Tarrant’s argument fails to account for other sections of the Compact that cut against its reading. For example, §5.05(b)(3), which governs the waters of subbasin 5 in Reach II when flows are below 1,000 CFS, requires that during such periods, Arkansas, Texas, and Oklahoma allow water “within their respective states to flow into the Red River as required to maintain a 1,000 [CFS] flow at the Arkansas-Louisiana state boundary.” 1 App. 25 (emphasis added). Obviously none of the upstream States can redirect water that lies outside of their borders, so the phrase “within their respective states” is superfluous in §5.05(b)(3). In contrast, §5.05(b)(2), which governs when the River’s flow at the Arkansas-Louisiana border is above 1,000 CFS but below 3,000 CFS, requires that upstream States allow a flow to Louisiana equivalent to 40 percent of total weekly runoff originating within the subbasin and 40 percent of undesignated water flowing into subbasin 5 of Reach II. Id., at 25. This language can only refer to water within each State’s borders because otherwise each State would have to contribute 40 percent to the total water flow, which would add up to more than 100 percent. Read together and to avoid absurd results, §§5.05(b)(2) and (3) suggest that each upstream State is individually responsible for ensuring that sufficient subbasin 5 water located within its respective borders flows down to Louisiana, even though §5.05(b)(2) lacks any explicit reference to state lines. Applying Tarrant’s understanding of §5.05(b)(1)’s silence regarding state lines to other of the Compact’s provisions would produce further anomalous results. Consider §6.01(b). That provision states that “Texas is apportioned sixty (60) percent of the runoff of [subbasin 1 of Reach III] and shall have unrestricted use thereof; Arkansas is entitled to forty (40) percent of the runoff of this subbasin.” Id., at 32. Because Texas is upstream from Arkansas, water flows from Texas to Arkansas. Given this situation, the commonsense reason for §6.01(b)’s 60-to-40 allocation is to prevent Texas from barring the flow of water to Arkansas. While there is no reference to state boundaries in the section’s text, the unstated assumption underlying this provision is that Arkansas must wait for its 40 percent share to go through Texas before it can claim it. But applying Tarrant’s understanding of silence regarding state borders to this section would imply that Arkansas could enter into Texas without having to wait for the water that will inevitably reach it. This counterintuitive outcome would thwart the self-evident purposes of the Compact. Further, other provisions of the Compact share this structure of allocating a proportion of water that will flow from an upstream State to a downstream one.[9] Accepting Tarrant’s reading would upset the balance struck by all these sections. At the very least, the problems that arise from Tarrant’s proposed reading suggest that §5.05(b)(1)’s silence is ambiguous regarding cross-border rights under the Compact. We therefore turn to other interpretive tools to shed light on the intent of the Compact’s drafters. See Oklahoma v. New Mexico, 501 U.S. 221, 235, n. 5 (1991).[10] Three things persuade us that cross-border rights were not granted by the Compact: the well-established principle that States do not easily cede their sovereign powers, including their control over waters within their own territories; the fact that other interstate water compacts have treated cross-border rights explicitly; and the parties’ course of dealing. 1 The background notion that a State does not easily cede its sovereignty has informed our interpretation of interstate compacts. We have long understood that as sovereign entities in our federal system, the States possess an “absolute right to all their navigable waters and the soils under them for their own common use.” Martin v. Lessee of Waddell, 16 Pet. 367, 410 (1842). Drawing on this principle, we have held that ownership of submerged lands, and the accompanying power to control navigation, fishing, and other public uses of water, “is an essen- tial attribute of sovereignty,” United States v. Alaska, 521 U.S. 1, 5 (1997). Consequently, “ ‘[a] court deciding a question of title to [a] bed of navigable water [within a State’s boundaries] must . . . begin with a strong presumption’ against defeat of a State’s title.” Id., at 34 (quoting Montana v. United States, 450 U.S. 544, 552 (1981)). See also Solid Waste Agency of Northern Cook Cty. v. Army Corps of Engineers, 531 U.S. 159, 174 (2001); Utah Div. of State Lands v. United States, 482 U.S. 193, 195 (1987). Given these principles, when confronted with silence in compacts touching on the States’ authority to control their waters, we have concluded that “[i]f any inference at all is to be drawn from [such] silence on the subject of regula- tory authority, we think it is that each State was left to regulate the activities of her own citizens.” Virginia v. Maryland, 540 U.S. 56, 67 (2003). Cf. New Jersey v. New York, 523 U.S. 767, 783, n. 6 (1998) (“[T]he silence of the Compact was on the subject of settled law governing avulsion, which the parties’ silence showed no intent to modify”). Tarrant asks us to infer from §5.05(b)(1)’s silence regarding state borders that the signatory States have dispensed with the core state prerogative to control water within their own boundaries.[11] But as the above demonstrates, States rarely relinquish their sovereign powers, so when they do we would expect a clear indication of such devolution, not inscrutable silence. We think that the better understanding of §5.05(b)(1)’s silence is that the parties drafted the Compact with this legal background in mind, and therefore did not intend to grant each other cross-border rights under the Compact. In response, Tarrant contends that its interpretation would not intrude on any sovereign prerogative of Oklahoma because that State would retain its authority to regulate the water within its borders. Because anyone seeking water from Oklahoma would still have to apply to the OWRB, receive a permit, and abide by its conditions, Tarrant argues that Oklahoma’s sovereign authority remains untouched by its interpretation. But Tarrant cannot have it both ways. Adopting Tarrant’s reading would necessarily entail assuming that Oklahoma and three other States silently surrendered substantial control over the water within their borders when they agreed to the Compact. Given the background principles we have described above, we find this unlikely to have been the intent of the Compact’s signatories. 2 Looking to the customary practices employed in other interstate compacts also helps us to ascertain the intent of the parties to this Compact. See Alabama v. North Carolina, 560 U.S. 330 ___, ___ (2010) (slip op., at 9); Oklahoma, 501 U. S., at 235, n. 5; Texas v. New Mexico, 462 U.S. 554, 565 (1983). See also Restatement (Second) of Contracts §203(b) (explaining that “usage of trade” may be relevant in interpreting a contract). Many of these other compacts feature language that unambiguously permits signatory States to cross each other’s borders to fulfill obligations under the compacts. See, e.g., Amended Bear River Compact, Art. VIII(A), 94Stat. 12 (“[N]o State shall deny the right of another signatory State . . . to acquire rights to the use of water . . . in one State for use of water in another”).[12] The absence of comparable language in the Red River Compact counts heavily against Tarrant’s reading of it. Tellingly, many of these compacts provide for the terms and mechanics of how such cross-border relationships will operate, including who can assert such cross-border rights, see, e.g., Kansas-Nebraska Big Blue River Compact, Art. VII(1), 86Stat. 198, who should bear the costs of any cross-border diversions, see, e.g., Belle Fourche River Compact, Art. VI, 58Stat. 96–97, and how such diversions should be administered, Arkansas River Basin Compact, Kansas-Oklahoma, Art. VII(A), 80Stat. 1411. See also Brief for Professors of Law and Political Science as Amici Curiae 11–14 (giving more examples). Provisions like these are critical for managing the complexities that ensue from cross-border diversions. Consider the mechanics of a cross-border diversion or taking of water in this case. If Tarrant were correct, then applicants from Arkansas, Texas, and Louisiana could all apply to the OWRB for permits to take water from Oklahoma. The OWRB would then be obligated to determine the total amount of water in Oklahoma beyond the 25 percent cap created in §5.05(b)(1), given that the Compact would only obligate Oklahoma to deliver water beyond its quarter share. This alone would be a herculean task because the Compact does not require ongoing monitoring or accounting, see Compact §2.11, 1 App. 13, and not all of the water in subbasin 5 is located or originates in Oklahoma. Moreover, the OWRB would be tasked with determining the priority under the Compact of applicants from other States. This would almost certainly require the OWRB to not only determine whether Oklahoma had received more or less than its 25 percent allotment, but whether other States had as well. Put plainly, the end result would be a jurisdictional and administrative quagmire. The pro-visions in the other interstate water compacts resolve these complications. The absence of comparable provisions in the Red River Compact strongly suggests that cross-border rights were never intended to be part of the States’ agreement. Tarrant counters that not all interstate compacts that permit cross-border diversions have explicit language to this effect. On this front, Tarrant manages to identify one interstate compact that it contends permits cross-border diversions without express language to that effect, the Upper Niobrara River Compact, Pub. L. 91–52, 83Stat. 86. Tarrant observes that this compact, which deals with a river mostly located in Nebraska with only a small portion in Wyoming, provides that “[t]here shall be no restrictions on the use of the surface waters of [the river] by Wyoming.” See Art. V(A)1, id., at 88. Tarrant suggests that this language, coupled with the fact that the bulk of the river is in Nebraska, implicitly indicates that the compact grants Wyoming a right to enter Nebraska and use the river’s water. First, we are not convinced that a single compact’s failure to reference state borders does much to detract from the overall custom in this area. See supra, at 16–18, and n. 12. Second, the Upper Niobrara River Compact is not a helpful counterexample for Tarrant. The general provision that Tarrant quotes is paired with a host of detailed conditions. See Arts. V(A)1(a)–(f), 83Stat. 88. Contrary to Tarrant’s position, then, assuming that the Upper Niobrara River compact does create any cross-border rights, it does so not through silence, but through the detailed scheme that would apply to any such contemplated diversions. Tarrant also argues that §2.05(d) of the Red River Compact, which provides that “[e]ach Signatory State shall have the right to” “[u]se the bed and banks of the Red River and its tributaries to convey stored water, imported or exported water, and water apportioned according to this Compact,” 1 App. 11, in fact authorizes cross-border diversions. Because the present border between Texas and Oklahoma east of the Texas Panhandle is set by the vegetation line on the south bank of the River, Red River Boundary Compact, 114Stat. 919, Tarrant contends that §2.05(d) reflects an understanding on the part of the Compact’s drafters that state borders could be crossed. But the issue is not as simple as Tarrant makes it out to be. When the Compact was drafted, the Texas-Oklahoma border was fixed at the south bank of the River. See Texas v. Oklahoma, 457 U.S. 172 (1982). If Texas was able to access water through the south bank of the River—an issue left unbriefed by the parties—the Compact’s framers may have believed that Texas could reach the River and take water from it without having to enter Oklahoman land, casting doubt on Tarrant’s theory. In any event, even if §2.05(d) is read to establish a cross-border right, it does so through express language setting forth the location and purposes under which such an incursion is permissible. This is different from the inference from silence that Tarrant asks us to draw in §5.05(b)(1). 3 The parties’ conduct under the Compact also undermines Tarrant’s position. A “part[y’s] course of performance under the Compact is highly significant” evidence of its understanding of the compact’s terms. Alabama v. North Carolina, 560 U. S., at___ (slip op., at 14). Since the Compact was approved by Congress in 1980, no signatory State had pressed for a cross-border diversion under the Compact until Tarrant filed its suit in 2007. Brief for Respondents 26, 49–51. Indeed, Tarrant attempted to purchase water from Oklahoma over the course of 2000 until 2002, see supra, at 7, a strange offer if Tarrant believed it was entitled to demand such water without payment under the Compact. In response, Tarrant maintains that there were “compelling business reasons” for it to purchase water. Reply Brief 17. We are unpersuaded. If Tarrant believed that it had a right to water located in Oklahoma, there would have been “compelling business reasons” to mention this right given that billions of dollars were at stake. See 2 App. 362–363 (summarizing Texas purchase proposal). Yet there is no indication that Tarrant or any other Texas agency or the State of Texas itself previously made any mention of cross-border rights within the Compact, and none of the other signatory States has ever made such a claim. 4 The Compact creates no cross-border rights in Texas. Tarrant’s remaining arguments do not persuade us otherwise. First, Tarrant argues that its interpretation of the Compact is necessary to realize the “structure and purpose of Reach II.” Brief for Petitioner 34–38. Tarrant contends that because the boundary of subbasin 5 is set by the location of the last existing, authorized, or proposed sites for a downstream dam before the Red River, see Compact §§5.01(a), 5.02(a), 5.03(b), 5.04(a), 1 App. 22–24, the Compact allows each of the States upstream from Louisiana to prevent water from flowing from its tributaries into subbasin 5. Tarrant reasons that each State will therefore hold whatever water it needs in its upstream basins. Given this, Tarrant maintains that any water that a State voluntarily allows to reach subbasin 5 must be surplus water that State did not intend to use, and if the upstream State has no need for that water, then there is no reason not to allow other States to access and use it, even across borders. This argument is founded on a shaky premise: It assumes that flows from these dammed-up tributaries are the sole source of water in subbasin 5. But §5.05(b)(1) explains that “[s]ignatory States shall have equal rights to the use of runoff originating in subbasin 5,” as well as “water flowing into subbasin 5,” which would include flows from the main stem of the River itself. Id., at 25. Thus, there are waters that are specific to subbasin 5 separate from those originating in the tributaries covered by subbasins 1 through 4. Tarrant’s account of the purposes of subbasin 5 does not explain how these waters were to be allocated. Tarrant’s second argument regarding the purposes of Reach II is that §5.05(b)(1)’s 25 percent cap on each State’s access to excess water in subbasin 5 should be read to imply that if a State cannot access sufficient water within its borders to meet its share under the cap, then it must be able to cross borders to reach that water. Were it otherwise, Tarrant explains, the 25 percent cap would have no purpose. To support this argument, Tarrant draws on a 1970 engineering report that it contends shows that only 16 percent of the freshwater flowing into subbasin 5 was located in Texas. Brief for Petitioner 9, n. 5. The OWRB challenges this percentage with its own calculations drawn from the report, and asserts that Texas had access to at least 29 percent of the excess water in subbasin 5 within its own borders. Brief for Respondents 26, 47–48, and n. 17. Fortunately, we need not delve into calculations based on a decades-old engineering report to resolve this argument. As we have explained, supra, at 4–6, Texas does not have a minimum guarantee of 25 percent of the excess water in subbasin 5. If it believes that Oklahoma is using more than its 25 percent allotment and wishes to stop it from doing so, then it may call for an accounting under §2.11 of the Compact and, depending on the results of that accounting, insist that Oklahoma desist from taking more than its provided share. See Compact §2.11, and Comment on Art. II, 1 App. 13–16. This is the appropriate remedy provided under the Compact. But Texas has never done so and Tarrant offers no evidence that in the present day Texas cannot access its 25 percent share on its own land. C Under the Compact’s terms, water located within Oklahoma’s portion of subbasin 5 of Reach II remains under Oklahoma’s control. Accordingly, Tarrant’s theory that Oklahoma’s water statutes are pre-empted because they prevent Texas from exercising its rights under the Compact must fail for the reason that the Compact does not create any cross-border rights in signatory States. III Tarrant also challenges the constitutionality of the Oklahoma water statutes under a dormant Commerce Clause theory. Tarrant argues that the Oklahoma water statutes impermissibly “ ‘discriminat[e] against interstate commerce’ for the ‘forbidden purpose’ of favoring local interests” by erecting barriers to the distribution of water left unallocated under the Compact. Brief for Petitioner 47–48 (quoting Department of Revenue of Ky. v. Davis, 553 U.S. 328, 338 (2008)). Tarrant’s argument is premised on the position that if we “adopt the Tenth Circuit’s or respondent’s interpretation [of the Compact], . . . a substantial amount of Reach II, Subbasin 5 water located in Oklahoma is not apportioned to any State and therefore is available to permit applicants like Tarrant.” Brief for Petitioner 47. So, Tarrant continues, because Oklahoma’s laws prevent this “unallocated water” from being distributed out of State, those laws violate the Commerce Clause. Tarrant’s assumption that that the Compact leaves some water “unallocated” is incorrect. The interpretive comment for Article V of the Compact makes clear that when the River’s flow is above 3,000 CFS, “all states are free to use whatever amount of water they can put to beneficial use,” subject to the requirement that “[i]f the states have competing uses and the amount of water available in excess of 3000 CFS cannot satisfy all such uses, each state will honor the other’s right to 25% of the excess flow.” 1 App. 29–30. If more than 25 percent of subbasin 5’s water is located in Oklahoma, that water is not “unallocated”; rather, it is allocated to Oklahoma unless and until another State calls for an accounting and Oklahoma is asked to refrain from utilizing more than its entitled share.[13] The Oklahoma water statutes can- not discriminate against interstate commerce with re-spect to unallocated waters because the Compact leaves no waters unallocated. Tarrant’s Commerce Clause argument founders on this point. * * * The Red River Compact does not pre-empt Okla- homa’s water statutes because the Compact creates no cross-border rights in its signatories for these statutes to infringe. Nor do Oklahoma’s laws run afoul of the Commerce Clause. We affirm the judgment of the Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit. It is so ordered. Notes 1 Interpretive comments were included in the Compact so that future readers “might be apprised of the intent of the Compact Negotiation Committee with regard to each Article of the Compact.” Compact, Comment on Preamble, 1 App. 9. 2 Within subbasins 1, 2, and 4, water was fully apportioned to a single State. See Compact §5.01(b), id., at 22–23 (apportioning water of subbasin 1 and its “unrestricted use” to Oklahoma); §5.02(b), id., at 23 (same for Texas with respect to subbasin 2); §5.04(b), id., at 24 (same for Texas with respect to subbasin 4). Only subbasin 3, which includes portions of Oklahoma and Arkansas, breaks from this pattern and was divided along the lines of a 60-to-40 split, with both States having “free and unrestricted use of the water of this subbasin within their respective states, subject, however, to the limitation that Oklahoma shall allow a quantity of water equal to the 40 percent of the total runoff originating below the following existing, authorized or proposed last major downstream damsites in Oklahoma to flow into Arkansas.” §5.03(b), id., at 23–24. 3 The Compact defines “undesignated water” as “all water released from storage other than ‘designated water.’ ” §3.01(l), id., at 17. “[D]esignated water” means “water released from storage, paid for by non-Federal interests, for delivery to a specific point of use or diversion.” §3.01(k), ibid. 4 In such circumstances, the two relevant paragraphs provide: “(2) Whenever the flow of the Red River at the Arkansas-Louisiana state boundary is less than 3,000 [CFS], but more than 1,000 [CFS],the States of Arkansas, Oklahoma, and Texas shall allow to flow into the Red River for delivery to the State of Louisiana a quantity of water equal to 40 percent of the total weekly runoff originating in subbasin5 and 40 percent of undesignated water flowing into subbasin 5; pro-vided, however, that this requirement shall not be interpreted to require any state to release stored water. “(3) Whenever the flow of the Red River at the Arkansas-Louisiana state boundary falls below 1,000 [CFS], the States of Arkansas, Oklahoma, and Texas shall allow a quantity of water equal to all the weekly runoff originating in subbasin 5 and all undesignated water flowing in subbasin 5 within their respective states to flow into the Red River as required to maintain a 1,000 [CFS] flow at the Arkansas-Louisiana state boundary.” §5.05(b), id., at 25. 5 Under §2.10 of the Compact each signatory State retains “the right or power . . . to regulate within its boundaries the appropriation, use, and control of water.” Id., at 12. Thus, the Compact does not expressly pre-empt any state laws that address the control of water. Oklahoma law, in turn, requires that any “state or federal governmental agency” that “intend[s] to acquire the right to the beneficial use of any water” in Oklahoma must apply to the OWRB for “a permit to appropriate” water before “commencing any construction” or “taking [any water] from any constructed works.” Okla. Stat., Tit. 82, §105.9 (West 2013). 6 An acre-foot is equivalent to the volume of one acre of surface area filled to a depth of one foot. Webster’s Third New International Dictionary 19 (1966). 7 The parties have stipulated that OWRB will not take action onTarrant’s application until this litigation has concluded. Brief for Peti-tioner 16. 8 The Compact Clause of the Constitution provides that “[n]o State shall, without the Consent of Congress, . . . enter into any Agreement or Compact with another State.” Art. I, §10, cl. 3. Accordingly, before a compact between two States can be given effect it must be approved by Congress. See Virginia v. Maryland, 540 U.S. 56, 66 (2003). Once a compact receives such approval, it is “transform[ed] . . . into a law of the United States.” Ibid. (internal quotation marks omitted). The Supremacy Clause, Art. VI, cl. 2, then ensures that a congressionally approved compact, as a federal law, pre-empts any state law that conflicts with the Compact. See Fidelity Fed. Sav. & Loan Assn. v. De la Cuesta, 458 U.S. 141, 152–153 (1982). 9 See Compact §4.01(b), 1 App. 18 (“The annual flow within this subbasin is hereby apportioned sixty (60) percent to Texas and forty (40) percent to Oklahoma”); §6.02(b), id., at 32 (“Arkansas is apportioned sixty (60) percent of the runoff of this subbasin and shall have unrestricted use thereof; Louisiana is entitled to forty (40) percent of the runoff of this subbasin”). 10 There is, however, one interpretive tool that is inapplicable here: the presumption against pre-emption. The Court of Appeals repeatedly referenced and relied upon the presumption in its opinion. See 656 F.3d 1222, 1239, 1242, 1245–1246 (CA10 2011). Yet the presumption against pre-emption is rooted in “respect for the States as ‘independent sovereigns in our federal system’ ” and “assume[s] that ‘Congress does not cavalierly pre-empt’ ” state laws. Wyeth v. Levine, 555 U.S. 555, 565–566, n. 3 (2009). When the States themselves have drafted and agreed to the terms of a compact, and Congress’ role is limited to approving that compact, there is no reason to invoke the presumption. 11 Of course, the power of States to control water within their borders may be subject to limits in certain circumstances. For example, those imposed by the Commerce Clause. See Sporhase v. Nebraska ex rel. Douglas, 458 U.S. 941, 954–958 (1982). Here we deal only with whether the parties’ silence on state boundaries in the allocation of water under a compact suggests that borders are irrelevant for that allocation. As noted infra, at 23–24, Tarrant has not raised any Commerce Clause challenge to Oklahoma’s control of the water allocated to it by the Compact. 12 See also Amended Costilla Creek Compact, Art. III(2), 77Stat. 353 (“Each State grants for the benefit of the other . . . the rights . . . in one State for use in the other”); Klamath River Basin Compact, Art. V(A), 71Stat. 500 (“Each state hereby grants for the benefit of the other . . . the right . . . in one state for use in the other”); Snake River Compact, Art. VIII(A), 64Stat. 32 (“[N]either State shall deny the right of the other State to acquire rights to the use of water . . . in one State for use in the other”); South Platte River Compact, Art. VI(1), 44Stat. 198 (“Colorado consents that Nebraska and its citizens may . . . divert water from the South Platte River within Colorado for use in Nebraska”); Upper Colorado River Basin Compact, Art. IX(a), 63Stat. 37 (“[N]o State shall deny the right of another signatory State . . . to acquire rights to the use of water . . . in an upper signatory State for consumptive use in a lower signatory State”). 13 Moreover, even if Oklahoma utilized less than 25 percent of the excess subbasin 5 water within its territory and allowed the rest to flow down the River, that water would pass from Reach II into Reach V, see Compact §2.12, 1 App. 13, the waters of which are completely allocated to Louisiana, §8.01, id., at 38. Again, no water is left “unallocated.”

569.US.413

In Martinez v. Ryan, 566 U.S. 1, ___, this Court held that “a procedural default will not bar a federal habeas court from hearing a substantial claim of ineffective assistance at trial if, in the [State’s] initial-review collateral proceeding, there was no counsel or counsel in that proceeding was ineffective.” Martinez regarded a prisoner from Arizona, where state procedural law required the prisoner to raise the claim during his first state collateral review proceeding. Ibid. This case regards a prisoner from Texas, where state procedural law does not require a defendant to raise his ineffective-assistance-of-trial-counsel claim on collateral review. Rather, Texas law appears to permit a prisoner to raise such a claim on direct review, but the structure and design of the Texas system make it virtually impossible for a prisoner to do so. The question presented in this case is whether, despite this difference, the rule set out in Martinez applies in Texas. Petitioner Trevino was convicted of capital murder in Texas state court and sentenced to death after the jury found insufficient mitigating circumstances to warrant a life sentence. Neither new counsel appointed for his direct appeal nor new counsel appointed for state collateral review raised the claim that Trevino’s trial counsel provided ineffective assistance during the penalty phase by failing to adequately investigate and present mitigating circumstances. When that claim was finally raised in Trevino’s federal habeas petition, the District Court stayed the proceedings so Trevino could raise it in state court. The state court found the claim procedurally defaulted because of Trevino’s failure to raise it in his initial state postconviction proceedings, and the federal court then concluded that this failure was an independent and adequate state ground barring the federal courts from considering the claim. The Fifth Circuit affirmed. Its decision predated Martinez, but that court has since concluded that Martinez does not apply in Texas because Martinez’s good-cause exception applies only where state law says that a defendant must initially raise his ineffective-assistance-of-trial-counsel claim in initial state collateral review proceedings, while Texas law appears to permit a defendant to raise that claim on direct appeal. Held: Where, as here, a State’s procedural framework, by reason of its design and operation, makes it highly unlikely in a typical case that a defendant will have a meaningful opportunity to raise an ineffective-assistance-of-trial-counsel claim on direct appeal, the exception recognized in Martinez applies. Pp. 5–15. (a) A finding that a defendant’s state law “procedural default” rests on “an independent and adequate state ground” ordinarily prevents a federal habeas court from considering the defendant’s federal constitutional claim. Coleman v. Thompson, 501 U.S. 722,729–730. However, a “prisoner may obtain federal review of a defaulted claim by showing cause for the default and prejudice from a violation of the federal law.” Martinez, supra, at ___. In Martinez, the Court recognized a “narrow exception” to Coleman’s statement “that an attorney’s ignorance or inadvertence in a postconviction proceeding does not qualify as cause to excuse a procedural default.” 566 U. S., at ___. That exception allows a federal habeas court to find “cause” to excuse such default where (1) the ineffective-assistance-of-trial-counsel claim was a “substantial” claim; (2) the “cause” consisted of there being “no counsel” or only “ineffective” counsel during the state collateral review proceeding; (3) the state collateral review proceeding was the “initial” review proceeding in respect to the “ineffective-assistance-of-trial-counsel claim”; and (4) state law requires that the claim “be raised in an initial-review collateral proceeding.” Id., at ___. Pp. 5–8. (b) The difference between the Texas law—which in theory grants permission to bring an ineffective-assistance-of-trial-counsel claim on direct appeal but in practice denies a meaningful opportunity to do so—and the Arizona law at issue in Martinez—which required the claim to be raised in an initial collateral review proceeding—does not matter in respect to the application of Martinez. Pp. 8–14. (1) This conclusion is supported by two characteristics of Texas’ procedures. First, Texas procedures make it nearly impossible for an ineffective-assistance-of-trial-counsel claim to be presented on direct review. The nature of an ineffective-assistance claim means that the trial record is likely to be insufficient to support the claim. And a motion for a new trial to develop the record is usually inadequate because of Texas rules regarding time limits on the filing, and the disposal, of such motions and the availability of trial transcripts. Thus, a writ of habeas corpus is normally needed to gather the facts necessary for evaluating these claims in Texas. Second, were Martinez not to apply, the Texas procedural system would create significant unfairness because Texas courts in effect have directed defendants to raise ineffective-assistance-of-trial-counsel claims on collateral, rath- er than on direct, review. Texas can point to only a few cases in which a defendant has used the motion-for-a-new-trial mechanism to expand the record on appeal. Texas suggests that there are other mechanisms by which a prisoner can expand the record on appeal, but these mechanisms seem special and limited in their application, and cannot overcome the Texas courts’ own well-supported determination that collateral review normally is the preferred procedural route for raising an ineffective-assistance-of-trial-counsel claim. Respondent also argues that there is no equitable problem here, where appellate counsel’s failure to bring a substantial ineffective-assistance claim on direct appeal may constitute cause to excuse the procedural default, but respondent points to no case in which such a failure by appellate counsel has been deemed constitutionally ineffective. Pp. 8–13. (2) The very factors that led this Court to create a narrow exception to Coleman in Martinez similarly argue for applying that exception here. The right involved—adequate assistance of trial counsel—is similarly and critically important. In both instances practical considerations—the need for a new lawyer, the need to expand the trial court record, and the need for sufficient time to develop the claim—argue strongly for initial consideration of the claim during collateral, not on direct, review. See Martinez, 566 U. S., at ___. In both instances failure to consider a lawyer’s “ineffectiveness” during an initial-review collateral proceeding as a potential “cause” for excusing a procedural default will deprive the defendant of any opportunity for review of an ineffective-assistance-of-trial-counsel claim. See id., at ___. Thus, for present purposes, a distinction between (1) a State that denies permission to raise the claim on direct appeal and (2) a State that grants permission but denies a fair, meaningful opportunity to develop the claim is a distinction without a difference. Pp. 13–14. 449 Fed. Appx. 415, vacated and remanded. Breyer, J., delivered the opinion for the Court, in which Kennedy, Ginsburg, Sotomayor, and Kagan, JJ., joined. Roberts, C. J., filed a dissenting opinion, in which Alito, J., joined. Scalia, J., filed a dissenting opinion, in which Thomas, J., joined.

In Martinez v. Ryan, 566 U.S. 1 (2012), we considered the right of a state prisoner to raise, in a federal habeas corpus proceeding, a claim of ineffective assistance of trial counsel. In that case an Arizona procedural rule required a defendant convicted at trial to raise a claim of ineffective assistance of trial counsel during his first state collateral review proceeding—or lose the claim. The defendant in Martinez did not comply with the state procedural rule. But he argued that the federal habeas court should excuse his state procedural failing, on the ground that he had good “cause” for not raising the claim at the right time, namely that, not only had he lacked effective counsel during trial, but also he lacked effective counsel during his first state collateral review proceeding. We held that lack of counsel on collateral review might excuse defendant’s state law procedural default. We wrote: “[A] procedural default will not bar a federal habeas court from hearing a substantial claim of ineffective assistance at trial if, in the [State’s] initial-review collateral proceeding, there was no counsel or counsel in that proceeding was ineffective.” Id., at ___ (slip op., at 15). At the same time we qualified our holding. We said that the holding applied where state procedural law said that “claims of ineffective assistance of trial counsel must be raised in an initial-review collateral proceeding.” Ibid. (emphasis added). In this case Texas state law does not say “must.” It does not on its face require a defendant initially to raise an ineffective-assistance-of-trial-counsel claim in a state col- lateral review proceeding. Rather, that law appears at first glance to permit (but not require) the defendant initially to raise a claim of ineffective assistance of trial counsel on direct appeal. The structure and design of the Texas system in actual operation, however, make it “virtually impossible” for an ineffective assistance claim to be presented on direct review. See Robinson v. State, 16 S.W.3d 808, 810–811 (Tex. Crim. App. 2000). We must now decide whether the Martinez exception applies in this procedural regime. We conclude that it does. I A Texas state court jury convicted petitioner, Carlos Trevino, of capital murder. After a subsequent penalty-phase hearing, the jury found that Trevino “would commit criminal acts of violence in the future which would constitute a continuing threat to society,” that he “actually caused the death of Linda Salinas or, if he did not actually cause her death, he intended to kill her or another, or he anticipated a human life would be taken,” and that “there were insufficient mitigating circumstances to warrant a sentence of life imprisonment” rather than death. 449 Fed. Appx. 415, 418 (CA5 2011). The judge consequently imposed a sentence of death. Eight days later the judge appointed new counsel to handle Trevino’s direct appeal. App. 1, 3. Seven months after sentencing, when the trial transcript first became available, that counsel filed an appeal. The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals then considered and rejected Trevino’s appellate claims. Trevino’s appellate counsel did not claim that Trevino’s trial counsel had been constitutionally ineffective during the penalty phase of the trial court proceedings. Id., at 12–24. About six months after sentencing, the trial judge appointed Trevino a different new counsel to seek state collateral relief. As Texas’ procedural rules provide, that third counsel initiated collateral proceedings while Tre- vino’s appeal still was in progress. This new counsel first sought postconviction relief (through collateral review) in the trial court itself. After a hearing, the trial court denied relief; and the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals affirmed that denial. Id., at 25–26, 321–349. Trevino’s postconviction claims included a claim that his trial counsel was constitutionally ineffective during the penalty phase of Trevino’s trial, but it did not include a claim that trial counsel’s ineffectiveness consisted in part of a failure adequately to investigate and to present mitigating circumstances during the penalty phase of Trevino’s trial. Id., at 321–349; see Wiggins v. Smith, 539 U.S. 510, 523 (2003) (counsel’s failure to investigate and present mitigating circumstances deprived defendant of effective assistance of counsel). Trevino then filed a petition in federal court seeking a writ of habeas corpus. The Federal District Court appointed another new counsel to represent him. And that counsel claimed for the first time that Trevino had not received constitutionally effective counsel during the penalty phase of his trial in part because of trial counsel’s failure to adequately investigate and present mitigating circumstances during the penalty phase. App. 438, 456–478. Federal habeas counsel pointed out that Trevino’s trial counsel had presented only one witness at the sentencing phase, namely Trevino’s aunt. The aunt had testified that Trevino had had a difficult upbringing, that his mother had an alcohol problem, that his family was on welfare, and that he had dropped out of high school. She had added that Trevino had a child, that he was good with children, and that he was not violent. Id., at 285–291. Federal habeas counsel then told the federal court that Trevino’s trial counsel should have found and presented at the penalty phase other mitigating matters that his own investigation had brought to light. These included, among other things, that Trevino’s mother abused alcohol while she was pregnant with Trevino, that Trevino weighed only four pounds at birth, that throughout his life Trevino suffered the deleterious effects of Fetal Alcohol Syndrome, that as a child Trevino had suffered numerous head injuries without receiving adequate medical attention, that Trevino’s mother had abused him physically and emotionally, that from an early age Trevino was exposed to, and abused, alcohol and drugs, that Trevino had attended school irregularly and performed poorly, and that Tre- vino’s cognitive abilities were impaired. Id., at 66–67. The federal court stayed proceedings to permit Trevino to raise this claim in state court. The state court held that because Trevino had not raised this claim during his initial postconviction proceedings, he had procedurally defaulted the claim, id., at 27–28; and the Federal District Court then denied Trevino’s ineffective-assistance-of-trial-counsel claim, id., at 78–79. The District Court concluded in relevant part that, despite the fact that “even the most minimal investigation . . . would have revealed a wealth of additional mitigating evidence,” an independent and adequate state ground (namely Trevino’s failure to raise the issue during his state postconviction proceeding) barred the federal habeas court from considering the ineffective-assistance-of-trial-counsel claim. Id., at 131–132. See Coleman v. Thompson, 501 U.S. 722, 729–730 (1991). Trevino appealed. The Fifth Circuit, without considering the merits of Trevino’s ineffective-assistance-of-trial-counsel claim, agreed with the District Court that an independent, adequate state ground, namely Trevino’s procedural default, barred its consideration. 449 Fed. Appx., at 426. Although the Circuit decided Trevino’s case before this Court decided Martinez, the Fifth Circuit’s reasoning in a later case, Ibarra v. Thaler, 687 F.3d 222 (2012), makes clear that the Fifth Circuit would have found that Martinez would have made no difference. That is because in Ibarra the Circuit recognized that Martinez had said that its good-cause exception applies where state law says that a criminal defendant must initially raise his claim of ineffective assistance of trial counsel in initial state collateral review proceedings. 687 F. 3d, at 225–226. Texas law, the Circuit pointed out, does not say explicitly that the defendant must initially raise the claim in state collateral review proceedings. Rather Texas law on its face appears to permit a criminal defendant to raise such a claim on direct appeal. Id., at 227. And the Circuit held that that fact means that Martinez does not apply in Texas. 687 F. 3d, at 227. Since the Circuit’s holding in Ibarra (that Martinez does not apply in Texas) would similarly govern this case, we granted certiorari here to determine whether Martinez applies in Texas. II A We begin with Martinez. We there recognized the historic importance of federal habeas corpus proceedings as a method for preventing individuals from being held in custody in violation of federal law. Martinez, 566 U. S., at ___ (slip op., at 6–7). See generally Preiser v. Rodriguez, 411 U.S. 475, 484–485 (1973). In general, if a convicted state criminal defendant can show a federal habeas court that his conviction rests upon a violation of the Federal Constitution, he may well obtain a writ of habeas corpus that requires a new trial, a new sentence, or release. We similarly recognized the importance of federal ha- beas corpus principles designed to prevent federal courts from interfering with a State’s application of its own firmly established, consistently followed, constitutionally proper procedural rules. Martinez, supra, at ___ (slip op., at 6–7). Those principles have long made clear that a conviction that rests upon a defendant’s state law “procedural default” (for example, the defendant’s failure to raise a claim of error at the time or in the place that state law requires), normally rests upon “an independent and adequate state ground.” Coleman, 501 U. S., at 729–730. And where a conviction rests upon such a ground, a fed- eral habeas court normally cannot consider the defendant’s federal constitutional claim. Ibid.; see Martinez, 566 U. S., at ___ (slip op., at 6–7). At the same time, we pointed out that “[t]he doctrine barring procedurally defaulted claims from being heard is not without exceptions. A prisoner may obtain federal review of a defaulted claim by showing cause for the default and prejudice from a violation of federal law.” Id., at ___ (slip op., at 6–7). And we turned to the issue directly before the Court: whether Martinez had shown “cause” to excuse his state procedural failing. Id., at ___ (slip op., at 15). Martinez argued that his lawyer should have raised, but did not raise, his claim of ineffective assistance of trial counsel during state collateral review proceedings. Id., at ___ (slip op., at 4). He added that this failure, itself amounting to ineffective assistance, was the “cause” of, and ought to excuse, his procedural default. Id., at ___ (slip op., at 4). But this Court had previously held that “[n]egligence on the part of a prisoner’s postconviction attorney does not qualify as ‘cause,’ ” primarily because a “principal” such as the prisoner, “bears the risk of negligent conduct on the part of his agent,” the attorney. Maples v. Thomas, 565 U. S. ___, ___ (2012) (slip op., at 12) (quoting Coleman, supra, at 753–754; emphasis added). Martinez, in effect, argued for an exception to Coleman’s broad statement of the law. We ultimately held that a “narrow exception” should “modify the unqualified statement in Coleman that an attorney’s ignorance or inadvertence in a postconviction proceeding does not qualify as cause to excuse a proce- dural default.” Martinez, 566 U. S., at ___ (slip op., at 6). We did so for three reasons. First, the “right to the effective assistance of counsel at trial is a bedrock principle in our justice system. . . . Indeed, the right to counsel is the foundation for our adversary system.” Id., at ___ (slip op., at 9). Second, ineffective assistance of counsel on direct appellate review could amount to “cause,” excusing a defendant’s failure to raise (and thus procedurally defaulting) a constitutional claim. Id., at ___ (slip op., at 8). But States often have good reasons for initially reviewing claims of ineffective assistance of trial counsel during state collateral proceedings rather than on direct appellate review. Id., at ___ (slip op., at 9–10). That is because review of such a claim normally requires a different attorney, because it often “depend[s] on evidence outside the trial record,” and because efforts to expand the record on direct appeal may run afoul of “[a]bbreviated deadlines,” depriving the new attorney of “adequate time . . . to investigate the ineffective-assistance claim.” Id., at ___ (slip op., at 10). Third, where the State consequently channels initial review of this constitutional claim to collateral proceedings, a lawyer’s failure to raise an ineffective-assistance-of-trial-counsel claim during initial-review collateral proceedings, could (were Coleman read broadly) deprive a defendant of any review of that claim at all. Martinez, supra, at ___ (slip op., at 7). We consequently read Coleman as containing an exception, allowing a federal habeas court to find “cause,” thereby excusing a defendant’s procedural default, where (1) the claim of “ineffective assistance of trial counsel” was a “substantial” claim; (2) the “cause” consisted of there being “no counsel” or only “ineffective” counsel during the state collateral review proceeding; (3) the state collateral review proceeding was the “initial” review proceeding in respect to the “ineffective-assistance-of-trial-counsel claim”; and (4) state law requires that an “ineffective assistance of trial counsel [claim] . . . be raised in an initial-review collateral proceeding.” Martinez, supra, at ___ (slip op., at 11, 15). B Here state law differs from that in Martinez in respect to the fourth requirement. Unlike Arizona, Texas does not expressly require the defendant to raise a claim of ineffective assistance of trial counsel in an initial collateral review proceeding. Rather Texas law on its face appears to permit (but not require) the defendant to raise the claim on direct appeal. Does this difference matter? 1 Two characteristics of the relevant Texas procedures lead us to conclude that it should not make a difference in respect to the application of Martinez. First, Texas procedure makes it “virtually impossible for appellate counsel to adequately present an ineffective assistance [of trial counsel] claim” on direct review. Robinson, 16 S. W. 3d, at 810–811. As the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals itself has pointed out, “the inherent nature of most ineffective assistance” of trial counsel “claims” means that the trial court record will often fail to “contai[n] the information necessary to substantiate” the claim. Ex parte Torres, 943 S.W.2d 469, 475 (1997) (en banc). As the Court of Criminal Appeals has also noted, a convicted defendant may make a motion in the trial court for a new trial in order to develop the record on appeal. See Reyes v. State, 849 S.W.2d 812, 816 (1993). And, in principle, the trial court could, in connection with that motion, allow the defendant some additional time to de- velop a further record. Ibid. But that motion-for-new-trial “vehicle is often inadequate because of time constraints and because the trial record has generally not been transcribed at this point.” Torres, supra, at 475. See Tex. Rule App. Proc. 21.4 (2013) (motion for a new trial must be made within 30 days of sentencing); Rules 21.8(a), (c) (trial court must dispose of motion within 75 days of sentencing); Rules 35.2(b), 35.3(c) (transcript must be prepared within 120 days of sentencing where a motion for a new trial is filed and this deadline may be extended). Thus, as the Court of Criminal Appeals has concluded, in Texas “a writ of habeas corpus” issued in state collateral proceedings ordinarily “is essential to gathering the facts necessary to . . . evaluate . . . [ineffective-assistance-of-trial-counsel] claims.” Torres, supra, at 475. See Robinson, supra, at 810–811 (noting that there is “not generally a realistic opportunity to adequately develop the record for appeal in post-trial motions” and that “[t]he time requirements for filing and presenting a motion for new trial would have made it virtually impossible for appellate counsel to adequately present an ineffective assistance claim to the trial court”). See also Thompson v. State, 9 S.W.3d 808, 813–814, and n. 6 (Tex. Crim. App. 1999) (“[I]n the vast majority of cases, the undeveloped record on direct appeal will be insufficient for an appellant to satisfy the dual prongs of Strickland”; only “[r]arely will a reviewing court be provided the opportunity to make its determination on direct appeal with a record capable of providing a fair evaluation of the merits of the claim . . .”); Goodspeed v. State, 187 S.W.3d 390, 392 (Tex. Crim. App. 2005) (similar); Andrews v. State, 159 S.W.3d 98, 102–103 (Tex. Crim. App. 2005) (similar); Ex parte Brown, 158 S.W.3d 449, 453 (Tex. Crim. App. 2005) (per curiam) (similar); Jackson v. State, 973 S.W.2d 954, 957 (Tex. Crim. App. 1998) (per curiam) (similar). See also 42 G. Dix & J. Schmolesky, Texas Practice Series §29:76, pp. 844–845 (3d ed. 2011) (hereinafter Texas Practice) (explaining that “[o]ften” the requirement that a claim of ineffective assistance of trial counsel be supported by a record containing direct evidence of why counsel acted as he did “will require that the claim . . . be raised in postconviction habeas proceedings where a full record on the matter can be raised”). This opinion considers whether, as a systematic matter, Texas affords meaningful review of a claim of ineffective assistance of trial counsel. The present capital case illustrates why it does not. The trial court appointed new counsel for Trevino eight days after sentencing. Counsel thus had 22 days to decide whether, and on what grounds, to make a motion for a new trial. She then may have had an additional 45 days to provide support for the motion but without the help of a transcript (which did not become available until much later—seven months after the trial). It would have been difficult, perhaps impossible, within that time frame to investigate Trevino’s background, de- termine whether trial counsel had adequately done so, and then develop evidence about additional mitigating background circumstances. See Reyes, supra, at 816 (“[M]otions for new trial [must] be supported by affidavit . . . specifically showing the truth of the grounds of attack”). Second, were Martinez not to apply, the Texas procedural system would create significant unfairness. That is because Texas courts in effect have directed defendants to raise claims of ineffective assistance of trial counsel on collateral, rather than on direct, review. As noted, they have explained why direct review proceedings are likely inadequate. See supra, at 8–10. They have held that failure to raise the claim on direct review does not bar the defendant from raising the claim in collateral proceedings. See, e.g., Robinson, 16 S. W. 3d, at 813; Ex parte Duffy, 607 S.W.2d 507, 512–513 (Tex. Crim. App. 1980) (overruled on other grounds by Hernandez v. State, 988 S.W.2d 770 (Tex. Crim. App. 1999)). They have held that the defendant’s decision to raise the claim on direct review does not bar the defendant from also raising the claim in collateral proceedings. See, e.g., Lopez v. State, 343 S.W.3d 137, 143 (Tex. Crim. App. 2011); Torres, supra, at 475. They have suggested that appellate counsel’s failure to raise the claim on direct review does not constitute “ineffective assistance of counsel.” See Sprouse v. State, No. AP–74933, 2007 WL 283152, *7 (Tex. Crim. App., Jan. 31, 2007) (unpublished). And Texas’ highest criminal court has explicitly stated that “[a]s a general rule” the de- fendant “should not raise an issue of ineffective assistance of counsel on direct appeal,” but rather in collateral re- view proceedings. Mata v. State, 226 S.W.3d 425, 430, n. 14 (2007) (internal quotation marks omitted). See Rob- inson, supra, at 810 (“[A] post-conviction writ proceeding, rather than a motion for new trial, is the preferred method for gathering the facts necessary to substantiate” an ineffective-assistance-of-trial-counsel claim). The criminal bar, not surprisingly, has taken this strong judicial advice seriously. See Guidelines and Standards for Texas Capital Counsel, 69 Tex. B. J. 966, 977, Guideline 12.2(B)(1)(d) (2006) (“[S]tate habeas corpus is the first opportunity for a capital client to raise challenges to the effectiveness of trial or direct appeal counsel”). Texas now can point to only a comparatively small number of cases in which a defendant has used the motion-for-a-new-trial mechanism to expand the record on appeal and then received a hearing on his ineffective-assistance-of-trial-counsel claim on direct appeal. Brief for Respondent 35–36, and n. 6 (citing, inter alia, State v. Morales, 253 S.W.3d 686, 689–691 (Tex. Crim. App. 2008); Robertson v. State, 187 S.W.3d 475, 480–481 (Tex. Crim. App. 2006)). And, of those, precisely one case involves trial counsel’s investigative failures of the kind at issue here. See Armstrong v. State, No. AP–75706, 2010 WL 359020 (Tex. Crim. App., Jan. 27, 2010) (unpublished). How could federal law deny defendants the benefit of Martinez solely because of the existence of a theoretically available pro- cedural alternative, namely direct appellate review, that Texas procedures render so difficult, and in the typical case all but impossible, to use successfully, and which Texas courts so strongly discourage defendants from using? Respondent argues that Texas courts enforce the relevant time limits more flexibly than we have suggested. Sometimes, for example, an appellate court can abate an appeal and remand the case for further record development in the trial court. See Cooks v. State, 240 S.W.3d 906 (Tex. Crim. App. 2007). But the procedural possibilities to which Texas now points seem special, limited in their application, and, as far as we can tell, rarely used. See 43A Texas Practice §50:15, at 636–639; 43B id., §56:235, at 607–609. Cooks, for example, the case upon which respondent principally relies, involved a remand for further record development, but in circumstances where the lower court wrongly failed to give a defendant new counsel in time to make an ordinary new trial motion. 240 S. W. 3d, at 911. We do not believe that this, or other, special, rarely used procedural possibilities can overcome the Texas courts’ own well-supported determination that collateral review normally constitutes the preferred—and indeed as a practical matter, the only—method for raising an ineffective-assistance-of-trial-counsel claim. Respondent further argues that there is no equitable problem to be solved in Texas because if counsel fails to bring a substantial claim of ineffective assistance of trial counsel on direct appeal, the ineffectiveness of appellate counsel may constitute cause to excuse the procedural default. See Murray v. Carrier, 477 U.S. 478 (1986). But respondent points to no case in which such a failure by appellate counsel has been deemed constitutionally ineffective. And that lack of authority is not surprising given the fact that the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals has directed defendants to bring such claims on collateral review. 2 For the reasons just stated, we believe that the Texas procedural system—as a matter of its structure, design, and operation—does not offer most defendants a meaningful opportunity to present a claim of ineffective assistance of trial counsel on direct appeal. What the Arizona law prohibited by explicit terms, Texas law precludes as a matter of course. And, that being so, we can find no significant difference between this case and Martinez. The very factors that led this Court to create a narrow exception to Coleman in Martinez similarly argue for the application of that exception here. The right involved—adequate assistance of counsel at trial—is similarly and critically important. In both instances practical considerations, such as the need for a new lawyer, the need to expand the trial court record, and the need for sufficient time to develop the claim, argue strongly for initial consideration of the claim during collateral, rather than on direct, review. See Martinez, 566 U. S., at ___ (slip op., at 10); see also Massaro v. United States, 538 U.S. 500, 505 (2003). In both instances failure to consider a lawyer’s “ineffectiveness” during an initial-review collateral proceeding as a potential “cause” for excusing a procedural default will deprive the defendant of any opportunity at all for review of an ineffective-assistance-of-trial-counsel claim. See Martinez, supra, at ___ (slip op., at 7). Thus, for present purposes, a distinction between (1) a State that denies permission to raise the claim on direct appeal and (2) a State that in theory grants permission but, as a matter of procedural design and systemic operation, denies a meaningful opportunity to do so is a distinction without a difference. In saying this, we do not (any more than we did in Martinez) seek to encourage States to tailor direct appeals so that they provide a fuller op- portunity to raise ineffective-assistance-of-trial-counsel claims. That is a matter for the States to decide. And, as we have said, there are often good reasons for hearing the claim initially during collateral proceedings. III For these reasons, we conclude that where, as here, state procedural framework, by reason of its design and operation, makes it highly unlikely in a typical case that a defendant will have a meaningful opportunity to raise a claim of ineffective assistance of trial counsel on direct appeal, our holding in Martinez applies: “[A] procedural default will not bar a federal habeas court from hearing a substantial claim of ineffective assistance at trial if, in the initial-review collateral proceeding, there was no counsel or counsel in that proceeding was ineffective.” 566 U. S., at ___ (slip op., at 15). Given this holding, Texas submits that its courts should be permitted, in the first instance, to decide the merits of Trevino’s ineffective-assistance-of-trial-counsel claim. Brief for Respondent 58–60. We leave that matter to be determined on remand. Likewise, we do not decide here whether Trevino’s claim of ineffective assistance of trial counsel is substantial or whether Trevino’s initial state habeas attorney was ineffective. For these reasons we vacate the Fifth Circuit’s judgment and remand the case for further proceedings consistent with this opinion. It is so ordered.

568.US.2012_11-192

Respondent Bormes, an attorney, filed suit against the Federal Government, alleging that the electronic receipt he received when paying his client’s federal-court filing fee on Pay.gov included the last four digits of his credit card number and the card’s expiration date, in willful violation of the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA), 15 U. S. C. §1681 et seq. He sought damages under §1681n and asserted jurisdiction under §1681p, as well as under the Little Tucker Act, which grants district courts “original jurisdiction, concurrent with the United States Court of Federal Claims, of . . . [a]ny. . . civil action or claim against the United States, not exceeding $10,000 in amount, founded . . . upon . . . any Act of Congress,” 28 U. S. C. §1346(a)(2). In dismissing the suit, the District Court held that FCRA did not explicitly waive the Federal Government’s sovereign immunity. Bormes appealed to the Federal Circuit, which vacated the District Court’s decision, holding that the Little Tucker Act provided the Government’s consent to suit because the underlying statute—FCRA—could fairly be interpreted as mandating a right of recovery in damages. Held: The Little Tucker Act does not waive the Government’s sovereign immunity with respect to FCRA damages actions. Pp. 4–11. (a) The Little Tucker Act and its companion statute, the Tucker Act, provide the Federal Government’s consent to suit for certain money-damages claims “premised on other sources of law,” United States v. Navajo Nation, 556 U.S. 287, 290. The general terms of the Tucker Acts are displaced, however, when a law imposing monetary liability has its own judicial remedies. In that event, the specific remedial scheme establishes the exclusive framework for determining the scope of liability under the statute. See, e.g., Hinck v. United States, 550 U.S. 501. Pp. 4–7. (b) FCRA is such a statute. Its detailed remedial scheme sets “out a carefully circumscribed, time-limited, plaintiff-specific” cause of action, and “also precisely define[s] the appropriate forum,” 550 U. S., at 507. FCRA authorizes aggrieved consumers to hold “any person” who “willfully” or “negligent[ly]” fails to comply with the Act’s requirements liable for specified damages, 15 U. S. C. §§1681n(a), 1681o; requires enforcement claims to be brought within a specified limitations period, §1681p; and provides that jurisdiction will lie “in any appropriate United States district court, without regard to the amount in controversy,” ibid. Because FCRA enables claimants to pursue monetary relief in court without resort to the Tucker Act, only its own text can determine whether Congress unequivocally intended to impose the statute’s damages liability on the Federal Government. Pp. 7–10. 626 F.3d 574, vacated and remanded. Scalia, J., delivered the opinion for a unanimous Court.

The Little Tucker Act, 28 U. S. C. §1346(a)(2), provides that “[t]he district courts shall have original jurisdiction, concurrent with the United States Court of Federal Claims, of . . . [a]ny. . . civil action or claim against the United States, not exceeding $10,000 in amount, founded . . . upon . . . any Act of Congress.” We consider whether the Little Tucker Act waives the sovereign immunity of the United States with respect to damages actions for violations of the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA), 15 U. S. C. §1681 et seq. I The Fair Credit Reporting Act has as one of its purposes to “protect consumer privacy.” Safeco Ins. Co. of America v. Burr, 551 U.S. 47, 52 (2007); see 84Stat. 1128, 15 U. S. C. §1681. To that end, FCRA provides, among other things, that “no person that accepts credit cards or debit cards for the transaction of business shall print more than the last 5 digits of the card number or the expiration date upon any receipt provided to the cardholder at the point of the sale or transaction.” §1681c(g)(1) (emphasis added). The Act defines “person” as “any individual, partnership, corporation, trust, estate, cooperative, association, government or governmental subdivision or agency, or other entity.” §1681a(b). FCRA imposes civil liability for willful or negligent noncompliance with its requirements: “Any person who willfully fails to comply” with the Act “with respect to any consumer,” “is liable to that consumer” for actual damages or damages “of not less than $100 and not more than $1,000,” as well as punitive damages, attorney’s fees, and costs. §1681n(a); see also §1681o (civil liability for negligent noncompliance). The Act includes a jurisdictional provision, which provides that “[a]n action to enforce any liability created under this subchapter may be brought in any appropriate United States district court, without regard to the amount in controversy, or in any other court of competent jurisdiction” within the earlier of “2 years after the date of discovery by the plaintiff of the violation that is the basis for such liability” or “5 years after the date on which the violation that is the basis for such liability occurs.” §1681p. Respondent James X. Bormes is an attorney who filed a putative class action against the United States in the United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois seeking damages under FCRA. Bormes alleged that he paid a $350 federal-court filing fee for a client using his own credit card on Pay.gov, an Internet-based system used by federal courts and dozens of federal agencies to process online payment transactions. According to Bormes, his Pay.gov electronic receipt included the last four digits of his credit card, in addition to its expiration date, in willful violation of §1681c(g)(1). He claimed that he and thousands of similarly situated persons were entitled to recover damages under §1681n, and asserted jurisdiction under §1681p, as well as under the Little Tucker Act, 28 U. S. C. §1346(a)(2). The District Court dismissed the suit, holding that FCRA does not contain the explicit waiver of sovereign immunity necessary to permit a damages suit against the United States. 638 F. Supp. 2d 958, 962 (ND Ill. 2009). The court did not address the Little Tucker Act as an asserted basis for jurisdiction. Respondent appealed to the Federal Circuit, which has exclusive jurisdiction “of an appeal from a final decision of a district court of the United States . . . if the jurisdiction of that court was based, in whole or in part, on” the Little Tucker Act. 28 U. S. C. §1295(a)(2). Arguing that the Little Tucker Act’s jurisdictional grant did not apply to respondent’s suit, the Government moved to transfer the appeal to the Seventh Circuit. The Federal Circuit denied the transfer motion and went on to vacate the District Court’s decision. Without deciding whether FCRA itself contained the requisite waiver of sovereign immunity, the court held that the Little Tucker Act provided the Government’s consent to suit for violation of FCRA. The court explained that the Little Tucker Act applied because FCRA “ ‘can fairly be interpreted as mandating compensation by the Federal Government for the damage sustained.’ ” 626 F.3d 574, 578 (2010) (quoting United States v. White Mountain Apache Tribe, 537 U.S. 465, 472 (2003)). This “fair interpretation” rule, the court explained, “demands a showing ‘demonstrably lower’ than the initial waiver of sovereign immunity” contained in the Little Tucker Act itself. 626 F. 3d, at 578. The court reasoned that FCRA satisfied the “fair interpretation” rule because its damages provision applies to “any person” who willfully violates its requirements, 15 U. S. C. §1681n(a), and the Act elsewhere defines “person” to include “any . . . government,” §1681a(b). 626 F. 3d, at 580. The Federal Circuit remanded to the District Court for further proceedings. We granted certiorari, 565 U. S. ___ (2012). II Sovereign immunity shields the United States from suit absent a consent to be sued that is “ ‘unequivocally expressed.’ ” United States v. Nordic Village, Inc., 503 U.S. 30, 33–34 (1992) (quoting Irwin v. Department of Veterans Affairs, 498 U.S. 89, 95 (1990); some internal quotation marks omitted). The Little Tucker Act is one statute that unequivocally provides the Federal Government’s consent to suit for certain money-damages claims. United States v. Mitchell, 463 U.S. 206, 216 (1983) (Mitchell II). Subject to exceptions not relevant here, the Little Tucker Act provides that “district courts shall have original jurisdiction, concurrent with the United States Court of Federal Claims,” of a “civil action or claim against the United States, not exceeding $10,000 in amount, founded either upon the Constitution, or any Act of Congress, or any regulation of an executive department, or upon any express or implied contract with the United States, or for liquidated or unliquidated damages in cases not sounding in tort.” 28 U. S. C. §1346(a)(2).[1] The Little Tucker Act and its companion statute, the Tucker Act, §1491(a)(1),[2] do not themselves “creat[e] substantive rights,” but “are simply jurisdictional provisions that operate to waive sovereign immunity for claims premised on other sources of law.” United States v. Navajo Nation, 556 U.S. 287, 290 (2009). Bormes argues that whether or not FCRA itself unam-biguously waives sovereign immunity, the Little Tucker Act authorizes his FCRA damages claim against the United States. The question, then, is whether a damages claim under FCRA “falls within the terms of the Tucker Act,” so that “the United States has presumptively consented to suit.” Mitchell II, supra, at 216. It does not. Where, as in FCRA, a statute contains its own self-executing remedial scheme, we look only to that statute to determine whether Congress intended to subject the United States to dam- ages liability. A The Court of Claims was established, and the Tucker Act enacted, to open a judicial avenue for certain mone-tary claims against the United States. Before the creation of the Court of Claims in 1855, see Act of Feb. 24, 1855 (1855 Act), ch. 122, §1, 10Stat. 612, it was not uncommon for statutes to impose monetary obligations on the United States without specifying a means of judicial enforcement.[3] As a result, claimants routinely petitioned Congress for private bills to recover money owed by the Federal Government. See Mitchell II, supra, at 212 (citing P. Bator, P. Mishkin, D. Shapiro & H. Wechsler, Hart and Wechsler’s The Federal Courts and the Federal System 98 (2d ed. 1973)). As this individualized legislative process became increasingly burdensome for Congress, the Court of Claims was created “to relieve the pressure on Congress caused by the volume of private bills.” Glidden Co. v. Zdanok, 370 U.S. 530, 552 (1962) (plurality opinion). The 1855 Act authorized the Court of Claims to hear claims against the United States “founded upon any law of Congress,” §1, 10Stat. 612, and thus allowed claimants to sue the Federal Government for monetary relief premised on other sources of law. (Specialized legislation remained necessary to authorize the payments approved by the Court of Claims until 1863, when Congress empowered the court to enter final judgments. See Act of Mar. 3, 1863 (1863 Act), ch. 92, 12Stat. 765; Mitchell II, supra, at 212–214 (recounting the history of the Court of Claims)). Enacted in 1887, the Tucker Act was the successor statute to the 1855 and 1863 Acts and replaced most of their provisions. See Act of Mar. 3, 1887 (1887 Act), ch. 359, 24Stat. 505; Mitchell II, supra, at 213–214. Like the 1855 Act before it, the Tucker Act provided the Federal Government’s consent to suit in the Court of Claims for claims “founded upon . . . any law of Congress.” 1887 Act §1, 24Stat. 505. Section 2 of the 1887 Act created concurrent jurisdiction in the district courts for claims of up to $1,000. The Tucker Act’s jurisdictional grant, and accompanying immunity waiver, supplied the missing ingredient for an action against the United States for the breach of monetary obligations not otherwise judicially enforceable.[4] B The Tucker Act is displaced, however, when a law assertedly imposing monetary liability on the United States contains its own judicial remedies. In that event, the specific remedial scheme establishes the exclusive framework for the liability Congress created under the statute. Because a “precisely drawn, detailed statute pre-empts more general remedies,” Hinck v. United States, 550 U.S. 501, 506 (2007) (quoting EC Term of Years Trust v. United States, 550 U.S. 429, 434 (2007); internal quotation marks omitted), FCRA’s self-executing remedial scheme supersedes the gap-filling role of the Tucker Act. We have long recognized that an additional remedy in the Court of Claims is foreclosed when it contradicts the limits of a precise remedial scheme. In Nichols v. United States, 7 Wall. 122, 131 (1869), the issue was whether the 1855 Act authorized suit in the Court of Claims for improper assessment of duties on imported liquor that had already been paid without protest. The Court held that it did not. The revenue laws already provided a remedy: An aggrieved merchant could sue to recover the tax, but only after paying the duty under protest. Act of Feb. 26, 1845, ch. 22, 5Stat. 727. The Court rejected the supposition that “Congress, after having carefully constructed a revenue system, with ample provisions to redress wrong, intended to give to the taxpayer and importer a further and different remedy.” 7 Wall., at 131. Permitting suit under the 1855 Act, the Court concluded, would frustrate congressional intent with respect to the specific remedial scheme already in place. The 1855 Act was confined to a gap-filling role. As we said in a later case, “the general laws which govern the Court of Claims may be resorted to for relief” only because “[n]o special remedy has been provided” to enforce a payment to which the claimant was entitled. United States v. Kaufman, 96 U.S. 567, 569 (1878). Where the “liability is one created by statute,” the “special remedy provided by the same statute is exclusive.” Ibid. Our more recent cases have consistently held that statutory schemes with their own remedial framework exclude alternative relief under the general terms of the Tucker Act. See, e.g., Hinck, supra; United States v. Fausto, 484 U.S. 439 (1988); United States v. Erika, Inc., 456 U.S. 201 (1982). Respondent contends that in each of those cases Congress had unambiguously demonstrated its intent to foreclose additional review by the Court of Federal Claims—whereas here, no similar intent to preclude Tucker Act jurisdiction is apparent. See Brief for Respondent 27–28. But our precedents collectively stand for a more basic proposition: Where a specific statutory scheme provides the accoutrements of a judicial action, the metes and bounds of the liability Congress intended to create can only be divined from the text of the statute itself.[5] In Hinck, for example, we held that the Tax Court provides the exclusive forum for suits under 26 U. S. C. §6404(h), which authorizes judicial review of the Secre-tary’s decision not to abate interest under §6404(e)(1). We relied on “our past recognition that when Congress enacts a specific remedy when no remedy was previously recognized . . . the remedy provided is generally regarded as exclusive.” 550 U. S., at 506. Section 6404(h), we concluded, “fits the bill”: it “provides a forum for adjudication, a limited class of potential plaintiffs, a statute of limitations, a standard of review, and authorization for judicial relief.” Ibid. It did not matter that Congress “fail[ed] explicitly to define the Tax Court’s jurisdiction as exclusive.” Ibid. We found it “quite plain that the terms of §6404(h)—a ‘precisely drawn, detailed statute’ filling a perceived hole in the law—control all requests for review of §6404(e)(1) determinations.” Ibid. Like §6404(h), FCRA creates a detailed remedial scheme. Its provisions “set out a carefully circumscribed, time-limited, plaintiff-specific” cause of action, and “also precisely define the appropriate forum.” Id., at 507. It authorizes aggrieved consumers to hold “any person” who “willfully” or “negligent[ly]” fails to comply with the Act’s requirements liable for specified damages. 15 U. S. C. §§1681n(a), 1681o. Claims to enforce liability must be brought within a specified limitations period, §1681p, and jurisdiction will lie “in any appropriate United States dis- trict court, without regard to the amount in controversy, or in any other court of competent jurisdiction.” Ibid. Without resort to the Tucker Act, FCRA enables claimants to pursue in court the monetary relief contemplated by the statute. Plaintiffs cannot, therefore, mix and match FCRA’s provisions with the Little Tucker Act’s immunity waiver to create an action against the United States. Since FCRA is a detailed remedial scheme, only its own text can determine whether the damages liability Congress crafted extends to the Federal Government. To hold otherwise—to permit plaintiffs to remedy the absence of a waiver of sovereign immunity in specific, detailed statutes by pleading general Tucker Act jurisdiction—would transform the sovereign-immunity landscape. The Federal Circuit was therefore wrong to conclude that the Tucker Act justified applying a “less stringent” sovereign-immunity analysis to FCRA than our cases require. 626 F. 3d, at 582. It distorted our case law in applying to FCRA the immunity-waiver standard we expressed in White Mountain Apache Tribe, 537 U. S., at 472: whether the statute “ ‘can fairly be interpreted as mandating compensation by the Federal Government for the damage sustained.’ ” 626 F. 3d, at 578. That is the test for determining whether a statute that imposes an obligation but does not provide the elements of a cause of action qualifies for suit under the Tucker Act—more specifically, whether the failure to perform an obligation undoubtedly imposed on the Federal Government creates a right to monetary relief. See White Mountain Apache Tribe, supra; Mitchell II, 463 U.S. 206. That test is not relevant when a “mandate of compensation” is contained in a statute that provides a detailed judicial remedy against those who are subject to its requirements. FCRA is such a statute. By using the “fair interpretation” test to determine whether FCRA’s civil liability provisions apply to the United States, the Federal Circuit directed the test to a purpose for which it was not designed and leapfrogged the threshold concern that the Tucker Act cannot be superimposed on an existing remedial scheme. * * * We do not decide here whether FCRA itself waives the Federal Government’s immunity to damages actions under §1681n. That question is for the Seventh Circuit to consider once this case is transferred to it on remand. But whether or not FCRA contains the necessary waiver of immunity, any attempt to append a Tucker Act remedy to the statute’s existing remedial scheme interferes with its intended scope of liability. The judgment of the Court of Appeals is vacated, and the case remanded with instructions to transfer the case to the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit for further proceedings consistent with this opinion. It is so ordered. Notes 1 It is undisputed that this class action satisfied the Little Tucker Act’s amount-in-controversy limitation. We have held that to require only that the “claims of individual members of the clas[s] do not exceed $10,000.” United States v. Will, 449 U.S. 200, 211, n. 10 (1980). 2 Whereas the Little Tucker Act creates jurisdiction in the district courts concurrent with the Court of Federal Claims for covered claims of $10,000 or less, the Tucker Act assigns jurisdiction to the Court of Federal Claims regardless of monetary amount. As relevant here, the scope of the two statutes is otherwise the same. The third statute in the Tucker Act trio, the Indian Tucker Act, 28 U. S. C. §1505, “confers a like waiver for Indian tribal claims that ‘otherwise would be cognizable in the Court of Federal Claims if the claimant were not an Indian tribe.’ ” United States v. White Mountain Apache Tribe, 537 U.S. 465, 472 (2003) (quoting §1505). 3 For example, the Act of March 30, 1814, provided that every noncommissioned U. S. army officer who “may be captured by the enemy, shall be entitled to receive during his captivity . . . the same pay, subsistence, and allowance to which he may be entitled whilst in the actual service of the United States.” §14, 3Stat. 115, repealed in 1962 by Pub. L. 87–649, §14, 76Stat. 498. The 1814 Act clearly “command[ed] the payment of a specified amount of money by the United States,” Bowen v. Massachusetts, 487 U.S. 879, 923 (1988) (Scalia, J., dissenting), but did not designate a means of judicial relief in the event the Government failed to pay. 4 For purposes of this case, the current versions of the Tucker Act and Little Tucker Act resemble the 1887 Act. Compare 28 U. S. C. §1491(a)(1) (permitting suits “founded . . . upon . . . any Act of Congress”) with Tucker Act §1, 24Stat. 505 (permitting suits “founded upon . . . any law of Congress, except for pensions”). The prior functions of the Court of Claims are now divided between the Court of Federal Claims at the trial level and the Federal Circuit at the appellate. 5 We therefore need not resolve the parties’ disagreement about whether certain inconsistencies between the Little Tucker Act and FCRA can be reconciled. Compare 28 U. S. C. §1346(a)(2) (no claims in district court “exceeding $10,000 in amount”) with 15 U. S. C. §1681p (claims may be brought in district court “without regard to the amount in controversy”); compare 28 U. S. C. §2501 (claims must be filed in the Court of Federal Claims within six years of accrual) with 15 U. S. C. §1681p (claims under FCRA must be filed within the earlier of two years after discovery or five years after the alleged violation). Reconcilable or not, FCRA governs. The Government also contends that the Tucker Act does not apply because §§1681n and 1681o sound in tort. We do not decide the merits of that alternative argument.

569.US.597

Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure 11 governs guilty pleas. Rule 11(c)(1) instructs that “[t]he court must not participate in [plea] discussions,” and Rule 11(h) states that a “variance from the requirements of th[e] rule is harmless error if it does not affect substantial rights.” Rule 52(a), which covers trial court errors generally, similarly prescribes: “Any error . . . that does not affect substantial rights must be disregarded.” Respondent Davila, while under indictment on multiple tax fraud charges, wrote to the District Court, expressing dissatisfaction with his court-appointed attorney. Complaining that his attorney offered no defensive strategy, but simply advised him to plead guilty, Davila requested new counsel. A Magistrate Judge held an in camera hearing at which Davila and his attorney, but no representative of the United States, appeared. At the hearing, the Magistrate Judge told Davila that he would not get another court-appointed attorney and that his best course, given the strength of the Government’s case, was to plead guilty. More than three months later, Davila pleaded guilty to a conspiracy charge in exchange for dismissal of 33 other charges. He stated under oath before a U. S. District Judge that he had not been forced or pressured to enter the plea, and he did not mention the in camera hearing before the Magistrate Judge. Prior to sentencing, however, Davila moved to vacate his plea and dismiss the indictment, asserting that he had entered the plea for a “strategic” reason, i.e., to force the Government to acknowledge errors in the indictment. Finding that Davila’s plea had been knowing and voluntary, the District Judge denied the motion. Again, Davila said nothing of the in camera hearing conducted by the Magistrate Judge. On appeal, the Eleventh Circuit, following Circuit precedent, held that the Magistrate Judge’s violation of Rule 11(c)(1) required automatic vacatur of Davila’s guilty plea, obviating any need to inquire whether the error was prejudicial. Held: Under Rule 11(h), vacatur of the plea is not in order if the record shows no prejudice to Davila’s decision to plead guilty. Pp. 7–14. (a) Rule 11(c)(1)’s prohibition of judicial involvement in plea discussions was included in the 1974 Amendment to the Rule out of concern that a defendant might be induced to plead guilty rather than risk antagonizing the judge who would preside at trial. Rule 11(h) was added in the 1983 Amendment to make clear that Rule 11 errors are not excepted from Rule 52(a)’s harmless-error inquiry. Rule 52 also states, in subsection (b), that a “plain error that affects substantial rights may be considered even though it was not brought to the [trial] court’s attention.” When Rule 52(a) governs, the prosecution has the burden of showing harmlessness, but when Rule 52(b) controls, the defendant must show that the error affects substantial rights. See United States v. Vonn, 535 U.S. 55, 62. As clarified in Vonn and United States v. Dominguez Benitez, 542 U.S. 74, Rule 11 error may be of the Rule 52(a) type or the Rule 52(b) kind, depending on when the error was raised. In Vonn, the judge who conducted the plea hearing failed to inform the defendant, as required by Rule 11(c)(3), that he would have “the right to the assistance of counsel” if he proceeded to trial. The defendant first objected to the omission on appeal. This Court held that “a silent defendant has the burden to satisfy [Rule 52(b)’s] plain-error rule.” 535 U. S., at 59. In Dominguez Benitez, the error first raised on appeal was failure to warn the defendant, as Rule 11(c)(3)(B) instructs, that a plea could not be withdrawn even if the sentence imposed was higher than the plea-bargained sentence recommendation. The Court again held that Rule 52(b) controlled, and prescribed the standard a defendant silent until appeal must meet to show “plain error,” namely, “a reasonable probability that, but for the [Rule 11] error, he would not have entered the plea.” 542 U. S., at 83. Pp. 7–9. (b) Here, the Magistrate Judge plainly violated Rule 11(c)(1) by exhorting Davila to plead guilty. Davila contends that automatic vacatur, while inappropriate for most Rule 11 violations, should attend conduct banned by Rule 11(c)(1). He distinguishes plea-colloquy omissions, i.e., errors of the kind involved in Vonn and Dominguez Benitez, from pre-plea exhortations to admit guilt. The former come into play after a defendant has decided to plead guilty, the latter, before a defendant has decided to plead guilty or to stand trial. Nothing in Rule 11’s text, however, indicates that the ban on judicial involvement in plea discussions, if dishonored, demands automatic vacatur without regard to case-specific circumstances. Nor does the Advisory Committee commentary single out any Rule 11 instruction as more basic than others. And Rule 11(h), specifically designed to stop automatic vacaturs, calls for across-the-board application of the harmless-error prescription (or, absent prompt objection, the plain-error rule). Rule 11(c)(1) was adopted as a prophylactic measure, not one impelled by the Due Process Clause or any other constitutional requirement. Thus, violation of the Rule does not belong in the highly exceptional category of structural errors—e.g., denial of counsel of choice or denial of a public trial—that trigger automatic reversal because they undermine the fairness of the entire criminal proceeding. United States v. Marcus, 560 U.S. 258, ___. Instead, in assessing Rule 11 errors, a reviewing court must take account of all that transpired in the trial court. Had Davila’s guilty plea followed soon after the Magistrate Judge’s comments, the automatic-vacatur rule would have remained erroneous. The Court of Appeals’ mistake in that regard, however, might have been inconsequential, for the Magistrate Judge’s exhortations, if they immediately elicited a plea, would likely have qualified as prejudicial. Here, however, three months distanced the in camera meeting conducted by the Magistrate Judge from Davila’s appearance before the District Judge who examined and accepted his guilty plea after an exemplary Rule 11 colloquy, at which Davila had the opportunity to raise any questions he might have about matters relating to his plea. The Court of Appeals, therefore, should not have assessed the Magistrate Judge’s comments in isolation. Instead, it should have considered, in light of the full record, whether it was reasonably probable that, but for the Magistrate Judge’s comments, Davila would have exercised his right to go to trial. Pp. 10–14. (c) The Court of Appeals, having concluded that the Magistrate Judge’s comments violated Rule 11(c)(1), cut off further consideration. It did not engage in a full-record assessment of the particular facts of Davila’s case or the case-specific arguments raised by the parties, including the Government’s assertion that Davila was not prejudiced by the Magistrate Judge’s comments, and Davila’s contention that the extraordinary circumstances his case presents should allow his claim to be judged under Rule 52(a)’s harmless-error standard rather than Rule 52(b)’s plain-error standard. The Court decides only that the automatic-vacatur rule is incompatible with Rule 11(h) and leaves all remaining issues to be addressed on remand. P. 14. 664 F.3d 1355, vacated and remanded. Ginsburg, J., delivered the opinion of the Court, in which Roberts, C. J., and Kennedy, Breyer, Alito, Sotomayor, and Kagan, JJ., joined. Scalia, J., filed an opinion concurring in part and concurring in the judgment, in which Thomas, J., joined.

This case concerns Rule 11 of the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure, which governs guilty pleas. Two provisions of that rule are key here. The first, Rule 11(c)(1), instructs that “[t]he court must not participate in [plea] discussions.” The second, Rule 11(h), states: “A variance from the requirements of th[e] rule is harmless error if it does not affect substantial rights.” Rule 52(a), which covers trial court errors generally, similarly prescribes: “Any error . . . that does not affect substantial rights must be disregarded.” Anthony Davila, respondent here, entered a guilty plea to conspiracy to defraud the United States by filing false income tax returns. He maintains that he did so because a U. S. Magistrate Judge, at a pre-plea in camera hearing and in flagrant violation of Rule 11(c)(1), told him his best course, given the strength of the Government’s case, was to plead guilty. Three months later, Davila entered a plea on advice of counsel. The hearing on Davila’s plea, conducted by a U. S. District Judge, complied in all respects with Rule 11. The question presented is whether, as the Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit held, the violation of Rule 11(c)(1) by the Magistrate Judge warranted automatic vacatur of Davila’s guilty plea. We hold that Rule 11(h) controls. Under the inquiry that Rule instructs, vacatur of the plea is not in order if the record shows no prejudice to Davila’s decision to plead guilty. I In May 2009, a federal grand jury in the Southern District of Georgia returned a 34-count indictment against respondent Anthony Davila. The indictment charged that Davila filed over 120 falsified tax returns, receiving over $423,000 from the United States Treasury as a result of his fraudulent scheme. In January 2010, Davila sent a letter to the District Court expressing dissatisfaction with his court-appointed attorney and requesting new counsel. His attorney, Davila complained, offered no defensive strategy, “ ‘never mentioned a defense at all,’ ” but simply advised that he plead guilty.[1] In response to Davila’s letter, a U. S. Magistrate Judge held an in camera hearing at which Davila and his attorney, but no representative of the United States, appeared. At the start of the hearing, the Magistrate Judge told Davila that he was free to represent himself, but would not get another court-appointed attorney. See App. 148. Addressing Davila’s complaint that his attorney had advised him to plead guilty, the Magistrate Judge told Davila that “oftentimes . . . that is the best advice a lawyer can give his client.” Id., at 152. “In view of whatever the Government’s evidence in a case might be,” the judge continued, “it might be a good idea for the Defendant to accept responsibility for his criminal conduct[,] to plead guilty[,] and go to sentencing with the best arguments . . . still available [without] wasting the Court’s time, [and] causing the Government to have to spend a bunch of money empanelling a jury to try an open and shut case.” Ibid. As to Davila’s objection that his attorney had given him no options other than pleading guilty, the Magistrate Judge commented: “[T]here may not be a viable defense to these charges.” Id., at 155. The judge then urged Davila to cooperate in order to gain a downward departure from the sentence indicated by the Federal Sentencing Guidelines. “[T]ry to understand,” he counseled, “the Government, they have all of the marbles in this situation and they can file that . . . motion for [a] downward departure from the guidelines if they want to, you know, and the rules are constructed so that nobody can force them to file that [motion] for you. The only thing at your disposal that is entirely up to you is the two or three level reduction for acceptance of responsibility. That means you’ve got to go to the cross. You’ve got to tell the probation officer everything you did in this case regardless of how bad it makes you appear to be because that is the way you get that three-level reduction for acceptance, and believe me, Mr. Davila, someone with your criminal history needs a three-level reduction for acceptance.” Id., at 159–160. Davila’s Sentencing Guidelines range, the Magistrate Judge said, would “probably [be] pretty bad because [his] criminal history score would be so high.” Id., at 160. To reduce his sentencing exposure, the Magistrate Judge suggested, Davila could “cooperate with the Government in this or in other cases.” Ibid. As the hearing concluded, the judge again cautioned that “to get the [sentence] reduction for acceptance [of responsibility],” Davila had to “come to the cross”: “[T]hat two- or three-level reduction for acceptance is something that you have the key to and you can ensure that you get that reduction in sentence simply by virtue of being forthcoming and not trying to make yourself look like you really didn’t know what was going on. . . . You’ve got to go [to the cross] and you’ve got to tell it all, Brother, and convince that probation officer that you are being as open and honest with him as you can possibly be because then he will go to the [D]istrict [J]udge and he will say, you know, that Davila guy, he’s got a long criminal history but when we were in there talking about this case he gave it all up so give him the two-level, give him the three-level reduction.” Id., at 160–161. Nearly a month after the in camera hearing, Davila filed a motion demanding a speedy trial. The District Court set a trial date for April 2010, which was continued at the Government’s request. In May 2010, more than three months after the hearing before the Magistrate Judge, Davila agreed to plead guilty to the conspiracy charge in exchange for dismissal of the other 33 counts charged in the indictment. Davila entered his guilty plea before a U. S. District Judge six days later. Under oath, Davila stated that he had not been forced or pressured to plead guilty. Id., at 122. Davila did not mention the in camera hearing before the Magistrate Judge, and the record does not indicate whether the District Judge was aware that the pre-plea hearing had taken place. See id., at 82–99, 115–125. Before he was sentenced, Davila moved to vacate his plea and to dismiss the indictment. The reason for his plea, Davila asserted, was “strategic.” Id., at 58. Aware that the prosecutor had a duty to disclose all information relevant to the court’s determination whether to accept the plea bargain, he stated that his purpose in entering the plea was to force the Government to acknowledge timeframe errors made in the indictment. Id., at 58–59. By pleading guilty, Davila said, he would make the court aware that the prosecution was “vindictive.” Id., at 59. The District Judge denied Davila’s motion. In so ruling, the court observed that, at the plea hearing, Davila had affirmed that he was under no “pressure, threats, or promises, other than promises [made] by the government in the plea agreement.” Id., at 70. Furthermore, he had been fully advised of his rights and the consequences of his plea. Id., at 71. It was therefore clear to the District Judge, who had himself presided at the plea hearing, that Davila’s guilty plea “was knowing and voluntary.” Id., at 72. In view of Davila’s extensive criminal history, the court sentenced him to a prison term of 115 months. Id., at 75–77. Again, neither Davila nor the court mentioned the in camera hearing conducted by the Magistrate Judge. Id., at 55–80. On appeal, Davila’s court-appointed attorney sought leave to withdraw from the case, asserting, in a brief filed pursuant to Anders v. California, 386 U.S. 738 (1967), that there were no issues of arguable merit to be raised on Davila’s behalf. The Eleventh Circuit denied counsel’s motion without prejudice to renewal. App. to Pet. for Cert. 6a–8a. It did so based on a discovery the appeals court made upon “independent review” of the record. That review “revealed an irregularity in the statements of a magistrate judge, made during a hearing prior to Davila’s plea, which appeared to urge [him] to cooperate and be candid about his criminal conduct to obtain favorable sentencing consequences.” Id., at 7a. The court requested counsel to address whether the “irregularity” constituted reversible error under Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure 11(c)(1). Id., at 7a–8a. Following the court’s instruction, counsel filed a brief arguing that Davila’s plea should be set aside due to the Magistrate Judge’s comments. In response, the Government conceded that those comments violated Rule 11(c)(1). Even so, the Government urged, given the three-month gap between the comments and the plea, and the fact that a different judge presided over Davila’s plea and sentencing hearings, no adverse effect on Davila’s substantial rights could be demonstrated. Pursuant to Circuit precedent, the appeals court held that the Rule 11(c)(1) violation required automatic vacatur of Davila’s guilty plea. Under the Circuit’s “bright line rule,” the court explained, there was no need to inquire whether the error was, in fact, prejudicial. 664 F.3d 1355, 1359 (CA11 2011) (per curiam). We granted certiorari to resolve a Circuit conflict concerning the consequences of a Rule 11(c)(1) violation. 568 U. S. ___ (2013).[2] II Rule 11(c)(1)’s prohibition of judicial involvement in plea discussions was introduced as part of the 1974 Amendment to the Rule. See Advisory Committee’s 1974 Note on Subd. (e)(1) of Fed. Rule Crim. Proc. 11, 18 U. S. C. App., p. 1420 (1976 ed.) (hereinafter Advisory Committee’s 1974 Note).[3] As the Advisory Committee’s note explains, commentators had observed, prior to the amendment, that judicial participation in plea negotiations was “common practice.” Id., at 1420 (citing D. Newman, Conviction: The Determination of Guilt or Innocence Without Trial 32–52, 78–104 (1966); Note, Guilty Plea Bargaining: Compromises by Prosecutors to Secure Guilty Pleas, 112 U. Pa. L. Rev. 865, 891, 905 (1964)). Nonetheless, the prohibition was included out of concern that a defendant might be induced to plead guilty rather than risk displeasing the judge who would preside at trial. Advisory Committee’s 1974 Note 1420. Moreover, the Advisory Committee anticipated, barring judicial involvement in plea discussions would facilitate objective assessments of the voluntariness of a defendant’s plea. Ibid. Added as a part of the 1983 Amendment, Rule 11(h) provides that “a variance from the requirements of [Rule 11] is harmless error if it does not affect substantial rights.” Subsection (h), the Advisory Committee’s note informs, “rejects the extreme sanction of automatic reversal” for Rule 11 violations and clarifies that Rule 52(a)’s harmlessness inquiry applies to plea errors. Advisory Committee’s 1983 Note on Subd. (h) of Fed. Rule Crim. Proc. 11, 18 U. S. C. App., pp. 749, 751 (1988 ed.) (hereinafter Advisory Committee’s 1983 Note). The addition of subsection (h) was prompted by lower court over-readings of McCarthy v. United States, 394 U.S. 459 (1969). That decision called for vacatur of a guilty plea accepted by the trial court without any inquiry into the defendant’s understanding of the nature of the charge. The Advisory Committee explained that subsection (h) would deter reading McCarthy “as meaning that the general harmless error provision in Rule 52(a) cannot be utilized with respect to Rule 11 proceedings.” Advisory Committee’s 1983 Note 751. Substantial compliance with Rule 11 would remain the requirement, but the new subsection would guard against exalting “ceremony . . . over substance.” Id., at 749. For trial court errors generally, Rule 52(a) states that “[a]ny error, defect, irregularity, or variance that does not affect substantial rights must be disregarded.” Rule 11(h), as just noted, was designed to make it clear that Rule 11 errors are not excepted from that general Rule. Advisory Committee’s 1983 Note 749. Rule 52, in addition to stating the “harmless-error rule” in subsection (a), also states, in subsection (b), the “plain-error rule,” applicable when a defendant fails to object to the error in the trial court. Rule 52(b) states: “A plain error that affects substantial rights may be considered even though it was not brought to the [trial] court’s attention.” When Rule 52(a)’s “harmless-error rule” governs, the prosecution bears the burden of showing harmlessness. See United States v. Vonn, 535 U.S. 55, 62 (2002). When Rule 52(b) controls, the defendant must show that the error affects substantial rights. Ibid. In two cases, United States v. Vonn, 535 U.S. 55, and United States v. Dominguez Benitez, 542 U.S. 74 (2004), this Court clarified that a Rule 11 error may be of the Rule 52(a) type, or it may be of the Rule 52(b) kind, depending on when the error was raised. In Vonn, the judge who conducted the plea hearing failed to inform the defendant, as required by Rule 11, that he would have “the right to the assistance of counsel” if he proceeded to trial. See Fed. Rule Crim. Proc. 11(c)(3) (2000).[4] The defendant first objected to the omission on appeal. We addressed the question “whether a defendant who lets Rule 11 error pass without objection in the trial court must carry the burdens of Rule 52(b) or whether even the silent defendant can put the Government to the burden of proving the Rule 11 error harmless.” 535 U. S., at 58. The Defendant in Vonn had urged that “importation of [Rule 52(a)’s] harmless-error standard into Rule 11(h) without its companion plain-error rule was meant to eli- minate a silent defendant’s burdens under . . . Rule 52(b).” Id., at 63. This Court rejected the defendant’s argu- ment and held that “a silent defendant has the burden to satisfy the plain-error rule.” Id., at 59. In Dominguez Benitez, the Court addressed what the silent defendant’s burden entailed. The judge presiding at the plea hearing in that case failed to warn the defendant, as Rule 11(c)(3)(B) directs, that he would not be permitted to withdraw his guilty plea even if the court did not ac- cept the plea-bargained sentencing recommendation. 542 U. S., at 79. As in Vonn, the error was first raised on appeal. 542 U. S., at 79. This Court again held that Rule 52(b) was controlling. Id., at 82. Stressing “the particular importance of the finality of guilty pleas,” ibid., the Court prescribed the standard a defendant complaining of a Rule 11 violation must meet to show “plain error”: “[A] defendant who seeks reversal of his conviction after a guilty plea, on the ground that the district court committed plain error under Rule 11, must show a reasonable probability that, but for the error, he would not have entered the plea.” Id., at 83. III In Davila’s case, the Government acknowledged in this Court, as it did before the Eleventh Circuit, that the Magistrate Judge violated Rule 11(c)(1) by improperly participating in plea discussions. As the excerpts from the in camera hearing, set out supra, at 2–4, show, there is no room for doubt on that score. The Magistrate Judge’s repeated exhortations to Davila to “tell it all” in order to obtain a more favorable sentence, see App. 157–160, were indeed beyond the pale. Did that misconduct in itself demand vacatur of Davila’s plea, as the Eleventh Circuit held, or, as the Government urges, must a reviewing court consider all that transpired in the trial court in order to assess the impact of the error on the defendant’s decision to plead guilty? We hold that the latter inquiry is the one the Rules and our precedent require. Davila contends that automatic vacatur, while inappropriate for most Rule 11 violations, should attend conduct banned by Rule 11(c)(1). He distinguishes plea-colloquy omissions, i.e., errors of the kind involved in Vonn and Dominguez Benitez, from pre-plea exhortations to admit guilt. Plea-colloquy requirements come into play after a defendant has agreed to plead guilty. The advice and questions now specified in Rules 11(b) and 11(c)(3)(B), Davila observes, are designed to ensure that a defendant’s plea is fully informed and intelligently made. Errors or omissions in following Rule 11’s plea-colloquy instructions, Davila recognizes, are properly typed procedural, and are therefore properly assessed under the harmless-error instruction of Rule 11(h). Rule 11(c)(1)’s prohibition on judicial participation in plea discussions, in contrast, becomes operative before a defendant has decided whether to plead guilty or to stand trial. The Rule serves a more basic purpose, Davila urges, one “central to the proper functioning of the criminal process.” Brief for Respondent 18. Therefore, “the remedial analysis that applies to violations of . . . procedural provisions does not and should not apply to th[is] distinct class of error.” Id., at 16. Violations of Rule 11(c)(1), Davila elaborates, heighten the risk that a defendant’s plea will be coerced or pressured, and not genuinely an exercise of free will. When a judge conveys his belief that pleading guilty would be to a defendant’s advantage, Davila adds, the judge becomes, in effect, a second prosecutor, depriving the defendant of the impartial arbiter to which he is entitled. “Rule 11(c)(1)’s bright-line prohibition on judicial exhortations to plead guilty,” Davila concludes, is “no mere procedural technicality,” id., at 21, for such exhortations inevitably and incurably infect the ensuing pretrial process. Id., at 43. Nothing in Rule 11’s text, however, indicates that the ban on judicial involvement in plea discussions, if dishonored, demands automatic vacatur of the plea without regard to case-specific circumstances. The prohibition appears in subsection (c), headed “Plea Agreement Procedure.” See Fed. Rule Crim. Proc. 11(c). That subsection affirms that the prosecution and defense attorney (or the defendant when proceeding pro se) “may discuss and reach a plea agreement.” Rule 11(c)(1). Further, Rule 11(c) describes permissible types of plea agreements, see Rule 11(c)(1)(A)–(C), and addresses the court’s consideration, acceptance, or rejection of a proffered agreement, see Rule 11(c)(3)–(5). In recommending the disallowance of judicial participation in plea negotiations now contained in subsection (c)(1), the Advisory Committee stressed that a defendant might be induced to plead guilty to avoid antagonizing the judge who would preside at trial. See Advisory Committee’s 1974 Note 1420. But the Committee nowhere suggested that violation of Rule 11(c)(1) is necessarily an error graver than, for example, the error in Dominguez Benitez, i.e., the failure to tell a defendant that the plea would bind him even if the sentence imposed significantly exceeded in length the term of years stated in the plea bargain. As earlier noted, see supra, at 7, the Committee pointed to commentary describing judicial engagement in plea bargaining as a once “common practice,”[5] and it observed that, in particular cases, questions may arise “[a]s to what . . . constitute[s] ‘participation.’ ” Advisory Committee’s 1974 Note 1420. In short, neither Rule 11 itself, nor the Advisory Committee’s commentary on the Rule singles out any instruction as more basic than others. And Rule 11(h), specifically designed to stop automatic vacaturs, calls for across-the-board application of the harmless-error prescription (or, absent prompt objection, the plain-error rule). See supra, at 7–8. Rule 11(c)(1) was adopted as a prophylactic measure, see supra, at 7, not one impelled by the Due Process Clause or any other constitutional requirement. See 664 F. 3d, at 1359 (recognizing that Rule 11(c)(1) is part of a “prophylactic scheme”). We have characterized as “structural” “a very limited class of errors” that trigger automatic reversal because they undermine the fairness of a crim- inal proceeding as a whole. United States v. Marcus, 560 U.S. 258, ___ (2010) (slip op., at 4–5) (internal quotation marks omitted). Errors of this kind include denial of counsel of choice, denial of self-representation, denial of a public trial, and failure to convey to a jury that guilt must be proved beyond a reasonable doubt. See, e.g., United States v. Gonzalez-Lopez, 548 U.S. 140, 150 (2006) (ranking “deprivation of the right to counsel of choice” as “ ‘structural error’ ”). Rule 11(c)(1) error does not belong in that highly exceptional category. See Neder v. United States, 527 U.S. 1, 7 (1999) (structural errors are “fundamental constitutional errors that ‘defy analysis by “harmless error” standards’ ” (quoting Arizona v. Fulminante, 499 U.S. 279, 309 (1991)). Had Davila’s guilty plea followed soon after the Magistrate Judge told Davila that pleading guilty might be “the best advice” a lawyer could give him, see App. 152, this case may not have warranted our attention. The automatic-vacatur rule would have remained erroneous, but the Court of Appeals’ mistake might have been inconsequential. See Tr. of Oral Arg. 47 (Counsel for the Government acknowledged that if there is a “serious [Rule 11(c)(1)] error,” and the defendant pleads guilty “right after that,” the error would likely qualify as prejudicial). Our essential point is that particular facts and circumstances matter. Three months distanced the in camera meeting with the Magistrate Judge from Davila’s appearance before the District Judge who examined and accepted his guilty plea and later sentenced him. Nothing in the record shows that the District Judge knew of the in camera hearing. After conducting an exemplary Rule 11 colloquy, the judge inquired: “Mr. Davila, has anyone forced or pressured you to plead guilty today?,” to which Davila responded: “No, sir.” App. 122. At the time of the plea hearing, there was no blending of judicial and prosecutorial functions. Given the opportunity to raise any questions he might have about matters relating to his plea, Davila simply affirmed that he wished to plead guilty to the conspiracy count. When he later explained why he elected to plead guilty, he said nothing of the Magistrate Judge’s exhortations. Instead, he called the decision “strategic,” designed to get the prosecutor to correct misinformation about the conspiracy count. Id., at 58–59, 61. Rather than automatically vacating Davila’s guilty plea because of the Rule 11(c)(1) violation, the Court of Appeals should have considered whether it was reasonably probable that, but for the Magistrate Judge’s exhortations, Davila would have exercised his right to go to trial. In answering that question, the Magistrate Judge’s comments should be assessed, not in isolation, but in light of the full record. IV The Court of Appeals did not engage in that full-record assessment here. Rather, the court cut off consideration of the particular facts of Davila’s case upon concluding that the Magistrate Judge’s comments violated Rule 11(c)(1). That pretermission kept the court from reaching case-specific arguments raised by the parties, including the Government’s assertion that Davila was not prejudiced by the Magistrate Judge’s comments, and Davila’s contention that the extraordinary circumstances his case presents should allow his claim to be judged under the harmless-error standard of Rule 52(a) rather than the plain-error standard of Rule 52(b), the rule that ordinarily attends a defendant’s failure to object to a Rule 11 violation. See supra, at 8; 664 F. 3d, at 1358 (citing United States v. Moriarty, 429 F.3d 1012, 1019 (CA11 2005) (per curiam)). Having explained why automatic vacatur of a guilty plea is incompatible with Rule 11(h), see supra, at 11–13 and this page, we leave all remaining issues to be addressed by the Court of Appeals on remand. * * * The judgment of the Court of Appeals is vacated, and the case is remanded for further proceedings consistent with this opinion. It is so ordered. Notes 1 See Brief for Appellee in No. 10–15319–I (CA11), p. 3 (quoting Record (Exh. B)). 2 Compare United States v. Bradley, 455 F.3d 453, 461 (CA4 2006) (Rule 11(c) errors are not structural and are subject to plain-error review); United States v. Pagan-Ortega, 372 F.3d 22, 27–28 (CA1 2004) (“[A] facially appealing claim of improper judicial participation in a plea proceeding prior to its solemnization in writing did not, on close analysis, demonstrate a basic unfairness and lack of integrity in the proceeding.”); United States v. Ebel, 299 F.3d 187, 191 (CA3 2002) (“[W]hen Rule 11 error has been committed in the taking of a guilty plea, we can consider the record as a whole to determine whether, under Rule 11(h), [the defendant’s] substantial rights were affected.”); United States v. Kraus, 137 F.3d 447, 457–458 (CA7 1998) (applying harmless-error review); and United States v. Miles, 10 F.3d 1135, 1140–1141 (CA5 1993) (“Rule 11(h) . . . compel[s] harmless error review.”), with 664 F.3d 1355 (CA11 2011) (this case); United States v. Anderson, 993 F.2d 1435, 1438–1439 (CA9 1993) (“Rule 11’s ban [on judicial involvement in plea negotiations is] an absolute command which admits of no exceptions.” (internal quotation marks omitted)); and United States v. Barrett, 982 F.2d 193, 196 (CA6 1992) (“This court’s role is not to weigh the judge’s statements to determine whether they were so oppressive as to abrogate the voluntariness of the plea.”). 3 As originally enacted, the prohibition of court participation in plea discussions was found in Rule 11(e)(1). See Fed. Rule Crim. Proc. 11(e)(1) (1976). 4 The requirement that the judge inform the defendant that he has “the right to be represented by counsel” is currently found in Rule 11(b)(1)(D). 5 For state provisions permitting at least some judicial participation in plea bargaining, see, e.g., N. C. Gen. Stat. Ann. §15A–1021(a) (Lexis 2011); Idaho Crim. Rule 11(f) (2012); Vt. Rule Crim. Proc. 11 Reporter’s Notes (2003 and Supp. 2012).

570.US.387

Respondent Kebodeaux was convicted by a special court-martial of a federal sex offense. After serving his sentence and receiving a bad conduct discharge from the Air Force, he moved to Texas where he registered with state authorities as a sex offender. Congress subsequently enacted the Sex Offender Registration and Notification Act (SORNA), which requires federal sex offenders to register in the States where they live, study, and work, 42 U. S. C. §16913(a), and which applies to offenders who, when SORNA became law, had already completed their sentences, 28 CFR §72.3. When Kebodeaux moved within Texas and failed to update his registration, the Federal Government prosecuted him under SORNA, and the District Court convicted him. The Fifth Circuit reversed, noting that, at the time of SORNA’s enactment, Kebodeaux had served his sentence and was no longer in any special relationship with the Federal Government. Believing that Kebodeaux was not required to register under the pre-SORNA Jacob Wetterling Crimes Against Children and Sexually Violent Offender Registration Act, the court found that he had been “unconditionally” freed. That being so, the court held, the Federal Government lacked the power under Article I’s Necessary and Proper Clause to regulate his intrastate movements. Held: SORNA’s registration requirements as applied to Kebodeaux fall within the scope of Congress’ authority under the Necessary and Proper Clause. Pp. 3–12. (a) Contrary to the Fifth Circuit’s critical assumption that Kebodeaux’s release was unconditional, a full reading of the relevant statutes and regulations makes clear that at the time of his offense and conviction he was subject to the Wetterling Act, which imposed upon him registration requirements very similar to SORNA’s. See, e.g., 42 U. S. C. §§14072(i)(3)–(4). The fact that these federal-law requirements in part involved compliance with state-law requirements made them no less requirements of federal law. See generally United States v. Sharpnack, 355 U.S. 286, 293–294. Pp. 3–6. (b) Congress promulgated the Wetterling Act under authority granted by the Military Regulation Clause, Art. I, §8, cl. 14, and the Necessary and Proper Clause. The same power that authorized Congress to promulgate the Uniform Code of Military Justice and punish Kebodeaux’s crime also authorized Congress to make the civil registration requirement at issue here a consequence of his conviction. And its decision to impose a civil registration requirement that would apply upon the release of an offender like Kebodeaux is eminently reasonable. See Smith v. Doe, 538 U.S. 84, 102–103. It was also entirely reasonable for Congress to have assigned a special role to the Federal Government in ensuring compliance with federal sex offender registration requirements. See Carr v. United States, 560 U.S. 438, ___. Thus, Congress did not apply SORNA to an individual who had, prior to its enactment, been “unconditionally released,” but rather to an individual already subject to federal registration requirements enacted pursuant to the Military Regulation and Necessary and Proper Clauses. SORNA somewhat modified the applicable registration requirements to which Kebodeaux was already subject, in order to make more uniform what had remained “a patchwork of federal and 50 individual state registration requirements,” Reynolds v. United States, 565 U. S. ___, ___. No one here claims that these changes are unreasonable or that Congress could not reasonably have found them “necessary and proper” means for furthering its pre-existing registration ends. Pp. 6–12. 687 F.3d 232, reversed and remanded. Breyer, J., delivered the opinion of the Court, in which Kennedy, Ginsburg, Sotomayor, and Kagan, JJ., joined. Roberts, C. J., and Alito, J., filed opinions concurring in the judgment. Scalia, J., filed a dissenting opinion. Thomas, J., filed a dissenting opinion, in which Scalia, J., joined as to Parts I, II, and III–B.

In 1999 a special court-martial convicted Anthony Kebo- deaux, a member of the United States Air Force, of a sex offense. It imposed a sentence of three months’ imprisonment and a bad conduct discharge. In 2006, several years after Kebodeaux had served his sentence and been discharged, Congress enacted the Sex Offender Registration and Notification Act (SORNA), 120Stat. 590, 42 U. S. C. §16901 et seq., a federal statute that requires those convicted of federal sex offenses to register in the States where they live, study, and work. §16913(a); 18 U. S. C. §2250(a). And, by regulation, the Federal Government made clear that SORNA’s registration requirements ap- ply to federal sex offenders who, when SORNA became law, had already completed their sentences. 42 U. S. C. §16913(d) (Attorney General’s authority to issue regulations); 28 CFR §72.3 (2012) (regulation specifying application to pre-SORNA offenders). We here must decide whether the Constitution’s Necessary and Proper Clause grants Congress the power to enact SORNA’s registration requirements and apply them to a federal offender who had completed his sentence prior to the time of SORNA’s enactment. For purposes of answering this question, we assume that Congress has complied with the Constitution’s Ex Post Facto and Due Process Clauses. See Smith v. Doe, 538 U. S. 84 –106 (2003) (upholding a similar Alaska statute against ex post facto challenge); Supp. Brief for Kebodeaux on Rehearing En Banc in No. 08–51185 (CA5) (not raising any Due Process challenge); Brief for Respondent (same). We conclude that the Necessary and Proper Clause grants Congress adequate power to enact SORNA and to apply it here. I As we have just said, in 1999 a special court-martial convicted Kebodeaux, then a member of the Air Force, of a federal sex offense. He served his 3-month sentence; the Air Force released him with a bad conduct discharge. And then he moved to Texas. In 2004 Kebodeaux registered as a sex offender with Texas state authorities. Brief for Respondent 6–7. In 2006 Congress enacted SORNA. In 2007 Kebodeaux moved within Texas from San Antonio to El Paso, updating his sex offender registration. App. to Pet. for Cert. 167a–168a. But later that year he returned to San Antonio without making the legally required sex-offender registration changes. Id., at 169a. And the Federal Government, acting under SORNA, prosecuted Kebodeaux for this last-mentioned SORNA registration failure. A Federal District Court convicted Kebodeaux of having violated SORNA. See 687 F. 3d 232, 234 (CA5 2012) (en banc). On appeal a panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit initially upheld the conviction. 647 F. 3d 137 (2011) (per curiam). But the Circuit then heard the appeal en banc and, by a vote of 10 to 6, reversed. 687 F. 3d, at 234. The court stated that, by the time Congress enacted SORNA, Kebodeaux had “fully served” his sex-offense sentence; he was “no longer in federal custody, in the military, under any sort of supervised release or parole, or in any other special relationship with the federal government.” Ibid. The court recognized that, even before SORNA, federal law required certain federal sex offenders to register. Id., at 235, n. 4. See Jacob Wetterling Crimes Against Children and Sexually Violent Offender Registration Act, §170101, 108Stat. 2038–2042. But it believed that the pre-SORNA federal registration requirements did not apply to Kebodeaux. 687 F. 3d, at 235, n. 4. Hence, in the Circuit’s view, Kebodeaux had been “unconditionally let . . . free.” Id., at 234. And, that being so, the Federal Government lacked the power under Article I’s Necessary and Proper Clause to regulate through registration Kebo- deaux’s intrastate movements. Id., at 234–235. In particular, the court said that after “the federal government has unconditionally let a person free . . . the fact that he once committed a crime is not a jurisdictional basis for subsequent regulation and possible criminal prosecution.” Ibid. The Solicitor General sought certiorari. And, in light of the fact that a Federal Court of Appeals has held a federal statute unconstitutional, we granted the petition. See, e.g., United States v. Morrison, 529 U. S. 598, 605 (2000) ; United States v. Edge Broadcasting Co., 509 U. S. 418, 425 (1993) . II We do not agree with the Circuit’s conclusion. And, in explaining our reasons, we need not go much further than the Circuit’s critical assumption that Kebodeaux’s release was “unconditional,” i.e., that after Kebodeaux’s release, he was not in “any . . . special relationship with the fed- eral government.” 687 F. 3d, at 234. To the contrary, the Solicitor General, tracing through a complex set of statutory cross-references, has pointed out that at the time of his offense and conviction Kebodeaux was subject to the federal Wetterling Act, an Act that imposed upon him registration requirements very similar to those that SORNA later mandated. Brief for United States 18–29. Congress enacted the Wetterling Act in 1994 and up- dated it several times prior to Kebodeaux’s offense. Like SORNA, it used the federal spending power to encourage States to adopt sex offender registration laws. 42 U. S. C. §14071(i) (2000 ed.); Smith, supra, at 89–90. Like SORNA, it applied to those who committed federal sex crimes. §14071(b)(7)(A). And like SORNA, it imposed federal penalties upon federal sex offenders who failed to register in the States in which they lived, worked, and studied. §§14072(i)(3)–(4). In particular, §14072(i)(3) imposed federal criminal penalties upon any “person who is . . . described in section 4042(c)(4) of title 18, and knowingly fails to register in any State in which the person resides.” The cross-referenced §4042(c)(4) said that a “person is described in this paragraph if the person was convicted of” certain enumerated offenses or “[a]ny other offense designated by the Attorney General as a sexual offense for purposes of this subsection.” 18 U. S. C. §4042(c)(4). In 1998 the Attorney General “delegated this authority [to designate sex offenses] to the Director of the Bureau of Prisons.” Dept. of Justice, Bureau of Prisons, Designation of Offenses Subject to Sex Offender Release Notification, 63 Fed. Reg. 69386. And that same year the Director of the Bureau of Prisons “designate[d]” the offense of which Kebodeaux was convicted, namely the military offense of “carnal knowledge” as set forth in Article 120(B) of the Code of Military Justice. Id., at 69387 See 28 CFR §571.72(b)(2) (1999). A full reading of these documents makes clear that, contrary to Kebodeaux’s contention, the relevant penalty applied to crimes committed by military personnel. Moreover, a different Wetterling Act section imposed federal criminal penalties upon any “person who is . . . sentenced by a court martial for conduct in a category specified by the Secretary of Defense under section 115(a)(8)(C) of title I of Public Law 105–119, and know- ingly fails to register in any State in which the person resides.” 42 U. S. C. §14072(i)(4) (2000 ed.). The cross-referenced section, §115(a)(8)(C), said that the “Secretary of Defense shall specify categories of conduct punishable under the Uniform Code of Military Justice which encompass a range of conduct comparable to that described in [certain provisions of the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994], and such other conduct as the Secretary deems appropriate.” 1998 Appropriations Act, §115(a)(8)(C)(i), 111Stat. 2466. See note following 10 U. S. C. §951 (2000 ed.). The Secretary had delegated certain types of authority, such as this last mentioned “deem[ing]” authority, to an Assistant Secretary of Defense. DoD Directive 5124.5, p. 4 (Oct. 31, 1994). And in December 1998 an Assistant Secretary, acting pursuant to this authority, published a list of military crimes that included the crime of which Kebodeaux was convicted, namely Article 120(B) of the Uniform Code of Military Justice. App. to Pet. for Cert. 171a–175a. The provision added that “[c]onvictions . . . shall trigger requirements to notify state and local law enforcement agencies and to provide information to inmates concerning sex offender registration requirements.” Id., at 175a. And, the provision says (contrary to Kebodeaux’s reading, Brief for Respondent 57), that it shall “take effect immediately.” It contains no expiration date. App. to Pet. for Cert. 175a. We are not aware of any plausible counterargument to the obvious conclusion, namely that as of the time of Kebo- deaux’s offense, conviction and release from federal custody, these Wetterling Act provisions applied to Kebo- deaux and imposed upon him registration requirements very similar to those that SORNA later imposed. Con- trary to what the Court of Appeals may have believed, the fact that the federal law’s requirements in part involved compliance with state-law requirements made them no less requirements of federal law. See generally United States v. Sharpnack, 355 U. S. 286 –294 (1958) (Congress has the power to adopt as federal law the laws of a State and to apply them in federal enclaves); Gibbons v. Ogden, 9 Wheat. 1, 207–208 (1824) (“Although Congress cannot enable a State to legislate, Congress may adopt the provisions of a State on any subject. . . . The act [adopts state systems for regulation of pilots] and gives [them] the same validity as if its provisions had been specially made by Congress”). III Both the Court of Appeals and Kebodeaux come close to conceding that if, as of the time of Kebodeaux’s offense, he was subject to a federal registration requirement, then the Necessary and Proper Clause authorized Congress to modify the requirement as in SORNA and to apply the modified requirement to Kebodeaux. See 687 F. 3d, at 234–235, and n. 4; Tr. of Oral Arg. 38–39. And we believe they would be right to make this concession. No one here claims that the Wetterling Act, as applied to military sex offenders like Kebodeaux, falls outside the scope of the Necessary and Proper Clause. And it is difficult to see how anyone could persuasively do so. The Constitution explicitly grants Congress the power to “make Rules for the . . . Regulation of the land and naval Forces.” Art. I, §8, cl. 14. And, in the Necessary and Proper Clause itself, it grants Congress the power to “make all Laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into Execution the foregoing Powers” and “all other Powers” that the Constitution vests “in the Government of the United States, or in any Department or Officer thereof.” Id., cl. 18. The scope of the Necessary and Proper Clause is broad. In words that have come to define that scope Chief Justice Marshall long ago wrote: “Let the end be legitimate, let it be within the scope of the constitution, and all means which are appropriate, which are plainly adapted to that end, which are not prohibited, but consist with the letter and spirit of the constitution, are constitutional.” McCulloch v. Maryland, 4 Wheat. 316, 421 (1819). As we have come to understand these words and the provision they explain, they “leav[e] to Congress a large discretion as to the means that may be employed in executing a given power.” Lottery Case, 188 U. S. 321, 355 (1903) . See Morrison, 529 U. S., at 607. The Clause allows Congress to “adopt any means, appearing to it most eligible and appropriate, which are adapted to the end to be accomplished and consistent with the letter and spirit of the Constitution.” James Everard’s Breweries v. Day, 265 U. S. 545, 559 (1924) . The Constitution, for example, makes few explicit references to federal criminal law, but the Necessary and Proper Clause nonetheless authorizes Congress, in the im- plementation of other explicit powers, to create federal crimes, to confine offenders to prison, to hire guards and other prison personnel, to provide prisoners with medical care and educational training, to ensure the safety of those who may come into contact with prisoners, to ensure the public’s safety through systems of parole and supervised release, and, where a federal prisoner’s mental condition so requires, to confine that prisoner civilly after the expiration of his or her term of imprisonment. See United States v. Comstock, 560 U. S. 126 –137 (2010). Here, under the authority granted to it by the Military Regulation and Necessary and Proper Clauses, Congress could promulgate the Uniform Code of Military Justice. It could specify that the sex offense of which Kebodeaux was convicted was a military crime under that Code. It could punish that crime through imprisonment and by placing conditions upon Kebodeaux’s release. And it could make the civil registration requirement at issue here a consequence of Kebodeaux’s offense and conviction. This civil requirement, while not a specific condition of Kebodeaux’s release, was in place at the time Kebodeaux committed his offense, and was a consequence of his violation of federal law. And Congress’ decision to impose such a civil requirement that would apply upon the release of an offender like Kebodeaux is eminently reasonable. Congress could reasonably conclude that registration requirements applied to federal sex offenders after their release can help protect the public from those federal sex offenders and alleviate public safety concerns. See Smith, 538 U. S., at 102–103 (sex offender registration has “a legitimate nonpunitive purpose of ‘public safety, which is advanced by alerting the public to the risk of sex offenders in their community’ ”). There is evidence that recidivism rates among sex offenders are higher than the average for other types of criminals. See Dept. of Justice, Bureau of Justice Statistics, P. Langan, E. Schmitt, & M. Durose, Recidivism of Sex Offenders Released in 1994, p. 1 (Nov. 2003) (reporting that compared to non-sex offenders, released sex offenders were four times more likely to be rearrested for a sex crime, and that within the first three years following release 5.3% of released sex offenders were rearrested for a sex crime). There is also conflicting evidence on the point. Cf. R. Tewsbury, W. Jennings, & K. Zgoba, Final Report on Sex Offenders: Recidivism and Collateral Consequences (Sept. 2011) (concluding that sex offenders have relatively low rates of recidivism, and that registration requirements have limited observable benefits regarding recidivism). But the Clause gives Congress the power to weigh the evidence and to reach a rational conclusion, for example, that safety needs justify postrelease registration rules. See Lambert v. Yellowley, 272 U. S. 581 – 595 (1926) (upholding congressional statute limiting the amount of spirituous liquor that may be prescribed by a physician, and noting that Congress’ “finding [regard- ing the appropriate amount], in the presence of the well-known diverging opinions of physicians, cannot be regarded as arbitrary or without a reasonable basis”). See also Gonzales v. Raich, 545 U. S. 1, 22 (2005) (“In assessing the scope of Congress’ authority under the Commerce Clause, we stress that the task before us is a modest one. We need not determine whether respondents’ activities, taken in the aggregate, substantially affect interstate commerce in fact, but only whether a ‘rational basis’ exists for so concluding”). See also H. R. Rep. No. 109–218, pt. 1, pp. 22, 23 (2005) (House Report) (citing statistics compiled by the Justice Department as support for SORNA’s sex offender registration regime). At the same time, “it is entirely reasonable for Congress to have assigned the Federal Government a special role in ensuring compliance with SORNA’s registration requirements by federal sex offenders—persons who typically would have spent time under federal criminal supervision.” Carr v. United States, 560 U. S. 438 , ___ (2010) (slip op., at 12). The Federal Government has long kept track of former federal prisoners through probation, parole, and supervised release in part to prevent further crimes thereby protecting the public against the risk of recidivism. See Parole Act, 36Stat. 819; Probation Act, ch. 521, 43Stat. 1259; Sentencing Reform Act of 1984, ch. II, 98Stat. 1987. See also 1 N. Cohen, The Law of Probation and Parole §§7:3, 7:4 (2d ed. 1999) (principal purposes of postrelease conditions are to rehabilitate the convict, thus preventing him from recidivating, and to protect the public). Neither, as of 1994, was registration particularly novel, for by then States had implemented similar requirements for close to half a century. See W. Logan, Knowledge as Power: Criminal Registration and Community Notification Laws in America 30–31 (2009). Moreover, the Wetterling Act took state interests into account by, for the most part, requiring released federal offenders to register in accordance with state law. At the same time, the Wetterling Act’s requirements were reasonably narrow and precise, tying time limits to the type of sex offense, incorporating state-law details, and relating penalties for violations to the sex crime initially at issue. See 42 U. S. C. §14071(b) (2000 ed.). The upshot is that here Congress did not apply SORNA to an individual who had, prior to SORNA’s enactment, been “unconditionally released,” i.e., a person who was not in “any . . . special relationship with the federal government,” but rather to an individual already subject to federal registration requirements that were themselves a valid exercise of federal power under the Military Regulation and Necessary and Proper Clauses. But cf. post, at 1 (Scalia, J., dissenting). SORNA, enacted after Kebodeaux’s release, somewhat modified the applicable registration requirements. In gen-eral, SORNA provided more detailed definitions of sex offenses, described in greater detail the nature of the information registrants must provide, and imposed somewhat different limits upon the length of time that regis- tration must continue and the frequency with which offenders must update their registration. 42 U. S. C. §§16911, 16913–16916 (2006 ed. and Supp. V). But the statute, like the Wetterling Act, used Spending Clause grants to encourage States to adopt its uniform definitions and requirements. It did not insist that the States do so. See §§16925(a), (d) (2006 ed.) (“The provisions of this subchapter that are cast as directions to jurisdictions or their officials constitute, in relation to States, only conditions required to avoid the reduction of Federal funding under this section”). As applied to an individual already subject to the Wetterling Act like Kebodeaux, SORNA makes few changes. In particular, SORNA modified the time limitations for a sex offender who moves to update his registration to within three business days of the move from both seven days before and seven days after the move, as required by the Texas law enforced under the Wetterling Act. Compare 42 U. S. C. §16913(c) with App. to Pet. for Cert. 167a–168a. SORNA also increased the federal penalty for a federal offender’s registration violation to a maximum of 10 years from a maximum of 1 year for a first offense. Compare 18 U. S. C. §2250(a) with 42 U. S. C. §14072(i) (2000 ed.). Kebodeaux was sentenced to one year and one day of imprisonment. For purposes of federal law, SORNA re- duced the duration of Kebodeaux’s registration requirement to 25 years from the lifetime requirement imposed by Texas law, compare 42 U. S. C. §16915(a) (2006 ed.) with App. to Pet. for Cert. 167a, and reduced the frequency with which Kebodeaux must update his registration to every six months from every 90 days as imposed by Texas law, compare 42 U. S. C. §16916(2) with App. to Pet. for Cert. 167a. And as far as we can tell, while SORNA punishes violations of its requirements (instead of violations of state law), the Federal Government has prosecuted a sex offender for violating SORNA only when that offender also violated state-registration requirements. SORNA’s general changes were designed to make more uniform what had remained “a patchwork of federal and 50 individual state registration systems,” Reynolds v. United States, 565 U. S. ___, ___ (2012) (slip op., at 2), with “loopholes and deficiencies” that had resulted in an estimated 100,000 sex offenders becoming “missing” or “lost,” House Report 20, 26. See S. Rep. No. 109–369, pp. 16–17 (2006). See also Jinks v. Richland County, 538 U. S. 456 –463 (2003) (holding that a statute is authorized by the Necessary and Proper Clause when it “provides an alternative to [otherwise] unsatisfactory options” that are “obviously inefficient”). SORNA’s more specific changes reflect Congress’ determination that the statute, changed in respect to frequency, penalties, and other details, will keep track of more offenders and will encourage States themselves to adopt its uniform standards. No one here claims that these changes are unreasonable or that Congress could not reasonably have found them “necessary and proper” means for furthering its pre-existing registration ends. We conclude that the SORNA changes as applied to Kebodeaux fall within the scope Congress’ authority under the Military Regulation and Necessary and Proper Clauses. The Fifth Circuit’s judgment to the contrary is reversed, and the case is remanded for further proceedings consistent with this opinion. It is so ordered.

570.US.744

The State of New York recognizes the marriage of New York residents Edith Windsor and Thea Spyer, who wed in Ontario, Canada, in 2007. When Spyer died in 2009, she left her entire estate to Windsor. Windsor sought to claim the federal estate tax exemption for surviving spouses, but was barred from doing so by §3 of the federal Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), which amended the Dictionary Act—a law providing rules of construction for over 1,000 federal laws and the whole realm of federal regulations—to define “marriage” and “spouse” as excluding same-sex partners. Windsor paid $363,053 in estate taxes and sought a refund, which the Internal Revenue Service denied. Windsor brought this refund suit, contending that DOMA violates the principles of equal protection incorporated in the Fifth Amendment. While the suit was pending, the Attorney General notified the Speaker of the House of Representatives that the Department of Justice would no longer defend §3’s constitutionality. In response, the Bipartisan Legal Advisory Group (BLAG) of the House of Representatives voted to intervene in the litigation to defend §3’s constitutionality. The District Court permitted the intervention. On the merits, the court ruled against the United States, finding §3 unconstitutional and ordering the Treasury to refund Windsor’s tax with interest. The Second Circuit affirmed. The United States has not complied with the judgment. Held: 1. This Court has jurisdiction to consider the merits of the case. This case clearly presented a concrete disagreement between opposing parties that was suitable for judicial resolution in the District Court, but the Executive’s decision not to defend §3’s constitutionality in court while continuing to deny refunds and assess deficiencies introduces a complication. Given the Government’s concession, amicus contends, once the District Court ordered the refund, the case should have ended and the appeal been dismissed. But this argument elides the distinction between Article III’s jurisdictional requirements and the prudential limits on its exercise, which are “essentially matters of judicial self-governance.” Warth v. Seldin, 422 U.S. 490, 500. Here, the United States retains a stake sufficient to support Article III jurisdiction on appeal and in this Court. The refund it was ordered to pay Windsor is “a real and immediate economic injury,” Hein v. Freedom From Religion Foundation, Inc., 551 U.S. 587, 599, even if the Executive disagrees with §3 of DOMA. Windsor’s ongoing claim for funds that the United States refuses to pay thus establishes a controversy sufficient for Article III jurisdiction. Cf. INS v. Chadha, 462 U.S. 919. Prudential considerations, however, demand that there be “concrete adverseness which sharpens the presentation of issues upon which the court so largely depends for illumination of difficult constitutional questions.” Baker v. Carr, 369 U.S. 186, 204. Unlike Article III requirements—which must be satisfied by the parties before judicial consideration is appropriate—prudential factors that counsel against hearing this case are subject to “countervailing considerations [that] may outweigh the concerns underlying the usual reluctance to exert judicial power.” Warth, supra, at 500–501. One such consideration is the extent to which adversarial presentation of the issues is ensured by the participation of amici curiae prepared to defend with vigor the legislative act’s constitutionality. See Chadha, supra, at 940. Here, BLAG’s substantial adversarial argument for §3’s constitutionality satisfies prudential concerns that otherwise might counsel against hearing an appeal from a decision with which the principal parties agree. This conclusion does not mean that it is appropriate for the Executive as a routine exercise to challenge statutes in court instead of making the case to Congress for amendment or repeal. But this case is not routine, and BLAG’s capable defense ensures that the prudential issues do not cloud the merits question, which is of immediate importance to the Federal Government and to hundreds of thousands of persons. Pp. 5–13. 2. DOMA is unconstitutional as a deprivation of the equal liberty of persons that is protected by the Fifth Amendment. Pp. 13–26. (a) By history and tradition the definition and regulation of marriage has been treated as being within the authority and realm of the separate States. Congress has enacted discrete statutes to regulate the meaning of marriage in order to further federal policy, but DOMA, with a directive applicable to over 1,000 federal statues and the whole realm of federal regulations, has a far greater reach. Its operation is also directed to a class of persons that the laws of New York, and of 11 other States, have sought to protect. Assessing the validity of that intervention requires discussing the historical and traditional extent of state power and authority over marriage. Subject to certain constitutional guarantees, see, e.g., Loving v. Virginia, 388 U.S. 1, “regulation of domestic relations” is “an area that has long been regarded as a virtually exclusive province of the States,” Sosna v. Iowa, 419 U.S. 393, 404. The significance of state responsibilities for the definition and regulation of marriage dates to the Nation’s beginning; for “when the Constitution was adopted the common understanding was that the domestic relations of husband and wife and parent and child were matters reserved to the States,” Ohio ex rel. Popovici v. Agler, 280 U.S. 379, 383–384. Marriage laws may vary from State to State, but they are consistent within each State. DOMA rejects this long-established precept. The State’s decision to give this class of persons the right to marry conferred upon them a dignity and status of immense import. But the Federal Government uses the state-defined class for the opposite purpose—to impose restrictions and disabilities. The question is whether the resulting injury and indignity is a deprivation of an essential part of the liberty protected by the Fifth Amendment, since what New York treats as alike the federal law deems unlike by a law designed to injure the same class the State seeks to protect. New York’s actions were a proper exercise of its sovereign authority. They reflect both the community’s considered perspective on the historical roots of the institution of marriage and its evolving understanding of the meaning of equality. Pp. 13–20. (b) By seeking to injure the very class New York seeks to protect, DOMA violates basic due process and equal protection principles applicable to the Federal Government. The Constitution’s guarantee of equality “must at the very least mean that a bare congressional desire to harm a politically unpopular group cannot” justify disparate treatment of that group. Department of Agriculture v. Moreno, 413 U.S. 528, 534–535. DOMA cannot survive under these principles. Its unusual deviation from the tradition of recognizing and accepting state definitions of marriage operates to deprive same-sex couples of the benefits and responsibilities that come with federal recognition of their marriages. This is strong evidence of a law having the purpose and effect of disapproval of a class recognized and protected by state law. DOMA’s avowed purpose and practical effect are to impose a disadvantage, a separate status, and so a stigma upon all who enter into same-sex marriages made lawful by the unquestioned authority of the States. DOMA’s history of enactment and its own text demonstrate that interference with the equal dignity of same-sex marriages, conferred by the States in the exercise of their sovereign power, was more than an incidental effect of the federal statute. It was its essence. BLAG’s arguments are just as candid about the congressional purpose. DOMA’s operation in practice confirms this purpose. It frustrates New York’s objective of eliminating inequality by writing inequality into the entire United States Code. DOMA’s principal effect is to identify and make unequal a subset of state-sanctioned marriages. It contrives to deprive some couples married under the laws of their State, but not others, of both rights and responsibilities, creating two contradictory marriage regimes within the same State. It also forces same-sex couples to live as married for the purpose of state law but unmarried for the purpose of federal law, thus diminishing the stability and predictability of basic personal relations the State has found it proper to acknowledge and protect. Pp. 20–26. 699 F.3d 169, affirmed. Kennedy, J., delivered the opinion of the Court, in which Ginsburg, Breyer, Sotomayor, and Kagan, JJ., joined. Roberts, C. J., filed a dissenting opinion. Scalia, J., filed a dissenting opinion, in which Thomas, J., joined, and in which Roberts, C. J., joined as to Part I. Alito, J., filed a dissenting opinion, in which Thomas, J., joined as to Parts II and III.

Two women then resident in New York were married in a lawful ceremony in Ontario, Canada, in 2007. Edith Windsor and Thea Spyer returned to their home in New York City. When Spyer died in 2009, she left her entire estate to Windsor. Windsor sought to claim the estate tax exemption for surviving spouses. She was barred from doing so, however, by a federal law, the Defense of Marriage Act, which excludes a same-sex partner from the definition of “spouse” as that term is used in federal statutes. Windsor paid the taxes but filed suit to challenge the constitutionality of this provision. The United States District Court and the Court of Appeals ruled that this portion of the statute is unconstitutional and ordered the United States to pay Windsor a refund. This Court granted certiorari and now affirms the judgment in Windsor’s favor. I In 1996, as some States were beginning to consider the concept of same-sex marriage, see, e.g., Baehr v. Lewin, 74 Haw. 530, 852 P. 2d 44 (1993), and before any State had acted to permit it, Congress enacted the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), 110Stat. 2419. DOMA contains two operative sections: Section 2, which has not been challenged here, allows States to refuse to recognize same-sex marriages performed under the laws of other States. See 28 U. S. C. §1738C. Section 3 is at issue here. It amends the Dictionary Act in Title 1, §7, of the United States Code to provide a fed- eral definition of “marriage” and “spouse.” Section 3 of DOMA provides as follows: “In determining the meaning of any Act of Congress, or of any ruling, regulation, or interpretation of the various administrative bureaus and agencies of the United States, the word ‘marriage’ means only a legal union between one man and one woman as husband and wife, and the word ‘spouse’ refers only to a person of the opposite sex who is a husband or a wife.” 1 U. S. C. §7. The definitional provision does not by its terms forbid States from enacting laws permitting same-sex marriages or civil unions or providing state benefits to residents in that status. The enactment’s comprehensive definition of marriage for purposes of all federal statutes and other regulations or directives covered by its terms, however, does control over 1,000 federal laws in which marital or spousal status is addressed as a matter of federal law. See GAO, D. Shah, Defense of Marriage Act: Update to Prior Report 1 (GAO–04–353R, 2004). Edith Windsor and Thea Spyer met in New York City in 1963 and began a long-term relationship. Windsor and Spyer registered as domestic partners when New York City gave that right to same-sex couples in 1993. Concerned about Spyer’s health, the couple made the 2007 trip to Canada for their marriage, but they continued to reside in New York City. The State of New York deems their Ontario marriage to be a valid one. See 699 F. 3d 169, 177–178 (CA2 2012). Spyer died in February 2009, and left her entire estate to Windsor. Because DOMA denies federal recognition to same-sex spouses, Windsor did not qualify for the marital exemption from the federal estate tax, which excludes from taxation “any interest in property which passes or has passed from the decedent to his surviving spouse.” 26 U. S. C. §2056(a). Windsor paid $363,053 in estate taxes and sought a refund. The Internal Revenue Service denied the refund, concluding that, under DOMA, Windsor was not a “surviving spouse.” Windsor commenced this refund suit in the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York. She contended that DOMA violates the guarantee of equal protection, as applied to the Federal Government through the Fifth Amendment. While the tax refund suit was pending, the Attorney General of the United States notified the Speaker of the House of Representatives, pursuant to 28 U. S. C. §530D, that the Department of Justice would no longer defend the constitutionality of DOMA’s §3. Noting that “the Department has previously defended DOMA against . . . challenges involving legally married same-sex couples,” App. 184, the Attorney General informed Congress that “the President has concluded that given a number of factors, including a documented history of discrimination, classifications based on sexual orientation should be subject to a heightened standard of scrutiny.” Id., at 191. The Department of Justice has submitted many §530D letters over the years refusing to defend laws it deems unconstitutional, when, for instance, a federal court has rejected the Government’s defense of a statute and has issued a judgment against it. This case is unusual, however, because the §530D letter was not preceded by an adverse judgment. The letter instead reflected the Executive’s own conclusion, relying on a definition still being debated and considered in the courts, that heightened equal protection scrutiny should apply to laws that classify on the basis of sexual orientation. Although “the President . . . instructed the Department not to defend the statute in Windsor,” he also decided “that Section 3 will continue to be enforced by the Executive Branch” and that the United States had an “interest in providing Congress a full and fair opportunity to participate in the litigation of those cases.” Id., at 191–193. The stated rationale for this dual-track procedure (determination of unconstitutionality coupled with ongoing enforcement) was to “recogniz[e] the judiciary as the final arbiter of the constitutional claims raised.” Id., at 192. In response to the notice from the Attorney General, the Bipartisan Legal Advisory Group (BLAG) of the House of Representatives voted to intervene in the litigation to defend the constitutionality of §3 of DOMA. The Department of Justice did not oppose limited intervention by BLAG. The District Court denied BLAG’s motion to enter the suit as of right, on the rationale that the United States already was represented by the Department of Justice. The District Court, however, did grant intervention by BLAG as an interested party. See Fed. Rule Civ. Proc. 24(a)(2). On the merits of the tax refund suit, the District Court ruled against the United States. It held that §3 of DOMA is unconstitutional and ordered the Treasury to refund the tax with interest. Both the Justice Department and BLAG filed notices of appeal, and the Solicitor General filed a petition for certiorari before judgment. Before this Court acted on the petition, the Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit affirmed the District Court’s judgment. It applied heightened scrutiny to classifications based on sexual orientation, as both the Department and Windsor had urged. The United States has not complied with the judg- ment. Windsor has not received her refund, and the Ex- ecutive Branch continues to enforce §3 of DOMA. In granting certiorari on the question of the constitutionality of §3 of DOMA, the Court requested argument on two additional questions: whether the United States’ agreement with Windsor’s legal position precludes further review and whether BLAG has standing to appeal the case. All parties agree that the Court has jurisdiction to decide this case; and, with the case in that framework, the Court appointed Professor Vicki Jackson as amicus curiae to argue the position that the Court lacks jurisdiction to hear the dispute. 568 U. S. ___ (2012). She has ably discharged her duties. In an unrelated case, the United States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit has also held §3 of DOMA to be unconstitutional. A petition for certiorari has been filed in that case. Pet. for Cert. in Bipartisan Legal Advisory Group v. Gill, O. T. 2012, No. 12–13. II It is appropriate to begin by addressing whether either the Government or BLAG, or both of them, were entitled to appeal to the Court of Appeals and later to seek certiorari and appear as parties here. There is no dispute that when this case was in the District Court it presented a concrete disagreement between opposing parties, a dispute suitable for judicial resolution. “[A] taxpayer has standing to challenge the collection of a specific tax assessment as unconstitutional; being forced to pay such a tax causes a real and immediate economic injury to the individual taxpayer.” Hein v. Freedom From Religion Foundation, Inc., 551 U. S. 587, 599 (2007) (plurality opinion) (emphasis deleted). Windsor suffered a redressable injury when she was required to pay estate taxes from which, in her view, she was exempt but for the alleged invalidity of §3 of DOMA. The decision of the Executive not to defend the constitutionality of §3 in court while continuing to deny refunds and to assess deficiencies does introduce a complication. Even though the Executive’s current position was announced before the District Court entered its judgment, the Government’s agreement with Windsor’s position would not have deprived the District Court of jurisdiction to entertain and resolve the refund suit; for her injury (fail- ure to obtain a refund allegedly required by law) was concrete, persisting, and unredressed. The Government’s position—agreeing with Windsor’s legal contention but refusing to give it effect—meant that there was a justiciable controversy between the parties, despite what the claimant would find to be an inconsistency in that stance. Windsor, the Government, BLAG, and the amicus appear to agree upon that point. The disagreement is over the standing of the parties, or aspiring parties, to take an appeal in the Court of Appeals and to appear as parties in further proceedings in this Court. The amicus’ position is that, given the Government’s concession that §3 is unconstitutional, once the District Court ordered the refund the case should have ended; and the amicus argues the Court of Appeals should have dismissed the appeal. The amicus submits that once the President agreed with Windsor’s legal position and the District Court issued its judgment, the parties were no longer adverse. From this standpoint the United States was a prevailing party below, just as Windsor was. Accordingly, the amicus reasons, it is inappropriate for this Court to grant certiorari and proceed to rule on the merits; for the United States seeks no redress from the judgment entered against it. This position, however, elides the distinction between two principles: the jurisdictional requirements of Article III and the prudential limits on its exercise. See Warth v. Seldin, 422 U. S. 490, 498 (1975) . The latter are “essentially matters of judicial self-governance.” Id., at 500. The Court has kept these two strands separate: “Article III standing, which enforces the Constitution’s case-or-controversy requirement, see Lujan v. Defenders of Wildlife, 504 U. S. 555 –562 (1992); and prudential standing, which embodies ‘judicially self-imposed limits on the exer- cise of federal jurisdiction,’ Allen [v. Wright,] 468 U. S. [737,] 751 [(1984)].” Elk Grove Unified School Dist. v. Newdow, 542 U. S. 1 –12 (2004). The requirements of Article III standing are familiar: “First, the plaintiff must have suffered an ‘injury in fact’—an invasion of a legally protected interest which is (a) concrete and particularized, and (b) ‘actual or imminent, not “conjectural or hypothetical.” ’ Second, there must be a causal connection between the injury and the conduct complained of—the injury has to be ‘fairly . . . trace[able] to the challenged action of the defendant, and not . . . th[e] result [of] the independent action of some third party not before the court.’ Third, it must be ‘likely,’ as opposed to merely ‘speculative,’ that the injury will be ‘redressed by a favor- able decision.’ ” Lujan, supra, at 560–561 (footnote and citations omitted). Rules of prudential standing, by contrast, are more flex- ible “rule[s] . . . of federal appellate practice,” Deposit Guaranty Nat. Bank v. Roper, 445 U. S. 326, 333 (1980) , designed to protect the courts from “decid[ing] abstract questions of wide public significance even [when] other governmental institutions may be more competent to ad- dress the questions and even though judicial intervention may be unnecessary to protect individual rights.” Warth, supra, at 500. In this case the United States retains a stake sufficient to support Article III jurisdiction on appeal and in proceedings before this Court. The judgment in question orders the United States to pay Windsor the refund she seeks. An order directing the Treasury to pay money is “a real and immediate economic injury,” Hein, 551 U. S., at 599, indeed as real and immediate as an order directing an individual to pay a tax. That the Executive may welcome this order to pay the refund if it is accompanied by the constitutional ruling it wants does not eliminate the injury to the national Treasury if payment is made, or to the taxpayer if it is not. The judgment orders the United States to pay money that it would not disburse but for the court’s order. The Government of the United States has a valid legal argument that it is injured even if the Executive disagrees with §3 of DOMA, which results in Windsor’s liability for the tax. Windsor’s ongoing claim for funds that the United States refuses to pay thus establishes a controversy sufficient for Article III jurisdiction. It would be a different case if the Executive had taken the further step of paying Windsor the refund to which she was entitled under the District Court’s ruling. This Court confronted a comparable case in INS v. Chadha, 462 U. S. 919 (1983) . A statute by its terms allowed one House of Congress to order the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) to deport the respondent Chadha. There, as here, the Executive determined that the statute was unconstitutional, and “the INS presented the Executive’s views on the constitutionality of the House action to the Court of Appeals.” Id., at 930. The INS, however, continued to abide by the statute, and “the INS brief to the Court of Appeals did not alter the agency’s decision to comply with the House action ordering deportation of Chadha.” Ibid. This Court held “that the INS was sufficiently aggrieved by the Court of Appeals deci- sion prohibiting it from taking action it would otherwise take,” ibid., regardless of whether the agency welcomed the judgment. The necessity of a “case or controversy” to satisfy Article III was defined as a requirement that the Court’s “ ‘decision will have real meaning: if we rule for Chadha, he will not be deported; if we uphold [the statute], the INS will execute its order and deport him.’ ” Id., at 939–940 (quoting Chadha v. INS, 634 F. 2d 408, 419 (CA9 1980)). This conclusion was not dictum. It was a necessary predicate to the Court’s holding that “prior to Congress’ intervention, there was adequate Art. III adverseness.” 462 U. S., at 939. The holdings of cases are instructive, and the words of Chadha make clear its holding that the refusal of the Executive to provide the relief sought suffices to preserve a justiciable dispute as required by Article III. In short, even where “the Government largely agree[s] with the opposing party on the merits of the controversy,” there is sufficient adverseness and an “adequate basis for jurisdiction in the fact that the Government intended to enforce the challenged law against that party.” Id., at 940, n. 12. It is true that “[a] party who receives all that he has sought generally is not aggrieved by the judgment affording the relief and cannot appeal from it.” Roper, supra, at 333, see also Camreta v. Greene, 563 U. S. ___, ___ (2011) (slip op., at 8) (“As a matter of practice and prudence, we have generally declined to consider cases at the request of a prevailing party, even when the Constitution allowed us to do so”). But this rule “does not have its source in the jurisdictional limitations of Art. III. In an appropriate case, appeal may be permitted . . . at the behest of the party who has prevailed on the merits, so long as that party retains a stake in the appeal satisfying the requirements of Art. III.” Roper, supra, at 333–334. While these principles suffice to show that this case presents a justiciable controversy under Article III, the prudential problems inherent in the Executive’s unusual position require some further discussion. The Executive’s agreement with Windsor’s legal argument raises the risk that instead of a “ ‘real, earnest and vital controversy,’ ” the Court faces a “friendly, non-adversary, proceeding . . . [in which] ‘a party beaten in the legislature [seeks to] transfer to the courts an inquiry as to the constitutionality of the legislative act.’ ” Ashwander v. TVA, 297 U. S. 288, 346 (1936) (Brandeis, J., concurring) (quoting Chicago & Grand Trunk R. Co. v. Wellman, 143 U. S. 339, 345 (1892) ). Even when Article III permits the exercise of federal jurisdiction, prudential considerations demand that the Court insist upon “that concrete adverseness which sharpens the presentation of issues upon which the court so largely depends for illumination of difficult constitutional questions.” Baker v. Carr, 369 U. S. 186, 204 (1962) . There are, of course, reasons to hear a case and issue a ruling even when one party is reluctant to prevail in its position. Unlike Article III requirements—which must be satisfied by the parties before judicial consideration is appropriate—the relevant prudential factors that counsel against hearing this case are subject to “countervailing considerations [that] may outweigh the concerns underlying the usual reluctance to exert judicial power.” Warth, 422 U. S., at 500–501. One consideration is the extent to which adversarial presentation of the issues is assured by the participation of amici curiae prepared to defend with vigor the constitutionality of the legislative act. With respect to this prudential aspect of standing as well, the Chadha Court encountered a similar situation. It noted that “there may be prudential, as opposed to Art. III, concerns about sanctioning the adjudication of [this case] in the absence of any participant supporting the validity of [the statute]. The Court of Appeals properly dispelled any such concerns by inviting and accepting briefs from both Houses of Congress.” 462 U. S., at 940. Chadha was not an anomaly in this respect. The Court adopts the practice of entertaining arguments made by an amicus when the Solicitor General confesses error with respect to a judgment below, even if the confession is in effect an admission that an Act of Congress is unconstitutional. See, e.g., Dickerson v. United States, 530 U. S. 428 (2000) . In the case now before the Court the attorneys for BLAG present a substantial argument for the constitutionality of §3 of DOMA. BLAG’s sharp adversarial presentation of the issues satisfies the prudential concerns that otherwise might counsel against hearing an appeal from a decision with which the principal parties agree. Were this Court to hold that prudential rules require it to dismiss the case, and, in consequence, that the Court of Appeals erred in failing to dismiss it as well, extensive litigation would ensue. The district courts in 94 districts throughout the Nation would be without precedential guidance not only in tax refund suits but also in cases involving the whole of DOMA’s sweep involving over 1,000 federal statutes and a myriad of federal regulations. For instance, the opinion of the Court of Appeals for the First Circuit, addressing the validity of DOMA in a case involving regulations of the Department of Health and Human Services, likely would be vacated with instructions to dismiss, its ruling and guidance also then erased. See Massachusetts v. United States Dept. of Health and Human Servs., 682 F. 3d 1 (CA1 2012). Rights and privileges of hundreds of thousands of persons would be adversely affected, pending a case in which all prudential concerns about justiciability are absent. That numerical prediction may not be certain, but it is certain that the cost in judicial resources and expense of litigation for all persons adversely affected would be immense. True, the very extent of DOMA’s mandate means that at some point a case likely would arise without the prudential concerns raised here; but the costs, uncertainties, and alleged harm and injuries likely would continue for a time measured in years before the issue is resolved. In these unusual and urgent circumstances, the very term “prudential” counsels that it is a proper exercise of the Court’s responsibility to take jurisdiction. For these reasons, the prudential and Article III requirements are met here; and, as a consequence, the Court need not decide whether BLAG would have standing to challenge the District Court’s ruling and its affirmance in the Court of Appeals on BLAG’s own authority. The Court’s conclusion that this petition may be heard on the merits does not imply that no difficulties would ensue if this were a common practice in ordinary cases. The Executive’s failure to defend the constitutionality of an Act of Congress based on a constitutional theory not yet established in judicial decisions has created a procedural dilemma. On the one hand, as noted, the Government’s agreement with Windsor raises questions about the propriety of entertaining a suit in which it seeks affirmance of an order invalidating a federal law and ordering the United States to pay money. On the other hand, if the Execu- tive’s agreement with a plaintiff that a law is unconsti- tutional is enough to preclude judicial review, then the Supreme Court’s primary role in determining the constitutionality of a law that has inflicted real injury on a plaintiff who has brought a justiciable legal claim would become only secondary to the President’s. This would undermine the clear dictate of the separation-of-powers principle that “when an Act of Congress is alleged to conflict with the Constitution, ‘[i]t is emphatically the province and duty of the judicial department to say what the law is.’ ” Zivotofsky v. Clinton, 566 U. S. ___, ___ (2012) (slip op., at 7) (quoting Marbury v. Madison, 1 Cranch 137, 177 (1803)). Similarly, with respect to the legislative power, when Congress has passed a statute and a President has signed it, it poses grave challenges to the separation of powers for the Executive at a particular moment to be able to nullify Congress’ enactment solely on its own initiative and without any determination from the Court. The Court’s jurisdictional holding, it must be underscored, does not mean the arguments for dismissing this dispute on prudential grounds lack substance. Yet the difficulty the Executive faces should be acknowledged. When the Executive makes a principled determination that a statute is unconstitutional, it faces a difficult choice. Still, there is no suggestion here that it is appropriate for the Executive as a matter of course to challenge statutes in the judicial forum rather than making the case to Congress for their amendment or repeal. The integrity of the political process would be at risk if difficult consti- tutional issues were simply referred to the Court as a routine exercise. But this case is not routine. And the capable defense of the law by BLAG ensures that these prudential issues do not cloud the merits question, which is one of immediate importance to the Federal Government and to hundreds of thousands of persons. These cir- cumstances support the Court’s decision to proceed to the merits. III When at first Windsor and Spyer longed to marry, neither New York nor any other State granted them that right. After waiting some years, in 2007 they traveled to Ontario to be married there. It seems fair to conclude that, until recent years, many citizens had not even considered the possibility that two persons of the same sex might aspire to occupy the same status and dignity as that of a man and woman in lawful marriage. For marriage between a man and a woman no doubt had been thought of by most people as essential to the very definition of that term and to its role and function throughout the history of civilization. That belief, for many who long have held it, became even more urgent, more cherished when challenged. For others, however, came the beginnings of a new perspective, a new insight. Accordingly some States concluded that same-sex marriage ought to be given recognition and validity in the law for those same-sex couples who wish to define themselves by their commitment to each other. The limitation of lawful marriage to heterosexual couples, which for centuries had been deemed both necessary and fundamental, came to be seen in New York and certain other States as an unjust exclusion. Slowly at first and then in rapid course, the laws of New York came to acknowledge the urgency of this issue for same-sex couples who wanted to affirm their commitment to one another before their children, their family, their friends, and their community. And so New York recognized same-sex marriages performed elsewhere; and then it later amended its own marriage laws to permit same-sex marriage. New York, in common with, as of this writing, 11 other States and the District of Columbia, decided that same-sex couples should have the right to marry and so live with pride in themselves and their union and in a status of equality with all other married persons. After a statewide deliberative process that enabled its citizens to discuss and weigh arguments for and against same- sex marriage, New York acted to enlarge the definition of marriage to correct what its citizens and elected representatives perceived to be an injustice that they had not earlier known or understood. See Marriage Equality Act, 2011 N. Y. Laws 749 (codified at N. Y. Dom. Rel. Law Ann. §§10–a, 10–b, 13 (West 2013)). Against this background of lawful same-sex marriage in some States, the design, purpose, and effect of DOMA should be considered as the beginning point in deciding whether it is valid under the Constitution. By history and tradition the definition and regulation of marriage, as will be discussed in more detail, has been treated as being within the authority and realm of the separate States. Yet it is further established that Congress, in enacting discrete statutes, can make determinations that bear on marital rights and privileges. Just this Term the Court upheld the authority of the Congress to pre-empt state laws, allowing a former spouse to retain life insurance proceeds under a federal program that gave her priority, because of formal beneficiary designation rules, over the wife by a second marriage who survived the husband. Hillman v. Maretta, 569 U. S. ___ (2013); see also Ridgway v. Ridgway, 454 U. S. 46 (1981) ; Wissner v. Wissner, 338 U. S. 655 (1950) . This is one example of the general principle that when the Federal Government acts in the exercise of its own proper authority, it has a wide choice of the mechanisms and means to adopt. See McCulloch v. Maryland, 4 Wheat. 316, 421 (1819). Congress has the power both to ensure efficiency in the administration of its programs and to choose what larger goals and policies to pursue. Other precedents involving congressional statutes which affect marriages and family status further illustrate this point. In addressing the interaction of state domestic relations and federal immigration law Congress determined that marriages “entered into for the purpose of procuring an alien’s admission [to the United States] as an immigrant” will not qualify the noncitizen for that status, even if the noncitizen’s marriage is valid and proper for state-law purposes. 8 U. S. C. §1186a(b)(1) (2006 ed. and Supp. V). And in establishing income-based criteria for Social Security benefits, Congress decided that although state law would determine in general who qualifies as an applicant’s spouse, common-law marriages also should be recognized, regardless of any particular State’s view on these relationships. 42 U. S. C. §1382c(d)(2). Though these discrete examples establish the constitutionality of limited federal laws that regulate the meaning of marriage in order to further federal policy, DOMA has a far greater reach; for it enacts a directive applicable to over 1,000 federal statutes and the whole realm of federal regulations. And its operation is directed to a class of persons that the laws of New York, and of 11 other States, have sought to protect. See Goodridge v. Department of Public Health, 440 Mass. 309, 798 N. E. 2d 941 (2003); An Act Implementing the Guarantee of Equal Protection Under the Constitution of the State for Same Sex Couples, 2009 Conn. Pub. Acts no. 09–13; Varnum v. Brien, 763 N. W. 2d 862 (Iowa 2009); Vt. Stat. Ann., Tit. 15, §8 (2010); N. H. Rev. Stat. Ann. §457:1–a (West Supp. 2012); Religious Freedom and Civil Marriage Equality Amendment Act of 2009, 57 D. C. Reg. 27 (Dec. 18, 2009); N. Y. Dom. Rel. Law Ann. §10–a (West Supp. 2013); Wash. Rev. Code §26.04.010 (2012); Citizen Initiative, Same- Sex Marriage, Question 1 (Me. 2012) (results online at http: / / w w w.maine.gov/sos/cec/elec/2012/tab - ref-2012.html (all Internet sources as visited June 18, 2013, and avail- able in Clerk of Court’s case file)); Md. Fam. Law Code Ann. §2–201 (Lexis 2012); An Act to Amend Title 13 of the Delaware Code Relating to Domestic Relations to Provide for Same-Gender Civil Marriage and to Convert Exist- ing Civil Unions to Civil Marriages, 79 Del. Laws ch. 19 (2013); An act relating to marriage; providing for civil marriage between two persons; providing for exemptions and protections based on religious association, 2013 Minn. Laws ch. 74; An Act Relating to Domestic Relations—Persons Eligible to Marry, 2013 R. I. Laws ch. 4. In order to assess the validity of that intervention it is necessary to discuss the extent of the state power and au- thority over marriage as a matter of history and tradi- tion. State laws defining and regulating marriage, of course, must respect the constitutional rights of persons, see, e.g., Loving v. Virginia, 388 U. S. 1 (1967) ; but, subject to those guarantees, “regulation of domestic relations” is “an area that has long been regarded as a virtually exclusive province of the States.” Sosna v. Iowa, 419 U. S. 393, 404 (1975) . The recognition of civil marriages is central to state domestic relations law applicable to its residents and citizens. See Williams v. North Carolina, 317 U. S. 287, 298 (1942) (“Each state as a sovereign has a rightful and legitimate concern in the marital status of persons domiciled within its borders”). The definition of marriage is the foundation of the State’s broader authority to regulate the subject of domestic relations with respect to the “[p]rotection of offspring, property interests, and the enforcement of marital responsibilities.” Ibid. “[T]he states, at the time of the adoption of the Constitution, possessed full power over the subject of marriage and divorce . . . [and] the Constitution delegated no authority to the Government of the United States on the subject of marriage and divorce.” Haddock v. Haddock, 201 U. S. 562, 575 (1906) ; see also In re Burrus, 136 U. S. 586 –594 (1890) (“The whole subject of the domestic relations of husband and wife, parent and child, belongs to the laws of the States and not to the laws of the United States”). Consistent with this allocation of authority, the Federal Government, through our history, has deferred to state-law policy decisions with respect to domestic relations. In De Sylva v. Ballentine, 351 U. S. 570 (1956) , for example, the Court held that, “[t]o decide who is the widow or widower of a deceased author, or who are his executors or next of kin,” under the Copyright Act “requires a reference to the law of the State which created those legal relationships” because “there is no federal law of domestic relations.” Id., at 580. In order to respect this principle, the federal courts, as a general rule, do not adjudicate issues of marital status even when there might otherwise be a basis for federal jurisdiction. See Ankenbrandt v. Richards, 504 U. S. 689, 703 (1992) . Federal courts will not hear divorce and custody cases even if they arise in diversity because of “the virtually exclusive primacy . . . of the States in the regulation of domestic relations.” Id., at 714 (Blackmun, J., concurring in judgment). The significance of state responsibilities for the definition and regulation of marriage dates to the Nation’s beginning; for “when the Constitution was adopted the common understanding was that the domestic relations of husband and wife and parent and child were matters reserved to the States.” Ohio ex rel. Popovici v. Agler, 280 U. S. 379 –384 (1930). Marriage laws vary in some respects from State to State. For example, the required minimum age is 16 in Vermont, but only 13 in New Hampshire. Compare Vt. Stat. Ann., Tit. 18, §5142 (2012), with N. H. Rev. Stat. Ann. §457:4 (West Supp. 2012). Likewise the permissible degree of consanguinity can vary (most States permit first cousins to marry, but a handful—such as Iowa and Washington, see Iowa Code §595.19 (2009); Wash. Rev. Code §26.04.020 (2012)—prohibit the practice). But these rules are in every event consistent within each State. Against this background DOMA rejects the long-established precept that the incidents, benefits, and obligations of marriage are uniform for all married couples within each State, though they may vary, subject to constitutional guarantees, from one State to the next. Despite these considerations, it is unnecessary to decide whether this federal intrusion on state power is a violation of the Constitution because it disrupts the federal balance. The State’s power in defining the marital relation is of central relevance in this case quite apart from principles of federalism. Here the State’s decision to give this class of persons the right to marry conferred upon them a dignity and status of immense import. When the State used its historic and essential authority to define the marital relation in this way, its role and its power in making the decision enhanced the recognition, dignity, and protection of the class in their own community. DOMA, because of its reach and extent, departs from this history and tra- dition of reliance on state law to define marriage. “ ‘[D]is-criminations of an unusual character especially sug- gest careful consideration to determine whether they are obnoxious to the constitutional provision.’ ” Romer v. Evans, 517 U. S. 620, 633 (1996) (quoting Louisville Gas & Elec. Co. v. Coleman, 277 U. S. 32 –38 (1928)). The Federal Government uses this state-defined class for the opposite purpose—to impose restrictions and dis- abilities. That result requires this Court now to address whether the resulting injury and indignity is a deprivation of an essential part of the liberty protected by the Fifth Amendment. What the State of New York treats as alike the federal law deems unlike by a law designed to injure the same class the State seeks to protect. In acting first to recognize and then to allow same-sex marriages, New York was responding “to the initiative of those who [sought] a voice in shaping the destiny of their own times.” Bond v. United States, 564 U. S. ___, ___ (2011) (slip op., at 9). These actions were without doubt a proper exercise of its sovereign authority within our fed- eral system, all in the way that the Framers of the Constitu-tion intended. The dynamics of state government in the federal system are to allow the formation of consensus respecting the way the members of a discrete community treat each other in their daily contact and constant interaction with each other. The States’ interest in defining and regulating the marital relation, subject to constitutional guarantees, stems from the understanding that marriage is more than a routine classification for purposes of certain statutory benefits. Private, consensual sexual intimacy between two adult persons of the same sex may not be punished by the State, and it can form “but one element in a personal bond that is more enduring.” Lawrence v. Texas, 539 U. S. 558, 567 (2003) . By its recognition of the validity of same-sex marriages performed in other jurisdictions and then by authorizing same-sex unions and same-sex marriages, New York sought to give further protection and dignity to that bond. For same-sex couples who wished to be married, the State acted to give their lawful conduct a lawful status. This status is a far-reaching legal acknowledgment of the intimate relationship between two people, a relationship deemed by the State worthy of dignity in the community equal with all other marriages. It reflects both the community’s considered perspective on the historical roots of the institution of marriage and its evolving understanding of the meaning of equality. IV DOMA seeks to injure the very class New York seeks to protect. By doing so it violates basic due process and equal protection principles applicable to the Federal Government. See U. S. Const., Amdt. 5; Bolling v. Sharpe, 347 U. S. 497 (1954) . The Constitution’s guarantee of equality “must at the very least mean that a bare con- gressional desire to harm a politically unpopular group cannot” justify disparate treatment of that group. Depart- ment of Agriculture v. Moreno, 413 U. S. 528 –535 (1973). In determining whether a law is motived by an improper animus or purpose, “ ‘[d]iscriminations of an un- usual character’ ” especially require careful considera- tion. Supra, at 19 (quoting Romer, supra, at 633). DOMA cannot survive under these principles. The responsibility of the States for the regulation of domestic relations is an important indicator of the substantial societal impact the State’s classifications have in the daily lives and customs of its people. DOMA’s unusual deviation from the usual tradition of recognizing and accepting state definitions of marriage here operates to deprive same-sex couples of the benefits and responsibilities that come with the federal recognition of their marriages. This is strong evidence of a law having the purpose and effect of disapproval of that class. The avowed purpose and practical effect of the law here in question are to impose a disadvantage, a separate status, and so a stigma upon all who enter into same-sex marriages made lawful by the unquestioned authority of the States. The history of DOMA’s enactment and its own text demonstrate that interference with the equal dignity of same-sex marriages, a dignity conferred by the States in the exercise of their sovereign power, was more than an incidental effect of the federal statute. It was its essence. The House Report announced its conclusion that “it is both appropriate and necessary for Congress to do what it can to defend the institution of traditional heterosexual marriage. . . . H. R. 3396 is appropriately entitled the ‘Defense of Marriage Act.’ The effort to redefine ‘marriage’ to extend to homosexual couples is a truly radical proposal that would fundamentally alter the institution of marriage.” H. R. Rep. No. 104–664, pp. 12–13 (1996). The House concluded that DOMA expresses “both moral disapproval of homosexuality, and a moral conviction that heterosexuality better comports with traditional (especially Judeo-Christian) morality.” Id., at 16 (footnote deleted). The stated purpose of the law was to promote an “interest in protecting the traditional moral teachings reflected in heterosexual-only marriage laws.” Ibid. Were there any doubt of this far-reaching purpose, the title of the Act confirms it: The Defense of Marriage. The arguments put forward by BLAG are just as candid about the congressional purpose to influence or interfere with state sovereign choices about who may be married. As the title and dynamics of the bill indicate, its purpose is to discourage enactment of state same-sex marriage laws and to restrict the freedom and choice of couples married under those laws if they are enacted. The congressional goal was “to put a thumb on the scales and influence a state’s decision as to how to shape its own marriage laws.” Massachusetts, 682 F. 3d, at 12–13. The Act’s demonstrated purpose is to ensure that if any State decides to recognize same-sex marriages, those unions will be treated as second-class marriages for purposes of federal law. This raises a most serious question under the Constitution’s Fifth Amendment. DOMA’s operation in practice confirms this purpose. When New York adopted a law to permit same-sex marriage, it sought to eliminate inequality; but DOMA frustrates that objective through a system-wide enactment with no identified connection to any particular area of fed- eral law. DOMA writes inequality into the entire United States Code. The particular case at hand concerns the estate tax, but DOMA is more than a simple determi- nation of what should or should not be allowed as an estate tax refund. Among the over 1,000 statutes and numerous federal regulations that DOMA controls are laws pertaining to Social Security, housing, taxes, criminal sanctions, copyright, and veterans’ benefits. DOMA’s principal effect is to identify a subset of state-sanctioned marriages and make them unequal. The principal purpose is to impose inequality, not for other reasons like governmental efficiency. Responsibilities, as well as rights, enhance the dignity and integrity of the person. And DOMA contrives to deprive some couples married under the laws of their State, but not other couples, of both rights and responsibilities. By creating two contradictory marriage regimes within the same State, DOMA forces same-sex couples to live as married for the purpose of state law but unmarried for the purpose of federal law, thus diminishing the stability and predictability of basic personal relations the State has found it proper to acknowledge and protect. By this dynamic DOMA undermines both the public and private significance of state-sanctioned same-sex marriages; for it tells those couples, and all the world, that their otherwise valid marriages are unworthy of federal recognition. This places same-sex couples in an unstable position of being in a second-tier marriage. The differentiation demeans the couple, whose moral and sexual choices the Constitution protects, see Lawrence, 539 U. S. 558 , and whose relationship the State has sought to dignify. And it humiliates tens of thousands of children now being raised by same-sex couples. The law in question makes it even more difficult for the children to understand the integrity and closeness of their own family and its concord with other families in their community and in their daily lives. Under DOMA, same-sex married couples have their lives burdened, by reason of government decree, in visible and public ways. By its great reach, DOMA touches many aspects of married and family life, from the mundane to the profound. It prevents same-sex married couples from obtaining government healthcare benefits they would otherwise receive. See 5 U. S. C. §§8901(5), 8905. It deprives them of the Bankruptcy Code’s special protections for domestic-support obligations. See 11 U. S. C. §§101(14A), 507(a)(1)(A), 523(a)(5), 523(a)(15). It forces them to follow a complicated procedure to file their state and federal taxes jointly. Technical Bulletin TB–55, 2010 Vt. Tax LEXIS 6 (Oct. 7, 2010); Brief for Federalism Scholars as Amici Curiae 34. It prohibits them from being buried together in veterans’ cemeteries. National Cemetery Administration Directive 3210/1, p. 37 (June 4, 2008). For certain married couples, DOMA’s unequal effects are even more serious. The federal penal code makes it a crime to “assaul[t], kidna[p], or murde[r] . . . a member of the immediate family” of “a United States official, a United States judge, [or] a Federal law enforcement officer,” 18 U. S. C. §115(a)(1)(A), with the intent to influence or retaliate against that official, §115(a)(1). Although a “spouse” qualifies as a member of the officer’s “immediate family,” §115(c)(2), DOMA makes this protection inapplicable to same-sex spouses. DOMA also brings financial harm to children of same-sex couples. It raises the cost of health care for families by taxing health benefits provided by employers to their workers’ same-sex spouses. See 26 U. S. C. §106; Treas. Reg. §1.106–1, 26 CFR §1.106–1 (2012); IRS Private Letter Ruling 9850011 (Sept. 10, 1998). And it denies or re- duces benefits allowed to families upon the loss of a spouse and parent, benefits that are an integral part of family security. See Social Security Administration, Social Security Survivors Benefits 5 (2012) (benefits available to a surviving spouse caring for the couple’s child), online at http://www.ssa.gov/pubs/EN-05-10084.pdf. DOMA divests married same-sex couples of the duties and responsibilities that are an essential part of married life and that they in most cases would be honored to accept were DOMA not in force. For instance, because it is expected that spouses will support each other as they pursue educational opportunities, federal law takes into consideration a spouse’s income in calculating a student’s fed- eral financial aid eligibility. See 20 U. S. C. §1087nn(b). Same-sex married couples are exempt from this requirement. The same is true with respect to federal ethics rules. Federal executive and agency officials are prohibited from “participat[ing] personally and substantially” in matters as to which they or their spouses have a financial interest. 18 U. S. C. §208(a). A similar statute prohibits Senators, Senate employees, and their spouses from accepting high-value gifts from certain sources, see 2 U. S. C. §31–2(a)(1), and another mandates detailed financial disclosures by numerous high-ranking officials and their spouses. See 5 U. S. C. App. §§102(a), (e). Under DOMA, however, these Government-integrity rules do not apply to same-sex spouses. * * * The power the Constitution grants it also restrains. And though Congress has great authority to design laws to fit its own conception of sound national policy, it cannot deny the liberty protected by the Due Process Clause of the Fifth Amendment. What has been explained to this point should more than suffice to establish that the principal purpose and the necessary effect of this law are to demean those persons who are in a lawful same-sex marriage. This requires the Court to hold, as it now does, that DOMA is unconstitutional as a deprivation of the liberty of the person protected by the Fifth Amendment of the Constitution. The liberty protected by the Fifth Amendment’s Due Process Clause contains within it the prohibition against denying to any person the equal protection of the laws. See Bolling, 347 U. S., at 499–500; Adarand Constructors, Inc. v. Peña, 515 U. S. 200 –218 (1995). While the Fifth Amendment itself withdraws from Government the power to degrade or demean in the way this law does, the equal protection guarantee of the Fourteenth Amendment makes that Fifth Amendment right all the more specific and all the better understood and preserved. The class to which DOMA directs its restrictions and restraints are those persons who are joined in same-sex marriages made lawful by the State. DOMA singles out a class of persons deemed by a State entitled to recognition and protection to enhance their own liberty. It imposes a disability on the class by refusing to acknowledge a status the State finds to be dignified and proper. DOMA instructs all federal officials, and indeed all persons with whom same-sex couples interact, including their own children, that their marriage is less worthy than the marriages of others. The federal statute is invalid, for no legitimate purpose overcomes the purpose and effect to disparage and to injure those whom the State, by its marriage laws, sought to protect in personhood and dignity. By seeking to displace this protection and treating those persons as living in marriages less respected than others, the federal statute is in violation of the Fifth Amendment. This opinion and its holding are confined to those lawful marriages. The judgment of the Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit is affirmed. It is so ordered.

570.US.338

Petitioner, a university medical center (University) that is part of the University of Texas system, specializes in medical education. It has an affiliation agreement with Parkland Memorial Hospital (Hospital), which requires the Hospital to offer vacant staff physician posts to University faculty members. Respondent, a physician of Middle Eastern descent who was both a University faculty member and a Hospital staff physician, claimed that Dr. Levine, one of his supervisors at the University, was biased against him on account of his religion and ethnic heritage. He complained to Dr. Fitz, Levine’s supervisor. But after he arranged to continue working at the Hospital without also being on the University’s faculty, he resigned his teaching post and sent a letter to Fitz and others, stating that he was leaving because of Levine’s harassment. Fitz, upset at Levine’s public humiliation and wanting public exoneration for her, objected to the Hospital’s job offer, which was then withdrawn. Respondent filed suit, alleging two discrete Title VII violations. First, he alleged that Levine’s racially and religiously motivated harassment had resulted in his constructive discharge from the University, in violation of 42 U. S. C. §2000e–2(a), which prohibits an employer from discriminating against an employee “because of such individual’s race, color, religion, sex, and national origin” (referred to here as status-based discrimination). Second, he claimed that Fitz’s efforts to prevent the Hospital from hiring him were in retaliation for complaining about Levine’s harassment, in violation of §2000e–3(a), which prohibits employer retaliation “because [an employee] has opposed . . . an unlawful employment practice . . . or . . . made a [Title VII] charge.” The jury found for respondent on both claims. The Fifth Circuit vacated as to the constructive-discharge claim, but affirmed as to the retaliation finding on the theory that retaliation claims brought under §2000e–3(a)—like §2000e–2(a) status-based claims—require only a showing that retaliation was a motivating factor for the adverse employment action, not its but-for cause, see §2000e–2(m). And it found that the evidence supported a finding that Fitz was motivated, at least in part, to retaliate against respondent for his complaints about Levine. Held: Title VII retaliation claims must be proved according to traditional principles of but-for causation, not the lessened causation test stated in §2000e–2(m). Pp. 5–23. (a) In defining the proper causation standard for Title VII retaliation claims, it is presumed that Congress incorporated tort law’s causation in fact standard—i.e., proof that the defendant’s conduct did in fact cause the plaintiff’s injury—absent an indication to the contrary in the statute itself. See Meyer v. Holley, 537 U.S. 280, 285. An employee alleging status-based discrimination under §2000e–2 need not show “but-for” causation. It suffices instead to show that the motive to discriminate was one of the employer’s motives, even if the employer also had other, lawful motives for the decision. This principle is the result of Price Waterhouse v. Hopkins, 490 U.S. 228, and the ensuing Civil Rights Act of 1991 (1991 Act), which substituted a new burden-shifting framework for the one endorsed by Price Waterhouse. As relevant here, that Act added a new subsection to §2000e–2, providing that “an unlawful employment practice is established when the complaining party demonstrates that race, color, religion, sex, or national origin was a motivating factor for any employment practice, even though other factors also motivated the practice,” §2000e–2(m). Also relevant here is this Court’s decision in Gross v. FBL Financial Services, Inc., 557 U.S. 167, 176, which interprets the Age Discrimination in Employment Act of 1967 (ADEA) phrase “because of . . . age,” 29 U. S. C. §623(a)(1). Gross holds two insights that inform the analysis of this case. The first is textual and concerns the proper interpretation of the term “because” as it relates to the principles of causation underlying both §623(a) and §2000e–3(a). The second is the significance of Congress’ structural choices in both Title VII itself and the 1991 Act. Pp. 5–11. (b) Title VII’s antiretaliation provision appears in a different section from its status-based discrimination ban. And, like §623(a)(1), the ADEA provision in Gross, §2000e–3(a) makes it unlawful for an employer to take adverse employment action against an employee “because” of certain criteria. Given the lack of any meaningful textual difference between §2000e–3(a) and §623(a)(1), the proper conclusion is that Title VII retaliation claims require proof that the desire to retaliate was the but-for cause of the challenged employment action. Respondent and the United States maintain that §2000e–2(m)’s motivating-factor test applies, but that reading is flawed. First, it is inconsistent with the provision’s plain language, which addresses only race, color, religion, sex, and national origin discrimination and says nothing about retaliation. Second, their reading is inconsistent with the statute’s design and structure. Congress inserted the motivating-factor provision as a subsection within §2000e–2, which deals only with status-based discrimination. The conclusion that Congress acted deliberately in omitting retaliation claims from §2000–2(m) is reinforced by the fact that another part of the 1991 Act, §109, expressly refers to all unlawful employment actions. See EEOC v. Arabian American Oil Co., 499 U.S. 244, 256. Third, the cases they rely on, which state the general proposition that Congress’ enactment of a broadly phrased antidiscrimination statute may signal a concomitant intent to ban retaliation against individuals who oppose that discrimination, see, e.g., CBOCS West, Inc. v. Humphries, 553 U.S. 442, 452–453; Gómez-Pérez v. Potter, 553 U.S. 474, do not support the quite different rule that every reference to race, color, creed, sex, or nationality in an antidiscrimination statute is to be treated as a synonym for “retaliation,” especially in a precise, complex, and exhaustive statute like Title VII. The Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990, which contains seven paragraphs of detailed description of the practices constituting prohibited discrimination, as well as an express antiretaliation provision, and which was passed only a year before §2000e–2(m)’s enactment, shows that when Congress elected to address retaliation as part of a detailed statutory scheme, it did so clearly. Pp. 11–17. (c) The proper interpretation and implementation of §2000e–3(a) and its causation standard are of central importance to the fair and responsible allocation of resources in the judicial and litigation systems, particularly since retaliation claims are being made with ever-increasing frequency. Lessening the causation standard could also contribute to the filing of frivolous claims, siphoning resources from efforts by employers, agencies, and courts to combat workplace harassment. Pp. 18–20. (d) Respondent and the Government argue that their view would be consistent with longstanding agency views contained in an Equal Employment Opportunity Commission guidance manual, but the manual’s explanations for its views lack the persuasive force that is a necessary precondition to deference under Skidmore v. Swift & Co., 323 U.S. 134, 140. Respondent’s final argument—that if §2000e–2(m) does not control, then the Price Waterhouse standard should—is foreclosed by the 1991 Act’s amendments to Title VII, which displaced the Price Waterhouse framework. Pp. 20–23. 674 F.3d 448, vacated and remanded. Kennedy, J., delivered the opinion of the Court, in which Roberts, C. J., and Scalia, Thomas, and Alito, JJ., joined. Ginsburg, J., filed a dissenting opinion, in which Breyer, Sotomayor, and Kagan, JJ., joined.

When the law grants persons the right to compensation for injury from wrongful conduct, there must be some demonstrated connection, some link, between the injury sustained and the wrong alleged. The requisite relation between prohibited conduct and compensable injury is governed by the principles of causation, a subject most often arising in elaborating the law of torts. This case requires the Court to define those rules in the context of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, 42 U. S. C. §2000e et seq., which provides remedies to employees for injuries related to discriminatory conduct and associated wrongs by employers. Title VII is central to the federal policy of prohibiting wrongful discrimination in the Nation’s workplaces and in all sectors of economic endeavor. This opinion discusses the causation rules for two categories of wrongful employer conduct prohibited by Title VII. The first type is called, for purposes of this opinion, status-based discrimination. The term is used here to refer to basic workplace protection such as prohibitions against employer discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, or national origin, in hiring, firing, salary structure, promotion and the like. See §2000e–2(a). The second type of conduct is employer retaliation on account of an employee’s having opposed, complained of, or sought remedies for, unlawful workplace discrimination. See §2000e–3(a). An employee who alleges status-based discrimination under Title VII need not show that the causal link between injury and wrong is so close that the injury would not have occurred but for the act. So-called but-for causation is not the test. It suffices instead to show that the motive to discriminate was one of the employer’s motives, even if the employer also had other, lawful motives that were causative in the employer’s decision. This principle is the result of an earlier case from this Court, Price Waterhouse v. Hopkins, 490 U. S. 228 (1989) , and an ensuing statutory amendment by Congress that codified in part and abrogated in part the holding in Price Waterhouse, see §§2000e–2(m), 2000e–5(g)(2)(B). The question the Court must answer here is whether that lessened causation standard is applicable to claims of unlawful employer retaliation under §2000e–3(a). Although the Court has not addressed the question of the causation showing required to establish liability for a Title VII retaliation claim, it has addressed the issue of causation in general in a case involving employer discrimination under a separate but related statute, the Age Discrimination in Employment Act of 1967 (ADEA), 29 U. S. C. §623. See Gross v. FBL Financial Services, Inc., 557 U. S. 167 (2009) . In Gross, the Court concluded that the ADEA requires proof that the prohibited criterion was the but-for cause of the prohibited conduct. The holding and analysis of that decision are instructive here. I Petitioner, the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center (University), is an academic institution within the University of Texas system. The University specializes in medical education for aspiring physicians, health professionals, and scientists. Over the years, the University has affiliated itself with a number of healthcare facilities including, as relevant in this case, Parkland Memorial Hospital (Hospital). As provided in its affiliation agreement with the University, the Hospital permits the University’s students to gain clinical experience working in its facilities. The agreement also requires the Hospital to offer empty staff physician posts to the University’s faculty members, see App. 361–362, 366, and, accordingly, most of the staff physician positions at the Hospital are filled by those faculty members. Respondent is a medical doctor of Middle Eastern descent who specializes in internal medicine and infectious diseases. In 1995, he was hired to work both as a member of the University’s faculty and a staff physician at the Hospital. He left both positions in 1998 for additional medical education and then returned in 2001 as an assistant professor at the University and, once again, as a physician at the Hospital. In 2004, Dr. Beth Levine was hired as the University’s Chief of Infectious Disease Medicine. In that position Levine became respondent’s ultimate (though not direct) superior. Respondent alleged that Levine was biased against him on account of his religion and ethnic heritage, a bias manifested by undeserved scrutiny of his billing practices and productivity, as well as comments that “ ‘Middle Easterners are lazy.’ ” 674 F. 3d 448, 450 (CA5 2012). On different occasions during his employment, respondent met with Dr. Gregory Fitz, the University’s Chair of Internal Medicine and Levine’s supervisor, to complain about Levine’s alleged harassment. Despite obtaining a promotion with Levine’s assistance in 2006, respondent continued to believe that she was biased against him. So he tried to arrange to continue working at the Hospital without also being on the University’s faculty. After preliminary negotiations with the Hospital suggested this might be possible, respondent resigned his teaching post in July 2006 and sent a letter to Dr. Fitz (among others), in which he stated that the reason for his departure was harassment by Levine. That harassment, he asserted, “ ‘stems from . . . religious, racial and cultural bias against Arabs and Muslims.’ ” Id., at 451. After reading that letter, Dr. Fitz expressed consternation at respondent’s accusations, saying that Levine had been “publicly humiliated by th[e] letter” and that it was “very important that she be publicly exonerated.” App. 41. Meanwhile, the Hospital had offered respondent a job as a staff physician, as it had indicated it would. On learning of that offer, Dr. Fitz protested to the Hospital, asserting that the offer was inconsistent with the affiliation agreement’s requirement that all staff physicians also be members of the University faculty. The Hospital then withdrew its offer. After exhausting his administrative remedies, respondent filed this Title VII suit in the United States District Court for the Northern District of Texas. He alleged two discrete violations of Title VII. The first was a status-based discrimination claim under §2000e–2(a). Respondent alleged that Dr. Levine’s racially and religiously moti- vated harassment had resulted in his constructive discharge from the University. Respondent’s second claim was that Dr. Fitz’s efforts to prevent the Hospital from hiring him were in retaliation for complaining about Dr. Levine’s harassment, in violation of §2000e–3(a). 674 F. 3d, at 452. The jury found for respondent on both claims. It awarded him over $400,000 in backpay and more than $3 million in compensatory damages. The District Court later reduced the compensatory damages award to $300,000. On appeal, the Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit affirmed in part and vacated in part. The court first concluded that respondent had submitted insufficient evidence in support of his constructive-discharge claim, so it vacated that portion of the jury’s verdict. The court affirmed as to the retaliation finding, however, on the theory that retaliation claims brought under §2000e–3(a)—like claims of status-based discrimination under §2000e–2(a)—require only a showing that retaliation was a motivating factor for the adverse employment action, rather than its but-for cause. See id., at 454, n. 16 (citing Smith v. Xerox Corp., 602 F. 3d 320, 330 (CA5 2010)). It further held that the evidence supported a finding that Dr. Fitz was motivated, at least in part, to retaliate against respondent for his complaints against Levine. The Court of Appeals then remanded for a redetermination of damages in light of its decision to vacate the constructive-discharge verdict. Four judges dissented from the court’s decision not to rehear the case en banc, arguing that the Circuit’s application of the motivating-factor standard to retaliation cases was “an erroneous interpretation of [Title VII] and controlling caselaw” and should be overruled en banc. 688 F. 3d 211, 213–214 (CA5 2012) (Smith, J., dissenting from denial of rehearing en banc). Certiorari was granted. 568 U. S. ___ (2013). II A This case requires the Court to define the proper standard of causation for Title VII retaliation claims. Causation in fact—i.e., proof that the defendant’s conduct did in fact cause the plaintiff’s injury—is a standard requirement of any tort claim, see Restatement of Torts §9 (1934) (definition of “legal cause”); §431, Comment a (same); §279, and Comment c (intentional infliction of physical harm); §280 (other intentional torts); §281(c) (negligence). This includes federal statutory claims of workplace discrimination. Hazen Paper Co. v. Biggins, 507 U. S. 604, 610 (1993) (In intentional-discrimination cases, “liability depends on whether the protected trait” “actually motivated the employer’s decision” and “had a determinative in- fluence on the outcome”); Los Angeles Dept. of Water and Power v. Manhart, 435 U. S. 702, 711 (1978) (explaining that the “simple test” for determining a discriminatory employment practice is “whether the evidence shows treatment of a person in a manner which but for that person’s sex would be different” (internal quotation marks omitted)). In the usual course, this standard requires the plaintiff to show “that the harm would not have occurred” in the absence of—that is, but for—the defendant’s conduct. Restatement of Torts §431, Comment a (negligence); §432(1), and Comment a (same); see §279, and Comment c (intentional infliction of bodily harm); §280 (other intentional torts); Restatement (Third) of Torts: Liability for Physical and Emotional Harm §27, and Comment b (2010) (noting the existence of an exception for cases where an injured party can prove the existence of multiple, independently sufficient factual causes, but observing that “cases invoking the concept are rare”). See also Restatement (Second) of Torts §432(1) (1963 and 1964) (negligence claims); §870, Comment l (intentional injury to another); cf. §435a, and Comment a (legal cause for intentional harm). It is thus textbook tort law that an action “is not regarded as a cause of an event if the particular event would have occurred without it.” W. Keeton, D. Dobbs, R. Keeton, & D. Owen, Prosser and Keeton on Law of Torts 265 (5th ed. 1984). This, then, is the background against which Congress legislated in enacting Title VII, and these are the default rules it is presumed to have incorporated, absent an indication to the contrary in the statute itself. See Meyer v. Holley, 537 U. S. 280, 285 (2003) ; Carey v. Piphus, 435 U. S. 247 –258 (1978). B Since the statute’s passage in 1964, it has prohibited employers from discriminating against their employees on any of seven specified criteria. Five of them—race, color, religion, sex, and national origin—are personal characteristics and are set forth in §2000e–2. (As noted at the outset, discrimination based on these five characteristics is called status-based discrimination in this opinion.) And then there is a point of great import for this case: The two remaining categories of wrongful employer conduct—the employee’s opposition to employment discrimination, and the employee’s submission of or support for a complaint that alleges employment discrimination—are not wrongs based on personal traits but rather types of protected employee conduct. These latter two categories are covered by a separate, subsequent section of Title VII, §2000e–3(a). Under the status-based discrimination provision, it is an “unlawful employment practice” for an employer “to discriminate against any individual . . . because of such individual’s race, color, religion, sex, or national origin.” §2000e–2(a). In its 1989 decision in Price Waterhouse, the Court sought to explain the causation standard imposed by this language. It addressed in particular what it means for an action to be taken “because of” an individual’s race, religion, or nationality. Although no opinion in that case commanded a majority, six Justices did agree that a plaintiff could prevail on a claim of status-based discrimination if he or she could show that one of the prohibited traits was a “motivating” or “substantial” factor in the employer’s decision. 490 U. S., at 258 (plurality opinion); id., at 259 (White, J., concurring in judgment); id., at 276 (O’Connor, J., concurring in judgment). If the plaintiff made that showing, the burden of persuasion would shift to the employer, which could escape liability if it could prove that it would have taken the same employment action in the absence of all discriminatory animus. Id., at 258 (plurality opinion); id., at 259–260 (opinion of White, J.); id., at 276–277 (opinion of O’Connor, J.). In other words, the employer had to show that a discriminatory motive was not the but-for cause of the adverse employment action. Two years later, Congress passed the Civil Rights Act of 1991 (1991 Act), 105Stat. 1071. This statute (which had many other provisions) codified the burden-shifting and lessened-causation framework of Price Waterhouse in part but also rejected it to a substantial degree. The legislation first added a new subsection to the end of §2000e–2, i.e., Title VII’s principal ban on status-based discrimination. See §107(a), 105Stat. 1075. The new provision, §2000e–2(m), states: “[A]n unlawful employment practice is established when the complaining party demonstrates that race, color, religion, sex, or national origin was a motivating factor for any employment practice, even though other factors also motivated the practice.” This, of course, is a lessened causation standard. The 1991 Act also abrogated a portion of Price Waterhouse’s framework by removing the employer’s ability to defeat liability once a plaintiff proved the existence of an impermissible motivating factor. See Gross, 557 U. S., at 178, n. 5. In its place, Congress enacted §2000e–5(g)(2), which provides: “(B) On a claim in which an individual proves a violation under section 2000e–2(m) of this title and [the employer] demonstrates that [it] would have taken the same action in the absence of the impermissible motivating factor, the court— “(i) may grant declaratory relief, injunctive relief . . . and [limited] attorney’s fees and costs . . . ; and “(ii) shall not award damages or issue an order requiring any admission, reinstatement, hiring, promotion, or payment . . . .” So, in short, the 1991 Act substituted a new burden-shifting framework for the one endorsed by Price Waterhouse. Under that new regime, a plaintiff could obtain declaratory relief, attorney’s fees and costs, and some forms of injunctive relief based solely on proof that race, color, religion, sex, or nationality was a motivating factor in the employment action; but the employer’s proof that it would still have taken the same employment action would save it from monetary damages and a reinstatement order. See Gross, 557 U. S., at 178, n. 5; see also id., at 175, n. 2, 177, n. 3. After Price Waterhouse and the 1991 Act, considerable time elapsed before the Court returned again to the meaning of “because” and the problem of causation. This time it arose in the context of a different, yet similar statute, the ADEA, 29 U. S. C. §623(a). See Gross, supra. Much like the Title VII statute in Price Waterhouse, the relevant portion of the ADEA provided that “ ‘[i]t shall be unlawful for an employer . . . to fail or refuse to hire or to discharge any individual or otherwise discriminate against any individual with respect to his compensation, terms, conditions, or privileges of employment, because of such individual’s age.’ ” 557 U. S., at 176 (quoting §623(a)(1); emphasis and ellipsis in original). Concentrating first and foremost on the meaning of the phrase “ ‘because of . . . age,’ ” the Court in Gross explained that the ordinary meaning of “ ‘because of’ ” is “ ‘by reason of’ ” or “ ‘on account of.’ ” Id., at 176 (citing 1 Webster’s Third New International Dictionary 194 (1966); 1 Oxford English Dictionary 746 (1933); The Random House Dictionary of the English Language 132 (1966); emphasis in original). Thus, the “requirement that an employer took adverse action ‘because of’ age [meant] that age was the ‘reason’ that the employer decided to act,” or, in other words, that “age was the ‘but-for’ cause of the employer’s adverse decision.” 557 U. S., at 176. See also Safeco Ins. Co. of America v. Burr, 551 U. S. 47 –64, and n. 14 (2007) (noting that “because of” means “based on” and that “ ‘based on’ indicates a but-for causal relationship”); Holmes v. Securities Investor Protection Corporation, 503 U. S. 258 –266 (1992) (equating “by reason of” with “ ‘but for’ cause”). In the course of approving this construction, Gross declined to adopt the interpretation endorsed by the plurality and concurring opinions in Price Waterhouse. Noting that “the ADEA must be ‘read . . . the way Congress wrote it,’ ” 557 U. S., at 179 (quoting Meacham v. Knolls Atomic Power Laboratory, 554 U. S. 84, 102 (2008) ), the Court concluded that “the textual differences between Title VII and the ADEA” “prevent[ed] us from applying Price Waterhouse . . . to federal age discrimination claims,” 557 U. S., at 175, n. 2. In particular, the Court stressed the congressional choice not to add a provision like §2000e–2(m) to the ADEA despite making numerous other changes to the latter statute in the 1991 Act. Id., at 174–175 (citing EEOC v. Arabian American Oil Co., 499 U. S. 244, 256 (1991) ); 557 U. S., at 177, n. 3 (citing 14 Penn Plaza LLC v. Pyett, 556 U. S. 247, 270 (2009) ). Finally, the Court in Gross held that it would not be proper to read Price Waterhouse as announcing a rule that applied to both statutes, despite their similar wording and near-contemporaneous enactment. 557 U. S., at 178, n. 5. This different reading was necessary, the Court concluded, because Congress’ 1991 amendments to Title VII, including its “careful tailoring of the ‘motivating factor’ claim” and the substitution of §2000e–5(g)(2)(B) for Price Waterhouse’s full affirmative defense, indicated that the motivating-factor standard was not an organic part of Title VII and thus could not be read into the ADEA. See 557 U. S., at 178, n. 5. In Gross, the Court was careful to restrict its analysis to the statute before it and withhold judgment on the proper resolution of a case, such as this, which arose under Title VII rather than the ADEA. But the particular confines of Gross do not deprive it of all persuasive force. Indeed, that opinion holds two insights for the present case. The first is textual and concerns the proper interpretation of the term “because” as it relates to the principles of causation underlying both §623(a) and §2000e–3(a). The second is the significance of Congress’ structural choices in both Title VII itself and the law’s 1991 amendments. These principles do not decide the present case but do inform its analysis, for the issues possess significant parallels. III A As noted, Title VII’s antiretaliation provision, which is set forth in §2000e–3(a), appears in a different section from Title VII’s ban on status-based discrimination. The antiretaliation provision states, in relevant part: “It shall be an unlawful employment practice for an employer to discriminate against any of his employees . . . because he has opposed any practice made an unlawful employment practice by this subchapter, or because he has made a charge, testified, assisted, or participated in any manner in an investigation, proceeding, or hearing under this subchapter.” This enactment, like the statute at issue in Gross, makes it unlawful for an employer to take adverse employment action against an employee “because” of certain criteria. Cf. 29 U. S. C. §623(a)(1). Given the lack of any meaningful textual difference between the text in this statute and the one in Gross, the proper conclusion here, as in Gross, is that Title VII retaliation claims require proof that the desire to retaliate was the but-for cause of the challenged employment action. See Gross, supra, at 176. The principal counterargument offered by respondent and the United States relies on their different understanding of the motivating-factor section, which—on its face—applies only to status discrimination, discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, and national origin. In substance, they contend that: (1) retaliation is defined by the statute to be an unlawful employment practice; (2) §2000e–2(m) allows unlawful employment practices to be proved based on a showing that race, color, religion, sex, or national origin was a motivating factor for—and not necessarily the but-for factor in—the challenged employment action; and (3) the Court has, as a matter of course, held that “retaliation for complaining about race discrimination is ‘discrimination based on race.’ ” Brief for United States as Amicus Curiae 14; see id., at 11–14; Brief for Respondent 16–19. There are three main flaws in this reading of §2000e–2(m). The first is that it is inconsistent with the provision’s plain language. It must be acknowledged that because Title VII defines “unlawful employment practice” to include retaliation, the question presented by this case would be different if §2000e–2(m) extended its coverage to all unlawful employment practices. As actually written, however, the text of the motivating-factor provision, while it begins by referring to “unlawful employment practices,” then proceeds to address only five of the seven prohibited discriminatory actions—actions based on the employee’s status, i.e., race, color, religion, sex, and national origin. This indicates Congress’ intent to confine that provision’s coverage to only those types of employment practices. The text of §2000e–2(m) says nothing about retaliation claims. Given this clear language, it would be improper to conclude that what Congress omitted from the statute is nevertheless within its scope. Gardner v. Collins, 2 Pet. 58, 93 (1829) (“What the legislative intention was, can be derived only from the words they have used; and we cannot speculate beyond the reasonable import of these words”); see Sebelius v. Cloer, 569 U. S. ___, ___ (2013) (slip op., at 8). The second problem with this reading is its inconsistency with the design and structure of the statute as a whole. See Gross, 557 U. S., at 175, n. 2, 178, n. 5. Just as Congress’ choice of words is presumed to be deliberate, so too are its structural choices. See id., at 177, n. 3. When Congress wrote the motivating-factor provision in 1991, it chose to insert it as a subsection within §2000e–2, which contains Title VII’s ban on status-based discrimination, §§2000e–2(a) to (d), (l), and says nothing about retaliation. See 1991 Act, §107(a), 105Stat. 1075 (directing that “§2000e–2 . . . [be] further amended by adding at the end the following new subsection . . . (m)”). The title of the section of the 1991 Act that created §2000e–2(m)—“Clarifying prohibition against impermissible consideration of race, color, religion, sex, or national origin in employment practices”—also indicates that Congress determined to address only claims of status-based discrimination, not retaliation. See §107(a), id., at 1075. What is more, a different portion of the 1991 Act contains an express reference to all unlawful employment actions, thereby reinforcing the conclusion that Congress acted deliberately when it omitted retaliation claims from §2000e–2(m). See Arabian American Oil Co., 499 U. S., at 256 (congressional amendment of ADEA on a similar subject coupled with congressional failure to amend Title VII weighs against conclusion that the ADEA’s standard applies to Title VII); see also Gross, supra, at 177, n. 3. The relevant portion of the 1991 Act, §109(b), allowed certain overseas operations by U. S. employers to engage in “any practice prohibited by section 703 or 704,” i.e., §2000e–2 or §2000e–3, “if compliance with such section would cause such employer . . . to violate the law of the foreign country in which such workplace is located.” 105Stat. 1077. If Congress had desired to make the motivating-factor standard applicable to all Title VII claims, it could have used language similar to that which it invoked in §109. See Arabian American Oil Co., supra, at 256. Or, it could have inserted the motivating-factor provision as part of a section that applies to all such claims, such as §2000e–5, which establishes the rules and remedies for all Title VII enforcement actions. See FDA v. Brown & Williamson Tobacco Corp., 529 U. S. 120, 160 (2000) . But in writing §2000e–2(m), Congress did neither of those things, and “[w]e must give effect to Congress’ choice.” Gross, supra, at 177, n. 3. The third problem with respondent’s and the Government’s reading of the motivating-factor standard is in its submission that this Court’s decisions interpreting federal antidiscrimination law have, as a general matter, treated bans on status-based discrimination as also prohibiting retaliation. In support of this proposition, both respondent and the United States rely upon decisions in which this Court has “read [a] broadly worded civil rights statute . . . as including an antiretaliation remedy.” CBOCS West, Inc. v. Humphries, 553 U. S. 442 –453 (2008). In CBOCS, for example, the Court held that 42 U. S. C. §1981—which declares that all persons “shall have the same right . . . to make and enforce contracts . . . as is enjoyed by white citizens”—prohibits not only racial discrimination but also retaliation against those who oppose it. 553 U. S., at 445. And in Gómez-Pérez v. Potter, 553 U. S. 474 (2008) , the Court likewise read a bar on retaliation into the broad wording of the federal-employee provisions of the ADEA. Id., at 479, 487 (“All personnel actions affecting [federal] employees . . . who are at least 40 years of age . . . shall be made free from any discrimination based on age,” 29 U. S. C. §633a(a)); see also Jackson v. Birmingham Bd. of Ed., 544 U. S. 167, 173, 179 (2005) ( 20 U. S. C. §1681(a) (Title IX)); Sullivan v. Little Hunting Park, Inc., 396 U. S. 229 , n. 3, 237 (1969) ( 42 U. S. C. §1982). These decisions are not controlling here. It is true these cases do state the general proposition that Congress’ enactment of a broadly phrased antidiscrimination statute may signal a concomitant intent to ban retaliation against individuals who oppose that discrimination, even where the statute does not refer to retaliation in so many words. What those cases do not support, however, is the quite different rule that every reference to race, color, creed, sex, or nationality in an antidiscrimination statute is to be treated as a synonym for “retaliation.” For one thing, §2000e–2(m) is not itself a substantive bar on discrimination. Rather, it is a rule that establishes the causation standard for proving a violation defined elsewhere in Title VII. The cases cited by respondent and the Government do not address rules of this sort, and those precedents are of limited relevance here. The approach respondent and the Government suggest is inappropriate in the context of a statute as precise, complex, and exhaustive as Title VII. As noted, the laws at issue in CBOCS, Jackson, and Gómez-Pérez were broad, general bars on discrimination. In interpreting them the Court concluded that by using capacious language Congress expressed the intent to bar retaliation in addition to status-based discrimination. See Gómez-Pérez, supra, at 486–488. In other words, when Congress’ treatment of the subject of prohibited discrimination was both broad and brief, its omission of any specific discussion of retaliation was unremarkable. If Title VII had likewise been phrased in broad and general terms, respondent’s argument might have more force. But that is not how Title VII was written, which makes it incorrect to infer that Congress meant anything other than what the text does say on the subject of retaliation. Unlike Title IX, §1981, §1982, and the federal-sector provisions of the ADEA, Title VII is a detailed statutory scheme. This statute enumerates specific unlawful employment practices. See §§2000e–2(a)(1), (b), (c)(1), (d) (status-based discrimination by employers, employment agencies, labor organizations, and training programs, respectively); §2000e–2(l) (status-based discrimination in employment-related testing); §2000e–3(a) (retaliation for opposing, or making or supporting a complaint about, unlawful employment actions); §2000e–3(b) (advertising a preference for applicants of a particular race, color, religion, sex, or national origin). It defines key terms, see §2000e, and exempts certain types of employers, see §2000e–1. And it creates an administrative agency with both rulemaking and enforcement authority. See §§2000e–5, 2000e–12. This fundamental difference in statutory structure renders inapposite decisions which treated retaliation as an implicit corollary of status-based discrimination. Text may not be divorced from context. In light of Congress’ special care in drawing so precise a statutory scheme, it would be improper to indulge respondent’s suggestion that Congress meant to incorporate the default rules that apply only when Congress writes a broad and undifferentiated statute. See Gómez-Pérez, supra, at 486–488 (when construing the broadly worded federal-sector provision of the ADEA, Court refused to draw inferences from Congress’ amendments to the detailed private-sector provisions); Arabian American Oil Co., 499 U. S., at 256; cf. Jackson, supra, at 175 (distinguishing Title IX’s “broadly written general prohibition on discrimination” from Title VII’s “greater detail [with respect to] the conduct that constitutes discrimination”). Further confirmation of the inapplicability of §2000e–2(m) to retaliation claims may be found in Congress’ approach to the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 (ADA), 104Stat. 327. In the ADA Congress provided not just a general prohibition on discrimination “because of [an individual’s] disability,” but also seven paragraphs of detailed description of the practices that would constitute the prohibited discrimination, see §§102(a), (b)(1)–(7), id., at 331–332 (codified at 42 U. S. C. §12112). And, most pertinent for present purposes, it included an express antiretaliation provision, see §503(a), 104Stat. 370 (codified at 42 U. S. C. §12203). That law, which Congress passed only a year before enacting §2000e–2(m) and which speaks in clear and direct terms to the question of retaliation, rebuts the claim that Congress must have intended to use the phrase “race, color, religion, sex, or national origin” as the textual equivalent of “retaliation.” To the contrary, the ADA shows that when Congress elected to address retaliation as part of a detailed statutory scheme, it did so in clear textual terms. The Court confronted a similar structural dispute in Lehman v. Nakshian, 453 U. S. 156 (1981) . The question there was whether the federal-employment provisions of the ADEA, 29 U. S. C. §633a, provided a jury-trial right for claims against the Federal Government. Nakshian, 453 U. S., at 157. In concluding that it did not, the Court noted that the portion of the ADEA that prohibited age discrimination by private, state, and local employers, §626, expressly provided for a jury trial, whereas the federal-sector provisions said nothing about such a right. Id., at 162–163, 168. So, too, here. Congress has in explicit terms altered the standard of causation for one class of claims but not another, despite the obvious opportunity to do so in the 1991 Act. B The proper interpretation and implementation of §2000e–3(a) and its causation standard have central importance to the fair and responsible allocation of resources in the judicial and litigation systems. This is of particular significance because claims of retaliation are being made with ever-increasing frequency. The number of these claims filed with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) has nearly doubled in the past 15 years—from just over 16,000 in 1997 to over 31,000 in 2012. EEOC, Charge Statistics FY 1997 Through FY 2012, http://www.eeoc.gov/eeoc/statistics/enforcement/ charges.cfm (as visited June 20, 2013, and available in Clerk of Court’s case file). Indeed, the number of retaliation claims filed with the EEOC has now outstripped those for every type of status-based discrimination except race. See ibid. In addition lessening the causation standard could also contribute to the filing of frivolous claims, which would siphon resources from efforts by employer, administrative agencies, and courts to combat workplace harassment. Consider in this regard the case of an employee who knows that he or she is about to be fired for poor perform- ance, given a lower pay grade, or even just transferred to a different assignment or location. To forestall that lawful action, he or she might be tempted to make an unfounded charge of racial, sexual, or religious discrimination; then, when the unrelated employment action comes, the employee could allege that it is retaliation. If respondent were to prevail in his argument here, that claim could be established by a lessened causation standard, all in order to prevent the undesired change in employment circumstances. Even if the employer could escape judgment after trial, the lessened causation standard would make it far more difficult to dismiss dubious claims at the summary judgment stage. Cf. Vance v. Ball State Univ., post, at 9–11. It would be inconsistent with the structure and operation of Title VII to so raise the costs, both financial and reputational, on an employer whose actions were not in fact the result of any discriminatory or retaliatory intent. See Brief for National School Boards Association as Amicus Curiae 11–22. Yet there would be a significant risk of that consequence if respondent’s position were adopted here. The facts of this case also demonstrate the legal and factual distinctions between status-based and retaliation claims, as well as the importance of the correct standard of proof. Respondent raised both claims in the District Court. The alleged wrongdoer differed in each: In respondent’s status-based discrimination claim, it was his indirect supervisor, Dr. Levine. In his retaliation claim, it was the Chair of Internal Medicine, Dr. Fitz. The proof required for each claim differed, too. For the status-based claim, respondent was required to show instances of racial slurs, disparate treatment, and other indications of nationality-driven animus by Dr. Levine. Respondent’s retaliation claim, by contrast, relied on the theory that Dr. Fitz was committed to exonerating Dr. Levine and wished to punish respondent for besmirching her reputation. Separately instructed on each type of claim, the jury returned a separate verdict for each, albeit with a single damages award. And the Court of Appeals treated each claim separately, too, finding insufficient evidence on the claim of status-based discrimination. If it were proper to apply the motivating-factor standard to respondent’s retaliation claim, the University might well be subject to liability on account of Dr. Fitz’s alleged desire to exonerate Dr. Levine, even if it could also be shown that the terms of the affiliation agreement pre- cluded the Hospital’s hiring of respondent and that the University would have sought to prevent respondent’s hiring in order to honor that agreement in any event. That result would be inconsistent with the both the text and purpose of Title VII. In sum, Title VII defines the term “unlawful employment practice” as discrimination on the basis of any of seven prohibited criteria: race, color, religion, sex, national origin, opposition to employment discrimination, and submitting or supporting a complaint about employment discrimination. The text of §2000e–2(m) mentions just the first five of these factors, the status-based ones; and it omits the final two, which deal with retaliation. When it added §2000e–2(m) to Title VII in 1991, Congress inserted it within the section of the statute that deals only with those same five criteria, not the section that deals with retaliation claims or one of the sections that apply to all claims of unlawful employment practices. And while the Court has inferred a congressional intent to prohibit retaliation when confronted with broadly worded antidiscrimination statutes, Title VII’s detailed structure makes that inference inappropriate here. Based on these textual and structural indications, the Court now concludes as follows: Title VII retaliation claims must be proved according to traditional principles of but-for causation, not the lessened causation test stated in §2000e–2(m). This requires proof that the unlawful retaliation would not have occurred in the absence of the alleged wrongful action or actions of the employer. IV Respondent and the Government also argue that applying the motivating-factor provision’s lessened causation standard to retaliation claims would be consistent with longstanding agency views, contained in a guidance manual published by the EEOC. It urges that those views are entitled to deference under this Court’s decision in Skidmore v. Swift & Co., 323 U. S. 134 (1944) . See National Railroad Passenger Corporation v. Morgan, 536 U. S. 101 , n. 6 (2002). The weight of deference afforded to agency interpretations under Skidmore depends upon “the thoroughness evident in its consideration, the validity of its reasoning, its consistency with earlier and later pronouncements, and all those factors which give it power to persuade.” 323 U. S., at 140; see Vance, post, at 9, n. 4. According to the manual in question, the causation element of a retaliation claim is satisfied if “there is credible direct evidence that retaliation was a motive for the challenged action,” regardless of whether there is also “[e]vidence as to [a] legitimate motive.” 2 EEOC Compliance Manual §8–II(E)(1), pp. 614:0007–614:0008 (Mar. 2003). After noting a division of authority as to whether motivating-factor or but-for causation should apply to retaliation claims, the manual offers two rationales in support of adopting the former standard. The first is that “[c]ourts have long held that the evidentiary framework for proving [status-based] discrimination . . . also applies to claims of discrimination based on retaliation.” Id., at 614:0008, n. 45. Second, the manual states that “an interpretation . . . that permits proven retaliation to go unpunished undermines the purpose of the anti-retaliation provisions of maintaining unfettered access to the statutory remedial mechanism.” Ibid. These explanations lack the persuasive force that is a necessary precondition to deference under Skidmore. See 323 U. S., at 140; Vance, post, at 9, n. 4. As to the first rationale, while the settled judicial construction of a particular statute is of course relevant in ascertaining statutory meaning, see Lorillard v. Pons, 434 U. S. 575 –581 (1978), the manual’s discussion fails to address the particular interplay among the status-based discrimination provision (§2000e–2(a)), the antiretaliation provision (§2000e–3(a)), and the motivating-factor provision (§2000e–2(m)). Other federal antidiscrimination statutes do not have the structure of statutory subsections that control the outcome at issue here. The manual’s failure to address the specific provisions of this statutory scheme, coupled with the generic nature of its discussion of the causation standards for status-based discrimination and retaliation claims, call the manual’s conclusions into serious question. See Kentucky Retirement Systems v. EEOC, 554 U. S. 135 –150 (2008). The manual’s second argument is unpersuasive, too; for its reasoning is circular. It asserts the lessened causation standard is necessary in order to prevent “proven retaliation” from “go[ing] unpunished.” 2 EEOC Compliance Manual §8–II(E)(1), at 614:0008, n. 45. Yet this assumes the answer to the central question at issue here, which is what causal relationship must be shown in order to prove retaliation. Respondent’s final argument, in which he is not joined by the United States, is that even if §2000e–2(m) does not control the outcome in this case, the standard applied by Price Waterhouse should control instead. That assertion is incorrect. First, this position is foreclosed by the 1991 Act’s amendments to Title VII. As noted above, Price Waterhouse adopted a complex burden-shifting framework. Congress displaced this framework by enacting §2000e–2(m) (which adopts the motivating-factor standard for status-based discrimination claims) and §2000e–5(g)(2)(B) (which replaces employers’ total defense with a remedial limitation). See Gross, 557 U. S., at 175, n. 2, 177, n. 3, 178, n. 5. Given the careful balance of lessened causation and reduced remedies Congress struck in the 1991 Act, there is no reason to think that the different balance articulated by Price Waterhouse somehow survived that legislation’s passage. Second, even if this argument were still available, it would be inconsistent with the Gross Court’s reading (and the plain textual meaning) of the word “because” as it appears in both §623(a) and §2000e–3(a). See Gross, supra, at 176–177. For these reasons, the rule of Price Waterhouse is not controlling here. V The text, structure, and history of Title VII demonstrate that a plaintiff making a retaliation claim under §2000e–3(a) must establish that his or her protected activity was a but-for cause of the alleged adverse action by the employer. The University claims that a fair application of this standard, which is more demanding than the motivating-factor standard adopted by the Court of Appeals, entitles it to judgment as a matter of law. It asks the Court to so hold. That question, however, is better suited to resolution by courts closer to the facts of this case. The judgment of the Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit is vacated, and the case is remanded for further proceedings consistent with this opinion. It is so ordered.

569.US.88

The health benefits plan established by petitioner US Airways paid $66,866 in medical expenses for injuries suffered by respondent McCutchen, a US Airways employee, in a car accident caused by a third party. The plan entitled US Airways to reimbursement if McCutchen later recovered money from the third party. McCutchen’s attorneys secured $110,000 in payments, and McCutchen received $66,000 after deducting the lawyers’ 40% contingency fee. US Airways demanded reimbursement of the full $66,866 it had paid. When McCutchen did not comply, US Airways filed suit under §502(a)(3) of the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974 (ERISA), which authorizes health-plan administrators to bring a civil action “to obtain . . . appropriate equitable relief . . . to enforce . . . the terms of the plan.” McCutchen raised two defenses to US Airways’ request for an equitable lien on the $66,866 it demanded: that, absent over-recovery on his part, US Airways’ right to reimbursement did not kick in; and that US Airways had to contribute its fair share to the costs he incurred to get his recovery, so any reimbursement had to be reduced by 40%, to cover the contingency fee. Rejecting both arguments, the District Court granted summary judgment to US Airways. The Third Circuit vacated. Reasoning that traditional “equitable doctrines and defenses” applied to §502(a)(3) suits, it held that the principle of unjust enrichment overrode US Airways’ reimbursement clause because the clause would leave McCutchen with less than full payment for his medical bills and would give US Airways a windfall. Held: 1. In a §502(a)(3) action based on an equitable lien by agreement—like this one—the ERISA plan’s terms govern. Neither general unjust enrichment principles nor specific doctrines reflecting those principles—such as the double-recovery or common-fund rules invoked by McCutchen—can override the applicable contract. Pp. 5–11. (a) Section 502(a)(3) authorizes the kinds of relief “typically available in equity” before the merger of law and equity. Mertens v. Hewitt Associates, 508 U.S. 248, 256. In Sereboff v. Mid Atlantic Medical Services, Inc., 547 U.S. 356, the Court permitted a health-plan administrator to bring a suit just like this one. The administrator’s claim to enforce its reimbursement clause, the Court explained, was the modern-day equivalent of an action in equity to enforce a contract-based lien—called an “equitable lien ‘by agreement.’ ” Id., at 364–365. Accordingly, the administrator could use §502(a)(3) to obtain funds that its beneficiaries had promised to turn over. The parties agree that US Airways can do the same here. Pp. 5–6. (b) Sereboff’s logic dooms McCutchen’s argument that two equitable doctrines meant to prevent unjust enrichment—the double-recovery rule and common-fund doctrine—can override the terms of an ERISA plan in such a suit. As in Sereboff, US Airways is seeking to enforce the modern-day equivalent of an equitable lien by agreement. Such a lien both arises from and serves to carry out a contract’s provisions. See 547 U. S., at 363–364. Thus, enforcing the lien means holding the parties to their mutual promises and declining to apply rules—even if they would be “equitable” absent a contract—at odds with the parties’ expressed commitments. The Court has found nothing to the contrary in the historic practice of equity courts. McCutchen identifies a slew of cases in which courts applied the equitable doctrines invoked here, but none in which they did so to override a clear contract that provided otherwise. This result comports with ERISA’s focus on what a plan provides: §502(a)(3) does not “authorize ‘appropriate equitable relief’ at large,” Mertens, 508 U. S., at 253, but countenances only such relief as will enforce “the terms of the plan” or the statute. Pp. 6–11. 2. While McCutchen’s equitable rules cannot trump a reimbursement provision, they may aid in properly construing it. US Airways’ plan is silent on the allocation of attorney’s fees, and the common-fund doctrine provides the appropriate default rule to fill that gap. Pp. 12–16. (a) Ordinary contract interpretation principles support this conclusion. Courts construe ERISA plans, as they do other contracts, by “looking to the terms of the plan” as well as to “other manifestations of the parties’ intent.” Firestone Tire & Rubber Co. v. Bruch, 489 U.S. 101, 113. Where the terms of a plan leave gaps, courts must “look outside the plan’s written language” to decide the agreement’s meaning, CIGNA Corp. v. Amara, 563 U. S. ___, ___, and they properly take account of the doctrines that typically or traditionally have governed a given situation when no agreement states otherwise. Pp. 12–13. (b) US Airways’ reimbursement provision precludes looking to the double-recovery rule in this manner because it provides an allocation formula that expressly contradicts the equitable rule. By contrast, the plan says nothing specific about how to pay for the costs of recovery. Given that contractual gap, the common-fund doctrine provides the best indication of the parties’ intent. This Court’s cases make clear that the doctrine would govern here in the absence of a contrary agreement. See, e.g., Boeing Co. v. Van Gemert, 444 U.S. 472, 478. Because a party would not typically expect or intend a plan saying nothing about attorney’s fees to abrogate so strong and uniform a background rule, a court should be loath to read the plan in that way. The common-fund rule’s rationale reinforces this conclusion: Without the rule, the insurer can free ride on the beneficiary’s efforts, and the beneficiary, as in this case, may be made worse off for having pursued a third party. A contract should not be read to produce these strange results unless it specifically provides as much. Pp. 13–16. 663 F.3d 671, vacated and remanded. Kagan, J., delivered the opinion of the Court, in which Kennedy, Ginsburg, Breyer, and Sotomayor, JJ., joined. Scalia, J., filed a dissenting opinion, in which Roberts, C. J., and Thomas and Alito, JJ., joined.

Respondent James McCutchen participated in a health benefits plan that his employer, petitioner US Airways, established under the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974 (ERISA), 29 U. S. C. §1001 et seq. That plan obliged US Airways to pay any medical ex- penses McCutchen incurred as a result of a third party’s actions—for example, another person’s negligent driving. The plan in turn entitled US Airways to reimbursement if McCutchen later recovered money from the third party. This Court has held that a health-plan administrator like US Airways may enforce such a reimbursement provision by filing suit under §502(a)(3) of ERISA, 88Stat. 891, 29 U. S. C. §1132(a)(3). See Sereboff v. Mid Atlantic Medical Services, Inc., 547 U.S. 356 (2006). That section authorizes a civil action “to obtain . . . appropriate equitable relief . . . to enforce . . . the terms of the plan.” We here consider whether in that kind of suit, a plan participant like McCutchen may raise certain equitable defenses deriving from principles of unjust enrichment. In particular, we address one equitable doctrine limiting reimbursement to the amount of an insured’s “double recovery” and another requiring the party seeking reimbursement to pay a share of the attorney’s fees incurred in securing funds from the third party. We hold that neither of those equitable rules can override the clear terms of a plan. But we explain that the latter, usually called the common-fund doctrine, plays a role in interpreting US Airways’ plan because the plan is silent about allocating the costs of recovery. I In January 2007, McCutchen suffered serious injuries when another driver lost control of her car and collided with McCutchen’s. At the time, McCutchen was an employee of US Airways and a participant in its self-funded health plan. The plan paid $66,866 in medical expenses arising from the accident on McCutchen’s behalf. McCutchen retained attorneys, in exchange for a 40% contingency fee, to seek recovery of all his accident-related damages, estimated to exceed $1 million. The attorneys sued the driver responsible for the crash, but settled for only $10,000 because she had limited insurance coverage and the accident had killed or seriously injured three other people. Counsel also secured a payment from McCutchen’s own automobile insurer of $100,000, the maximum amount available under his policy. McCutchen thus received $110,000—and after deducting $44,000 for the lawyer’s fee, $66,000. On learning of McCutchen’s recovery, US Airways demanded reimbursement of the $66,866 it had paid in medical expenses. In support of that claim, US Airways relied on the following statement in its summary plan description: “If [US Airways] pays benefits for any claim you incur as the result of negligence, willful misconduct, or other actions of a third party, . . . [y]ou will be required to reimburse [US Airways] for amounts paid for claims out of any monies recovered from [the] third party, including, but not limited to, your own insurance company as the result of judgment, settlement, or otherwise.” App. 20.[1] McCutchen denied that US Airways was entitled to any reimbursement, but his attorneys placed $41,500 in an escrow account pending resolution of the dispute. That amount represented US Airways’ full claim minus a proportionate share of the promised attorney’s fees. US Airways then filed this action under §502(a)(3), seeking “appropriate equitable relief” to enforce the plan’s reimbursement provision. The suit requested an equitable lien on $66,866—the $41,500 in the escrow account and $25,366 more in McCutchen’s possession. McCutchen countered by raising two defenses relevant here. First, he maintained that US Airways could not receive the relief it sought because he had recovered only a small portion of his total damages; absent over-recovery on his part, US Airways’ right to reimbursement did not kick in. Second, he contended that US Airways at least had to contribute its fair share to the costs he incurred to get his recovery; any reimbursement therefore had to be marked down by 40%, to cover the promised contingency fee. The District Court rejected both arguments, granting summary judgment to US Airways on the ground that the plan “clear[ly] and unambiguous[ly]” provided for full reimbursement of the medical expenses paid. App. to Pet. for Cert. 30a; see id., at 32a. The Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit vacated the District Court’s order. The Third Circuit reasoned that in a suit for “appropriate equitable relief” under §502(a)(3), a court must apply any “equitable doctrines and defenses” that traditionally limited the relief requested. 663 F.3d 671, 676 (CA3 2011). And here, the court continued, “ ‘the principle of unjust enrichment’ ” should “ ‘serve to limit the effectiveness’ ” of the plan’s reimbursement provision. See id., at 677 (quoting 4 G. Palmer, Law of Restitution §23.18, p. 472–473 (1978)). Full reimbursement, the Third Circuit thought, would “leav[e] [McCutchen] with less than full payment” for his medical bills; at the same time, it would provide a “windfall” to US Airways given its failure to “contribute to the cost of obtaining the third-party recovery.” 663 F. 3d, at 679. The Third Circuit then instructed the District Court to determine what amount, shy of the entire $66,866, would qualify as “appropriate equitable relief.” Ibid. We granted certiorari, 567 U. S. ___ (2012), to resolve a circuit split on whether equitable defenses can so override an ERISA plan’s reimbursement provision.[2] We now vacate the Third Circuit’s decision. II A health-plan administrator like US Airways may bring suit under §502(a)(3) for “appropriate equitable relief . . . to enforce . . . the terms of the plan.”[3] That provision, we have held, authorizes the kinds of relief “typically available in equity” in the days of “the divided bench,” before law and equity merged. Mertens v. Hewitt Associates, 508 U.S. 248, 256 (1993) (emphasis deleted). In Sereboff v. Mid Atlantic Medical Services, we allowed a health-plan administrator to bring a suit just like this one under §502(a)(3). Mid Atlantic had paid medical expenses for the Sereboffs after they were injured in a car crash. When they settled a tort suit against the other driver, Mid Atlantic claimed a share of the proceeds, invoking the plan’s reimbursement clause. We held that Mid Atlantic’s action sought “equitable relief,” as §502(a)(3) requires. See 547 U. S., at 369. The “nature of the recovery” requested was equitable because Mid Atlantic claimed “specifically identifiable funds” within the Sereboffs’ control—that is, a portion of the settlement they had gotten. Id., at 362–363 (internal quotation marks omitted). And the “basis for [the] claim” was equitable too, because Mid Atlantic relied on “ ‘the familiar rul[e] of equity that a contract to convey a specific object’ ” not yet acquired “ ‘create[s] a lien’ ” on that object as soon as “ ‘the contractor . . . gets a title to the thing.’ ” Id., at 363–364 (quoting Barnes v. Alexander, 232 U.S. 117, 121 (1914)). Mid Atlantic’s claim for reimbursement, we determined, was the modern-day equivalent of an action in equity to enforce such a contract-based lien—called an “equitable lien by agreement.” 547 U. S., at 364–365 (internal quotation marks omitted). Accordingly, Mid Atlantic could bring an action under §502(a)(3) seeking the funds that its beneficiaries had promised to turn over. And here, as all parties agree, US Airways can do the same thing. The question in this case concerns the role that equitable defenses alleging unjust enrichment can play in such a suit. As earlier noted, the Third Circuit held that “the principle of unjust enrichment” overrides US Airways’ reimbursement clause if and when they come into conflict. 663 F. 3d, at 677. McCutchen offers a more refined version of that view, alleging that two specific equitable doctrines meant to “prevent unjust enrichment” defeat the reimbursement provision. Brief for Respondents i. First, he contends that in equity, an insurer in US Airways’ position could recoup no more than an insured’s “double recovery”—the amount the insured has received from a third party to compensate for the same loss the insurance covered. That rule would limit US Airways’ reimbursement to the share of McCutchen’s settlements paying for medical expenses; McCutchen would keep the rest (e.g., damages for loss of future earnings or pain and suffering), even though the plan gives US Airways first claim on the whole third-party recovery. Second, McCutchen claims that in equity the common-fund doctrine would have operated to reduce any award to US Airways. Under that rule, “a litigant or a lawyer who recovers a common fund for the benefit of persons other than himself or his client is entitled to a reasonable attorney’s fee from the fund as a whole.” Boeing Co. v. Van Gemert, 444 U.S. 472, 478 (1980). McCutchen urges that this doctrine, which is designed to prevent freeloading, enables him to pass on a share of his lawyer’s fees to US Airways, no matter what the plan provides.[4] We rejected a similar claim in Sereboff, though without altogether foreclosing McCutchen’s position. The Sereboffs argued, among other things, that the lower courts erred in enforcing Mid Atlantic’s reimbursement clause “without imposing various limitations” that would “apply to truly equitable relief grounded in principles of subrogation.”[5] 547 U. S., at 368 (internal quotation marks omitted). In particular, the Sereboffs contended that a variant of the double-recovery rule, called the make-whole doctrine, trumped the plan’s terms. We rebuffed that argument, explaining that the Sereboffs were improperly mixing and matching rules from different equitable boxes. The Sereboffs asserted a “parcel of equitable defenses” available when an out-of-pocket insurer brought a “freestanding action for equitable subrogation,” not founded on a contract, to succeed to an insured’s judgment against a third party. Ibid. But Mid Atlantic’s reimbursement claim was “considered equitable,” we replied, because it sought to enforce a “ lien based on agreement ”—not a lien imposed independent of contract by virtue of equitable subrogation.[6] Ibid. (internal quotation marks omitted). In light of that fact, we viewed the Sereboffs’ equitable defenses—which again, closely resemble McCutchen’s—as “beside the point.” Ibid. And yet, we left a narrow opening for future litigants in the Sereboffs’ position to make a like claim. In a footnote, we observed that the Sereboffs had forfeited a “distinct assertion” that the contract-based relief Mid Atlantic requested, although “equitable,” was not “appropriate” under §502(a)(3) because “it contravened principles like the make-whole doctrine.” Id., at 368–369 n. 2. Enter McCutchen, to make that basic argument. In the end, however, Sereboff’s logic dooms McCutchen’s effort. US Airways, like Mid Atlantic, is seeking to enforce the modern-day equivalent of an “equitable lien by agreement.” And that kind of lien—as its name announces—both arises from and serves to carry out a contract’s provisions. See id., at 363–364; 4 S. Symons, Pomeroy’s Equity Jurisprudence §1234, p. 695 (5th ed. 1941). So enforcing the lien means holding the parties to their mutual promises. See, e.g., Barnes, 232 U. S., at 121; Walker v. Brown, 165 U.S. 654, 664 (1897). Conversely, it means declining to apply rules—even if they would be “equitable” in a contract’s absence—at odds with the parties’ expressed commitments. McCutchen therefore cannot rely on theories of unjust enrichment to defeat US Airways’ appeal to the plan’s clear terms. Those principles, as we said in Sereboff, are “beside the point” when parties demand what they bargained for in a valid agreement. See Restatement (Third) of Restitution and Unjust Enrichment §2(2), p. 15 (2010) (“A valid contract defines the obligations of the parties as to matters within its scope, displacing to that extent any inquiry into unjust enrichment”). In those circumstances, hewing to the parties’ exchange yields “appropriate” as well as “equitable” relief. We have found nothing to the contrary in the historic practice of equity courts. McCutchen offers us a slew of cases in which those courts applied the double-recovery or common-fund rule to limit insurers’ efforts to recoup funds from their beneficiaries’ tort judgments. See Brief for Respondents 21–25. But his citations are not on point. In some of McCutchen’s cases, courts apparently applied equitable doctrines in the absence of any relevant contract provision. See, e.g., Washtenaw Mut. Fire Ins. Co. v. Budd, 208 Mich. 483, 486–487, 175 N.W. 231, 232 (1919); Fire Assn. of Philadelphia v. Wells, 84 N. J. Eq. 484, 487, 94 A. 619, 621 (1915). In others, courts found those rules to comport with the applicable contract term. For example, in Svea Assurance Co. v. Packham, 92 Md. 464, 48 A. 359 (1901)—the case McCutchen calls his best, see Tr. of Oral Arg. 47–48—the court viewed the double-recovery rule as according with “the intention” of the contracting parties; “[b]road as [the] language is,” the court explained, the agreement “cannot be construed to” give the insurer any greater recovery. 92 Md., at 478, 48 A., at 362; see also Knaffl v. Knoxville Banking & Trust Co., 133 Tenn. 655, 661, 182 S.W. 232, 233 (1916); Camden Fire Ins. Assn. v. Prezioso, 93 N. J. Eq. 318, 319–320, 116 A. 694, 694 (Ch. Div. 1922). But in none of these cases—nor in any other we can find—did an equity court apply the double-recovery or common-fund rule to override a plain contract term. That is, in none did an equity court do what McCutchen asks of us. Nevertheless, the United States, appearing as amicus curiae, claims that the common-fund rule has a special capacity to trump a conflicting contract. The Government begins its brief foursquare with our (and Sereboff’s) analysis: In a suit like this one, to enforce an equitable lien by agreement, “the agreement, not general restitutionary principles of unjust enrichment, provides the measure of relief due.” Brief for United States 6. Because that is so, the Government (naturally enough) concludes, McCutchen cannot invoke the double-recovery rule to defeat the plan. But then the Government takes an unexpected turn. “When it comes to the costs incurred” by a beneficiary to obtain money from a third party, “the terms of the plan do not control.” Id., at 21. An equity court, the Government contends, has “inherent authority” to apportion litigation costs in accord with the “longstanding equitable common-fund doctrine,” even if that conflicts with the parties’ contract. Id., at 22. But if the agreement governs, the agreement governs: The reasons we have given (and the Government mostly ac- cepts) for looking to the contract’s terms do not permit an attorney’s-fees exception. We have no doubt that the common-fund doctrine has deep roots in equity. See Sprague v. Ticonic Nat. Bank, 307 U.S. 161, 164 (1939) (tracing equity courts’ authority over fees to the First Judiciary Act). Those roots, however, are set in the soil of unjust enrichment: To allow “others to obtain full benefit from the plaintiff’s efforts without contributing . . . to the litigation expenses,” we have often noted, “would be to enrich the others unjustly at the plaintiff’s expense.” Mills v. Electric Auto-Lite Co., 396 U.S. 375, 392 (1970); see Boeing, 444 U. S., at 478; Trustees v. Greenough, 105 U.S. 527, 532 (1882); supra, at 6–7 and n. 4. And as we have just explained, principles of unjust enrichment give way when a court enforces an equitable lien by agreement. See supra, at 8–9. The agreement itself becomes the measure of the parties’ equities; so if a contract abrogates the common-fund doctrine, the insurer is not unjustly enriched by claiming the benefit of its bargain. That is why the Government, like McCutchen, fails to produce a single case in which an equity court applied the common-fund rule (any more than the double-recovery rule) when a contract provided to the contrary. Even in equity, when a party sought to enforce a lien by agreement, all provisions of that agreement controlled. So too, then, in a suit like this one. The result we reach, based on the historical analysis our prior cases prescribe, fits lock and key with ERISA’s focus on what a plan provides. The section under which this suit is brought “does not, after all, authorize ‘appropriate equitable relief’ at large,” Mertens, 508 U. S., at 253 (quoting §1132(a)(3)); rather, it countenances only such relief as will enforce “the terms of the plan” or the statute, §1132(a)(3) (emphasis added). That limitation reflects ERISA’s principal function: to “protect contractually defined benefits.” Massachusetts Mut. Life Ins. Co. v. Russell, 473 U.S. 134, 148 (1985). The statutory scheme, we have often noted, “is built around reliance on the face of written plan documents.” Curtiss-Wright Corp. v. Schoonejongen, 514 U.S. 73, 83 (1995). “Every employee benefit plan shall be established and maintained pursuant to a written instrument,” §1102(a)(1), and an administrator must act “in accordance with the documents and instruments governing the plan” insofar as they accord with the statute, §1104(a)(1)(D). The plan, in short, is at the center of ERISA. And precluding McCutchen’s equitable defenses from overriding plain contract terms helps it to remain there. III Yet McCutchen’s arguments are not all for naught. If the equitable rules he describes cannot trump a reimbursement provision, they still might aid in properly construing it. And for US Airways’ plan, the common-fund doctrine (though not the double-recovery rule) serves that function. The plan is silent on the allocation of attorney’s fees, and in those circumstances, the common-fund doctrine provides the appropriate default. In other words, if US Airways wished to depart from the well-established common-fund rule, it had to draft its contract to say so—and here it did not.[7] Ordinary principles of contract interpretation point toward this conclusion. Courts construe ERISA plans, as they do other contracts, by “looking to the terms of the plan” as well as to “other manifestations of the parties’ intent.” Firestone Tire & Rubber Co. v. Bruch, 489 U.S. 101, 113 (1989). The words of a plan may speak clearly, but they may also leave gaps. And so a court must often “look outside the plan’s written language” to decide what an agreement means. CIGNA Corp. v. Amara, 563 U. S. ___, ___ (slip op., at 13); see Curtiss-Wright, 514 U. S., at 80–81. In undertaking that task, a court properly takes account of background legal rules—the doctrines that typically or traditionally have governed a given situation when no agreement states otherwise. See Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. Assoc. Health & Welfare Plan v. Wells, 213 F.3d 398, 402 (CA7 2000) (Posner, J.) (“[C]ontracts . . . are enacted against a background of common-sense understandings and legal principles that the parties may not have bothered to incorporate expressly but that operate as default rules to govern in the absence of a clear expression of the parties’ [contrary] intent”); 11 R. Lord, Williston on Contracts §31:7 (4th ed. 2012); Restatement (Second) of Contracts §221 (1979). Indeed, ignoring those rules is likely to frustrate the parties’ intent and produce perverse consequences. The reimbursement provision at issue here precludes looking to the double-recovery rule in this manner. Both the contract term and the equitable principle address the same problem: how to apportion, as between an insurer and a beneficiary, a third party’s payment to recompense an injury. But the allocation formulas they prescribe differ markedly. According to the plan, US Airways has first claim on the entire recovery—as the plan description states, on “any monies recovered from [the] third party”; McCutchen receives only whatever is left over (if anything). See supra, at 3. By contrast, the double-recovery rule would give McCutchen first dibs on the portion of the recovery compensating for losses that the plan did not cover (e.g., future earnings or pain and suffering); US Airways’ claim would attach only to the share of the recovery for medical expenses. See supra, at 6–7. The express contract term, in short, contradicts the background equitable rule; and where that is so, for all the reasons we have given, the agreement must govern. By contrast, the plan provision here leaves space for the common-fund rule to operate. That equitable doctrine, as earlier noted, addresses not how to allocate a third-party recovery, but instead how to pay for the costs of obtaining it. See supra, at 7. And the contract, for its part, says nothing specific about that issue. The District Court below thus erred when it found that the plan clearly repudiated the common-fund rule. See supra, at 4. To be sure, the plan’s allocation formula—first claim on the recovery goes to US Airways—might operate on every dollar received from a third party, even those covering the beneficiary’s litigation costs. But alternatively, that formula could apply to only the true recovery, after the costs of obtaining it are deducted. (Consider, for comparative purposes, how an income tax is levied on net, not gross, receipts.) See Dawson, Lawyers and Involuntary Clients: Attorney Fees From Funds, 87 Harv. L. Rev. 1597, 1606–1607 (1974) (“[T]he claim for legal services is a first charge on the fund and must be satisfied before any distribution occurs”). The plan’s terms fail to select between these two alternatives: whether the recovery to which US Airways has first claim is every cent the third party paid or, instead, the money the beneficiary took away. Given that contractual gap, the common-fund doctrine provides the best indication of the parties’ intent. No one can doubt that the common-fund rule would govern here in the absence of a contrary agreement. This Court has “recognized consistently” that someone “who recovers a common fund for the benefit of persons other than himself” is due “a reasonable attorney’s fee from the fund as whole.” Boeing Co., 444 U. S., at 478. We have understood that rule as “reflect[ing] the traditional practice in courts of equity.” Ibid.; see Sprague, 307 U. S., at 164–166; supra, at 11. And we have applied it in a wide range of circumstances as part of our inherent authority. See Boeing Co., 444 U. S., at 474, 478; Hall v. Cole, 412 U.S. 1, 6–7 and n. 7 (1973); Mills, 396 U. S., at 389–390, 392; Sprague, 307 U. S., at 166; Central Railroad & Banking Co. of Ga. v. Pettus, 113 U.S. 116, 126–127 (1885); Greenough, 105 U. S., at 528, 531–533. State courts have done the same; the “overwhelming majority” routinely use the common-fund rule to allocate the costs of third-party recoveries between insurers and beneficiaries. 8A Appleman §4903.85, at 335 (1981); see Annot., 2 A. L. R. 3d 1441, §§2–3 (1965 and Supp. 2012). A party would not typically expect or intend a plan saying nothing about attorney’s fees to abrogate so strong and uniform a background rule. And that means a court should be loath to read such a plan in that way.[8] The rationale for the common-fund rule reinforces that conclusion. Third-party recoveries do not often come free: To get one, an insured must incur lawyer’s fees and expenses. Without cost sharing, the insurer free rides on its beneficiary’s efforts—taking the fruits while contributing nothing to the labor. Odder still, in some cases—indeed, in this case—the beneficiary is made worse off by pursuing a third party. Recall that McCutchen spent $44,000 (representing a 40% contingency fee) to get $110,000, leaving him with a real recovery of $66,000. But US Airways claimed $66,866 in medical expenses. That would put McCutchen $866 in the hole; in effect, he would pay for the privilege of serving as US Airways’ collection agent. We think McCutchen would not have foreseen that result when he signed on to the plan. And we doubt if even US Airways should want it. When the next McCutchen comes along, he is not likely to relieve US Airways of the costs of recovery. See Blackburn v. Sundstrand Corp., 115 F.3d 493, 496 (CA7 1997) (Easterbrook, J.) (“[I]f . . . injured persons could not charge legal costs against recoveries, people like [McCutchen] would in the future have every reason” to make different judgments about bringing suit, “throwing on plans the burden and expense of collection”). The prospect of generating those strange results again militates against reading a general reimbursement provision—like the one here—for more than it is worth. Only if US Airways’ plan expressly addressed the costs of recovery would it alter the common-fund doctrine. IV Our holding today has two parts, one favoring US Airways, the other McCutchen. First, in an action brought under §502(a)(3) based on an equitable lien by agreement, the terms of the ERISA plan govern. Neither general principles of unjust enrichment nor specific doctrines reflecting those principles—such as the double-recovery or common-fund rules—can override the applicable contract. We therefore reject the Third Circuit’s decision. But second, the common-fund rule informs interpretation of US Airways’ reimbursement provision. Because that term does not advert to the costs of recovery, it is properly read to retain the common-fund doctrine. We therefore also disagree with the District Court’s decision. In light of these rulings, we vacate the judgment below and re- mand the case for further proceedings consistent with this opinion. It is so ordered. Notes 1 We have made clear that the statements in a summary plan description “communicat[e] with beneficiaries about the plan, but . . . donot themselves constitute the terms of the plan.” CIGNA Corp. v. Amara, 563 U. S. ___, ___ (2011) (slip op., at 15). Nonetheless, the parties litigated this case, and both lower courts decided it, based solely on the language quoted above. See 663 F.3d 671, 673 (CA3 2011); App. to Pet. for Cert. 26a. Only in this Court, in response to a request from the Solicitor General, did the plan itself come to light. See Letter from Matthew W. H. Wessler to William K. Suter, Clerk of Court (Nov. 19, 2012) (available in Clerk of Court’s case file). That is too late to affect what happens here: Because everyone in this case has treated the language from the summary description as though it came from the plan, we do so as well. 2 Compare 663 F.3d 671, 673 (CA3 2011) (case below) (holding that equitable doctrines can trump a plan’s terms); CGI Technologies & Solutions Inc. v. Rose, 683 F.3d 1113, 1124 (CA9 2012) (same), with Zurich Am. Ins. Co. v. O’Hara, 604 F.3d 1232, 1237 (CA11 2010) (holding that they cannot do so); Administrative Comm. of Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. v. Shank, 500 F.3d 834, 838 (CA8 2007) (same); Moore v. CapitalCare, Inc., 461 F.3d 1, 9–10 and n. 10 (CADC 2006) (same); Bombadier Aerospace Employee Welfare Benefits Plan v. Ferror, Poirot, & Wansbrough, 354 F.3d 348, 362 (CA5 2003) (same); Administrative Comm. of Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. v. Varco, 338 F.3d 680, 692 (CA7 2003) (same). 3 Sans ellipses, §502(a)(3) provides that a plan administrator may bring a civil action “(A) to enjoin any act or practice which violates any provision of this subchapter or the terms of the plan, or (B) to obtain other appropriate equitable relief (i) to redress such violations or (ii) to enforce any provisions of this subchapter or the terms of the plan.” 29 U. S. C. §1132(a)(3). 4 Both our prior cases and secondary sources confirm McCutchen’s characterization of the common-fund and double-recovery rules as deriving primarily from principles of unjust enrichment. See Boeing, 444 U. S., at 478 (“The [common-fund] doctrine rests on the perception that persons who obtain the benefit of a lawsuit without contributing to its cost are unjustly enriched”); Mills v. Electric Auto-Lite Co., 396 U.S. 375, 392 (1970) (similar); 1 D. Dobbs, Law of Remedies §3.10(2), p. 395 (2d ed. 1993) (hereinafter Dobbs) (similar); 4 G. Palmer, Law of Restitution §23.16(b), p. 444 (“[T]he injured person is unjustly enriched” only when he has received “in excess of full compensation” from two sources “for the same loss”); 16 G. Couch, Cyclopedia of Insurance Law §61:18 (2d ed. 1983) (similar); 8B J. Appleman & J. Appleman, Insurance Law and Practice §4941, p. 11 (Cum. Supp. 2012) (hereinafter Appleman) (similar). 5 “Subrogation simply means substitution of one person for another; that is, one person is allowed to stand in the shoes of another and assert that person’s rights against” a third party. 1 Dobbs §4.3(4), at 604; see 8B Appleman §4941, at 11 (“ ‘Subrogation’ involves the substitution of the insurer . . . to the rights of the insured”). 6 The Sereboff Court’s analysis concerned only subrogation actions based on equitable principles independent of any agreement. A subrogation action may also be founded on a contract incorporating those principles. See 1 Dobbs §4.3(4), at 604. US Airways suggested at oral argument that McCutchen’s case would “ge[t] a lot stronger” if the plan here spoke only of subrogation, without separately granting a right of reimbursement. Tr. of Oral Arg. 18. We need not consider that question because US Airways seeks to enforce a reimbursement provision, of the same kind we considered in Sereboff. 7 The dissent faults us for addressing this issue, but we think it adequately preserved and presented. The language the dissent highlights in McCutchen’s brief in opposition, indicating that the plan clearly abrogates the common-fund doctrine, comes from his description of US Airways’ claim in the District Court. See post, at 1 (opinion of Scalia, J.); Brief in Opposition 5. McCutchen’s argument in that court urged the very position we adopt—that the common-fund doctrine applies because the plan is silent. See App. to Pet. for Cert. 30a; Defendants’ Memorandum in Opposition to Plaintiff’s Motion for Summary Judgment in No. 2:08–cv–1593 (WD Pa., Dec. 4, 2011), Doc. 33, pp. 12–13 (“If [US Airways] wanted to exclude a deduction for attorney fees, it easily could have so expressed”). To be sure, McCutchen shifted ground on appeal because the District Court ruled that Third Circuit precedent foreclosed his contract-based argument, see App. to Pet. for Cert. 31a; the Court of Appeals’ decision then put front-and-center his alternative contention that the common-fund rule trumps a contract. But both claims have the same basis (the nature and function of the common-fund doctrine), which the parties have disputed throughout this litigation. And similarly, the question we decide here is included in the question presented. The principal clause of that question asks whether a court may use “equitable principles to rewrite contractual language.” Pet. for Cert. i. We answer “not rewrite, but inform”—a reply well within the question’s scope. 8 For that reason, almost every state court that has confronted the issue has done what we do here: apply the common-fund doctrine inthe face of a contract giving an insurer a general right to recoup funds from an insured’s third-party recovery, without specifically addressing attorney’s fees. See, e.g., Ex parte State Farm Mut. Auto. Ins. Co., 105 So. 3d 1199, 1212 and n. 6 (Ala. 2012); York Ins. Group of Me. v. Van Hall, 1997 ME 230, ¶8, 704 A.2d 366, 369; Barreca v. Cobb, 95–1651, pp. 2–3, 5 and n. 5 (La. 2/28/96), 668 So. 2d 1129, 1131–1132 and n. 5; Federal Kemper Ins. Co. v. Arnold, 183 W. Va. 31, 33–34, 393 S.E.2d 669, 671–672 (1990); State Farm Mut. Auto. Ins. Co. v. Clinton, 267 Ore. 653, 661–662, 518 P.2d 645, 649 (1974); Northern Buckeye Educ. Council Group Health Benefits Plan v. Lawson, 154 Ohio App. 3d 659, 669, 2003–Ohio–5196, 798 N.E.2d 667, 675; Lancer Corp. v. Murillo, 909 S.W.2d 122, 126–127 and n. 2 (Tex. App. 1995); Breslin v. Liberty Mut. Ins. Co., 134 N. J. Super. 357, 362, 341 A.2d 342, 344 (App. Div. 1975); Hospital Service Corp. of R. I. v. Pennsylvania Ins. Co., 101 R. I. 708, 710, 716, 227 A.2d 105, 108, 111 (1967); National Union Fire Ins. Co. v. Grimes, 278 Minn. 45, 46–47, 51, 153 N.W.2d 152, 153, 156 (1967); Foremost Life Ins. Co. v. Waters, 125 Mich. App. 799, 801, 805, 337 N.W.2d 29, 30, 32 (1983) (citing Foremost Life Ins. Co. v. Waters, 88 Mich. App. 599, 602, 278 N.W.2d 688, 689 (1979)); Lee v. State Farm Mut. Auto. Ins. Co., 57 Cal. App. 3d 458, 462, 469, 129 Cal. Rptr. 271, 273–274, 278 (1976).

570.US.421

Under Title VII, an employer’s liability for workplace harassment may depend on the status of the harasser. If the harassing employee is the victim’s co-worker, the employer is liable only if it was negligent in controlling working conditions. In cases in which the harasser is a “supervisor,” however, different rules apply. If the supervisor’s harassment culminates in a tangible employment action (i.e., “a significant change in employment status, such as hiring, firing, failing to promote, reassignment with significantly different responsibilities, or a decision causing a significant change in benefits,” Burlington Industries, Inc. v. Ellerth, 524 U.S. 742, 761), the employer is strictly liable. But if no tangible employment action is taken, the employer may escape liability by establishing, as an affirmative defense, that (1) the employer exercised reasonable care to prevent and correct any harassing behavior and (2) that the plaintiff unreasonably failed to take advantage of the preventive or corrective opportunities that the employer provided. Faragher v. Boca Raton, 524 U.S. 775, 807; Ellerth, supra, at 765. Petitioner Vance, an African-American woman, sued her employer, Ball State University (BSU) alleging that a fellow employee, Saundra Davis, created a racially hostile work environment in violation of Title VII. The District Court granted summary judgment to BSU. It held that BSU was not vicariously liable for Davis’ alleged actions because Davis, who could not take tangible employment actions against Vance, was not a supervisor. The Seventh Circuit affirmed. Held: An employee is a “supervisor” for purposes of vicarious liability under Title VII only if he or she is empowered by the employer to take tangible employment actions against the victim. Pp. 9–30. (a) Petitioner errs in relying on the meaning of “supervisor” in general usage and in other legal contexts because the term has varying meanings both in colloquial usage and in the law. In any event, Congress did not use the term “supervisor” in Title VII, and the way to understand the term’s meaning for present purposes is to consider the interpretation that best fits within the highly structured framework adopted in Faragher and Ellerth. Pp. 10–14. (b) Petitioner misreads Faragher and Ellerth in claiming that those cases support an expansive definition of “supervisor” because, in her view, at least some of the alleged harassers in those cases, whom the Court treated as supervisors, lacked the authority that the Seventh Circuit’s definition demands. In Ellerth, there was no question that the alleged harasser, who hired and promoted his victim, was a supervisor. And in Faragher, the parties never disputed the characterization of the alleged harassers as supervisors, so the question simply was not before the Court. Pp. 14–18. (c) The answer to the question presented in this case is implicit in the characteristics of the framework that the Court adopted in Ellerth and Faragher, which draws a sharp line between co-workers and supervisors and implies that the authority to take tangible employment actions is the defining characteristic of a supervisor. Ellerth, supra, at 762. The interpretation of the concept of a supervisor adopted today is one that can be readily applied. An alleged harasser’s supervisor status will often be capable of being discerned before (or soon after) litigation commences and is likely to be resolved as a matter of law before trial. By contrast, the vagueness of the EEOC’s standard would impede the resolution of the issue before trial, possibly requiring the jury to be instructed on two very different paths of analysis, depending on whether it finds the alleged harasser to be a supervisor or merely a co-worker. This approach will not leave employees unprotected against harassment by co-workers who possess some authority to assign daily tasks. In such cases, a victim can prevail simply by showing that the employer was negligent in permitting the harassment to occur, and the jury should be instructed that the nature and degree of authority wielded by the harasser is an important factor in determining negligence. Pp. 18–25. (d) The definition adopted today accounts for the fact that many modern organizations have abandoned a hierarchical management structure in favor of giving employees overlapping authority with respect to work assignments. Petitioner fears that employers will attempt to insulate themselves from liability for workplace harassment by empowering only a handful of individuals to take tangible employment actions, but a broad definition of “supervisor” is not necessary to guard against that concern. Pp. 25–26. 646 F.3d 461, affirmed. Alito, J., delivered the opinion of the Court, in which Roberts, C. J., and Scalia, Kennedy, and Thomas, JJ., joined. Thomas, J., filed a concurring opinion. Ginsburg, J., filed a dissenting opinion, in which Breyer, Sotomayor, and Kagan, JJ., joined.

In this case, we decide a question left open in Burlington Industries, Inc. v. Ellerth, 524 U. S. 742 (1998) , and Far- agher v. Boca Raton, 524 U. S. 775 (1998) , namely, who qualifies as a “supervisor” in a case in which an employee asserts a Title VII claim for workplace harassment? Under Title VII, an employer’s liability for such harassment may depend on the status of the harasser. If the harassing employee is the victim’s co-worker, the employer is liable only if it was negligent in controlling working conditions. In cases in which the harasser is a “super- visor,” however, different rules apply. If the supervisor’s harassment culminates in a tangible employment action, the employer is strictly liable. But if no tangible employment action is taken, the employer may escape liability by establishing, as an affirmative defense, that (1) the employer exercised reasonable care to prevent and correct any harassing behavior and (2) that the plaintiff unreasonably failed to take advantage of the preventive or corrective opportunities that the employer provided. Id., at 807; Ellerth, supra, at 765. Under this framework, therefore, it matters whether a harasser is a “supervisor” or simply a co-worker. We hold that an employee is a “supervisor” for purposes of vicarious liability under Title VII if he or she is empowered by the employer to take tangible employment actions against the victim, and we therefore affirm the judgment of the Seventh Circuit. I Maetta Vance, an African-American woman, began working for Ball State University (BSU) in 1989 as a sub- stitute server in the University Banquet and Catering division of Dining Services. In 1991, BSU promoted Vance to a part-time catering assistant position, and in 2007 she applied and was selected for a position as a full-time catering assistant. Over the course of her employment with BSU, Vance lodged numerous complaints of racial discrimination and retaliation, but most of those incidents are not at issue here. For present purposes, the only relevant incidents concern Vance’s interactions with a fellow BSU employee, Saundra Davis. During the time in question, Davis, a white woman, was employed as a catering specialist in the Banquet and Catering division. The parties vigorously dispute the precise nature and scope of Davis’ duties, but they agree that Davis did not have the power to hire, fire, demote, promote, transfer, or discipline Vance. See No. 1:06–cv–1452–SEB–JMS, 2008 WL 4247836, *12 (SD Ind., Sept. 10, 2008) (“Vance makes no allegations that Ms. Davis possessed any such power”); Brief for Petitioner 9–11 (describing Davis’ authority over Vance); Brief for Respondent 39 (“[A]ll agree that Davis lacked the author- ity to take tangible employments [sic] actions against petitioner”). In late 2005 and early 2006, Vance filed internal complaints with BSU and charges with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), alleging racial harassment and discrimination, and many of these complaints and charges pertained to Davis. 646 F. 3d 461, 467 (CA7 2011). Vance complained that Davis “gave her a hard time at work by glaring at her, slamming pots and pans around her, and intimidating her.” Ibid. She alleged that she was “left alone in the kitchen with Davis, who smiled at her”; that Davis “blocked” her on an elevator and “stood there with her cart smiling”; and that Davis often gave her “weird” looks. Ibid. (internal quotation marks omitted). Vance’s workplace strife persisted despite BSU’s attempts to address the problem. As a result, Vance filed this lawsuit in 2006 in the United States District Court for the Southern District of Indiana, claiming, among other things, that she had been subjected to a racially hostile work environment in violation of Title VII. In her complaint, she alleged that Davis was her supervisor and that BSU was liable for Davis’ creation of a racially hostile work environment. Complaint in No. 1:06–cv–01452–SEB–TAB (SD Ind., Oct. 3, 2006), Dkt. No. 1, pp. 5–6. Both parties moved for summary judgment, and the District Court entered summary judgment in favor of BSU. 2008 WL 4247836, at *1. The court explained that BSU could not be held vicariously liable for Davis’ alleged racial harassment because Davis could not “ ‘hire, fire, demote, promote, transfer, or discipline’ ” Vance and, as a result, was not Vance’s supervisor under the Seventh Circuit’s interpretation of that concept. See id., at *12 (quoting Hall v. Bodine Elect. Co., 276 F. 3d 345, 355 (CA7 2002)). The court further held that BSU could not be liable in negligence because it responded reasonably to the incidents of which it was aware. 2008 WL 4247836, *15. The Seventh Circuit affirmed. 646 F. 3d 461. It explained that, under its settled precedent, supervisor status requires “ ‘the power to hire, fire, demote, promote, transfer, or discipline an employee.’ ” Id., at 470 (quoting Hall, supra, at 355). The court concluded that Davis was not Vance’s supervisor and thus that Vance could not recover from BSU unless she could prove negligence. Finding that BSU was not negligent with respect to Davis’ conduct, the court affirmed. 646 F. 3d, at 470–473. II A Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 makes it “an unlawful employment practice for an employer . . . to discriminate against any individual with respect to his compensation, terms, conditions, or privileges of employment, because of such individual’s race, color, religion, sex, or national origin.” 42 U. S. C. §2000e–2(a)(1). This provision obviously prohibits discrimination with respect to employment decisions that have direct economic consequences, such as termination, demotion, and pay cuts. But not long after Title VII was enacted, the lower courts held that Title VII also reaches the creation or perpetuation of a discriminatory work environment. In the leading case of Rogers v. EEOC, 454 F. 2d 234 (1971), the Fifth Circuit recognized a cause of action based on this theory. See Meritor Savings Bank, FSB v. Vinson, 477 U. S. 57 –66 (1986) (describing development of hostile environment claims based on race). The Rogers court reasoned that “the phrase ‘terms, conditions, or privileges of employment’ in [Title VII] is an expansive concept which sweeps within its protective ambit the practice of creating a working environment heavily charged with ethnic or racial discrimination.” 454 F. 2d, at 238. The court observed that “[o]ne can readily envision working environments so heavily polluted with discrimination as to destroy completely the emotional and psy- chological stability of minority group workers.” Ibid. Following this decision, the lower courts generally held that an employer was liable for a racially hostile work environ- ment if the employer was negligent, i.e., if the employer knew or reasonably should have known about the harassment but failed to take remedial action. See Ellerth, 524 U. S., at 768–769 (Thomas, J., dissenting) (citing cases). When the issue eventually reached this Court, we agreed that Title VII prohibits the creation of a hostile work environment. See Meritor, supra, at 64–67. In such cases, we have held, the plaintiff must show that the work environment was so pervaded by discrimination that the terms and conditions of employment were altered. See, e.g., Harris v. Forklift Systems, Inc., 510 U. S. 17, 21 (1993) . B Consistent with Rogers, we have held that an employer is directly liable for an employee’s unlawful harassment if the employer was negligent with respect to the offensive behavior. Faragher, 524 U. S., at 789. Courts have generally applied this rule to evaluate employer liability when a co-worker harasses the plaintiff. [ 1 ] In Ellerth and Faragher, however, we held that different rules apply where the harassing employee is the plain- tiff’s “supervisor.” In those instances, an employer may be vicariously liable for its employees’ creation of a hostile work environment. And in identifying the situations in which such vicarious liability is appropriate, we looked to the Restatement of Agency for guidance. See, e.g., Meri- tor, supra, at 72; Ellerth, supra, at 755. Under the Restatement, “masters” are generally not liable for the torts of their “servants” when the torts are committed outside the scope of the servants’ employment. See 1 Restatement (Second) of Agency §219(2), p. 481 (1957) (Restatement). And because racial and sexual harassment are unlikely to fall within the scope of a servant’s duties, application of this rule would generally preclude employer liability for employee harassment. See Faragher, supra, at 793–796; Ellerth, supra, at 757. But in Ellerth and Faragher, we held that a provision of the Restatement provided the basis for an exception. Section 219(2)(d) of that Restatement recognizes an exception to the general rule just noted for situations in which the servant was “aided in accomplishing the tort by the existence of the agency relation.” [ 2 ] Restatement 481; see Far- agher, supra, at 802–803; Ellerth, supra, at 760–763. Adapting this concept to the Title VII context, Ellerth and Faragher identified two situations in which the aided-in-the-accomplishment rule warrants employer liability even in the absence of negligence, and both of these situations involve harassment by a “supervisor” as opposed to a co-worker. First, the Court held that an employer is vicariously liable “when a supervisor takes a tangible employment action,” Ellerth, supra, at 762; Faragher, supra, at 790—i.e., “a significant change in employment status, such as hiring, firing, failing to promote, reassignment with significantly different responsibilities, or a decision causing a significant change in benefits.” Ellerth, 524 U. S., at 761. We explained the reason for this rule as follows: “When a supervisor makes a tangible employment decision, there is assurance the injury could not have been inflicted absent the agency relation. . . . A tangible employment decision requires an official act of the enterprise, a company act. The decision in most cases is documented in official company records, and may be subject to review by higher level supervisors.” Id., at 761–762. In those circumstances, we said, it is appropriate to hold the employer strictly liable. See Faragher, supra, at 807; Ellerth, supra, at 765. Second, Ellerth and Faragher held that, even when a supervisor’s harassment does not culminate in a tangible employment action, the employer can be vicariously liable for the supervisor’s creation of a hostile work environment if the employer is unable to establish an affirmative defense. [ 3 ] We began by noting that “a supervisor’s power and authority invests his or her harassing conduct with a particular threatening character, and in this sense, a supervisor always is aided by the agency relation.” El- lerth, supra, at 763; see Faragher, 524 U. S., at 803–805. But it would go too far, we found, to make employers strictly liable whenever a “supervisor” engages in harassment that does not result in a tangible employment action, and we therefore held that in such cases the employer may raise an affirmative defense. Specifically, an employer can mitigate or avoid liability by showing (1) that it exercised reasonable care to prevent and promptly correct any harassing behavior and (2) that the plaintiff unreasonably failed to take advantage of any preventive or corrective opportunities that were provided. Faragher, supra, at 807; Ellerth, 524 U. S., at 765. This compromise, we ex- plained, “accommodate[s] the agency principles of vicarious liability for harm caused by misuse of supervisory authority, as well as Title VII’s equally basic policies of encouraging forethought by employers and saving action by objecting employees.” Id., at 764. The dissenting Members of the Court in Ellerth and Faragher would not have created a special rule for cases involving harassment by “supervisors.” Instead, they would have held that an employer is liable for any employee’s creation of a hostile work environment “if, and only if, the plaintiff proves that the employer was negligent in permitting the [offending] conduct to occur.” Ellerth, supra, at 767 (Thomas, J., dissenting); Faragher, supra, at 810 (same). C Under Ellerth and Faragher, it is obviously important whether an alleged harasser is a “supervisor” or merely a co-worker, and the lower courts have disagreed about the meaning of the concept of a supervisor in this context. Some courts, including the Seventh Circuit below, have held that an employee is not a supervisor unless he or she has the power to hire, fire, demote, promote, transfer, or discipline the victim. E.g., 646 F. 3d, at 470; Noviello v. Boston, 398 F. 3d 76, 96 (CA1 2005); Weyers v. Lear Operations Corp., 359 F. 3d 1049, 1057 (CA8 2004). Other courts have substantially followed the more open-ended approach advocated by the EEOC’s Enforcement Guidance, which ties supervisor status to the ability to exercise significant direction over another’s daily work. See, e.g., Mack v. Otis Elevator Co., 326 F. 3d 116, 126–127 (CA2 2003); Whitten v. Fred’s, Inc., 601 F. 3d 231, 245–247 (CA4 2010); EEOC, Enforcement Guidance: Vicarious Employer Liability for Unlawful Harassment by Supervisors (1999), 1999 WL 33305874, *3 (hereinafter EEOC Guidance). We granted certiorari to resolve this conflict. 567 U. S. ___ (2012). III We hold that an employer may be vicariously liable for an employee’s unlawful harassment only when the employer has empowered that employee to take tangible employment actions against the victim, i.e., to effect a “sig- nificant change in employment status, such as hiring, firing, failing to promote, reassignment with significantly different responsibilities, or a decision causing a significant change in benefits.” Ellerth, supra, at 761. We reject the nebulous definition of a “supervisor” advocated in the EEOC Guidance [ 4 ] and substantially adopted by several courts of appeals. Petitioner’s reliance on colloquial uses of the term “supervisor” is misplaced, and her contention that our cases require the EEOC’s abstract definition is simply wrong. As we will explain, the framework set out in Ellerth and Faragher presupposes a clear distinction between supervisors and co-workers. Those decisions contemplate a unitary category of supervisors, i.e., those employees with the authority to make tangible employment decisions. There is no hint in either decision that the Court had in mind two categories of supervisors: first, those who have such authority and, second, those who, although lacking this power, nevertheless have the ability to direct a co-worker’s labor to some ill-defined degree. On the contrary, the Ellerth/Faragher framework is one under which supervisory status can usually be readily determined, generally by written documentation. The approach recommended by the EEOC Guidance, by contrast, would make the determination of supervisor status depend on a highly case-specific evaluation of numerous factors. The Ellerth/Faragher framework represents what the Court saw as a workable compromise between the aided-in-the-accomplishment theory of vicarious liability and the legitimate interests of employers. The Seventh Circuit’s understanding of the concept of a “supervisor,” with which we agree, is easily workable; it can be applied without undue difficulty at both the summary judgment stage and at trial. The alternative, in many cases, would frustrate judges and confound jurors. A Petitioner contends that her expansive understanding of the concept of a “supervisor” is supported by the meaning of the word in general usage and in other legal contexts, see Brief for Petitioner 25–28, but this argument is both incorrect on its own terms and, in any event, misguided. In general usage, the term “supervisor” lacks a sufficiently specific meaning to be helpful for present purposes. Petitioner is certainly right that the term is often used to refer to a person who has the authority to direct another’s work. See, e.g., 17 Oxford English Dictionary 245 (2d ed. 1989) (defining the term as applying to “one who inspects and directs the work of others”). But the term is also often closely tied to the authority to take what Ellerth and Faragher referred to as a “tangible employment action.” See, e.g., Webster’s Third New International Dictionary 2296, def. 1(a) (1976) (“a person having authority dele- gated by an employer to hire, transfer, suspend, recall, promote, assign, or discharge another employee or to rec- ommend such action”). A comparison of the definitions provided by two colloquial business authorities illustrates the term’s imprecision in general usage. One says that “[s]upervisors are usually authorized to recommend and/or effect hiring, disciplining, promoting, punishing, rewarding, and other associated activities regarding the employees in their departments.” [ 5 ] Another says exactly the opposite: “A supervisor generally does not have the power to hire or fire employees or to promote them.” [ 6 ] Compare Ellerth, 524 U. S., at 762 (“Tangible employment actions fall within the special province of the supervisor”). If we look beyond general usage to the meaning of the term in other legal contexts, we find much the same situation. Sometimes the term is reserved for those in the upper echelons of the management hierarchy. See, e.g., 25 U. S. C. §2021(18) (defining the “supervisor” of a school within the jurisdiction of the Bureau of Indian Affairs as “the individual in the position of ultimate authority at a Bureau school”). But sometimes the term is used to refer to lower ranking individuals. See, e.g., 29 U. S. C. §152(11) (defining a supervisor to include “any individual having authority . . . to hire, transfer, suspend, lay off, recall, promote, discharge, assign, reward, or discipline other employees, or responsibly to direct them, or to adjust their grievances, or effectively to recommend such action, if in connection with the foregoing the exercise of such authority is not of a merely routine or clerical nature, but requires the use of independent judgment”); 42 U. S. C. §1396n(j)(4)(A) (providing that an eligible Medicaid beneficiary who receives care through an approved self-directed services plan may “hire, fire, supervise, and manage the individuals providing such services”). Although the meaning of the concept of a supervisor varies from one legal context to another, the law often contemplates that the ability to supervise includes the ability to take tangible employment actions. [ 7 ] See, e.g., 5 CFR §§9701.511(a)(2), (3) (2012) (referring to a supervisor’s authority to “hire, assign, and direct employees . . . and [t]o lay off and retain employees, or to suspend, re- move, reduce in grade, band, or pay, or take other disciplinary action against such employees or, with respect to filling positions, to make selections for appointments from properly ranked and certified candidates for promotion or from any other appropriate source”); §9701.212(b)(4) (defining “supervisory work” as that which “may involve hiring or selecting employees, assigning work, managing performance, recognizing and rewarding employees, and other associated duties”). In sum, the term “supervisor” has varying meanings both in colloquial usage and in the law. And for this reason, petitioner’s argument, taken on its own terms, is unsuccessful. More important, petitioner is misguided in suggesting that we should approach the question presented here as if “supervisor” were a statutory term. “Supervisor” is not a term used by Congress in Title VII. Rather, the term was adopted by this Court in Ellerth and Faragher as a label for the class of employees whose misconduct may give rise to vicarious employer liability. Accordingly, the way to understand the meaning of the term “supervisor” for present purposes is to consider the interpretation that best fits within the highly structured framework that those cases adopted. B In considering Ellerth and Faragher, we are met at the outset with petitioner’s contention that at least some of the alleged harassers in those cases, whom we treated as supervisors, lacked the authority that the Seventh Circuit’s definition demands. This argument misreads our decisions. In Ellerth, it was clear that the alleged harasser was a supervisor under any definition of the term: He hired his victim, and he promoted her (subject only to the minis- terial approval of his supervisor, who merely signed the paperwork). 524 U. S., at 747. Ellerth was a case from the Seventh Circuit, and at the time of its decision in that case, that court had already adopted its current definition of a supervisor. See Volk v. Coler, 845 F. 2d 1422, 1436 (1988). See also Parkins v. Civil Constructors of Ill., Inc., 163 F. 3d 1027, 1033, n. 1 (CA7 1998) (discussing Circuit case law). Although the en banc Seventh Circuit in Ellerth issued eight separate opinions, there was no disagreement about the harasser’s status as a supervisor. Jansen v. Packaging Corp. of America, 123 F. 3d 490 (1997) (per curiam). Likewise, when the case reached this Court, no question about the harasser’s status was raised. The same is true with respect to Faragher. In that case, Faragher, a female lifeguard, sued her employer, the city of Boca Raton, for sexual harassment based on the conduct of two other lifeguards, Bill Terry and David Silverman, and we held that the city was vicariously liable for Terry’s and Silverman’s harassment. Although it is clear that Terry had authority to take tangible employment actions affecting the victim, [ 8 ] see 524 U. S., at 781 (explaining that Terry could hire new lifeguards, supervise their work assignments, counsel, and discipline them), Silverman may have wielded less authority, ibid. (noting that Silverman was “responsible for making the lifeguards’ daily assignments, and for supervising their work and fitness training”). Nevertheless, the city never disputed Far- agher’s characterization of both men as her “supervisors.” See App., O. T. 1997, No. 97–282, p. 40 (First Amended Complaint ¶¶6–7); id., at 79 (Answer to First Amended Complaint ¶¶6–7) (admitting that both harassers had “supervisory responsibilities” over the plaintiff). [ 9 ] In light of the parties’ undisputed characterization of the alleged harassers, this Court simply was not presented with the question of the degree of authority that an employee must have in order to be classified as a supervisor. [ 10 ] The parties did not focus on the issue in their briefs, although the victim in Faragher appears to have agreed that supervisors are employees empowered to take tangible employment actions. See Brief for Petitioner, O. T. 1997, No. 97–282, p. 24 (“Supervisors typically exercise broad discretionary powers over their subordinates, determining many of the terms and conditions of their employment, including their raises and prospects for pro- motion and controlling or greatly influencing whether they are to be dismissed”). For these reasons, we have no difficulty rejecting petition- er’s argument that the question before us in the present case was effectively settled in her favor by our treatment of the alleged harassers in Ellerth and Faragher. [ 11 ] The dissent acknowledges that our prior cases do “not squarely resolve whether an employee without power to take tangible employment actions may nonetheless qualify as a supervisor,” but accuses us of ignoring the “all-too-plain reality” that employees with authority to control their subordinates’ daily work are aided by that authority in perpetuating a discriminatory work environment. Post, at 8 (opinion of Ginsburg, J.). As Ellerth recognized, however, “most workplace tortfeasors are aided in accomplishing their tortious objective by the existence of the agency relation,” and consequently “something more” is required in order to warrant vicarious liability. 524 U. S., at 760. The ability to direct another employee’s tasks is simply not sufficient. Employees with such powers are certainly capable of creating intolerable work environments, see post, at 9–11 (discussing examples), but so are many other co-workers. Negligence provides the better framework for evaluating an employer’s liability when a harassing employee lacks the power to take tangible employment actions. C Although our holdings in Faragher and Ellerth do not resolve the question now before us, we believe that the answer to that question is implicit in the characteristics of the framework that we adopted. To begin, there is no hint in either Ellerth or Faragher that the Court contemplated anything other than a unitary category of supervisors, namely, those possessing the authority to effect a tangible change in a victim’s terms or conditions of employment. The Ellerth/Faragher framework draws a sharp line between co-workers and supervisors. Co-workers, the Court noted, “can inflict psychologi- cal injuries” by creating a hostile work environment, but they “cannot dock another’s pay, nor can one co-worker demote another.” Ellerth, 524 U. S., at 762. Only a supervisor has the power to cause “direct economic harm” by taking a tangible employment action. Ibid. “Tangible employment actions fall within the special province of the supervisor. The supervisor has been empowered by the company as a distinct class of agent to make economic decisions affecting other employees under his or her control. . . . Tangible employment actions are the means by which the supervisor brings the official power of the enterprise to bear on subordinates.” Ibid. (emphasis added). The strong implication of this passage is that the authority to take tangible employment actions is the defining characteristic of a supervisor, not simply a characteristic of a subset of an ill-defined class of employees who qualify as supervisors. The way in which we framed the question presented in Ellerth supports this understanding. As noted, the Ellerth/Faragher framework sets out two circumstances in which an employer may be vicariously liable for a supervisor’s harassment. The first situation (which results in strict liability) exists when a supervisor actually takes a tangible employment action based on, for example, a subordinate’s refusal to accede to sexual demands. The second situation (which results in vicarious liability if the employer cannot make out the requisite affirmative defense) is present when no such tangible action is taken. Both Ellerth and Faragher fell into the second category, and in Ellerth, the Court couched the question at issue in the following terms: “whether an employer has vicarious liability when a supervisor creates a hostile work en- vironment by making explicit threats to alter a subor- dinate’s terms or conditions of employment, based on sex, but does not fulfill the threat.” 524 U. S., at 754. This statement plainly ties the second situation to a supervisor’s authority to inflict direct economic injury. It is because a supervisor has that authority—and its potential use hangs as a threat over the victim—that vicarious liability (subject to the affirmative defense) is justified. Finally, the Ellerth/Faragher Court sought a framework that would be workable and would appropriately take into account the legitimate interests of employers and employees. The Court looked to principles of agency law for guidance, but the Court concluded that the “malleable terminology” of the aided-in-the-commission principle counseled against the wholesale incorporation of that principle into Title VII case law. Ellerth, 524 U. S., at 763. Instead, the Court also considered the objectives of Title VII, including “the limitation of employer liability in certain circumstances.” Id., at 764. The interpretation of the concept of a supervisor that we adopt today is one that can be readily applied. In a great many cases, it will be known even before litigation is commenced whether an alleged harasser was a supervi- sor, and in others, the alleged harasser’s status will become clear to both sides after discovery. And once this is known, the parties will be in a position to assess the strength of a case and to explore the possibility of resolving the dispute. Where this does not occur, supervisor status will generally be capable of resolution at summary judgment. By contrast, under the approach advocated by petitioner and the EEOC, supervisor status would very often be murky—as this case well illustrates. [ 12 ] According to petitioner, the record shows that Davis, her alleged harasser, wielded enough authority to qualify as a supervisor. Petitioner points in particular to Davis’ job description, which gave her leadership responsibilities, and to evidence that Davis at times led or directed Vance and other employees in the kitchen. See Brief for Petitioner 42–43 (citing record); Reply Brief 22–23 (same). The United States, on the other hand, while applying the same open-ended test for supervisory status, reaches the opposite conclusion. At least on the present record, the United States tells us, Davis fails to qualify as a supervisor. Her job description, in the Government’s view, is not dispositive, and the Government adds that it would not be enough for petitioner to show that Davis “occasionally took the lead in the kitchen.” Brief for United States as Amicus Curiae 31 (U. S. Brief). This disagreement is hardly surprising since the EEOC’s definition of a supervisor, which both petitioner and the United States defend, is a study in ambiguity. In its Enforcement Guidance, the EEOC takes the position that an employee, in order to be classified as a supervisor, must wield authority “ ‘of sufficient magnitude so as to as- sist the harasser explicitly or implicitly in carrying out the harassment.’ ” Id., at 27 (quoting App. to Pet. for Cert. 89a (EEOC Guidance)). But any authority over the work of another employee provides at least some assistance, see Ellerth, supra, at 763, and that is not what the United States interprets the Guidance to mean. Rather, it informs us, the authority must exceed both an ill-defined temporal requirement (it must be more than “occa- siona[l]”) and an ill-defined substantive requirement (“an employee who directs ‘only a limited number of tasks or assignments’ for another employee . . . would not have sufficient authority to qualify as a supervisor.” U. S. Brief 28 (quoting App. to Pet. for Cert. 92a (EEOC Guidance)); U. S. Brief 31. We read the EEOC Guidance as saying that the number (and perhaps the importance) of the tasks in question is a factor to be considered in determining whether an employee qualifies as a supervisor. And if this is a correct interpretation of the EEOC’s position, what we are left with is a proposed standard of remarkable ambiguity. The vagueness of this standard was highlighted at oral argument when the attorney representing the United States was asked to apply that standard to the situation in Faragher, where the alleged harasser supposedly threatened to assign the plaintiff to clean the toilets in the lifeguard station for a year if she did not date him. 524 U. S., at 780. Since cleaning the toilets is just one task, albeit an unpleasant one, the authority to assign that job would not seem to meet the more-than-a-limited-number-of-tasks requirement in the EEOC Guidance. Nevertheless, the Government attorney’s first response was that the authority to make this assignment would be enough. Tr. of Oral Arg. 23. He later qualified that answer by saying that it would be necessary to “know how much of the day’s work [was] encompassed by cleaning the toilets.” Id., at 23–24. He did not explain what percentage of the day’s work (50%, 25%, 10%?) would suffice. The Government attorney’s inability to provide a de- finitive answer to this question was the inevitable con- sequence of the vague standard that the Government asks us to adopt. Key components of that standard—“sufficient” authority, authority to assign more than a “limited number of tasks,” and authority that is exercised more than “occasionally”—have no clear meaning. Applying these standards would present daunting problems for the lower federal courts and for juries. Under the definition of “supervisor” that we adopt today, the question of supervisor status, when contested, can very often be resolved as a matter of law before trial. The elimination of this issue from the trial will focus the efforts of the parties, who will be able to present their cases in a way that conforms to the framework that the jury will apply. The plaintiff will know whether he or she must prove that the employer was negligent or whether the employer will have the burden of proving the elements of the Ellerth/Faragher affirmative defense. Perhaps even more important, the work of the jury, which is inevitably complicated in employment discrimination cases, will be simplified. The jurors can be given preliminary instructions that allow them to understand, as the evidence comes in, how each item of proof fits into the framework that they will ultimately be required to apply. And even where the issue of supervisor status cannot be eliminated from the trial (because there are genuine factual disputes about an alleged harasser’s authority to take tangible employment actions), this preliminary question is rela- tively straightforward. The alternative approach advocated by petitioner and the United States would make matters far more complicated and difficult. The complexity of the standard they favor would impede the resolution of the issue before trial. With the issue still open when trial commences, the parties would be compelled to present evidence and argu- ment on supervisor status, the affirmative defense, and the question of negligence, and the jury would have to grapple with all those issues as well. In addition, it would often be necessary for the jury to be instructed about two very different paths of analysis, i.e., what to do if the alleged harasser was found to be a supervisor and what to do if the alleged harasser was found to be merely a co-worker. Courts and commentators alike have opined on the need for reasonably clear jury instructions in employment discrimination cases. [ 13 ] And the danger of juror confusion is particularly high where the jury is faced with instructions on alternative theories of liability under which different parties bear the burden of proof. [ 14 ] By simplifying the process of determining who is a supervisor (and by extension, which liability rules apply to a given set of facts), the approach that we take will help to ensure that juries return verdicts that reflect the application of the correct legal rules to the facts. Contrary to the dissent’s suggestions, see post, at 14, 17, this approach will not leave employees unprotected against harassment by co-workers who possess the authority to inflict psychological injury by assigning unpleasant tasks or by altering the work environment in objectionable ways. In such cases, the victims will be able to prevail simply by showing that the employer was negligent in permitting this harassment to occur, and the jury should be instructed that the nature and degree of authority wielded by the harasser is an important factor to be con- sidered in determining whether the employer was negligent. The nature and degree of authority possessed by harassing employees varies greatly, see post, 9–11 (offering examples), and as we explained above, the test proposed by petitioner and the United States is ill equipped to deal with the variety of situations that will inevitably arise. This variety presents no problem for the negligence standard, which is thought to provide adequate protection for tort plaintiffs in many other situations. There is no reason why this standard, if accompanied by proper instructions, cannot provide the same service in the context at issue here. D The dissent argues that the definition of a supervisor that we now adopt is out of touch with the realities of the workplace, where individuals with the power to assign daily tasks are often regarded by other employees as supervisors. See post, at 5, 8–12. But in reality it is the alternative that is out of touch. Particularly in modern organizations that have abandoned a highly hierarchical management structure, it is common for employees to have overlapping authority with respect to the assignment of work tasks. Members of a team may each have the responsibility for taking the lead with respect to a particular aspect of the work and thus may have the responsibility to direct each other in that area of responsibility. Finally, petitioner argues that tying supervisor status to the authority to take tangible employment actions will encourage employers to attempt to insulate themselves from liability for workplace harassment by empowering only a handful of individuals to take tangible employment actions. But a broad definition of “supervisor” is not necessary to guard against this concern. As an initial matter, an employer will always be liable when its negligence leads to the creation or continuation of a hostile work environment. And even if an employer concentrates all decisionmaking authority in a few individuals, it likely will not isolate itself from heightened liability under Faragher and Ellerth. If an employer does attempt to confine decisionmaking power to a small number of individuals, those individuals will have a limited ability to exercise independent discretion when making decisions and will likely rely on other workers who actu- ally interact with the affected employee. Cf. Rhodes v. Illinois Dept. of Transp., 359 F. 3d 498, 509 (CA7 2004) (Rovner, J., concurring in part and concurring in judgment) (“Although they did not have the power to take formal employment actions vis-à-vis [the victim], [the harassers] necessarily must have had substantial input into those decisions, as they would have been the people most familiar with her work—certainly more familiar with it than the off-site Department Administrative Services Manager”). Under those circumstances, the employer may be held to have effectively delegated the power to take tangible employment actions to the employees on whose recommendations it relies. See Ellerth, 524 U. S., at 762. IV Importuning Congress, post, at 21–22, the dissent suggests that the standard we adopt today would cause the plaintiffs to lose in a handful of cases involving shocking allegations of harassment, see post, at 9–12. However, the dissent does not mention why the plaintiffs would lose in those cases. It is not clear in any of those examples that the legal outcome hinges on the definition of “supervisor.” For example, Clara Whitten ultimately did not prevail on her discrimination claims—notwithstanding the fact that the Fourth Circuit adopted the approach advocated by the dissent, see Whitten v. Fred’s, Inc., 601 F. 3d 231, 243–247 (2010)—because the District Court subsequently dismissed her claims for lack of jurisdiction. See Whitten v. Fred’s, Inc., No. 8:08–0218–HMH–BHH, 2010 WL 2757005, *3 (D SC, July 12, 2010). And although the dissent suggests that Donna Rhodes’ employer would have been liable under the dissent’s definition of “supervisor,” that is pure speculation: It is not clear that Rhodes suffered any tangible employment action, see Rhodes v. Illinois Dept. of Transp., 243 F. Supp. 2d 810, 817 (ND Ill. 2003), and no court had occasion to determine whether the employer could have established the affirmative defense (a prospect that is certainly feasible given that there was evidence that the employer had an “adequate anti-harassment policy in place,” that the employer promptly addressed the incidents about which Rhodes complained, and that “Rhodes failed to take advantage of the preventative or corrective opportunities provided,” Rhodes v. Illinois Dept. of Transp., 359 F. 3d, at 507). [ 15 ] Finally, the dissent’s reliance on Monika Starke’s case is perplexing given that the EEOC ultimately did obtain relief (in the amount of $50,000) for the harassment of Starke, [ 16 ] see Order of Dismissal in No. 1:07–cv–0095–LRR (ND Iowa, Feb. 2, 2013), Dkt. No. 380, Exh. 1, ¶1, notwithstanding the fact that the court in that case applied the definition of “supervisor” that we adopt today, see EEOC v. CRST Van Expedited, Inc., 679 F. 3d 657, 684 (CA8 2012). In any event, the dissent is wrong in claiming that our holding would preclude employer liability in other cases with facts similar to these. Assuming that a harasser is not a supervisor, a plaintiff could still prevail by showing that his or her employer was negligent in failing to prevent harassment from taking place. Evidence that an employer did not monitor the workplace, failed to respond to complaints, failed to provide a system for registering complaints, or effectively discouraged complaints from being filed would be relevant. Thus, it is not true, as the dissent asserts, that our holding “relieves scores of employers of responsibility” for the behavior of workers they employ. Post, at 14. The standard we adopt is not untested. It has been the law for quite some time in the First, Seventh, and Eighth Circuits, see, e.g., Noviello v. Boston, 398 F. 3d 76, 96 (CA1 2005); Weyers v. Lear Operations Corp., 359 F. 3d 1049, 1057 (CA8 2004); Parkins v. Civil Constructors of Ill., Inc., 163 F. 3d 1027, 1033–1034, and n. 1 (CA7 1998)—i.e., in Arkansas, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Maine, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, New Hampshire, North Dakota, Rhode Island, South Dakota, and Wisconsin. We are aware of no evidence that this rule has produced dire consequences in these 14 jurisdictions. Despite its rhetoric, the dissent acknowledges that Davis, the alleged harasser in this case, would probably not qualify as a supervisor even under the dissent’s preferred approach. See post, at 20 (“[T]here is cause to anticipate that Davis would not qualify as Vance’s supervisor”). On that point, we agree. Petitioner did refer to Davis as a “supervisor” in some of the complaints that she filed, App. 28; id., at 45, and Davis’ job description does state that she supervises Kitchen Assistants and Substitutes and “[l]ead[s] and direct[s]” certain other employees, id., at 12–13. But under the dissent’s preferred approach, supervisor status hinges not on formal job titles or “paper descriptions” but on “specific facts about the working relationship.” Post, at 20–21 (internal quotation marks omitted). Turning to the “specific facts” of petitioner’s and Davis’ working relationship, there is simply no evidence that Davis directed petitioner’s day-to-day activities. The record indicates that Bill Kimes (the general manager of the Catering Division) and the chef assigned petitioner’s daily tasks, which were given to her on “prep lists.” No. 1:06–cv–1452–SEB–JMS, 2008 WL 4247836, *7 (SD Ind., Sept. 10, 2008); App. 430, 431. The fact that Davis sometimes may have handed prep lists to petitioner, see id., at 74, is insufficient to confer supervisor status, see App. to Pet. for Cert. 92a (EEOC Guidance). And Kimes—not Davis—set petitioner’s work schedule. See App. 431. See also id., at 212. Because the dissent concedes that our approach in this case deprives petitioner of none of the protections that Ti- tle VII offers, the dissent’s critique is based on nothing more than a hypothesis as to how our approach might affect the outcomes of other cases—cases where an employee who cannot take tangible employment actions, but who does direct the victim’s daily work activities in a meaningful way, creates an unlawful hostile environment, and yet does not wield authority of such a degree and nature that the employer can be deemed negligent with respect to the harassment. We are skeptical that there are a great number of such cases. However, we are confident that, in every case, the approach we take today will be more easily administrable than the approach advocated by the dissent. * * * We hold that an employee is a “supervisor” for purposes of vicarious liability under Title VII if he or she is empowered by the employer to take tangible employment actions against the victim. Because there is no evidence that BSU empowered Davis to take any tangible employment actions against Vance, the judgment of the Seventh Circuit is affirmed. It is so ordered. Notes 1 See, e.g., Williams v. Waste Management of Ill., 361 F. 3d 1021, 1029 (CA7 2004); McGinest v. GTE Serv. Corp., 360 F. 3d 1103, 1119 (CA9 2004); Joens v. John Morrell & Co., 354 F. 3d 938, 940 (CA8 2004); Noviello v. Boston, 398 F. 3d 76, 95 (CA1 2005); Duch v. Jakubek, 588 F. 3d 757, 762 (CA2 2009); Huston v. Procter & Gamble Paper Prods. Corp., 568 F. 3d 100, 104–105 (CA3 2009). 2 The Restatement (Third) of Agency disposed of this exception to liability, explaining that “[t]he purposes likely intended to be met by the ‘aided in accomplishing’ basis are satisfied by a more fully elaborated treatment of apparent authority and by the duty of reasonable care that a principal owes to third parties with whom it interacts through employees and other agents.” 2 Restatement (Third) §7.08, p. 228 (2005). The parties do not argue that this change undermines our holdings in Faragher and Ellerth. 3 Faragher and Ellerth involved hostile environment claims premised on sexual harassment. Several federal courts of appeals have held that Faragher and Ellerth apply to other types of hostile environment claims, including race-based claims. See Spriggs v. Diamond Auto Glass, 242 F. 3d 179, 186, n. 9 (CA4 2001) (citing cases reflecting “the developing consensus . . . that the holdings [in Faragher and Ellerth] apply with equal force to other types of harassment claims under Title VII”). But see Ellerth, 524 U. S., at 767 (Thomas, J., dissenting) (stating that, as a result of the Court’s decision in Ellerth, “employer liability under Title VII is judged by different standards depending upon whether a sexually or racially hostile work environment is alleged”). Neither party in this case challenges the application of Faragher and Ellerth to race-based hostile environment claims, and we assume that the framework announced in Faragher and Ellerth applies to cases such as this one. 4 The United States urges us to defer to the EEOC Guidance. Brief for United States as Amicus Curiae 26–29 (citing Skidmore v. Swift & Co., ). But to do so would be proper only if the EEOC Guidance has the power to persuade, which “depend[s] upon the thoroughness evident in its consideration, the validity of its reasoning, [and] its consistency with earlier and later pronouncements.” Id., at 140. For the reasons explained below, we do not find the EEOC Guidance persuasive. 5 http://www.businessdictionary.com/definition/supervisor.html (all In-ternet materials as visited June 21, 2013, and available in Clerk of Court’s case file). 6 http://management.about.com/od/policiesandprocedures/g/supervisor1.html 7 One outlier that petitioner points to is the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA), . Petitioner argues that the NLRA’s definition supports her position in this case to the extent that it encompasses employees who have the ability to direct or assign work to subordinates. Brief for Petitioner 27–28. The NLRA certainly appears to define “supervisor” in broad terms. The National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) and the lower courts, however, have consistently explained that supervisory authority is not trivial or insignificant: If the term “supervisor” is construed too broadly, then employees who are deemed to be supervisors will be denied rights that the NLRA was intended to protect. E.g., In re Connecticut Humane Society, 358 NLRB No. 31, *33 (Apr. 12, 2012); Frenchtown Acquisition Co., Inc. v. NLRB, 683 F. 3d 298, 305 (CA6 2012); Beverly Enterprises-Massachusetts, Inc. v. NLRB, 165 F. 3d 960, 963 (CADC 1999). Indeed, in defining a supervisor for purposes of the NLRA, Congress sought to distinguish “between straw bosses, leadmen, set-up men, and other minor supervisory employees, on the one hand, and the supervisor vested with such genuine management prerogatives as theright to hire or fire, discipline, or make effective recommendations with respect to such action.” S. Rep. No. 105, 80th Cong., 1st Sess., 4 (1947). Cf. NLRB v. Health Care & Retirement Corp. of America, (HCRA) (Ginsburg, J., dissenting) (“Through case-by-case adjudication, the Board has sought to distinguish individuals exercising the level of control that truly places them in the ranks of management, from highly skilled employees, whether professional or technical, who perform, incidentally to their skilled work, a limited supervisory role”). Accordingly, the NLRB has interpreted the NLRA’s statutory definition of supervisor more narrowly than its plain language might permit. See, e.g., Connecticut Humane Society, supra, at *39 (an employee who evaluates others is not a supervisor unless the evaluation “affect[s] the wages and the job status of the employee evaluated”); In re CGLM, Inc., 350 NLRB 974, 977 (2007) (“ ‘If any authority over someone else, no matter how insignificant or infrequent, made an employee a super-visor, our industrial composite would be predominantly supervisory. Every order-giver is not a supervisor. Even the traffic director tells the president of the company where to park his car’ ” (quoting NLRB v. Security Guard Serv., Inc., 384 F. 2d 143, 151 (CA5 1967))). The NLRA therefore does not define the term “supervisor” as broadly as petitioner suggests. To be sure, the NLRA may in some instances define “supervisor” more broadly than we define the term in this case. But those differences reflect the NLRA’s unique purpose, which is to preserve the balance of power between labor and management, see HCRA, supra, at 573 (explaining that Congress amended the NLRA to exclude supervisors in order to address the “imbalance between labor and management” that resulted when “supervisory employees could organize as part of bargaining units and negotiate with the employer”). That purpose is inapposite in the context of Title VII, which focuses on eradicating discrimination. An employee may have a sufficient degree of authority over subordinates such that Congress has decided that the employee should not participate with lower level employees in the same collective-bargaining unit (because, for example, a higher level employee will pursue his own interests at the expense of lower level employees’ interests), but that authority is not necessarily sufficient to merit heightened liability for the purposes of Title VII. The NLRA’s definition of supervisor therefore is not controlling in this context. 8 The dissent suggests that it is unclear whether Terry would qualify as a supervisor under the test we adopt because his hiring decisions were subject to approval by higher management. Post, at 7, n. 1 (opinion of Ginsburg, J.). See also Faragher, 524 U. S., at 781. But we have assumed that tangible employment actions can be subject to such approval. See Ellerth, 524 U. S., at 762. In any event, the record indicates that Terry possessed the power to make employment decisions having direct economic consequences for his victims. See Brief for Petitioner in Faragher v. Boca Raton, O. T. 1997, No. 97–282, p. 9 (“No one, during the twenty years that Terry was Marine Safety Chief, was hired without his recommendation. [He] initiated firing and suspending personnel. [His] evaluations of the lifeguards translated into sal-ary increases. [He] made recommendations regarding promotions . . .” (citing record)). 9 Moreover, it is by no means certain that Silverman lacked the authority to take tangible employment actions against Faragher. In her merits brief, Faragher stated that, as a lieutenant, Silverman “made supervisory and disciplinary decisions and had input on the evaluations as well.” Id., at 9–10. If that discipline had economic consequences (such as suspension without pay), then Silverman might qualify as a supervisor under the definition we adopt today. Silverman’s ability to assign Faragher significantly different work responsibilities also may have constituted a tangible employment action. Silverman told Faragher, “ ‘Date me or clean the toilets for a year.’ ” Faragher, supra, at 780. That threatened reassignment of duties likely would have constituted significantly different responsibilities for a lifeguard, whose job typically is to guard the beach. If that reassignment had economic consequences, such as foreclosing Far-agher’s eligibility for promotion, then it might constitute a tangible employment action. 10 The lower court did not even address this issue. See Faragher v. Boca Raton, 111 F. 3d 1530, 1547 (CA11 1997) (Anderson, J., concurring in part and dissenting in part) (noting that it was unnecessary to “decide the threshold level of authority which a supervisor must possess in order to impose liability on the employer”). 11 According to the dissent, the rule that we adopt is also inconsistent with our decision in Pennsylvania State Police v. Suders, . See post, at 7–8. The question in that case was “whether a constructive discharge brought about by supervisor harassment ranks as a tangible employment action and therefore precludes assertion of the affirmative defense articulated in Ellerth and Faragher.” Suders, supra, at 140. As the dissent implicitly acknowledges, the supervi-sor status of the harassing employees was not before us in that case. See post, at 8. Indeed, the employer conceded early in the litigation that the relevant employees were supervisors, App. in Pennsylvania State Police v. Suders, O. T. 2003, No. 03–95, p. 20 (Answer ¶29),and we therefore had no occasion to question that unchallengedcharacterization. 12 The dissent attempts to find ambiguities in our holding, see post,at 15–16, and n. 5, but it is indisputable that our holding is orders of magnitude clearer than the nebulous standard it would adopt. Employment discrimination cases present an almost unlimited numberof factual variations, and marginal cases are inevitable under any standard. 13 See, e.g., Gross v. FBL Financial Services, Inc., ; Armstrong v. Burdette Tomlin Memorial Hospital, 438 F. 3d 240, 249 (CA3 2006) (noting in the context of McDonnell Douglas Corp. v. Green, , that that “the ‘prima facie case and the shifting burdens confuse lawyers and judges, much less juries, who do not have the benefit of extensive study of the law on the subject’ ” (quoting Mogull v. Commercial Real Estate, 162 N. J. 449, 471, 744 A. 2d 1186, 1199 (2000))); Whittington v. Nordam Group Inc., 429 F. 3d 986, 998 (CA10 2005) (noting that unnecessarily complicated instructions complicate a jury’s job in employment discrimination cases, and “unnecessary complexity increases the opportunity for error”); Sanders v. New York City Human Resources Admin., 361 F. 3d 749, 758 (CA2 2004) (“Making the burden-shifting scheme of McDonnell Douglas part of a jury charge undoubtedly constitutes error because of the manifest risk of confusion it creates”); Mogull, supra, at 473, 744 A. 2d, at 1200 (“Given the confusion that often results when the first and second stages of the McDonnell Douglas test goes to the jury, we recommend that the court should decide both those issues”); Tymkovich, The Problem with Pretext, 85 Denver Univ. L. Rev. 503, 527–529 (2008) (discussing the potential for jury confusion that arises when in-structions are unduly complex and proposing a simpler framework); Grebeldinger, Instructing the Jury in a Case of Circumstantial Individual Disparate Treatment: Thoroughness or Simplicity? 12 Lab. Law. 399, 419 (1997) (concluding that more straightforward instructions “provid[e] the jury with clearer guidance of their mission”); Davis, The Stumbling Three-Step, Burden-Shifting Approach in Employment Discrimination Cases, 61 Brook. L. Rev. 703, 742–743 (1995) (discussing potential for juror confusion in the face of complex instructions); Note, Toward a Motivating Factor Test for Individual Disparate Treatment Claims, 100 Mich. L. Rev. 234, 262–273 (2001) (discussing the need for a simpler approach to jury instructions in employment discrimination cases). 14 Cf. Struve, Shifting Burdens: Discrimination Law Through the Lens of Jury Instructions, 51 Boston College L. Rev. 279, 330–334 (2010) (arguing that unnecessary confusion arises when a jury must resolve different claims under different burden frameworks); Monahan, Cabrera v. Jakabovitz—A Common-Sense Proposal for Formulating Jury Instructions Regarding Shifting Burdens of Proof in Disparate Treatment Discrimination Cases, 5 Geo. Mason U. C. R. L. J. 55, 76 (1994) (“Any jury instruction that attempts to shift the burden of per-suasion on closely related issues is never likely to be successful”). 15 Similarly, it is unclear whether Yasharay Mack ultimately would have prevailed even under the dissent’s definition of “supervisor.” The Second Circuit (adopting a definition similar to that advocated by the dissent) remanded the case for the District Court to determine whether Mack “ ‘unreasonably failed to take advantage of any preventative or corrective opportunities provided by the employer or to avoid harm otherwise.’ ” Mack v. Otis Elevator Co., 326 F. 3d 116, 127–128 (2003) (quoting Ellerth, 524 U. S., at 765). But before it had an opportunity to make any such determination, Mack withdrew her complaint and the District Court dismissed her claims with prejudice. See Stipulation and Order of Dismissal in No. 1:00–cv–7778–LAP (SDNY, Oct. 21, 2004), Dkt. No. 63. 16 Starke herself lacked standing to pursue her claims, see EEOC v. CRST Van Expedited, Inc., 679 F. 3d 657, 678, and n. 14 (CA8 2012), but the Eighth Circuit held that the EEOC could sue in its own name to remedy the sexual harassment against Starke and other CRST employees, see id., at 682.

568.US.627

The federal Medicaid statute’s anti-lien provision, 42 U. S. C. §1396p(a)(1), pre-empts a State’s effort to take any portion of a Medicaid beneficiary’s tort judgment or settlement not “designated as payments for medical care,” Arkansas Dept. of Health and Human Servs. v. Ahlborn, 547 U.S. 268, 284. A North Carolina statute requires that up to one-third of any damages recovered by a beneficiary for a tortious injury be paid to the State to reimburse it for payments it made for medical treatment on account of the injury. Respondent E. M. A. was born with multiple serious birth injuries that require her to receive between 12 and 18 hours of skilled nursing care per day and that will prevent her from being able to work, live independently, or provide for her basic needs. North Carolina’s Medicaid program pays part of the cost of her ongoing medical care. E. M. A. and her parents filed a medical malpractice suit against the physician who delivered her and the hospital where she was born. They presented expert testimony estimating their damages to exceed $42 million, but they ultimately settled for $2.8 million, due in large part to insurance policy limits. The settlement did not allocate money among their various medical and nonmedical claims. In approving the settlement, the state court placed one-third of the recovery into escrow pending a judicial determination of the amount of the lien owed by E. M. A. to the State. E. M. A. and her parents then sought declaratory and injunctive relief in Federal District Court, claiming that the State’s reimbursement scheme violated the Medicaid anti-lien provision. While that litigation was pending, the North Carolina Supreme Court held in another case that the irrebuttable statutory one-third presumption was a reasonable method for determining the amount due the State for medical expenses. The Federal District Court, in the instant case, agreed. But the Fourth Circuit vacated and remanded, concluding that the State’s statutory scheme could not be reconciled with Ahlborn. Held: The federal anti-lien provision pre-empts North Carolina’s irrebuttable statutory presumption that one-third of a tort recovery is attributable to medical expenses. Pp. 4–16. (a) In Ahlborn, the Court held that the federal Medicaid statute sets both a floor and a ceiling on a State’s potential share of a beneficiary’s tort recovery. Federal law requires an assignment to the State of “the right to recover that portion of a settlement that represents payments for medical care,” but also “precludes attachment or encumbrance of the remainder of the settlement.” 547 U. S., at 282, 284. Ahlborn did not, however, resolve the question of how to determine what portion of a settlement represents payment for medical care. As North Carolina construes its statute, when the State’s Medicaid expenditures exceed one-third of a beneficiary’s tort recovery, the statute establishes a conclusive presumption that one-third of the recovery represents compensation for medical expenses, even if the settlement or verdict expressly allocates a lower percentage of the judgment to medical expenses. Pp. 4–7. (b) North Carolina’s law is pre-empted insofar as it would permit the State to take a portion of a Medicaid beneficiary’s tort judgment or settlement not designated for medical care. It directly conflicts with the federal Medicaid statute and therefore “must give way.” PLIVA, Inc. v. Mensing, 564 U. S. ___, ___. The state law has no process for determining what portion of a beneficiary’s tort recovery is attributable to medical expenses. Instead, the State has picked an arbitrary percentage and by statutory command labeled that portion of a beneficiary’s tort recovery as representing payment for medical care. A State may not evade pre-emption through creative statutory interpretation or description, “framing” its law in a way that is at odds with the statute’s intended operation and effect. National Meat Assn. v. Harris, 565 U. S. ___, ___. North Carolina’s argument, if accepted, would frustrate the Medicaid anti-lien provision in the context of tort recoveries. It lacks any limiting principle: If a State could arbitrarily designate one-third of any recovery as payment for medical expenses, it could arbitrarily designate half or all of the recovery in the same way. The State offers no evidence showing that its allocation is reasonable in the mine run of cases, and the law provides no mechanism for determining whether its allocation is reasonable in any particular case. No estimate of an allocation will be necessary where there has been a judicial finding or approval of an allocation between medical and nonmedical damages. In some cases, including Ahlborn, this binding stipulation or judgment will attribute to medical expenses less than one-third of the settlement. Yet even in these circumstances, North Carolina’s statute would permit the State to take one-third of the total recovery. A conflict thus exists between North Carolina’s law and the Medicaid anti-lien provision. This case is not as clear-cut as Ahlborn was, for here there was no such stipulation or judgment. But Ahlborn’s reasoning and the federal statute’s design contemplate that possibility: They envisioned that a judicial or administrative proceeding would be necessary where a beneficiary and the State are unable to agree on what portion of a settlement represents compensation for medical expenses. See 547 U. S., at 288. North Carolina’s irrebuttable, one-size-fits-all statutory presumption is incompatible with the Medicaid Act’s clear mandate that a State may not demand any portion of a beneficiary’s tort recovery except the share that is attributable to medical ex-penses. Pp. 7–10. (c) None of North Carolina’s responses to this reasoning is persuasive. Pp. 10–15. 674 F.3d 290, affirmed. Kennedy, J., delivered the opinion of the Court, in which Ginsburg, Breyer, Alito, Sotomayor, and Kagan, JJ., joined. Breyer, J., filed a concurring opinion. Roberts, C. J., filed a dissenting opinion, in which Scalia and Thomas, JJ., joined.

A federal statute prohibits States from attaching a lien on the property of a Medicaid beneficiary to recover ben-efits paid by the State on the beneficiary’s behalf. 42 U. S. C. §1396p(a)(1). The anti-lien provision pre-empts a State’s effort to take any portion of a Medicaid beneficiary’s tort judgment or settlement not “designated as pay-ments for medical care.” Arkansas Dept. of Health and Human Servs. v. Ahlborn, 547 U.S. 268, 284 (2006). North Carolina has enacted a statute requiring that up to one-third of any damages recovered by a beneficiary for a tortious injury be paid to the State to reimburse it for pay-ments it made for medical treatment on account of the in-jury. See N. C. Gen. Stat. Ann. §108A–57 (Lexis 2011); Andrews v. Haygood, 362 N. C. 599, 604–605, 669 S.E.2d 310, 314 (2008). The question presented is whether the North Carolina statute is compatible with the federal anti-lien provision. I When respondent E. M. A. was born in February 2000, she suffered multiple serious birth injuries which left her deaf, blind, and unable to sit, walk, crawl, or talk. The injuries also cause her to suffer from mental retardation and a seizure disorder. She requires between 12 and 18 hours of skilled nursing care per day. She will not be able to work, live independently, or provide for her basic needs. The cost of her ongoing medical care is paid in part by the State of North Carolina’s Medicaid program. In February 2003, E. M. A. and her parents filed a medical malpractice suit in North Carolina state court against the physician who delivered E. M. A. at birth and the hospital where she was born. The expert witnesses for E. M. A. and her parents in that proceeding estimated damages in excess of $42 million for medical and life-care expenses, loss of future earning capacity, and other assorted expenses such as architectural renovations to their home and specialized transportation equipment. App. 91–112. By far the largest part of this estimate was for “Skilled Home Care,” totaling more than $37 million over E. M. A.’s lifetime. Id., at 112. E. M. A. and her parents also sought damages for her pain and suffering and for her parents’ emotional distress. Id., at 64–65, 67–68, 72–73, 75–76. Their experts did not estimate the damages in these last two categories. Assisted by a mediator, the parties began settlement negotiations. E. M. A. and her parents informed the North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services of the negotiations. The department had a statutory right to intervene in the malpractice suit and participate in the settlement negotiations in order to obtain reimbursement for the medical expenses it paid on E. M. A.’s behalf, up to one-third of the total recovery. See N. C. Gen. Stat. Ann. §§108A–57, 108A–59. It elected not to do so, though its representative informed E. M. A. and her parents that the State’s Medicaid program had expended $1.9 million for E. M. A.’s medical care, which it would seek to recover from any tort judgment or settlement. In November 2006, the court approved a $2.8 million settlement. The amount, apparently, was dictated in large part by the policy limits on the defendants’ medical malpractice insurance coverage. See Brief for Respondents 5. The settlement agreement did not allocate the money among the different claims E. M. A. and her parents had advanced. In approving the settlement the court placed one-third of the $2.8 million recovery into an interest-bearing escrow account “until such time as the actual amount of the lien owed by [E. M. A.] to [the State] is con-clusively judicially determined.” App. 87. E. M. A. and her parents then filed this action under Rev. Stat. §1979, 42 U. S. C. §1983, in the United States District Court for the Western District of North Carolina. They sought declaratory and injunctive relief, arguing that the State’s reimbursement scheme violated the Medicaid anti-lien provision, §1396p(a)(1). While that litigation was pending, the North Carolina Supreme Court con-fronted the same question in Andrews, supra. It held that the irrebuttable statutory presumption that one-third of a Medicaid beneficiary’s tort recovery is attributable to medical expenses was “a reasonable method for determining the State’s medical reimbursements.” Id., at 604, 669 S. E. 2d, at 314. The United States District Court, in the instant case, agreed. Armstrong v. Cansler, 722 F. Supp. 2d 653 (2010). The Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit vacated and remanded. E. M. A. v. Cansler, 674 F.3d 290 (2012). It concluded that North Carolina’s statutory scheme could not be reconciled with “Ahlborn’s clear holding that the general anti-lien provision in federal Medicaid law prohibits a state from recovering any portion of a settlement or judgment not attributable to medical expenses.” Id., at 310. In some cases, the court reasoned, the actual portion of a beneficiary’s tort recovery representing payment for medical care would be less than one-third. North Caro-lina’s statutory presumption that one-third of a tort recovery is attributable to medical expenses therefore must be “subject to adversarial testing” in a judicial or administrative proceeding. Id., at 311. To resolve the conflict between the opinion of the Court of Appeals in this case and the decision of the North Carolina Supreme Court in Andrews, this Court granted certiorari. 567 U. S. ___ (2012). II At issue is the interaction between certain provisions of the federal Medicaid statute and state law. Congress has directed States, in administering their Medicaid programs, to seek reimbursement for medical expenses incurred on behalf of beneficiaries who later recover from third-party tortfeasors. States must require beneficiaries “to assign the State any rights . . . to support (specified as support for the purpose of medical care by a court or administrative order) and to payment for medical care from any third party.” 42 U. S. C. §1396k(a)(1)(A). States receiving Medi-caid funds must also “ha[ve] in effect laws under which, to the extent that payment has been made under the State plan for medical assistance for health care items or services furnished to an individual, the State is considered to have acquired the rights of such individual to payment by any other party for such health care items or services.” §1396a(a)(25)(H). A separate provision of the Medicaid statute, however, exists in some tension with these requirements. It says that, with exceptions not relevant here, “[n]o lien may be imposed against the property of any individual prior to his death on account of medical assistance paid or to be paid on his behalf under the State plan.” §1396p(a)(1). In Ahlborn, the Court addressed this tension and held that the Medicaid statute sets both a floor and a ceiling on a State’s potential share of a beneficiary’s tort recovery. Federal law requires an assignment to the State of “the right to recover that portion of a settlement that represents payments for medical care,” but it also “precludes attachment or encumbrance of the remainder of the settlement.” 547 U. S., at 282, 284. This is so because the beneficiary has a property right in the proceeds of the settlement, bringing it within the ambit of the anti-lien provision. Id., at 285. That property right is subject to the specific statutory “exception” requiring a State to seek reimbursement for medical expenses paid on the beneficiary’s behalf, but the anti-lien provision protects the beneficiary’s interest in the remainder of the settlement. Id., at 284. A question the Court had no occasion to resolve in Ahlborn is how to determine what portion of a settlement represents payment for medical care. The parties in that case stipulated that about 6 percent of respondent Ahlborn’s tort recovery (approximately $35,600 of a $550,000 settlement) represented compensation for medical care. Id., at 274. The Court nonetheless anticipated the concern that some settlements would not include an itemized allocation. It also recognized the possibility that Medicaid beneficiaries and tortfeasors might collaborate to allocate an artificially low portion of a settlement to medical expenses. The Court noted that these problems could “be avoided either by obtaining the State’s advance agreement to an allocation or, if necessary, by submitting the matter to a court for decision.” Id., at 288. North Carolina has attempted a different approach. Its statute provides: “Notwithstanding any other provisions of the law, to the extent of payments under this Part, the State, or the county providing medical assistance benefits, shall be subrogated to all rights of recovery, contractual or otherwise, of the beneficiary of this assistance . . . . The county attorney, or an attorney retained by the county or the State or both, or an attorney retained by the beneficiary of the assistance if this attorney has actual notice of payments made under this Part shall enforce this section. Any attorney retained by the beneficiary of the assistance shall, out of the proceeds obtained on behalf of the beneficiary by settlement with, judgment against, or otherwise from a third party by reason of injury or death, distribute to the Department the amount of assistance paid by the Department on behalf of or to the beneficiary, as prorated with the claims of all others having medical subrogation rights or medical liens against the amount received or recovered, but the amount paid to the Department shall not exceed one-third of the gross amount obtained or recovered.” N. C. Gen. Stat. Ann. §108A–57(a). Before Ahlborn was decided, North Carolina and the state courts interpreted this statute to allow the State to “recover the costs of medical treatment provided . . . even when the funds received by the [beneficiary] are not re- imbursement for medical expenses.” Campbell v. North Carolina Dept. of Human Resources, 153 N. C. App. 305, 307–308, 569 S.E.2d 670, 672 (2002). See also Ezell v. Grace Hospital, Inc., 360 N. C. 529, 631 S.E.2d 131 (2006) (per curiam). Under Ahlborn, however, this construction of the statute is at odds with the Medicaid anti-lien provision, which “precludes attachment or encum- brance” of any portion of a settlement not “designated as payments for medical care.” 547 U. S., at 284. In response to Ahlborn, the State advanced—and the North Carolina Supreme Court in Andrews accepted— a new interpretation of its statute. Under this interpretation the statute “defines ‘the portion of the settlement that represents payment for medical expenses’ as the lesser of the State’s past medical expenditures or one-third of the plaintiff’s total recovery.” Andrews, 362 N. C., at 604, 669 S. E. 2d, at 314. In other words, when the State’s Medicaid expenditures on behalf of a beneficiary exceed one-third of the beneficiary’s tort recovery, the statute establishes a conclusive presumption that one-third of the recovery represents compensation for medical expenses. Under this reading of the statute the presumption operates even if the settlement or a jury verdict expressly allocates a lower percentage of the judgment to medical expenses. See Tr. of Oral Arg. 10, 16–17. Cf. Andrews, supra, at 602–604, 669 S. E. 2d, at 313. III A Under the Supremacy Clause, “[w]here state and federal law ‘directly conflict,’ state law must give way.” PLIVA, Inc. v. Mensing, 564 U. S. ___, ___ (2011) (slip op., at 11). The Medicaid anti-lien provision prohibits a State from making a claim to any part of a Medicaid beneficiary’s tort recovery not “designated as payments for medical care.” Ahlborn, supra, at 284. North Carolina’s statute, therefore, is pre-empted if, and insofar as, it would operate that way. And it is pre-empted for that reason. The defect in §108A–57 is that it sets forth no process for determining what portion of a beneficiary’s tort recovery is attributable to medical expenses. Instead, North Carolina has picked an arbitrary number—one-third—and by statutory command labeled that portion of a beneficiary’s tort recovery as representing payment for medical care. Pre-emption is not a matter of semantics. A State may not evade the pre-emptive force of federal law by resorting to creative statutory interpretation or description at odds with the statute’s intended operation and effect. A similar issue was presented last Term, in National Meat Assn. v. Harris, 565 U. S. ___ (2012). That case involved the pre-emptive scope of the Federal Meat Inspection Act, 21 U. S. C. §601 et seq. The Act prohibited States from imposing “ ‘[r]equirements . . . with respect to premises, facilities and operations’ ” at federally regulated slaughterhouses. National Meat Assn., 565 U. S., at ___ (slip op., at 4) (quoting §678). The State of California had enacted a law that prohibited slaughterhouses from (among other things) selling meat from nonambulatory ani- mals for human consumption. Id., at ___ (slip op., at 5) (citing Cal. Penal Code Ann. §599f(b) (West 2010)). California sought to defend the law on the ground that it did not regulate the activities of slaughterhouses but instead restricted what type of meat could be sold in the marketplace after the animals had been butchered. 565 U. S., at ___–___ (slip op., at 9–10). The Court rejected that argument. It recognized that if the argument were to prevail, “then any State could im-pose any regulation on slaughterhouses just by framing it as a ban on the sale of meat produced in whatever way the State disapproved. That would make a mockery of the [Act’s] preemption provision.” Id., at ___ (slip op., at 10). In a pre-emption case, the Court held, a proper analysis requires consideration of what the state law in fact does, not how the litigant might choose to describe it. That reasoning controls here. North Carolina’s argument, if accepted, would frustrate the Medicaid anti-lien provision in the context of tort recoveries. The argument lacks any limiting principle: If a State arbitrarily may designate one-third of any recovery as payment for medical expenses, there is no logical reason why it could not designate half, three-quarters, or all of a tort recovery in the same way. In Ahlborn, the State of Arkansas, under this rationale, would have succeeded in claiming the full amount it sought from the beneficiary had it been more creative and less candid in describing the effect of its full-reimbursement law. Here the State concedes that it would be “difficult . . . to defend” a law purporting to allocate most or all of a beneficiary’s tort recovery to medical expenses. Tr. of Oral Arg. 20. That is true; but, as a doctrinal matter, it is no eas- ier to defend North Carolina’s across-the-board allocation of one-third of all beneficiaries’ tort recoveries to medical ex-penses. The problem is not that it is an unreasonable ap-proximation in all cases. In some cases, it may well be a fair estimate. But the State provides no evidence to substantiate its claim that the one-third allocation is reasonable in the mine run of cases. Nor does the law provide a mechanism for determining whether it is a reasonable approximation in any particular case. In some instances, no estimate will be necessary or appropriate. When there has been a judicial finding or approval of an allocation between medical and nonmedical damages—in the form of either a jury verdict, court decree, or stipulation binding on all parties—that is the end of the matter. Ahlborn was a case of this sort. All parties (including the State of Arkansas) stipulated that approximately 6 percent of the plaintiff’s settlement represented payment for medical costs. 547 U. S., at 274. In other cases a settlement may not be reached and the judge or jury, in its findings, may make an allocation. With a stipulation or judgment under this procedure, the anti-lien provision protects from state demand the portion of a beneficiary’s tort recovery that the stipulation or judgment does not attribute to medical expenses. North Carolina’s statute, however, operates to allow the State to take one-third of the total recovery, even if a proper stipulation or judgment attributes a smaller percentage to medical expenses. Consider the facts of Ahlborn. There, only $35,581.47 of the beneficiary’s settlement “constituted reimbursement for medical payments made.” Ibid. North Carolina’s statute, had it been applied in Ahlborn, would have allowed the State to claim $183,333.33 (one-third of the beneficiary’s $550,000 settlement). A conflict thus exists between North Carolina’s law and the Medicaid anti-lien provision. The instant case, to be sure, is not quite so clear cut; for there was no allocation of the settlement by either judi- cial decree or binding stipulation of the parties. But the reasoning of Ahlborn and the design of the federal statute contemplate that possibility. When the State and the beneficiary are unable to agree on an allocation, Ahlborn noted, the parties could “submi[t] the matter to a court for decision.” Id., at 288. The facts of the present case demonstrate why Ahlborn anticipated that a judicial or administrative proceeding would be necessary in that situation. Of the damages stemming from the injuries E. M. A. suffered at birth, it is apparent that a quite substantial share must be allocated to the skilled home care she will require for the rest of her life. See App. 112. It also may be necessary to consider how much E. M. A. and her parents could have expected to receive as compensation for their other tort claims had the suit proceeded to trial. An irrebuttable, one-size-fits-all statutory presumption is incompatible with the Medicaid Act’s clear mandate that a State may not demand any por- tion of a beneficiary’s tort recovery except the share that is attributable to medical expenses. B North Carolina offers responses to this reasoning, but none is persuasive. First, the State asserts that it is doing nothing more than what Ahlborn said it could do: “adop[t] special rules and procedures for allocating tort settlements.” 547 U. S., at 288, n. 18. This misreads Ahlborn. There the Court, citing an amicus brief, referred to judicial proceedings some States had established for allocating tort settlements where necessary for insurance or tax purposes. See Brief for Association of Trial Lawyers of America, O. T. 2005, No. 04–1506, pp. 20–21 (citing Henning v. Wineman, 306 N.W.2d 550 (Minn. 1981), and Rimes v. State Farm Mut. Auto. Ins. Co., 106 Wis. 2d 263, 316 N.W.2d 348 (1982)). Those examples illustrated the kind of “special rules and procedures for allocating tort settlements” that Ahlborn con- sidered. The decision did not endorse irrebuttable presumptions that designate some arbitrary fraction of a tort judgment to medical expenses in all cases. Second, North Carolina contends that its law falls within the scope of a State’s traditional authority to regulate tort actions, including the amount of damages that a party may recover. This argument begins from a correct premise: In our federal system, there is no question that States possess the “traditional authority to provide tort remedies to their citizens” as they see fit. Silkwood v. Kerr-McGee Corp., 464 U.S. 238, 248 (1984). But North Carolina’s law is not an exercise of the State’s general authority to regulate its tort system. It does not limit tort plaintiffs’ ability to recover for certain types of nonmedical damages, and it does not say that medical damages are to be privileged above other damages in tort suits. All it seeks to do is to allocate the share of damages attributable to medical expenses in tort suits brought by Medicaid beneficiaries. A statute that singles out Medicaid beneficiaries in this manner cannot avoid compliance with the federal anti-lien provision merely by relying upon a connection to an area of traditional state regulation. Third, North Carolina suggests that even though its allocation of one-third of a tort recovery to medical expenses may be arbitrary, other methods for allocating a recovery would be just as arbitrary. In the State’s view there is no “ascertainable ‘true value’ of [a] case that should control what portion of any settlement is subject to the State’s third-party recovery rights.” Brief for Petitioner 26–27. As explained earlier, allocations, while to some extent perhaps not precise, need not be arbitrary. See supra, at 9–10. In some cases a judgment or stipulation binding on all parties will allocate the plaintiff’s recovery across different claims. Where no such judgment or stipulation exists, a fair allocation of such a settlement may be difficult to determine. Trial judges and trial lawyers, however, can find objective benchmarks to make projections of the damages the plaintiff likely could have proved had the case gone to trial. In the instant case, for example, the North Carolina trial court approved the settlement only after finding that it constituted “fair and just compensation” to E. M. A. and her parents for her “severe and debilitating injuries”; for “medical and life care expenses” her condition will require; and for “severe emotional distress” from her injuries. App. 82. What portion of this lump-sum settlement constitutes “fair and just compensation” for each individual claim will depend both on how likely E. M. A. and her parents would have been to prevail on the claims at trial and how much they reasonably could have expected to receive on each claim if successful, in view of damages awarded in comparable tort cases. This relates to North Carolina’s fourth argument: that it would be “wasteful, time consuming, and costly” to hold “frequent mini-trials” in order to divide a settlement between medical and nonmedical expenses. Brief for Petitioner 28. Even if that were true, it would not relieve the State of its obligation to comply with the terms of the Medicaid anti-lien provision. And it is not true as a general proposition. States have considerable latitude to design administrative and judicial procedures to ensure a prompt and fair allocation of damages. Sixteen States and the District of Columbia provide for hearings of this sort, and there is no indication that they have proved bur- densome. Brief for United States as Amicus Curiae 28– 29, and n. 7. See, e.g., Cal. Welf. & Inst. Code Ann. §14124.76(a) (West 2011); Mo. Rev. Stat. §§208.215.9–11 (2012); Tenn. Code Ann. §§71–5–117(g)–(i) (2012); In re E. B., 229 W. Va. 435, ___, 729 S.E.2d 270, 297 (2012). Many of these States have established rebuttable presumptions and adjusted burdens of proof to ensure that speculative assessments of a plaintiff’s likely recovery do not defeat the State’s right to recover medical costs, a concern North Carolina raises. See, e.g., Haw. Rev. Stat. §346–37(h) (2011 Cum. Supp.) (rebuttable presumption of a one-third allocation); Mass. Gen. Laws, ch. 118E, §22(c) (West 2010) (rebuttable presumption of full reimbursement); Okla. Stat., Tit. 63, §5051.1(D)(1)(d) (West 2011) (rebuttable presumption of full reimbursement, “unless a more limited allocation of damages to medical expenses is shown by clear and convincing evidence”). Without holding that these rules are necessarily compliant with the federal statute, it can be concluded that they are more accurate than the procedure North Carolina has enacted. The task of dividing a tort settlement is a familiar one. In a variety of settings, state and federal courts are called upon to separate lump-sum settlements or jury awards into categories to satisfy different claims to a portion of the moneys recovered. See supra, at 11. See also, e.g., Green v. Commissioner, 507 F.3d 857, 867–868 (CA5 2007) (separation of compensatory from noncompensatory damages for tax purposes); Donnel v. United States, 50 Fed. Cl. 375, 386–387 (2001) (separation of employee severance bonus from other payments for tax purposes); In re Harrison, 306 B.R. 172, 182–183 (Bkrtcy. Ct. ED Tex. 2003) (separation of pain-and-suffering damages from other damages for purposes of bankruptcy exemption); Colorado Compensation Ins. Auth. v. Jones, 131 P.3d 1074, 1077–1078 (Colo. App. 2005) (separation of economic from noneconomic damages for purposes of insurance sub- rogation); Spangler v. North Star Drilling Co., 552 So. 2d 673, 685 (La. App. 1989) (separation of past dam- ages from future damages for purposes of calculating pre- judgment interest). Indeed, North Carolina itself uses a judicial allocation procedure to ascertain the portion of a settlement subject to subrogation in a workers’ compensation suit. It instructs trial courts to “consider the anticipated amount of prospective compensation the employer or workers’ compensation carrier is likely to pay to the employee in the future, the net recovery to plaintiff, the likelihood of the plaintiff prevailing at trial or on appeal, the need for finality in the litigation, and any other factors the court deems just and reasonable.” N. C. Gen. Stat. Ann. §97– 10.2(j) (Lexis 2011). North Carolina would be on sounder footing had it adopted a similar procedure for allocating Medicaid beneficiaries’ tort recoveries. It might also consider a different one along the lines of what other States have done in Medicaid reimbursement cases. The State thus has ample means available to allocate Medicaid beneficiaries’ tort recoveries in an efficient manner that complies with federal law. Indeed, if States are concerned that case-by-case judicial allocations will prove unwieldy, they may even be able to adopt ex ante administrative criteria for allocating medical and nonmedical expenses, provided that these criteria are backed by evidence suggesting that they are likely to yield reasonable results in the mine run of cases. What they cannot do is what North Carolina did here: adopt an arbitrary, one-size-fits-all allocation for all cases. Fifth, and finally, North Carolina contends that in two documents—a July 2006 memorandum and a December 2009 letter responding to an inquiry from a member of North Carolina’s congressional delegation—the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services approved of North Carolina’s statutory scheme for Medicaid reimbursement. In the State’s view, these agency pronouncements are entitled to deference. See Brief for Petitioner 33–36 (citing Chevron U. S. A. Inc. v. Natural Resources Defense Council, Inc., 467 U.S. 837 (1984)). The 2006 and 2009 documents, however, no longer re-flect the agency’s position. See Brief for United States as Amicus Curiae 8–34. And at any rate, the documents are opinion letters, not regulations with the force of law. We have held that “[i]nterpretations such as those in opinion letters—like interpretations contained in policy statements, agency manuals, and enforcement guidelines, all of which lack the force of law—do not warrant Chevron-style deference.” Christensen v. Harris County, 529 U.S. 576, 587 (2000). These documents are “ ‘entitled to respect’ ” in proportion to their “ ‘power to persuade.’ ” Ibid. (quoting Skidmore v. Swift & Co., 323 U.S. 134, 140 (1944)). Insofar as the 2006 and 2009 documents approve of North Carolina’s statute, they lack persuasive force for the reasons discussed above. * * * The law here at issue, N. C. Gen. Stat. Ann. §108A–57, reflects North Carolina’s effort to comply with federal law and secure reimbursement from third-party tortfeasors for medical expenses paid on behalf of the State’s Medicaid beneficiaries. In some circumstances, however, the statute would permit the State to take a portion of a Medicaid beneficiary’s tort judgment or settlement not “designated as payments for medical care.” Ahlborn, 547 U. S., at 284. The Medicaid anti-lien provision, 42 U. S. C. §1396p(a)(1), bars that result. The judgment of the Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit is affirmed. It is so ordered.

573.US.431

The Copyright Act of 1976 gives a copyright owner the “exclusive righ[t]” to “perform the copyrighted work publicly.” 17 U. S. C. §106(4). The Act’s Transmit Clause defines that exclusive right to include the right to “transmit or otherwise communicate a performance . . . of the [copyrighted] work . . . to the public, by means of any device or process, whether the members of the public capable of receiving the performance . . . receive it in the same place or in separate places and at the same time or at different times.” §101. Respondent Aereo, Inc., sells a service that allows its subscribers to watch television programs over the Internet at about the same time as the programs are broadcast over the air. When a subscriber wants to watch a show that is currently airing, he selects the show from a menu on Aereo’s website. Aereo’s system, which consists of thousands of small antennas and other equipment housed in a centralized warehouse, responds roughly as follows: A server tunes an antenna, which is dedicated to the use of one subscriber alone, to the broadcast carrying the selected show. A transcoder translates the signals received by the antenna into data that can be transmitted over the Internet. A server saves the data in a subscriber-specific folder on Aereo’s hard drive and begins streaming the show to the subscriber’s screen once several seconds of programming have been saved. The streaming continues, a few seconds behind the over-the-air broadcast, until the subscriber has received the entire show. Petitioners, who are television producers, marketers, distributors, and broadcasters that own the copyrights in many of the programs that Aereo streams, sued Aereo for copyright infringement. They sought a preliminary injunction, arguing that Aereo was infringing their right to “perform” their copyrighted works “publicly.” The District Court denied the preliminary injunction, and the Second Circuit affirmed. Held: Aereo performs petitioners’ works publicly within the meaning of the Transmit Clause. Pp. 4–18. (a) Aereo “perform[s].” It does not merely supply equipment that allows others to do so. Pp. 4–10. (1) One of Congress’ primary purposes in amending the Copyright Act in 1976 was to overturn this Court’s holdings that the activities of community antenna television (CATV) providers fell outside the Act’s scope. In Fortnightly Corp. v. United Artists Television, Inc., 392 U.S. 390, the Court determined that a CATV provider was more like a viewer than a broadcaster, because its system “no more than enhances the viewer’s capacity to receive the broadcaster’s signals [by] provid[ing] a well-located antenna with an efficient connection to the viewer’s television set.” Id., at 399. Therefore, the Court concluded, a CATV provider did not perform publicly. The Court reached the same determination in respect to a CATV provider that retransmitted signals from hundreds of miles away in Teleprompter Corp. v. Columbia Broadcasting System, Inc., 415 U.S. 394. “The reception and rechanneling of [broadcast television signals] for simultaneous viewing is essentially a viewer function, irrespective of the distance between the broadcasting station and the ultimate viewer,” the Court said. Id., at 408. Pp. 4–7. (2) In 1976, Congress amended the Copyright Act in large part to reject the Fortnightly and Teleprompter holdings. The Act now clarifies that to “perform” an audiovisual work means “to show its images in any sequence or to make the sounds accompanying it audible.” §101. Thus, both the broadcaster and the viewer “perform,” because they both show a television program’s images and make audible the program’s sounds. Congress also enacted the Transmit Clause, which specifies that an entity performs when it “transmit[s] . . . a performance . . . to the public.” Ibid. The Clause makes clear that an entity that acts like a CATV system itself performs, even when it simply enhances viewers’ ability to receive broadcast television signals. Congress further created a complex licensing scheme that sets out the conditions, including the payment of compulsory fees, under which cable systems may retransmit broadcasts to the public. §111. Congress made all three of these changes to bring cable system activities within the Copyright Act’s scope. Pp. 7–8. (3) Because Aereo’s activities are substantially similar to those of the CATV companies that Congress amended the Act to reach, Aereo is not simply an equipment provider. Aereo sells a service that allows subscribers to watch television programs, many of which are copyrighted, virtually as they are being broadcast. Aereo uses its own equipment, housed in a centralized warehouse, outside of its users’ homes. By means of its technology, Aereo’s system “receive[s] programs that have been released to the public and carr[ies] them by private channels to additional viewers.” Fortnightly, supra, at 400. This Court recognizes one particular difference between Aereo’s system and the cable systems at issue in Fortnightly and Teleprompter: The systems in those cases transmitted constantly, whereas Aereo’s system remains inert until a subscriber indicates that she wants to watch a program. In other cases involving different kinds of service or technology providers, a user’s involvement in the operation of the provider’s equipment and selection of the content transmitted may well bear on whether the provider performs within the meaning of the Act. But given Aereo’s overwhelming likeness to the cable companies targeted by the 1976 amendments, this sole technological difference between Aereo and traditional cable companies does not make a critical difference here. Pp. 8–10. (b) Aereo also performs petitioners’ works “publicly.” Under the Clause, an entity performs a work publicly when it “transmit[s] . . . a per-formance . . . of the work . . . to the public.” §101. What performance, if any, does Aereo transmit? Petitioners say Aereo transmits a prior performance of their works, whereas Aereo says the performance it transmits is the new performance created by its act of transmitting. This Court assumes arguendo that Aereo is correct and thus assumes, for present purposes, that to transmit a performance of an audiovisual work means to communicate contemporaneously visible images and contemporaneously audible sounds of the work. Under the Court’s assumed definition, Aereo transmits a performance whenever its subscribers watch a program. What about the Clause’s further requirement that Aereo transmit a performance “to the public”? Aereo claims that because it transmits from user-specific copies, using individually-assigned antennas, and because each transmission is available to only one subscriber, it does not transmit a performance “to the public.” Viewed in terms of Congress’ regulatory objectives, these behind-the-scenes technological differences do not distinguish Aereo’s system from cable systems, which do perform publicly. Congress would as much have intended to protect a copyright holder from the unlicensed activities of Aereo as from those of cable companies. The text of the Clause effectuates Congress’ intent. Under the Clause, an entity may transmit a performance through multiple transmissions, where the performance is of the same work. Thus when an entity communicates the same contemporaneously perceptible images and sounds to multiple people, it “transmit[s] . . . a performance” to them, irrespective of the number of discrete communications it makes and irrespective of whether it transmits using a single copy of the work or, as Aereo does, using an individual personal copy for each viewer. Moreover, the subscribers to whom Aereo transmits constitute “the public” under the Act. This is because Aereo communicates the same contemporaneously perceptible images and sounds to a large number of people who are unrelated and unknown to each other. In addition, neither the record nor Aereo suggests that Aereo’s subscribers receive performances in their capacities as owners or possessors of the underlying works. This is relevant because when an entity performs to a set of people, whether they constitute “the public” often depends upon their relationship to the underlying work. Finally, the statute makes clear that the fact that Aereo’s subscribers may receive the same programs at different times and locations is of no consequence. Aereo transmits a performance of petitioners’ works “to the public.” Pp. 11–15. (c) Given the limited nature of this holding, the Court does not believe its decision will discourage the emergence or use of different kinds of technologies. Pp. 15–17. 712 F.3d 676, reversed and remanded. Breyer, J., delivered the opinion of the Court, in which Roberts, C. J., and Kennedy, Ginsburg, Sotomayor, and Kagan, JJ., joined. Scalia, J., filed a dissenting opinion, in which Thomas and Alito, JJ., joined.

The Copyright Act of 1976 gives a copyright owner the “exclusive righ[t]” to “perform the copyrighted work publicly.” 17 U. S. C. §106(4). The Act’s Transmit Clause defines that exclusive right as including the right to “transmit or otherwise communicate a performance . . . of the [copyrighted] work . . . to the public, by means of any device or process, whether the members of the public capable of receiving the performance . . . receive it in the same place or in separate places and at the same time or at different times.” §101. We must decide whether respondent Aereo, Inc., infringes this exclusive right by selling its subscribers a technologically complex service that allows them to watch television programs over the Internet at about the same time as the programs are broadcast over the air. We conclude that it does. I A For a monthly fee, Aereo offers subscribers broadcast television programming over the Internet, virtually as the programming is being broadcast. Much of this programming is made up of copyrighted works. Aereo neither owns the copyright in those works nor holds a license from the copyright owners to perform those works publicly. Aereo’s system is made up of servers, transcoders, and thousands of dime-sized antennas housed in a central warehouse. It works roughly as follows: First, when a subscriber wants to watch a show that is currently being broadcast, he visits Aereo’s website and selects, from a list of the local programming, the show he wishes to see. Second, one of Aereo’s servers selects an antenna, which it dedicates to the use of that subscriber (and that subscriber alone) for the duration of the selected show. A server then tunes the antenna to the over-the-air broadcast carrying the show. The antenna begins to receive the broadcast, and an Aereo transcoder translates the sig-nals received into data that can be transmitted over the Internet. Third, rather than directly send the data to the subscriber, a server saves the data in a subscriber-specific folder on Aereo’s hard drive. In other words, Aereo’s system creates a subscriber-specific copy—that is, a “personal” copy—of the subscriber’s program of choice. Fourth, once several seconds of programming have been saved, Aereo’s server begins to stream the saved copy of the show to the subscriber over the Internet. (The subscriber may instead direct Aereo to stream the program at a later time, but that aspect of Aereo’s service is not before us.) The subscriber can watch the streamed program on the screen of his personal computer, tablet, smart phone, Internet-connected television, or other Internet-connected device. The streaming continues, a mere few seconds behind the over-the-air broadcast, until the subscriber has received the entire show. See A Dictionary of Computing 494 (6th ed. 2008) (defining “streaming” as “[t]he process of providing a steady flow of audio or video data so that an Internet user is able to access it as it is transmitted”). Aereo emphasizes that the data that its system streams to each subscriber are the data from his own personal copy, made from the broadcast signals received by the particular antenna allotted to him. Its system does not transmit data saved in one subscriber’s folder to any other subscriber. When two subscribers wish to watch the same program, Aereo’s system activates two separate antennas and saves two separate copies of the program in two separate folders. It then streams the show to the subscribers through two separate transmissions—each from the subscriber’s personal copy. B Petitioners are television producers, marketers, distributors, and broadcasters who own the copyrights in many of the programs that Aereo’s system streams to its subscribers. They brought suit against Aereo for copyright infringement in Federal District Court. They sought a preliminary injunction, arguing that Aereo was infringing their right to “perform” their works “publicly,” as the Transmit Clause defines those terms. The District Court denied the preliminary injunction. 874 F. Supp. 2d 373 (SDNY 2012). Relying on prior Circuit precedent, a divided panel of the Second Circuit affirmed. WNET, Thirteen v. Aereo, Inc., 712 F. 3d 676 (2013) (citing Cartoon Network LP, LLLP v. CSC Holdings, Inc., 536 F. 3d 121 (2008)). In the Second Circuit’s view, Aereo does not perform publicly within the meaning of the Transmit Clause because it does not transmit “to the public.” Rather, each time Aereo streams a program to a subscriber, it sends a private transmission that is avail-able only to that subscriber. The Second Circuit denied rehearing en banc, over the dissent of two judges. WNET, Thirteen v. Aereo, Inc., 722 F. 3d 500 (2013). We granted certiorari. II This case requires us to answer two questions: First, in operating in the manner described above, does Aereo “perform” at all? And second, if so, does Aereo do so “publicly”? We address these distinct questions in turn. Does Aereo “perform”? See §106(4) (“[T]he owner of [a] copyright . . . has the exclusive righ[t] . . . to perform the copyrighted work publicly” (emphasis added)); §101 (“To perform . . . a work ‘publicly’ means [among other things] to transmit . . . a performance . . . of the work . . . to the public . . . ” (emphasis added)). Phrased another way, does Aereo “transmit . . . a performance” when a subscriber watches a show using Aereo’s system, or is it only the subscriber who transmits? In Aereo’s view, it does not perform. It does no more than supply equipment that “emulate[s] the operation of a home antenna and [digital video recorder (DVR)].” Brief for Respondent 41. Like a home antenna and DVR, Aereo’s equipment simply responds to its subscribers’ directives. So it is only the subscribers who “perform” when they use Aereo’s equipment to stream television programs to themselves. Considered alone, the language of the Act does not clearly indicate when an entity “perform[s]” (or “transmit[s]”) and when it merely supplies equipment that allows others to do so. But when read in light of its purpose, the Act is unmistakable: An entity that engages in activities like Aereo’s performs. A History makes plain that one of Congress’ primary purposes in amending the Copyright Act in 1976 was to overturn this Court’s determination that community antenna television (CATV) systems (the precursors of modern cable systems) fell outside the Act’s scope. In Fortnightly Corp. v. United Artists Television, Inc., 392 U. S. 390 (1968) , the Court considered a CATV system that carried local television broadcasting, much of which was copyrighted, to its subscribers in two cities. The CATV provider placed antennas on hills above the cities and used coaxial cables to carry the signals received by the antennas to the home television sets of its subscribers. The system amplified and modulated the signals in order to improve their strength and efficiently transmit them to subscribers. A subscriber “could choose any of the . . . programs he wished to view by simply turning the knob on his own television set.” Id., at 392. The CATV provider “neither edited the programs received nor originated any programs of its own.” Ibid. Asked to decide whether the CATV provider infringed copyright holders’ exclusive right to perform their works publicly, the Court held that the provider did not “perform” at all. See 17 U. S. C. §1(c) (1964 ed.) (granting copyright holder the exclusive right to “perform . . . in public for profit” a nondramatic literary work), §1(d) (granting copyright holder the exclusive right to “perform . . . publicly” a dramatic work). The Court drew a line: “Broadcasters perform. Viewers do not perform.” 392 U. S., at 398 (footnote omitted). And a CATV provider “falls on the viewer’s side of the line.” Id., at 399. The Court reasoned that CATV providers were unlike broadcasters: “Broadcasters select the programs to be viewed; CATV systems simply carry, without editing, whatever programs they receive. Broadcasters procure programs and propagate them to the public; CATV systems receive programs that have been released to the public and carry them by private channels to additional viewers.” Id., at 400. Instead, CATV providers were more like viewers, for “the basic function [their] equipment serves is little different from that served by the equipment generally furnished by” viewers. Id., at 399. “Essentially,” the Court said, “a CATV system no more than enhances the viewer’s capac-ity to receive the broadcaster’s signals [by] provid[ing] a well-located antenna with an efficient connection to the viewer’s television set.” Ibid. Viewers do not become performers by using “amplifying equipment,” and a CATV provider should not be treated differently for providing viewers the same equipment. Id., at 398–400. In Teleprompter Corp. v. Columbia Broadcasting System, Inc., 415 U. S. 394 (1974) , the Court considered the copyright liability of a CATV provider that carried broadcast television programming into subscribers’ homes from hundreds of miles away. Although the Court recognized that a viewer might not be able to afford amplifying equipment that would provide access to those distant signals, it nonetheless found that the CATV provider was more like a viewer than a broadcaster. Id., at 408–409. It explained: “The reception and rechanneling of [broadcast television signals] for simultaneous viewing is essentially a viewer function, irrespective of the distance between the broadcasting station and the ultimate viewer.” Id., at 408. The Court also recognized that the CATV system exercised some measure of choice over what to transmit. But that fact did not transform the CATV system into a broadcaster. A broadcaster exercises significant creativity in choosing what to air, the Court reasoned. Id., at 410. In contrast, the CATV provider makes an initial choice about which broadcast stations to retransmit, but then “ ‘simply carr[ies], without editing, whatever programs [it] receive[s].’ ” Ibid. (quoting Fortnightly, supra, at 400 (altera-tions in original)). B In 1976 Congress amended the Copyright Act in large part to reject the Court’s holdings in Fortnightly and Teleprompter. See H. R. Rep. No. 94–1476, pp. 86–87 (1976) (hereinafter H. R. Rep.) (The 1976 amendments “completely overturned” this Court’s narrow construction of the Act in Fortnightly and Teleprompter). Congress enacted new language that erased the Court’s line between broadcaster and viewer, in respect to “perform[ing]” a work. The amended statute clarifies that to “perform” an audiovisual work means “to show its images in any sequence or to make the sounds accompanying it audible.” §101; see ibid. (defining “[a]udiovisual works” as “works that consist of a series of related images which are intrinsically intended to be shown by the use of machines . . . , together with accompanying sounds”). Under this new language, both the broadcaster and the viewer of a television program “perform,” because they both show the program’s images and make audible the program’s sounds. See H. R. Rep., at 63 (“[A] broadcasting network is performing when it transmits [a singer’s performance of a song] . . . and any individual is performing whenever he or she . . . communicates the performance by turning on a receiving set”). Congress also enacted the Transmit Clause, which specifies that an entity performs publicly when it “transmit[s] . . . a performance . . . to the public.” §101; see ibid. (defining “[t]o ‘transmit’ a performance” as “to communicate it by any device or process whereby images or sounds are received beyond the place from which they are sent”). Cable system activities, like those of the CATV systems in Fortnightly and Teleprompter, lie at the heart of the activities that Congress intended this language to cover. See H. R. Rep., at 63 (“[A] cable television system is perform-ing when it retransmits [a network] broadcast to its subscribers”); see also ibid. (“[T]he concep[t] of public performance . . . cover[s] not only the initial rendition or showing, but also any further act by which that rendition or showing is transmitted or communicated to the public”). The Clause thus makes clear that an entity that acts like a CATV system itself performs, even if when doing so, it simply enhances viewers’ ability to receive broadcast television signals. Congress further created a new section of the Act to regulate cable companies’ public performances of copyrighted works. See §111. Section 111 creates a complex, highly detailed compulsory licensing scheme that sets out the conditions, including the payment of compulsory fees, under which cable systems may retransmit broadcasts. H. R. Rep., at 88 (Section 111 is primarily “directed at the operation of cable television systems and the terms and conditions of their liability for the retransmission of copyrighted works”). Congress made these three changes to achieve a similar end: to bring the activities of cable systems within the scope of the Copyright Act. C This history makes clear that Aereo is not simply an equipment provider. Rather, Aereo, and not just its subscribers, “perform[s]” (or “transmit[s]”). Aereo’s activities are substantially similar to those of the CATV companies that Congress amended the Act to reach. See id., at 89 (“[C]able systems are commercial enterprises whose basic retransmission operations are based on the carriage of copyrighted program material”). Aereo sells a service that allows subscribers to watch television programs, many of which are copyrighted, almost as they are being broadcast. In providing this service, Aereo uses its own equipment, housed in a centralized warehouse, outside of its users’ homes. By means of its technology (antennas, transcoders, and servers), Aereo’s system “receive[s] programs that have been released to the public and carr[ies] them by private channels to additional viewers.” Fortnightly, 392 U. S., at 400. It “carr[ies] . . . whatever programs [it] receive[s],” and it offers “all the programming” of each over-the-air station it carries. Id., at 392, 400. Aereo’s equipment may serve a “viewer function”; it may enhance the viewer’s ability to receive a broadcaster’s programs. It may even emulate equipment a viewer could use at home. But the same was true of the equipment that was before the Court, and ultimately before Congress, in Fortnightly and Teleprompter. We recognize, and Aereo and the dissent emphasize, one particular difference between Aereo’s system and the cable systems at issue in Fortnightly and Teleprompter. The systems in those cases transmitted constantly; they sent continuous programming to each subscriber’s television set. In contrast, Aereo’s system remains inert until a subscriber indicates that she wants to watch a program. Only at that moment, in automatic response to the subscriber’s request, does Aereo’s system activate an antenna and begin to transmit the requested program. This is a critical difference, says the dissent. It means that Aereo’s subscribers, not Aereo, “selec[t] the copy-righted content” that is “perform[ed],” post, at 4 (opinion of Scalia, J.), and for that reason they, not Aereo, “transmit” the performance. Aereo is thus like “a copy shop that provides its patrons with a library card.” Post, at 5. A copy shop is not directly liable whenever a patron uses the shop’s machines to “reproduce” copyrighted materials found in that library. See §106(1) (“exclusive righ[t] . . . to reproduce the copyrighted work”). And by the same token, Aereo should not be directly liable whenever its patrons use its equipment to “transmit” copyrighted television programs to their screens. In our view, however, the dissent’s copy shop argument, in whatever form, makes too much out of too little. Given Aereo’s overwhelming likeness to the cable companies targeted by the 1976 amendments, this sole technological difference between Aereo and traditional cable companies does not make a critical difference here. The subscribers of the Fortnightly and Teleprompter cable systems also selected what programs to display on their receiving sets. Indeed, as we explained in Fortnightly, such a subscriber “could choose any of the . . . programs he wished to view by simply turning the knob on his own television set.” 392 U. S., at 392. The same is true of an Aereo subscriber. Of course, in Fortnightly the television signals, in a sense, lurked behind the screen, ready to emerge when the subscriber turned the knob. Here the signals pursue their ordinary course of travel through the universe until today’s “turn of the knob”—a click on a website—activates machinery that intercepts and reroutes them to Aereo’s subscribers over the Internet. But this difference means nothing to the subscriber. It means nothing to the broadcaster. We do not see how this single difference, invisible to subscriber and broadcaster alike, could transform a system that is for all practical purposes a traditional cable system into “a copy shop that provides its patrons with a library card.” In other cases involving different kinds of service or technology providers, a user’s involvement in the operation of the provider’s equipment and selection of the content transmitted may well bear on whether the provider performs within the meaning of the Act. But the many similarities between Aereo and cable companies, considered in light of Congress’ basic purposes in amending the Copyright Act, convince us that this difference is not critical here. We conclude that Aereo is not just an equipment supplier and that Aereo “perform[s].” III Next, we must consider whether Aereo performs petitioners’ works “publicly,” within the meaning of the Transmit Clause. Under the Clause, an entity performs a work publicly when it “transmit[s] . . . a performance . . . of the work . . . to the public.” §101. Aereo denies that it satisfies this definition. It reasons as follows: First, the “performance” it “transmit[s]” is the performance created by its act of transmitting. And second, because each of these performances is capable of being received by one and only one subscriber, Aereo transmits privately, not pub-licly. Even assuming Aereo’s first argument is correct, its second does not follow. We begin with Aereo’s first argument. What performance does Aereo transmit? Under the Act, “[t]o ‘transmit’ a performance . . . is to communicate it by any device or process whereby images or sounds are received beyond the place from which they are sent.” Ibid. And “[t]o ‘perform’ ” an audiovisual work means “to show its images in any sequence or to make the sounds accompanying it audible.” Ibid. Petitioners say Aereo transmits a prior performance of their works. Thus when Aereo retransmits a network’s prior broadcast, the underlying broadcast (itself a performance) is the performance that Aereo transmits. Aereo, as discussed above, says the performance it transmits is the new performance created by its act of transmitting. That performance comes into existence when Aereo streams the sounds and images of a broadcast program to a subscriber’s screen. We assume arguendo that Aereo’s first argument is correct. Thus, for present purposes, to transmit a performance of (at least) an audiovisual work means to communicate contemporaneously visible images and contemporaneously audible sounds of the work. Cf. United States v. American Soc. of Composers, Authors and Publishers, 627 F. 3d 64, 73 (CA2 2010) (holding that a download of a work is not a performance because the data transmitted are not “contemporaneously perceptible”). When an Aereo subscriber selects a program to watch, Aereo streams the program over the Internet to that subscriber. Aereo thereby “communicate[s]” to the subscriber, by means of a “device or process,” the work’s images and sounds. §101. And those images and sounds are contemporaneously visible and audible on the subscriber’s computer (or other Internet-connected device). So under our assumed definition, Aereo transmits a performance whenever its subscribers watch a program. But what about the Clause’s further requirement that Aereo transmit a performance “to the public”? As we have said, an Aereo subscriber receives broadcast television signals with an antenna dedicated to him alone. Aereo’s system makes from those signals a personal copy of the selected program. It streams the content of the copy to the same subscriber and to no one else. One and only one subscriber has the ability to see and hear each Aereo transmission. The fact that each transmission is to only one subscriber, in Aereo’s view, means that it does not transmit a performance “to the public.” In terms of the Act’s purposes, these differences do not distinguish Aereo’s system from cable systems, which do perform “publicly.” Viewed in terms of Congress’ regula-tory objectives, why should any of these technological differ-ences matter? They concern the behind-the-scenes way in which Aereo delivers television programming to its viewers’ screens. They do not render Aereo’s commercial objective any different from that of cable companies. Nor do they significantly alter the viewing experience of Aereo’s subscribers. Why would a subscriber who wishes to watch a television show care much whether images and sounds are delivered to his screen via a large multisubscriber antenna or one small dedicated antenna, whether they arrive instantaneously or after a few seconds’ delay, or whether they are transmitted directly or after a personal copy is made? And why, if Aereo is right, could not modern CATV systems simply continue the same commercial and consumer-oriented activities, free of copyright restrictions, provided they substitute such new technologies for old? Congress would as much have intended to protect a copyright holder from the unlicensed activities of Aereo as from those of cable companies. The text of the Clause effectuates Congress’ intent. Aereo’s argument to the contrary relies on the premise that “to transmit . . . a performance” means to make a single transmission. But the Clause suggests that an entity may transmit a performance through multiple, discrete transmissions. That is because one can “transmit” or “communicate” something through a set of actions. Thus one can transmit a message to one’s friends, irrespective of whether one sends separate identical e-mails to each friend or a single e-mail to all at once. So can an elected official communicate an idea, slogan, or speech to her constituents, regardless of whether she communicates that idea, slogan, or speech during individual phone calls to each constituent or in a public square. The fact that a singular noun (“a performance”) follows the words “to transmit” does not suggest the contrary. One can sing a song to his family, whether he sings the same song one-on-one or in front of all together. Similarly, one’s colleagues may watch a performance of a particular play—say, this season’s modern-dress version of “Measure for Measure”—whether they do so at separate or at the same showings. By the same principle, an entity may transmit a performance through one or several transmissions, where the performance is of the same work. The Transmit Clause must permit this interpretation, for it provides that one may transmit a performance to the public “whether the members of the public capable of receiving the performance . . . receive it . . . at the same time or at different times.” §101. Were the words “to transmit . . . a performance” limited to a single act of communication, members of the public could not receive the performance communicated “at different times.” Therefore, in light of the purpose and text of the Clause, we conclude that when an entity communicates the same contemporaneously perceptible images and sounds to multiple people, it transmits a performance to them regardless of the number of discrete communications it makes. We do not see how the fact that Aereo transmits via personal copies of programs could make a difference. The Act applies to transmissions “by means of any device or process.” Ibid. And retransmitting a television program using user-specific copies is a “process” of transmitting a performance. A “cop[y]” of a work is simply a “material objec[t] . . . in which a work is fixed . . . and from which the work can be perceived, reproduced, or otherwise communicated.” Ibid. So whether Aereo transmits from the same or separate copies, it performs the same work; it shows the same images and makes audible the same sounds. Therefore, when Aereo streams the same television program to multiple subscribers, it “transmit[s] . . . a performance” to all of them. Moreover, the subscribers to whom Aereo transmits television programs constitute “the public.” Aereo communicates the same contemporaneously perceptible imagesand sounds to a large number of people who are unre-lated and unknown to each other. This matters because, although the Act does not define “the public,” it specifies that an entity performs publicly when it performs at “any place where a substantial number of persons outside of a normal circle of a family and its social acquaintances is gathered.” Ibid. The Act thereby suggests that “the public” consists of a large group of people outside of a family and friends. Neither the record nor Aereo suggests that Aereo’s subscribers receive performances in their capacities as owners or possessors of the underlying works. This is relevant because when an entity performs to a set of people, whether they constitute “the public” often depends upon their relationship to the underlying work. When, for example, a valet parking attendant returns cars to their drivers, we would not say that the parking service provides cars “to the public.” We would say that it provides the cars to their owners. We would say that a car dealership, on the other hand, does provide cars to the public, for it sells cars to individuals who lack a pre-existing relationship to the cars. Similarly, an entity that transmits a performance to individuals in their capacities as owners or possessors does not perform to “the public,” whereas an entity like Aereo that transmits to large numbers of paying subscribers who lack any prior relationship to the works does so perform. Finally, we note that Aereo’s subscribers may receive the same programs at different times and locations. This fact does not help Aereo, however, for the Transmit Clause expressly provides that an entity may perform publicly “whether the members of the public capable of receiving the performance . . . receive it in the same place or in separate places and at the same time or at different times.” Ibid. In other words, “the public” need not be situated together, spatially or temporally. For these reasons, we conclude that Aereo transmits a performance of petitioners’ copyrighted works to the public, within the meaning of the Transmit Clause. IV Aereo and many of its supporting amici argue that to apply the Transmit Clause to Aereo’s conduct will impose copyright liability on other technologies, including new technologies, that Congress could not possibly have wanted to reach. We agree that Congress, while intending the Transmit Clause to apply broadly to cable companies and their equivalents, did not intend to discourage or to control the emergence or use of different kinds of technologies. But we do not believe that our limited holding today will have that effect. For one thing, the history of cable broadcast transmissions that led to the enactment of the Transmit Clause informs our conclusion that Aereo “perform[s],” but it does not determine whether different kinds of providers in different contexts also “perform.” For another, an entity only transmits a performance when it communicates contemporaneously perceptible images and sounds of a work. See Brief for Respondent 31 (“[I]f a distributor . . . sells [multiple copies of a digital video disc] by mail to consumers, . . . [its] distribution of the DVDs merely makes it possible for the recipients to perform the work themselves—it is not a ‘device or process’ by which the distributor publicly performs the work” (emphasis in original)). Further, we have interpreted the term “the public” to apply to a group of individuals acting as ordinary members of the public who pay primarily to watch broadcast television programs, many of which are copyrighted. We have said that it does not extend to those who act as owners or possessors of the relevant product. And we have not considered whether the public performance right is infringed when the user of a service pays primarily for something other than the transmission of copyrighted works, such as the remote storage of content. See Brief for United States as Amicus Curiae 31 (distinguishing cloud-based storage services because they “offer consumers more numerous and convenient means of playing back copies that the consumers have already lawfully acquired” (emphasis in original)). In addition, an entity does not trans-mit to the public if it does not transmit to a substantial number of people outside of a family and its social circle. We also note that courts often apply a statute’s highly general language in light of the statute’s basic purposes. Finally, the doctrine of “fair use” can help to prevent inappropriate or inequitable applications of the Clause. See Sony Corp. of America v. Universal City Studios, Inc., 464 U. S. 417 (1984) . We cannot now answer more precisely how the Transmit Clause or other provisions of the Copyright Act will apply to technologies not before us. We agree with the Solicitor General that “[q]uestions involving cloud computing, [remote storage] DVRs, and other novel issues not before the Court, as to which ‘Congress has not plainly marked [the] course,’ should await a case in which they are squarely presented.” Brief for United States as Amicus Curiae 34 (quoting Sony, supra, at 431 (alteration in original)). And we note that, to the extent commercial actors or other interested entities may be concerned with the relationship between the development and use of such technologies and the Copyright Act, they are of course free to seek action from Congress. Cf. Digital Millennium Copyright Act, 17 U. S. C. §512. * * * In sum, having considered the details of Aereo’s practices, we find them highly similar to those of the CATV systems in Fortnightly and Teleprompter. And those are activities that the 1976 amendments sought to bring within the scope of the Copyright Act. Insofar as there are differences, those differences concern not the nature of the service that Aereo provides so much as the technological manner in which it provides the service. We conclude that those differences are not adequate to place Aereo’s activities outside the scope of the Act. For these reasons, we conclude that Aereo “perform[s]” petitioners’ copyrighted works “publicly,” as those terms are defined by the Transmit Clause. We therefore reverse the contrary judgment of the Court of Appeals, and we remand the case for further proceedings consistent with this opinion. It is so ordered.

573.US.169

Petitioner Bruce Abramski offered to purchase a handgun for his uncle. The form that federal regulations required Abramski to fill out (Form 4473) asked whether he was the “actual transferee/buyer” of the gun, and clearly warned that a straw purchaser (namely, someone buying a gun on behalf of another) was not the actual buyer. Abramski falsely answered that he was the actual buyer. Abramski was convicted for knowingly making false statements “with respect to any fact material to the lawfulness of the sale” of a gun, 18 U. S. C. §922(a)(6), and for making a false statement “with respect to the information required . . . to be kept” in the gun dealer’s records, §924(a)(1)(A). The Fourth Circuit affirmed. Held: 1. Abramski’s misrepresentation is material under §922(a)(6). Pp. 7–22. (a) Abramski contends that federal gun laws are entirely unconcerned with straw arrangements: So long as the person at the counter is eligible to own a gun, the sale to him is legal under the statute. To be sure, federal law regulates licensed dealer’s transactions with “persons” or “transferees” without specifying whether that language refers to the straw buyer or the actual purchaser. But when read in light of the statute’s context, structure, and purpose, it is clear this language refers to the true buyer rather than the straw. Federal gun law establishes an elaborate system of in-person identification and background checks to ensure that guns are kept out of the hands of felons and other prohibited purchasers. §§922(c), 922(t). It also imposes record-keeping requirements to assist law enforcement authorities in investigating serious crimes through the tracing of guns to their buyers. §922(b)(5), 923(g). These provisions would mean little if a would-be gun buyer could evade them all simply by enlisting the aid of an intermediary to execute the paperwork on his behalf. The statute’s language is thus best read in context to refer to the actual rather than nominal buyer. This conclusion is reinforced by this Court’s standard practice of focusing on practical realities rather than legal formalities when identifying the parties to a transaction. Pp. 7–19. (b) Abramski argues more narrowly that his false response was not material because his uncle could have legally bought a gun for himself. But Abramski’s false statement prevented the dealer from insisting that the true buyer (Alvarez) appear in person, provide identifying information, show a photo ID, and submit to a background check. §§922(b), (c), (t). Nothing in the statute suggests that these legal duties may be wiped away merely because the actual buyer turns out to be legally eligible to own a gun. Because the dealer could not have lawfully sold the gun had it known that Abramski was not the true buyer, the misstatement was material to the lawfulness of the sale. Pp. 19–22. 2. Abramski’s misrepresentation about the identity of the actual buyer concerned “information required by [Chapter 44 of Title 18 of the United States Code] to be kept” in the dealer’s records. §924(a)(1)(A). Chapter 44 contains a provision requiring a dealer to “maintain such records . . . as the Attorney General may . . . prescribe.” §923(g)(1)(A). The Attorney General requires every licensed dealer to retain in its records a completed copy of Form 4473, see 27 CFR §478.124(b), and that form in turn includes the “actual buyer” question that Abramski answered falsely. Therefore, falsely answering a question on Form 4473 violates §924(a)(1)(A). Pp. 22–23. 706 F.3d 307, affirmed. Kagan, J., delivered the opinion of the Court, in which Kennedy, Ginsburg, Breyer, and Sotomayor, JJ., joined. Scalia, J., filed a dissenting opinion, in which Roberts, C. J., and Thomas and Alito, JJ., joined.

Before a federally licensed firearms dealer may sell a gun, the would-be purchaser must provide certain per-sonal information, show photo identification, and pass a background check. To ensure the accuracy of those submissions, a federal statute imposes criminal penalties on any person who, in connection with a firearm’s acquisition, makes false statements about “any fact material to the lawfulness of the sale.” 18 U. S. C. §922(a)(6). In this case, we consider how that law applies to a so-called straw purchaser—namely, a person who buys a gun on someone else’s behalf while falsely claiming that it is for himself. We hold that such a misrepresentation is punishable under the statute, whether or not the true buyer could have purchased the gun without the straw. I A Federal law has for over 40 years regulated sales by licensed firearms dealers, principally to prevent guns from falling into the wrong hands. See Gun Control Act of 1968, 18 U. S. C. §921 et seq. Under §922(g), certain classes of people—felons, drug addicts, and the mentally ill, tolist a few—may not purchase or possess any firearm. And to ensure they do not, §922(d) forbids a licensed dealer from selling a gun to anyone it knows, or has reasonable cause to believe, is such a prohibited buyer. See Huddleston v. United States, 415 U. S. 814, 825 (1974) (“[T]he focus of the federal scheme,” in controlling access to weapons, “is the federally licensed firearms dealer”). The statute establishes a detailed scheme to enable the dealer to verify, at the point of sale, whether a potential buyer may lawfully own a gun. Section 922(c) brings the would-be purchaser onto the dealer’s “business premises” by prohibiting, except in limited circumstances, the sale of a firearm “to a person who does not appear in person” at that location. Other provisions then require the dealer to check and make use of certain identifying information received from the buyer. Before completing any sale, the dealer must “verif[y] the identity of the transferee by examining a valid identification document” bearing a photograph. §922(t)(1)(C). In addition, the dealer must procure the buyer’s “name, age, and place of residence.” §922(b)(5). And finally, the dealer must (with limited exceptions not at issue here[1]) submit that informationto the National Instant Background Check System (NICS) to determine whether the potential purchaser is forany reason disqualified from owning a firearm. See §§922(t)(1)(A)–(B). The statute further insists that the dealer keep certain records, to enable federal authorities both to enforce the law’s verification measures and to trace firearms used in crimes. See H. R. Rep. No. 1577, 90th Cong., 2d Sess., 14 (1968). A dealer must maintain the identifying information mentioned above (i.e., name, age, and residence) in its permanent files. See §922(b)(5). In addition, the dealer must keep “such records of . . . sale[ ] or other disposi-tion of firearms . . . as the Attorney General may by regulations prescribe.” §923(g)(1)(A). And the Attorney General (or his designee) may obtain and inspect any of those records, “in the course of a bona fide criminal investigation,” to “determin[e] the disposition of 1 or more firearms.” §923(g)(7). To implement all those statutory requirements, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) developed Form 4473 for gun sales. See Supp. App. 1–6. The part of that form to be completed by the buyer requests his name, birth date, and address, as well as certain other identifying information (for example, his height, weight, and race). The form further lists all the factors disqualifying a person from gun ownership, and asks the would-be buyer whether any of them apply (e.g., “[h]ave you ever been convicted . . . of a felony?”). Id., at 1. Most important here, Question 11.a. asks (with bolded emphasis appearing on the form itself): “Are you the actual transferee/buyer of the firearm(s) listed on this form? Warning: You are not the actual buyer if you are acquiring the firearm(s) on behalf of another person. If you are not the actual buyer, the dealer cannot transfer the firearm(s) to you.” Ibid. The accompanying instructions for that question provide: “Question 11.a. Actual Transferee/Buyer: For purposes of this form, you are the actual transferee/buyer if you are purchasing the firearm for yourselfor otherwise acquiring the firearm for yourself . . . . You are also the actual transferee/buyer if you are legitimately purchasing the firearm as a gift for a third party. ACTUAL TRANSFEREE/BUYER EXAM-PLES: Mr. Smith asks Mr. Jones to purchase a firearm for Mr. Smith. Mr. Smith gives Mr. Jones the money for the firearm. Mr. Jones is NOT THE ACTUAL TRANSFEREE/BUYER of the firearm and must answer “NO” to question 11.a.” Id., at 4. After responding to this and other questions, the customer must sign a certification declaring his answers “true, correct and complete.” Id., at 2. That certification provides that the signator “understand[s] that making any false . . . statement” respecting the transaction—and, particularly, “answering ‘yes’ to question 11.a. if [he is] not the actual buyer”—is a crime “punishable as a felony under Federal law.” Ibid. (bold typeface deleted). Two statutory provisions, each designed to ensure that the dealer can rely on the truthfulness of the buyer’s dis-closures in carrying out its obligations, criminalize certain false statements about firearms transactions. First and foremost, §922(a)(6), provides as follows: “It shall be unlawful . . . for any person in connection with the acquisition or attempted acquisition of any firearm or ammunition from [a licensed dealer] knowingly to make any false or fictitious oral or written statement . . . , intended or likely to deceive such [dealer] with respect to any fact material to the lawfulness of the sale or other disposition of such firearm or ammunition under the provisions of this chapter.” That provision helps make certain that a dealer will receive truthful information as to any matter relevant to a gun sale’s legality. In addition, §924(a)(1)(A) prohibits “knowingly mak[ing] any false statement or representation with respect to the information required by this chapter to be kept in the records” of a federally licensed gun dealer. The question in this case is whether, as the ATF declares in Form 4473’s certification, those statutory provisions criminalize a false answer to Question 11.a.—that is, a customer’s statement that he is the “actual transferee/buyer,” purchasing a firearm for himself, when in fact he is a straw purchaser, buying the gun on someone else’s behalf. B The petitioner here is Bruce Abramski, a former police officer who offered to buy a Glock 19 handgun for his uncle, Angel Alvarez. (Abramski thought he could get the gun for a discount by showing his old police identification, though the Government contends that because he had been fired from his job two years earlier, he was no longer authorized to use that card.) Accepting his nephew’s offer, Alvarez sent Abramski a check for $400 with “Glock 19 handgun” written on the memo line. Two days later, Abramski went to Town Police Supply, a federally licensed firearms dealer, to make the purchase. There, he filled out Form 4473, falsely checking “Yes” in reply to Question 11.a.—that is, asserting he was the “actual transferee/buyer” when, according to the form’s clear definition, he was not. He also signed the requisite certification, acknowledging his understanding that a false answer to Question 11.a. is a federal crime. After Abramski’s name cleared the NICS background check, the dealer sold him the Glock. Abramski then deposited the $400 check in his bank account, transferred the gun to Alvarez, and got back a receipt. Federal agents found that receipt while executing a search warrant at Abramski’s home after he became a suspect in a different crime. A grand jury indicted Abramski for violating §§922(a)(6) and 924(a)(1)(A) by falsely affirming in his response to Question 11.a. that he was the Glock’s actual buyer. Abramski moved to dismiss both charges. He argued that his misrepresentation on Question 11.a. was not “material to the lawfulness of the sale” under §922(a)(6) because Alvarez was legally eligible to own a gun. And he claimed that the false statement did not violate §924(a)(1)(A) because a buyer’s response to Question 11.a. is not “required . . . to be kept in the records” of a gun dealer. After the District Court denied those motions, see 778 F. Supp. 2d 678 (WD Va. 2011), Abramski entered a conditional guilty plea, reserving his right to challenge the rulings. The District Court then sentenced him to five years of probation on each count, running concurrently. The Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit affirmed the convictions. 706 F. 3d 307 (2013). It noted a division among appellate courts on the question Abramski raised about §922(a)(6)’s materiality requirement: Of three courts to have addressed the issue, one agreed with Abramski that a misrepresentation on Question 11.a. is immaterial if “the true purchaser [here, Alvarez] can lawfully purchase a firearm directly.” Id., at 315 (quoting United States v. Polk, 118 F. 3d 286, 295 (CA5 1997)).[2] The Fourth Circuit, however, thought the majority position correct: “[T]he identity of the actual purchaser of a firearm is a constant that is always material to the lawfulness of a firearm acquisition under §922(a)(6).” 706 F. 3d, at 316. The court also held that Abramski’s conviction under §924(a)(1)(A) was valid, finding that the statute required a dealer to maintain the information at issue in its records. Id., at 317. We granted certiorari, 571 U. S. ___ (2013), principally to resolve the Circuit split about §922(a)(6). In this Court, Abramski renews his claim that a false answer to Question 11.a. is immaterial if the true buyer is legally eligible to purchase a firearm. But Abramski now focuses on a new and more ambitious argument, which he concedes no court has previously accepted. See Brief for Petitioner i.[3] In brief, he alleges that a false response to Question 11.a. is never material to a gun sale’s legality, whether or not the actual buyer is eligible to own a gun. We begin with that fundamental question, next turn to what has become Abramski’s back-up argument under §922(a)(6), and fi-nally consider the relatively easy question pertaining to §924(A)(1)(a)’s separate false-statement prohibition. On each score, we affirm Abramski’s conviction. II Abramski’s broad theory (mostly echoed by the dissent) is that federal gun law simply does not care about arrangements involving straw purchasers: So long as the person at the counter is eligible to own a gun, the sale to him is legal under the statute. That is true, Abramski contends, irrespective of any agreement that person has made to purchase the firearm on behalf of someone else—including someone who cannot lawfully buy or own a gun himself. Accordingly, Abramski concludes, his “false statement that he was the [Glock 19’s] ‘actual buyer,’ ” as that term was “defined in Question 11.a., was not material”—indeed, was utterly irrelevant—“to the lawfulness ofthe sale.” Id., at 31 (emphasis deleted); see also post, at 4 (opinion of Scalia, J.). In essence, he claims, Town Police Supply could legally have sold the gun to him even if had truthfully answered Question 11.a. by disclosing that he was a straw—because, again, all the federal firearms law cares about is whether the individual standing at the dealer’s counter meets the requirements to buy a gun.[4] At its core, that argument relies on one true fact: Fed-eral gun law regulates licensed dealers’ transactions with “persons” or “transferees,” without specifically referencing straw purchasers. Section 922(d), for example, bars a dealer from “sell[ing] or otherwise dispos[ing] of” a firearm to any “person” who falls within a prohibited category—felons, drug addicts, the mentally ill, and so forth. See supra, at 1–2; see also §922(b)(5) (before selling a gun to a “person,” the dealer must take down his name, age, and residence); §922(t)(1) (before selling a gun to a “person,” the dealer must run a background check). Similarly, §922(t)(1)(C) requires the dealer to verify the identity of the “transferee” by checking a valid photo ID. See supra, at 2; see also §922(c) (spelling out circumstances in which a “transferee” may buy a gun without appearing at the dealer’s premises). Abramski contends that Congress’s use of such language alone, sans any mention of “straw purchasers” or “actual buyers,” shows that “[i]t is not illegal to buy a gun for someone else.” Brief for Petitioner 15–16; Reply Brief 1; see also post, at 2–6. But that language merely raises, rather than answers, the critical question: In a straw purchase, who is the “person” or “transferee” whom federal gun law addresses? Is that “person” the middleman buying a firearm on someone else’s behalf (often because the ultimate recipient could not buy it himself, or wants to camouflage the transaction)? Or is that “person” instead the individual really paying for the gun and meant to take possession of it upon completion of the purchase? Is it the conduit at the counter, or the gun’s intended owner?[5] In answering that inquiry, we must (as usual) interpret the relevant words not in a vacuum, but with reference to the statutory context, “structure, history, and purpose.” Maracich v. Spears, 570 U. S. ___, ___ (2013) (slip op., at 26). All those tools of divining meaning—not to mention common sense, which is a fortunate (though not inevitable) side-benefit of construing statutory terms fairly—demonstrate that §922, in regulating licensed dealers’ gun sales, looks through the straw to the actual buyer.[6] The overarching reason is that Abramski’s reading would undermine—indeed, for all important purposes, would virtually repeal—the gun law’s core provisions.[7] As noted earlier, the statute establishes an elaborate system to verify a would-be gun purchaser’s identity and check on his background. See supra, at 2. It also requires that the information so gathered go into a dealer’s permanent records. See supra, at 2–3. The twin goals of this comprehensive scheme are to keep guns out of the hands of criminals and others who should not have them, and to assist law enforcement authorities in investigating serious crimes. See Huddleston, 415 U. S., at 824; supra, at 2–3. And no part of that scheme would work if the statute turned a blind eye to straw purchases—if, in other words, the law addressed not the substance of a transaction, but only empty formalities. To see why, consider what happens in a typical straw purchase. A felon or other person who cannot buy or own a gun still wants to obtain one. (Or, alternatively, a person who could legally buy a firearm wants to conceal his purchase, maybe so he can use the gun for criminal purposes without fear that police officers will later trace it to him.) Accordingly, the prospective buyer enlists an intermediary to help him accomplish his illegal aim. Perhaps he conscripts a loyal friend or family member; perhaps more often, he hires a stranger to purchase the gun for a price. The actual purchaser might even accompany the straw to the gun shop, instruct him which firearm to buy, give him the money to pay at the counter, and take possession as they walk out the door. See, e.g., United States v. Bowen, 207 Fed. Appx. 727, 729 (CA7 2006) (describing a straw purchase along those lines); United States v. Paye, 129 Fed. Appx. 567, 570 (CA11 2005) (per curiam) (same). What the true buyer would not do—what he would leave to the straw, who possesses the gun for all of a minute—is give his identifying information to the dealer and submit himself to a background check. How many of the statute’s provisions does that scenario—the lawful result of Abramski’s (and the dissent’s) reading of “transferee” and “person”—render meaningless? Start with the parts of §922 enabling a dealer to verify whether a buyer is legally eligible to own a firearm. That task, as noted earlier, begins with identification—requesting the name, address, and age of the potential purchaser and checking his photo ID. See §§922(b)(5), (t)(1)(C); supra, at 2. And that identification in turn permits a background check: The dealer runs the purchaser’s name through the NICS database to discover whether he is, for example, a felon, drug addict, or mentally ill person. See §§922(d), (t)(1); supra, at 2. All those provisions are designed to accomplish what this Court has previously termed Congress’s “principal purpose” in enacting the statute—“to curb crime by keeping ‘firearms out of the hands of those not legally entitled to possess them.’ ” Huddleston, 415 U. S., at 824 (quoting S. Rep. No. 1501, 90th Cong., 2d Sess. 22 (1968)). But under Abramski’s reading, the statutory terms would be utterly ineffectual, because the identification and background check would be of the wrong person. The provisions would evaluate the eligibility of mere conduits, while allowing every criminal (and drug addict and so forth) to escape that assessment and walk away with a weapon. Similarly, Abramski’s view would defeat the point of §922(c), which tightly restricts the sale of guns “to a person who does not appear in person at the licensee’s business premises.” See supra, at 2. Only a narrow class of prospective buyers may ever purchase a gun from afar—primarily, individuals who have already had their eligibility to own a firearm verified by state law enforcement officials with access to the NICS database. See 27 CFR §478.96(b) (2014), 18 U. S. C. §922(t)(3); n. 1, supra. And even when an individual fits within that category, he still must submit to the dealer a sworn statement that he can lawfully own a gun, as well as provide the name and address of the principal law enforcement officer in his community. See §922(c)(1). The dealer then has to forward notice of the sale to that officer, in order to allow law enforcement authorities to investigate the legality of the sale and, if necessary, call a stop to it. See §§922(c)(2)–(3). The provision thus prevents remote sales except to a small class of buyers subject to extraordinary procedures—again, to ensure effective verification of a potential purchaser’s eligibility. Yet on Abramski’s view, a person could easily bypass the scheme, purchasing a gun without ever leaving his home by dispatching to a gun store a hired deliveryman. Indeed, if Abramski were right, we see no reason why anyone (and certainly anyone with less-than-pure motives) would put himself through the procedures laid out in §922(c): Deliverymen, after all, are not so hard to come by. And likewise, the statute’s record-keeping provisions would serve little purpose if the records kept were of nominal rather than real buyers. As noted earlier, dealers must store, and law enforcement officers may obtain, information about a gun buyer’s identity. See §§922(b)(5), 923(g); supra, at 3. That information helps to fight serious crime. When police officers retrieve a gun at a crime scene, they can trace it to the buyer and consider him as a suspect. See National Shooting Sports Foundation, Inc. v. Jones, 716 F. 3d 200, 204 (CADC 2013) (describing law enforcement’s use of firearm tracing). Too, the required records enable dealers to identify certain suspicious pur-chasing trends, which they then must report to federal authorities. See §923(g)(3) (imposing a reporting obligation when a person buys multiple handguns within five days). But once again, those provisions can serve their objective only if the records point to the person who took actual control of the gun(s). Otherwise, the police will at most learn the identity of an intermediary, who could not have been responsible for the gun’s use and might know next to nothing about the actual buyer. See, e.g., United States v. Juarez, 626 F. 3d 246, 249 (CA5 2010) (straw purchaser bought military-style assault rifles, later found among Mexican gang members, for a buyer known “only as ‘El Mano’ ”). Abramski’s view would thus render the required records close to useless for aiding law enforcement: Putting true numbskulls to one side, anyone purchasing a gun for criminal purposes would avoid leaving a paper trail by the simple expedient of hiring a straw. To sum up so far: All the prerequisites for buying a gun described above refer to a “person” or “transferee.” Read Abramski’s way (“the man at the counter”), those terms deny effect to the regulatory scheme, as criminals could always use straw purchasers to evade the law.[8] Read the other way (“the man getting, and always meant to get, the firearm”), those terms give effect to the statutory provi-sions, allowing them to accomplish their manifest objects. That alone provides more than sufficient reason to understand “person” and “transferee” as referring not to the fictitious but to the real buyer. And other language in §922 confirms that construction, by evincing Congress’s concern with the practical realities, rather than the legal niceties, of firearms transactions. For example, §922(a)(6) itself bars material misrepresentations “in connection with the acquisition,” and not just the purchase, of a firearm. That broader word, we have previously held, does not focus on “legal title”—let alone legal title for a few short moments, until another, always intended transfer occurs. Huddleston, 415 U. S., at 820. Instead, the term signifies “com[ing] into possession, control, or power of disposal,” as the actual buyer in a straw purchase does. Ibid. Similarly, we have reasoned that such a substance-over-form approach draws support from the statute’s repeated references to “the sale or other disposition” of a firearm. §922(a)(6); see §922(d) (making it unlawful to “sell or otherwise dispose of” a gun to a prohibited person). That term, we have stated, “was aimed at providing maximum coverage.” Id., at 826–827. We think such expansive language inconsistent with Abramski’s view of the statute, which would stare myopically at the nominal buyer while remaining blind to the person exiting the transaction with control of the gun. Finally, our reading of §922 comports with courts’ standard practice, evident in many legal spheres and presumably known to Congress, of ignoring artifice when identifying the parties to a transaction. In United States v. One 1936 Model Ford V-8 Deluxe Coach, Commercial Credit Co., 307 U. S. 219 (1939) , for example, we considered the operation of a statute requiring forfeiture of any interest in property that was used to violate prohibition laws, except if acquired in good faith. There, a straw purchaser had bought a car in his name but with his brother’s money, and transferred it to the brother—a known bootlegger—right after driving it off the lot. See id., at 222–223. The Court held the finance company’s lien on the car non-forfeitable because the company had no hint that the straw was a straw—that his brother would in fact be the owner. See id., at 224. But had the com-pany known, the Court made clear, a different result would have obtained: The company could not have relied on the formalities of the sale to the “ ‘straw’ purchaser” when it knew that the “real owner and purchaser” of the car was someone different. Id., at 223–224. We have similarly emphasized the need in other contexts, involving both criminal and civil penalties, to look through a transaction’s nominal parties to its true participants. See, e.g., American Needle, Inc. v. National Football League, 560 U. S. 183, 193 (2010) (focusing on “substance rather than form” in assessing when entities are distinct enough to be capable of conspiring to violate the antitrust laws); Gregory v. Helvering, 293 U. S. 465, 470 (1935) (disregarding an intermediary shell corporation created to avoid taxes because doing otherwise would “exalt artifice above reality”). We do no more than that here in holding, consistentwith §922’s text, structure, and purpose, that using a straw does not enable evasion of the firearms law. Abramski, along with the dissent, objects that such action is no circumvention—that Congress made an intentional choice, born of “political compromise,” to limit the gun law’s compass to the person at the counter, even if merely acting on another’s behalf. Reply Brief 11; post, at 10–11. As evidence, Abramski states that the statute does not regulate beyond the initial point of sale. Because the law mostly addresses sales made by licensed dealers, a purchaser can (within wide limits) subsequently decide to resell his gun to another private party. See Reply Brief 11. And similarly, Abramski says, a purchaser can buy a gun for someone else as a gift. See Brief for Petitioner 26–27, n. 3. Abramski lumps in the same category the transfer of a gun from a nominal to a real buyer—as something, like a later resale or gift, meant to fall outside the statute’s (purported) standing-in-front-of-the-gun-dealer scope. See Reply Brief 13; see also post, at 7–9. But Abramski and the dissent draw the wrong conclusion from their observations about resales and gifts. Yes, Congress decided to regulate dealers’ sales, while leaving the secondary market for guns largely untouched. As we noted in Huddleston, Congress chose to make the dealer the “principal agent of federal enforcement” in “restricting [criminals’] access to firearms.” 415 U. S., at 824. And yes, that choice (like pretty much everything Congress does) was surely a result of compromise. But no, straw arrangements are not a part of the secondary market, separate and apart from the dealer’s sale. In claiming as much, Abramski merely repeats his mistaken assumption that the “person” who acquires a gun from a dealer in a case like this one is the straw, rather than the individual who has made a prior arrangement to pay for, take possession of, own, and use that part of the dealer’s stock. For all the reasons we have already given, that is not a plausible construction of a statute mandating that the dealer identify and run a background check on the person to whom it is (really, not fictitiously) selling a gun. See supra, at 9–15. The individual who sends a straw to a gun store to buy a firearm is transacting with the dealer, in every way but the most formal; and that distinguishes such a person from one who buys a gun, or receives a gun as a gift, from a private party.[9] The line Congress drew between those who acquire guns from dealers and those who get them as gifts or on the secondary market, we suspect, reflects a host of things, including administrative simplicity and a view about where the most problematic firearm transactions—like criminal organizations’ bulk gun purchases—typically occur. But whatever the reason, the scarcity of controls in the secondary market provides no reason to gut the robust measures Congress enacted at the point of sale. Abramski claims further support for his argument from Congress’s decision in 1986 to amend §922(d) to prohibit a private party (and not just, as originally enacted, a licensed dealer) from selling a gun to someone he knows or reasonably should know cannot legally possess one. See Firearm Owners’ Protection Act, §102(5)(A), 100 Stat. 451–452. According to Abramski, the revised §922(d) should be understood as Congress’s exclusive response to the potential dangers arising from straw purchases. See Brief for Petitioner 26–27. The amendment shows, he claims, that “Congress chose to address this perceived problem in a way other than” by imposing liability under §922(a)(6) on a straw who tells a licensed dealer that he is the firearm’s actual buyer. Reply Brief 14, n. 2. But Congress’s amendment of §922(d) says nothing about §922(a)(6)’s application to straw purchasers. In en-acting that amendment, Congress left §922(a)(6) just asit was, undercutting any suggestion that Congress some-how intended to contract that provision’s reach. The amendment instead performed a different function: Rather than ensuring that a licensed dealer receives truthful information, it extended a minimal form of regulation to the secondary market. The revised §922(d) prevents a private person from knowingly selling a gun to an ineligible owner no matter when or how he acquired the weapon: It thus applies not just to a straw purchaser, but to an individual who bought a gun for himself and later decided to resell it. At the same time, §922(d) has nothing to say about a raft of cases §922(a)(6) covers, including all the (many) straw purchases in which the frontman does not know that the actual buyer is ineligible. See supra, at 13. Thus, §922(d) could not serve as an effective substitute for §922(a)(6). And the mere potential for some transactions to run afoul of both prohibitions gives no cause to read §922(d) as limiting §922(a)(6) (or vice versa). See, e.g., United States v. Batchelder, 442 U. S. 114 –126 (1979).[10] Abramski’s principal attack on his §922(a)(6) conviction therefore fails. Contrary to his contention, the information Question 11.a. requests—“[a]re you the actual transferee/buyer[?]” or, put conversely, “are [you] acquir-ing the firearm(s) on behalf of another person[?]”—is relevant to the lawfulness of a gun sale. That is because, for all the reasons we have given, the firearms law contemplates that the dealer will check not the fictitious purchaser’s but instead the true purchaser’s identity and eligibility for gun ownership. By concealing that Alvarez was the actual buyer, Abramski prevented the dealer from transacting with Alvarez face-to-face, see §922(c), recording his name, age, and residence, see §922(b)(5), inspecting his photo ID, see §922(t)(1)(C), submitting his identifying information to the background check system, see §922(t)(1)(B), and determining whether he was prohibited from receiving a firearm, see §922(d). In sum, Abramski thwarted application of essentially all of the firearms law’s requirements. We can hardly think of a misrepresentation any more material to a sale’s legality. III Abramski also challenges his §922(a)(6) conviction on a narrower ground. For purposes of this argument, he assumes that the Government can make its case when a straw hides the name of an underlying purchaser who is legally ineligible to own a gun. But, Abramski reminds us, that is not true here, because Alvarez could have bought a gun for himself. In such circumstances, Abramski claims that a false response to Question 11.a. is not material. See Brief for Petitioner 28–30. Essentially, Abramski contends, when the hidden purchaser is eligible anyway to own a gun, all’s well that ends well, and all should be forgiven. But we think what we have already said shows the fallacy of that claim: Abramski’s false statement was material because had he revealed that he was purchasing the gun on Alvarez’s behalf, the sale could not have proceeded under the law—even though Alvarez turned out to be an eligible gun owner. The sale, as an initial matter, would not have complied with §922(c)’s restrictions on absentee purchases. See supra, at 11–12. If the dealer here, Town Police Supply, had realized it was in fact selling a gun to Alvarez, it would have had to stop the transaction for failure to comply with those conditions. Yet more, the sale could not have gone forward because the dealer would have lacked the information needed to verify and record Alvarez’s identity and check his background. See §§922(b)(5), (t)(1)(B)–(C); supra, at 10–12. Those requirements, as we have explained, pertain to the real buyer; and the after-the-fact discovery that Alvarez would have passed the background check cannot somehow wipe them away. Accordingly, had Town Police Supply known Abramski was a straw, it could not have certified, as Form 4473 demands, its belief that the transfer was “not unlawful.” Supp. App. 3. An analogy may help show the weakness of Abramski’s argument. Suppose a would-be purchaser, Smith, lawfully could own a gun. But further suppose that, for reasons of his own, Smith uses an alias (let’s say Jones) to make the purchase. Would anyone say “no harm, no foul,” just because Smith is not in fact a prohibited person under §922(d)? We think not. Smith would in any event have made a false statement about who will own the gun, impeding the dealer’s ability to carry out its legal responsibilities. So too here. Abramski objects that because Alvarez could own a gun, the statute’s core purpose—“keeping guns out of the hands” of criminals and other prohibited persons—“is not even implicated.” Brief for Petitioner 29. But that argument (which would apply no less to the alias scenario) misunderstands the way the statute works. As earlier noted, the federal gun law makes the dealer “[t]he principal agent of federal enforcement.” Huddleston, 415 U. S., at 824, see supra, at 16. It is that highly regulated, legally knowledgeable entity, possessing access to the expansive NICS database, which has the responsibility to “[e]nsure that, in the course of sales or other dispositions . . . , weapons [are not] obtained by individuals whose possession of them would be contrary to the public interest.” 415 U. S., at 825. Nothing could be less consonant with the statutory scheme than placing that inquiry in the hands of an unlicensed straw purchaser, who is unlikely to be familiar with federal firearms law and has no ability to use the database to check whether the true buyer may own a gun. And in any event, keeping firearms out of the hands of criminals is not §922’s only goal: The statute’s record-keeping provisions, as we have said, are also designed to aid law enforcement in the investigation of crime. See supra, at 2–3, 12–13. Abramski’s proposed limitation on §922(a)(6) would undercut that purpose because many would-be criminals remain legally eligible to buy firearms, and thus could use straws to purchase an endless stream of guns off-the-books. See, e.g., Polk, 118 F. 3d, at 289 (eligible gun buyer used straw purchasers to secretly accumulate an “arsenal of weapons” for a “massive offensive” against the Federal Government). In addition, Abramski briefly notes that until 1995, the ATF took the view that a straw purchaser’s misrepresentation counted as material only if the true buyer could not legally possess a gun. See Brief for Petitioner 7–8; n. 8, supra. We may put aside that ATF has for almost two decades now taken the opposite position, after reflecting on both appellate case law and changes in the statute. See Tr. of Oral Arg. 41; Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act of 1993, §103, 107Stat. 1541 (codified at 18 U. S. C. §922(t)). The critical point is that criminal laws are for courts, not for the Government, to construe. See, e.g., United States v. Apel, 571 U. S. ___, (2014) (slip op., at 9) (“[W]e have never held that the Government’s reading of a criminal statute is entitled to any deference”). We think ATF’s old position no more relevant than its current one—which is to say, not relevant at all. Whether the Government interprets a criminal statute too broadly (as it sometimes does) or too narrowly (as the ATF used to in construing §922(a)(6)), a court has an obligation to correct its error. Here, nothing suggests that Congress—the entity whose voice does matter—limited its prohibition of astraw purchaser’s misrepresentation in the way Abramski proposes. IV Finally, Abramski challenges his conviction under §924(a)(1)(A), which prohibits “knowingly mak[ing] any false statement . . . with respect to the information required by this chapter to be kept in the records” of a federally licensed dealer. That provision is broader than §922(a)(6) in one respect: It does not require that the false statement at issue be “material” in any way. At the same time, §924(a)(1)(A) includes an element absent from §922(a)(6): The false statement must relate to “information required by this chapter to be kept in [a dealer’s] records.” Abramski notes that the indictment in this case charged him with only one misrepresentation: his statement in response to Question 11.a. that he was buying the Glock on his own behalf rather than on someone else’s. And, he argues, that information (unlike the transferee’s “name, age, and place of residence,” which he plausibly reads the indictment as not mentioning) was not required “by this chapter”—but only by Form 4473 itself—to be kept in the dealer’s permanent records. Brief for Petitioner 32. We disagree. Included in “this chapter”—Chapter 44 of Title 18—is a provision, noted earlier, requiring a dealer to “maintain such records of . . . sale, or other disposition of firearms at his place of business for such period, and in such form, as the Attorney General may by regulations prescribe.” §923(g)(1)(A); supra, at 3. Because of that statutory section, the information that the Attorney General’s regulations compel a dealer to keep is information “required by this chapter.” And those regulations (the validity of which Abramski does not here contest) demand that every licensed dealer “retain . . . as a part of [its] required records, each Form 4473 obtained in the course of” selling or otherwise disposing of a firearm. 27 CFR §478.124(b). Accordingly, a false answer on that form, such as the one Abramski made, pertains to information a dealer is statutorily required to maintain.[11] V No piece of information is more important under federal firearms law than the identity of a gun’s purchaser—the person who acquires a gun as a result of a transaction with a licensed dealer. Had Abramski admitted that he was not that purchaser, but merely a straw—that he was asking the dealer to verify the identity of, and run a background check on, the wrong individual—the sale here could not have gone forward. That makes Abramski’s misrepresentation on Question 11.a. material under §922(a)(6). And because that statement pertained to information that a dealer must keep in its permanent records under the firearms law, Abramski’s answer to Question 11.a. also violated §924(a)(1)(A). Accordingly, we affirm the judgment of the Fourth Circuit. It is so ordered.Notes 1 The principal exception is for any buyer who has a state permit that has been “issued only after an authorized government official has verified” the buyer’s eligibility to own a gun under both federal and state law. §922(t)(3). 2 Compare , 118 F. 3d, at 294–295, withv, 687 F. 3d 697, 700–701 (CA6 2012) (a misrepresentation about the true purchaser’s identity is material even when he can legally own a gun); v, 605 F. 3d 1271, 1279–1280 (CA11 2010) (same). 3 Reflecting that prior consensus, neither of Abramski’s principal —the National Rifle Association and a group of 26 States—joins Abramski in making this broader argument. They confine themselves to supporting the more limited claim about straw purchases made on behalf of eligible gun owners, addressed , at 19–22. 4 The dissent reserves the question whether the false statement would be material if the straw purchaser knew that the true buyer was not eligible to own a firearm. at 6, n. 2. But first, that reservation is of quite limited scope: Unlike Abramski’s back-up argument, which imposes liability whenever the true purchaser cannot legally buy a gun, the dissent’s reservation applies only when the straw has knowledge of (or at least reasonable cause to believe) that fact. And as we will later note, straws often do not have such knowledge. See , at 12–13. Second, the reservation (fairly enough for a reservation) rests on an uncertain legal theory. According to the dissent, a straw buyer might violate §922(a)(6) if a dealer’s sale to him aids and abets his violation of §922(d)—a provision barring knowingly transferring a gun to an ineligible person, see at 8, 17–18. But that reasoning presupposes that a firearms dealer acting in the ordinary course of business can ever have the intent needed to aid and abet a crime—a question this Court reserved not six months ago. See v, 572 U. S. ___ (2014) (slip op., at 12, n. 8). 5 The dissent claims the answer is easy because “if I give my son $10 and tell him to pick up milk and eggs at the store, no English speaker would say that the store ‘sells’ the milk and eggs to me.” , at 4.But try a question more similar to the one the gun law’s text raises: If I send my brother to the Apple Store with money and instructions to purchase an iPhone, and then take immediate and sole possession of that device, am I the “person” (or “transferee”) who has bought the phone or is he? Nothing in ordinary English usage compels an answer either way. 6 Contrary to the dissent’s view, our analysis does not rest on mere “purpose-based arguments.” . at 7. We simply recognize that a court should not interpret each word in a statute with blinders on, refusing to look at the word’s function within the broader statutory context. As we have previously put the point, a “provision that may seem ambiguous in isolation is often clarified by the remainder of the statutory scheme . . . because only one of the permissible meanings produces a substantive effect that is compatible with the rest of the law.” v. , . 7 That reading would also, at a stroke, declare unlawful a large part of what the ATF does to combat gun trafficking by criminals. See Dept. of Treasury, Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco & Firearms, Following the Gun: Enforcing Federal Laws Against Firearms Traffickers, p. xi (June 2000) (noting that in several prior years “[a]lmost half of all [ATF firearm] trafficking investigations involved straw purchasers”). 8 The dissent is mistaken when it says that the ATF’s own former view of the statute refutes this proposition. See at 11–12. As we will later discuss, see at 21–22, the ATF for a time thought that §922(a)(6) did not cover cases in which the true purchaser could have legally purchased a gun himself. But Abramski’s principal argument extends much further, to cases in which straws buy weapons for criminals, drug addicts, and other prohibited purchasers. For the reasons just stated, that interpretation would render the statute all but useless. And although the dissent appeals to a snippet of congressional testi-mony to suggest that ATF once briefly held that extreme view of the statute, it agrees that by at least 1979 (well over three decades ago), ATF recognized the unlawfulness of straw purchases on behalf of prohibited persons. 9 The dissent responds: “That certainly distinguishes” the individual transacting with a dealer through a straw from an individual receiving a gun from a private party; “so would the fact that [the former] has orange hair.” at 9. But that is an example of wit gone wrong. Whether the purchaser has orange hair, we can all agree, is immaterial to the statutory scheme. By contrast, whether the purchaser has transacted with a licensed dealer is integral to the statute—because, as previously noted, “the federal scheme . . . controls access to weapons” through the federally licensed firearms dealer, who is “the principal agent of federal enforcement.” v. , ; see at 16. In so designing the statute, Congress chose not to pursue the goal of “controll[ing] access” to guns to the nth degree; buyers can, as the dissent says, avoid the statute’s background check and record-keeping requirements by getting a gun second-hand. But that possibility provides no justification for limiting the statute’s considered regulation of sales. 10 Nor do we agree with the dissent’s argument (not urged by Abramski himself) that the rule of lenity defeats our construction. See at 12–14. That rule, as we have repeatedly emphasized, applies only if, “after considering text, structure, history and purpose, there remains a grievous ambiguity or uncertainty in the statute such that the Court must simply guess as to what Congress intended.” v. , 570 U. S ___, ___ (2013) (slip op. at 26) (quoting v. , ). We are not in that position here: Although the text creates some ambiguity, the context, structure, history, and purpose resolve it. The dissent would apply the rule of lenity here because the statute’s text, taken alone, permits a narrower construction, but we have repeatedly emphasized that is not the appropriate test. See, v. , ; v. , . 11 The dissent argues that our view would impose criminal liability for a false answer even to an “ultra vires question,” such as “the buyer’s favorite color.” , at 15. We need not, and do not, opine on that hypothetical, because it is miles away from this case. As we have explained, see at 9–19, Question 11.a. is not ultra vires, but instead fundamental to the lawfulness of a gun sale. It is, indeed, part and parcel of the dealer’s determination of the (true) buyer’s “name, age, and place of residence,” which §922(b)(5) requires the dealer to keep. That section alone would justify Abramski’s conviction under §924(a)(1)(A) if the indictment here had clearly alleged that, in addition to answering Question 11.a. falsely, he lied about that buyer’s “name, age, and place of residence.”

571.US.237

Respondent Hoeper was a pilot for petitioner Air Wisconsin Airlines Corp. When Air Wisconsin stopped flying from Hoeper’s home base on aircraft that he was certified to fly, he needed to become certified on a different type of aircraft to keep his job. After Hoeper failed in his first three attempts to gain certification, Air Wisconsin agreed to give him a fourth and final chance. But he performed poorly during a required training session in a simulator. Hoeper responded angrily to this failure—raising his voice, tossing his headset, using profanity, and accusing the instructor of “railroading the situation.” The instructor called an Air Wisconsin manager, who booked Hoeper on a flight from the test location to Hoeper’s home in Denver. Several hours later, the manager discussed Hoeper’s behavior with other airline officials. The officials discussed Hoeper’s outburst, his impending termination, the history of assaults by disgruntled airline employees, and the chance that—because Hoeper was a Federal Flight Deck Officer (FFDO), permitted “to carry a firearm while engaged in providing air transportation,” 49 U. S. C. §44921(f)(1)—he might be armed. At the end of the meeting, an airline executive made the decision to notify the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) of the situation. The manager who had received the initial report from Hoeper’s instructor made the call to the TSA. During that call, according to the jury, he made two statements: first, that Hoeper “was an FFDO who may be armed” and that the airline was “concerned about his mental stability and the whereabouts of his firearm”; and second, that an “[u]nstable pilot in [the] FFDO program was terminated today.” In response, the TSA removed Hoeper from his plane, searched him, and questioned him about the location of his gun. Hoeper eventually boarded a later flight to Denver, and Air Wisconsin fired him the next day. Hoeper sued for defamation in Colorado state court. Air Wisconsin moved for summary judgment and later for a directed verdict, relying on the Aviation and Transportation Security Act (ATSA), which grants airlines and their employees immunity against civil liability for reporting suspicious behavior, 49 U. S. C. §44941(a), except where such disclosure is “made with actual knowledge that the disclosure was false, inaccurate, or misleading” or “made with reckless disregard as to the truth or falsity of that disclosure,” §44941(b). The trial court denied the motions and submitted the ATSA immunity question to the jury. The jury found for Hoeper on the defamation claim. The State Supreme Court affirmed. It held that the trial court erred in submitting the immunity question to the jury but that the error was harmless. Laboring under the assumption that even true statements do not qualify for ATSA immunity if they are made recklessly, the court held that Air Wisconsin was not entitled to immunity because its statements to the TSA were made with reckless disregard of their truth or falsity. Held: 1. ATSA immunity may not be denied to materially true statements. Pp. 7–11. (a) The ATSA immunity exception is patterned after the actual malice standard of New York Times Co. v. Sullivan, 376 U.S. 254, which requires material falsity. See, e.g., Masson v. New Yorker Magazine, Inc., 501 U.S. 496, 517. Because the material falsity requirement was settled when the ATSA was enacted, Congress presumably meant to incorporate it into the ATSA’s immunity exception and did not mean to deny ATSA immunity to true statements made recklessly. This presumption is not rebutted by other indicia of statutory meaning. Section 44941(b)(1) requires falsity, and §44941(b)(2) simply extends the immunity exception from knowing falsehoods to reckless ones. Denying immunity for substantially true reports, on the theory that the person making the report had not yet gathered enough information to be certain of its truth, would defeat the purpose of ATSA immunity: to ensure that air carriers and their employees do not hesitate to provide the TSA with needed information. Pp. 7–10. (b) Hoeper’s arguments that the State Supreme Court’s judgment should be affirmed notwithstanding its misapprehension of ATSA’s immunity standard are unpersuasive. Hoeper claims that Air Wisconsin did not argue the truth of its statements in asserting immunity, but Air Wisconsin contended in the state court that ATSA’s immunity exception incorporates the New York Times actual malice standard, which requires material falsity. And the State Supreme Court did not perform the requisite analysis of material falsity in finding the record sufficient to support the defamation verdict. A court’s deferential review of jury findings cannot substitute for its own analysis of the record; the jury was instructed only to determine falsity, not materiality; and applying the material falsity standard to a defamation claim is quite different from applying it to ATSA immunity. Pp. 10–11. 2. Under the correct material falsity analysis, Air Wisconsin is entitled to immunity as a matter of law. Pp. 12–18. (a) In the defamation context, a materially false statement is one that “ ‘would have a different effect on the mind of the reader [or listener] from that which the . . . truth would have produced.’ ” Masson, 501 U. S., at 517. This standard suffices in the ATSA context as well, so long as the hypothetical reader or listener is a security officer. For purposes of ATSA immunity, a falsehood cannot be material absent a substantial likelihood that a reasonable security officer would consider it important in determining a response to the supposed threat. Pp. 12–13. (b) Viewing the evidence in the light most favorable to Hoeper, the Court concludes as a matter of law that any falsehoods in Air Wisconsin’s statement to the TSA were not material. First, the Court rejects Hoeper’s argument that Air Wisconsin should have qualified its statement that Hoeper “was an FFDO who may be armed” by noting that it had no reason to think he actually was armed. To the extent that Air Wisconsin’s statement could have been confusing, any such confusion is immaterial, as a reasonable TSA officer—having been told that Hoeper was an FFDO who was upset about losing his job—would have wanted to investigate whether he was armed. To demand more precise wording would vitiate the purpose of ATSA immunity: to encourage air carriers and their employees, often in fast-moving situations and with little time to fine-tune their diction, to provide the TSA immediately with information about potential threats. Second, Air Wisconsin’s statement that Hoeper “was terminated today” was not materially false. While Hoeper had not actually been fired at the time of the statement, everyone involved knew that his firing was imminent. No reasonable TSA officer would care whether an angry, potentially armed airline employee had just been fired or merely knew he was about to meet that fate. Finally, although the details of Hoeper’s behavior during the simulator session may be disputed, it would have been correct even under Hoeper’s version of the facts for Air Wisconsin to report that Hoeper “blew up” during the test. From a reasonable security officer’s perspective, there is no material difference between a statement that Hoeper had “blown up” in a professional setting and a statement that he was unstable. Air Wisconsin’s related statement that it was “concerned about [Hoeper’s] mental stability” is no more troubling. Many of the officials who attended the meeting at airline headquarters might not have framed their concerns in terms of “mental stability,” but it would be inconsistent with the ATSA’s text and purpose to expose Air Wisconsin to liability because the manager who placed the call to the TSA could have chosen a slightly better phrase to articulate the airline’s concern. A statement that would otherwise qualify for ATSA immunity cannot lose that immunity because of some minor imprecision, so long as “the gist” of the statement is accurate, Masson, 501 U. S., at 517. Pp. 13–18. Reversed and remanded. Sotomayor, J., delivered the opinion of the Court, in which Roberts, C. J., and Kennedy, Ginsburg, Breyer, and Alito, JJ., joined, and in which Scalia, Thomas, and Kagan, JJ., joined as to Parts I, II, and III–A. Scalia, J., filed an opinion concurring in part and dissenting in part, in which Thomas and Kagan, JJ., joined.

In 2001, Congress created the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) to assess and manage threats against air travel. Aviation and Transportation Security Act (ATSA),49 U. S. C. §44901 et seq. To ensure that theTSA would be informed of potential threats, Congress gave airlines and their employees immunity against civil liability for reporting suspicious behavior. §44941(a). But this immunity does not attach to “any disclosure made with actual knowledge that the disclosure was false, inaccurate, or misleading” or “any disclosure made with reckless disregard as to the truth or falsity of that disclosure.” §44941(b). The question before us is whether ATSA immunity may be denied under §44941(b) without a determination that a disclosure was materially false. We hold that it may not. Because the state courts made no such determination, and because any falsehood in the disclosure here would not have affected a reasonable security officer’s assessment of the supposed threat, we reverse the judgment of the Colorado Supreme Court.IA William Hoeper joined Air Wisconsin Airlines Corporation as a pilot in 1998. But by late 2004, Air Wisconsin had stopped operating flights from Denver, Hoeper’s home base, on any type of aircraft for which he was certified. To continue flying for Air Wisconsin out of Denver, Hoeper needed to gain certification on the British Aerospace 146 (BAe-146), an aircraft he had not flown. Hoeper failed in his first three attempts to pass a proficiency test. After the third failure, as he later acknowledged at trial, his employment was “at [Air Wisconsin’s] discretion.” App. 193. But he and Air Wisconsin entered into an agreement to afford him “one more opportunity to pass [the] proficiency check.” Id., at 426. The agreement left little doubt that Hoeper would lose his job if he failed again. In December 2004, Hoeper flew from Denver to Virginia for simulator training as part of this final test. During the training, Hoeper failed to cope with a challenging scenario created by the instructor, Mark Schuerman, and the simulator showed the engines “flam[ing] out” due to a loss of fuel. App. 203. As Schuerman began to tell Hoeper that he “should know better,” ibid., Hoeper responded angrily. He later described what happened:“At this point, that’s it. I take my headset off and I toss it up on the glare shield. . . . [Schuerman] and I exchanged words at the same elevated decibel level. Mine went something like this: This is a bunch of shit. I’m sorry. You are railroading the situation and it’s not realistic.” Id., at 203–204.When Hoeper announced that he wanted to call the legal department of the pilots’ union, Schuerman ended the session so that Hoeper could do so. Schuerman then re-ported Hoeper’s behavior to Patrick Doyle, the Wisconsin-based manager of the BAe-146 fleet. Doyle booked Hoeper on a United Airlines flight back to Denver. Several hours after Schuerman’s report, Doyle discussed the situation at Air Wisconsin’s headquarters with the airline’s Vice President of Operations, Kevin LaWare; its Managing Director of Flight Operations, Scott Orozco; and its Assistant Chief Pilot, Robert Frisch. LaWare later ex-plained the accretion of his concerns about what Hoeper might do next. He regarded Hoeper’s behavior in the simulator as “a fairly significant outburst,” of a sort that he “hadn’t seen . . . before.” Id., at 276. And he knew “it was a given that . . . Hoeper’s employment was . . . going to be terminated” as a result of his failure to complete the simulator training. Id., at 278. Then, LaWare testified, Orozco mentioned that Hoeper was a Federal Flight Deck Officer (FFDO). The FFDO program allows the Government to “deputize volunteer pilots of air carriers . . . to defend the flight decks of aircraft . . . against acts of criminal violence or air piracy.” §44921(a). FFDOs are permitted “to carry a firearm while engaged in providing air transportation.” §44921(f )(1). Hoeper had become an FFDO earlier in 2004 and had been issued a firearm. He was not allowed to carry the firearm during his trip to the training facility, because he was not “engaged in providing air transportation,” ibid. But according to one official at the meeting, the Denver airport’s security procedures made it possible for crew members to bypass screening, so that Hoeper could have carried his gun despite the rule. Indeed, Frisch later testified that he was “aware of one” incident in which an Air Wisconsin pilot had come to training with his FFDO weapon. App. 292. On the basis of this information, LaWare concluded, there was “no way . . . to confirm” whether “Hoeper had his weapon with him, even though . . . by policy, [he was] not supposed to have it with him.” Id., at 279. Finally, LaWare testified, he and the other Air Wisconsin officials discussed two prior episodes in which disgruntled airline employees had lashed out violently. Id., at 280. In one incident, a FedEx flight engineer under investigation for misconduct “entered the cockpit” of a FedEx flight “and began attacking the crew with a hammer” before being subdued. United States v. Calloway, 116 F. 3d 1129, 1131 (CA6 1997). In another, a recently fired ticket agent brought a gun onto a Pacific Southwest Airlines flight and shot his former supervisor and the crew, leading to a fatal crash. Malnic, Report Confirms That Gunman Caused 1987 Crash of PSA Jet, L. A. Times,Jan. 6, 1989, p. 29. In light of all this—Hoeper’s anger, his impending termination, the chance that he might be armed, and the history of assaults by disgruntled airline employees—LaWare decided that the airline “need[ed] to make a call to the TSA,” to let the authorities know “the status” of the situation. App. 282. Doyle offered to make the call. According to the jury, he made two statements to the TSA: first, that Hoeper “was an FFDO who may be armed” and that the airline was “concerned about his mental stability and the whereabouts of his firearm”; and second, that an “[u]nstable pilot in [the] FFDO program was terminated today.” App. to Pet. for Cert. 111a. (The latter statement appears in the record as the subject line of an internal TSA e-mail, summarizing the call from Doyle. App. 414.) The TSA responded to the call by ordering that Hoeper’s plane return to the gate. Officers boarded the plane, re-moved Hoeper, searched him, and questioned him about the location of his gun. When Hoeper stated that the gun was at his home in Denver, a Denver-based federal agent went there to retrieve it. Later that day, Hoeper boarded a return flight to Denver. Air Wisconsin fired him the following day.B Hoeper sued Air Wisconsin in Colorado state court on several claims, including defamation.[1] Air Wisconsin moved for summary judgment on the basis of ATSA immunity,[2] but the trial court denied it, ruling that the jury was entitled to find the facts pertinent to immunity. The case went to trial, and the court denied Air Wisconsin’s motion for a directed verdict on the same basis. It submitted the question of ATSA immunity to the jury, with the instruction—following the language of §44941(b)—that immunity would not apply if Hoeper had proved thatAir Wisconsin “made the disclosure [to the TSA] with ac-tual knowledge that the disclosure was false, inaccurate, or misleading” or “with reckless disregard as to its truth or falsity.” App. 582. The jury instructions did not state that ATSA immunity protects materially true statements. The jury found for Hoeper on the defamation claim and awarded him $849,625 in compensatory damages and $391,875 in punitive damages. The court reduced the latter award to $350,000, for a total judgment of just under $1.2 million, plus costs. The Colorado Court of Appeals affirmed. 232 P. 3d 230 (2009). It held “that the trial court properly submitted the ATSA immunity issue to the jury,” that “the record supports the jury’s rejection of immunity,” and that the evidence was sufficient to support the jury’s defamation verdict. Id., at 233. The Colorado Supreme Court affirmed. 2012 WL 907764 (Mar. 19, 2012). It began by holding, contrary to the lower courts, “that immunity under the ATSA is a question of law to be determined by the trial court before trial.” Id., at *4. But it concluded that the trial court’s error in submitting immunity to the jury was “harmless because Air Wisconsin is not entitled to immunity.” Id., at *6. In a key footnote, the court stated: “In our determination of immunity under the ATSA, we need not, and therefore do not, decide whether the statements were true or false. Rather, we conclude that Air Wisconsin made the statements with reckless disregard as to their truth or falsity.” Id., at *16, n. 6. The court thus appears tohave labored under the assumption that even true statements do not qualify for ATSA immunity if they are made recklessly. Applying this standard, and giving “no weight to the jury’s finding[s],” ibid., n. 5, the court held that “[a]l-though the events at the training may have warranteda report to TSA,” Air Wisconsin’s statements “overstated those events to such a degree that they were made with reckless disregard of their truth or falsity.” Id., at *7. The court opined that Air Wisconsin “would likely be immune under the ATSA if Doyle had reported that Hoeper was an Air Wisconsin employee, that he knew he would be terminated soon, that he had acted irrationally at the training three hours earlier and ‘blew up’ at test administrators, and that he was an FFDO pilot.” Id., at *8. But because Doyle actually told TSA “(1) that he believed Hoeper to be mentally unstable; (2) that Hoeper had been terminated earlier that day; and (3) that Hoeper may have been armed,” id., at *7, the court determined that his statements “went well beyond” the facts and did not qualify for immunity, id., at *8. The court went on to conclude that the evidence was sufficient to support the jury’s defamation verdict. Justice Eid, joined by two others, dissented in part. She agreed with the majority’s holding that immunity is an issue for the court, not the jury. But she reasoned that Air Wisconsin was entitled to immunity “because [its] statements to the TSA were substantially true.” Id., at *11. We granted certiorari to decide “[w]hether ATSA immunity may be denied without a determination that the air carrier’s disclosure was materially false.” 570 U. S. ___ (2013).IIA Congress patterned the exception to ATSA immunity after the actual malice standard of New York Times Co. v. Sullivan,376 U. S. 254 (1964), and we have long held that actual malice requires material falsity. Because we presume that Congress meant to incorporate the settled meaning of actual malice when it incorporated the language of that standard, we hold that a statement otherwise eligible for ATSA immunity may not be deniedimmunity unless the statement is materially false. In New York Times, we held that under the First Amendment, a public official cannot recover “for a defamatory falsehood relating to his official conduct unless he proves that the statement was made with ‘actual malice’—that is, with knowledge that it was false or with reckless disregard of whether it was false or not.” Id., at 279–280. Congress borrowed this exact language in denying ATSA immunity to “(1) any disclosure made with actual knowledge that the disclosure was false, inaccurate, or misleading; or (2) any disclosure made with recklessdisregard as to the truth or falsity of that disclosure.” §44941(b). One could in principle construe the language of the actual malice standard to cover true statements made recklessly. But we have long held, to the contrary, that actual malice entails falsity. See, e.g., Philadelphia Newspapers, Inc. v. Hepps,475 U. S. 767,775 (1986) (“[A]s one might expect given the language of the Court in New York Times, a public-figure plaintiff must show the falsity of the statements at issue in order to prevail in a suit for defamation” (citation omitted)); Garrison v. Louisiana,379 U. S. 64,74 (1964) (“We held in New York Times that a public official might be allowed the civil remedy only if he establishes that the utterance was false”). Indeed, we have required more than mere falsity to establish actual malice: The falsity must be “material.” Masson v. New Yorker Magazine, Inc.,501 U. S. 496,517 (1991). As we explained in Masson, “[m]inor inaccuracies do not amount to falsity so long as ‘the substance, the gist, the sting, of the libelous charge be justified.’ ” Ibid. A “statement is not considered false unless it ‘would have a different effect on the mind of the reader from that which the pleaded truth would have produced.’ ” Ibid. (quoting R. Sack, Libel, Slander, and Related Problems 138 (1980)). These holdings were settled when Congress enacted the ATSA, and we therefore presume that Congress meant to adopt the material falsity requirement when it incorporated the actual malice standard into the ATSA immunity exception. “[I]t is a cardinal rule of statutory construction that, when Congress employs a term of art, it presumably knows and adopts the cluster of ideas that were attached to each borrowed word in the body of learning from which it is taken.” FAA v. Cooper, 566 U. S. ___, ___ (2012) (slip op., at 6) (internal quotation marks omitted). The actual malice standard does not cover materially true statements made recklessly, so we presume that Congress did not mean to deny ATSA immunity to such statements. Other indicia of statutory meaning could rebut this presumption, but here, they do not. First, the ATSA’stext favors a falsity requirement. The first subsection of §44941(b) requires falsity, as a true disclosure cannot have been made “with actual knowledge” that it “was false.” The only question is whether the second subsection—which denies immunity to “any disclosure made with reckless disregard as to [its] truth or falsity”—similarly requires falsity. We conclude that it does. The second subsection simply extends the immunity exception from knowing falsehoods to reckless ones, ensuring that an air carrier cannot avoid liability for a baseless report by sticking its head in the sand to avoid “actual knowledge” that its statements are false. “[T]he defense of truth . . . , even if not explicitly recognized, . . .is implicit in . . . a standard of recovery that rests on knowing or reckless disregard of the truth.” Cox Broadcasting Corp. v. Cohn,420 U. S. 469–499 (1975) (Powell, J., concurring). A material falsity requirement also serves the purpose of ATSA immunity. The ATSA shifted from airlines to the TSA the responsibility “for assessing and investigating possible threats to airline security.” 2012 WL 907764, *14 (Eid, J., concurring in part and dissenting in part). In directing the TSA to “receive, assess, and distribute intelligence information related to transportation security,”49 U. S. C. §114(f)(1), Congress wanted to ensure that air carriers and their employees would not hesitate to provide the TSA with the information it needed. This is the purpose of the immunity provision, evident both from its context and from the title of the statutory section that contained it: “encouraging airline employees to report sus-picious activities.” ATSA §125,115Stat.631 (capitali-zation and boldface type omitted). It would defeat this purpose to deny immunity for substantially true reports, on the theory that the person making the report had not yet gathered enough information to be certain of its truth. Such a rule would restore the pre-ATSA state of affairs, in which air carriers bore the responsibility to investigate and verify potential threats. We therefore hold that ATSA immunity may not be denied under §44941(b) to materially true statements. This interpretation of the statute is clear enough that Hoeper effectively concedes it. See Brief for Respondent 30 (acknowledging that if the Colorado Supreme Court actually said “ ‘an airline may be denied ATSA immunity . . . for reporting true information,’ ” then “the court was likely wrong”). Hoeper does point out in a footnote that given Congress’ desire to deny immunity to “ ‘bad actors,’ ” and “given that the vast majority of reckless statements will not turn out to be true[,] . . . Congress could have quite reasonably chosen to deny the special privilege of ATSA immunity to all reckless speakers,” even those whose statements turned out to be true. Id., at 30, n. 12. But although Congress could have made this choice, nothing about the statute’s text or purpose suggests that it actually did. Instead, Congress chose to model the exception to ATSA immunity after a standard we have long construed to require material falsity.B We are not persuaded by Hoeper’s arguments thatwe should affirm the judgment of the Colorado Supreme Court notwithstanding its misapprehension of the ATSA immunity standard. Hoeper first argues that Air Wisconsin forfeited the claim that it is entitled to immunity because its statements were materially true. His premise is that AirWisconsin argued the truth of its statements only in challenging the evidentiary basis for the defamation verdict, not in asserting immunity. But Air Wisconsin’s brief before the Colorado Supreme Court argued that the exception to ATSA immunity “appears to incorporate the New York Times actual malice standard,” which—as we have explained—requires material falsity. Petitioner’s Opening Brief in No. 09SC1050, p. 24. Hoeper next argues that the Colorado Supreme Court performed the requisite analysis of material falsity, albeit in the context of finding the record sufficient to support the jury’s defamation verdict. For several reasons, however, this analysis does not suffice for us to affirm the denialof ATSA immunity. First, to the extent that the immunity determination belongs to the court—as the Colorado Supreme Court held—a court’s deferential review of jury findings cannot substitute for its own analysis of the record. Second, the jury here did not find that any falsity in Air Wisconsin’s statements was material, because the trial court instructed it only to determine whether “[o]ne or more of th[e] statements was false,” App. 580, without addressing materiality. Third, applying the material falsity standard to a defamation claim is quite different from applying it to ATSA immunity. In both contexts,a materially false statement is one that “ ‘would have a different effect on the mind of the reader [or listener] from that which the . . . truth would have produced.’ ” Masson, 501 U. S., at 517. But the identity of the relevant reader or listener varies according to the context. In determining whether a falsehood is material to a defamation claim, we care whether it affects the subject’s reputation in the community. In the context of determining ATSA immu-nity, by contrast, we care whether a falsehood affects the authorities’ perception of and response to a given threat.[3]III Finally, the Colorado Supreme Court’s analysis of material falsity was erroneous. We turn next to explaining why, by applying the ATSA immunity standard to the facts of this case.[4]A We begin by addressing how to determine the material-ity of a false statement in the ATSA context. As we noted earlier, a materially false statement is generally one that “ ‘would have a different effect on the mind of the reader [or listener] from that which the . . . truth would have produced.’ ” Ibid. The parties quibble over whether ATSA immunity requires some special version of this standard, but they more or less agree—as do we—that the usual standard suffices as long as the hypothetical reader or listener is a security officer. A further question is what it means for a statement to produce “ ‘a different effect on the mind of’ ” a security officer from that which the truth would have produced. In defamation law, the reputational harm caused by a false statement is its effect on a reader’s or listener’s mind. But contrary to the position of Hoeper’s counsel at oral argument, Tr. of Oral Arg. 32–33, courts cannot decide whether a false statement produced “ ‘a different effect on the mind of’ ” a hypothetical TSA officer without considering the effect of that statement on TSA’s behavior. After all, the whole reason the TSA considers threat reports is to deter-mine and execute a response. A plaintiff seeking to defeat ATSA immunity need not show “precisely what a particular official or federal agency would have done in a counterfactual scenario.” Brief for United States as Amicus Curiae 27. Such a showing would be “impossible . . . given the need to maintain se-crecy regarding airline security operations.” Brief for Re-spondent 42. But any falsehood cannot be material, for purposes of ATSA immunity, absent a substantial likelihood that a reasonable security officer would consider it important in determining a response to the supposed threat. Cf. TSC Industries, Inc. v. Northway, Inc.,426 U. S. 438,449 (1976) (an omission in a proxy solicitation “is material if there is a substantial likelihood that a reasonable shareholder would consider it important in deciding how to vote”). This standard “is an objectiveone, involving the [hypothetical] significance of an omitted or misrepresented fact to a reasonable” security official, rather than the actual significance of that fact to a particular security official. Id., at 445.B We apply the material falsity standard to the facts of this case. In doing so, we neither embrace nor reject the Colorado Supreme Court’s unanimous holding “that immunity under the ATSA is a question of law to be determined by the trial court before trial.” 2012 WL 9097764, *4; see id., at *11 (Eid, J., concurring in part and dissenting in part) (agreeing with majority). Rather, we conclude that even if a jury were to find the historical facts in the manner most favorable to Hoeper, Air Wisconsin is entitled to ATSA immunity as a matter of law. We begin with Air Wisconsin’s statement that Hoeper “was an FFDO who may be armed.” App. to Pet. for Cert. 111a. Hoeper cannot dispute the literal truth of this statement: He was an FFDO, and because FFDOs possess weapons, any FFDO “may be armed.” Hoeper argues only that to avoid any misinterpretation, Air Wisconsin should have qualified the statement by adding that it had no reason to think he was actually carrying his gun during the trip to Virginia, especially because he was not allowed to do so under §44921(f )(1).[5] We agree that Air Wisconsin’s statement could have been misinterpreted by some, but we reject Hoeper’s argument for two reasons. First, any confusion of the nature that Hoeper suggests would have been immaterial: A reasonable TSA officer, having been told only that Hoeper was an FFDO and that he was upset about losing his job, would have wanted to investigate whether Hoeper was carrying his gun. Second, to accept Hoeper’s demand for such precise wording would vitiate the purpose of ATSA immunity: to encourage air carriers and their employees, often in fast-moving situations and with little time to fine-tune their diction, to provide the TSA immediately with information about potential threats. Baggage handlers, flight attendants, gate agents, and other airline employees who report suspicious behavior to the TSA should not face financial ruin if, in the heat of a potential threat, they fail to choose their words with exacting care.[6] We next consider Air Wisconsin’s statement that Hoeper “was terminated today.” App. to Pet. for Cert. 111a. When Air Wisconsin made that statement, Hoeper had not yet been fired. But everyone knew the firing was almost certainly imminent. Hoeper acknowledged that his employment was “at [Air Wisconsin’s] discretion” after his third failed test, App. 193, and the agreement between him and Air Wisconsin stated that his “fourth . . . attempt” to pass the test would be his “final” one, id., at 426. No reasonable TSA officer would care whether an angry, po-tentially armed airline employee had just been fired or merely knew he was about to meet that fate. Finally, we consider Air Wisconsin’s statements that Hoeper was “[u]nstable” and that it was “concerned about his mental stability.” App. to Pet. for Cert. 111a. Al-though the details of Hoeper’s behavior during the simulator session may be disputed, Hoeper himself testified that he had become visibly angry: He decided “that’s it,” he removed his headset and “toss[ed] it,” and he accused the instructor—at an “elevated decibel level,” and with an expletive—of “railroading the situation.” App. 203–204. It would surely have been correct, then, for Air Wisconsin to report that Hoeper “ ‘blew up’ ” during the test. 2012 WL 907764, *8. The question is whether, from the perspective of a reasonable security officer, there is any material difference between a statement that Hoeper had just “blown up” in a professional setting and a statement that hewas “[u]nstable.” We think not. We are no more troubled by Air Wisconsin’s related statement that it was “concerned about [Hoeper’s] mental stability.” Hoeper is correct that many of the Air Wisconsin officials who attended the meeting at headquarters might not have framed their concerns in terms of “men-tal stability.” LaWare, for instance, testified that “[t]hose weren’t the words that [he] would have anticipated” when he directed Doyle to call the TSA. App. 272. But the officials who attended the meeting did harbor concerns about Hoeper’s mental state: They knew he had just “blown up,” and they worried about what he might do next. It would be inconsistent with the ATSA’s text and purpose to expose Air Wisconsin to liability because its employee could have chosen a slightly better phrase than “mental stability” to articulate its concern. Just as “[m]inor inaccuracies do not amount to falsity” in the defamation context, “so long as ‘the substance, the gist, the sting, of the libelous charge be justified,’ ” Masson, 501 U. S., at 517, a statement that would otherwise qualify for ATSA immunity cannot lose that immunity because of some minor imprecision, so long as “the gist” of the statement is accurate. Doyle’s statements to the TSA accu-rately conveyed “the gist” of the situation; it is irrelevant whether trained lawyers or judges might with the luxury of time have chosen more precise words. Hoeper’s overarching factual theory appears to be that members of the BAe-146 team, including Doyle and Schuer-man, harbored personal animosity toward him, which caused them to manipulate the proficiency tests in order to fail him. But even if Hoeper were correct aboutall this (and we express no view on that question), we do not see why it would have made him any less a threat in the eyes of a reasonable security officer. As between two employees—one who thinks he is being fired because of his inadequate skills, another who thinks he is being fired because his employer hates him—the latter is presumably more, not less, likely to lash out in anger. The partial dissent argues that Doyle’s reference to Hoeper’s “mental stability” was so egregious as to make his report to the TSA the basis of a $1.2 million defamation judgment. We disagree. While lawyers and judges may in some contexts apply the label “mentally unstable” to people suffering from serious mental illnesses, see post, at 4 (Scalia, J., concurring in part and dissenting in part), that is hardly the only manner in which the label is used. A holding that Air Wisconsin lost its ATSA immunity by virtue of Doyle’s failure to be aware of every connotation of the phrase “mental stability” would eviscerate the immunity provision. All of us from time to time use words that, on reflection, we might modify. If such slips of the tongue could give rise to major financial liability, no airline would contact the TSA (or permit its employees to do so) without running by its lawyers the text of its proposed disclosure—exactly the kind of hesitation that Congress aimed to avoid. The partial dissent further argues that Hoeper’s “display of anger” made him no more a threat than “millions of perfectly harmless air travelers.” Post, at 4. But Hoeper did not just lose his temper; he lost it in circumstances that he knew would lead to his firing, which he regarded as the culmination of a vendetta against him. And he was not just any passenger; he was an FFDO, which meant that he could plausibly have been carrying a firearm. In short, Hoeper was not some traveling businessman who yelled at a barista in a fit of pique over a badly brewed cup of coffee. Finally, the partial dissent relies on an expert’s testimony “that Hoeper’s behavior did not warrant any report to the TSA.” Post, at 4 (citing App. 356). But the expert appears to have based that statement on an outdated understanding of reporting obligations that is flatly at odds with the ATSA. Prior to the ATSA, “airlines were responsible for assessing and investigating possible threats to airline security.” 2012 WL 907764, *14 (Eid, J., concurring in part and dissenting in part). But the ATSA shifted that responsibility to the TSA, creating a policy “known as ‘when in doubt, report.’ ” Ibid.; see supra, at 9. The expert who believed that Hoeper’s conduct did not warrant a report to the TSA also believed that airlines have “an obligation . . . to filter out . . . the low noise from . . . what’s significant” in reporting threats. App. 356. That understanding does not comport with the policy that Congress chose to enact. The Colorado Supreme Court recognized that even if the facts are viewed in the light most favorable to Hoeper, Air Wisconsin “would likely be immune” had it “reported that Hoeper . . . knew he would be terminated soon, that he had acted irrationally at the training three hours earlier and ‘blew up’ at test administrators, and that he was an FFDO pilot.” 2012 WL 907764, *8. But the court erred in parsing so finely the distinctions between these hypothetical statements and the ones that Air Wisconsin actually made. The minor differences are, for the reasons we have explained, immaterial as a matter of law in determining Air Wisconsin’s ATSA immunity. By incorporating the actual malice standard into §44941(b), Congress meant to give air carriers the “ ‘breathing space’ ” to report potential threats to security officials without fear of civil liability for a few inaptly chosen words. New York Times, 376 U. S., at 272. To hold Air Wisconsin liable for minor misstatements or loose wording would undermine that purpose and disregard the statutory text.* * * The judgment of the Supreme Court of Colorado is therefore reversed, and the case is remanded for proceedings not inconsistent with this opinion.It is so ordered.Notes1 Air Wisconsin agrees that it bears responsibility for Doyle’s statements. 2012 WL 907764, *2, *16, n. 2 (Colo., Mar. 19, 2012).2 The ATSA immunity provision specifies that “[a]ny air carrier . . . or any employee of an air carrier . . . who makes a voluntary disclosureof any suspicious transaction relevant to a possible violation of law or regulation, relating to air piracy, a threat to aircraft or passenger safety, or terrorism, . . . to any employee or agent of the Department of Transportation, the Department of Justice, any Federal, State, or local law enforcement officer, or any airport or airline security officer shall not be civilly liable to any person under any law or regulation of the United States, any constitution, law, or regulation of any State or political subdivision of any State, for such disclosure.”.3 These are very different inquiries. Suppose the TSA receives the following tip: “My adulterous husband is carrying a gun onto a flight.” Whether the husband is adulterous will presumably have no effect on the TSA’s assessment of any security risk that he poses. So if the word “adulterous” is false, the caller may still be entitled to ATSA immunity. But any falsity as to that word obviously would affect the husband’s reputation in the community, so it would be material in the context of a defamation claim.4 We “recognize the prudence . . . of allowing the lower courts ‘to undertake [a fact-intensive inquiry] in the first instance.’ ” v. ,. Here, however, we conclude that another prudential consideration—the need for clear guidance on a novel but important question of federal law—weighs in favor of our applying the ATSA immunity standard. Cf. v. , (“[T ]his Court’s role in marking out the limits of [a ] standard through the process of case-by-case adjudication is of special importance”).5 See Tr. of Oral Arg. 42–43 (concession by Hoeper’s counsel that “it would have been true for [Air Wisconsin] to say, look, we’re calling to let you know, because Mr. Hoeper’s an FFDO, we don’t have any reason to believe that he has gun with him, but we can’t tell for sure, so we just thought we would tell you, in case you have any questions and want to investigate further”).6 Hoeper also takes issue with Air Wisconsin’s statement that it was “concerned about . . . the whereabouts of his firearm,” App. to Pet. for Cert. 111a. But his arguments concerning this statement are the same as those concerning the statement that he “may [have] been armed,” ,and we reject them for the same reasons.

573.US.208

Petitioner Alice Corporation is the assignee of several patents that disclose a scheme for mitigating “settlement risk,” i.e., the risk that only one party to an agreed-upon financial exchange will satisfy its obligation. In particular, the patent claims are designed to facilitate the exchange of financial obligations between two parties by using a computer system as a third-party intermediary. The patents in suit claim (1) a method for exchanging financial obligations, (2) a computer system configured to carry out the method for exchanging obligations, and (3) a computer-readable medium containing program code for performing the method of exchanging obligations. Respondents (together, CLS Bank), who operate a global network that facilitates currency transactions, filed suit against petitioner, arguing that the patent claims at issue are invalid, unenforceable, or not infringed. Petitioner counterclaimed, alleging infringement. After Bilski v. Kappos, 561 U.S. 593, was decided, the District Court held that all of the claims were ineligible for patent protection under 35 U. S. C. §101 because they are directed to an abstract idea. The en banc Federal Circuit affirmed. Held: Because the claims are drawn to a patent-ineligible abstract idea, they are not patent eligible under §101. Pp. 5–17. (a) The Court has long held that §101, which defines the subject matter eligible for patent protection, contains an implicit exception for ‘ “[l]aws of nature, natural phenomena, and abstract ideas.’ ” Association for Molecular Pathology v. Myriad Genetics, Inc., 569 U. S. ___, ___. In applying the §101 exception, this Court must distinguish patents that claim the “ ‘buildin[g] block[s]’ ” of human ingenuity, which are ineligible for patent protection, from those that integrate the building blocks into something more, see Mayo Collaborative Services v. Prometheus Laboratories, Inc., 566 U. S. ___, ___, thereby “transform[ing]” them into a patent-eligible invention, id., at ___. Pp. 5–6. (b) Using this framework, the Court must first determine whether the claims at issue are directed to a patent-ineligible concept. 566 U. S., at ___. If so, the Court then asks whether the claim’s elements, considered both individually and “as an ordered combination,” “transform the nature of the claim” into a patent-eligible application. Id., at ___. Pp. 7–17. (1) The claims at issue are directed to a patent-ineligible concept: the abstract idea of intermediated settlement. Under “the longstanding rule that ‘[a]n idea of itself is not patentable,’ ” Gottschalk v. Benson, 409 U.S. 63, 67, this Court has found ineligible patent claims involving an algorithm for converting binary-coded decimal numerals into pure binary form, id., at 71–72; a mathematical formula for computing “alarm limits” in a catalytic conversion process, Parker v. Flook, 437 U.S. 584, 594–595; and, most recently, a method for hedging against the financial risk of price fluctuations, Bilski, 561 U. S, at 599. It follows from these cases, and Bilski in particular, that the claims at issue are directed to an abstract idea. On their face, they are drawn to the concept of intermediated settlement, i.e., the use of a third party to mitigate settlement risk. Like the risk hedging in Bilski, the concept of intermediated settlement is “ ‘a fundamental economic practice long prevalent in our system of commerce,’ ” ibid., and the use of a third-party intermediary (or “clearing house”) is a building block of the modern economy. Thus, intermediated settlement, like hedging, is an “abstract idea” beyond §101’s scope. Pp. 7–10. (2) Turning to the second step of Mayo’s framework: The method claims, which merely require generic computer implementation, fail to transform that abstract idea into a patent-eligible invention. Pp. 10–16. (i) “Simply appending conventional steps, specified at a high level of generality,” to a method already “well known in the art” is not “enough” to supply the “ ‘inventive concept’ ” needed to make this transformation. Mayo, supra, at ___, ___. The introduction of a computer into the claims does not alter the analysis. Neither stating an abstract idea “while adding the words ‘apply it,’ ” Mayo, supra, at ___, nor limiting the use of an abstract idea “ ‘to a particular technological environment,’ ” Bilski, supra, at 610–611, is enough for patent eligibility. Stating an abstract idea while adding the words “apply it with a computer” simply combines those two steps, with the same deficient result. Wholly generic computer implementation is not generally the sort of “additional featur[e]” that provides any “practical assurance that the process is more than a drafting effort designed to monopolize the [abstract idea] itself.” Mayo, supra, at ___. Pp. 11–14. (ii) Here, the representative method claim does no more than simply instruct the practitioner to implement the abstract idea of intermediated settlement on a generic computer. Taking the claim elements separately, the function performed by the computer at each step—creating and maintaining “shadow” accounts, obtaining data, adjusting account balances, and issuing automated instructions—is “[p]urely ‘conventional. ’ ” Mayo, 566 U. S., at ___. Considered “as an ordered combination,” these computer components “ad[d] nothing . . . that is not already present when the steps are considered separately.” Id., at ___. Viewed as a whole, these method claims simply recite the concept of intermediated settlement as performed by a generic computer. They do not, for example, purport to improve the functioning of the computer itself or effect an improvement in any other technology or technical field. An instruction to apply the abstract idea of intermediated settlement using some unspecified, generic computer is not “enough” to transform the abstract idea into a patent-eligible invention. Id., at ___. Pp. 14–16. (3) Because petitioner’s system and media claims add nothing of substance to the underlying abstract idea, they too are patent ineligible under §101. Petitioner conceded below that its media claims rise or fall with its method claims. And the system claims are no different in substance from the method claims. The method claims recite the abstract idea implemented on a generic computer; the system claims recite a handful of generic computer components configured to implement the same idea. This Court has long “warn[ed] . . . against” interpreting §101 “in ways that make patent eligibility ‘depend simply on the draftsman’s art.’ ” Mayo, supra, at ___. Holding that the system claims are patent eligible would have exactly that result. Pp. 16–17. 717 F.3d 1269, affirmed. Thomas, J., delivered the opinion for a unanimous Court. Sotomayor, J., filed a concurring opinion, in which Ginsburg and Breyer, JJ., joined.

The patents at issue in this case disclose a computer-implemented scheme for mitigating “settlement risk” (i.e., the risk that only one party to a financial transaction will pay what it owes) by using a third-party intermediary. The question presented is whether these claims are patent eligible under 35 U. S. C. §101, or are instead drawn to a patent-ineligible abstract idea. We hold that the claims at issue are drawn to the abstract idea of intermediated settlement, and that merely requiring generic computer implementation fails to transform that abstract idea into a patent-eligible invention. We therefore affirm the judgment of the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit. I A Petitioner Alice Corporation is the assignee of several patents that disclose schemes to manage certain forms of financial risk. [ 1 ] According to the specification largely shared by the patents, the invention “enabl[es] the management of risk relating to specified, yet unknown, future events.” App. 248. The specification further explains that the “invention relates to methods and apparatus, including electrical computers and data processing systems applied to financial matters and risk management.” Id., at 243. The claims at issue relate to a computerized scheme for mitigating “settlement risk”—i.e., the risk that only one party to an agreed-upon financial exchange will satisfy its obligation. In particular, the claims are designed to facilitate the exchange of financial obligations between two parties by using a computer system as a third-party intermediary. Id., at 383–384. [ 2 ] The intermediary creates “shadow” credit and debit records (i.e., account ledgers) that mirror the balances in the parties’ real-world accounts at “exchange institutions” (e.g., banks). The intermediary updates the shadow records in real time as transactions are entered, allowing “only those transactions for which the parties’ updated shadow records indicate sufficient resources to satisfy their mutual obligations.” 717 F. 3d 1269, 1285 (CA Fed. 2013) (Lourie, J., concurring). At the end of the day, the intermediary instructs the relevant financial institutions to carry out the “permitted” transactions in accordance with the updated shadow records, ibid., thus mitigating the risk that only one party will perform the agreed-upon exchange. In sum, the patents in suit claim (1) the foregoing method for exchanging obligations (the method claims), (2) a computer system configured to carry out the method for exchanging obligations (the system claims), and (3) a computer-readable medium containing program code for performing the method of exchanging obligations (the media claims). All of the claims are implemented using a computer; the system and media claims expressly recite a computer, and the parties have stipulated that the method claims require a computer as well. B Respondents CLS Bank International and CLS Services Ltd. (together, CLS Bank) operate a global network that facilitates currency transactions. In 2007, CLS Bank filed suit against petitioner, seeking a declaratory judgment that the claims at issue are invalid, unenforceable, or not infringed. Petitioner counterclaimed, alleging infringement. Following this Court’s decision in Bilski v. Kappos, 561 U. S. 593 (2010) , the parties filed cross-motions for summary judgment on whether the asserted claims are eligible for patent protection under 35 U. S. C. §101. The District Court held that all of the claims are patent ineligible because they are directed to the abstract idea of “employing a neutral intermediary to facilitate simultaneous exchange of obligations in order to minimize risk.” 768 F. Supp. 2d 221, 252 (DC 2011). A divided panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit reversed, holding that it was not “manifestly evident” that petitioner’s claims are directed to an abstract idea. 685 F. 3d 1341, 1352, 1356 (2012). The Federal Circuit granted rehearing en banc, vacated the panel opinion, and affirmed the judgment of the District Court in a one-paragraph per curiam opinion. 717 F. 3d, at 1273. Seven of the ten participating judges agreed that petitioner’s method and media claims are patent ineligible. See id., at 1274 (Lourie, J., concurring); id., at 1312–1313 (Rader, C. J., concurring in part and dissenting in part). With respect to petitioner’s system claims, the en banc Federal Circuit affirmed the District Court’s judgment by an equally divided vote. Id., at 1273. Writing for a five-member plurality, Judge Lourie concluded that all of the claims at issue are patent ineligible. In the plurality’s view, under this Court’s decision in Mayo Collaborative Services v. Prometheus Laboratories, Inc., 566 U. S. ___ (2012), a court must first “identif[y] the abstract idea represented in the claim,” and then determine “whether the balance of the claim adds ‘significantly more.’ ” 717 F. 3d, at 1286. The plurality concluded that petitioner’s claims “draw on the abstract idea of reducing settlement risk by effecting trades through a third-party intermediary,” and that the use of a computer to maintain, adjust, and reconcile shadow accounts added nothing of substance to that abstract idea. Ibid. Chief Judge Rader concurred in part and dissented in part. In a part of the opinion joined only by Judge Moore, Chief Judge Rader agreed with the plurality that petitioner’s method and media claims are drawn to an abstract idea. Id., at 1312–1313. In a part of the opinion joined by Judges Linn, Moore, and O’Malley, Chief Judge Rader would have held that the system claims are patent eligible because they involve computer “hardware” that is “specifically programmed to solve a complex problem.” Id., at 1307. Judge Moore wrote a separate opinion dissenting in part, arguing that the system claims are patent eligible. Id., at 1313–1314. Judge Newman filed an opinion concurring in part and dissenting in part, arguing that all of petitioner’s claims are patent eligible. Id., at 1327. Judges Linn and O’Malley filed a separate dissenting opinion reaching that same conclusion. Ibid. We granted certiorari, 571 U. S. ___ (2013), and now affirm. II Section 101 of the Patent Act defines the subject matter eligible for patent protection. It provides: “Whoever invents or discovers any new and useful process, machine, manufacture, or composition of matter, or any new and useful improvement thereof, may obtain a patent therefor, subject to the conditions and requirements of this title.” 35 U. S. C. §101. “We have long held that this provision contains an important implicit exception: Laws of nature, natural phenomena, and abstract ideas are not patentable.” Association for Molecular Pathology v. Myriad Genetics, Inc., 569 U. S. ___, ___ (2013) (slip op., at 11) (internal quotation marks and brackets omitted). We have interpreted §101 and its predecessors in light of this exception for more than 150 years. Bilski, supra, at 601–602; see also O’Reilly v. Morse, 15 How. 62, 112–120 (1854); Le Roy v. Tatham, 14 How. 156, 174–175 (1853). We have described the concern that drives this exclusionary principle as one of pre-emption. See, e.g., Bilski, supra, at 611–612 (upholding the patent “would pre-empt use of this approach in all fields, and would effectively grant a monopoly over an abstract idea”). Laws of nature, natural phenomena, and abstract ideas are “ ‘ “the basic tools of scientific and technological work.” ’ ” Myriad, supra, at ___ (slip op., at 11). “[M]onopolization of those tools through the grant of a patent might tend to impede innovation more than it would tend to promote it,” thereby thwarting the primary object of the patent laws. Mayo, supra, at ___ (slip op., at 2); see U. S. Const., Art. I, §8, cl. 8 (Congress “shall have Power . . . To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts”). We have “repeatedly emphasized this . . . concern that patent law not inhibit further discovery by improperly tying up the future use of” these building blocks of human ingenuity. Mayo, supra, at ___ (slip op., at 16) (citing Morse, supra, at 113). At the same time, we tread carefully in construing this exclusionary principle lest it swallow all of patent law. Mayo, 566 U. S., at ___ (slip op., at 2). At some level, “all inventions . . . embody, use, reflect, rest upon, or apply laws of nature, natural phenomena, or abstract ideas.” Id., at ___ (slip op., at 2). Thus, an invention is not rendered ineligible for patent simply because it involves an abstract concept. See Diamond v. Diehr, 450 U. S. 175, 187 (1981) . “[A]pplication[s]” of such concepts “ ‘to a new and useful end,’ ” we have said, remain eligible for patent protection. Gottschalk v. Benson, 409 U. S. 63, 67 (1972) . Accordingly, in applying the §101 exception, we must distinguish between patents that claim the “ ‘buildin[g] block[s]’ ” of human ingenuity and those that integrate the building blocks into something more, Mayo, 566 U. S., at ___ (slip op., at 20), thereby “transform[ing]” them into a patent-eligible invention, id., at ___ (slip op., at 3). The former “would risk disproportionately tying up the use of the underlying” ideas, id., at ___ (slip op., at 4), and are therefore ineligible for patent protection. The latter pose no comparable risk of pre-emption, and therefore remain eligible for the monopoly granted under our patent laws. III In Mayo Collaborative Services v. Prometheus Laboratories, Inc., 566 U. S. ___ (2012), we set forth a framework for distinguishing patents that claim laws of nature, natural phenomena, and abstract ideas from those that claim patent-eligible applications of those concepts. First, we determine whether the claims at issue are directed to one of those patent-ineligible concepts. Id., at ___ (slip op., at 8). If so, we then ask, “[w]hat else is there in the claims before us?” Id., at ___ (slip op., at 9). To answer that question, we consider the elements of each claim both individually and “as an ordered combination” to determine whether the additional elements “transform the nature of the claim” into a patent-eligible application. Id., at ___ (slip op., at 10, 9). We have described step two of this analysis as a search for an “ ‘inventive concept’ ”—i.e., an element or combination of elements that is “sufficient to ensure that the patent in practice amounts to significantly more than a patent upon the [ineligible concept] itself.” Id., at ___ (slip op., at 3). [ 3 ] A We must first determine whether the claims at issue are directed to a patent-ineligible concept. We conclude that they are: These claims are drawn to the abstract idea of intermediated settlement. The “abstract ideas” category embodies “the longstanding rule that ‘[a]n idea of itself is not patentable.’ ” Benson, supra, at 67 (quoting Rubber-Tip Pencil Co. v. Howard, 20 Wall. 498, 507 (1874)); see also Le Roy, supra, at 175 (“A principle, in the abstract, is a fundamental truth; an original cause; a motive; these cannot be patented, as no one can claim in either of them an exclusive right”). In Benson, for example, this Court rejected as ineligible patent claims involving an algorithm for converting binary-coded decimal numerals into pure binary form, holding that the claimed patent was “in practical effect . . . a pat- ent on the algorithm itself.” 409 U. S., at 71–72. And in Parker v. Flook, 437 U. S. 584 –595 (1978), we held that a mathematical formula for computing “alarm limits” in a catalytic conversion process was also a patent-ineligible abstract idea. We most recently addressed the category of abstract ideas in Bilski v. Kappos, 561 U. S. 593 (2010) . The claims at issue in Bilski described a method for hedging against the financial risk of price fluctuations. Claim 1 recited a series of steps for hedging risk, including: (1) initiating a series of financial transactions between providers and consumers of a commodity; (2) identifying market participants that have a counterrisk for the same commodity; and (3) initiating a series of transactions between those market participants and the commodity provider to balance the risk position of the first series of consumer transactions. Id., at 599. Claim 4 “pu[t] the concept articulated in claim 1 into a simple mathematical formula.” Ibid. The remaining claims were drawn to examples of hedging in commodities and energy markets. “[A]ll members of the Court agree[d]” that the patent at issue in Bilski claimed an “abstract idea.” Id., at 609; see also id., at 619 (Stevens, J., concurring in judgment). Specifically, the claims described “the basic concept of hedging, or protecting against risk.” Id., at 611. The Court explained that “ ‘[h]edging is a fundamental economic practice long prevalent in our system of commerce and taught in any introductory finance class.’ ” Ibid. “The concept of hedging” as recited by the claims in suit was therefore a patent-ineligible “abstract idea, just like the algorithms at issue in Benson and Flook.” Ibid. It follows from our prior cases, and Bilski in particular, that the claims at issue here are directed to an abstract idea. Petitioner’s claims involve a method of exchanging financial obligations between two parties using a third-party intermediary to mitigate settlement risk. The intermediary creates and updates “shadow” records to reflect the value of each party’s actual accounts held at “exchange institutions,” thereby permitting only those transactions for which the parties have sufficient resources. At the end of each day, the intermediary issues irrevocable instructions to the exchange institutions to carry out the permitted transactions. On their face, the claims before us are drawn to the concept of intermediated settlement, i.e., the use of a third party to mitigate settlement risk. Like the risk hedging in Bilski, the concept of intermediated settlement is “ ‘a fundamental economic practice long prevalent in our system of commerce.’ ” Ibid.; see, e.g., Emery, Speculation on the Stock and Produce Exchanges of the United States, in 7 Studies in History, Economics and Public Law 283, 346–356 (1896) (discussing the use of a “clearing-house” as an intermediary to reduce settlement risk). The use of a third-party intermediary (or “clearing house”) is also a building block of the modern economy. See, e.g., Yadav, The Problematic Case of Clearinghouses in Complex Markets, 101 Geo. L. J. 387, 406–412 (2013); J. Hull, Risk Management and Financial Institutions 103–104 (3d ed. 2012). Thus, intermediated settlement, like hedging, is an “abstract idea” beyond the scope of §101. Petitioner acknowledges that its claims describe intermediated settlement, see Brief for Petitioner 4, but rejects the conclusion that its claims recite an “abstract idea.” Drawing on the presence of mathematical formulas in some of our abstract-ideas precedents, petitioner contends that the abstract-ideas category is confined to “preexisting, fundamental truth[s]” that “ ‘exis[t ] in principle apart from any human action.’ ” Id., at 23, 26 (quoting Mayo, 566 U. S., at ___ (slip op., at 8)). Bilski belies petitioner’s assertion. The concept of risk hedging we identified as an abstract idea in that case cannot be described as a “preexisting, fundamental truth.” The patent in Bilski simply involved a “series of steps instructing how to hedge risk.” 561 U. S., at 599. Al-though hedging is a longstanding commercial practice, id., at 599, it is a method of organizing human activity, not a “truth” about the natural world “ ‘that has always existed,’ ” Brief for Petitioner 22 (quoting Flook, supra, at 593, n. 15). One of the claims in Bilski reduced hedging to a mathematical formula, but the Court did not assign any special significance to that fact, much less the sort of talismanic significance petitioner claims. Instead, the Court grounded its conclusion that all of the claims at issue were abstract ideas in the understanding that risk hedging was a “ ‘fundamental economic practice.’ ” 561 U. S., at 611. In any event, we need not labor to delimit the precise contours of the “abstract ideas” category in this case. It is enough to recognize that there is no meaningful distinction between the concept of risk hedging in Bilski and the concept of intermediated settlement at issue here. Both are squarely within the realm of “abstract ideas” as we have used that term. B Because the claims at issue are directed to the abstract idea of intermediated settlement, we turn to the second step in Mayo’s framework. We conclude that the method claims, which merely require generic computer implementation, fail to transform that abstract idea into a patent-eligible invention. 1 At Mayo step two, we must examine the elements of the claim to determine whether it contains an “ ‘inventive concept’ ” sufficient to “transform” the claimed abstract idea into a patent-eligible application. 566 U. S., at ___, ___ (slip op., at 3, 11). A claim that recites an abstract idea must include “additional features” to ensure “that the [claim] is more than a drafting effort designed to monopolize the [abstract idea].” Id., at ___ (slip op., at 8–9). Mayo made clear that transformation into a patent-eligible application requires “more than simply stat[ing] the [abstract idea] while adding the words ‘apply it.’ ” Id., at ___ (slip op., at 3). Mayo itself is instructive. The patents at issue in Mayo claimed a method for measuring metabolites in the bloodstream in order to calibrate the appropriate dosage of thiopurine drugs in the treatment of autoimmune dis- eases. Id., at ___ (slip op., at 4–6). The respondent in that case contended that the claimed method was a patent-eligible application of natural laws that describe the relationship between the concentration of certain metabolites and the likelihood that the drug dosage will be harmful or ineffective. But methods for determining metabolite levels were already “well known in the art,” and the process at issue amounted to “nothing significantly more than an instruction to doctors to apply the applicable laws when treating their patients.” Id., at ___ (slip op., at 10). “Simply appending conventional steps, specified at a high level of generality,” was not “enough” to supply an “ ‘inventive concept.’ ” Id., at ___, ___, ___ (slip op., at 14, 8, 3). The introduction of a computer into the claims does not alter the analysis at Mayo step two. In Benson, for example, we considered a patent that claimed an algorithm implemented on “a general-purpose digital computer.” 409 U. S., at 64. Because the algorithm was an abstract idea, see supra, at 8, the claim had to supply a “ ‘new and use-ful’ ” application of the idea in order to be patent eligible. 409 U. S., at 67. But the computer implementation did not supply the necessary inventive concept; the process could be “carried out in existing computers long in use.” Ibid. We accordingly “held that simply implementing a mathematical principle on a physical machine, namely a computer, [i]s not a patentable application of that principle.” Mayo, supra, at ___ (slip op., at 16) (citing Benson, supra, at 64). Flook is to the same effect. There, we examined a computerized method for using a mathematical formula to adjust alarm limits for certain operating conditions (e.g., temperature and pressure) that could signal inefficiency or danger in a catalytic conversion process. 437 U. S., at 585–586. Once again, the formula itself was an abstract idea, see supra, at 8, and the computer implementation was purely conventional. 437 U. S., at 594 (noting that the “use of computers for ‘automatic monitoring-alarming’ ” was “well known”). In holding that the process was patent ineligible, we rejected the argument that “implement[ing] a principle in some specific fashion” will “automatically fal[l] within the patentable subject matter of §101.” Id., at 593. Thus, “Flook stands for the proposition that the prohibition against patenting abstract ideas cannot be circumvented by attempting to limit the use of [the idea] to a particular technological environment.” Bilski, 561 U. S., at 610–611 (internal quotation marks omitted). In Diehr, 450 U. S. 175 , by contrast, we held that a computer-implemented process for curing rubber was patent eligible, but not because it involved a computer. The claim employed a “well-known” mathematical equation, but it used that equation in a process designed to solve a technological problem in “conventional industry practice.” Id., at 177, 178. The invention in Diehr used a “thermocouple” to record constant temperature measure-ments inside the rubber mold—something “the industry ha[d] not been able to obtain.” Id., at 178, and n. 3. The temperature measurements were then fed into a computer, which repeatedly recalculated the remaining cure time by using the mathematical equation. Id., at 178–179. These additional steps, we recently explained, “transformed the process into an inventive application of the formula.” Mayo, supra, at ___ (slip op., at 12). In other words, the claims in Diehr were patent eligible because they improved an existing technological process, not because they were implemented on a computer. These cases demonstrate that the mere recitation of a generic computer cannot transform a patent-ineligible abstract idea into a patent-eligible invention. Stating an abstract idea “while adding the words ‘apply it’ ” is not enough for patent eligibility. Mayo, supra, at ___ (slip op., at 3). Nor is limiting the use of an abstract idea “ ‘to a particular technological environment.’ ” Bilski, supra, at 610–611. Stating an abstract idea while adding the words “apply it with a computer” simply combines those two steps, with the same deficient result. Thus, if a patent’s recitation of a computer amounts to a mere instruction to “implemen[t]” an abstract idea “on . . . a computer,” Mayo, supra, at ___ (slip op., at 16), that addition cannot impart patent eligibility. This conclusion accords with the pre-emption concern that undergirds our §101 jurisprudence. Given the ubiquity of computers, see 717 F. 3d, at 1286 (Lourie, J., concurring), wholly generic computer implementation is not generally the sort of “additional featur[e]” that provides any “practical assurance that the process is more than a drafting effort designed to monopolize the [abstract idea] itself.” Mayo, 566 U. S., at ___ (slip op., at 8–9). The fact that a computer “necessarily exist[s] in the physical, rather than purely conceptual, realm,” Brief for Petitioner 39, is beside the point. There is no dispute that a computer is a tangible system (in §101 terms, a “machine”), or that many computer-implemented claims are formally addressed to patent-eligible subject matter. But if that were the end of the §101 inquiry, an applicant could claim any principle of the physical or social sciences by reciting a computer system configured to implement the relevant concept. Such a result would make the determination of patent eligibility “depend simply on the draftsman’s art,” Flook, supra, at 593, thereby eviscerating the rule that “ ‘[l]aws of nature, natural phenomena, and abstract ideas are not patentable,’ ” Myriad, 569 U. S., at ___ (slip op., at 11). 2 The representative method claim in this case recites the following steps: (1) “creating” shadow records for each counterparty to a transaction; (2) “obtaining” start-of-day balances based on the parties’ real-world accounts at exchange institutions; (3) “adjusting” the shadow records as transactions are entered, allowing only those transactions for which the parties have sufficient resources; and (4) issuing irrevocable end-of-day instructions to the exchange institutions to carry out the permitted transactions. See n. 2, supra. Petitioner principally contends that the claims are patent eligible because these steps “require a substantial and meaningful role for the computer.” Brief for Petitioner 48. As stipulated, the claimed method requires the use of a computer to create electronic records, track multiple transactions, and issue simultaneous instructions; in other words, “[t]he computer is itself the intermediary.” Ibid. (emphasis deleted). In light of the foregoing, see supra, at 11–14, the relevant question is whether the claims here do more than simply instruct the practitioner to implement the abstract idea of intermediated settlement on a generic computer. They do not. Taking the claim elements separately, the function performed by the computer at each step of the process is “[p]urely conventional.” Mayo, supra, at ___ (slip op., at 10) (internal quotation marks omitted). Using a computer to create and maintain “shadow” accounts amounts to electronic recordkeeping—one of the most basic functions of a computer. See, e.g., Benson, 409 U. S., at 65 (noting that a computer “operates . . . upon both new and previously stored data”). The same is true with respect to the use of a computer to obtain data, adjust account balances, and issue automated instructions; all of these computer functions are “well-understood, routine, conventional activit[ies]” previously known to the industry. Mayo, 566 U. S., at ___ (slip op., at 4). In short, each step does no more than require a generic computer to perform generic computer functions. Considered “as an ordered combination,” the computer components of petitioner’s method “ad[d] nothing . . . that is not already present when the steps are considered separately.” Id., at ___ (slip op., at 10). Viewed as a whole, petitioner’s method claims simply recite the concept of intermediated settlement as performed by a generic computer. See 717 F. 3d, at 1286 (Lourie, J., concurring) (noting that the representative method claim “lacks any express language to define the computer’s participation”). The method claims do not, for example, purport to improve the functioning of the computer itself. See ibid. (“There is no specific or limiting recitation of . . . improved computer technology . . .”); Brief for United States as Amicus Curiae 28–30. Nor do they effect an improvement in any other technology or technical field. See, e.g., Diehr, 450 U. S., at 177–178. Instead, the claims at issue amount to “nothing significantly more” than an instruction to apply the abstract idea of intermediated settlement using some unspecified, generic computer. Mayo, 566 U. S., at ___ (slip op., at 10). Under our precedents, that is not “enough” to transform an abstract idea into a patent-eligible invention. Id., at ___ (slip op., at 8). C Petitioner’s claims to a computer system and a computer-readable medium fail for substantially the same rea- sons. Petitioner conceded below that its media claims rise or fall with its method claims. En Banc Response Brief for Defendant-Appellant in No. 11–1301 (CA Fed.) p. 50, n. 3. As to its system claims, petitioner emphasizes that those claims recite “specific hardware” configured to perform “specific computerized functions.” Brief for Petitioner 53. But what petitioner characterizes as specific hardware—a “data processing system” with a “communications controller” and “data storage unit,” for example, see App. 954, 958, 1257—is purely functional and generic. Nearly every computer will include a “communications controller” and “data storage unit” capable of performing the basic calculation, storage, and transmission functions required by the method claims. See 717 F. 3d, at 1290 (Lourie, J., concurring). As a result, none of the hardware recited by the system claims “offers a meaningful limitation beyond generally linking ‘the use of the [method] to a particular technological environment,’ that is, implementation via computers.” Id., at 1291 (quoting Bilski, 561 U. S., at 610–611). Put another way, the system claims are no different from the method claims in substance. The method claims recite the abstract idea implemented on a generic computer; the system claims recite a handful of generic computer components configured to implement the same idea. This Court has long “warn[ed] . . . against” interpreting §101 “in ways that make patent eligibility ‘depend simply on the draftsman’s art.’ ” Mayo, supra, at ___ (slip op., at 3) (quoting Flook, 437 U. S., at 593); see id., at 590 (“The concept of patentable subject matter under §101 is not ‘like a nose of wax which may be turned and twisted in any direction . . .’ ”). Holding that the system claims are patent eligible would have exactly that result. Because petitioner’s system and media claims add nothing of substance to the underlying abstract idea, we hold that they too are patent ineligible under §101. * * * For the foregoing reasons, the judgment of the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit is affirmed. It is so ordered. Notes 1 The patents at issue are United States Patent Nos. 5,970,479 (the ’479 patent), 6,912,510, 7,149,720, and 7,725,375. 2 The parties agree that claim 33 of the ’479 patent is representative of the method claims. Claim 33 recites: “A method of exchanging obligations as between parties, each party holding a credit record and a debit record with an exchange institution, the credit records and debit records for exchange of predetermined obligations, the method comprising the steps of: “(a) creating a shadow credit record and a shadow debit record for each stakeholder party to be held independently by a supervisory institution from the exchange institutions; “(b) obtaining from each exchange institution a start-of-day balance for each shadow credit record and shadow debit record; “(c) for every transaction resulting in an exchange obligation, the supervisory institution adjusting each respective party’s shadow credit record or shadow debit record, allowing only these transactions that do not result in the value of the shadow debit record being less than the value of the shadow credit record at any time, each said adjustment taking place in chronological order, and “(d) at the end-of-day, the supervisory institution instructing on[e] of the exchange institutions to exchange credits or debits to the credit record and debit record of the respective parties in accordance with the adjustments of the said permitted transactions, the credits and debits being irrevocable, time invariant obligations placed on the exchange institutions.” App. 383–384. 3 Because the approach we made explicit in Mayo considers all claim elements, both individually and in combination, it is consistent with the general rule that patent claims “must be considered as a whole.” Diamond v. Diehr, ; see Parker v. Flook, (“Our approach . . . is . . . not at all inconsistent with the view that a patent claim must be considered as a whole”).

573.US.134

After petitioner, Republic of Argentina, defaulted on its external debt, respondent, NML Capital, Ltd. (NML), one of Argentina’s bondholders, prevailed in 11 debt-collection actions that it brought against Argentina in the Southern District of New York. In aid of executing the judgments, NML sought discovery of Argentina’s property, serving subpoenas on two nonparty banks for records relating to Argentina’s global financial transactions. The District Court granted NML’s motions to compel compliance. The Second Circuit affirmed, rejecting Argentina’s argument that the District Court’s order transgressed the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act of 1976 (FSIA or Act). Held: No provision in the FSIA immunizes a foreign-sovereign judgment debtor from postjudgment discovery of information concerning its extraterritorial assets. Pp. 4–12. (a) This Court assumes without deciding that, in the ordinary case, a district court would have the discretion under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 69(a)(2) to permit discovery of third-party information bearing on a judgment debtor’s extraterritorial assets. Pp. 4–5. (b) The FSIA replaced an executive-driven, factor-intensive, loosely common-law-based immunity regime with “a comprehensive framework for resolving any claim of sovereign immunity.” Republic of Austria v. Altmann, 541 U.S. 677, 699. Henceforth, any sort of immunity defense made by a foreign sovereign in an American court must stand or fall on the Act’s text. The Act confers on foreign states two kinds of immunity. The first, jurisdictional immunity ( 28 U. S. C. §1604), was waived here. The second, execution immunity, generally shields “property in the United States of a foreign state” from attachment, arrest, and execution. §§1609, 1610. See also §1611(a), (b)(1), (b)(2). The Act has no third provision forbidding or limiting discovery in aid of execution of a foreign-sovereign judgment debtor’s assets. Far from containing the “plain statement” necessary to preclude application of federal discovery rules, Société Nationale Industrielle Aérospatiale v. United States Dist. Court for Southern Dist. of Iowa, 482 U.S. 522, 539, the Act says not a word about postjudgment discovery in aid of execution. Argentina’s arguments are unavailing. Even if Argentina were correct that §1609 execution immunity implies coextensive discovery-in-aid-of-execution immunity, the latter would not shield from discovery a foreign sovereign’s extraterritorial assets, since the text of §1609 immunizes only foreign-state property “in the United States.” The prospect that NML’s general request for information about Argentina’s worldwide assets may turn up information about property that Argentina regards as immune does not mean that NML cannot pursue discovery of it. Pp. 5–10. 695 F.3d 201, affirmed. Scalia, J., delivered the opinion of the Court, in which Roberts, C. J., and Kennedy, Thomas, Breyer, Alito, and Kagan, JJ., joined. Ginsburg, J., filed a dissenting opinion. Sotomayor, J., took no part in the decision of the case.

We must decide whether the Foreign Sovereign Immu-nities Act of 1976 (FSIA or Act), 28 U. S. C. §§1330, 1602 et seq., limits the scope of discovery available to a judgment creditor in a federal postjudgment execution proceeding against a foreign sovereign. I. Background In 2001, petitioner, Republic of Argentina, defaulted on its external debt. In 2005 and 2010, it restructured most of that debt by offering creditors new securities (with less favorable terms) to swap out for the defaulted ones. Most bondholders went along. Respondent, NML Capital, Ltd. (NML), among others, did not. NML brought 11 actions against Argentina in the Southern District of New York to collect on its debt, and prevailed in every one.[1] It is owed around $2.5 billion, which Argentina has not paid. Having been unable to collect on its judgments from Argentina, NML has attempted to execute them against Argentina’s property. That postjudgment litigation “has involved lengthy attachment proceedings before the district court and multiple appeals.” EM Ltd. v. Republic of Argentina, 695 F. 3d 201, 203, and n. 2 (CA2 2012) (referring the reader to prior opinions “[f]or additional background on Argentina’s default and the resulting litigation”). Since 2003, NML has pursued discovery of Argentina’s property. In 2010, “ ‘[i]n order to locate Argentina’s assets and accounts, learn how Argentina moves its assets through New York and around the world, and accurately identify the places and times when those assets might be subject to attachment and execution (whether under [United States law] or the law of foreign jurisdictions),’ ” id., at 203 (quoting NML brief), NML served subpoenas on two nonparty banks, Bank of America (BOA) and Banco de la Nación Argentina (BNA), an Argentinian bank with a branch in New York City. For the most part, the two subpoenas target the same kinds of information: documents relating to accounts maintained by or on behalf of Argentina, documents identifying the opening and closing dates of Argentina’s accounts, current balances, transaction histories, records of electronic fund transfers, debts owed by the bank to Argentina, transfers in and out of Argentina’s accounts, and information about transferors and transferees. Argentina, joined by BOA, moved to quash the BOA subpoena. NML moved to compel compliance but, before the court ruled, agreed to narrow its subpoenas by excluding the names of some Argentine officials from the ini-tial electronic-fund-transfer message search. NML also agreed to treat as confidential any documents that the banks so designated. The District Court denied the motion to quash and granted the motions to compel. Approving the subpoenas in principle, it concluded that extraterritorial asset discovery did not offend Argentina’s sovereign immunity, and it reaffirmed that it would serve as a “clearinghouse for information” in NML’s efforts to find and attach Argentina’s assets. App. to Pet. for Cert. 31. But the court made clear that it expected the parties to negotiate further over specific production requests, which, the court said, must include “some reasonable definition of the information being sought.” Id., at 32. There was no point, for instance, in “getting information about something that might lead to attachment in Argentina because that would be useless information,” since no Argentinian court would allow attachment. Ibid. “Thus, the district court . . . sought to limit the subpoenas to discovery that was reasonably calculated to lead to attachable property.” 695 F. 3d, at 204–205. NML and BOA later negotiated additional changes to the BOA subpoena. NML expressed its willingness to narrow its requests from BNA as well, but BNA neither engaged in negotiation nor complied with the subpoena. Only Argentina appealed, arguing that the court’s order transgressed the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act because it permitted discovery of Argentina’s extraterritorial assets. The Second Circuit affirmed, holding that “because the Discovery Order involves discovery, not attachment of sovereign property, and because it is directed at third-party banks, not at Argentina itself, Argentina’s sovereign immunity is not infringed.” Id., at 205. We granted certiorari. 571 U. S. ___ (2014). II. Analysis A The rules governing discovery in postjudgment execution proceedings are quite permissive. Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 69(a)(2) states that, “[i]n aid of the judgment or execution, the judgment creditor . . . may obtain discovery from any person—including the judgment debtor—as provided in the rules or by the procedure of thestate where the court is located.” See 12 C. Wright, A. Miller, & R. Marcus, Federal Practice and Procedure §3014, p. 160 (2d ed. 1997) (hereinafter Wright & Miller) (court “may use the discovery devices provided in [the federal rules] or may obtain discovery in the manner provided by the practice of the state in which the district court is held”). The general rule in the federal system is that, subject to the district court’s discretion, “[p]arties may obtain discovery regarding any nonprivileged matter that is relevant to any party’s claim or defense.” Fed. Rule Civ. Proc. 26(b)(1). And New York law entitles judgment creditors to discover “all matter relevant to the satisfaction of [a] judgment,” N. Y. Civ. Prac. Law Ann. §5223 (West 1997), permitting “investigation [of] any person shown to have any light to shed on the subject of the judgment debtor’s assets or their whereabouts,” D. Siegel, New York Practice §509, p. 891 (5th ed. 2011). The meaning of those rules was much discussed at oral argument. What if the assets targeted by the discovery request are beyond the jurisdictional reach of the court to which the request is made? May the court nonetheless permit discovery so long as the judgment creditor shows that the assets are recoverable under the laws of the jurisdictions in which they reside, whether that be Florida or France? We need not take up those issues today, since Argentina has not put them in contention. In the Court of Appeals, Argentina’s only asserted ground for objection to the subpoenas was the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act. See 695 F. 3d, at 208 (“Argentina argues . . . that the normally broad scope of discovery in aid of execution is limited in this case by principles of sovereign immunity”). And Argentina’s petition for writ of certiorari asked us to decide only whether that Act “imposes [a] limit on a United States court’s authority to order blanket post-judgment execution discovery on the assets of a foreign state used for any activity anywhere in the world.” Pet. for Cert. 14. Plainly, then, this is not a case about the breadth of Rule 69(a)(2).[2] We thus assume without deciding that, as the Government conceded at argument, Tr. of Oral Arg. 24, and as the Second Circuit concluded below, “in a run-of-the-mill execution proceeding . . . the district court would have been within its discretion to order the discovery from third-party banks about the judgment debtor’s assets located outside the United States.” 695 F. 3d, at 208. The single, narrow question before us is whether the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act specifies a different rule when the judgment debtor is a foreign state. B To understand the effect of the Act, one must know something about the regime it replaced. Foreign sovereign immunity is, and always has been, “a matter of grace and comity on the part of the United States, and not a restriction imposed by the Constitution.” Verlinden B. V. v. Central Bank of Nigeria, 461 U. S. 480, 486 (1983) . Accordingly, this Court’s practice has been to “defe[r] to the decisions of the political branches” about whether and when to exercise judicial power over foreign states. Ibid. For the better part of the last two centuries, the political branch making the determination was the Executive, which typically requested immunity in all suits against friendly foreign states. Id., at 486–487. But then, in 1952, the State Department embraced (in the so-called Tate Letter) the “restrictive” theory of sovereign immunity, which holds that immunity shields only a foreign sovereign’s public, noncommercial acts. Id., at 487, and n. 9. The Tate Letter “thr[ew] immunity determinations into some disarray,” since “political considerations sometimes led the Department to file suggestions of immunity in cases where immunity would not have been available under the restrictive theory.” Republic of Austria v. Altmann, 541 U. S. 677, 690 (2004) (internal quotation marks omitted). Further muddling matters, when in particular cases the State Department did not suggest immunity, courts made immunity determinations “generally by reference to prior State Department decisions.” Verlinden, 461 U. S., at 487. Hence it was that “sovereign immunity decisions were [being] made in two different branches, subject to a variety of factors, sometimes including diplomatic considerations. Not surprisingly, the governing standards were neither clear nor uniformly applied.” Id., at 488. Congress abated the bedlam in 1976, replacing the old executive-driven, factor-intensive, loosely common-law-based immunity regime with the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act’s “comprehensive set of legal standards governing claims of immunity in every civil action against a foreign state.” Ibid. The key word there—which goes a long way toward deciding this case—is comprehensive. We have used that term often and advisedly to describe the Act’s sweep: “Congress established [in the FSIA] a comprehensive framework for resolving any claim of sovereign immunity.” Altman, 541 U. S., at 699. The Act “compre-hensively regulat[es] the amenability of foreign nations to suit in the United States.” Verlinden, supra, at 493. This means that “[a]fter the enactment of the FSIA, the Act—and not the pre-existing common law—indisputably governs the determination of whether a foreign state is entitled to sovereign immunity.” Samantar v. Yousuf, 560 U. S. 305, 313 (2010) . As the Act itself instructs, “[c]laims of foreign states to immunity should henceforth be decided by courts . . . in conformity with the principles set forth in this [Act].” 28 U. S. C. §1602 (emphasis added). Thus, any sort of immunity defense made by a foreign sovereign in an American court must stand on the Act’s text. Or it must fall. The text of the Act confers on foreign states two kinds of immunity. First and most significant, “a foreign state shall be immune from the jurisdiction of the courts of the United States . . . except as provided in sections 1605 to 1607.” §1604. That provision is of no help to Argentina here: A foreign state may waive jurisdictional immunity, §1605(a)(1), and in this case Argentina did so, see 695 F. 3d, at 203. Consequently, the Act makes Argentina “liable in the same manner and to the same extent as a private individual under like circumstances.” §1606. The Act’s second immunity-conferring provision states that “the property in the United States of a foreign state shall be immune from attachment[,] arrest[,] and execution except as provided in sections 1610 and 1611 of this chapter.” §1609. The exceptions to this immunity defense (we will call it “execution immunity”) are narrower. “The property in the United States of a foreign state” is subject to attachment, arrest, or execution if (1) it is “used for a commercial activity in the United States,” §1610(a), and (2) some other enumerated exception to immunity applies, such as the one allowing for waiver, see §1610(a)(1)–(7). The Act goes on to confer a more robust execution immu-nity on designated international-organization property, §1611(a), property of a foreign central bank, §1611(b)(1), and “property of a foreign state . . . [that] is, or is intended to be, used in connection with a military activity” and is either “of a military character” or “under the control of a military authority or defense agency,” §1611(b)(2). That is the last of the Act’s immunity-granting sections. There is no third provision forbidding or limiting discovery in aid of execution of a foreign-sovereign judgment debtor’s assets. Argentina concedes that no part of the Act “expressly address[es] [postjudgment] discovery.” Brief for Petitioner 22. Quite right. The Act speaks of discovery only once, in an subsection requiring courts to stay discovery requests directed to the United States that would interfere with criminal or national-security matters, §1605(g)(1). And that section explicitly suspends certain Federal Rules of Civil Procedure when such a stay is entered, see §1605(g)(4). Elsewhere, it is clear when the Act’s provisions specifically applicable to suits against sovereigns displace their general federal-rule counterparts. See, e.g., §1608(d). Far from containing the “plain statement” necessary to preclude application of federal discovery rules, Société Nationale Industrielle Aérospatiale v. United States Dist. Court for Southern Dist. of Iowa, 482 U. S. 522, 539 (1987) , the Act says not a word on the subject.[3] Argentina would have us draw meaning from this silence. Its argument has several parts. First, it asserts that, before and after the Tate Letter, the State Department and American courts routinely accorded absolute execution immunity to foreign-state property. If a thing belonged to a foreign sovereign, then, no matter where it was found, it was immune from execution. And absolute immunity from execution necessarily entailed immunity from discovery in aid of execution. Second, by codifying execution immunity with only a small set of exceptions, Congress merely “partially lowered the previously unconditional barrier to post-judgment relief.” Brief for Petitioner 29. Because the Act gives “no indication that it was authorizing courts to inquire into state property beyond the court’s limited enforcement authority,” ibid., Argen-tina contends, discovery of assets that do not fall within an exception to execution immunity (plainly true of a foreign state’s extraterritorial assets) is forbidden. The argument founders at each step. To begin with, Argentina cites no case holding that, before the Act, a foreign state’s extraterritorial assets enjoyed absolute execution immunity in United States courts. No surprise there. Our courts generally lack authority in the first place to execute against property in other countries, so how could the question ever have arisen? See Wright & Miller §3013, at 156 (“[A] writ of execution . . . can be served anywhere within the state in which the district court is held”). More importantly, even if Argentina were right about the scope of the common-law execution-immunity rule, then it would be obvious that the terms of §1609 execution immunity are narrower, since the text of that provision immunizes only foreign-state property “in the United States.” So even if Argentina were correct that §1609 execution immunity implies coextensive discovery-in-aid-of-execution immunity, the latter would not shield from discovery a foreign sovereign’s extraterritorial assets. But what of foreign-state property that would enjoy execution immunity under the Act, such as Argentina’s diplomatic or military property? Argentina maintains that, if a judgment creditor could not ultimately execute a judgment against certain property, then it has no business pursuing discovery of information pertaining to that prop-erty. But the reason for these subpoenas is that NML does not yet know what property Argentina has and where it is, let alone whether it is executable under the relevant jurisdiction’s law. If, bizarrely, NML’s subpoenas had sought only “information that could not lead to executable assets in the United States or abroad,” then Argentina likely would be correct to say that the subpoenas were unenforceable—not because information about nonexecutable assets enjoys a penumbral “discovery immunity” under the Act, but because information that could not possibly lead to executable assets is simply not “relevant” to execution in the first place, Fed. Rule Civ. Proc. 26(b)(1); N. Y. Civ. Prac. Law Ann. §5223.[4] But of course that is not what the subpoenas seek. They ask for information about Argentina’s worldwide assets generally, so that NML can identify where Argentina may be holding property that is subject to execution. To be sure, that request is bound to turn up information about property that Argentina regards as immune. But NML may think the same property not immune. In which case, Argentina’s self-serving legal assertion will not automatically prevail; the District Court will have to settle the matter. * * * Today’s decision leaves open what Argentina thinks is a gap in the statute. Could the 1976 Congress really have meant not to protect foreign states from postjudgment discovery “clearinghouses”? The riddle is not ours to solve (if it can be solved at all). It is of course possible that, had Congress anticipated the rather unusual circumstances of this case (foreign sovereign waives immunity; foreign sovereign owes money under valid judgments; foreign sovereign does not pay and apparently has no executable assets in the United States), it would have added to the Act a sentence conferring categorical discovery-in-aid-of-execution immunity on a foreign state’s extraterritorial assets. Or, just as possible, it would have done no such thing. Either way, “[t]he question . . . is not what Congress ‘would have wanted’ but what Congress enacted in the FSIA.” Republic of Argentina v. Weltover, Inc., 504 U. S. 607, 618 (1992) .[5] Nonetheless, Argentina and the United States urge us to consider the worrisome international-relations consequences of siding with the lower court. Discovery orders as sweeping as this one, the Government warns, will cause “a substantial invasion of [foreign states’] sovereignty,” Brief for United States as Amicus Curiae 18, and will “[u]ndermin[e] international comity,” id., at 19. Worse, such orders might provoke “reciprocal adverse treatment of the United States in foreign courts,” id., at 20, and will “threaten harm to the United States’ foreign relations more generally,” id., at 21. These apprehensions are better directed to that branch of government with author-ity to amend the Act—which, as it happens, is the same branch that forced our retirement from the immunity-by-factor-balancing business nearly 40 years ago.[6] The judgment of the Court of Appeals is affirmed. It is so ordered. Justice Sotomayor took no part in the decision of this case.Notes 1 The District Court’s jurisdiction rested on Argentina’s broad waiver of sovereign immunity memorialized in its bond indenture agreement, which states: “To the extent that [Argentina] or any of its revenues, assets or properties shall be entitled . . . to any immunity from suit . . . from attachment prior to judgment . . . from execution of a judgment or from any other legal or judicial process or remedy, . . . [Argentina] has irrevocably agreed not to claim and has irrevocably waived such immunity to the fullest extent permitted by the laws of such jurisdiction (and consents generally for the purposes of the [FSIA] to the giving of any relief or the issue of any process in connection with any Related Proceeding or Related Judgment) . . . .” App. 106–107. 2 On one of the final pages of its reply brief, Argentina makes for the first time the assertion (which it does not develop, and for which it cites no authority) that the scope of Rule 69 discovery in aid of execution is limited to assets upon which a United States court can execute. Reply Brief 19. We will not revive a forfeited argument simply because the petitioner gestures toward it in its reply brief. 3 Argentina and the United States suggest that, under the terms of Rule 69 itself, the Act trumps the federal rules, since Rule 69(a)(1) states that “a federal statute governs to the extent it applies.” But, since the Act does not contain implicit discovery-immunity protections, it does not “apply” (in the relevant sense) at all. 4 The dissent apparently agrees that the Act has nothing to say about the scope of postjudgment discovery of a foreign sovereign’s extraterritorial assets. It also apparently agrees that the rules limit discovery to matters relevant to execution. Our agreement ends there. The dissent goes on to assert that, unless a judgment creditor up front that all of the information it seeks is relevant to execution under the laws of all foreign jurisdictions, discovery of information concerning extraterritorial assets is limited to that which the Act makes relevant to execution . , at 2 (opinion of , J.). We can find no basis in the Act or the rules for that position. 5 NML also argues that, even if Argentina had a claim to immunity from postjudgment discovery, it waived it in its bond indenture agreement, see n. 1, . The Second Circuit did not address this argument. Nor do we. 6 Although this appeal concerns only the meaning of the Act, we have no reason to doubt that, as NML concedes, “other sources of law” ordinarily will bear on the propriety of discovery requests of this nature and scope, such as “settled doctrines of privilege and the discretionary determination by the district court whether the discovery is warranted, which may appropriately consider comity interests and the burden that the discovery might cause to the foreign state.” Brief for Respondent 24–25 (quoting v. , –544, and n. 28 (1987)).

571.US.49

Petitioner Atlantic Marine Construction Co., a Virginia corporation, entered into a subcontract with respondent J-Crew Management, Inc., a Texas corporation, for work on a construction project. The subcontract included a forum-selection clause, which stated that all disputes between the parties would be litigated in Virginia. When a dispute arose, however, J-Crew filed suit in the Western District of Texas. Atlantic Marine moved to dismiss, arguing that the forum-selection clause rendered venue “wrong” under 28 U. S. C. §1406(a) and “improper” under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 12(b)(3). In the alternative, Atlantic Marine moved to transfer the case to the Eastern District of Virginia under 28 U. S. C. §1404(a). The District Court denied both motions. It concluded that §1404(a) is the exclusive mechanism for enforcing a forum-selection clause that points to another federal forum; that Atlantic Marine bore the burden of establishing that a transfer would be appropriate under §1404(a); and that the court would consider both public- and private-interest factors, only one of which was the forum-selection clause. After weighing those factors, the court held that Atlantic Marine had not carried its burden. The Fifth Circuit denied Atlantic Marine’s petition for a writ of mandamus directing the District Court to dismiss the case under §1406(a) or to transfer it to the Eastern District of Virginia under §1404(a). The court agreed with the District Court that §1404(a) is the exclusive mechanism for enforcing a forum-selection clause that points to another federal forum; that dismissal under Rule 12(b)(3) would be the correct mechanism for enforcing a forum-selection clause that pointed to a nonfederal forum; and that the District Court had not abused its discretion in refusing to transfer the case after conducting the balance-of-interests analysis required by §1404(a). Held: 1. A forum-selection clause may be enforced by a motion to transfer under §1404(a), which provides that “[f]or the convenience of parties and witnesses, in the interest of justice, a district court may transfer any civil action to any other district or division where it might have been brought or to any district or division to which all parties have consented.” Pp. 4–11. (a) Section 1406(a) and Rule 12(b)(3) allow dismissal only when venue is “wrong” or “improper.” Whether venue is “wrong” or “improper” depends exclusively on whether the court in which the case was brought satisfies the requirements of federal venue laws. Title 28 U. S. C. §1391, which governs venue generally, states that “[e]xcept as otherwise provided by law . . . this section shall govern the venue of all civil actions brought in” federal district courts. §1391(a)(1). It then defines districts in which venue is proper. See §1391(b). If a case falls within one of §1391(b)’s districts, venue is proper; if it does not, venue is improper, and the case must be dismissed or transferred under §1406(a). Whether the parties’ contract contains a forum-selection clause has no bearing on whether a case falls into one of the specified districts. This conclusion is confirmed by the structure of the federal venue provisions, which reflects Congress’ intent that venue should always lie in some federal court whenever federal courts have personal ju- risdiction over the defendant. See §1391(b)(3). The conclusion also follows from this Court’s decisions construing the federal venue statutes. See Van Dusen v. Barrack, 376 U.S. 612; Stewart Organization, Inc. v. Ricoh Corp., 487 U.S. 22. Pp. 4–8. (b) Although a forum-selection clause does not render venue in a court “wrong” or “improper” under §1406(a) or Rule 12(b)(3), the clause may be enforced through a motion to transfer under §1404(a), which permits transfer to any other district where venue is proper or to any district to which the parties have agreed by contract or stipulation. Section 1404(a), however, governs transfer only within the federal court system. When a forum-selection clause points to a state or foreign forum, the clause may be enforced through the doctrine of forum non conveniens. Section 1404(a) is a codification of that doctrine for the subset of cases in which the transferee forum is another federal court. Sinochem Int’l Co. v. Malaysia Int’l Shipping Corp., 549 U.S. 422. For all other cases, parties may still invoke the residual forum non conveniens doctrine. See id., at 430. Pp. 8–10. (c) The Court declines to consider whether a defendant in a breach-of-contract action could obtain dismissal under Rule 12(b)(6) if the plaintiff files suit in a district other than the one specified in a forum-selection clause. Petitioner did not file a motion to dismiss un- der Rule 12(b)(6), and the parties did not brief the Rule’s application. Pp. 10–11. 2. When a defendant files a §1404(a) motion, a district court should transfer the case unless extraordinary circumstances unrelated to the convenience of the parties clearly disfavor a transfer. No such exceptional factors appear to be present in this case. Pp. 11–17. (a) Normally, a district court considering a §1404(a) motion must evaluate both the private interests of the parties and public-interest considerations. But when the parties’ contract contains a valid forum-selection clause, that clause “represents [their] agreement as to the most proper forum,” Stewart, 487 U. S., at 31, and should be “given controlling weight in all but the most exceptional cases,” id., at 33 (Kennedy, J., concurring). The presence of a valid forum-selection clause requires district courts to adjust their usual §1404(a) analysis in three ways. First, the plaintiff’s choice of forum merits no weight, and the plaintiff, as the party defying the forum-selection clause, has the burden of establishing that transfer to the forum for which the parties bargained is unwarranted. Second, the court should not consider the parties’ private interests aside from those embodied in the forum-selection clause; it may consider only public interests. Because public-interest factors will rarely defeat a transfer motion, the practical result is that forum-selection clauses should control except in unusual cases. Third, when a party bound by a forum-selection clause flouts its contractual obligation and files suit in a different forum, a §1404(a) transfer of venue will not carry with it the original venue’s choice-of-law rules. See Van Dusen, supra, at 639. Pp. 12–16. (b) Here, the District Court’s application of §1404(a) did not comport with these principles. The court improperly placed the burden on Atlantic Marine to prove that transfer to the parties’ contractually preselected forum was appropriate instead of requiring J-Crew, the party acting in violation of the forum-selection clause, to show that public-interest factors overwhelmingly disfavored a transfer. It also erred in giving weight to the parties’ private interests outside those expressed in the forum-selection clause. And its holding that public interests favored keeping the case in Texas because Texas contract law is more familiar to federal judges in Texas than to those in Virginia rested in part on the District Court’s mistaken belief that the Virginia federal court would have been required to apply Texas’ choice-of-law rules instead of Virginia’s. Pp. 16–17. 701 F.3d 736, reversed and remanded. Alito, J., delivered the opinion for a unanimous Court.

The question in this case concerns the procedure that is available for a defendant in a civil case who seeks to enforce a forum-selection clause. We reject petitioner’s argument that such a clause may be enforced by a motion to dismiss under 28 U. S. C. §1406(a) or Rule 12(b)(3) of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure. Instead, a forum-selection clause may be enforced by a motion to transfer under §1404(a) (2006 ed., Supp. V), which provides that “[f ]or the convenience of parties and witnesses, in the interest of justice, a district court may transfer any civil action to any other district or division where it might have been brought or to any district or division to which all parties have consented.” When a defendant files such a motion, we conclude, a district court should transfer the case unless extraordinary circumstances unrelated to the convenience of the parties clearly disfavor a transfer. In the present case, both the District Court and the Court of Appeals misunderstood the standards to be applied in adjudicating a §1404(a) motion in a case involving a forum-selection clause, and we therefore reverse the decision below. I Petitioner Atlantic Marine Construction Co., a Virginia corporation with its principal place of business in Virginia, entered into a contract with the United States Army Corps of Engineers to construct a child-development center at Fort Hood in the Western District of Texas. Atlantic Marine then entered into a subcontract with respondent J-Crew Management, Inc., a Texas corporation, for work on the project. This subcontract included a forum-selection clause, which stated that all disputes between the parties “ ‘shall be litigated in the Circuit Court for the City of Norfolk, Virginia, or the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, Norfolk Division.’ ” In re Atlantic Marine Constr. Co., 701 F. 3d 736, 737–738 (CA5 2012). When a dispute about payment under the subcontract arose, however, J-Crew sued Atlantic Marine in the Western District of Texas, invoking that court’s diversity ju- risdiction. Atlantic Marine moved to dismiss the suit, arguing that the forum-selection clause rendered venue in the Western District of Texas “wrong” under §1406(a) and “improper” under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 12(b)(3). In the alternative, Atlantic Marine moved to transfer the case to the Eastern District of Virginia under §1404(a). J-Crew opposed these motions. The District Court denied both motions. It first concluded that §1404(a) is the exclusive mechanism for enforcing a forum-selection clause that points to another federal forum. The District Court then held that Atlantic Marine bore the burden of establishing that a transfer would be appropriate under §1404(a) and that the court would “consider a nonexhaustive and nonexclusive list of public and private interest factors,” of which the “forum-selection clause [was] only one such factor.” United States ex rel. J-Crew Management, Inc. v. Atlantic Marine Constr. Co., 2012 WL 8499879, *5 (WD Tex., Apr. 6, 2012). Giving particular weight to its findings that “compulsory process will not be available for the majority of J-Crew’s witnesses” and that there would be “significant expense for those willing witnesses,” the District Court held that Atlantic Marine had failed to carry its burden of showing that transfer “would be in the interest of justice or increase the convenience to the parties and their witnesses.” Id., at *7–*8; see also 701 F. 3d, at 743. Atlantic Marine petitioned the Court of Appeals for a writ of mandamus directing the District Court to dismiss the case under §1406(a) or to transfer the case to the East- ern District of Virginia under §1404(a). The Court of Appeals denied Atlantic Marine’s petition because Atlantic Marine had not established a “ ‘clear and indisputable’ ” right to relief. Id., at 738; see Cheney v. United States Dist. Court for D. C., 542 U. S. 367, 381 (2004) (mandamus “petitioner must satisfy the burden of showing that [his] right to issuance of the writ is clear and indisputable” (internal quotation marks omitted; brackets in original)). Relying on Stewart Organization, Inc. v. Ricoh Corp., 487 U. S. 22 (1988) , the Court of Appeals agreed with the District Court that §1404(a) is the exclusive mechanism for enforcing a forum-selection clause that points to another federal forum when venue is otherwise proper in the district where the case was brought. See 701 F. 3d, at 739–741. [ 1 ] The court stated, however, that if a forum-selection clause points to a nonfederal forum, dismissal under Rule 12(b)(3) would be the correct mechanism to enforce the clause because §1404(a) by its terms does not permit transfer to any tribunal other than another federal court. Id., at 740. The Court of Appeals then concluded that the District Court had not clearly abused its discretion in refusing to transfer the case after conducting the balance-of-interests analysis required by §1404(a). Id., at 741–743; see Cheney, supra, at 380 (permitting mandamus relief to correct “a clear abuse of discretion” (internal quotation marks omitted)). That was so even though there was no dispute that the forum-selection clause was valid. See 701 F. 3d, at 742; id., at 744 (concurring opinion). We granted certiorari. 569 U. S. ___ (2013). II Atlantic Marine contends that a party may enforce a forum-selection clause by seeking dismissal of the suit under §1406(a) and Rule 12(b)(3). We disagree. Section 1406(a) and Rule 12(b)(3) allow dismissal only when venue is “wrong” or “improper.” Whether venue is “wrong” or “improper” depends exclusively on whether the court in which the case was brought satisfies the requirements of federal venue laws, and those provisions say nothing about a forum-selection clause. A Section 1406(a) provides that “[t]he district court of a district in which is filed a case laying venue in the wrong division or district shall dismiss, or if it be in the interest of justice, transfer such case to any district or division in which it could have been brought.” Rule 12(b)(3) states that a party may move to dismiss a case for “improper venue.” These provisions therefore authorize dismissal only when venue is “wrong” or “improper” in the forum in which it was brought. This question—whether venue is “wrong” or “improper”—is generally governed by 28 U. S. C. §1391 (2006 ed., Supp. V). [ 2 ] That provision states that “[e]xcept as otherwise provided by law . . . this section shall govern the venue of all civil actions brought in district courts of the United States.” §1391(a)(1) (emphasis added). It further provides that “[a] civil action may be brought in—(1) a judicial district in which any defendant resides, if all defendants are residents of the State in which the district is located; (2) a judicial district in which a substantial part of the events or omissions giving rise to the claim occurred, or a substantial part of property that is the subject of the action is situated; or (3) if there is no district in which an action may otherwise be brought as provided in this section, any judicial district in which any defendant is subject to the court’s personal jurisdiction with respect to such action.” §1391(b). [ 3 ] When venue is challenged, the court must determine whether the case falls within one of the three categories set out in §1391(b). If it does, venue is proper; if it does not, venue is improper, and the case must be dismissed or transferred under §1406(a). Whether the parties entered into a contract containing a forum-selection clause has no bearing on whether a case falls into one of the categories of cases listed in §1391(b). As a result, a case filed in a district that falls within §1391 may not be dismissed under §1406(a) or Rule 12(b)(3). Petitioner’s contrary view improperly conflates the special statutory term “venue” and the word “forum.” It is certainly true that, in some contexts, the word “venue” is used synonymously with the term “forum,” but §1391 makes clear that venue in “all civil actions” must be determined in accordance with the criteria outlined in that section. That language cannot reasonably be read to allow judicial consideration of other, extrastatutory limitations on the forum in which a case may be brought. The structure of the federal venue provisions confirms that they alone define whether venue exists in a given forum. In particular, the venue statutes reflect Congress’ intent that venue should always lie in some federal court whenever federal courts have personal jurisdiction over the defendant. The first two paragraphs of §1391(b) define the preferred judicial districts for venue in a typical case, but the third paragraph provides a fallback option: If no other venue is proper, then venue will lie in “any judicial district in which any defendant is subject to the court’s personal jurisdiction” (emphasis added). The statute thereby ensures that so long as a federal court has personal jurisdiction over the defendant, venue will always lie somewhere. As we have previously noted, “Congress does not in general intend to create venue gaps, which take away with one hand what Congress has given by way of jurisdictional grant with the other.” Smith v. United States, 507 U. S. 197, 203 (1993) (internal quotation marks omitted). Yet petitioner’s approach would mean that in some number of cases—those in which the forum-selection clause points to a state or foreign court—venue would not lie in any federal district. That would not comport with the statute’s design, which contemplates that venue will always exist in some federal court. The conclusion that venue is proper so long as the requirements of §1391(b) are met, irrespective of any forum-selection clause, also follows from our prior decisions construing the federal venue statutes. In Van Dusen v. Barrack, 376 U. S. 612 (1964) , we considered the meaning of §1404(a), which authorizes a district court to “transfer any civil action to any other district or division where it might have been brought.” The question in Van Dusen was whether §1404(a) allows transfer to a district in which venue is proper under §1391 but in which the case could not have been pursued in light of substantive state-law limitations on the suit. See id., at 614–615. In holding that transfer is permissible in that context, we construed the phrase “where it might have been brought” to refer to “the federal laws delimiting the districts in which such an action ‘may be brought,’ ” id., at 624, noting that “the phrase ‘may be brought’ recurs at least 10 times” in §§1391–1406, id., at 622. We perceived “no valid reason for reading the words ‘where it might have been brought’ to narrow the range of permissible federal forums beyond those permitted by federal venue statutes.” Id., at 623. As we noted in Van Dusen, §1406(a) “shares the same statutory context” as §1404(a) and “contain[s] a similar phrase.” Id., at 621, n. 11. It instructs a court to transfer a case from the “wrong” district to a district “in which it could have been brought.” The most reasonable interpretation of that provision is that a district cannot be “wrong” if it is one in which the case could have been brought under §1391. Under the construction of the venue laws we adopted in Van Dusen, a “wrong” district is therefore a district other than “those districts in which Congress has provided by its venue statutes that the action ‘may be brought.’ ” Id., at 618 (emphasis added). If the federal venue statutes establish that suit may be brought in a particular district, a contractual bar cannot render venue in that district “wrong.” Our holding also finds support in Stewart, 487 U. S. 22 . As here, the parties in Stewart had included a forum-selection clause in the relevant contract, but the plaintiff filed suit in a different federal district. The defendant had initially moved to transfer the case or, in the alternative, to dismiss for improper venue under §1406(a), but by the time the case reached this Court, the defendant had abandoned its §1406(a) argument and sought only transfer under §1404(a). We rejected the plaintiff’s argument that state law governs a motion to transfer venue pursuant to a forum-selection clause, concluding instead that “federal law, specifically 28 U. S. C. §1404(a), governs the District Court’s decision whether to give effect to the parties’ forum-selection clause.” Id., at 32. We went on to explain that a “motion to transfer under §1404(a) . . . calls on the district court to weigh in the balance a number of case-specific factors” and that the “presence of a forum-selection clause . . . will be a significant factor that figures centrally in the district court’s calculus.” Id., at 29. The question whether venue in the original court was “wrong” under §1406(a) was not before the Court, but we wrote in a footnote that “[t]he parties do not dispute that the District Court properly denied the motion to dismiss the case for improper venue under 28 U. S. C. §1406(a) because respondent apparently does business in the Northern District of Alabama. See 28 U. S. C. §1391(c) (venue proper in judicial district in which corporation is doing business).” Id., at 28, n. 8. In other words, because §1391 made venue proper, venue could not be “wrong” for purposes of §1406(a). Though dictum, the Court’s observation supports the holding we reach today. A contrary view would all but drain Stewart of any significance. If a forum-selection clause rendered venue in all other federal courts “wrong,” a defendant could always obtain automatic dismissal or transfer under §1406(a) and would not have any reason to resort to §1404(a). Stewart’s holding would be limited to the presumably rare case in which the defendant inexplicably fails to file a motion under §1406(a) or Rule 12(b)(3). B Although a forum-selection clause does not render venue in a court “wrong” or “improper” within the meaning of §1406(a) or Rule 12(b)(3), the clause may be enforced through a motion to transfer under §1404(a). That provision states that “[f ]or the convenience of parties and witnesses, in the interest of justice, a district court may transfer any civil action to any other district or division where it might have been brought or to any district or division to which all parties have consented.” Unlike §1406(a), §1404(a) does not condition transfer on the ini- tial forum’s being “wrong.” And it permits transfer to any district where venue is also proper (i.e., “where [the case] might have been brought”) or to any other district to which the parties have agreed by contract or stipulation. Section 1404(a) therefore provides a mechanism for enforcement of forum-selection clauses that point to a particular federal district. And for the reasons we address in Part III, infra, a proper application of §1404(a) requires that a forum-selection clause be “given controlling weight in all but the most exceptional cases.” Stewart, supra, at 33 (Kennedy, J., concurring). Atlantic Marine argues that §1404(a) is not a suitable mechanism to enforce forum-selection clauses because that provision cannot provide for transfer when a forum-selection clause specifies a state or foreign tribunal, see Brief for Petitioner 18–19, and we agree with Atlantic Marine that the Court of Appeals failed to provide a sound answer to this problem. The Court of Appeals opined that a forum-selection clause pointing to a nonfederal forum should be enforced through Rule 12(b)(3), which permits a party to move for dismissal of a case based on “improper venue.” 701 F. 3d, at 740. As Atlantic Marine persua- sively argues, however, that conclusion cannot be reconciled with our construction of the term “improper venue” in §1406 to refer only to a forum that does not satisfy federal venue laws. If venue is proper under federal venue rules, it does not matter for the purpose of Rule 12(b)(3) whether the forum-selection clause points to a federal or a nonfederal forum. Instead, the appropriate way to enforce a forum-selection clause pointing to a state or foreign forum is through the doctrine of forum non conveniens. Section 1404(a) is merely a codification of the doctrine of forum non conveniens for the subset of cases in which the transferee forum is within the federal court system; in such cases, Congress has replaced the traditional remedy of outright dismissal with transfer. See Sinochem Int’l Co. v. Malaysia Int’l Shipping Corp., 549 U. S. 422, 430 (2007) (“For the federal court system, Congress has codified the doctrine . . . ”); see also notes following §1404 (Historical and Revision Notes) (Section 1404(a) “was drafted in accordance with the doctrine of forum non conveniens, permitting transfer to a more convenient forum, even though the venue is proper”). For the remaining set of cases calling for a nonfederal forum, §1404(a) has no application, but the residual doctrine of forum non conveniens “has continuing application in federal courts.” Sinochem, 549 U. S., at 430 (internal quotation marks and brackets omitted); see also ibid. (noting that federal courts invoke forum non conveniens “in cases where the alternative forum is abroad, and perhaps in rare instances where a state or territorial court serves litigational convenience best” (internal quotation marks and citation omitted)). And because both §1404(a) and the forum non conveniens doctrine from which it derives entail the same balancing-of-interests standard, courts should evaluate a forum-selection clause pointing to a nonfederal forum in the same way that they evaluate a forum-selection clause pointing to a federal forum. See Stewart, 487 U. S., at 37 (Scalia, J., dissenting) (Section 1404(a) “did not change ‘the relevant factors’ which federal courts used to consider under the doctrine of forum non conveniens” (quoting Norwood v. Kirkpatrick, 349 U. S. 29, 32 (1955) )). C An amicus before the Court argues that a defendant in a breach-of-contract action should be able to obtain dismissal under Rule 12(b)(6) if the plaintiff files suit in a district other than the one specified in a valid forum-selection clause. See Brief for Stephen E. Sachs as Amicus Curiae. Petitioner, however, did not file a motion under Rule 12(b)(6), and the parties did not brief the Rule’s application to this case at any stage of this litigation. We therefore will not consider it. Even if a defendant could use Rule 12(b)(6) to enforce a forum-selection clause, that would not change our conclusions that §1406(a) and Rule 12(b)(3) are not proper mechanisms to enforce a forum-selection clause and that §1404(a) and the forum non conveniens doctrine provide appropriate enforcement mechanisms. [ 4 ] III Although the Court of Appeals correctly identified §1404(a) as the appropriate provision to enforce the forum-selection clause in this case, the Court of Appeals erred in failing to make the adjustments required in a §1404(a) analysis when the transfer motion is premised on a forum-selection clause. When the parties have agreed to a valid forum-selection clause, a district court should ordinarily transfer the case to the forum specified in that clause. [ 5 ] Only under extraordinary circumstances unrelated to the convenience of the parties should a §1404(a) motion be denied. And no such exceptional factors appear to be present in this case. A In the typical case not involving a forum-selection clause, a district court considering a §1404(a) motion (or a forum non conveniens motion) must evaluate both the convenience of the parties and various public-interest considerations. [ 6 ] Ordinarily, the district court would weigh the relevant factors and decide whether, on balance, a transfer would serve “the convenience of parties and witnesses” and otherwise promote “the interest of justice.” §1404(a). The calculus changes, however, when the parties’ contract contains a valid forum-selection clause, which “represents the parties’ agreement as to the most proper forum.” Stewart, 487 U. S., at 31. The “enforcement of valid forum-selection clauses, bargained for by the parties, protects their legitimate expectations and furthers vital interests of the justice system.” Id., at 33 (Kennedy, J., concurring). For that reason, and because the overarching consideration under §1404(a) is whether a transfer would promote “the interest of justice,” “a valid forum-selection clause [should be] given controlling weight in all but the most exceptional cases.” Id., at 33 (same). The presence of a valid forum-selection clause requires district courts to adjust their usual §1404(a) analysis in three ways. First, the plaintiff’s choice of forum merits no weight. Rather, as the party defying the forum-selection clause, the plaintiff bears the burden of establishing that transfer to the forum for which the parties bargained is unwarranted. Because plaintiffs are ordinarily allowed to select whatever forum they consider most advantageous (consistent with jurisdictional and venue limitations), we have termed their selection the “plaintiff’s venue privilege.” Van Dusen, 376 U. S., at 635. [ 7 ] But when a plaintiff agrees by contract to bring suit only in a specified forum—presumably in exchange for other binding promises by the defendant—the plaintiff has effectively exercised its “venue privilege” before a dispute arises. Only that initial choice deserves deference, and the plaintiff must bear the burden of showing why the court should not transfer the case to the forum to which the parties agreed. Second, a court evaluating a defendant’s §1404(a) motion to transfer based on a forum-selection clause should not consider arguments about the parties’ private interests. When parties agree to a forum-selection clause, they waive the right to challenge the preselected forum as inconvenient or less convenient for themselves or their witnesses, or for their pursuit of the litigation. A court accordingly must deem the private-interest factors to weigh entirely in favor of the preselected forum. As we have explained in a different but “ ‘instructive’ ” context, Stewart, supra, at 28, “[w]hatever ‘inconvenience’ [the parties] would suffer by being forced to litigate in the contractual forum as [they] agreed to do was clearly foreseeable at the time of contracting.” The Bremen v. Zapata Off-Shore Co., 407 U. S. 1 –18 (1972); see also Stewart, supra, at 33 (Kennedy, J., concurring) (stating that Bremen’s “reasoning applies with much force to federal courts sitting in diversity”). As a consequence, a district court may consider arguments about public-interest factors only. See n. 6, supra. Because those factors will rarely defeat a transfer motion, the practical result is that forum-selection clauses should control except in unusual cases. Although it is “conceiv- able in a particular case” that the district court “would refuse to transfer a case notwithstanding the counterweight of a forum-selection clause,” Stewart, supra, at 30–31, such cases will not be common. Third, when a party bound by a forum-selection clause flouts its contractual obligation and files suit in a different forum, a §1404(a) transfer of venue will not carry with it the original venue’s choice-of-law rules—a factor that in some circumstances may affect public-interest considerations. See Piper Aircraft Co. v. Reyno, 454 U. S. 235 , n. 6 (1981) (listing a court’s familiarity with the “law that must govern the action” as a potential factor). A federal court sitting in diversity ordinarily must follow the choice-of-law rules of the State in which it sits. See Klaxon Co. v. Stentor Elec. Mfg. Co., 313 U. S. 487 –496 (1941). However, we previously identified an exception to that prin- ciple for §1404(a) transfers, requiring that the state law applicable in the original court also apply in the trans- feree court. See Van Dusen, 376 U. S., at 639. We deemed that exception necessary to prevent “defendants, properly subjected to suit in the transferor State,” from “invok[ing] §1404(a) to gain the benefits of the laws of another jurisdiction . . . .” Id., at 638; see Ferens v. John Deere Co., 494 U. S. 516, 522 (1990) (extending the Van Dusen rule to §1404(a) motions by plaintiffs). The policies motivating our exception to the Klaxon rule for §1404(a) transfers, however, do not support an extension to cases where a defendant’s motion is premised on enforcement of a valid forum-selection clause. See Ferens, supra, at 523. To the contrary, those considerations lead us to reject the rule that the law of the court in which the plaintiff inappropriately filed suit should follow the case to the forum contractually selected by the parties. In Van Dusen, we were concerned that, through a §1404(a) transfer, a defendant could “defeat the state-law advantages that might accrue from the exercise of [the plaintiff’s] venue privilege.” 376 U. S., at 635. But as discussed above, a plaintiff who files suit in violation of a forum-selection clause enjoys no such “privilege” with respect to its choice of forum, and therefore it is entitled to no concomitant “state-law advantages.” Not only would it be inequitable to allow the plaintiff to fasten its choice of substantive law to the venue transfer, but it would also encourage gamesmanship. Because “§1404(a) should not create or multiply opportunities for forum shopping,” Ferens, supra, at 523, we will not apply the Van Dusen rule when a transfer stems from enforcement of a forum-selection clause: The court in the contractually selected venue should not apply the law of the transferor venue to which the parties waived their right. [ 8 ] When parties have contracted in advance to litigate disputes in a particular forum, courts should not unnecessarily disrupt the parties’ settled expectations. A forum-selection clause, after all, may have figured centrally in the parties’ negotiations and may have affected how they set monetary and other contractual terms; it may, in fact, have been a critical factor in their agreement to do business together in the first place. In all but the most un-usual cases, therefore, “the interest of justice” is served by holding parties to their bargain. B The District Court’s application of §1404(a) in this case did not comport with these principles. The District Court improperly placed the burden on Atlantic Marine to prove that transfer to the parties’ contractually preselected forum was appropriate. As the party acting in violation of the forum-selection clause, J-Crew must bear the burden of showing that public-interest factors overwhelmingly disfavor a transfer. The District Court also erred in giving weight to arguments about the parties’ private interests, given that all private interests, as expressed in the forum-selection clause, weigh in favor of the transfer. The District Court stated that the private-interest factors “militat[e] against a transfer to Virginia” because “compulsory process will not be available for the majority of J-Crew’s witnesses” and there will be “significant expense for those willing witnesses.” 2012 WL 8499879, *6–*7; see 701 F. 3d, at 743 (noting District Court’s “concer[n] with J-Crew’s ability to secure witnesses for trial”). But when J-Crew entered into a contract to litigate all disputes in Virginia, it knew that a distant forum might hinder its ability to call certain witnesses and might impose other burdens on its litigation efforts. It nevertheless promised to resolve its disputes in Virginia, and the District Court should not have given any weight to J-Crew’s current claims of inconvenience. The District Court also held that the public-interest factors weighed in favor of keeping the case in Texas because Texas contract law is more familiar to federal judges in Texas than to their federal colleagues in Vir- ginia. That ruling, however, rested in part on the District Court’s belief that the federal court sitting in Virginia would have been required to apply Texas’ choice-of-law rules, which in this case pointed to Texas contract law. See 2012 WL 8499879, *8 (citing Van Dusen, supra, at 639). But for the reasons we have explained, the trans- feree court would apply Virginia choice-of-law rules. It is true that even these Virginia rules may point to the contract law of Texas, as the State in which the contract was formed. But at minimum, the fact that the Virginia court will not be required to apply Texas choice-of-law rules reduces whatever weight the District Court might have given to the public-interest factor that looks to the familiarity of the transferee court with the applicable law. And, in any event, federal judges routinely apply the law of a State other than the State in which they sit. We are not aware of any exceptionally arcane features of Texas contract law that are likely to defy comprehension by a fed- eral judge sitting in Virginia. * * * We reverse the judgment of the Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. Although no public-interest factors that might support the denial of Atlantic Marine’s motion to transfer are apparent on the record before us, we remand the case for the courts below to decide that question. It is so ordered. Notes 1 Venue was otherwise proper in the Western District of Texas because the subcontract at issue in the suit was entered into and was to be performed in that district. See United States ex rel. J-Crew Management, Inc. v. Atlantic Marine Constr. Co., 2012 WL 8499879, *5 (WD Tex., Apr. 6, 2012) (citing ). 2 Section 1391 governs “venue generally,” that is, in cases where a more specific venue provision does not apply. Cf., e.g., §1400 (identifying proper venue for copyright and patent suits). 3 Other provisions of §1391 define the requirements for proper venue in particular circumstances. 4 We observe, moreover, that a motion under Rule 12(b)(6), unlike a motion under §1404(a) or the forum non conveniens doctrine, may lead to a jury trial on venue if issues of material fact relating to the validity of the forum-selection clause arise. Even if Professor Sachs is ultimately correct, therefore, defendants would have sensible reasons to invoke §1404(a) or the forum non conveniens doctrine in addition to Rule 12(b)(6). 5 Our analysis presupposes a contractually valid forum-selection clause. 6 Factors relating to the parties’ private interests include “relative ease of access to sources of proof; availability of compulsory process for attendance of unwilling, and the cost of obtaining attendance of willing, witnesses; possibility of view of premises, if view would be appropriate to the action; and all other practical problems that make trial of a case easy, expeditious and inexpensive.” Piper Aircraft Co. v. Reyno, (internal quotation marks omitted). Public-interest factors may include “the administrative difficulties flowing from court congestion; the local interest in having localized controversies decided at home; [and] the interest in having the trial of a diversity case in a forum that is at home with the law.” Ibid. (internal quotation marks omitted). The Court must also give some weight to the plaintiffs’ choice of forum. See Norwood v. Kirkpatrick, . 7 We note that this “privilege” exists within the confines of statutory limitations, and “[i]n most instances, the purpose of statutorily specified venue is to protect the defendant against the risk that a plaintiff will select an unfair or inconvenient place of trial.” Leroy v. Great Western United Corp., –184 (1979). 8 For the reasons detailed above, see Part II–B, supra, the same standards should apply to motions to dismiss for forum non conveniens in cases involving valid forum-selection clauses pointing to state or for-eign forums. We have noted in contexts unrelated to forum-selection clauses that a defendant “invoking forum non conveniens ordinarily bears a heavy burden in opposing the plaintiff’s chosen forum.” Sinochem Int’l Co. v. Malaysia Int’l Shipping Co., . That is because of the “hars[h] result” of that doctrine: Unlike a §1404(a) motion, a successful motion under forum non conveniens requires dismissal of the case. Norwood, 349 U. S., at 32. That inconveniences plaintiffs in several respects and even “makes it possible for [plaintiffs] to lose out completely, through the running of the statute of limitations in the forum finally deemed appropriate.” Id., at 31 (internal quotation marks omitted). Such caution is not warranted, however, when the plaintiff has violated a contractual obligation by filing suitin a forum other than the one specified in a valid forum-selection clause. In such a case, dismissal would work no injustice on the plaintiff.

572.US.25

An investment treaty (Treaty) between the United Kingdom and Argentina authorizes a party to submit a dispute “to the decision of the competent tribunal of the Contracting Party in whose territory the investment was made,” i.e., a local court, Art. 8(1); and permits arbitration, as relevant here, “where, after a period of eighteen months has elapsed from the moment when the dispute was submitted to [that] tribunal . . . , the said tribunal has not given its final decision,” Art. 8(2)(a)(i). Petitioner BG Group plc, a British firm, belonged to a consortium with a majority interest in MetroGAS, an Argentine entity awarded an exclusive license to distribute natural gas in Buenos Aires. At the time of BG Group’s investment, Argentine law provided that gas “tariffs” would be calculated in U. S. dollars and would be set at levels sufficient to assure gas distribution firms a reasonable return. But Argentina later amended the law, changing (among other things) the calculation basis to pesos. MetroGAS’ profits soon became losses. Invoking Article 8, BG Group sought arbitration, which the parties sited in Washington, D. C. BG Group claimed that Argentina’s new laws and practices violated the Treaty, which forbids the “expropriation” of investments and requires each nation to give “fair and equitable treatment” to investors from the other. Argentina denied those claims, but also argued that the arbitrators lacked “jurisdiction” to hear the dispute because, as relevant here, BG Group had not complied with Article 8’s local litigation requirement. The arbitration panel concluded that it had jurisdiction, finding, among other things, that Argentina’s conduct (such as also enacting new laws that hindered recourse to its judiciary by firms in BG Group’s situation) had excused BG Group’s failure to comply with Article 8’s requirement. On the merits, the panel found that Argentina had not expropriated BG Group’s investment but had denied BG Group “fair and equitable treatment.” It awarded damages to BG Group. Both sides sought review in federal district court: BG Group to confirm the award under the New York Convention and the Federal Arbitration Act (FAA), and Argentina to vacate the award, in part on the ground that the arbitrators lacked jurisdiction under the FAA. The District Court confirmed the award, but the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit vacated. It found that the interpretation and application of Article 8’s requirement were matters for courts to decide de novo, i.e., without deference to the arbitrators’ views; that the circumstances did not excuse BG Group’s failure to comply with the requirement; and that BG Group had to commence a lawsuit in Argentina’s courts and wait 18 months before seeking arbitration. Thus, the court held, the arbitrators lacked authority to decide the dispute. Held: 1. A court of the United States, in reviewing an arbitration award made under the Treaty, should interpret and apply “threshold” provisions concerning arbitration using the framework developed for interpreting similar provisions in ordinary contracts. Under that framework, the local litigation requirement is a matter for arbitrators primarily to interpret and apply. Courts should review their interpretation with deference. Pp. 6–17. (a) Were the Treaty an ordinary contract, it would call for arbitrators primarily to interpret and to apply the local litigation provision. In an ordinary contract, the parties determine whether a particular matter is primarily for arbitrators or for courts to decide. See, e.g., Steelworkers v. Warrior & Gulf Nav. Co., 363 U.S. 574, 582. If the contract is silent on the matter of who is to decide a “threshold” question about arbitration, courts determine the parties’ intent using presumptions. That is, courts presume that the parties intended courts to decide disputes about “arbitrability,” e.g., Howsam v. Dean Witter Reynolds, Inc., 537 U.S. 79, 84, and arbitrators to decide disputes about the meaning and application of procedural preconditions for the use of arbitration, see id., at 86, including, e.g., claims of “waiver, delay, or a like defense to arbitrability,” Moses H. Cone Memorial Hospital v. Mercury Constr. Corp., 460 U.S. 1, 25, and the satisfaction of, e.g., “ ‘time limits, notice, laches, [or] estoppel,’ ” Howsam, 537 U. S., at 85. The provision at issue is of the procedural variety. As its text and structure make clear, it determines when the contractual duty to arbitrate arises, not whether there is a contractual duty to arbitrate at all. Neither its language nor other language in Article 8 gives substantive weight to the local court’s determinations on the matters at issue between the parties. The litigation provision is thus a claims-processing rule. It is analogous to other procedural provisions found to be for arbitrators primarily to interpret and apply, see, e.g., ibid., and there is nothing in Article 8 or the Treaty to overcome the ordinary assumption. Pp. 7–9. (b) The fact that the document at issue is a treaty does not make a critical difference to this analysis. A treaty is a contract between nations, and its interpretation normally is a matter of determining the parties’ intent. Air France v. Saks, 470 U.S. 392, 399. Where, as here, a federal court is asked to interpret that intent pursuant to a motion to vacate or confirm an award made under the Federal Arbitration Act, it should normally apply the presumptions supplied by American law. The presence of a condition of “consent” to arbitration in a treaty likely does not warrant abandoning, or increasing the complexity of, the ordinary intent-determining framework. See, e.g., Howsam, supra, at 83–85. But because this Treaty does not state that the local litigation requirement is a condition of consent, the Court need not resolve what the effect of any such language would be. The Court need not go beyond holding that in the absence of language in a treaty demonstrating that the parties intended a different delegation of authority, the ordinary interpretive framework applies. Pp. 10–13. (c) The Treaty contains no evidence showing that the parties had an intent contrary to the ordinary presumptions about who should decide threshold arbitration issues. The text and structure of Article 8’s litigation requirement make clear that it is a procedural condition precedent to arbitration. Because the ordinary presumption applies and is not overcome, the interpretation and application of the provision are primarily for the arbitrators, and courts must review their decision with considerable deference. Pp. 13–17. 2. While Argentina is entitled to court review (under a properly deferential standard) of the arbitrators’ decision to excuse BG Group’s noncompliance with the litigation requirement, that review shows that the arbitrators’ determinations were lawful. Their conclusion that the litigation provision cannot be construed as an absolute impediment to arbitration, in all cases, lies well within their interpretative authority. Their factual findings that Argentina passed laws hindering recourse to the local judiciary by firms similar to BG Group are undisputed by Argentina and are accepted as valid. And their conclusion that Argentina’s actions made it “absurd and unreasonable” to read Article 8 to require an investor in BG Group’s position to bring its grievance in a domestic court, before arbitrating, is not barred by the Treaty. Pp. 17–19. 665 F.3d 1363, reversed. Breyer, J., delivered the opinion of the Court, in which Scalia, Thomas, Ginsburg, Alito, and Kagan, JJ., joined, and in which Sotomayor, J., joined except for Part IV–A–1. Sotomayor, J., filed an opinion concurring in part. Roberts, C. J., filed a dissenting opinion, in which Kennedy, J., joined.

Article 8 of an investment treaty between the United Kingdom and Argentina contains a dispute-resolution pro-vision, applicable to disputes between one of those na-tions and an investor from the other. See Agreementfor the Promotion and Protection of Investments, Art. 8(2), Dec. 11, 1990, 1765 U. N. T. S. 38 (hereinafter Treaty). The provision authorizes either party to submit a dispute “to the decision of the competent tribunal of the Contracting Party in whose territory the investment was made,” i.e., a local court. Art. 8(1). And it provides for arbitration “(i) where, after a period of eighteen months has elapsed from the moment when the dispute was submitted to the competent tribunal . . . , the said tribunal has not given its final decision; [or] “(ii) where the final decision of the aforementioned tribunal has been made but the Parties are still in dispute.” Art. 8(2)(a). The Treaty also entitles the parties to agree to proceed directly to arbitration. Art. 8(2)(b). This case concerns the Treaty’s arbitration clause, and specifically the local court litigation requirement set forth in Article 8(2)(a). The question before us is whether a court of the United States, in reviewing an arbitration award made under the Treaty, should interpret and apply the local litigation requirement de novo, or with the deference that courts ordinarily owe arbitration decisions. That is to say, who—court or arbitrator—bears primary responsibility for interpreting and applying the local litigation requirement to an underlying controversy? In our view, the matter is for the arbitrators, and courts must review their determinations with deference. I A In the early 1990’s, the petitioner, BG Group plc, a British firm, belonged to a consortium that bought a majority interest in an Argentine entity called MetroGAS. MetroGAS was a gas distribution company created by Argentine law in 1992, as a result of the government’s privatization of its state-owned gas utility. Argentina distributed the utility’s assets to new, private companies, one of which was MetroGAS. It awarded MetroGAS a 35-year exclusive license to distribute natural gas in Buenos Aires, and it submitted a controlling interest in the company to international public tender. BG Group’s consor-tium was the successful bidder. At about the same time, Argentina enacted statutes providing that its regulators would calculate gas “tariffs” in U. S. dollars, and that those tariffs would be set at levels sufficient to assure gas distribution firms, such as MetroGAS, a reasonable return. In 2001 and 2002, Argentina, faced with an economic crisis, enacted new laws. Those laws changed the basis for calculating gas tariffs from dollars to pesos, at a rate of one peso per dollar. The exchange rate at the time was roughly three pesos to the dollar. The result was that MetroGAS’ profits were quickly transformed into losses. BG Group believed that these changes (and several others) violated the Treaty; Argentina believed the contrary. B In 2003, BG Group, invoking Article 8 of the Treaty, sought arbitration. The parties appointed arbitrators; they agreed to site the arbitration in Washington, D. C.; and between 2004 and 2006, the arbitrators decided motions, received evidence, and conducted hearings. BG Group essentially claimed that Argentina’s new laws and regulatory practices violated provisions in the Treaty forbidding the “expropriation” of investments and requiring that each nation give “fair and equitable treatment” to investors from the other. Argentina denied these claims, while also arguing that the arbitration tribunal lacked “jurisdiction” to hear the dispute. App. to Pet. for Cert. 143a–144a, 214a–218a, 224a–232a. According to Argen-tina, the arbitrators lacked jurisdiction because: (1) BG Group was not a Treaty-protected “investor”; (2) BG Group’s interest in MetroGAS was not a Treaty-protected “investment”; and (3) BG Group initiated arbitration without first litigating its claims in Argentina’s courts, despite Article 8’s requirement. Id., at 143a–171a. In Argentina’s view, “failure by BG to bring its grievance to Argentine courts for 18 months renders its claims in this arbitration inadmissible.” Id., at 162a. In late December 2007, the arbitration panel reached a final decision. It began by determining that it had “jurisdiction” to consider the merits of the dispute. In support of that determination, the tribunal concluded that BG Group was an “investor,” that its interest in MetroGAS amounted to a Treaty-protected “investment,” and that Argentina’s own conduct had waived, or excused, BG Group’s failure to comply with Article 8’s local litigation requirement. Id., at 99a, 145a, 161a, 171a. The panel pointed out that in 2002, the President of Argentina had issued a decree staying for 180 days the execution of its courts’ final judgments (and injunctions) in suits claiming harm as a result of the new economic measures. Id., at 166a–167a. In addition, Argentina had established a “renegotiation process” for public service contracts, such as its contract with MetroGAS, to alleviate the negative impact of the new economic measures. Id., at 129a, 131a. But Argentina had simultaneously barred from participation in that “process” firms that were litigating against Argentina in court or in arbitration. Id., at 168a–171a. These measures, while not making litigation in Argentina’s courts literally impossible, nonetheless “hindered” recourse “to the domestic judiciary” to the point where the Treaty implicitly excused compliance with the local litigation requirement. Id., at 165. Requiring a private party in such circumstances to seek relief in Argentina’s courts for 18 months, the panel concluded, would lead to “absurd and unreasonable result[s].” Id., at 166a. On the merits, the arbitration panel agreed with Argentina that it had not “expropriate[d]” BG Group’s investment, but also found that Argentina had denied BG Group “fair and equitable treatment.” Id., at 222a–223a, 240a–242a. It awarded BG Group $185 million in damages. Id., at 297a. C In March 2008, both sides filed petitions for review in the District Court for the District of Columbia. BG Group sought to confirm the award under the New York Convention and the Federal Arbitration Act. See Convention on the Recognition and Enforcement of Foreign Arbitral Awards, Art. IV, June 10, 1958, 21 U. S. T. 2519, T. I. A. S. No. 6997 (New York Convention) (providing that a party may apply “for recognition and enforcement” of an arbitral award subject to the Convention); 9 U. S. C. §§204, 207 (providing that a party may move “for an order confirming [an arbitral] award” in a federal court of the “place designated in the agreement as the place of arbitration if such place is within the United States”). Argentina sought to vacate the award in part on the ground that the arbitrators lacked jurisdiction. See §10(a)(4) (a federal court may vacate an arbitral award “where the arbitrators exceeded their powers”). The District Court denied Argentina’s claims and confirmed the award. 764 F. Supp. 2d 21 (DC 2011); 715 F. Supp. 2d 108 (DC 2010). But the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit reversed. 665 F. 3d 1363 (2012). In the appeals court’s view, the interpretation and application of Article 8’s local litigation requirement was a matter for courts to decide de novo, i.e., without deference to the views of the arbitrators. The Court of Appeals then went on to hold that the circumstances did not excuse BG Group’s failure to comply with the requirement. Rather, BG Group must “commence a lawsuit in Argentina’s courts and wait eighteen months before filing for arbitration.” Id., at 1373. Because BG Group had not done so, the arbitrators lacked authority to decide the dispute. And the appeals court ordered the award vacated. Ibid. BG Group filed a petition for certiorari. Given the importance of the matter for international commercial ar-bitration, we granted the petition. See, e.g., K. Van-develde, Bilateral Investment Treaties: History, Policy& Interpretation 430–432 (2010) (explaining that dispute-resolution mechanisms allowing for arbitration are a “critical element” of modern day bilateral investment treaties); C. Dugan, D. Wallace, N. Rubins, & B. Sabahi, Investor-State Arbitration 51–52, 117–120 (2008) (referring to the large number of investment treaties that provide for arbitration, and explaining that some also impose prearbitration requirements such as waiting periods, amicable negotiations, or exhaustion of local remedies). II As we have said, the question before us is who—court or arbitrator—bears primary responsibility for interpreting and applying Article 8’s local court litigation provision. Put in terms of standards of judicial review, should a United States court review the arbitrators’ interpretation and application of the provision de novo, or with the deference that courts ordinarily show arbitral decisions on matters the parties have committed to arbitration? Compare, e.g., First Options of Chicago, Inc. v. Kaplan, 514 U. S. 938, 942 (1995) (example where a “court makes up its mind about [an issue] independently” because the parties did not agree it should be arbitrated), with Oxford Health Plans LLC v. Sutter, 569 U. S. ___, ___ (2013) (slip op., at 4) (example where a court defers to arbitrators because the parties “ ‘bargained for’ ” arbitral resolution of the question (quoting Eastern Associated Coal Corp. v. Mine Workers, 531 U. S. 57, 62 (2000) )). See also Hall Street Associates, L. L. C. v. Mattel, Inc., 552 U. S. 576, 588 (2008) (on matters committed to arbitration, the Federal Arbitration Act provides for “just the limited review needed to maintain arbitration’s essential virtue of resolving disputes straightaway” and to prevent it from be-coming “merely a prelude to a more cumbersome andtime-consuming judicial review process” (internal quotation marks omitted)); Eastern Associated Coal Corp., supra, at 62 (where parties send a matter to arbitration, a court will set aside the “arbitrator’s interpretation of what their agreement means only in rare instances”). In answering the question, we shall initially treat the document before us as if it were an ordinary contract between private parties. Were that so, we conclude, the matter would be for the arbitrators. We then ask whether the fact that the document in question is a treaty makes a critical difference. We conclude that it does not. III Where ordinary contracts are at issue, it is up to the parties to determine whether a particular matter is primarily for arbitrators or for courts to decide. See, e.g., Steelworkers v. Warrior & Gulf Nav. Co., 363 U. S. 574, 582 (1960) (“[A]rbitration is a matter of contract and a party cannot be required to submit to arbitration any dispute which he has not agreed so to submit”). Ifthe contract is silent on the matter of who primarilyis to decide “threshold” questions about arbitration,courts determine the parties’ intent with the help ofpresumptions. On the one hand, courts presume that the parties intend courts, not arbitrators, to decide what we have called disputes about “arbitrability.” These include questions such as “whether the parties are bound by a given arbitration clause,” or “whether an arbitration clause in a con-cededly binding contract applies to a particular type of controversy.” Howsam v. Dean Witter Reynolds, Inc., 537 U. S. 79, 84 (2002) ; accord, Granite Rock Co. v. Teamsters, 561 U. S. 287 –300 (2010) (disputes over “formation of the parties’ arbitration agreement” and “its enforceability or applicability to the dispute” at issue are “matters . . . the court must resolve” (internal quotation marks omitted)). See First Options, supra, at 941, 943–947 (court should decide whether an arbitration clause applied to a party who “had not personally signed” the document containing it); AT&T Technologies, Inc. v. Communications Workers, 475 U. S. 643, 651 (1986) (court should decide whether a particular labor-management layoff dispute fell within the arbitration clause of a collective-bargaining contract); John Wiley & Sons, Inc. v. Livingston, 376 U. S. 543 –548 (1964) (court should decide whether an arbitration provision survived a corporate merger). See generally AT&T Technologies, supra, at 649 (“Unless the parties clearly and unmistakably provide otherwise, the question of whether the parties agreed to arbitrate is to be decided by the court, not the arbitrator”). On the other hand, courts presume that the parties intend arbitrators, not courts, to decide disputes about the meaning and application of particular procedural preconditions for the use of arbitration. See Howsam, supra, at 86 (courts assume parties “normally expect a forum-based decisionmaker to decide forum-specific procedural gateway matters” (emphasis added)). These procedural matters include claims of “waiver, delay, or a like defense to arbitrability.” Moses H. Cone Memorial Hospital v. Mercury Constr. Corp., 460 U. S. 1, 25 (1983) . And they include the satisfaction of “ ‘prerequisites such as time limits, notice, laches, estoppel, and other conditions precedent to an obligation to arbitrate.’ ” Howsam, supra, at 85 (quoting the Revised Uniform Arbitration Act of 2000 §6, Comment 2, 7 U. L. A. 13 (Supp. 2002); emphasis deleted). See also §6(c) (“An arbitrator shall decide whether a condition precedent to arbitrability has been fulfilled”); §6, Comment 2 (explaining that this rule reflects “the holdings of the vast majority of state courts” and collecting cases). The provision before us is of the latter, procedural, variety. The text and structure of the provision make clear that it operates as a procedural condition precedent to arbitration. It says that a dispute “shall be submitted to international arbitration” if “one of the Parties so requests,” as long as “a period of eighteen months has elapsed” since the dispute was “submitted” to a local tribunal and the tribunal “has not given its final decision.” Art. 8(2). It determines when the contractual duty to arbitrate arises, not whether there is a contractual duty to arbitrate at all. Cf. 13 R. Lord, Williston on Contracts §38:7, pp. 435, 437; §38:4, p. 422 (4th ed. 2013) (a “condition precedent” determines what must happen before “a contractual duty arises” but does not “make the validity of the contract depend on its happening” (emphasis added)). Neither does this language or other language in Article 8 give substantive weight to the local court’s determinations on the matters at issue between the parties. To the contrary, Article 8 provides that only the “arbitration decision shall be final and binding on both Parties.” Art. 8(4). The litigation provision is consequently a purely procedural requirement—a claims-processing rule that governs when the arbitration may begin, but not whether it may occur or what its substantive outcome will be on the issues in dispute. Moreover, the local litigation requirement is highly analogous to procedural provisions that both this Court and others have found are for arbitrators, not courts, primarily to interpret and to apply. See Howsam, supra, at 85 (whether a party filed a notice of arbitration within the time limit provided by the rules of the chosen arbitral forum “is a matter presumptively for the arbitrator, not for the judge”); John Wiley, supra, at 555–557 (same, in respect to a mandatory prearbitration grievance procedure that involved holding two conferences). See also Dialysis Access Center, LLC v. RMS Lifeline, Inc., 638 F. 3d 367, 383 (CA1 2011) (same, in respect to a prearbitration “good faith negotiations” requirement); Lumbermens Mut. Cas. Co. v. Broadspire Management Servs., Inc., 623 F. 3d 476, 481 (CA7 2010) (same, in respect to a prearbitration filing of a “Disagreement Notice”). Finally, as we later discuss in more detail, see infra, at 13–14, we can find nothing in Article 8 or elsewhere in the Treaty that might overcome the ordinary assumption. It nowhere demonstrates a contrary intent as to the delegation of decisional authority between judges and arbitrators. Thus, were the document an ordinary contract, it would call for arbitrators primarily to interpret and to apply the local litigation provision. IV A We now relax our ordinary contract assumption and ask whether the fact that the document before us is a treaty makes a critical difference to our analysis. The Solicitor General argues that it should. He says that the local litigation provision may be “a condition on the State’s consent to enter into an arbitration agreement.” Brief for United States as Amicus Curiae 25. He adds that courts should “review de novo the arbitral tribunal’s resolution of objections based on an investor’s non-compliance” with such a condition. Ibid. And he recommends that we remand this case to the Court of Appeals to determine whether the court-exhaustion provision is such a condition. Id., at 31–33. 1 We do not accept the Solicitor General’s view as applied to the treaty before us. As a general matter, a treaty isa contract, though between nations. Its interpretation normally is, like a contract’s interpretation, a matter of determining the parties’ intent. Air France v. Saks, 470 U. S. 392, 399 (1985) (courts must give “the specific words of the treaty a meaning consistent with the shared expectations of the contracting parties”); Sullivan v. Kidd, 254 U. S. 433, 439 (1921) (“[T]reaties are to be interpreted upon the principles which govern the interpretation of contracts in writing between individuals, and are to be executed in the utmost good faith, with a view to making effective the purposes of the high contracting parties”); Wright v. Henkel, 190 U. S. 40, 57 (1903) (“Treaties must receive a fair interpretation, according to the intention of the contracting parties”). And where, as here, a federal court is asked to interpret that intent pursuant to a motion to vacate or confirm an award made in the United States under the Federal Arbitration Act, it should normally apply the presumptions supplied by American law. See New York Convention, Art. V(1)(e) (award may be “set aside or suspended by a competent authority of the country in which, or under the law of which, that award was made”); Vandevelde, Bilateral Investment Treaties, at 446 (arbitral awards pursuant to treaties are “subject to review under the arbitration law of the state where the arbitration takes place”); Dugan, Investor-State Arbitration, at 636 (“[T]he national courts and the law of the legal situs of arbitration control a losing party’s attempt to set aside [an] award”). The Solicitor General does not deny that the presumption discussed in Part III, supra (namely, the presumption that parties intend procedural preconditions to arbitration to be resolved primarily by arbitrators), applies both to ordinary contracts and to similar provisions in treaties when those provisions are not also “conditions of consent.” Brief for United States as Amicus Curiae 25–27. And, while we respect the Government’s views about the proper interpretation of treaties, e.g., Abbott v. Abbott, 560 U. S. 1, 15 (2010) , we have been unable to find any other authority or precedent suggesting that the use of the “consent” label in a treaty should make a critical differencein discerning the parties’ intent about whether courtsor arbitrators should interpret and apply the relevant provision. We are willing to assume with the Solicitor General that the appearance of this label in a treaty can show that the parties, or one of them, thought the designated matter quite important. But that is unlikely to be conclusive. For parties often submit important matters to arbitration. And the word “consent” could be attached to a highly procedural precondition to arbitration, such as a waiting period of several months, which the parties are unlikely to have intended that courts apply without saying so. See, e.g., Agreement on Encouragement and Reciprocal Protection of Investments, Art. 9, Netherlands-Slovenia, Sept. 24, 1996, Netherlands T. S. No. 296 (“Each Contracting Party hereby consents to submit any dispute . . . which they can not [sic] solve amicably within three months . . . to the International Center for Settlement of Disputesfor settlement by conciliation or arbitration”), online at www.rijksoverheid.nl/documenten-en-publicaties/besluiten/2006/10/17/slovenia.html (all Internet materials as visited on Feb. 28, 2014, and available in Clerk of Court’s case file); Agreement for the Promotion and Protection ofInvestments, Art. 8(1), United Kingdom-Egypt, June 11, 1975, 14 I. L. M. 1472 (“Each Contracting Party hereby consents to submit” a dispute to arbitration if “agreement cannot be reached within three months between the parties”). While we leave the matter open for future argument, we do not now see why the presence of the term “consent” in a treaty warrants abandoning, or increasing the complexity of, our ordinary intent-determining framework. See Howsam, 537 U. S., at 83–85; First Options, 514 U. S., at 942–945; John Wiley, 376 U. S., at 546–549, 555–559. 2 In any event, the treaty before us does not state that the local litigation requirement is a “condition of consent” to arbitration. Thus, we need not, and do not, go beyond holding that, in the absence of explicit language in atreaty demonstrating that the parties intended a different delegation of authority, our ordinary interpretive framework applies. We leave for another day the question of interpreting treaties that refer to “conditions of consent” explicitly. See, e.g., United States-Korea Free Trade Agreement, Art. 11.18, Feb. 10, 2011 (provision entitled “Conditions and Limitations on Consent of Each Party” and providing that “[n]o claim may be submitted toarbitration under this Section” unless the claimantwaives in writing “any right” to press his claim beforean “administrative tribunal or court”), online at www.ustr.gov/trade-agreements/free-trade-agreements/korus-fta/final-text; North American Free Trade Agreement, Arts. 1121–1122, Dec. 17, 1992, 32 I. L. M. 643–644 (pro-viding that each party’s “[c]onsent to [a]rbitration” is conditioned on fulfillment of certain “procedures,” one of which is a waiver by an investor of his right to litigate the claim being arbitrated). See also 2012 U. S. Model Bilateral Investment Treaty, Art. 26 (entitled “Conditions and limitations on Consent of Each Party”), online at www.ustr.gov / sites / default / files / BIT %20text%20for%20ACIEP%20Meeting.pdf. And we apply our ordinary presumption that the interpretation and application of procedural provisions such as the provision before us are primarily for the arbitrators. B A treaty may contain evidence that shows the parties had an intent contrary to our ordinary presumptions about who should decide threshold issues related to arbitration. But the treaty before us does not show any such contrary intention. We concede that the local litigation requirement appears in ¶(1) of Article 8, while the Article does not mention arbitration until the subsequent paragraph, ¶(2). Moreover, a requirement that a party exhaust its remedies in a country’s domestic courts before seeking to arbitrate may seem particularly important to a country offering protections to foreign investors. And the placing of an important matter prior to any mention of arbitration at least arguably suggests an intent by Argentina, the United Kingdom, or both, to have courts rather than arbitrators apply the litigation requirement. These considerations, however, are outweighed by others. As discussed supra, at 8–9, the text and structure of the litigation requirement set forth in Article 8 make clear that it is a procedural condition precedent to arbitration—a sequential step that a party must follow before giving notice of arbitration. The Treaty nowhere says that the provision is to operate as a substantive condition on the formation of the arbitration contract, or that it is a matter of such elevated importance that it is to be decided by courts. International arbitrators are likely more familiar than are judges with the expectations of foreign investors and recipient nations regarding the operation of the provision. See Howsam, supra, at 85 (comparative institutional expertise a factor in determining parties’ likely intent). And the Treaty itself authorizes the use of international arbitration associations, the rules of which provide that arbitrators shall have the authority to interpret provisions of this kind. Art. 8(3) (providing that the parties may refer a dispute to the International Centre for the Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID) or to arbitrators appointed pursuant to the arbitration rules of the United Nations Commission on International Trade Law (UNCITRAL)); accord, UNCITRAL Arbitration Rules, Art. 23(1) (rev. 2010 ed.) (“[A]rbitral tribunal shall have the power to rule on its own jurisdiction”); ICSID Convention, Regulations and Rules, Art. 41(1) (2006 ed.) (“Tribunal shall be the judge of its own competence”). Cf. Howsam, supra, at 85 (giving weight to the parties’ incorporation of the National Association of Securities Dealers’ Code of Arbitration into their contract, which provided for similar arbitral authority, as evidence that they intended arbitrators to “interpret and apply the NASD time limit rule”). The upshot is that our ordinary presumption applies and it is not overcome. The interpretation and application of the local litigation provision is primarily for the arbi-trators. Reviewing courts cannot review their decisionde novo. Rather, they must do so with considerabledeference. C The dissent interprets Article 8’s local litigation provision differently. In its view, the provision sets forth not a condition precedent to arbitration in an already-binding arbitration contract (normally a matter for arbitrators to interpret), but a substantive condition on Argentina’s con-sent to arbitration and thus on the contract’s formationin the first place (normally something for courts to interpret). It reads the whole of Article 8 as a “unilateral standing offer” to arbitrate that Argentina and the United Kingdom each extends to investors of the other country. Post, at 9 (opinion of Roberts, C. J.). And it says that the local litigation requirement is one of the essential “ ‘terms in which the offer was made.’ ” Post, at 6 (quoting Eliason v. Henshaw, 4 Wheat. 225, 228 (1819); emphasis deleted). While it is possible to read the provision in this way, doing so is not consistent with our case law interpreting similar provisions appearing in ordinary arbitration contracts. See Part III, supra. Consequently, interpreting the provision in such a manner would require us to treat treaties as warranting a different kind of analysis. And the dissent does so without supplying any different set of general principles that might guide that analysis. That is a matter of some concern in a world where foreign investment and related arbitration treaties increasingly matter. Even were we to ignore our ordinary contract principles, however, we would not take the dissent’s view. As we have explained, the local litigation provision on its face concerns arbitration’s timing, not the Treaty’s effective date; or whom its arbitration clause binds; or whether that arbitration clause covers a certain kind of dispute. Cf. Granite Rock, 561 U. S., at 296–303 (ratification date); First Options, 514 U. S., at 941, 943–947 (parties); AT&T Technologies, 475 U. S., at 651 (kind of dispute). The dissent points out that Article 8(2)(a) “does not simply require the parties to wait for 18 months before proceeding to arbitration,” but instructs them to do something—to “submit their claims for adjudication.” Post, at 8. That is correct. But the something they must do has no direct impact on the resolution of their dispute, for as we previously pointed out, Article 8 provides that only the decision of the arbitrators (who need not give weight to the local court’s decision) will be “final and binding.” Art. 8(4). The provision, at base, is a claims-processing rule. And the dissent’s efforts to imbue it with greater significance fall short. The treatises to which the dissent refers also fail to support its position. Post, at 3, 6. Those authorities primarily describe how an offer to arbitrate in an investment treaty can be accepted, such as through an investor’s filing of a notice of arbitration. See J. Salacuse, The Law of Investment Treaties 381 (2010); Schreuer, Consent to Arbitration, in The Oxford Handbook of International Investment Law 830, 836–837 (P. Muchlinski, F. Ortino, & C. Schreuer eds. 2008); Dugan, Investor-State Arbitration, at 221–222. They do not endorse the dissent’s reading of the local litigation provision or of provisions like it. To the contrary, the bulk of international authority supports our view that the provision functions as a purely procedural precondition to arbitrate. See 1 G. Born, International Commercial Arbitration 842 (2009) (“A substantial body of arbitral authority from investor-state disputes concludes that compliance with procedural mechanisms in an arbitration agreement (or bilateral investment treaty) is not ordinarily a jurisdictional prerequisite”); Brief for Professors and Practitioners of Arbitration Law as Amici Curiae 12–16 (to assume the parties intended de novo review of the provision by a court “is likely toset United States courts on a collision course with the international regime embodied in thousands of [bilateral investment treaties]”). See also Schreuer, Consent to Arbitration, supra, at 846–848 (“clauses of this kind . . . creat[e] a considerable burden to the party seeking arbitration with little chance of advancing the settlement of the dispute,” and “the most likely effect of a clause of this kind is delay and additional cost”). In sum, we agree with the dissent that a sovereign’s consent to arbitration is important. We also agree that sovereigns can condition their consent to arbitrate by writing various terms into their bilateral investment treaties. Post, at 9–10. But that is not the issue. The question is whether the parties intended to give courts or arbitrators primary authority to interpret and apply a threshold provision in an arbitration contract—when the contract is silent as to the delegation of authority. We have already explained why we believe that where, as here, the provision resembles a claims-processing requirement and is not a requirement that affects the arbitration contract’s validity or scope, we presume that the parties (even if they are sovereigns) intended to give that authority to the arbitrators. See Parts III, IV–A andIV–B, supra. V Argentina correctly argues that it is nonetheless en-titled to court review of the arbitrators’ decision to excuse BG Group’s noncompliance with the litigation requirement, and to take jurisdiction over the dispute. It asks us to provide that review, and it argues that even if the proper standard is “a [h]ighly [d]eferential” one, it should still prevail. Brief for Respondent 50. Having the relevant materials before us, we shall provide that review. But we cannot agree with Argentina that the arbitrators “ ‘exceeded their powers’ ” in concluding they had jurisdiction. Ibid. (quoting 9 U. S. C. §10(a)(4)). The arbitration panel made three relevant determinations: (1) “As a matter of treaty interpretation,” the local litigation provision “cannot be construed as an absolute impediment to arbitration,” App. to Pet. for Cert. 165a; (2) Argentina enacted laws that “hindered” “recourse to the domestic judiciary” by those “whose rights were allegedly affected by the emergency measures,” id., at 165a–166a; that sought “to prevent any judicial interference with the emergency legislation,” id., at 169a; and that “excluded from the renegotiation process” for public service contracts “any licensee seeking judicial redress,” ibid.; (3) under these circumstances, it would be “absurd and unreasonable” to read Article 8 as requiring an investor to bring its grievance to a domestic court before arbitrating. Id., at 166a. The first determination lies well within the arbitrators’ interpretive authority. Construing the local litigation provision as an “absolute” requirement would mean Argentina could avoid arbitration by, say, passing a law that closed down its court system indefinitely or that prohibited investors from using its courts. Such an interpretation runs contrary to a basic objective of the investment treaty. Nor does Argentina argue for an absolute interpretation. As to the second determination, Argentina does not argue that the facts set forth by the arbitrators are incorrect. Thus, we accept them as valid. The third determination is more controversial. Argen-tina argues that neither the 180-day suspension of courts’ issuances of final judgments nor its refusal to allow litigants (and those in arbitration) to use its contract renegotiation process, taken separately or together, warrants suspending or waiving the local litigation requirement. We would not necessarily characterize these actions as rendering a domestic court-exhaustion requirement “absurd and unreasonable,” but at the same time we cannot say that the arbitrators’ conclusions are barred by the Treaty. The arbitrators did not “ ‘stra[y] from interpretation and application of the agreement’ ” or otherwise “ ‘effectively “dispens[e]” ’ ” their “ ‘own brand of . . . justice.’ ” Stolt-Nielsen S. A. v. AnimalFeeds Int’l Corp., 559 U. S. 662, 671 (2010) (providing that it is only when an arbitrator engages in such activity that “ ‘his decision may be unenforceable’ ” (quoting Major League Baseball Players Assn. v. Garvey, 532 U. S. 504, 509 (2001) (per curiam)). Consequently, we conclude that the arbitrators’ jurisdictional determinations are lawful. The judgment of the Court of Appeals to the contrary is reversed. It is so ordered.

572.US.844

To implement the international Convention on the Prohibition of the Development, Production, Stockpiling, and Use of Chemical Weapons and on Their Destruction, Congress enacted the Chemical Weapons Convention Implementation Act of 1998. The statute forbids, among other things, any person knowingly to “possess[ ] or use . . . any chemical weapon,” 18 U. S. C. §229(a)(1). A “chemical weapon” is “[a] toxic chemical and its precursors, except where intended for a purpose not prohibited under this chapter.” §229F(1)(A). A “toxic chemical” is “any chemical which through its chemical action on life processes can cause death, temporary incapacitation or permanent harm to humans or animals. The term includes all such chemicals, regardless of their origin or of their method of production, and regardless of whether they are produced in facilities, in munitions or elsewhere.” §229F(8)(A). “[P]urposes not prohibited by this chapter” is defined as “[a]ny peaceful purpose related to an industrial, agricultural, research, medical, or pharmaceutical activity or other activity,” and other specific purposes. §229F(7). Petitioner Bond sought revenge against Myrlinda Haynes—with whom her husband had carried on an affair—by spreading two toxic chemicals on Haynes’s car, mailbox, and door knob in hopes that Haynes would develop an uncomfortable rash. On one occasion Haynes suffered a minor chemical burn that she treated by rinsing with water, but Bond’s attempted assaults were otherwise entirely unsuccessful. Federal prosecutors charged Bond with violating, among other things, section 229(a). Bond moved to dismiss the chemical weapons charges on the ground that the Act violates the Tenth Amendment. When the District Court denied her motion, she pleaded guilty but reserved the right to appeal. The Third Circuit initially held that Bond lacked standing to raise her Tenth Amendment challenge, but this Court reversed. On remand, the Third Circuit rejected her Tenth Amendment argument and her additional argument that section 229 does not reach her conduct. Held: Section 229 does not reach Bond’s simple assault. Pp. 8–21. (a) The parties debate whether section 229 is a necessary and proper means of executing the Federal Government’s power to make treaties, but “normally [this] Court will not decide a constitutional question if there is some other ground upon which to dispose of the case.” Escambia County v. McMillan, 466 U.S. 48, 51 (per curiam). Thus, this Court starts with Bond’s argument that section 229 does not cover her conduct. Pp. 8–9. (b) This Court has no need to interpret the scope of the international Chemical Weapons Convention in this case. The treaty specifies that a signatory nation should implement its obligations “in accordance with its constitutional processes.” Art. VII(1), 1974 U. N. T. S. 331. Bond was prosecuted under a federal statute, which, unlike the treaty, must be read consistent with the principles of federalism inherent in our constitutional structure. Pp. 10–21. (1) A fair reading of section 229 must recognize the duty of “federal courts to be certain of Congress’s intent before finding that federal law overrides” the “usual constitutional balance of federal and state powers,” Gregory v. Ashcroft, 501 U.S. 452, 460. This principle applies to federal laws that punish local criminal activity, which has traditionally been the responsibility of the States. This Court’s precedents have referred to basic principles of federalism in the Constitution to resolve ambiguity in federal statutes. See, e.g., United States v. Bass, 404 U.S. 336; Jones v. United States, 529 U.S. 848. Here, the ambiguity in the statute derives from the improbably broad reach of the key statutory definition, given the term—“chemical weapon”—that is being defined, the deeply serious consequences of adopting such a boundless reading, and the lack of any apparent need to do so in light of the context from which the statute arose—a treaty about chemical warfare and terrorism, not about local assaults. Thus, the Court can reasonably insist on a clear indication that Congress intended to reach purely local crimes before interpreting section 229’s expansive language in a way that intrudes on the States’ police power. Pp. 10–14. (2) No such clear indication is found in section 229. An ordinary speaker would not describe Bond’s feud-driven act of spreading irritating chemicals as involving a “chemical weapon.” And the chemicals at issue here bear little resemblance to those whose prohibition was the object of an international Convention. Where the breadth of a statutory definition creates ambiguity, it is appropriate to look to the ordinary meaning of the term being defined (here, “chemical weapon”) in settling on a fair reading of the statute. See Johnson v. United States, 559 U.S. 133. The Government’s reading of section 229 would transform a statute concerned with acts of war, assassination, and terrorism into a massive federal anti-poisoning regime that reaches the simplest of assaults. In light of the principle that Congress does not normally intrude upon the States’ police power, this Court is reluctant to conclude that Congress meant to punish Bond’s crime with a federal prosecution for a chemical weapons attack. In fact, only a handful of prosecutions have been brought under section 229, and most of those involved crimes not traditionally within the States’ purview, e.g., terrorist plots. Pennsylvania’s laws are sufficient to prosecute assaults like Bond’s, and there is no indication in section 229 that Congress intended to abandon its traditional “reluctan[ce] to define as a federal crime conduct readily denounced as criminal by the States,” Bass, supra, at 349. That principle goes to the very structure of the Constitution, and “protects the liberty of the individual from arbitrary power.” Bond v. United States, 564 U. S. ___, ___. The global need to prevent chemical warfare does not require the Federal Government to reach into the kitchen cupboard. Pp. 15–21. 681 F.3d 149, reversed and remanded. Roberts, C. J., delivered the opinion of the Court, in which Kennedy, Ginsburg, Breyer, Sotomayor, and Kagan, JJ., joined. Scalia, J., filed an opinion concurring in the judgment, in which Thomas, J., joined, and in which Alito, J., joined as to Part I. Thomas, J., filed an opinion concurring in the judgment, in which Scalia, J., joined, and in which Alito, J., joined as to Parts I, II, and III. Alito, J., filed an opinion concurring in the judgment.

The horrors of chemical warfare were vividly captured by John Singer Sargent in his 1919 painting Gassed. The nearly life-sized work depicts two lines of soldiers, blinded by mustard gas, clinging single file to orderlies guiding them to an improvised aid station. There they would receive little treatment and no relief; many suffered for weeks only to have the gas claim their lives. The soldiers were shown staggering through piles of comrades too seriously burned to even join the procession. The painting reflects the devastation that Sargent witnessed in the aftermath of the Second Battle of Arras during World War I. That battle and others like it led to an overwhelming consensus in the international commu-nity that toxic chemicals should never again be used as weapons against human beings. Today that objective is reflected in the international Convention on Chemical Weapons, which has been ratified or acceded to by 190 countries. The United States, pursuant to the Federal Government’s constitutionally enumerated power to make treaties, ratified the treaty in 1997. To fulfill the United States’ obligations under the Convention, Congress en-acted the Chemical Weapons Convention Implementation Act of 1998. The Act makes it a federal crime for a person to use or possess any chemical weapon, and it punishes violators with severe penalties. It is a statute that, like the Convention it implements, deals with crimes of deadly seriousness. The question presented by this case is whether the Implementation Act also reaches a purely local crime: an amateur attempt by a jilted wife to injure her husband’s lover, which ended up causing only a minor thumb burn readily treated by rinsing with water. Because our constitutional structure leaves local criminal activity primarily to the States, we have generally declined to read federal law as intruding on that responsibility, unless Congress has clearly indicated that the law should have such reach. The Chemical Weapons Convention Implementation Act contains no such clear indication, and we accordingly conclude that it does not cover the unremarkable local offense at issue here. I A In 1997, the President of the United States, upon the advice and consent of the Senate, ratified the Convention on the Prohibition of the Development, Production, Stockpiling, and Use of Chemical Weapons and on Their Destruction. S. Treaty Doc. No. 103–21, 1974 U. N. T. S. 317. The nations that ratified the Convention (State Parties) had bold aspirations for it: “general and complete disarmament under strict and effective international control, including the prohibition and elimination of all types of weapons of mass destruction.” Convention Preamble, ibid. This purpose traces its origin to World War I, when “[o]ver a million casualties, up to 100,000 of them fatal, are estimated to have been caused by chemicals . . . , a large part following the introduction of mustard gas in 1917.” Kenyon, Why We Need a Chemical Weapons Convention and an OPCW, in The Creation of the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons 1, 4 (I. Kenyon & D. Feakes eds. 2007) (Kenyon & Feakes). The atrocities of that war led the community of nations to adopt the 1925 Geneva Protocol, which prohibited the use of chemicals as a method of warfare. Id., at 5. Up to the 1990s, however, chemical weapons remained in use both in and out of wartime, with devastating consequences. Iraq’s use of nerve agents and mustard gas during its war with Iran in the 1980s contributed to international support for a renewed, more effective chemical weapons ban. Id., at 6, 10–11. In 1994 and 1995, long-held fears of the use of chemical weapons by terrorists were realized when Japanese extremists carried out two attacks using sarin gas. Id., at 6. The Convention was conceived as an effort to update the Geneva Protocol’s protections and to expand the prohibition on chemical weapons beyond state actors in wartime. Convention Preamble, 1974 U. N. T. S. 318 (the State Parties are “[d]etermined for the sake of all mankind, to exclude completely the possibility of the use of chemical weapons, . . . thereby complementing the obligations assumed under the Geneva Protocol of 1925”). The Convention aimed to achieve that objective by prohibiting the development, stockpiling, or use of chemical weapons by any State Party or person within a State Party’s jurisdiction. Arts. I, II, VII. It also established an elaborate reporting process requiring State Parties to destroy chemical weapons under their control and submit to inspection and monitoring by an international organization based in The Hague, Netherlands. Arts. VIII, IX. The Convention provides: “(1) Each State Party to this Convention undertakes never under any circumstances: “(a) To develop, produce, otherwise acquire, stockpile or retain chemical weapons, or transfer, directly or indirectly, chemical weapons to anyone; “(b) To use chemical weapons; “(c) To engage in any military preparations to use chemical weapons; “(d) To assist, encourage or induce, in any way, any-one to engage in any activity prohibited to a State Party under this Convention.” Art. I, id., at 319. “Chemical Weapons” are defined in relevant part as “[t]oxic chemicals and their precursors, except where intended for purposes not prohibited under this Convention, as long as the types and quantities are consistent with such purposes.” Art. II(1)(a), ibid. “Toxic Chemical,” in turn, is defined as “Any chemical which through its chemical action on life processes can cause death, temporary incapacitation or permanent harm to humans or animals. This includes all such chemicals, regardless of their origin or of their method of production, and regardless of whether they are produced in facilities, in munitions or elsewhere.” Art. II(2), id., at 320. “Purposes Not Prohibited Under this Convention” means “[i]ndustrial, agricultural, research, medical, pharmaceutical or other peaceful purposes,” Art. II(9)(a), id., at 322, and other specific purposes not at issue here, Arts. II(9)(b)–(d). Although the Convention is a binding international agreement, it is “not self-executing.” W. Krutzsch & R. Trapp, A Commentary on the Chemical Weapons Convention 109 (1994). That is, the Convention creates obligations only for State Parties and “does not by itself give rise to domestically enforceable federal law” absent “implementing legislation passed by Congress.” Medellín v. Texas, 552 U. S. 491 , n. 2 (2008). It instead provides that “[e]ach State Party shall, in accordance with its constitutional processes, adopt the necessary measures to implement its obligations under this Convention.” Art. VII(1), 1974 U. N. T. S. 331. “In particular,” each State Party shall “[p]rohibit natural and legal persons anywhere . . . under its jurisdiction . . . from undertaking any activity prohibited to a State Party under this Convention, including enacting penal legislation with respect to such activity.” Art. VII (1)(a), id., at 331–332. Congress gave the Convention domestic effect in 1998 when it passed the Chemical Weapons Convention Implementation Act. See 112Stat. 2681–856. The Act closely tracks the text of the treaty: It forbids any person knowingly “to develop, produce, otherwise acquire, transfer directly or indirectly, receive, stockpile, retain, own, possess, or use, or threaten to use, any chemical weapon.” 18 U. S. C. §229(a)(1). It defines “chemical weapon” in relevant part as “[a] toxic chemical and its precursors, except where intended for a purpose not prohibited under this chapter as long as the type and quantity is consistent with such a purpose.” §229F(1)(A). “Toxic chemical,” in turn, is defined in general as “any chemical which through its chemical action on life processes can cause death, temporary incapacitation or permanent harm to humans or animals. The term includes all such chemicals, regardless of their origin or of their method of production, and regardless of whether they are produced in facilities, in munitions or elsewhere.” §229F(8)(A). Finally, “purposes not prohibited by this chapter” is defined as “[a]ny peaceful purpose related to an industrial, agricultural, research, medical, or pharmaceutical activity or other activity,” and other specific purposes. §229F(7). A person who violates section 229 may be subject to severe punishment: imprisonment “for any term of years,” or if a victim’s death results, the death penalty or imprisonment “for life.” §229A(a). B Petitioner Carol Anne Bond is a microbiologist from Lansdale, Pennsylvania. In 2006, Bond’s closest friend, Myrlinda Haynes, announced that she was pregnant. When Bond discovered that her husband was the child’s father, she sought revenge against Haynes. Bond stole a quantity of 10-chloro-10H-phenoxarsine (an arsenic-based compound) from her employer, a chemical manufacturer. She also ordered a vial of potassium dichromate (a chemical commonly used in printing photographs or cleaning laboratory equipment) on Amazon.com. Both chemicals are toxic to humans and, in high enough doses, potentially lethal. It is undisputed, however, that Bond did not intend to kill Haynes. She instead hoped that Haynes would touch the chemicals and develop an uncomfortable rash. Between November 2006 and June 2007, Bond went to Haynes’s home on at least 24 occasions and spread the chemicals on her car door, mailbox, and door knob. These attempted assaults were almost entirely unsuccessful. The chemicals that Bond used are easy to see, and Haynes was able to avoid them all but once. On that occasion, Haynes suffered a minor chemical burn on her thumb, which she treated by rinsing with water. Haynes repeatedly called the local police to report the suspicious substances, but they took no action. When Haynes found powder on her mailbox, she called the police again, who told her to call the post office. Haynes did so, and postal inspectors placed surveillance cameras around her home. The cameras caught Bond opening Haynes’s mailbox, stealing an envelope, and stuffing potassium dichromate inside the muffler of Haynes’s car. Federal prosecutors naturally charged Bond with two counts of mail theft, in violation of 18 U. S. C. §1708. More surprising, they also charged her with two countsof possessing and using a chemical weapon, in violationof section 229(a). Bond moved to dismiss the chemical weapon counts on the ground that section 229 exceeded Congress’s enumerated powers and invaded powers reserved to the States by the Tenth Amendment. The District Court denied Bond’s motion. She then entered a conditional guilty plea that reserved her right to appeal. The District Court sentenced Bond to six years in federal prison plus five years of supervised release, and ordered her to pay a $2,000 fine and $9,902.79 in restitution. Bond appealed, raising a Tenth Amendment challenge to her conviction. The Government contended that Bond lacked standing to bring such a challenge. The Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit agreed. We granted certiorari, the Government confessed error, and we reversed. We held that, in a proper case, an individual may “assert injury from governmental action taken in excess of the authority that federalism defines.” Bond v. United States, 564 U. S. ___, ___ (2011) (Bond I) (slip op., at 8). We “expresse[d] no view on the merits” of Bond’s constitutional challenge. Id., at ___ (slip op., at 14). On remand, Bond renewed her constitutional argument. She also argued that section 229 does not reach her conduct because the statute’s exception for the use of chemicals for “peaceful purposes” should be understood in contradistinction to the “warlike” activities that the Convention was primarily designed to prohibit. Bond argued that her conduct, though reprehensible, was not at all “warlike.” The Court of Appeals rejected this argument. 681 F. 3d 149 (CA3 2012). The court acknowledged that the Government’s reading of section 229 would render the statute “striking” in its “breadth” and turn every “kitchen cupboard and cleaning cabinet in America into a potential chemical weapons cache.” Id., at 154, n. 7. But the court nevertheless held that Bond’s use of “ ‘highly toxic chemicals with the intent of harming Haynes’ can hardly be characterized as ‘peaceful’ under that word’s commonly understood meaning.” Id., at 154 (citation omitted). The Third Circuit also rejected Bond’s constitutional challenge to her conviction, holding that section 229 was “necessary and proper to carry the Convention into effect.” Id., at 162. The Court of Appeals relied on this Court’s opinion in Missouri v. Holland, 252 U. S. 416 (1920) , which stated that “[i]f the treaty is valid there can be no dispute about the validity of the statute” that implements it “as a necessary and proper means to execute the powers of the Government,” id., at 432. We again granted certiorari, 568 U. S. ___ (2013). II In our federal system, the National Government possesses only limited powers; the States and the people retain the remainder. The States have broad authority to enact legislation for the public good—what we have often called a “police power.” United States v. Lopez, 514 U. S. 549, 567 (1995) . The Federal Government, by contrast, has no such authority and “can exercise only the powers granted to it,” McCulloch v. Maryland, 4 Wheat. 316, 405 (1819), including the power to make “all Laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into Execution” the enumerated powers, U. S. Const., Art. I, §8, cl. 18. For nearly two centuries it has been “clear” that, lacking a police power, “Congress cannot punish felonies generally.” Cohens v. Virginia, 6 Wheat. 264, 428 (1821). A criminal act committed wholly within a State “cannot be made an offence against the United States, unless it have some relation to the execution of a power of Congress, or to some matter within the jurisdiction of the United States.” United States v. Fox, 95 U. S. 670, 672 (1878) . The Government frequently defends federal criminal legislation on the ground that the legislation is authorized pursuant to Congress’s power to regulate interstate commerce. In this case, however, the Court of Appeals held that the Government had explicitly disavowed that argument before the District Court. 681 F. 3d, at 151, n. 1. As a result, in this Court the parties have devoted significant effort to arguing whether section 229, as applied to Bond’s offense, is a necessary and proper means of executing the National Government’s power to make treaties. U. S. Const., Art. II, §2, cl. 2. Bond argues that the lower court’s reading of Missouri v. Holland would remove all limits on federal authority, so long as the Federal Government ratifies a treaty first. She insists that to effectively afford the Government a police power whenever it implements a treaty would be contrary to the Framers’ careful decision to divide power between the States and the National Government as a means of preserving liberty. To the extent that Holland authorizes such usurpation of traditional state authority, Bond says, it must be either limited or overruled. The Government replies that this Court has never held that a statute implementing a valid treaty exceeds Congress’s enumerated powers. To do so here, the Government says, would contravene another deliberate choice of the Framers: to avoid placing subject matter limitations on the National Government’s power to make treaties. And it might also undermine confidence in the United States as an international treaty partner. Notwithstanding this debate, it is “a well-established principle governing the prudent exercise of this Court’s jurisdiction that normally the Court will not decide a constitutional question if there is some other ground upon which to dispose of the case.” Escambia County v. Mc-Millan, 466 U. S. 48, 51 (1984) (per curiam); see also Ashwander v. TVA, 297 U. S. 288, 347 (1936) (Brandeis, J., concurring). Bond argues that section 229 does not cover her conduct. So we consider that argument first. III Section 229 exists to implement the Convention, so we begin with that international agreement. As explained, the Convention’s drafters intended for it to be a comprehensive ban on chemical weapons. But even with its broadly worded definitions, we have doubts that a treaty about chemical weapons has anything to do with Bond’s conduct. The Convention, a product of years of worldwide study, analysis, and multinational negotiation, arose in response to war crimes and acts of terrorism. See Kenyon & Feakes 6. There is no reason to think the sovereign nations that ratified the Convention were interested in anything like Bond’s common law assault. Even if the treaty does reach that far, nothing prevents Congress from implementing the Convention in the same manner it legislates with respect to innumerable other matters—observing the Constitution’s division of responsibility between sovereigns and leaving the prosecution of purely local crimes to the States. The Convention, after all, is agnostic between enforcement at the state versus federal level: It provides that “[e]ach State Party shall, in accordance with its constitutional processes, adopt the necessary measures to implement its obligations under this Convention.” Art. VII(1), 1974 U. N. T. S. 331 (emphasis added); see also Tabassi, National Implementation: Article VII, in Kenyon & Feakes 205, 207 (“Since the creation of national law, the enforcement of it and the structure and administration of government are all sovereign acts reserved exclusively for [State Parties], it is not surprising that the Convention is so vague on the critical matter of national implementation.”). Fortunately, we have no need to interpret the scope of the Convention in this case. Bond was prosecuted under section 229, and the statute—unlike the Convention—must be read consistent with principles of federalism inherent in our constitutional structure. A In the Government’s view, the conclusion that Bond “knowingly” “use[d]” a “chemical weapon” in violation of section 229(a) is simple: The chemicals that Bond placed on Haynes’s home and car are “toxic chemical[s]” as defined by the statute, and Bond’s attempt to assault Haynes was not a “peaceful purpose.” §§229F(1), (8), (7). The problem with this interpretation is that it would “dramatically intrude[ ] upon traditional state criminal jurisdiction,” and we avoid reading statutes to have such reach in the absence of a clear indication that they do. United States v. Bass, 404 U. S. 336, 350 (1971) . Part of a fair reading of statutory text is recognizing that “Congress legislates against the backdrop” of certain unexpressed presumptions. EEOC v. Arabian American Oil Co., 499 U. S. 244, 248 (1991) . As Justice Frankfurter put it in his famous essay on statutory interpretation, correctly reading a statute “demands awareness of certain presuppositions.” Some Reflections on the Reading of Statutes, 47 Colum. L. Rev. 527, 537 (1947). For example, we presume that a criminal statute derived from the common law carries with it the requirement of a culpable mental state—even if no such limitation appears in the text—unless it is clear that the Legislature intended to impose strict liability. United States v. United States Gypsum Co., 438 U. S. 422, 437 (1978) . To take another example, we presume, absent a clear statement from Congress, that federal statutes do not apply outside the United States. Morrison v. National Australia Bank Ltd., 561 U. S. 247, 255 (2010) . So even though section 229, read on its face, would cover a chemical weapons crime if committed by a U. S. citizen in Australia, we would not apply the statute to such conduct absent a plain statement from Congress.[1] The notion that some things “go without saying” applies to legislation just as it does to everyday life. Among the background principles of construction that our cases have recognized are those grounded in the relationship between the Federal Government and the States under our Constitution. It has long been settled, for example, that we presume federal statutes do not abrogate state sovereign immunity, Atascadero State Hospital v. Scanlon, 473 U. S. 234, 243 (1985) , impose obligations on the States pursuant to section 5 of the Fourteenth Amendment, Pennhurst State School and Hospital v. Halderman, 451 U. S. 1 –17 (1981), or preempt state law, Rice v. Santa Fe Elevator Corp., 331 U. S. 218, 230 (1947) . Closely related to these is the well-established principle that “ ‘it is incumbent upon the federal courts to be certain of Congress’ intent before finding that federal law overrides’ ” the “usual constitutional balance of federal and state powers.” Gregory v. Ashcroft, 501 U. S. 452, 460 (1991) (quoting Atascadero, supra, at 243). To quote Frankfurter again, if the Federal Government would “ ‘radically readjust[ ] the balance of state and national authority, those charged with the duty of legislating [must be] reasonably explicit’ ” about it. BFP v. Resolution Trust Corporation, 511 U. S. 531, 544 (1994) (quoting Some Reflections, supra, at 539–540; second alteration in original). Or as explained by Justice Marshall, when legislation “affect[s] the federal balance, the requirement of clear statement assures that the legislature has in fact faced, and intended to bring into issue, the critical matters involved in the judicial decision.” Bass, supra, at 349. We have applied this background principle when construing federal statutes that touched on several areas of traditional state responsibility. See Gregory, supra, at 460 (qualifications for state officers); BFP, supra, at 544 (titles to real estate); Solid Waste Agency of Northern Cook Cty. v. Army Corps of Engineers, 531 U. S. 159, 174 (2001) (land and water use). Perhaps the clearest example of traditional state authority is the punishment of local criminal activity. United States v. Morrison, 529 U. S. 598, 618 (2000) . Thus, “we will not be quick to assume that Congress has meant to effect a significant change in the sensitive relation between federal and state criminal jurisdiction.” Bass, 404 U. S., at 349. In Bass, we interpreted a statute that prohibited any convicted felon from “ ‘receiv[ing], possess[ing], or transport[ing] in commerce or affecting commerce . . . any firearm.’ ” Id., at 337. The Government argued that the statute barred felons from possessing all firearms and that it was not necessary to demonstrate a connection to interstate commerce. We rejected that reading, which would “render[ ] traditionally local criminal conduct a matter for federal enforcement and would also involve a substantial extension of federal police resources.” Id., at 350. We instead read the statute more narrowly to require proof of a connection to interstate commerce in every case, thereby “preserv[ing] as an element of all the of-fenses a requirement suited to federal criminal jurisdiction alone.” Id., at 351. Similarly, in Jones v. United States, 529 U. S. 848, 850 (2000) , we confronted the question whether the federal arson statute, which prohibited burning “ ‘any . . . property used in interstate or foreign commerce or in any activity affecting interstate or foreign commerce,’ ” reached an owner-occupied private residence. Once again we rejected the Government’s “expansive interpretation,” under which “hardly a building in the land would fall outside the fed-eral statute’s domain.” Id., at 857. We instead held that the statute was “most sensibly read” more narrowly to reach only buildings used in “active employment for commercial purposes.” Id., at 855. We noted that “arson is a paradigmatic common-law state crime,” id., at 858, and that the Government’s proposed broad reading would “ ‘significantly change[ ] the federal-state balance,’ ” ibid. (quoting Bass, 404 U. S., at 349), “mak[ing] virtually every arson in the country a federal offense,” 529 U. S., at 859. These precedents make clear that it is appropriate to refer to basic principles of federalism embodied in the Constitution to resolve ambiguity in a federal statute. In this case, the ambiguity derives from the improbably broad reach of the key statutory definition given the term—“chemical weapon”—being defined; the deeply serious consequences of adopting such a boundless reading; and the lack of any apparent need to do so in light of the context from which the statute arose—a treaty about chemical warfare and terrorism. We conclude that, in this curious case, we can insist on a clear indication that Congress meant to reach purely local crimes, before interpreting the statute’s expansive language in a way that intrudes on the police power of the States. See Bass, supra, at 349.[2] B We do not find any such clear indication in section 229. “Chemical weapon” is the key term that defines the statute’s reach, and it is defined extremely broadly. But that general definition does not constitute a clear statement that Congress meant the statute to reach local criminal conduct. In fact, a fair reading of section 229 suggests that it does not have as expansive a scope as might at first appear. To begin, as a matter of natural meaning, an educated user of English would not describe Bond’s crime as involving a “chemical weapon.” Saying that a person “used a chemical weapon” conveys a very different idea than saying the person “used a chemical in a way that caused some harm.” The natural meaning of “chemical weapon” takes account of both the particular chemicals that the defendant used and the circumstances in which she used them. When used in the manner here, the chemicals in this case are not of the sort that an ordinary person would associate with instruments of chemical warfare. The substances that Bond used bear little resemblance to the deadly toxins that are “of particular danger to the objectives of the Convention.” Why We Need a Chemical Weapons Convention and an OPCW, in Kenyon & Feakes 17 (describing the Convention’s Annex on Chemicals, a nonexhaustive list of covered substances that are subject to special regulation). More to the point, the use of something as a “weapon” typically connotes “[a]n instrument of offensive or defensive combat,” Webster’s Third New International Dictionary 2589 (2002), or “[a]n instrument of attack or defense in combat, as a gun, missile, or sword,” American Heritage Dictionary 2022 (3d ed. 1992). But no speaker in natural parlance would describe Bond’s feud-driven act of spreading irritating chemicals on Haynes’s door knob and mailbox as “combat.” Nor do the other circumstances of Bond’s offense—an act of revenge born of romantic jealousy, meant to cause discomfort, that produced nothing more than a minor thumb burn—suggest that a chemical weapon was deployed in Norristown, Pennsylvania. Potassium dichromate and 10-chloro-10H-phenoxarsine might be chemical weapons if used, say, to poison a city’s water supply. But Bond’s crime is worlds apart from such hypotheticals, and covering it would give the statute a reach exceeding the ordinary meaning of the words Congress wrote. In settling on a fair reading of a statute, it is not un-usual to consider the ordinary meaning of a defined term, particularly when there is dissonance between that ordinary meaning and the reach of the definition. In Johnson v. United States, 559 U. S. 133, 136 (2010) , for example, we considered the statutory term “ ‘violent felony,’ ” which the Armed Career Criminal Act defined in relevant part as an offense that “ ‘has as an element the use . . . of physical force against the person of another.’ ” Although “physical force against . . . another” might have meant any force, however slight, we thought it “clear that in the context of a statutory definition of ‘violent felony,’ the phrase ‘physical force’ means violent force—that is, force capable of causing physical pain or injury to another person.” Id., at 140. The ordinary meaning of “chemical weapon” plays a similar limiting role here. The Government would have us brush aside the ordinary meaning and adopt a reading of section 229 that would sweep in everything from the detergent under the kitchen sink to the stain remover in the laundry room. Yet no one would ordinarily describe those substances as “chemical weapons.” The Government responds that because Bond used “specialized, highly toxic” (though legal) chemicals, “this case presents no occasion to address whether Congress intended [section 229] to apply to common household substances.” Brief for United States 13, n. 3. That the statute would apply so broadly, however, is the inescapable conclusion of the Government’s position: Any parent would be guilty of a serious federal offense—possession of a chemical weapon—when, exasperated by the children’s repeated failure to clean the goldfish tank, he considers poisoning the fish with a few drops of vinegar. We are reluctant to ignore the ordinary meaning of “chemical weapon” when doing so would transform a statute passed to implement the international Convention on Chemical Weapons into one that also makes it a federal offense to poison goldfish. That would not be a “realistic assessment[ ] of congressional intent.” Post, at 6 (Scalia, J., concurring in judgment). In light of all of this, it is fully appropriate to apply the background assumption that Congress normally preserves “the constitutional balance between the National Government and the States.” Bond I, 564 U. S., at ___ (slip op., at 10). That assumption is grounded in the very structure of the Constitution. And as we explained when this case was first before us, maintaining that constitutional balance is not merely an end unto itself. Rather, “[b]y denying any one government complete jurisdiction over all the concerns of public life, federalism protects the liberty of the individual from arbitrary power.” Ibid. The Government’s reading of section 229 would “ ‘alter sensitive federal-state relationships,’ ” convert an astonishing amount of “traditionally local criminal conduct” into “a matter for federal enforcement,” and “involve a substantial extension of federal police resources.” Bass, 404 U. S., at 349–350. It would transform the statute from one whose core concerns are acts of war, assassination, and terrorism into a massive federal anti-poisoning regime that reaches the simplest of assaults. As the Government reads section 229, “hardly” a poisoning “in the land would fall outside the federal statute’s domain.” Jones, 529 U. S., at 857. Of course Bond’s conduct is serious and unacceptable—and against the laws of Pennsylvania. But the background principle that Congress does not normally intrude upon the police power of the States is critically important. In light of that principle, we are reluctant to conclude that Congress meant to punish Bond’s crime with a federal prosecution for a chemical weapons attack. In fact, with the exception of this unusual case, the Federal Government itself has not looked to section 229 to reach purely local crimes. The Government has identified only a handful of prosecutions that have been brought under this section. Brief in Opposition 27, n. 5. Most of those involved either terrorist plots or the possession of extremely dangerous substances with the potential to cause severe harm to many people. See United States v. Ghane, 673 F. 3d 771 (CA8 2012) (defendant possessed enough potassium cyanide to kill 450 people); United States v. Crocker, 260 Fed. Appx. 794 (CA6 2008) (defendant attempted to acquire VX nerve gas and chlorine gas as part of a plot to attack a federal courthouse); United States v. Krar, 134 Fed. Appx. 662 (CA5 2005) (per curiam) (defendant possessed sodium cyanide); United States v. Fries, 2012 WL 689157 (D Ariz., Feb. 28, 2012) (defendant set off a homemade chlorine bomb in the victim’s driveway, requiring evacuation of a residential neighborhood). The Federal Government undoubtedly has a substantial interest in enforcing criminal laws against assassination, terrorism, and acts with the potential to cause mass suffering. Those crimes have not traditionally been left predominantly to the States, and nothing we have said here will disrupt the Government’s authority to prosecute such offenses. It is also clear that the laws of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania (and every other State) are sufficient to prosecute Bond. Pennsylvania has several statutes that would likely cover her assault. See 18 Pa. Cons. Stat. §§2701 (2012) (simple assault), 2705 (reckless endangerment), 2709 (harassment).[3] And state authorities regularly enforce these laws in poisoning cases. See, e.g., Gamiz, Family Survives Poisoned Burritos, Allentown, Pa., Morning Call, May 18, 2013 (defendant charged with assault, reckless endangerment, and harassment for feeding burritos poisoned with prescription medication to her husband and daughter); Cops: Man Was Poisoned Over 3 Years, Harrisburg, Pa., Patriot News, Aug. 12, 2012, p. A11 (defendant charged with assault and reckless endangerment for poisoning a man with eye drops over three years so that “he would pay more attention to her”). The Government objects that Pennsylvania authorities charged Bond with only a minor offense based on her “harassing telephone calls and letters,” Bond I, 564 U. S., at ___ (slip op., at 2), and declined to prosecute her for assault. But we have traditionally viewed the exercise of state officials’ prosecutorial discretion as a valuable feature of our constitutional system. See Bordenkircher v. Hayes, 434 U. S. 357, 364 (1978) . And nothing in the Convention shows a clear intent to abrogate that feature. Prosecutorial discretion involves carefully weighing the benefits of a prosecution against the evidence needed to convict, the resources of the public fisc, and the public policy of the State. Here, in its zeal to prosecute Bond, the Federal Government has “displaced” the “public policy of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, enacted in its capacity as sovereign,” that Bond does not belong in prison for a chemical weapons offense. Bond I, supra, at ___ (slip op., at 12); see also Jones, supra, at 859 (Stevens, J., concurring) (federal prosecution of a traditionally local crime “illustrates how a criminal law like this may effectively displace a policy choice made by the State”). As we have explained, “Congress has traditionally been reluctant to define as a federal crime conduct readily denounced as criminal by the States.” Bass, 404 U. S., at 349. There is no clear indication of a contrary approach here. Section 229 implements the Convention, but Bond’s crime could hardly be more unlike the uses of mustard gas on the Western Front or nerve agents in the Iran-Iraq war that form the core concerns of that treaty. See Kenyon & Feakes 6. There are no life-sized paintings of Bond’s rival washing her thumb. And there are no apparent interests of the United States Congress or the community of nations in seeing Bond end up in federal prison, rather than dealt with (like virtually all other criminals in Pennsylvania) by the State. The Solicitor General acknowledged as much at oral argument. See Tr. of Oral Arg. 47 (“I don’t think anybody would say [that] whether or not Ms. Bond is prosecuted would give rise to an international incident”). This case is unusual, and our analysis is appropriately limited. Our disagreement with our colleagues reduces to whether section 229 is “utterly clear.” Post, at 5 (Scalia, J., concurring in judgment). We think it is not, given that the definition of “chemical weapon” in a particular case can reach beyond any normal notion of such a weapon, that the context from which the statute arose demonstrates a much more limited prohibition was intended, and that the most sweeping reading of the statute would fundamentally upset the Constitution’s balance between national and local power. This exceptional convergence of factors gives us serious reason to doubt the Government’s expansive reading of section 229, and calls for us to interpret the statute more narrowly. In sum, the global need to prevent chemical warfare does not require the Federal Government to reach into the kitchen cupboard, or to treat a local assault with a chemical irritant as the deployment of a chemical weapon. There is no reason to suppose that Congress—in implementing the Convention on Chemical Weapons—thought otherwise. * * * The Convention provides for implementation by each ratifying nation “in accordance with its constitutional processes.” Art. VII(1), 1974 U. N. T. S. 331. As James Madison explained, the constitutional process in our “compound republic” keeps power “divided between two distinct governments.” The Federalist No. 51, p. 323 (C. Rossiter ed. 1961). If section 229 reached Bond’s conduct, it would mark a dramatic departure from that constitutional structure and a serious reallocation of criminal law enforcement authority between the Federal Government and the States. Absent a clear statement of that purpose, we will not presume Congress to have authorized such a stark intrusion into traditional state authority. The judgment of the Court of Appeals is reversed, and the case is remanded for further proceedings consistent with this opinion. It is so ordered.Notes 1 Congress has in fact included just such a plain statement in section 229(c)(2): “Conduct prohibited by [section 229(a)] is within the jurisdiction of the United States if the prohibited conduct . . . takes place outside of the United States and is committed by a national of the United States.” 2 contends that the relevance of and to this case is “entirely made up,” at 3 (opinion concurring in judgment), but not because he disagrees with interpreting statutes in light of principles of federalism. Rather, he says that was a case where the statute was unclear. We agree; we simply think the statute in this case is also subject to construction, for the reasons given. As for , argues that the discussion of federalism in that case was beside the point. at 4. We do not read that way; the Court adopted the “most sensibl[e] read[ing]” of the statute, 529 U. S., at 855, which suggests that other sensible readings were possible. In arriving at its fair reading of the statute, the Court considered the dramatic extent to which the Government’s broader interpretation would have expanded “the federal statute’s domain.” at 857. We do the same here. 3 Pennsylvania also prohibits using “a weapon of mass destruction,” including a “chemical agent.” 18 Pa. Cons. Stat. §§2716(a), (i). Just as we conclude that Bond’s offense cannot be fairly described as the use of a chemical weapon, Pennsylvania authorities apparently determined that her crime did not involve a “weapon of mass destruction.”

572.US.93

Congress passed the General Railroad Right-of-Way Act of 1875 to provide railroad companies “right[s] of way through the public lands of the United States,” 43 U. S. C. §934. One such right of way, obtained by a railroad in 1908, crosses land that the United States conveyed to the Brandt family in a 1976 land patent. That patent stated, as relevant here, that the land was granted subject to the railroad’s rights in the 1875 Act right of way, but it did not specify what would occur if the railroad later relinquished those rights. Years later, a successor railroad abandoned the right of way with federal approval. The Government then sought a judicial declaration of abandonment and an order quieting title in the United States to the abandoned right of way, including the stretch that crossed the land conveyed in the Brandt patent. Petitioners contested the claim, asserting that the right of way was a mere easement that was extinguished when the railroad abandoned it, so that Brandt now enjoys full title to his land without the burden of the easement. The Government countered that the 1875 Act granted the railroad something more than a mere easement, and that the United States retained a reversionary interest in that land once the railroad abandoned it. The District Court granted summary judgment to the Government and quieted title in the United States to the right of way. The Tenth Circuit affirmed. Held: The right of way was an easement that was terminated by the railroad’s abandonment, leaving Brandt’s land unburdened. Pp. 8–17. (a) The Government loses this case in large part because it won when it argued the opposite in Great Northern R. Co. v. United States, 315 U.S. 262. There, the Government contended that the 1875 Act (unlike pre-1871 statutes granting rights of way) granted nothing more than an easement, and that the railroad in that case therefore had no interest in the resources beneath the surface of its right of way. This Court adopted the Government’s position in full. It found the 1875 Act’s text “wholly inconsistent” with the grant of a fee interest, id., at 271; agreed with the Government that cases describing the nature of rights of way granted prior to 1871 were “not controlling” because of a major shift in congressional policy concerning land grants to railroads after that year, id., at 278; and held that the 1875 Act “clearly grants only an easement,” id., at 271. Under well-established common law property principles, an easement disappears when abandoned by its beneficiary, leaving the owner of the underlying land to resume a full and unencumbered interest in the land. See Smith v. Townsend, 148 U.S. 490, 499. Pp. 8–12. (b) The Government asks this Court to limit Great Northern’s characterization of 1875 Act rights of way as easements to the question of who owns the oil and minerals beneath a right of way. But nothing in the 1875 Act’s text supports that reading, and the Government’s reliance on the similarity of the language in the 1875 Act and pre-1871 statutes directly contravenes the very premise of Great Northern: that the 1875 Act granted a fundamentally different interest than did its predecessor statutes. Nor do this Court’s decisions in Stalker v. Oregon Short Line R. Co., 225 U.S. 142, and Great Northern R. Co. v. Steinke, 261 U.S. 119, support the Government’s position. The dispute in each of those cases was framed in terms of competing claims to acquire and develop a particular tract of land, and it does not appear that the Court considered—much less rejected—an argument that the railroad had only an easement in the contested land. But to the extent that those cases could be read to imply that the interest was something more, any such implication would not have survived this Court’s unequivocal statement to the contrary in Great Northern. Finally, later enacted statutes, see 43 U. S. C. §§912, 940; 16 U. S. C. §1248(c), do not define or shed light on the nature of the interest Congress granted to railroads in their rights of way in 1875. They instead purport only to dispose of interests (if any) the United States already possesses. Pp. 12–17. 496 Fed. Appx. 822, reversed and remanded. Roberts, C. J., delivered the opinion of the Court, in which Scalia, Kennedy, Thomas, Ginsburg, Breyer, Alito, and Kagan, JJ., joined. Sotomayor, J., filed a dissenting opinion.

In the mid-19th century, Congress began granting private railroad companies rights of way over public lands to encourage the settlement and development of the West. Many of those same public lands were later conveyed by the Government to homesteaders and other settlers, with the lands continuing to be subject to the railroads’ rights of way. The settlers and their successors remained, but many of the railroads did not. This case presents the question of what happens to a railroad’s right of way granted under a particular statute—the General Railroad Right-of-Way Act of 1875—when the railroad abandons it: does it go to the Government, or to the private party who acquired the land underlying the right of way? I A In the early to mid-19th century, America looked west. The period from the Louisiana Purchase in 1803 to the Gadsden Purchase in 1853 saw the acquisition of the western lands that filled out what is now the contiguous United States. The young country had numerous reasons to encourage settlement and development of this vast new expanse. What it needed was a fast and reliable way to transport people and property to those frontier lands. New technology provided the answer: the railroad. The Civil War spurred the effort to develop a transcontinental railroad, as the Federal Government saw the need to protect its citizens and secure its possessions in the West. Leo Sheep Co. v. United States, 440 U. S. 668 –676 (1979). The construction of such a railroad would “furnish a cheap and expeditious mode for the transportation of troops and supplies,” help develop “the agricultural and mineral resources of this territory,” and foster settlement. United States v. Union Pacific R. Co., 91 U. S. 72, 80 (1875) . The substantial benefits a transcontinental railroad could bring were clear, but building it was no simple matter. The risks were great and the costs were staggering. Popular sentiment grew for the Government to play a role in supporting the massive project. Indeed, in 1860, President Lincoln’s winning platform proclaimed: “That a railroad to the Pacific Ocean is imperatively demanded by the interests of the whole country; that the Federal Government ought to render immediate and efficient aid in its construction.” J. Ely, Railroads and American Law 51 (2001). But how to do it? Sufficient funds were not at hand (especially with a Civil War to fight), and there were serious reservations about the legal authority for direct financing. “The policy of the country, to say nothing of the supposed want of constitutional power, stood in the way of the United States taking the work into its own hands.” Union Pacific R. Co., supra, at 81. What the country did have, however, was land—lots of it. It could give away vast swaths of public land—which at the time possessed little value without reliable transportation—in hopes that such grants would increase the appeal of a transcontinental railroad to private investors. Ely, supra, at 52–53. In the early 1860s, Congress began granting to railroad companies rights of way through the public domain, accompanied by outright grants of land along those rights of way. P. Gates, History of Public Land Law Development 362–368 (1968). The land was con-veyed in checkerboard blocks. For example, under the Union Pacific Act of 1862, odd-numbered lots of one square mile apiece were granted to the railroad, while even-numbered lots were retained by the United States. Leo Sheep Co., supra, at 672–673, 686, n. 23. Railroads could then either develop their lots or sell them, to finance construction of rail lines and encourage the settlement of future customers. Indeed, railroads became the largest secondary dispenser of public lands, after the States. Gates, supra, at 379. But public resentment against such generous land grants to railroads began to grow in the late 1860s. Western settlers, initially some of the staunchest supporters of governmental railroad subsidization, complained that the railroads moved too slowly in placing their lands on the market and into the hands of farmers and settlers. Citizens and Members of Congress argued that the grants conflicted with the goal of the Homestead Act of 1862 to encourage individual citizens to settle and develop the frontier lands. By the 1870s, legislators across the political spectrum had embraced a policy of reserving public lands for settlers rather than granting them to railroads. Id., at 380, 454–456. A House resolution adopted in 1872 summed up the change in national policy, stating: “That in the judgment of this House the policy of granting subsidies in public lands to railroads and other corporations ought to be discontinued, and that every consideration of public policy and equal justice to the whole people requires that the public lands should be held for the purpose of securing homesteads to actual settlers, and for educational purposes, as may be provided by law.” Cong. Globe, 42d Cong., 2d Sess., 1585. Congress enacted the last checkerboard land-grant statute for railroads in 1871. Gates, supra, at 380. Still wishing to encourage railroad construction, however, Congress passed at least 15 special acts between 1871 and 1875 granting to designated railroads “the right of way” through public lands, without any accompanying land subsidy. Great Northern R. Co. v. United States, 315 U. S. 262 , and n. 9 (1942). Rather than continue to enact special legislation for each such right of way, Congress passed the General Railroad Right-of-Way Act of 1875, 18Stat. 482, 43 U. S. C. §§934–939. The 1875 Act provided that “[t]he right of way through the public lands of the United States is granted to any railroad company” meeting certain requirements, “to the extent of one hundred feet on each side of the central line of said road.” §934. A railroad company could obtain a right of way by the “actual construction of its road” or “in advance of construction by filing a map as provided in section four” of the Act. Jamestown & Northern R. Co. v. Jones, 177 U. S. 125 –131 (1900). Section 4 in turn provided that a company could “secure” its right of way by filing a proposed map of its rail corridor with a local Department of the Interior office within 12 months after survey or location of the road. §937. Upon approval by the Interior Department, the right of way would be noted on the land plats held at the local office, and from that day forward “all such lands over which such right of way shall pass shall be disposed of subject to the rightof way.” Ibid. The 1875 Act remained in effect until 1976, when its provisions governing the issuance of new rights of way were repealed by the Federal Land Policy and Management Act, §706(a), 90Stat. 2793. This case requires us to define the nature of the interest granted by the 1875 Act, in order to determine what happens when a railroad abandons its right of way. B Melvin M. Brandt began working at a sawmill in Fox Park, Wyoming, in 1939. He later purchased the sawmill and, in 1946, moved his family to Fox Park. Melvin’s son Marvin started working at the sawmill in 1958 and came to own and operate it in 1976 until it closed, 15 years later. In 1976, the United States patented an 83-acre parcel of land in Fox Park, surrounded by the Medicine Bow-Routt National Forest, to Melvin and Lulu Brandt. (A land patent is an official document reflecting a grant by a sovereign that is made public, or “patent.”) The patent conveyed to the Brandts fee simple title to the land “with all the rights, privileges, immunities, and appurtenances, of whatsoever nature, thereunto belonging, unto said claimants, their successors and assigns, forever.” App. to Pet. for Cert. 76. But the patent did include limited exceptions and reservations. For example, the patent “except[s] and reserv[es] to the United States from the land granted a right-of-way thereon for ditches or canals constructedby the authority of the United States”; “reserv[es] to the United States . . . a right-of-way for the existing Platte Access Road No. 512”; and “reserv[es] to the United States . . . a right-of-way for the existing Dry Park Road No. 517.” Id., at 76–77 (capitalization omitted). But if those roads cease to be used by the United States or its assigns for a period of five years, the patent provides that “the easement traversed thereby shall terminate.” Id., at 78. Most relevant to this case, the patent concludes by stating that the land was granted “subject to those rights for railroad purposes as have been granted to the Lar-amie[,] Hahn’s Peak & Pacific Railway Company, its suc-cessors or assigns.” Ibid. (capitalization omitted). The patent did not specify what would occur if the railroad abandoned this right of way. The right of way referred to in the patent was obtained by the Laramie, Hahn’s Peak and Pacific Railroad (LHP&P) in 1908, pursuant to the 1875 Act.[1] The right of way is 66 miles long and 200 feet wide, and it meanders south from Laramie, Wyoming, through the Medicine Bow-Routt National Forest, to the Wyoming-Colorado border. Nearly a half-mile stretch of the right of way crosses Brandt’s land in Fox Park, covering ten acres of that parcel. In 1911, the LHP&P completed construction of its railway over the right of way, from Laramie to Coalmont, Colorado. Its proprietors had rosy expectations, proclaiming that it would become “one of the most important railroad systems in this country.” Laramie, Hahns Peak and Pacific Railway System: The Direct Gateway to Southern Wyoming, Northern Colorado, and Eastern Utah 24 (1910). But the railroad ultimately fell short of that goal. Rather than shipping coal and other valuable ores as originally hoped, the LHP&P was used primarily to transport timber and cattle. R. King, Trails to Rails: A History of Wyoming’s Railroads 90 (2003). Largely because of high operating costs during Wyoming winters, the LHP&P never quite achieved financial stability. It changed hands numerous times from 1914 until 1935, when it was acquired by the Union Pacific Railroad at the urging of the Interstate Commerce Commission. Ibid.; S. Thybony, R. Rosenberg, & E. Rosenberg, The Medicine Bows: Wyoming’s Mountain Country 136–138 (1985);F. Hollenback, The Laramie Plains Line 47–49 (1960). In 1987, the Union Pacific sold the rail line, including the right of way, to the Wyoming and Colorado Railroad, which planned to use it as a tourist attraction. King, supra, at 90. That did not prove profitable either, and in 1996 the Wyoming and Colorado notified the Surface Transportation Board of its intent to abandon the right of way. The railroad tore up the tracks and ties and, after receiving Board approval, completed abandonment in 2004. In 2006 the United States initiated this action seeking a judicial declaration of abandonment and an order quieting title in the United States to the abandoned right of way. In addition to the railroad, the Government named as defendants the owners of 31 parcels of land crossed by the abandoned right of way. The Government settled with or obtained a default judgment against all but one of those landowners—Marvin Brandt. He contested the Government’s claim and filed a counterclaim on behalf of a family trust that now owns the Fox Park parcel, and himself as trustee.[2] Brandt asserted that the stretch of the right of way crossing his family’s land was a mere easement that was extinguished upon abandonment by the railroad, so that, under common law property rules, he enjoyed full title to the land without the burden of the easement. The Government countered that it had all along retained a reversionary interest in the railroad right of way—that is, a future estate that would be restored to the United States if the railroad abandoned or forfeited its interest. The District Court granted summary judgment to the Government and quieted title in the United States to the right of way over Brandt’s land. 2008 WL 7185272 (D Wyo., Apr. 8, 2008).[3] The Court of Appeals affirmed. United States v. Brandt, 496 Fed. Appx. 822 (CA10 2012) (per curiam). The court acknowledged division among lower courts regarding the nature of the Government’s interest (if any) in abandoned 1875 Act rights of way. But it concluded based on Circuit precedent that the United States had retained an “implied reversionary interest” in the right of way, which then vested in the United States when the right of way was relinquished. Id., at 824. We granted certiorari. 570 U. S. __ (2013). II This dispute turns on the nature of the interest the United States conveyed to the LHP&P in 1908 pursuantto the 1875 Act. Brandt contends that the right of way granted under the 1875 Act was an easement, so that when the railroad abandoned it, the underlying land (Brandt’s Fox Park parcel) simply became unburdened of the easement. The Government does not dispute that easements normally work this way, but maintains that the 1875 Act granted the railroads something more than an easement, reserving an implied reversionary interest in that something more to the United States. The Government loses that argument today, in large part because it won when it argued the opposite before this Court more than 70 years ago, in the case of Great Northern Railway Co. v. United States, 315 U. S. 262 (1942) . In 1907, Great Northern succeeded to an 1875 Act right of way that ran through public lands in Glacier County, Montana. Oil was later discovered in the area, and Great Northern wanted to drill beneath its right of way. Butthe Government sued to enjoin the railroad from doingso, claiming that the railroad had only an easement, so that the United States retained all interests beneath the surface. This Court had indeed previously held that the pre-1871 statutes, granting rights of way accompanied by checkerboard land subsidies, conveyed to the railroads “a limited fee, made on an implied condition of reverter.” See, e.g., Northern Pacific R. Co. v. Townsend, 190 U. S. 267, 271 (1903) . Great Northern relied on those cases to contend that it owned a “fee” interest in the right of way, which included the right to drill for minerals beneath thesurface. The Government disagreed. It argued that “the 1875 Act granted an easement and nothing more,” and that the railroad accordingly could claim no interest in the resources beneath the surface. Brief for United States in Great Northern R. Co. v. United States, O. T. 1941, No. 149, p. 29. “The year 1871 marks the end of one era and the beginning of a new in American land-grant history,” the Government contended; thus, cases construing the pre-1871 statutes were inapplicable in construing the 1875 Act, id., at 15, 29–30. Instead, the Government argued, the text, background, and subsequent administrative and congressional construction of the 1875 Act all made clear that, unlike rights of way granted under pre-1871 land-grant statutes, those granted under the 1875 Act were mere easements. The Court adopted the United States’ position in full, holding that the 1875 Act “clearly grants only an easement, and not a fee.” Great Northern, 315 U. S., at 271. The Court found Section 4 of the Act “especially persuasive,” because it provided that “all such lands over which such right of way shall pass shall be disposed of subject to such right of way.” Ibid. Calling this language “wholly inconsistent” with the grant of a fee interest, the Court endorsed the lower court’s statement that “[a]pter words to indicate the intent to convey an easement would be difficult to find.” Ibid. That interpretation was confirmed, the Court explained, by the historical background against which the 1875 Act was passed and by subsequent administrative and congressional interpretation. The Court accepted the Government’s position that prior cases describing the nature of pre-1871 rights of way—including Townsend, supra, at 271—were “not controlling,” because of the shift in congressional policy after that year. Great Northern, supra, at 277–278, and n. 18. The Court also specifically disavowed the characterization of an 1875 Act right of way in Rio Grande Western R. Co. v. Stringham, 239 U. S. 44 (1915) , as “ ‘a limited fee, made on an implied condition of reverter.’ ” Great Northern, supra, at 278–279 (quoting Stringham, supra, at 47). The Court noted that in Stringham “it does not appear that Congress’ change of policy after 1871 was brought to the Court’s attention,” given that “[n]o brief was filed by the defendant or the United States” in that case. Great Northern, supra, at 279, and n. 20. The dissent is wrong to conclude that Great Northern merely held that “the right of way did not confer oneparticular attribute of fee title.” Post, at 3 (opinionof Sotomayor, J.). To the contrary, the Court specifically rejected the notion that the right of way conferred even a “limited fee.” 315 U. S., at 279; see also id., at 277–278 (declining to follow cases describing a right of way as a “limited,” “base,” or “qualified” fee). Instead, the Court concluded, it was “clear from the language of the Act, its legislative history, its early administrative interpretation and the construction placed upon it by Congress in subse-quent enactments” that the railroad had obtained “only an easement in its rights of way acquired under the Act of 1875.” Id., at 277; see United States v. Union Pacific R. Co., 353 U. S. 112, 119 (1957) (noting the conclusion in Great Northern that, in the period after 1871, “only an easement for railroad purposes was granted”); 353 U. S., at 128 (Frankfurter, J., dissenting) (observing that the Court “conclude[d] in the Great Northern case that a right of way granted by the 1875 Act was an easement and not a limited fee”). When the United States patented the Fox Park parcel to Brandt’s parents in 1976, it conveyed fee simple title to that land, “subject to those rights for railroad purposes” that had been granted to the LHP&P. The United States did not reserve to itself any interest in the right of way in that patent. Under Great Northern, the railroad thus had an easement in its right of way over land owned by the Brandts. The essential features of easements—including, most important here, what happens when they cease to be used—are well settled as a matter of property law. An easement is a “nonpossessory right to enter and use land in the possession of another and obligates the possessor not to interfere with the uses authorized by the easement.” Restatement (Third) of Property: Servitudes §1.2(1) (1998). “Unlike most possessory estates, easements . . . may be unilaterally terminated by abandonment, leaving the servient owner with a possessory estate unencumbered by the servitude.” Id., §1.2, Comment d; id., §7.4, Comments a, f. In other words, if the beneficiary of the easement abandons it, the easement disappears, and the landowner resumes his full and unencumbered interest in the land. See Smith v. Townsend, 148 U. S. 490, 499 (1893) (“[W]hoever obtained title from the government to any . . . land through which ran this right of way would acquire a fee to the whole tract subject to the easement of the company, and if ever the use of that right of way was abandoned by the railroad company the easement would cease, and the full title to that right of way would vest in the patentee of the land”); 16 Op. Atty. Gen. 250, 254 (1879) (“the purchasers or grantees of the United States took the fee of the lands patented to them subject to the easement created by the act of 1824; but on a discontinuance or abandonment of that right of way the entire and exclusive property, and right of enjoyment thereto, vested in the proprietors of the soil”).[4] Those basic common law principles resolve this case. When the Wyoming and Colorado Railroad abandoned the right of way in 2004, the easement referred to in the Brandt patent terminated. Brandt’s land became unburdened of the easement, conferring on him the same full rights over the right of way as he enjoyed over the rest of the Fox Park parcel. III Contrary to that straightforward conclusion, the Government now tells us that Great Northern did not really mean what it said. Emphasizing that Great Northern involved only the question of who owned the oil and min- erals beneath a right of way, the Government asks the Court to limit its characterization of 1875 Act rights of way as “easements” to that context. Even if the right of way has some features of an easement—such as granting only a surface interest to the railroad when the Government wants the subsurface oil and minerals—the Government asks us to hold that the right of way is not an easement for purposes of what happens when the railroad stops using it. But nothing in the text of the 1875 Act supports such an improbable (and self-serving) reading. The Government argues that the similarity in the language of the 1875 Act and the pre-1871 statutes shows that Congress intended to reserve a reversionary interest in the lands granted under the 1875 Act, just as it did in the pre-1871 statutes. See Brief for United States 17–18. But that is directly contrary to the very premise of this Court’s decision (and the Government’s argument) in Great Northern: that the 1875 Act granted a fundamen-tally different interest in the rights of way than did the predecessor statutes. 315 U. S., at 277–278; see U. S. Great Northern Brief 30 (“[Great Northern’s] argument . . . fails because it disregards the essential differences between the 1875 Act and its predecessors.”). Contrary to the Government’s position now—but consistent with the Government’s position in 1942—Great Northern stands for the proposition that the pre-1871 statutes (and this Court’s decisions construing them) have little relevance to the question of what interest the 1875 Act conveyed to railroads. The Government next contends that this Court’s decisions in Stalker v. Oregon Short Line R. Co., 225 U. S. 142 (1912) , and Great Northern R. Co. v. Steinke, 261 U. S. 119 (1923) , support its position that the United States retains an implied reversionary interest in 1875 Act rights of way. Brief for United States 28–32. According to the Government, both Stalker and Steinke demonstrate that those rights of way cannot be bare common law easements, because those cases concluded that patents purporting to convey the land underlying a right of way were “inoperative to pass title.” Brief for United States 31 (quoting Steinke, supra, at 131); see also Tr. of Oral Arg. 28–30, 33, 40–41, 44–45. If the right of way were a mere easement, the argument goes, the patent would have passed title to the underlying land subject to the railroad’s right of way, rather than failing to pass title altogether. But that is a substantial overreading of those cases. In both Stalker and Steinke, a railroad that had already obtained an 1875 Act right of way thereafter claimed adjacent land for station grounds under the Act, as it was permitted to do because of its right of way. A homesteader subsequently filed a claim to the same land, unaware of the station grounds. The question in each case was whether the railroad could build on the station grounds, notwithstanding a subsequent patent to the homesteader. The homesteader claimed priority because the railroad’s station grounds map had not been recorded in the local land office at the time the homesteader filed his claim. This Court construed the 1875 Act to give the railroad priority because it had submitted its proposed map to the Department of the Interior before the homesteader filed his claim. See Stalker, supra, at 148–154; Steinke, supra, at 125–129. The dispute in each case was framed in terms of competing claims to the right to acquire and develop the same tract of land. The Court ruled for the railroad, but did not purport to define the precise nature of the interest granted under the 1875 Act. Indeed, it does not appear that the Court in either case considered—much less rejected—an argument that the railroad had obtained only an easement in the contested land, so that the patent could still convey title to the homesteader. In any event, to the extent that Stalker and Steinke could be read to imply that the rail-roads had been granted something more than an easement, any such implication would not have survived this Court’s unequivocal statement in Great Northern that the 1875 Act “clearly grants only an easement, and not a fee.” 315 U. S., at 271. Finally, the Government relies on a number of later enacted statutes that it says demonstrate that Congress believed the United States had retained a reversionary interest in the 1875 Act rights of way. Brief for United States 34–42. But each of those statutes purported only to dispose of interests the United States already possessed, not to create or modify any such interests in the first place. First, in 1906 and 1909, Congress declared forfeited any right of way on which a railroad had not been constructed in the five years after the location of the road. 43 U. S. C. §940. The United States would “resume[ ] the full title to the lands covered thereby free and discharged of such easement,” but the forfeited right of way would immediately “inure to the benefit of any owner or owners of land conveyed by the United States prior to such date.” Ibid. Then, in 1922, Congress provided that whenever a railroad forfeited or officially abandoned its right of way, “all right, title, interest, and estate of the United Statesin said lands” (other than land that had been convertedto a public highway) would immediately be transferred to either the municipality in which it was located, or else to the person who owned the underlying land. 43 U. S. C. §912. Finally, as part of the National Trails System Improvements Act of 1988, Congress changed course and sought to retain title to abandoned or forfeited railroad rights of way, specifying that “any and all right, title, interest, and estate of the United States” in such rights of way “shall remain in the United States” upon abandonment or forfeiture. 16 U. S. C. §1248(c). The Government argues that these statutes prove that Congress intended to retain (or at least believed it had retained) a reversionary interest in 1875 Act rights of way. Otherwise, the argument goes, these later statutes providing for the disposition of the abandoned or forfeited strips of land would have been meaningless. That is wrong. This case turns on what kind of interest Congress granted to railroads in their rights of way in 1875. Cf. Leo Sheep Co., 440 U. S., at 681 (“The pertinent inquiry in this case is the intent of Congress when it granted land to the Union Pacific in 1862.”). Great Northern answered that question: an easement. The statutes the Government cites do not purport to define (or redefine) the nature of the interest conveyed under the 1875 Act. Nor do they shed light on what kind of property interest Congress intended to convey to railroads in 1875. See United States v. Price, 361 U. S. 304, 313 (1960) (“the views of a subsequent Congress form a hazardous basis for inferring the intent of an earlier one”). In other words, these statutes do not tell us whether the United States has an interest in any particular right of way; they simply tell us how any interest the United States might have should be disposed of. For pre-1871 rights of way in which the United States retained an implied reversionary interest, or for rights of way crossing public lands, these statutes might make a difference in what happens to a forfeited or abandoned right of way. But if there is no “right, title, interest, [or] estate of the United States” in the right of way, 43 U. S. C. §912, then the statutes simply do not apply. We cannot overlook the irony in the Government’s argument based on Sections 912 and 940. Those provisions plainly evince Congress’s intent to divest the United States of any title or interest it had retained to railroad rights of way, and to vest that interest in individuals to whom the underlying land had been patented—in other words, people just like the Brandts. It was not until 1988—12 years after the United States patented the Fox Park parcel to the Brandts—that Congress did an about-face and attempted to reserve the rights of way to the United States. That policy shift cannot operate to create an interest in land that the Government had already given away.[5] * * * More than 70 years ago, the Government argued before this Court that a right of way granted under the 1875 Act was a simple easement. The Court was persuaded, and so ruled. Now the Government argues that such a right of way is tantamount to a limited fee with an implied reversionary interest. We decline to endorse such a stark change in position, especially given “the special need for certainty and predictability where land titles are concerned.” Leo Sheep Co., supra, at 687. The judgment of the United States Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit is reversed, and the case is remanded for further proceedings consistent with this opinion. It is so ordered.Notes 1 Locals at the time translated the acronym LHP&P as “Lord Help Push and Pull” or “Late, Hard Pressed, and Panicky.” S. Thybony, R. Rosenberg, & E. Rosenberg, The Medicine Bows: Wyoming’s Mountain Country 136 (1985). 2 The other landowners had a potential interest in much smaller acreages: No other party could claim an interest in more than three acres of the right of way, and only six of the 31 potential claims amounted to more than one acre. See Amended Complaint in No. 06–CV–0184J etc. (D Wyo.), ¶¶6–10. 3 The District Court dismissed without prejudice Brandt’s separate counterclaim for just compensation. Brandt then filed a takings claim in the Court of Federal Claims. That case has been stayed pending the disposition of this one. 4 Because granting an easement merely gives the grantee the right to enter and use the grantor’s land for a certain purpose, but does not give the grantee any possessory interest in the land, it does not make sense under common law property principles to speak of the grantor of an easement having retained a “reversionary interest.” A reversionary interest is “any future interest left in a transferor or his successor in interest.” Restatement (First) of Property §154(1)(1936). It arises when the grantor “transfers less than his entire interest” in a piece of land, and it is either certain or possible that he will retake the transferred interest at a future date. , Comment . Because the grantor of an easement has not transferred his estate or possessory interest, he has not retained a reversionary interest. He retains all his ownership interest, subject to an easement. See v. , 100 F. 3d 1525, 1533–1534 (CA Fed. 1996) (en banc). 5 The dissent invokes the principle that “any ambiguity in land grants ‘is to be resolved favorably to a sovereign grantor,’ ” at 1 (quoting v, ), but the Solicitor General does not—for a very good reason. The Government’s argument here is that it gave away in the land grant than an easement, so that more should revert to it now. A principle that ambiguous grants should be construed in favor of the sovereign hurts rather than helps that argument. The dissent’s quotation is indeed from , where the principle was cited in support of the Government’s argument that its 1875 Act grant conveyed “only an easement, and not a fee.” at 271.

571.US.204

Long-time drug user Banka died following an extended binge that included using heroin purchased from petitioner Burrage. Burrage pleaded not guilty to a superseding indictment alleging, inter alia, that he had unlawfully distributed heroin and that “death . . . resulted from the use of th[at] substance”—thus subjecting Burrage to a 20-year mandatory minimum sentence under the penalty enhancement provision of the Controlled Substances Act, 21 U. S. C. §841(b)(1)(C). After medical experts testified at trial that Banka might have died even if he had not taken the heroin, Burrage moved for a judgment of acquittal, arguing that Banka’s death could only “result from” heroin use if there was evidence that heroin was a but-for cause of death. The court denied the motion and, as relevant here, instructed the jury that the Government only had to prove that heroin was a contributing cause of death. The jury convicted Burrage, and the court sentenced him to 20 years. In affirming, the Eighth Circuit upheld the District Court’s jury instruction. Held: At least where use of the drug distributed by the defendant is not an independently sufficient cause of the victim’s death or serious bodily injury, a defendant cannot be liable for penalty enhancement under §841(b)(1)(C) unless such use is a but-for cause of the death or injury. Pp. 4–15. (a) Section 841(b)(1)(C)’s “death results” enhancement, which increased the minimum and maximum sentences to which Burrage was exposed, is an element that must be submitted to the jury and found beyond a reasonable doubt. See, e.g., Alleyne v. United States, 570 U. S. ___, ___. Pp. 4–5. (b) Because the Controlled Substances Act does not define “results from,” the phrase should be given its ordinary meaning. See Asgrow Seed Co. v. Winterboer, 513 U.S. 179, 187. Ordinarily, that phrase imposes a requirement of actual causality, i.e., proof “ ‘that the harm would not have occurred’ in the absence of—that is, but for—the defendant’s conduct.” University of Tex. Southwestern Medical Center v. Nassar, 570 U. S. ___, ___. Similar statutory phrases—“because of,” see id., at ___, “ ‘based on,’ ” Safeco Ins. Co. of America v. Burr, 551 U.S. 47, 63, and “ ‘by reason of,’ ” Gross v. FBL Financial Services, Inc., 557 U.S. 167, 176—have been read to impose a but-for causation requirement. This Court declines to adopt the Government’s permissive interpretation of “results from” to mean that use of a drug distributed by the defendant need only contribute to an aggregate force, e.g., mixed-drug intoxication, that is itself a but-for cause of death. There is no need to address a special rule developed for cases in which multiple sufficient causes independently, but concurrently, produce death, since there was no evidence that Banka’s heroin use was an independently sufficient cause of his death. And though Congress could have written §841(b)(1)(C) to make an act or omission a cause-in-fact if it was a “substantial” or “contributing” factor in producing death, Congress chose instead to use language that imports but-for causality. Pp. 6–12. (c) Whether adopting the but-for causation requirement or the Government’s interpretation raises policy concerns is beside the point, for the Court’s role is to apply the statute as written. Pp. 12–14. 687 F.3d 1015, reversed and remanded. Scalia, J., delivered the opinion of the Court, in which the Roberts, C. J., and Kennedy, Thomas, Breyer, and Kagan, JJ., joined, and in which Alito, J., joined as to all but Part III–B. Ginsburg, J., filed an opinion concurring in the judgment, in which Sotomayor, J., joined.

together to cause the result.” v. , 748 So. 2d 963, 967 (Fla. 1999); see also v. , 863 S. W. 2d 852, 862–863 (Mo. 1993). We will not exaggerate the confusion by counting these as genuine “substantial factor” cases.

571.US.12

Respondent Titlow and Billie Rogers were arrested for the murder of Billie’s husband. After explaining to respondent that the State’s evidence could support a conviction for first-degree murder, respondent’s attorney negotiated a manslaughter plea in exchange for an agreement to testify against Billie. Three days before Billie’s trial, respondent retained a new attorney, Frederick Toca, who demanded an even lower sentence in exchange for the guilty plea and testimony. The prosecutor rejected the proposal, and respondent withdrew the original plea. Without that testimony, Billie was acquitted. Respondent was subsequently convicted of second-degree murder. On direct appeal, respondent argued that Toca provided ineffective assistance by advising withdrawal of the plea without taking time to learn the strength of the State’s evidence. The Michigan Court of Appeals rejected the claim, concluding that Toca’s actions were reasonable in light of his client’s protestations of innocence. On federal habeas review, the District Court applied the deferential standard of review set forth in the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996 (AEDPA), concluded that the Michigan Court of Appeals’ ruling was reasonable on the law and facts, and denied relief. The Sixth Circuit reversed. It found the factual predicate for the state court’s decision—that the plea withdrawal was based on respondent’s assertion of innocence—an unreasonable interpretation of the factual record, given Toca’s explanation at the withdrawal hearing that the decision to withdraw was made because the State’s original plea offer was higher than the sentencing range provided by the Michigan guidelines. It also found no evidence in the record that Toca adequately advised respondent of the consequences of withdrawal. Held: The Sixth Circuit failed to apply the “doubly deferential” standard of review recognized by the Court’s case law when it refused to credit the state court’s reasonable factual finding and assumed that counsel was ineffective where the record was silent. Pp. 4–11. (a) AEDPA recognizes the federalism principle that state courts are adequate forums for the vindication of federal statutory and constitutional rights. It erects a formidable barrier to federal habeas relief for prisoners whose claims have been adjudicated in state court, requiring them to “show that the state court’s ruling . . . was so lacking in justification that there was an error . . . beyond any possibility for fairminded disagreement.” Harrington v. Richter, 562 U. S. ___, ___. Pp. 4–6. (b) Here, the record readily supports the Michigan Court of Appeals’ factual finding that Toca advised withdrawal of the guilty plea only after respondent’s proclamation of innocence. The facts that respondent passed a polygraph test denying being in the room when Billie’s husband was killed, discussed the case with a jailer who advised against pleading guilty if respondent was indeed innocent, and hired Toca just three days before Billie’s trial at which respondent had agreed to self-incriminate, strongly suggest that respondent had second thoughts about confessing in open court and proclaimed innocence to Toca. The only evidence cited by the Sixth Circuit for its contrary conclusion was that Toca’s sole explanation at the withdrawal hearing focused on the fact that the State’s plea offer was substantially higher than that provided by the Michigan guidelines. The Michigan Court of Appeals was well aware of Toca’s representations to the trial court and correctly found nothing inconsistent about a defendant’s asserting innocence on the one hand and refusing to plead guilty to manslaughter accompanied by higher-than-normal punishment on the other. Accepting as true the Michigan Court of Appeals’ factual determination that respondent proclaimed innocence to Toca, the Sixth Circuit’s Strickland analysis cannot be sustained. More troubling is that court’s conclusion that Toca was ineffective because the record contained no evidence that he gave constitutionally adequate advice on whether to withdraw the plea. The Sixth Circuit turned on its head the principle that counsel should be “strongly presumed to have rendered adequate assistance and made all significant decisions in the exercise of reasonable professional judgment,” Strickland v. Washington, 466 U.S. 668, 690, with the burden to show otherwise resting squarely on the defendant, id., at 687. The single fact that Toca failed to retrieve respondent’s file from former counsel before withdrawing the guilty plea cannot overcome Strickland’s strong presumption of effectiveness. In any event, respondent admitted in open court that former counsel had explained the State’s evidence and that it would support a first-degree murder conviction. Toca was justified in relying on this admission to conclude that respondent understood the strength of the prosecution’s case. Toca’s conduct in this litigation was far from exemplary, but a lawyer’s ethical violations do not make the lawyer per se ineffective, and Toca’s questionable conduct was irrelevant to the narrow issue before the Sixth Circuit. Pp. 6–11. 680 F.3d 577, reversed. Alito, J., delivered the opinion of the Court, in which Roberts, C. J., and Scalia, Kennedy, Thomas, Breyer, Sotomayor, and Kagan, JJ., joined. Sotomayor, J,. filed a concurring opinion. Ginsburg, J., filed an opinion concurring in the judgment.

When a state prisoner asks a federal court to set aside a sentence due to ineffective assistance of counsel during plea bargaining, our cases require that the federal court use a “ ‘doubly deferential’ ” standard of review that gives both the state court and the defense attorney the benefit of the doubt. Cullen v. Pinholster, 563 U. S. ___, ___ (2011) (slip op., at 17). In this case, the Sixth Circuit failed to apply that doubly deferential standard by refusing to credit a state court’s reasonable factual finding and by assuming that counsel was ineffective where the record was silent. Because the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996 (AEDPA), 110Stat. 1214, and Strickland v. Washington, 466 U. S. 668 (1984) , do not permit federal judges to so casually second-guess the decisions of their state-court colleagues or defense attorneys, the Sixth Circuit’s decision must be reversed. I Respondent Titlow and Billie Rogers, respondent’s aunt, murdered Billie’s husband Don by pouring vodka down his throat and smothering him with a pillow. With help from attorney Richard Lustig, respondent reached an agreement with state prosecutors to testify against Billie, plead guilty to manslaughter, and receive a 7- to 15-year sentence. As confirmed at a plea hearing, Lustig reviewed the State’s evidence with respondent “over a long period of time,” and respondent understood that that evidence could support a conviction for first-degree murder. App. 43–44. The Michigan trial court approved the plea bargain. Three days before Billie Rogers’ trial was to commence, however, respondent retained a new lawyer, Frederick Toca. With Toca’s help, respondent demanded a substantially lower minimum sentence (three years, instead of seven) in exchange for the agreement to plead guilty and testify. When the prosecutor refused to accede to the new demands, respondent withdrew the plea, acknowledging in open court the consequences of withdrawal (including reinstatement of the first-degree murder charge). Without respondent’s critical testimony, Billie Rogers was acquitted, and later died. Respondent subsequently stood trial. During the course of the trial, respondent denied any intent to harm Don Rogers or any knowledge, at the time respondent covered his mouth or poured vodka down his throat, that Billie intended to harm him. Indeed, respondent testified to attempting to prevent Billie from harming her husband. The jury, however, elected to believe respondent’s previous out-of-court statements, which squarely demonstrated participation in the killing, and convicted respondent of second-degree murder. The trial court imposed a 20- to 40-year term of imprisonment. On direct appeal, respondent argued that Toca advised withdrawal of the guilty plea without taking time to learn more about the case, thereby failing to realize the strength of the State’s evidence and providing ineffective assistance of counsel. Rejecting that claim, the Michigan Court of Appeals found that Toca acted reasonably in light of his client’s protestations of innocence. That court found that respondent’s decision to hire Toca was “set in motion” by respondent’s “statement to a sheriff’s deputy that [respondent] did not commit the offense.” App. to Pet. for Cert. 101a. Applying the standard set forth by our decision in Strickland, which requires that defense counsel satisfy “an objective standard of reasonableness,” 466 U. S., at 688, the Michigan Court of Appeals concluded that “[w]hen a defendant proclaims . . . innocence . . . , it is not objectively unreasonable to recommend that the defendant refrain from pleading guilty—no matter how ‘good’ the deal may appear.” App. to Pet. for Cert. 102a. Respondent then filed a federal habeas petition under 28 U. S. C. §2254. Applying AEDPA’s deferential standard of review, the District Court concluded that the Michigan Court of Appeals’ ruling was “completely reasonable on the law and the facts” and denied relief. No. 07–CV–13614, 2010 WL 4115410, *15 (ED Mich., Oct. 19, 2010). In particular, the District Court concluded that “[c]ounsel could not be ineffective by trying to negotiate a better plea agreement for [Titlow] with Billie Rogers’s trial imminent and [Titlow] stating at the time that Billie Rogers had committed the murder without . . . assistance.” Ibid. The Sixth Circuit reversed. It found that the factual predicate for the state court’s decision—that the withdrawal of the plea was based on respondent’s assertion of innocence—was an unreasonable interpretation of the factual record, given Toca’s explanation at the withdrawal hearing that “the decision to withdraw Titlow’s plea was based on the fact that the State’s plea offer was substantially higher than the Michigan guidelines for second-degree murder.” 680 F. 3d 577, 589 (2012). Further observing that “[t]he record in this case contains no evidence” that Toca fully informed respondent of the possible consequences of withdrawing the guilty plea, the Sixth Circuit held that Toca rendered ineffective assistance of counsel that resulted in respondent’s loss of the benefit of the plea bargain. Id., at 589–592. Citing our decision in Lafler v. Cooper, 566 U. S. ___ (2012), the Sixth Circuit remanded this case with instructions that the prosecution must reoffer the original plea agreement to respondent, and that the state court should “consul[t]” the plea agreement and “fashion” a remedy for the violation of respondent’s Sixth Amendment right to effective assistance of counsel during plea bargaining. 680 F. 3d, at 592. Chief Judge Batchelder dissented on the grounds that the Michigan Court of Appeals’ decision was reasonable. Id., at 593. On remand, the prosecution followed the Sixth Circuit’s instructions and reoffered the plea agreement it had offered some 10 years before—even though, in light of Billie Rogers’ acquittal and subsequent death, respondent was no longer able to deliver on the promises originally made to the prosecution. At the plea hearing, however, respondent balked, refusing to provide a factual basis for the plea which the court could accept. Respondent admitted to pouring vodka down Don Rogers’ throat, but denied assisting in killing him or knowing that pouring vodka down his throat could lead to his death. As at trial, respondent testified to attempting to prevent Billie Rogers from harming her husband. Eventually, after conferring with current counsel (not Toca), respondent admitted to placing Don Rogers in danger by pouring vodka down his throat with the knowledge that his death could result. The trial court took the plea under advisement, where the matter stands at present. We granted certiorari. 568 U. S. ___ (2013). II AEDPA instructs that, when a federal habeas petitioner challenges the factual basis for a prior state-court decision rejecting a claim, the federal court may overturn the state court’s decision only if it was “based on an unreasonable determination of the facts in light of the evidence pre- sented in the State court proceeding.” 28 U. S. C. §2254(d)(2). The prisoner bears the burden of rebutting the state court’s factual findings “by clear and convincing evidence.” §2254(e)(1). We have not defined the precise relationship between §2254(d)(2) and §2254(e)(1), and we need not do so here. See Wood v. Allen, 558 U. S. 290, 293 (2010) . For present purposes, it is enough to reiterate “that a state-court factual determination is not unreasonable merely because the federal habeas court would have reached a different conclusion in the first instance.” Id., at 301. AEDPA likewise imposes a highly deferential standard for reviewing claims of legal error by the state courts: A writ of habeas corpus may issue only if the state court’s decision “was contrary to, or involved an unreasonable application of, clearly established Federal law, as determined by” this Court. §2254(d)(1). AEDPA recognizes a foundational principle of our fed- eral system: State courts are adequate forums for the vindi- cation of federal rights. “[T]he States possess sovereignty concurrent with that of the Federal Government, subject only to limitations imposed by the Supremacy Clause. Under this system of dual sovereignty, we have consist- ently held that state courts have inherent authority, and are thus presumptively competent, to adjudicate claims arising under the laws of the United States.” Tafflin v. Levitt, 493 U. S. 455, 458 (1990) . This principle applies to claimed violations of constitutional, as well as statutory, rights. See Trainor v. Hernandez, 431 U. S. 434, 443 (1977) . Indeed, “state courts have the solemn responsibility equally with the federal courts to safeguard constitutional rights,” and this Court has refused to sanction any decision that would “reflec[t] negatively upon [a] state court’s ability to do so.” Ibid. (internal quotation marks omitted). Especially where a case involves such a common claim as ineffective assistance of counsel under Strickland—a claim state courts have now adjudicated in countless criminal cases for nearly 30 years—“there is no intrinsic reason why the fact that a man is a federal judge should make him more competent, or conscientious, or learned . . . than his neighbor in the state courthouse.” Stone v. Powell, 428 U. S. 465, 494, n. 35 (1976) (internal quotation marks omitted). Recognizing the duty and ability of our state-court colleagues to adjudicate claims of constitutional wrong, AEDPA erects a formidable barrier to federal habeas relief for prisoners whose claims have been adjudicated in state court. AEDPA requires “a state prisoner [to] show that the state court’s ruling on the claim being presented in federal court was so lacking in justification that there was an error . . . beyond any possibility for fairminded disagreement.” Harrington v. Richter, 562 U. S. ___, ___ (2011) (slip op., at 13). “If this standard is difficult to meet”—and it is—“that is because it was meant to be.” Id., at ___ (slip op., at 12). We will not lightly conclude that a State’s criminal justice system has experienced the “extreme malfunctio[n]” for which federal habeas relief is the remedy. Id., at ___ (slip op., at 13) (internal quotation marks omitted). III The record readily supports the Michigan Court of Appeals’ factual finding that Toca advised withdrawal of the guilty plea only after respondent’s proclamation of innocence. Respondent passed a polygraph denying planning to kill Don Rogers or being in the room when he died. Thereafter, according to an affidavit in the record, respondent discussed the case with a jailer, who advised against pleading guilty if respondent was not in fact guilty. App. 298 (affidavit of William Pierson). [ 1 ] That conversation “set into motion” respondent’s decision to retain Toca. Ibid., ¶8. Those facts, together with the timing of Toca’s hiring—on the eve of the trial at which respondent was to self-incriminate—strongly suggest that respondent had second thoughts about confessing in open court and proclaimed innocence to Toca. That conclusion is further bolstered by respondent’s maintenance of innocence of Don Rogers’ death at trial. Indeed, reading the record in any other way is difficult. Respondent’s first lawyer, Lustig, had negotiated a deal that was quite favorable in light of the fact, admitted by respondent in open court, that the State’s evidence could support a conviction for first-degree murder. This deal involved a guilty plea to manslaughter and a 7- to 15-year sentence—far less than the mandatory sentence of life in prison that results from a conviction for first-degree murder under Michigan law. See Mich. Comp. Laws Ann. §750.316 (West Supp. 2013). Yet after a jailer advised against pleading guilty if respondent was not guilty, something caused respondent both to fire Lustig and hire Toca (who within a few days withdrew the guilty plea), and then to maintain innocence at trial. If that something was not a desire to assert innocence, it is difficult to imagine what it was, and respondent does not offer an alternative theory. The only evidence the Sixth Circuit cited for its conclusion that the plea withdrawal was not based on respondent’s proclamation of innocence was that, when Toca moved to withdraw the guilty plea, he “did not refer to Titlow’s claims of innocence,” but instead “explained that the decision to withdraw [the] plea was based on the fact that the State’s plea offer was substantially higher than the Michigan guidelines” for manslaughter. 680 F. 3d, at 589. The Sixth Circuit believed that this fact “sufficiently rebuts the Michigan Court of Appeals’ finding that the plea withdrawal was based on Titlow’s assertion of innocence.” Ibid. But the Michigan Court of Appeals was well aware of Toca’s representations to the trial court, noting in its opinion that respondent “moved to withdraw [the] plea because the agreed upon sentence exceeded the sentencing guidelines range.” App. to Pet. for Cert. 100a. The Michigan Court of Appeals, however—unlike the Sixth Circuit—also correctly recognized that there is nothing inconsistent about a defendant’s asserting innocence on the one hand and refusing to plead guilty to manslaughter accompanied by higher-than-normal punishment on the other. Indeed, a defendant convinced of his or her own innocence may have a particularly optimistic view of the likelihood of acquittal, and therefore be more likely to drive a hard bargain with the prosecution before pleading guilty. Viewing the record as a whole, we conclude that the Sixth Circuit improperly set aside a “reasonable state-court determinatio[n] of fact in favor of its own debatable interpretation of the record.” Rice v. Collins, 546 U. S. 333, 335 (2006) . Accepting as true the Michigan Court of Appeals’ factual determination that respondent proclaimed innocence to Toca, the Sixth Circuit’s Strickland analysis cannot be sustained. Although a defendant’s proclamation of innocence does not relieve counsel of his normal responsibilities under Strickland, it may affect the advice counsel gives. The Michigan Court of Appeals’ conclusion that Toca’s advice satisfied Strickland fell within the bounds of reasonableness under AEDPA, given that respondent was claiming innocence and only days away from offering self-incriminating testimony in open court pursuant to a plea agreement involving an above-guidelines sentence. [ 2 ] See Florida v. Nixon, 543 U. S. 175, 187 (2004) (explaining that the defendant has the “ ‘ultimate authority’ ” to decide whether to accept a plea bargain); Brookhart v. Janis, 384 U. S. 1 –8 (1966) (observing that a lawyer must not “override his client’s desire . . . to plead not guilty”). The Sixth Circuit’s conclusion to the contrary was error. Even more troubling is the Sixth Circuit’s conclusion that Toca was ineffective because the “record in this case contains no evidence that” he gave constitutionally adequate advice on whether to withdraw the guilty plea. 680 F. 3d, at 590. We have said that counsel should be “strongly presumed to have rendered adequate assistance and made all significant decisions in the exercise of reasonable professional judgment,” Strickland, 466 U. S., at 690, and that the burden to “show that counsel’s performance was deficient” rests squarely on the defendant, id., at 687. The Sixth Circuit turned that presumption of effectiveness on its head. It should go without saying that the absence of evidence cannot overcome the “strong presumption that counsel’s conduct [fell] within the wide range of reasonable professional assistance.” Id., at 689. As Chief Judge Batchelder correctly explained in her dissent, “[w]ithout evidence that Toca gave incorrect advice or evidence that he failed to give material advice, Titlow cannot establish that his performance was deficient.” 680 F. 3d, at 595. The Sixth Circuit pointed to a single fact in support of its conclusion that Toca failed to adequately advise respondent: his failure to retrieve respondent’s file from Lustig before withdrawing the guilty plea. Id., at 590. But here, too, the Sixth Circuit deviated from Strickland’s strong presumption of effectiveness. The record does not reveal how much Toca was able to glean about respondent’s case from other sources; he may well have obtained copies of the critical materials from prosecutors or the court. (Indeed, Toca’s statement at the plea withdrawal hearing that “[t]here’s a lot of material here” strongly suggests that he did have access to a source of documentation other than Lustig’s file. App. 71.) In any event, the same considerations were relevant to entering and withdrawing the guilty plea, and respondent admitted in open court when initially pleading guilty that Lustig had explained the State’s evidence and that this evidence would support a conviction for first-degree murder. Toca was justified in relying on this admission to conclude that respondent understood the strength of the prosecution’s case and nevertheless wished to withdraw the plea. With respondent having knowingly entered the guilty plea, we think any confusion about the strength of the State’s evidence upon withdrawing the plea less than a month later highly unlikely. Despite our conclusion that there was no factual or legal justification for overturning the state court’s decision, we recognize that Toca’s conduct in this litigation was far from exemplary. He may well have violated the rules of professional conduct by accepting respondent’s publication rights as partial payment for his services, and he waited weeks before consulting respondent’s first lawyer about the case. But the Sixth Amendment does not guarantee the right to perfect counsel; it promises only the right to effective assistance, and we have held that a lawyer’s violation of ethical norms does not make the lawyer per se ineffective. See Mickens v. Taylor, 535 U. S. 162, 171 (2002) . Troubling as Toca’s actions were, they were irrelevant to the narrow question that was before the Sixth Circuit: whether the state court reasonably determined that respondent was adequately advised before deciding to withdraw the guilty plea. Because the Michigan Court of Appeals’ decision that respondent was so advised is reasonable and supported by the record, the Sixth Circuit’s judgment is reversed. [ 3 ] It is so ordered. Notes 1 Respondent complains that the state court improperly relied on this affidavit, but it was respondent who provided the affidavit to the state court and asked it to rely on the affidavit as part of the ground for remanding for an evidentiary hearing. In any event, even if the state court used the affidavit for a purpose not permitted by state law—a proposition we do not endorse—that would not empower a federal court to grant habeas relief. See Estelle v. McGuire, . 2 We assume, arguendo, as did the Michigan Court of Appeals, that Toca went beyond facilitating respondent’s withdrawal of the plea and advised withdrawal, although we note that the sole basis in the record for this assertion appears to be respondent’s self-serving testimony. 3 Because we conclude that the Sixth Circuit erred in finding Toca’s representation constitutionally ineffective, we do not reach the other questions presented by this case, namely, whether respondent adequately demonstrated prejudice, and whether the Sixth Circuit’s remedy is at odds with our decision in Lafler v. Cooper, 566 U. S. ___ (2012).

573.US.682

The Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993 (RFRA) prohibits the “Government [from] substantially burden[ing] a person’s exercise of religion even if the burden results from a rule of general applicability” unless the Government “demonstrates that application of the burden to the person—(1) is in furtherance of a compelling governmental interest; and (2) is the least restrictive means of furthering that compelling governmental interest.” 42 U. S. C. §§2000bb–1(a), (b). As amended by the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act of 2000 (RLUIPA), RFRA covers “any exercise of religion, whether or not compelled by, or central to, a system of religious belief.” §2000cc–5(7)(A). At issue here are regulations promulgated by the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) under the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010 (ACA), which, as relevant here, requires specified employers’ group health plans to furnish “preventive care and screenings” for women without “any cost sharing requirements,” 42 U. S. C. §300gg–13(a)(4). Congress did not specify what types of preventive care must be covered; it authorized the Health Resources and Services Administration, a component of HHS, to decide. Ibid. Nonexempt employers are generally required to provide coverage for the 20 contraceptive methods approved by the Food and Drug Administration, including the 4 that may have the effect of preventing an already fertilized egg from developing any further by inhibiting its attachment to the uterus. Religious employers, such as churches, are exempt from this contraceptive mandate. HHS has also effectively exempted religious nonprofit organizations with religious objections to providing coverage for contraceptive services. Under this accommodation, the insurance issuer must exclude contraceptive coverage from the employer’s plan and provide plan participants with separate payments for contraceptive services without imposing any cost-sharing requirements on the employer, its insurance plan, or its employee beneficiaries. In these cases, the owners of three closely held for-profit corporations have sincere Christian beliefs that life begins at conception and that it would violate their religion to facilitate access to contraceptive drugs or devices that operate after that point. In separate actions, they sued HHS and other federal officials and agencies (collectively HHS) under RFRA and the Free Exercise Clause, seeking to enjoin application of the contraceptive mandate insofar as it requires them to provide health coverage for the four objectionable contraceptives. In No. 13–356, the District Court denied the Hahns and their company—Conestoga Wood Specialties—a preliminary injunction. Affirming, the Third Circuit held that a for-profit corporation could not “engage in religious exercise” under RFRA or the First Amendment, and that the mandate imposed no requirements on the Hahns in their personal capacity. In No. 13–354, the Greens, their children, and their companies—Hobby Lobby Stores and Mardel—were also denied a preliminary injunction, but the Tenth Circuit reversed. It held that the Greens’ businesses are “persons” under RFRA, and that the corporations had established a likelihood of success on their RFRA claim because the contraceptive mandate substantially burdened their exercise of religion and HHS had not demonstrated a compelling interest in enforcing the mandate against them; in the alternative, the court held that HHS had not proved that the mandate was the “least restrictive means” of furthering a compelling governmental interest. Held: As applied to closely held corporations, the HHS regulations imposing the contraceptive mandate violate RFRA. Pp. 16–49. (a) RFRA applies to regulations that govern the activities of closely held for-profit corporations like Conestoga, Hobby Lobby, and Mardel. Pp. 16–31. (1) HHS argues that the companies cannot sue because they are for-profit corporations, and that the owners cannot sue because the regulations apply only to the companies, but that would leave merchants with a difficult choice: give up the right to seek judicial protection of their religious liberty or forgo the benefits of operating as corporations. RFRA’s text shows that Congress designed the statute to provide very broad protection for religious liberty and did not intend to put merchants to such a choice. It employed the familiar legal fiction of including corporations within RFRA’s definition of “persons,” but the purpose of extending rights to corporations is to protect the rights of people associated with the corporation, including shareholders, officers, and employees. Protecting the free-exercise rights of closely held corporations thus protects the religious liberty of the humans who own and control them. Pp. 16–19. (2) HHS and the dissent make several unpersuasive arguments. Pp. 19–31. (i) Nothing in RFRA suggests a congressional intent to depart from the Dictionary Act definition of “person,” which “include[s] corporations, . . . as well as individuals.” 1 U. S. C. §1. The Court has entertained RFRA and free-exercise claims brought by nonprofit corporations. See, e.g., Gonzales v. O Centro Espírita Beneficiente União do Vegetal, 546 U.S. 418. And HHS’s concession that a nonprofit corporation can be a “person” under RFRA effectively dispatches any argument that the term does not reach for-profit corporations; no conceivable definition of “person” includes natural persons and nonprofit corporations, but not for-profit corporations. Pp. 19–20. (ii) HHS and the dissent nonetheless argue that RFRA does not cover Conestoga, Hobby Lobby, and Mardel because they cannot “exercise . . . religion.” They offer no persuasive explanation for this conclusion. The corporate form alone cannot explain it because RFRA indisputably protects nonprofit corporations. And the profit-making objective of the corporations cannot explain it because the Court has entertained the free-exercise claims of individuals who were attempting to make a profit as retail merchants. Braunfeld v. Brown, 366 U.S. 599. Business practices compelled or limited by the tenets of a religious doctrine fall comfortably within the understanding of the “exercise of religion” that this Court set out in Employment Div., Dept. of Human Resources of Ore. v. Smith, 494 U.S. 872, 877. Any suggestion that for-profit corporations are incapable of exercising religion because their purpose is simply to make money flies in the face of modern corporate law. States, including those in which the plaintiff corporations were incorporated, authorize corporations to pursue any lawful purpose or business, including the pursuit of profit in conformity with the owners’ religious principles. Pp. 20–25. (iii) Also flawed is the claim that RFRA offers no protection because it only codified pre-Smith Free Exercise Clause precedents, none of which squarely recognized free-exercise rights for for-profit corporations. First, nothing in RFRA as originally enacted suggested that its definition of “exercise of religion” was meant to be tied to pre-Smith interpretations of the First Amendment. Second, if RFRA’s original text were not clear enough, the RLUIPA amendment surely dispels any doubt that Congress intended to separate the definition of the phrase from that in First Amendment case law. Third, the pre-Smith case of Gallagher v. Crown Kosher Super Market of Mass., Inc., 366 U.S. 617, suggests, if anything, that for-profit corporations can exercise religion. Finally, the results would be absurd if RFRA, a law enacted to provide very broad protection for religious liberty, merely restored this Court’s pre-Smith decisions in ossified form and restricted RFRA claims to plaintiffs who fell within a category of plaintiffs whose claims the Court had recognized before Smith. Pp. 25–28. (3) Finally, HHS contends that Congress could not have wanted RFRA to apply to for-profit corporations because of the difficulty of ascertaining the “beliefs” of large, publicly traded corporations, but HHS has not pointed to any example of a publicly traded corporation asserting RFRA rights, and numerous practical restraints would likely prevent that from occurring. HHS has also provided no evidence that the purported problem of determining the sincerity of an asserted religious belief moved Congress to exclude for-profit corporations from RFRA’s protection. That disputes among the owners of corporations might arise is not a problem unique to this context. State corporate law provides a ready means for resolving any conflicts by, for example, dictating how a corporation can establish its governing structure. Courts will turn to that structure and the underlying state law in resolving disputes. Pp. 29–31. (b) HHS’s contraceptive mandate substantially burdens the exercise of religion. Pp. 31–38. (1) It requires the Hahns and Greens to engage in conduct that seriously violates their sincere religious belief that life begins at conception. If they and their companies refuse to provide contraceptive coverage, they face severe economic consequences: about $475 million per year for Hobby Lobby, $33 million per year for Conestoga, and $15 million per year for Mardel. And if they drop coverage altogether, they could face penalties of roughly $26 million for Hobby Lobby, $1.8 million for Conestoga, and $800,000 for Mardel. P. 32. (2) Amici supporting HHS argue that the $2,000 per-employee penalty is less than the average cost of providing insurance, and therefore that dropping insurance coverage eliminates any substantial burden imposed by the mandate. HHS has never argued this and the Court does not know its position with respect to the argument. But even if the Court reached the argument, it would find it unpersuasive: It ignores the fact that the plaintiffs have religious reasons for providing health-insurance coverage for their employees, and it is far from clear that the net cost to the companies of providing insurance is more than the cost of dropping their insurance plans and paying the ACA penalty. Pp. 32–35. (3) HHS argues that the connection between what the objecting parties must do and the end that they find to be morally wrong is too attenuated because it is the employee who will choose the coverage and contraceptive method she uses. But RFRA’s question is whether the mandate imposes a substantial burden on the objecting parties’ ability to conduct business in accordance with their religious beliefs. The belief of the Hahns and Greens implicates a difficult and important question of religion and moral philosophy, namely, the circumstances under which it is immoral for a person to perform an act that is innocent in itself but that has the effect of enabling or facilitating the commission of an immoral act by another. It is not for the Court to say that the religious beliefs of the plaintiffs are mistaken or unreasonable. In fact, this Court considered and rejected a nearly identical argument in Thomas v. Review Bd. of Indiana Employment Security Div., 450 U.S. 707. The Court’s “narrow function . . . is to determine” whether the plaintiffs’ asserted religious belief reflects “an honest conviction,” id., at 716, and there is no dispute here that it does. Tilton v. Richardson, 403 U.S. 672, 689; and Board of Ed. of Central School Dist. No. 1 v. Allen, 392 U.S. 236, 248–249, distinguished. Pp. 35–38. (c) The Court assumes that the interest in guaranteeing cost-free access to the four challenged contraceptive methods is a compelling governmental interest, but the Government has failed to show that the contraceptive mandate is the least restrictive means of furthering that interest. Pp. 38–49. (1) The Court assumes that the interest in guaranteeing cost-free access to the four challenged contraceptive methods is compelling within the meaning of RFRA. Pp. 39–40. (2) The Government has failed to satisfy RFRA’s least-restrictive-means standard. HHS has not shown that it lacks other means of achieving its desired goal without imposing a substantial burden on the exercise of religion. The Government could, e.g., assume the cost of providing the four contraceptives to women unable to obtain coverage due to their employers’ religious objections. Or it could extend the accommodation that HHS has already established for religious nonprofit organizations to non-profit employers with religious objections to the contraceptive mandate. That accommodation does not impinge on the plaintiffs’ religious beliefs that providing insurance coverage for the contraceptives at issue here violates their religion and it still serves HHS’s stated interests. Pp. 40–45. (3) This decision concerns only the contraceptive mandate and should not be understood to hold that all insurance-coverage mandates, e.g., for vaccinations or blood transfusions, must necessarily fall if they conflict with an employer’s religious beliefs. Nor does it provide a shield for employers who might cloak illegal discrimination as a religious practice. United States v. Lee, 455 U.S. 252, which upheld the payment of Social Security taxes despite an employer’s religious objection, is not analogous. It turned primarily on the special problems associated with a national system of taxation; and if Lee were a RFRA case, the fundamental point would still be that there is no less restrictive alternative to the categorical requirement to pay taxes. Here, there is an alternative to the contraceptive mandate. Pp. 45–49. No. 13–354, 723 F.3d 1114, affirmed; No. 13–356, 724 F.3d 377, reversed and remanded. Alito, J., delivered the opinion of the Court, in which Roberts, C. J., and Scalia, Kennedy, and Thomas, JJ., joined. Kennedy, J., filed a concurring opinion. Ginsburg, J., filed a dissenting opinion, in which Sotomayor, J., joined, and in which Breyer and Kagan, JJ., joined as to all but Part III–C–1. Breyer and Kagan, JJ., filed a dissenting opinion. Notes 1 Together with No. 13–356, Conestoga Wood Specialties Corp. et al. v. Burwell, Secretary of Health and Human Services, et al., on certiorari to the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit.

We must decide in these cases whether the Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993 (RFRA), 107Stat. 1488, 42 U. S. C. §2000bb et seq., permits the United States Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to demand that three closely held corporations provide health-insurance coverage for methods of contraception that violate the sincerely held religious beliefs of the companies’ owners. We hold that the regulations that impose this obligation violate RFRA, which prohibits the Federal Government from taking any action that substantially burdens the exercise of religion unless that action constitutes the least restrictive means of serving a compelling government interest. In holding that the HHS mandate is unlawful, we reject HHS’s argument that the owners of the companies for-feited all RFRA protection when they decided to organize their businesses as corporations rather than sole proprietorships or general partnerships. The plain terms of RFRA make it perfectly clear that Congress did not discriminate in this way against men and women who wish to run their businesses as for-profit corporations in the manner required by their religious beliefs. Since RFRA applies in these cases, we must decide whether the challenged HHS regulations substantially burden the exercise of religion, and we hold that they do. The owners of the businesses have religious objections to abortion, and according to their religious beliefs the four contraceptive methods at issue are abortifacients. If the owners comply with the HHS mandate, they believe they will be facilitating abortions, and if they do not comply, they will pay a very heavy price—as much as $1.3 million per day, or about $475 million per year, in the case of one of the companies. If these consequences do not amount to a substantial burden, it is hard to see what would. Under RFRA, a Government action that imposes a substantial burden on religious exercise must serve a compelling government interest, and we assume that the HHS regulations satisfy this requirement. But in order for the HHS mandate to be sustained, it must also constitute the least restrictive means of serving that interest, and the mandate plainly fails that test. There are other ways in which Congress or HHS could equally ensure that every woman has cost-free access to the particular contraceptives at issue here and, indeed, to all FDA-approved contraceptives. In fact, HHS has already devised and implemented a system that seeks to respect the religious liberty of religious nonprofit corporations while ensuring that the employees of these entities have precisely the same access to all FDA-approved contraceptives as employees of companies whose owners have no religious objections to providing such coverage. The employees of these religious nonprofit corporations still have access to insurance coverage without cost sharing for all FDA-approved contracep-tives; and according to HHS, this system imposes no net economic burden on the insurance companies that are required to provide or secure the coverage. Although HHS has made this system available to religious nonprofits that have religious objections to the contraceptive mandate, HHS has provided no reason why the same system cannot be made available when the owners of for-profit corporations have similar religious objections. We therefore conclude that this system constitutes an alternative that achieves all of the Government’s aims while providing greater respect for religious liberty. And under RFRA, that conclusion means that enforcement of the HHS contraceptive mandate against the objecting parties in these cases is unlawful. As this description of our reasoning shows, our holding is very specific. We do not hold, as the principal dissent alleges, that for-profit corporations and other commercial enterprises can “opt out of any law (saving only tax laws) they judge incompatible with their sincerely held religious beliefs.” Post, at 1 (opinion of Ginsburg, J.). Nor do we hold, as the dissent implies, that such corporations have free rein to take steps that impose “disadvantages . . . on others” or that require “the general public [to] pick up the tab.” Post, at 1–2. And we certainly do not hold or suggest that “RFRA demands accommodation of a for-profit corporation’s religious beliefs no matter the impact that accommodation may have on . . . thousands of women employed by Hobby Lobby.” Post, at 2.[1] The effect of the HHS-created accommodation on the women employed by Hobby Lobby and the other companies involved in these cases would be precisely zero. Under that accommodation, these women would still be entitled to all FDA-approved contraceptives without cost sharing. I A Congress enacted RFRA in 1993 in order to provide very broad protection for religious liberty. RFRA’s enactment came three years after this Court’s decision in Employment Div., Dept. of Human Resources of Ore. v. Smith, 494 U. S. 872 (1990) , which largely repudiated the method of analyzing free-exercise claims that had been used in cases like Sherbert v. Verner, 374 U. S. 398 (1963), and Wisconsin v. Yoder, 406 U. S. 205 (1972) . In determining whether challenged government actions violated the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment, those decisions used a balancing test that took into account whether the challenged action imposed a substantial burden on the practice of religion, and if it did, whether it was needed to serve a compelling government interest. Applying this test, the Court held in Sherbert that an employee who was fired for refusing to work on her Sabbath could not be denied unemployment benefits. 374 U. S., at 408–409. And in Yoder, the Court held that Amish children could not be required to comply with a state law demanding that they remain in school until the age of 16 even though their religion required them to focus on uniquely Amish values and beliefs during their formative adolescent years. 406 U. S., at 210–211, 234–236. In Smith, however, the Court rejected “the balancing test set forth in Sherbert.” 494 U. S., at 883. Smith concerned two members of the Native American Church who were fired for ingesting peyote for sacramental purposes. When they sought unemployment benefits, the State of Oregon rejected their claims on the ground that consumption of peyote was a crime, but the Oregon Supreme Court, applying the Sherbert test, held that the denial of benefits violated the Free Exercise Clause. 494 U. S., at 875. This Court then reversed, observing that use of the Sherbert test whenever a person objected on religious grounds to the enforcement of a generally applicable law “would open the prospect of constitutionally required religious exemptions from civic obligations of almost every conceivable kind.” 494 U. S., at 888. The Court therefore held that, under the First Amendment, “neutral, generally applicable laws may be applied to religious practices even when not supported by a compelling governmental interest.” City of Boerne v. Flores, 521 U. S. 507, 514 (1997). Congress responded to Smith by enacting RFRA. “[L]aws [that are] ‘neutral’ toward religion,” Congress found, “may burden religious exercise as surely as laws intended to interfere with religious exercise.” 42 U. S. C. §2000bb(a)(2); see also §2000bb(a)(4). In order to ensure broad protection for religious liberty, RFRA provides that “Government shall not substantially burden a person’s exercise of religion even if the burden results from a rule of general applicability.” §2000bb–1(a).[2] If the Government substantially burdens a person’s exercise of religion, under the Act that person is entitled to an exemption from the rule unless the Government “demonstrates that application of the burden to the person—(1) is in furtherance of a compelling governmental interest; and (2) is the least restrictive means of furthering that compelling governmental interest.” §2000bb–1(b).[3] As enacted in 1993, RFRA applied to both the Federal Government and the States, but the constitutional authority invoked for regulating federal and state agencies differed. As applied to a federal agency, RFRA is based on the enumerated power that supports the particular agency’s work,[4] but in attempting to regulate the States and their subdivisions, Congress relied on its power under Section 5 of the Fourteenth Amendment to enforce the First Amendment. 521 U. S., at 516–517. In City of Boerne, however, we held that Congress had overstepped its Section 5 authority because “[t]he stringent test RFRA demands” “far exceed[ed] any pattern or practice of unconstitutional conduct under the Free Exercise Clause as interpreted in Smith.” Id., at 533–534. See also id., at 532. Following our decision in City of Boerne, Congress passed the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act of 2000 (RLUIPA), 114Stat. 803, 42 U. S. C. §2000cc et seq. That statute, enacted under Congress’s Commerce and Spending Clause powers, imposes the same general test as RFRA but on a more limited category of governmental actions. See Cutter v. Wilkinson, 544 U. S. 709 –716 (2005). And, what is most relevant for present purposes, RLUIPA amended RFRA’s definition of the “exercise of religion.” See §2000bb–2(4) (importing RLUIPA definition). Before RLUIPA, RFRA’s definition made reference to the First Amendment. See §2000bb–2(4) (1994 ed.) (defining “exercise of religion” as “the exercise of religion under the First Amendment”). In RLUIPA, in an obvious effort to effect a complete separation from First Amendment case law, Congress deleted the reference to the First Amendment and defined the “exercise of religion” to include “any exercise of religion, whether or not compelled by, or central to, a system of religious belief.” §2000cc–5(7)(A). And Congress mandated that this concept “be construed in favor of a broad protection of religious exercise, to the maximum extent permitted by the terms of this chapter and the Constitution.” §2000cc–3(g).[5] B At issue in these cases are HHS regulations promul-gated under the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010 (ACA), 124Stat. 119. ACA generally requires employers with 50 or more full-time employees to offer“a group health plan or group health insurance coverage” that provides “minimum essential coverage.” 26 U. S. C. §5000A(f)(2); §§4980H(a), (c)(2). Any covered employer that does not provide such coverage must pay a substantial price. Specifically, if a covered employer provides group health insurance but its plan fails to comply with ACA’s group-health-plan requirements, the employer may be required to pay $100 per day for each affected “individual.” §§4980D(a)–(b). And if the employer decides to stop providing health insurance altogether and at least one full-time employee enrolls in a health plan and qualifies for a subsidy on one of the government-run ACA exchanges, the employer must pay $2,000 per year for each of its full-time employees. §§4980H(a), (c)(1). Unless an exception applies, ACA requires an employer’s group health plan or group-health-insurance coverage to furnish “preventive care and screenings” for women without “any cost sharing requirements.” 42 U. S. C. §300gg–13(a)(4). Congress itself, however, did not specify what types of preventive care must be covered. Instead, Congress authorized the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA), a component of HHS, to make that important and sensitive decision. Ibid. The HRSA in turn consulted the Institute of Medicine, a nonprofit group of volunteer advisers, in determining which preventive services to require. See 77 Fed. Reg. 8725–8726 (2012). In August 2011, based on the Institute’s recommendations, the HRSA promulgated the Women’s Preventive Services Guidelines. See id., at 8725–8726, and n. 1; online at http://hrsa.gov/womensguidelines (all Internet materials as visited June 26, 2014, and available in Clerk of Court’s case file). The Guidelines provide that nonexempt employers are generally required to provide “coverage, without cost sharing” for “[a]ll Food and Drug Ad-ministration [(FDA)] approved contraceptive methods, sterilization procedures, and patient education and counseling.” 77 Fed. Reg. 8725 (internal quotation marks omitted). Although many of the required, FDA-approved methods of contraception work by preventing the fertilization of an egg, four of those methods (those specifically at issue in these cases) may have the effect of preventing an already fertilized egg from developing any further by inhibiting its attachment to the uterus. See Brief for HHS in No. 13–354, pp. 9–10, n. 4;[6] FDA, Birth Control: Medicines to Help You.[7] HHS also authorized the HRSA to establish exemptions from the contraceptive mandate for “religious employers.” 45 CFR §147.131(a). That category encompasses “churches, their integrated auxiliaries, and conventions or associ-ations of churches,” as well as “the exclusively religious activities of any religious order.” See ibid (citing 26 U. S. C. §§6033(a)(3)(A)(i), (iii)). In its Guidelines,HRSA exempted these organizations from the requirement to cover contraceptive services. See http://hrsa.gov/womensguidelines. In addition, HHS has effectively exempted certain religious nonprofit organizations, described under HHS regulations as “eligible organizations,” from the contraceptive mandate. See 45 CFR §147.131(b); 78 Fed. Reg. 39874 (2013). An “eligible organization” means a nonprofit organization that “holds itself out as a religious organi-zation” and “opposes providing coverage for some or all of any contraceptive services required to be covered . . . on account of religious objections.” 45 CFR §147.131(b). To qualify for this accommodation, an employer must certify that it is such an organization. §147.131(b)(4). When a group-health-insurance issuer receives notice that one of its clients has invoked this provision, the issuer must then exclude contraceptive coverage from the employer’s plan and provide separate payments for contraceptive services for plan participants without imposing any cost-sharing requirements on the eligible organization, its insurance plan, or its employee beneficiaries. §147.131(c).[8] Al-though this procedure requires the issuer to bear the cost of these services, HHS has determined that this obligation will not impose any net expense on issuers because its cost will be less than or equal to the cost savings resulting from the services. 78 Fed. Reg. 39877.[9] In addition to these exemptions for religious organizations, ACA exempts a great many employers from most of its coverage requirements. Employers providing “grandfathered health plans”—those that existed prior to March 23, 2010, and that have not made specified changes after that date—need not comply with many of the Act’s requirements, including the contraceptive mandate. 42 U. S. C. §§18011(a), (e). And employers with fewer than 50 employees are not required to provide health insurance at all. 26 U. S. C. §4980H(c)(2). All told, the contraceptive mandate “presently does not apply to tens of millions of people.” 723 F. 3d 1114, 1143 (CA10 2013). This is attributable, in large part, to grandfathered health plans: Over one-third of the 149 million nonelderly people in America with employer-sponsored health plans were enrolled in grandfathered plans in 2013. Brief for HHS in No. 13–354, at 53; Kaiser Family Foundation & Health Research & Educational Trust, Employer Health Benefits, 2013 Annual Survey 43, 221.[10] The count for employees working for firms that do not have to provide insurance at all because they employ fewer than 50 employees is 34 million workers. See The Whitehouse, Health Reform for Small Businesses: The Affordable Care Act Increases Choice and Saving Money for Small Businesses 1.[11] II A Norman and Elizabeth Hahn and their three sons are devout members of the Mennonite Church, a Christian denomination. The Mennonite Church opposes abortion and believes that “[t]he fetus in its earliest stages . . . shares humanity with those who conceived it.”[12] Fifty years ago, Norman Hahn started a wood-working business in his garage, and since then, this company, Conestoga Wood Specialties, has grown and now has 950 employees. Conestoga is organized under Pennsylvania law as a for-profit corporation. The Hahns exercise sole ownership of the closely held business; they control its board of directors and hold all of its voting shares. One of the Hahn sons serves as the president and CEO. The Hahns believe that they are required to run their business “in accordance with their religious beliefs and moral principles.” 917 F. Supp. 2d 394, 402 (ED Pa. 2013). To that end, the company’s mission, as they see it, is to “operate in a professional environment founded upon the highest ethical, moral, and Christian principles.” Ibid. (internal quotation marks omitted). The company’s “Vision and Values Statements” affirms that Conestoga endeavors to “ensur[e] a reasonable profit in [a] manner that reflects [the Hahns’] Christian heritage.” App. in No. 13–356, p. 94 (complaint). As explained in Conestoga’s board-adopted “Statement on the Sanctity of Human Life,” the Hahns believe that “human life begins at conception.” 724 F. 3d 377, 382, and n. 5 (CA3 2013) (internal quotation marks omitted). It is therefore “against [their] moral conviction to be involved in the termination of human life” after conception, which they believe is a “sin against God to which they are held accountable.” Ibid. (internal quotation marks omitted). The Hahns have accordingly excluded from the group-health-insurance plan they offer to their employees certain contraceptive methods that they consider to be abortifacients. Id., at 382. The Hahns and Conestoga sued HHS and other federal officials and agencies under RFRA and the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment, seeking to enjoin application of ACA’s contraceptive mandate insofar as it requires them to provide health-insurance coverage for four FDA-approved contraceptives that may operate after the fertilization of an egg.[13] These include two forms of emergency contraception commonly called “morning after” pills and two types of intrauterine devices.[14] In opposing the requirement to provide coverage for the contraceptives to which they object, the Hahns argued that “it is immoral and sinful for [them] to intentionally participate in, pay for, facilitate, or otherwise support these drugs.” Ibid. The District Court denied a preliminary injunction, see 917 F. Supp. 2d, at 419, and the Third Circuit affirmed in a divided opinion, holding that “for-profit, secular corporations cannot engage in religious exercise” within the meaning of RFRA or the First Amendment. 724 F. 3d, at 381. The Third Circuit also rejected the claims brought by the Hahns themselves because it concluded that the HHS “[m]andate does not impose any requirements on the Hahns” in their personal capacity. Id., at 389. B David and Barbara Green and their three children are Christians who own and operate two family businesses. Forty-five years ago, David Green started an arts-and-crafts store that has grown into a nationwide chain called Hobby Lobby. There are now 500 Hobby Lobby stores, and the company has more than 13,000 employees. 723 F. 3d, at 1122. Hobby Lobby is organized as a for-profit corporation under Oklahoma law. One of David’s sons started an affiliated business, Mardel, which operates 35 Christian bookstores and employs close to 400 people. Ibid. Mardel is also organized as a for-profit corporation under Oklahoma law. Though these two businesses have expanded over the years, they remain closely held, and David, Barbara, and their children retain exclusive control of both companies. Ibid. David serves as the CEO of Hobby Lobby, and his three children serve as the president, vice president, and vice CEO. See Brief for Respondents in No. 13–354, p. 8.[15] Hobby Lobby’s statement of purpose commits the Greens to “[h]onoring the Lord in all [they] do by operating the company in a manner consistent with Biblical principles.” App. in No. 13–354, pp. 134–135 (complaint). Each family member has signed a pledge to run the businesses in accordance with the family’s religious beliefs and to use the family assets to support Christian ministries. 723 F. 3d, at 1122. In accordance with those commitments, Hobby Lobby and Mardel stores close on Sundays, even though the Greens calculate that they lose millions in sales annually by doing so. Id., at 1122; App. in No. 13–354, at 136–137. The businesses refuse to engage in profitable transactions that facilitate or promote alcohol use; they contribute profits to Christian missionaries and ministries; and they buy hundreds of full-page newspaper ads inviting people to “know Jesus as Lord and Savior.” Ibid. (internal quotation marks omitted). Like the Hahns, the Greens believe that life begins at conception and that it would violate their religion to facilitate access to contraceptive drugs or devices that operate after that point. 723 F. 3d, at 1122. They specifically object to the same four contraceptive methods as the Hahns and, like the Hahns, they have no objection to the other 16 FDA-approved methods of birth control. Id., at 1125. Although their group-health-insurance plan predates the enactment of ACA, it is not a grandfathered plan because Hobby Lobby elected not to retain grandfathered status before the contraceptive mandate was proposed. Id., at 1124. The Greens, Hobby Lobby, and Mardel sued HHS and other federal agencies and officials to challenge the contraceptive mandate under RFRA and the Free Exercise Clause.[16] The District Court denied a preliminary injunction, see 870 F. Supp. 2d 1278 (WD Okla. 2012), and the plaintiffs appealed, moving for initial en banc consideration. The Tenth Circuit granted that motion and reversed in a divided opinion. Contrary to the conclusion of the Third Circuit, the Tenth Circuit held that the Greens’ two for-profit businesses are “persons” within the meaning of RFRA and therefore may bring suit under that law. The court then held that the corporations had established a likelihood of success on their RFRA claim. 723 F. 3d, at 1140–1147. The court concluded that the contraceptive mandate substantially burdened the exercise of religion by requiring the companies to choose between “compromis[ing] their religious beliefs” and paying a heavy fee—either “close to $475 million more in taxes every year” if they simply refused to provide coverage for the contraceptives at issue, or “roughly $26 million” annually if they “drop[ped] health-insurance benefits for all employees.” Id., at 1141. The court next held that HHS had failed to demonstrate a compelling interest in enforcing the mandate against the Greens’ businesses and, in the alternative, that HHS had failed to prove that enforcement of the mandate was the “least restrictive means” of furthering the Government’s asserted interests. Id., at 1143–1144 (emphasis deleted; internal quotation marks omitted). After concluding that the companies had “demonstrated irreparable harm,” the court reversed and remanded for the District Court to consider the remaining factors of the preliminary-injunction test. Id., at 1147.[17] We granted certiorari. 571 U. S. ___ (2013). III A RFRA prohibits the “Government [from] substantially burden[ing] a person’s exercise of religion even if the burden results from a rule of general applicability” unless the Government “demonstrates that application of the burden to the person—(1) is in furtherance of a compelling governmental interest; and (2) is the least restrictive means of furthering that compelling governmental interest.” 42 U. S. C. §§2000bb–1(a), (b) (emphasis added). The first question that we must address is whether this provision applies to regulations that govern the activities of for-profit corporations like Hobby Lobby, Conestoga, and Mardel. HHS contends that neither these companies nor their owners can even be heard under RFRA. According to HHS, the companies cannot sue because they seek to make a profit for their owners, and the owners cannotbe heard because the regulations, at least as a formal mat-ter, apply only to the companies and not to the ownersas individuals. HHS’s argument would have dramatic consequences. Consider this Court’s decision in Braunfeld v. Brown, 366 U. S. 599 (1961) (plurality opinion). In that case, five Orthodox Jewish merchants who ran small retail businesses in Philadelphia challenged a Pennsylvania Sunday closing law as a violation of the Free Exercise Clause. Because of their faith, these merchants closed their shops on Saturday, and they argued that requiring them to remain shut on Sunday threatened them with financial ruin. The Court entertained their claim (although it ruled against them on the merits), and if a similar claim were raised today under RFRA against a jurisdiction still subject to the Act (for example, the District of Columbia, see 42 U. S. C. §2000bb–2(2)), the merchants would be entitled to be heard. According to HHS, however, if these merchants chose to incorporate their businesses—with-out in any way changing the size or nature of their businesses—they would forfeit all RFRA (and free-exercise) rights. HHS would put these merchants to a difficult choice: either give up the right to seek judicial protection of their religious liberty or forgo the benefits, available to their competitors, of operating as corporations. As we have seen, RFRA was designed to provide very broad protection for religious liberty. By enacting RFRA, Congress went far beyond what this Court has held is constitutionally required.[18] Is there any reason to think that the Congress that enacted such sweeping protection put small-business owners to the choice that HHS suggests? An examination of RFRA’s text, to which we turn in the next part of this opinion, reveals that Congress did no such thing. As we will show, Congress provided protection for people like the Hahns and Greens by employing a familiar legal fiction: It included corporations within RFRA’s definition of “persons.” But it is important to keep in mind that the purpose of this fiction is to provide protection for human beings. A corporation is simply a form of organization used by human beings to achieve desired ends. An established body of law specifies the rights and obligations of the people (including shareholders, officers, and employees) who are associated with a corporation in one way or another. When rights, whether constitutional or statu-tory, are extended to corporations, the purpose is to protect the rights of these people. For example, extending Fourth Amendment protection to corporations protects the privacy interests of employees and others associated with the company. Protecting corporations from government seizure of their property without just compensation protects all those who have a stake in the corporations’ financial well-being. And protecting the free-exercise rights of corporations like Hobby Lobby, Conestoga, and Mardel protects the religious liberty of the humans who own and control those companies. In holding that Conestoga, as a “secular, for-profit corporation,” lacks RFRA protection, the Third Circuit wrote as follows: “General business corporations do not, separate and apart from the actions or belief systems of their individual owners or employees, exercise religion. They do not pray, worship, observe sacraments or take other religiously-motivated actions separate and apart from the intention and direction of their individual actors.” 724 F. 3d, at 385 (emphasis added). All of this is true—but quite beside the point. Corporations, “separate and apart from” the human beings who own, run, and are employed by them, cannot do anything at all. B 1 As we noted above, RFRA applies to “a person’s” exercise of religion, 42 U. S. C. §§2000bb–1(a), (b), and RFRA itself does not define the term “person.” We therefore look to the Dictionary Act, which we must consult “[i]n determining the meaning of any Act of Congress, unless the context indicates otherwise.” 1 U. S. C. §1. Under the Dictionary Act, “the wor[d] ‘person’ . . . include[s] corporations, companies, associations, firms, partnerships, societies, and joint stock companies, as well as individuals.” Ibid.; see FCC v. AT&T Inc., 562 U. S. ___, ___ (2011) (slip op., at 6) (“We have no doubt that ‘person,’ in a legal setting, often refers to artificial entities. The Dictionary Act makes that clear”). Thus, unless there is something about the RFRA context that “indicates otherwise,” the Dictionary Act provides a quick, clear, and affirmative answer to the question whether the companies involved in these cases may be heard. We see nothing in RFRA that suggests a congressional intent to depart from the Dictionary Act definition, and HHS makes little effort to argue otherwise. We have entertained RFRA and free-exercise claims brought by nonprofit corporations, see Gonzales v. O Centro Espírita Beneficiente União do Vegetal, 546 U. S. 418 (2006) (RFRA); Hosanna-Tabor Evangelical Lutheran Church and School v. EEOC, 565 U. S. ___ (2012) (Free Exercise); Church of the Lukumi Babalu Aye, Inc. v. Hialeah, 508 U. S. 520 (1993) (Free Exercise), and HHS concedes that a nonprofit corporation can be a “person” within the meaning of RFRA. See Brief for HHS in No. 13–354, at 17; Reply Brief in No. 13–354, at 7–8.[19] This concession effectively dispatches any argument that the term “person” as used in RFRA does not reach the closely held corporations involved in these cases. No known understanding of the term “person” includes some but not all corporations. The term “person” sometimes encompasses artificial persons (as the Dictionary Act instructs), and it sometimes is limited to natural persons. But no conceivable definition of the term includes natural persons and nonprofit corporations, but not for-profit corporations.[20] Cf. Clark v. Martinez, 543 U. S. 371, 378 (2005) (“To give th[e] same words a different meaning for each category would be to invent a statute rather than interpret one”). 2 The principal argument advanced by HHS and the principal dissent regarding RFRA protection for Hobby Lobby, Conestoga, and Mardel focuses not on the statutory term “person,” but on the phrase “exercise of religion.” According to HHS and the dissent, these corporations are not protected by RFRA because they cannot exercise religion. Neither HHS nor the dissent, however, provides any persuasive explanation for this conclusion. Is it because of the corporate form? The corporate form alone cannot provide the explanation because, as we have pointed out, HHS concedes that nonprofit corporations can be protected by RFRA. The dissent suggests that nonprofit corporations are special because furthering their reli-gious “autonomy . . . often furthers individual religious freedom as well.” Post, at 15 (quoting Corporation of Presiding Bishop of Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints v. Amos, 483 U. S. 327, 342 (1987) (Brennan, J., concurring in judgment)). But this principle appliesequally to for-profit corporations: Furthering their re-ligious freedom also “furthers individual religious freedom.” In these cases, for example, allowing Hobby Lobby, Con-estoga, and Mardel to assert RFRA claims protects the religious liberty of the Greens and the Hahns.[21] If the corporate form is not enough, what about the profit-making objective? In Braunfeld, 366 U. S. 599 , we entertained the free-exercise claims of individuals who were attempting to make a profit as retail merchants, and the Court never even hinted that this objective precluded their claims. As the Court explained in a later case, the “exercise of religion” involves “not only belief and profession but the performance of (or abstention from) physical acts” that are “engaged in for religious reasons.” Smith, 494 U. S., at 877. Business practices that are compelled or limited by the tenets of a religious doctrine fall comfortably within that definition. Thus, a law that “operates so as to make the practice of . . . religious beliefs more expensive” in the context of business activities imposes a burden on the exercise of religion. Braunfeld, supra, at 605; see United States v. Lee, 455 U. S. 252, 257 (1982) (recognizing that “compulsory participation in the social security system interferes with [Amish employers’] free exercise rights”). If, as Braunfeld recognized, a sole proprietorship that seeks to make a profit may assert a free-exercise claim,[22] why can’t Hobby Lobby, Conestoga, and Mardel do the same? Some lower court judges have suggested that RFRA does not protect for-profit corporations because the purpose of such corporations is simply to make money.[23] This argument flies in the face of modern corporate law. “Each American jurisdiction today either expressly or by implication authorizes corporations to be formed under its general corporation act for any lawful purpose or business.” 1 J. Cox & T. Hazen, Treatise of the Law of Corporations §4:1, p. 224 (3d ed. 2010) (emphasis added); see 1A W. Fletcher, Cyclopedia of the Law of Corporations §102 (rev. ed. 2010). While it is certainly true that a central objective of for-profit corporations is to make money, modern corporate law does not require for-profit corporations to pursue profit at the expense of everything else, and many do not do so. For-profit corporations, with ownership approval, support a wide variety of charitable causes, and it is not at all uncommon for such corporations to further humanitarian and other altruistic objectives. Many examples come readily to mind. So long as its owners agree, a for-profit corporation may take costly pollution-control and energy-conservation measures that go beyond what the law requires. A for-profit corporation that operates facilities in other countries may exceed the requirements of local law regarding working conditions and benefits. If for-profit corporations may pursue such worthy objectives, there is no apparent reason why they may not further religious objectives as well. HHS would draw a sharp line between nonprofit corporations (which, HHS concedes, are protected by RFRA) and for-profit corporations (which HHS would leave unprotected), but the actual picture is less clear-cut. Not all corporations that decline to organize as nonprofits do so in order to maximize profit. For example, organizations with religious and charitable aims might organize as for-profit corporations because of the potential advantages of that corporate form, such as the freedom to participate in lobbying for legislation or campaigning for political candidates who promote their religious or charitable goals.[24] In fact, recognizing the inherent compatibility between establishing a for-profit corporation and pursuing nonprofit goals, States have increasingly adopted laws formally recognizing hybrid corporate forms. Over half of the States, for instance, now recognize the “benefit corporation,” a dual-purpose entity that seeks to achieve both a benefit for the public and a profit for its owners.[25] In any event, the objectives that may properly be pursued by the companies in these cases are governed by the laws of the States in which they were incorporated—Pennsylvania and Oklahoma—and the laws of those States permit for-profit corporations to pursue “any lawful purpose” or “act,” including the pursuit of profit in conformity with the owners’ religious principles. 15 Pa. Cons. Stat. §1301 (2001) (“Corporations may be incorporated under this subpart for any lawful purpose or purposes”); Okla. Stat., Tit. 18, §§1002, 1005 (West 2012) (“[E]very corporation, whether profit or not for profit” may “be incorporated or organized . . . to conduct or promote any lawful business or purposes”); see also §1006(A)(3); Brief for State of Oklahoma as Amicus Curiae in No. 13–354. 3 HHS and the principal dissent make one additional argument in an effort to show that a for-profit corporation cannot engage in the “exercise of religion” within the meaning of RFRA: HHS argues that RFRA did no more than codify this Court’s pre-Smith Free Exercise Clause precedents, and because none of those cases squarely held that a for-profit corporation has free-exercise rights, RFRA does not confer such protection. This argument has many flaws. First, nothing in the text of RFRA as originally enacted suggested that the statutory phrase “exercise of religion under the First Amendment” was meant to be tied to this Court’s pre-Smith interpretation of that Amendment. When first enacted, RFRA defined the “exercise of religion” to mean “the exercise of religion under the First Amendment”—not the exercise of religion as recognized only by then-existing Supreme Court precedents. 42 U. S. C. §2000bb–2(4) (1994 ed.). When Congress wants to link the meaning of a statutory provision to a body of this Court’s case law, it knows how to do so. See, e.g., Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996, 28 U. S. C. §2254(d)(1) (authorizing habeas relief from a state-court decision that “was contrary to, or involved an unreasonable application of, clearly established Federal law, as determined by the Supreme Court of the United States”). Second, if the original text of RFRA was not clear enough on this point—and we think it was—the amendment of RFRA through RLUIPA surely dispels any doubt. That amendment deleted the prior reference to the First Amendment, see 42 U. S. C. §2000bb–2(4) (2000 ed.) (incorporating §2000cc–5), and neither HHS nor the principal dissent can explain why Congress did this if it wanted to tie RFRA coverage tightly to the specific holdings of our pre-Smith free-exercise cases. Moreover, as discussed, the amendment went further, providing that the exercise of religion “shall be construed in favor of a broad protection of religious exercise, to the maximum extent permitted by the terms of this chapter and the Constitution.” §2000cc–3(g). It is simply not possible to read these provisions as restricting the concept of the “exercise of religion” to those practices specifically addressed in our pre-Smith decisions. Third, the one pre-Smith case involving the free-exercise rights of a for-profit corporation suggests, if anything, that for-profit corporations possess such rights. In Gallagher v. Crown Kosher Super Market of Mass., Inc., 366 U. S. 617 (1961) , the Massachusetts Sunday closing law was challenged by a kosher market that was organized as a for-profit corporation, by customers of the market, and by a rabbi. The Commonwealth argued that the corporation lacked “standing” to assert a free-exercise claim,[26] but not one member of the Court expressed agreement with that argument. The plurality opinion for four Justices rejected the First Amendment claim on the merits based on the reasoning in Braunfeld, and reserved decision on the question whether the corporation had “standing” to raise the claim. See 366 U. S., at 631. The three dissenters, Justices Douglas, Brennan, and Stewart, found the law unconstitutional as applied to the corporation and the other challengers and thus implicitly recognized their right to assert a free-exercise claim. See id., at 642 (Brennan, J., joined by Stewart, J., dissenting); McGowan v. Maryland, 366 U. S. 420 –579 (1961) (Douglas, J., dissenting as to related cases including Gallagher). Fi-nally, Justice Frankfurter’s opinion, which was joined by Justice Harlan, upheld the Massachusetts law on the merits but did not question or reserve decision on the issue of the right of the corporation or any of the other challengers to be heard. See McGowan, 366 U. S., at 521–522. It is quite a stretch to argue that RFRA, a law enacted to provide very broad protection for religious liberty,left for-profit corporations unprotected simply because in Gallagher—the only pre-Smith case in which the issue was raised—a majority of the Justices did not find it necessary to decide whether the kosher market’s corporate status barred it from raising a free-exercise claim. Finally, the results would be absurd if RFRA merely restored this Court’s pre-Smith decisions in ossified form and did not allow a plaintiff to raise a RFRA claim unless that plaintiff fell within a category of plaintiffs one of whom had brought a free-exercise claim that this Court entertained in the years before Smith. For example, we are not aware of any pre-Smith case in which this Court entertained a free-exercise claim brought by a resident noncitizen. Are such persons also beyond RFRA’s protective reach simply because the Court never addressed their rights before Smith? Presumably in recognition of the weakness of this argument, both HHS and the principal dissent fall back on the broader contention that the Nation lacks a tradition of exempting for-profit corporations from generally applicable laws. By contrast, HHS contends, statutes like Title VII, 42 U. S. C. §2000e–19(A), expressly exempt churches and other nonprofit religious institutions but not for-profit corporations. See Brief for HHS in No. 13–356, p. 26. In making this argument, however, HHS did not call to our attention the fact that some federal statutes do exempt categories of entities that include for-profit corporations from laws that would otherwise require these entities to engage in activities to which they object on grounds of conscience. See, e.g., 42 U. S. C. §300a–7(b)(2); §238n(a).[27] If Title VII and similar laws show anything, it isthat Congress speaks with specificity when it intends a religious accommodation not to extend to for-profitcorporations. 4 Finally, HHS contends that Congress could not have wanted RFRA to apply to for-profit corporations because it is difficult as a practical matter to ascertain the sincere “beliefs” of a corporation. HHS goes so far as to raise the specter of “divisive, polarizing proxy battles over the religious identity of large, publicly traded corporations such as IBM or General Electric.” Brief for HHS in No. 13–356, at 30. These cases, however, do not involve publicly traded corporations, and it seems unlikely that the sort of corporate giants to which HHS refers will often assert RFRA claims. HHS has not pointed to any example of a publicly traded corporation asserting RFRA rights, and numerous practical restraints would likely prevent that from occurring. For example, the idea that unrelated shareholders—including institutional investors with their own set of stakeholders—would agree to run a corporation under the same religious beliefs seems improbable. In any event, we have no occasion in these cases to consider RFRA’s applicability to such companies. The companies in the cases before us are closely held corporations, each owned and controlled by members of a single family, and no one has disputed the sincerity of their religious beliefs.[28] HHS has also provided no evidence that the purported problem of determining the sincerity of an asserted religious belief moved Congress to exclude for-profit corporations from RFRA’s protection. On the contrary, the scope of RLUIPA shows that Congress was confident of the ability of the federal courts to weed out insincere claims. RLUIPA applies to “institutionalized persons,” a category that consists primarily of prisoners, and by the time of RLUIPA’s enactment, the propensity of some prisoners to assert claims of dubious sincerity was well documented.[29] Nevertheless, after our decision in City of Boerne, Congress enacted RLUIPA to preserve the right of prisoners to raise religious liberty claims. If Congress thought that the federal courts were up to the job of dealing with insincere prisoner claims, there is no reason to believe that Congress limited RFRA’s reach out of concern for the seem-ingly less difficult task of doing the same in corporate cases. And if, as HHS seems to concede, Congress wanted RFRA to apply to nonprofit corporations, see, Reply Brief in No. 13–354, at 7–8, what reason is there to think that Congress believed that spotting insincere claims wouldbe tougher in cases involving for-profits? HHS and the principal dissent express concern about the possibility of disputes among the owners of corporations, but that is not a problem that arises because of RFRA or that is unique to this context. The owners of closely held corporations may—and sometimes do—disagree about the conduct of business. 1 Treatise of the Law of Corporations §14:11. And even if RFRA did not exist, the owners of a company might well have a dispute relating to religion. For example, some might want a company’s stores to remain open on the Sabbath in order to make more money, and others might want the stores to close for religious reasons. State corporate law provides a ready means for resolving any conflicts by, for example, dictating how a corporation can establish its governing structure. See, e.g., ibid; id., §3:2; Del. Code Ann., Tit. 8, §351 (2011) (providing that certificate of incorporation may provide how “the business of the corporation shall be managed”). Courts will turn to that structure and the underlying state law in resolving disputes. For all these reasons, we hold that a federal regulation’s restriction on the activities of a for-profit closely held corporation must comply with RFRA.[30] IV Because RFRA applies in these cases, we must next ask whether the HHS contraceptive mandate “substantially burden[s]” the exercise of religion. 42 U. S. C. §2000bb–1(a). We have little trouble concluding that it does. A As we have noted, the Hahns and Greens have a sincere religious belief that life begins at conception. They therefore object on religious grounds to providing health insurance that covers methods of birth control that, as HHS acknowledges, see Brief for HHS in No. 13–354, at 9, n. 4, may result in the destruction of an embryo. By requiring the Hahns and Greens and their companies to arrange for such coverage, the HHS mandate demands that they engage in conduct that seriously violates their religious beliefs. If the Hahns and Greens and their companies do not yield to this demand, the economic consequences will be severe. If the companies continue to offer group health plans that do not cover the contraceptives at issue, they will be taxed $100 per day for each affected individual. 26 U. S. C. §4980D. For Hobby Lobby, the bill could amount to $1.3 million per day or about $475 million per year; for Conestoga, the assessment could be $90,000 per day or $33 million per year; and for Mardel, it could be $40,000 per day or about $15 million per year. These sums are surely substantial. It is true that the plaintiffs could avoid these assessments by dropping insurance coverage altogether and thus forcing their employees to obtain health insurance on one of the exchanges established under ACA. But if at least one of their full-time employees were to qualify for a subsidy on one of the government-run exchanges, this course would also entail substantial economic consequences. The companies could face penalties of $2,000 per employee each year. §4980H. These penalties would amount to roughly $26 million for Hobby Lobby, $1.8 million for Conestoga, and $800,000 for Mardel. B Although these totals are high, amici supporting HHS have suggested that the $2,000 per-employee penalty is actually less than the average cost of providing health insurance, see Brief for Religious Organizations 22, and therefore, they claim, the companies could readily eliminate any substantial burden by forcing their employees to obtain insurance in the government exchanges. We do not generally entertain arguments that were not raised below and are not advanced in this Court by any party, see United Parcel Service, Inc. v. Mitchell, 451 U. S. 56 , n. 2 (1981); Bell v. Wolfish, 441 U. S. 520 , n. 13 (1979); Knetsch v. United States, 364 U. S. 361, 370 (1960) , and there are strong reasons to adhere to that practice in these cases. HHS, which presumably could have compiled the relevant statistics, has never made this argument—not in its voluminous briefing or at oral argument in this Court nor, to our knowledge, in any of the numerous cases in which the issue now before us has been litigated around the country. As things now stand, we do not even know what the Government’s position might be with respect to these amici’s intensely empirical argument.[31] For this same reason, the plaintiffs have never had an opportunity to respond to this novel claim that—contrary to their longstanding practice and that of most large employers—they would be better off discarding their employer insurance plans altogether. Even if we were to reach this argument, we would find it unpersuasive. As an initial matter, it entirely ignores the fact that the Hahns and Greens and their companies have religious reasons for providing health-insurance coverage for their employees. Before the advent of ACA, they were not legally compelled to provide insurance, but they nevertheless did so—in part, no doubt, for conventional business reasons, but also in part because their religious beliefs govern their relations with their employees. See App. to Pet. for Cert. in No. 13–356, p. 11g; App. in No. 13–354, at 139. Putting aside the religious dimension of the decision to provide insurance, moreover, it is far from clear that the net cost to the companies of providing insurance is more than the cost of dropping their insurance plans and paying the ACA penalty. Health insurance is a benefit that employees value. If the companies simply eliminated that benefit and forced employees to purchase their own insurance on the exchanges, without offering additional compensation, it is predictable that the companies would face a competitive disadvantage in retaining and attracting skilled workers. See App. in No. 13–354, at 153. The companies could attempt to make up for the elimination of a group health plan by increasing wages, but this would be costly. Group health insurance is generally less expensive than comparable individual coverage, so the amount of the salary increase needed to fully compensate for the termination of insurance coverage may well exceed the cost to the companies of providing the insurance. In addition, any salary increase would have to take into account the fact that employees must pay income taxes on wages but not on the value of employer-provided health insurance. 26 U. S. C. §106(a). Likewise, employers can deduct the cost of providing health insurance, see §162(a)(1), but apparently cannot deduct the amount of the penalty that they must pay if insurance is not pro-vided; that difference also must be taken into account. Given these economic incentives, it is far from clear that it would be financially advantageous for an employer to drop coverage and pay the penalty.[32] In sum, we refuse to sustain the challenged regulations on the ground—never maintained by the Government—that dropping insurance coverage eliminates the substantial burden that the HHS mandate imposes. We doubt that the Congress that enacted RFRA—or, for that matter, ACA—would have believed it a tolerable result to put family-run businesses to the choice of violating their sincerely held religious beliefs or making all of their employees lose their existing healthcare plans. C In taking the position that the HHS mandate does not impose a substantial burden on the exercise of religion, HHS’s main argument (echoed by the principal dissent) is basically that the connection between what the objecting parties must do (provide health-insurance coverage for four methods of contraception that may operate after the fertilization of an egg) and the end that they find to be morally wrong (destruction of an embryo) is simply too attenuated. Brief for HHS in 13–354, pp. 31–34; post, at 22–23. HHS and the dissent note that providing the coverage would not itself result in the destruction of an embryo; that would occur only if an employee chose to take advantage of the coverage and to use one of the four methods at issue.[33] Ibid. This argument dodges the question that RFRA presents (whether the HHS mandate imposes a substantial burden on the ability of the objecting parties to conduct business in accordance with their religious beliefs) and instead addresses a very different question that the federal courts have no business addressing (whether the religious belief asserted in a RFRA case is reasonable). The Hahns and Greens believe that providing the coverage demanded by the HHS regulations is connected to the destruction of an embryo in a way that is sufficient to make it immoral for them to provide the coverage. This belief implicates a difficult and important question of religion and moral philosophy, namely, the circumstances under which it is wrong for a person to perform an act that is innocent in itself but that has the effect of enabling or facilitating the commission of an immoral act by another.[34] Arrogating the authority to provide a binding national answer to this religious and philosophical question, HHS and the principal dissent in effect tell the plaintiffs that their beliefs are flawed. For good reason, we have repeatedly refused to take such a step. See, e.g., Smith, 494 U. S., at 887 (“Repeatedly and in many different contexts, we have warned that courts must not presume to determine . . . the plausibility of a religious claim”); Hernandez v. Commissioner, 490 U. S. 680, 699 (1989) ; Presbyterian Church in U. S. v. Mary Elizabeth Blue Hull Memorial Presbyterian Church, 393 U. S. 440, 450 (1969) . Moreover, in Thomas v. Review Bd. of Indiana Employment Security Div., 450 U. S. 707 (1981) , we considered and rejected an argument that is nearly identical to the one now urged by HHS and the dissent. In Thomas, a Jehovah’s Witness was initially employed making sheet steel for a variety of industrial uses, but he was later transferred to a job making turrets for tanks. Id., at 710. Because he objected on religious grounds to participating in the manufacture of weapons, he lost his job and sought unemployment compensation. Ruling against the em-ployee, the state court had difficulty with the line thatthe employee drew between work that he found to be con-sistent with his religious beliefs (helping to manufacture steel that was used in making weapons) and work that he found morally objectionable (helping to make the weapons themselves). This Court, however, held that “it is not for us to say that the line he drew was an unreasonable one.” Id., at 715.[35] Similarly, in these cases, the Hahns and Greens and their companies sincerely believe that providing the insurance coverage demanded by the HHS regulations lies on the forbidden side of the line, and it is not for us to say that their religious beliefs are mistaken or insubstantial. Instead, our “narrow function . . . in this context is to determine” whether the line drawn reflects “an honest conviction,” id., at 716, and there is no dispute that it does. HHS nevertheless compares these cases to decisions in which we rejected the argument that the use of general tax revenue to subsidize the secular activities of religious institutions violated the Free Exercise Clause. See Tilton v. Richardson, 403 U. S. 672, 689 (1971) (plurality); Board of Ed. of Central School Dist. No. 1 v. Allen, 392 U. S. 236 –249 (1968). But in those cases, while the subsidies were clearly contrary to the challengers’ views on a secular issue, namely, proper church-state relations, the challengers never articulated a religious objection to the subsidies. As we put it in Tilton, they were “unable to identify any coercion directed at the practice or exercise of their religious beliefs.” 403 U. S., at 689 (plurality opinion); see Allen, supra, at 249 (“[A]ppellants have not contended that the New York law in any way coerces them as individuals in the practice of their religion”). Here, in contrast, the plaintiffs do assert that funding the specific contraceptive methods at issue violates their religious beliefs, and HHS does not question their sincerity. Because the contraceptive mandate forces them to pay an enormous sum of money—as much as $475 million per year in the case of Hobby Lobby—if they insist on providing insurance coverage in accordance with their religious beliefs, the mandate clearly imposes a substantial burden on those beliefs. V Since the HHS contraceptive mandate imposes a substantial burden on the exercise of religion, we must move on and decide whether HHS has shown that the mandate both “(1) is in furtherance of a compelling governmental interest; and (2) is the least restrictive means of furthering that compelling governmental interest.” 42 U. S. C. §2000bb–1(b). A HHS asserts that the contraceptive mandate serves a variety of important interests, but many of these are couched in very broad terms, such as promoting “public health” and “gender equality.” Brief for HHS in No. 13–354, at 46, 49. RFRA, however, contemplates a “more focused” inquiry: It “requires the Government to demonstrate that the compelling interest test is satisfied through application of the challenged law ‘to the person’—the particular claimant whose sincere exercise of religion is being substantially burdened.” O’Centro, 546 U. S., at 430–431 (quoting §2000bb–1(b)). This requires us to “loo[k] beyond broadly formulated interests” and to “scrutiniz[e] the asserted harm of granting specific exemptions to particular religious claimants”—in other words, to look to the marginal interest in enforcing the contraceptive mandate in these cases. O Centro, supra, at 431. In addition to asserting these very broadly framed interests, HHS maintains that the mandate serves a compelling interest in ensuring that all women have access to all FDA-approved contraceptives without cost sharing. See Brief for HHS in No. 13–354, at 14–15, 49; see Brief for HHS in No. 13–356, at 10, 48. Under our cases, women (and men) have a constitutional right to obtain contraceptives, see Griswold v. Connecticut, 381 U. S. 479 –486 (1965), and HHS tells us that “[s]tudies have demonstrated that even moderate copayments for preventive services can deter patients from receiving those services.” Brief for HHS in No. 13–354, at 50 (internal quotation marks omitted). The objecting parties contend that HHS has not shown that the mandate serves a compelling government interest, and it is arguable that there are features of ACA that support that view. As we have noted, many employees—those covered by grandfathered plans and those who work for employers with fewer than 50 employees—may have no contraceptive coverage without cost sharing at all. HHS responds that many legal requirements have exceptions and the existence of exceptions does not in itself indicate that the principal interest served by a law is not compelling. Even a compelling interest may be outweighed in some circumstances by another even weightier consideration. In these cases, however, the interest served by one of the biggest exceptions, the exception for grandfathered plans, is simply the interest of employers in avoiding the inconvenience of amending an existing plan. Grandfathered plans are required “to comply with a subset of the Affordable Care Act’s health reform provisions” that provide what HHS has described as “particularly significant protections.” 75 Fed. Reg. 34540 (2010). But the contraceptive mandate is expressly excluded from this subset. Ibid. We find it unnecessary to adjudicate this issue. We will assume that the interest in guaranteeing cost-free access to the four challenged contraceptive methods is compelling within the meaning of RFRA, and we will proceed to consider the final prong of the RFRA test, i.e., whether HHS has shown that the contraceptive mandate is “the least restrictive means of furthering that compelling governmental interest.” §2000bb–1(b)(2). B The least-restrictive-means standard is exceptionally demanding, see City of Boerne, 521 U. S., at 532, and it is not satisfied here. HHS has not shown that it lacks other means of achieving its desired goal without imposing a substantial burden on the exercise of religion by the objecting parties in these cases. See §§2000bb–1(a), (b) (requiring the Government to “demonstrat[e] that application of [a substantial] burden to the person . . . is the least restrictive means of furthering [a] compelling governmental interest” (emphasis added)). The most straightforward way of doing this would be for the Government to assume the cost of providing the four contraceptives at issue to any women who are unable to obtain them under their health-insurance policies due to their employers’ religious objections. This would certainly be less restrictive of the plaintiffs’ religious liberty, and HHS has not shown, see §2000bb–1(b)(2), that this is not a viable alternative. HHS has not provided any estimate of the average cost per employee of providing access tothese contraceptives, two of which, according to the FDA, are designed primarily for emergency use. See Birth Control: Medicines to Help You, online at http://www.fda.gov/forconsumers/byaudience/forwomen/freepublications/ucm313215.htm. Nor has HHS provided any statistics regarding the number of employees who might be affected because they work for corporations like Hobby Lobby, Conestoga, and Mardel. Nor has HHS told us that it is unable to provide such statistics. It seems likely, however, that the cost of providing the forms of contraceptives at issue in these cases (if not all FDA-approved contraceptives) would be minor when compared with the overall cost of ACA. According to one of the Congressional Budget Office’s most recent forecasts, ACA’s insurance-coverage provisions will cost the Federal Government more than $1.3 trillion through the next decade. See CBO, Updated Estimates of the Effects of the Insurance Coverage Provisions of the Affordable Care Act, April 2014, p. 2.[36] If, as HHS tells us, providing all women with cost-free access to all FDA-approved methods of contraception is a Government interest of the highest order, it is hard to understand HHS’s argument that it cannot be required under RFRA to pay anything in order to achieve this important goal. HHS contends that RFRA does not permit us to take this option into account because “RFRA cannot be used to require creation of entirely new programs.” Brief for HHS in 13–354, at 15.[37] But we see nothing in RFRA that supports this argument, and drawing the line between the “creation of an entirely new program” and the modification of an existing program (which RFRA surely allows) would be fraught with problems. We do not doubt that cost may be an important factor in the least-restrictive-means analysis, but both RFRA and its sister statute, RLUIPA, may in some circumstances require the Government to expend additional funds to accommodate citizens’ religious beliefs. Cf. §2000cc–3(c) (RLUIPA: “[T]his chapter may require a government to incur expenses in its own operations to avoid imposing a substantial burden on religious exercise.”). HHS’s view that RFRA can never require the Government to spend even a small amount reflects a judgment about the importance of religious liberty that was not shared by the Congress that enacted that law. In the end, however, we need not rely on the option of a new, government-funded program in order to conclude that the HHS regulations fail the least-restrictive-means test. HHS itself has demonstrated that it has at its disposal an approach that is less restrictive than requiring employers to fund contraceptive methods that violate their religious beliefs. As we explained above, HHS has already established an accommodation for nonprofit organizations with religious objections. See supra, at 9–10, and nn. 8–9. Under that accommodation, the organization can self-certify that it opposes providing coverage for particular contraceptive services. See 45 CFR §§147.131(b)(4), (c)(1); 26 CFR §§54.9815–2713A(a)(4), (b). If the organization makes such a certification, the organization’s insurance issuer or third-party administrator must “[e]xpressly exclude contraceptive coverage from the group health insurance coverage provided in connection with the group health plan” and “[p]rovide separate payments for any contraceptive services required to be covered” without imposing “any cost-sharing requirements . . . on the eligible organization, the group health plan, or plan participants or beneficiaries.” 45 CFR §147.131(c)(2); 26 CFR §54.9815–2713A(c)(2).[38] We do not decide today whether an approach of this type complies with RFRA for purposes of all religious claims.[39] At a minimum, however, it does not impinge on the plaintiffs’ religious belief that providing insurance coverage for the contraceptives at issue here violates their religion, and it serves HHS’s stated interests equally well.[40] The principal dissent identifies no reason why this accommodation would fail to protect the asserted needs of women as effectively as the contraceptive mandate, and there is none.[41] Under the accommodation, the plaintiffs’ female employees would continue to receive contraceptive coverage without cost sharing for all FDA-approved contraceptives, and they would continue to “face minimal logistical and administrative obstacles,” post, at 28 (internal quotation marks omitted), because their employers’ insurers would be responsible for providing information and coverage, see, e.g., 45 CFR §§147.131(c)–(d); cf. 26 CFR §§54.9815–2713A(b), (d). Ironically, it is the dissent’s approach that would “[i]mped[e] women’s receipt of benefits by ‘requiring them to take steps to learn about, and to sign up for, a new government funded and administered health benefit,’ ” post, at 28, because the dissent would effectively compel religious employers to drop health-insurance coverage altogether, leaving their employees to find individual plans on government-run exchanges or elsewhere. This is indeed “scarcely what Congress contemplated.” Ibid. C HHS and the principal dissent argue that a ruling in favor of the objecting parties in these cases will lead to a flood of religious objections regarding a wide variety of medical procedures and drugs, such as vaccinations and blood transfusions, but HHS has made no effort to substantiate this prediction.[42] HHS points to no evidence that insurance plans in existence prior to the enactment of ACA excluded coverage for such items. Nor has HHS provided evidence that any significant number of employers sought exemption, on religious grounds, from any of ACA’s coverage requirements other than the contraceptive mandate. It is HHS’s apparent belief that no insurance-coverage mandate would violate RFRA—no matter how significantly it impinges on the religious liberties of employers—that would lead to intolerable consequences. Under HHS’s view, RFRA would permit the Government to require all employers to provide coverage for any medical procedure allowed by law in the jurisdiction in question—for instance, third-trimester abortions or assisted suicide. The owners of many closely held corporations could not in good conscience provide such coverage, and thus HHS would effectively exclude these people from full participation in the economic life of the Nation. RFRA was enacted to prevent such an outcome. In any event, our decision in these cases is concerned solely with the contraceptive mandate. Our decision should not be understood to hold that an insurance-coverage mandate must necessarily fall if it conflicts with an employer’s religious beliefs. Other coverage requirements, such as immunizations, may be supported by different interests (for example, the need to combat the spread of infectious diseases) and may involve different arguments about the least restrictive means of providing them. The principal dissent raises the possibility that discrimination in hiring, for example on the basis of race, might be cloaked as religious practice to escape legal sanction. See post, at 32–33. Our decision today provides no such shield. The Government has a compelling interest in providing an equal opportunity to participate in the workforce without regard to race, and prohibitions on racial discrimination are precisely tailored to achieve that critical goal. HHS also raises for the first time in this Court the argument that applying the contraceptive mandate to for-profit employers with sincere religious objections is essential to the comprehensive health-insurance scheme that ACA establishes. HHS analogizes the contraceptive mandate to the requirement to pay Social Security taxes, which we upheld in Lee despite the religious objection of an employer, but these cases are quite different. Our holding in Lee turned primarily on the special problems associated with a national system of taxation. We noted that “[t]he obligation to pay the social security tax initially is not fundamentally different from the obligation to pay income taxes.” 455 U. S., at 260. Based on that premise, we explained that it was untenable to allow individuals to seek exemptions from taxes based on religious objections to particular Government expenditures: “If, for example, a religious adherent believes war is a sin, and if a certain percentage of the federal budget can be identified as devoted to war-related activities, such individuals would have a similarly valid claim to be exempt from paying that percentage of the income tax.” Ibid. We observed that “[t]he tax system could not function if denominations were allowed to challenge the tax system because tax payments were spent in a manner that violates their religious belief.” Ibid.; see O Centro, 546 U. S., at 435. Lee was a free-exercise, not a RFRA, case, but if the issue in Lee were analyzed under the RFRA framework, the fundamental point would be that there simply is no less restrictive alternative to the categorical requirement to pay taxes. Because of the enormous variety of government expenditures funded by tax dollars, allowing tax-payers to withhold a portion of their tax obligations on religious grounds would lead to chaos. Recognizingexemptions from the contraceptive mandate is very different. ACA does not create a large national pool of tax revenue for use in purchasing healthcare coverage. Rather, individual employers like the plaintiffs purchase insurance for their own employees. And contrary to the principal dissent’s characterization, the employers’ contributions do not necessarily funnel into “undifferentiated funds.” Post, at 23. The accommodation established by HHS requires issuers to have a mechanism by which to “segregate premium revenue collected from the eligible organization from the monies used to provide payments for contraceptive services.” 45 CFR §147.131(c)(2)(ii). Recognizing a religious accommodation under RFRA for particular coverage requirements, therefore, does not threaten the viability of ACA’s comprehensive scheme in the way that recognizing religious objections to particular expenditures from general tax revenues would.[43] In its final pages, the principal dissent reveals that its fundamental objection to the claims of the plaintiffs is an objection to RFRA itself. The dissent worries about forcing the federal courts to apply RFRA to a host of claims made by litigants seeking a religious exemption from generally applicable laws, and the dissent expresses a desire to keep the courts out of this business. See post, at 32–35. In making this plea, the dissent reiterates a point made forcefully by the Court in Smith. 494 U. S., at 888–889 (applying the Sherbert test to all free-exercise claims “would open the prospect of constitutionally required religious exemptions from civic obligations of almost every conceivable kind”). But Congress, in enacting RFRA, took the position that “the compelling interest test as set forth in prior Federal court rulings is a workable test forstriking sensible balances between religious liberty and competing prior governmental interests.” 42 U. S. C. §2000bb(a)(5). The wisdom of Congress’s judgment on this matter is not our concern. Our responsibility is to enforce RFRA as written, and under the standard that RFRA prescribes, the HHS contraceptive mandate is unlawful. * * * The contraceptive mandate, as applied to closely held corporations, violates RFRA. Our decision on that statutory question makes it unnecessary to reach the First Amendment claim raised by Conestoga and the Hahns. The judgment of the Tenth Circuit in No. 13–354 is affirmed; the judgment of the Third Circuit in No. 13–356 is reversed, and that case is remanded for further proceedings consistent with this opinion. It is so ordered.Notes 1 See also , at 8 (“The exemption sought by Hobby Lobby and Conestoga . . . would deny [their employees] access to contraceptive coverage that the ACA would otherwise secure”) 2 The Act defines “government” to include any “department” or“agency” of the United States. §2000bb–2(1). 3 In v. , 521 U. S., 507 (1997), we wrote that RFRA’s “least restrictive means requirement was not used in the pre-jurisprudence RFRA purported to codify.” , at 509. On this understanding of our pre- cases, RFRA did more than merely restore the balancing test used in the line of cases; it provided even broader protection for religious liberty than was available under those decisions. 4 See, , v., 441 F. 3d 96, 108 (CA2 2006); v., 290 F. 3d 1210, 1220 (CA9 2002). 5 The principal dissent appears to contend that this rule of construction should apply only when defining the “exercise of religion” in an RLUIPA case, but not in a RFRA case. See , at 11, n. 10. That argument is plainly wrong. Under this rule of construction, the phrase “exercise of religion,” as it appears in RLUIPA, must be interpreted broadly, and RFRA states that the same phrase, as used in RFRA, means “religious exercis[e] as defined in [RLUIPA].” –2(4). It necessarily follows that the “exercise of religion” under RFRA must be given the same broad meaning that applies under RLUIPA. 6 We will use “Brief for HHS” to refer to the Brief for Petitioners in No. 13–354 and the Brief for Respondents in No. 13–356. The federal parties are the Departments of HHS, Treasury, and Labor, and the Secretaries of those Departments. 7 Online at http://www.fda.gov/forconsumers/byaudience/forwomen/freepublications/ucm313215.htm. The owners of the companies involved in these cases and others who believe that life begins at conception regard these four methods as causing abortions, but federal regulations, which define pregnancy as beginning at implantation, see, ., 62 Fed. Reg. 8611 (1997); 45 CFR §46.202(f) (2013), do not so classify them. 8 In the case of self-insured religious organizations entitled to the accommodation, the third-party administrator of the organization must “provide or arrange payments for contraceptive services” for the organization’s employees without imposing any cost-sharing requirements on the eligible organization, its insurance plan, or its employee beneficiaries. 78 Fed. Reg. 39893 (to be codified in 26 CFR §54.9815–2713A(b)(2)). The regulations establish a mechanism for these third-party administrators to be compensated for their expenses by obtaining a reduction in the fee paid by insurers to participate in the federally facilitated exchanges. See 78 Fed. Reg. 39893 (to be codified in 26 CFR §54.9815–2713A (b)(3)). HHS believes that these fee reductions will not materially affect funding of the exchanges because “payments for contraceptive services will represent only a small portion of total [exchange] user fees.” 78 Fed. Reg. 39882. 9 In a separate challenge to this framework for religious nonprofit organizations, the Court recently ordered that, pending appeal, the eligible organizations be permitted to opt out of the contraceptive mandate by providing written notification of their objections to the Secretary of HHS, rather than to their insurance issuers or third-party administrators. See v. , 571 U. S. ___ (2014). 10 While the Government predicts that this number will decline over time, the total number of Americans working for employers to whom the contraceptive mandate does not apply is still substantial, and there is no legal requirement that grandfathered plans ever be phased out. 11 Online at http : / / www . whitehouse . gov / files / documents / health _reform_for_small_businesses.pdf. 12 Mennonite Church USA, Statement on Abortion, online athttp://www.mennoniteusa.org /resource-center/resources /statements -and-resolutions/statement-on-abortion/. 13 The Hahns and Conestoga also claimed that the contraceptive mandate violates the and the Administrative Procedure Act, , but those claims are not before us. 14 See, , WebMD Health News, New Morning-After Pill Ella Wins FDA Approval, online at http://www.webmd.com/sex/birth-control/news/20100813/new-morning-after-pill-ella-wins-fda-approval. 15 The Greens operate Hobby Lobby and Mardel through a management trust, of which each member of the family serves as trustee. 723 F. 3d 1114, 1122 (CA10 2013). The family provided that the trust would also be governed according to their religious principles. 16 They also raised a claim under the Administrative Procedure Act, . 17 Given its RFRA ruling, the court declined to address the plaintiffs’ free-exercise claim or the question whether the Greens could bring RFRA claims as individual owners of Hobby Lobby and Mardel. Four judges, however, concluded that the Greens could do so, see 723 F. 3d, at 1156 (Gorsuch, J., concurring); , at 1184 (Matheson, J., concurring in part and dissenting in part), and three of those judges would have granted plaintiffs a preliminary injunction, see , at 1156 (Gorsuch, J., concurring). 18 As discussed, n. 3, , in we stated that RFRA, by imposing a least-restrictive-means test, went beyond what was required by our pre-decisions. Although the author of the principal dissent joined the Court’s opinion in , she now claims that the statement was incorrect. , at 12. For present purposes, it is unnecessary to adjudicate this dispute. Even if RFRA simply restored the status quo ante, there is no reason to believe, as HHS and the dissent seem to suggest, that the law was meant to be limited to situations that fall squarely within the holdings of pre- cases. See , at 25–28. 19 Cf. Brief for Federal Petitioners in , O. T. 2004, No. 04–1084, p. II (stating that the organizational respondent was “a New Mexico Corporation”); Brief for Federal Respondent in , O. T. 2011, No. 10–553, p. 3 (stating that the petitioner was an “ecclesiastical corporation”). 20 Not only does the Government concede that the term “persons” in RFRA includes nonprofit corporations, it goes further and appears to concede that the term might also encompass other artificial entities, namely, general partnerships and unincorporated associations. See Brief for HHS in No. 13–354, at 28, 40. 21 Although the principal dissent seems to think that Justice Brennan’s statement in provides a ground for holding that for-profit corporations may not assert free-exercise claims, that was not Justice Brennan’s view. See v., (dissenting opinion); , at 26–27. 22 It is revealing that the principal dissent cannot even bring itself to acknowledge that was correct in entertaining the merchants’ claims. See at 19 (dismissing the relevance of in part because “[t]he free exercise claim asserted there was promptly rejected on the merits”). 23 See, ., 724 F. 3d, at 385 (“We do not see how a for-profit, ‘artificial being,’ . . . that was created to make money” could exercise religion); v., 708 F. 3d 850, 857 (CA7 2013) (Rovner, J. dissenting) (“So far as it appears, the mission of Grote Industries, like that of any other for-profit, secular business, is to make money in the commercial sphere”); v., 730 F. 3d 618, 626 (CA7 2013) (“Congress did not intend to include corporations primarily organized for secular, profit-seeking purposes as ‘persons’ under RFRA”); see also 723 F. 3d, at 1171–1172 (Briscoe, C. J., dissenting) (“[T]he specific purpose for which [a corporation] is created matters greatly to how it will be categorized and treated under the law” and “it is undisputed that Hobby Lobby and Mardel are for-profit corporations focused on selling merchandise to consumers”). 24 See, , M. Sanders, Joint Ventures Involving Tax-Exempt Organizations 555 (4th ed. 2013) (describing Google.org, which “advance[s] its charitable goals” while operating as a for-profit corporation to be able to “invest in for-profit endeavors, lobby for policies that support its philanthropic goals, and tap Google’s innovative technology and workforce” (internal quotation marks and alterations omitted)); cf. 26 CFR §1.501(c)(3)–1(c)(3). 25 See Benefit Corp Information Center, online at http://www.benefitcorp.net/state-by-state-legislative-status; , Va. Code Ann. §§13.1–787, 13.1–626, 13.1–782 (Lexis 2011) (“A benefit corporation shall have as one of its purposes the purpose of creating a general public benefit,” and “may identify one or more specific public benefits that it is the purpose of the benefit corporation to create. . . . This purpose is in addition to [the purpose of engaging in any lawful business].” “ ‘Specific public benefit’ means a benefit that serves one or more public welfare, religious, charitable, scientific, literary, or educational purposes, or other purpose or benefit beyond the strict interest of the shareholders of the benefit corporation . . . .”); S. C. Code Ann. §§33–38–300 (2012 Cum. Supp.), 33–3–101 (2006), 33–38–130 (2012 Cum. Supp.) (similar). 26 See Brief for Appellants in , O. T. 1960 No. 11, pp. 16, 28–31 (arguing that corporation “has no ‘religious belief’ or ‘religious liberty,’ and had no standing in court to assert that its free exercise of religion was impaired”). 27 The principal dissent points out that “the exemption codified in §238n(a) was not enacted until three years after RFRA’s passage.” , at 16, n. 15. The dissent takes this to mean that RFRA did not, in fact, “ope[n] all statutory schemes to religion-based challenges by for-profit corporations” because if it had “there would be no need for a statute-specific, post-RFRA exemption of this sort.” . 28 To qualify for RFRA’s protection, an asserted belief must be “sincere”; a corporation’s pretextual assertion of a religious belief in order to obtain an exemption for financial reasons would fail. Cf., ., v. , 608 F. 3d 717, 718–719 (CA10 2010). 29 See, , v. , 90 F. 3d 293, 296 (CA8 1996); v., 525 F. Supp. 81, 83–84 (ED Mo. 1981);v. , 1996 WL 5320, *5 (CA9, Jan. 5, 1996);v., 549 N. W. 2d 819–820 (Iowa 1996). 30 The principal dissent attaches significance to the fact that the “Senate voted down [a] so-called ‘conscience amendment,’ which would have enabled any employer or insurance provider to deny coverage based on its asserted religious beliefs or moral convictions.” , at 6. The dissent would evidently glean from that vote an intent by the Senate to prohibit for-profit corporate employers from refusing to offer contraceptive coverage for religious reasons, regardless of whether the contraceptive mandate could pass muster under RFRA’s standards. But that is not the only plausible inference from the failed amendment—or even the most likely. For one thing, the text of the amendment was “written so broadly that it would allow any employer to deny any health service to any American for virtually any reason—.” 158 Cong. Rec. S1165 (Mar. 1, 2012) (emphasis added). Moreover, the amendment would have authorized a blanket exemption for religious or moral objectors; it would not have subjected religious-based objections to the judicial scrutiny called for by RFRA, in which a court must consider not only the burden of a requirement on religious adherents, but also the government’s interest and how narrowly tailored the requirement is. It is thus perfectly reasonable to believe that the amendment was voted down because it extended more broadly than the pre-existing protections of RFRA. And in any event, even if a rejected amendment to a bill could be relevant in other contexts, it surely cannot be relevant here, because any “Federal statutory law adopted after November 16, 1993 is subject to [RFRA] unless such law such application by reference to [RFRA].” –3(b) (emphasis added). It is not plausible to find such an explicit reference in the meager legislative history on which the dissent relies. 31 Indeed, one of HHS’s stated reasons for establishing the religious accommodation was to “encourag[e] eligible organizations to to offer health coverage.” 78 Fed. Reg. 39882 (2013) (emphasis added). 32 Attempting to compensate for dropped insurance by raising wages would also present administrative difficulties. In order to provide full compensation for employees, the companies would have to calculate the value to employees of the convenience of retaining their employer-provided coverage and thus being spared the task of attempting to find and sign up for a comparable plan on an exchange. And because some but not all of the companies’ employees may qualify for subsidies on an exchange, it would be nearly impossible to calculate a salary increase that would accurately restore the status quo ante for all employees. 33 This argument is not easy to square with the position taken by HHS in providing exemptions from the contraceptive mandate for religious employers, such as churches, that have the very same religious objections as the Hahns and Greens and their companies. The connection between what these religious employers would be required to do if not exempted (provide insurance coverage for particular contraceptives) and the ultimate event that they find morally wrong (destruction of an embryo) is exactly the same. Nevertheless, as discussed, HHS and the Labor and Treasury Departments authorized the exemption from the contraceptive mandate of group health plans of certain religious employers, and later expanded the exemption to include certain nonprofit organizations with religious objections to contraceptive coverage. 78 Fed. Reg. 39871. When this was done, the Government made clear that its objective was to “protec[t]” these religious objectors “from having to contract, arrange, pay, or refer for such coverage.” . Those exemptions would be hard to understand if the plaintiffs’ objections here were not substantial. 34 See, ., Oderberg, The Ethics of Co-operation in Wrongdoing, in Modern Moral Philosophy 203–228 (A. O’Hear ed. 2004); T. Higgins, Man as Man: The Science and Art of Ethics 353, 355 (1949) (“The general principles governing cooperation” in wrongdoing—., “physical activity (or its omission) by which a person assists in the evil act of another who is the principal agent”—“present troublesome difficulties in application”); 1 H. Davis, Moral and Pastoral Theology 341 (1935) (Cooperation occurs “when A helps B to accomplish an external act by an act that is not sinful, and without approving of what B does”). 35 The principal dissent makes no effort to reconcile its view about the substantial-burden requirement with our decision in . 36 Online at http://cbo.gov/publication/45231. 37 In a related argument, HHS appears to maintain that a plaintiff cannot prevail on a RFRA claim that seeks an exemption from a legal obligation requiring the plaintiff to confer benefits on third parties. Nothing in the text of RFRA or its basic purposes supports giving the Government an entirely free hand to impose burdens on religious exercise so long as those burdens confer a benefit on other individuals. It is certainly true that in applying RFRA “courts must take adequate account of the burdens a requested accommodation may impose on nonbeneficiaries.” v., (applying RLUIPA). That consideration will often inform the analysis of the Government’s compelling interest and the availability of a less restrictive means of advancing that interest. But it could not reasonably be maintained that any burden on religious exercise, no matter how onerous and no matter how readily the government interest could be achieved through alternative means, is permissible under RFRA so long as the relevant legal obligation requires the religious adherent to confer a benefit on third parties. Otherwise, for example, the Government could decide that all supermarkets must sell alcohol for the convenience of customers (and thereby exclude Muslims with religious objections from owning supermarkets), or it could decide that all restaurants must remain open on Saturdays to give employees an opportunity to earn tips (and thereby exclude Jews with religious objections from owning restaurants). By framing any Government regulation as benefiting a third party, the Government could turn all regulations into entitlements to which nobody could object on religious grounds, rendering RFRA meaningless. In any event, our decision in these cases need not result in any detrimental effect on any third party. As we explain, see , at 43–44, the Government can readily arrange for other methods of providing contraceptives, without cost sharing, to employees who are unable to obtain them under their health-insurance plans due to their employers’ religious objections. 38 HHS has concluded that insurers that insure eligible employers opting out of the contraceptive mandate and that are required to pay for contraceptive coverage under the accommodation will not experience an increase in costs because the “costs of providing contraceptive coverage are balanced by cost savings from lower pregnancy-related costs and from improvements in women’s health.” 78 Fed. Reg. 39877. With respect to self-insured plans, the regulations establish a mechanism for the eligible employers’ third-party administrators to obtain a compensating reduction in the fee paid by insurers to participate in the federally facilitated exchanges. HHS believes that this system will not have a material effect on the funding of the exchanges because the “payments for contraceptive services will represent only a small portion of total [federally facilitated exchange] user fees.” at 39882; see 26 CFR §54.9815–2713A(b)(3). 39 See n. 9, . 40 The principal dissent faults us for being “noncommital” in refusing to decide a case that is not before us here. , at 30.The less re-strictive approach we describe accommodates the religious beliefs as-serted in these cases, and that is the only question we are permittedto address. 41 In the principal dissent’s view, the Government has not had a fair opportunity to address this accommodation, , at 30. n. 27, but the Government itself apparently believes that when it “provides an exception to a general rule for secular reasons (or for only certain religious reasons), [it] must explain why extending a comparable exception to a specific plaintiff for religious reasons would undermine its compelling interests.” Brief for the United States as in v., No. 13–6827, p. 10, now pending before the Court. 42 Cf. 42 U. S. C. §1396s (Federal “program for distribution of pediatric vaccines” for some uninsured and underinsured children). 43 HHS highlights certain statements in the opinion in that it regards as supporting its position in these cases. In particular, HHS notes the statement that “[w]hen followers of a particular sect enter into commercial activity as a matter of choice, the limits they accept on their own conduct as a matter of conscience and faith are not to be superimposed on the statutory schemes which are binding on others in that activity.” 455 U. S., at 261. was a free exercise, not a RFRA, case, and the statement to which HHS points, if taken at face value, is squarely inconsistent with the plain meaning of RFRA. Under RFRA, when followers of a particular religion choose to enter into commercial activity, the Government does not have a free hand in imposing obligations that substantially burden their exercise of religion. Rather, the Government can impose such a burden only if the strict RFRA test is met.

571.US.377

The Securities Litigation Uniform Standards Act of 1998 (Litigation Act or Act) forbids the bringing of large securities class actions “based upon the statutory or common law of any State” in which the plaintiffs allege “a misrepresentation or omission of a material fact in connection with the purchase or sale of a covered security,” 15 U. S. C. §78bb(f)(1). The Act defines “covered security” to include, as relevant here, only securities traded on a national exchange. §§78bb(f)(5)(E), 77r(b)(1). Four sets of plaintiffs, respondents here, filed civil class actions under state law, contending that the defendants, petitioners here, helped Allen Stanford and his companies perpetrate a Ponzi scheme by falsely representing that uncovered securities (certificates of deposit in Stanford International Bank) that plaintiffs were purchasing were backed by covered securities. The District Court dismissed each case under the Litigation Act. Although the certificates of deposit were not covered securities, the court concluded, the Bank’s misrepresentation that its holdings in covered securities made investments in its uncovered securities more secure provided the requisite “connection” (under the Litigation Act) between the plaintiffs’ state-law actions and transactions in covered securities. The Fifth Circuit reversed, concluding that the falsehoods about the Bank’s holdings in covered securities were too tangentially related to the fraud to trigger the Litigation Act. Held: The Litigation Act does not preclude the plaintiffs’ state-law class actions. Pp. 8–19. (a) Several factors support the conclusion that the scope of §78bb(f)(1)(A)’s phrase “misrepresentation or omission of a material fact in connection with the purchase or sale of a covered security” does not extend further than misrepresentations that are material to the decision by one or more individuals (other than the fraudster) to purchase or sell a covered security. First, this interpretation is consistent with the Act’s basic focus on transactions in covered, not uncovered, securities. Second, the interpretation is supported by the Act’s language. The phrase “material fact in connection with the purchase or sale” suggests a connection that matters. And a connection matters where the misrepresentation makes a significant difference to someone’s decision to purchase or to sell a covered security, not an uncovered one, something about which the Act expresses no concern. See Matrixx Initiatives, Inc. v. Siracusano, 563 U. S. ___, ___. Further, for the connection to matter, the “someone” making the decision to purchase or sell a covered security must be a party other than the fraudster. Third, the securities cases in which this Court has found a fraud to be “in connection with” a purchase or sale of a security, under both the Litigation Act and Section 10(b) of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 (which also uses the “in connection with” phrase), have involved victims who took, who tried to take, who divested themselves of, who tried to divest themselves of, or who maintained an ownership interest in financial instruments that fall within the relevant statutory definition. See, e.g., Merrill Lynch, Pierce, Fenner & Smith Inc. v. Dabit, 547 U.S. 71, 77. Fourth, this Court reads the Litigation Act in light of and consistent with the language and purpose of the underlying regulatory statutes, the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 and the Securities Act of 1933, which refer to persons engaged in securities transactions that lead to the taking or dissolving of ownership positions, and which make it illegal to deceive a person when he or she is doing so. The basic purpose of the 1934 and 1933 regulatory statutes is to protect investor confidence in the securities markets. Nothing in those statutes, or in the Litigation Act, suggests their object is to protect persons whose connection with the statutorily defined securities is more remote than buying or selling. Fifth, a broader interpretation of the necessary statutory “connection” would interfere with state efforts to provide remedies for victims of ordinary state-law frauds, despite the fact that the Litigation Act purposefully seeks to avoid such results by maintaining States’ legal authority over matters that are primarily of state concern, see, e.g., §§78bb(f)(4). Pp. 9–14. (b) Respondents and the Government make two important, but unavailing, counterarguments. First, they point to this Court’s suggestions that the phrase “in connection with” should be given a broad interpretation. But every case in which this Court interpreted the phrase to cover a fraud involved a false statement (or the like) that was “material” to another individual’s decision to “purchase or s[ell]” a statutorily defined “security” or “covered security,” e.g., Dabit, supra, at 75–77, and where the transaction was by or on behalf of someone other than the fraudster. Second, the Government warns that a narrow interpretation would curtail the Securities and Exchange Commission’s enforcement powers under §10(b) of the Securities Exchange Act, which uses the same “in connection with the purchase or sale” phrase. To the contrary, this Court’s interpretation is perfectly consistent with past SEC practice. The authority of the SEC and the Department of Justice extends to all “securities” under §10(b), not just to those traded on national exchanges. 15 U. S. C. §78c(a)(10). The SEC has accordingly brought successful enforcement actions against Stanford and his associates, based on the Bank’s fraudulent sales of certificates of deposit—products that are “securities” even if not “covered securities.” Neither the Government nor the dissent has pointed to an example of any prior SEC enforcement action that the instant holding would have prevented the SEC from bringing. Pp. 14–17. (c) Respondents’ complaints do not allege, for Litigation Act purposes, misrepresentations or omissions of material fact “in connection with” the “purchase or sale of a covered security.” At most, they allege misrepresentations about the Bank’s ownership of covered securities. But the Bank is the fraudster, not the fraudster’s victim; nor is it some other person transacting in covered securities. Thus, there is not the necessary “connection” between the materiality of the misstatements and the statutorily required “purchase or sale of a covered security.” In addition, while the District Court found that one plaintiff acquired Bank certificates with proceeds from the sale of covered securities, the plaintiffs did not allege that the sale of these covered securities constituted any part of the fraudulent scheme or that Stanford or his associates were interested in how the plaintiffs obtained the funds to purchase the certificates. Thus, those sales were only incidental to the fraud. Pp. 17–19. 675 F.3d 503, affirmed. Breyer, J., delivered the opinion of the Court, in which Roberts, C. J., and Scalia, Thomas, Ginsburg, Sotomayor, and Kagan, JJ., joined. Thomas, J., filed a concurring opinion. Kennedy, J., filed a dissenting opinion, in which Alito, J., joined. Notes 1 Together with No. 12–86, Willis of Colorado Inc. et al. v. Troice et al., and No. 12–88, Proskauer Rose LLP v. Troice et al., also on certiorari to the same court.

The Securities Litigation Uniform Standards Act of 1998 (which we shall refer to as the “Litigation Act”) for-bids the bringing of large securities class actions based upon violations of state law. It says that plaintiffs may not maintain a class action “based upon the statutory or common law of any State” in which the plaintiffs allege “a misrepresentation or omission of a material fact in con-nection with the purchase or sale of a covered security.” 15 U. S. C. §78bb(f)(1) (emphasis added). The Act defines “class actions” as those involving more than 50 members. See §78bb(f )(5). It defines “covered security” narrowly to include only securities traded on a national exchange (or, here irrelevant, those issued by investment companies). §§78bb(f )(5)(E), 77r(b)(1)–(2). The question before us is whether the Litigation Act encompasses a class action in which the plaintiffs allege (1) that they “purchase[d]” uncovered securities (certificates of deposit that are not traded on any national exchange), but (2) that the defendants falsely told the victims that the uncovered securities were backed by covered securities. We note that the plaintiffs do not allege that the defendants’ misrepresentations led anyone to buy or to sell (or to maintain positions in) covered securities. Under these circumstances, we conclude the Act does not apply. In light of the dissent’s characterization of our holding, post, at 11–12 (opinion of Kennedy, j.)—which we believe is incorrect—we specify at the outset that this holding does not limit the Federal Government’s authority to prosecute “frauds like the one here.” Post, at 11. The Federal Government has in fact brought successful prosecutions against the fraudsters at the heart of this litigation, see infra, at 5–6, and we fail to understand thedissent’s repeated suggestions to the contrary, post, at 3, 4,11, 12, 17. Rather, as we shall explain, we believe the basic consequence of our holding is that, without limiting the Federal Government’s prosecution power in any sig-nificant way, it will permit victims of this (and similar) frauds to recover damages under state law. See infra, at 15–17. Under the dissent’s approach, they would have no such ability. I A The relevant statutory framework has four parts: (1) Section 10(b) of the underlying regulatory statute, the Securities Exchange Act of 1934. 48Stat. 891, as amended, 15 U. S. C. §78j (2012 ed.). This well-known statutory provision forbids the “use” or “employ[ment]” of “any manipulative or deceptive device or contrivance” “in connection with the purchase or sale of any security.” §78j(b). Securities and Exchange Commission Rule 10b–5 similarly forbids the use of any “device, scheme, or artifice to defraud” (including the making of “any untrue statement of a material fact” or any similar “omi[ssion]”) “in connection with the purchase or sale of any security.” 17 CFR §240.10b–5 (2013). For purposes of these provisions, the Securities Exchange Act defines “security” broadly to include not just things traded on national exchanges, but also “any note, stock, treasury stock, security future, security-based swap, bond, debenture . . . [or] certificate of deposit for a security.” 15 U. S. C. §78c(a)(10). See also §§77b(a)(1), 80a–2(a)(36), 80b–2(a)(18) (providing virtually identical defini-tions of “security” for the Securities Act of 1933, the Investment Company Act of 1940, and the InvestmentAdvisers Act of 1940). (2) A statute-based private right of action. The Court has read §10(b) and Rule 10b–5 as providing injured persons with a private right of action to sue for damages suffered through those provisions’ violation. See, e.g., Blue Chip Stamps v. Manor Drug Stores, 421 U. S. 723, 730 (1975) . The scope of the private right of action is more limited than the scope of the statutes upon which it is based. See Stoneridge Investment Partners, LLC v. Scientific-Atlanta, Inc., 552 U. S. 148, 153, 155, 166 (2008) (private right does not cover suits against “secondary actors” who had no “role in preparing or disseminating” a stock issuer’s fraudulent “financial statements”); Central Bank of Denver, N. A. v. First Interstate Bank of Denver, N. A., 511 U. S. 164 (1994) (private right does not extend to actions against “aiders and abettors” of securities fraud); Blue Chip Stamps, supra, at 737 (private right extends only to purchasers and sellers, not to holders, of securities). (3) The Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 (PSLRA). 109Stat. 737, 15 U. S. C. §§77z–1, 78u–4. This law imposes procedural and substantive limitations upon the scope of the private right of action available under §10(b) and Rule 10b–5. It requires plaintiffs to meet heightened pleading standards. It permits defendants to obtain automatic stays of discovery. It limits recoverable damages and attorney’s fees. And it creates a new “safe harbor” for forward-looking statements. See §§78u–4, 78u–5. (4) The Securities Litigation Uniform Standards Act. 112Stat. 3227, 15 U. S. C. §78bb(f )(1)(A). As we said at the outset, this 1998 law forbids any “covered class action based upon the statutory or common law of any State . . . by any private partyalleging— “(A) a misrepresentation or omission of a material fact in connection with the purchase or sale of a covered security; or “(B) that the defendant used or employed any manipulative or deceptive device or contrivance in connection with the purchase or sale of a covered security.” §§78bb(f )(1)(A)–(B). The law defines “covered security” narrowly. It is a security that “satisfies the standards for a covered security specified in paragraph (1) or (2) of section 18(b) of the Securities Act of 1933.” §78bb(f )(5)(E). And the relevant paragraphs of §18(b) of the 1933 Act define a “covered security” as “[a security] listed, or authorized for listing, on a national securities exchange,” §77r(b)(1) (or, though not relevant here, as a security issued by an “investment company,” §77r(b)(2)). The Litigation Act also specifies that a “covered security” must be listed or authorized for listing on a national exchange “at the time during which it is alleged that the misrepresentation, omission, or manipulative or deceptive conduct occurred.” §78bb(f )(5)(E). The Litigation Act sets forth exceptions. It does not apply to class actions with fewer than 51 “persons or prospective class members.” §78bb(f )(5)(B). It does not apply to actions brought on behalf of a State itself. §78bb(f )(3)(B)(i). It does not apply to class actions based on the law “of the State in which the issuer is incorporated.” §78bb(f )(3)(A)(i). And it reserves the authority of state securities commissions “to investigate and bring enforcement actions.” §78bb(f )(4). We are here primarily interested in the Litigation Act’s phrase “misrepresentation or omission of a material factin connection with the purchase or sale of a covered secu-rity.” §78bb(f )(1)(A). Unless this phrase applies to the class actions before us, the plaintiffs may maintain their state-law-based class actions, and they may do so either in federal or state court. Otherwise, their class actions are precluded altogether. See §78bb(f )(2) (providing for the removal from state to federal court of class actions that meet the specifications of paragraph 1, and for the dismissal of such suits by the district court). B 1 The plaintiffs in these actions (respondents here) say that Allen Stanford and several of his companies ran a multibillion dollar Ponzi scheme. Essentially, Stanford and his companies sold the plaintiffs certificates of deposit in Stanford International Bank. Those certificates “were debt assets that promised a fixed rate of return.” Roland v. Green, 675 F. 3d 503, 522 (CA5 2012). The plaintiffs expected that Stanford International Bank would use the money it received to buy highly lucrative assets. But instead, Stanford and his associates used the money provided by new investors to repay old investors, to finance an elaborate lifestyle, and to finance speculative real estate ventures. The Department of Justice brought related criminal charges against Allen Stanford. A jury convicted Stanford of mail fraud, wire fraud, conspiracy to commit money laundering, and obstruction of a Securities and Exchange Commission investigation. Stanford was sentenced to prison and required to forfeit $6 billion. The SEC, noting that the Bank certificates of deposit fell within the 1934 Securities Exchange Act’s broad definition of “security,” filed a §10(b) civil case against Allen Stanford, the Stanford International Bank, and related Stanford companies and associates. The SEC won the civil action, and the court imposed a civil penalty of $6 billion. 2 The plaintiffs in each of the four civil class actions are private investors who bought the Bank’s certificates of deposit. Two groups of plaintiffs filed their actions in Louisiana state court against firms and individuals who helped sell the Bank’s certificates by working as “investment advisers” affiliated with Stanford, or who provided Stanford-related companies with trust, insurance, accounting, or reporting services. (The defendants included a respondent here, SEI Investments Company.) The plaintiffs claimed that the defendants helped the Bank perpetrate the fraud, thereby violating Louisiana state law. Two other groups of plaintiffs filed their actions in federal court for the Northern District of Texas. One group sued Willis of Colorado (and related Willis companies) and Bowen, Miclette & Britt, two insurance brokers; the other group sued Proskauer Rose and Chadbourne & Parke, two law firms. Both groups claimed that the defendants helped the Bank (and Allen Stanford) perpetrate the fraud or conceal it from regulators, thereby violating Texas securities law. The Louisiana state-court defendants removed their cases to federal court, and the Judicial Panel on Multi-District Litigation moved the Louisiana cases to the Northern District of Texas. A single federal judge heard all four class actions. The defendants in each of the cases moved to dismiss the complaints. The District Court concluded that the Litigation Act required dismissal. The court recognized that the certificates of deposit themselves were not “covered securities” under the Litigation Act, for they were not “ ‘traded nationally [or] listed on a regulated national exchange.’ ” App. to Pet. for Cert. in No. 12–86, p. 62.But each complaint in one way or another alleged thatthe fraud included misrepresentations that the Bank maintained significant holdings in “ ‘highly marketable se-curities issued by stable governments [and] strong mul-tinational companies,’ ” and that the Bank’s ownership of these “covered” securities made investments in the uncovered certificates more secure. Id., at 66. The court concluded that this circumstance provided the requisite statutory “connection” between (1) the plaintiffs’ state-law fraud claims, and (2) “transactions in covered securities.” Id., at 64, 66–67. Hence, the court dismissed the class actions under the Litigation Act. Id., at 75. See also 675 F. 3d,at 511. All four sets of plaintiffs appealed. The Fifth Circuit reversed. It agreed with the District Court that the complaints described misrepresentations about the Bank’s investments in nationally traded securities. Still, the “heart, crux, and gravamen of” the “allegedly fraudulent scheme was representing . . . that the [uncovered] CDs were a ‘safe and secure’ investment that was preferable to other investments for many reasons.” Id., at 522. The court held that the falsehoods about the Bank’s holdings in covered securities were too “ ‘tangentially related’ ” to the “crux” of the fraud to trigger the Litigation Act. Id., at 520, 522 (quoting Madden v. Cowen & Co., 576 F. 3d 957, 965–966 (CA9 2009)). “That the CDs were marketed with some vague references to [the Bank’s] portfolio containing instruments that might be [covered by the Litigation Act] seems tangential to the schemes,” to the point where the complaints fall outside the scope of that Act. 675 F. 3d,at 522. Defendants in the four class actions sought certiorari. We granted their petitions. II The question before us concerns the scope of the Litigation Act’s phrase “misrepresentation or omission of a material fact in connection with the purchase or sale ofa covered security.” §78bb(f )(1)(A). How broad is that scope? Does it extend further than misrepresentations that are material to the purchase or sale of a covered security? In our view, the scope of this language does not extend further. To put the matter more specifically: A fraudulent misrepresentation or omission is not made “in connection with” such a “purchase or sale of a covered security” unless it is material to a decision by one or more individuals (other than the fraudster) to buy or to sell a “covered security.” We add that in Merrill Lynch, Pierce, Fenner & Smith Inc. v. Dabit, 547 U. S. 71 (2006) , we held that the Litigation Act precluded a suit where the plaintiffs alleged a “fraudulent manipulation of stock prices” that was material to and “ ‘concide[d]’ with” third-party securities transactions, while also inducing the plaintiffs to “hold their stocks long beyond the point when, had the truth been known, they would have sold.” Id., at 75, 85, 89 (citing United States v. O’Hagan, 521 U. S. 642, 651 (1997) ). We do not here modify Dabit. A We reach this interpretation of the Litigation Act for several reasons. First, the Act focuses upon transactions in covered securities, not upon transactions in uncovered securities. An interpretation that insists upon a material connection with a transaction in a covered security is consistent with the Act’s basic focus. Second, a natural reading of the Act’s language supports our interpretation. The language requires the dismissal of a state-law-based class action where a private party alleges a “misrepresentation or omission of a material fact” (or engages in other forms of deception, not relevant here) “in connection with the purchase or sale of a covered secu-rity.” §78bb(f)(1). The phrase “material fact in connection with the purchase or sale” suggests a connection that matters. And for present purposes, a connection matters where the misrepresentation makes a significant difference to someone’s decision to purchase or to sell a covered security, not to purchase or to sell an uncovered security, something about which the Act expresses no concern. See generally Matrixx Initiatives, Inc. v. Siracusano, 563 U. S. ___, ___ (2011) (slip op., at 9–12) (a misrepresentation or omission is “material” if a reasonable investor would have considered the information significant when contemplating a statutorily relevant investment decision). Further, the “someone” making that decision to purchase or sell must be a party other than the fraudster. If the only party who decides to buy or sell a covered security as a result of a lie is the liar, that is not a “connection” that matters. Third, prior case law supports our interpretation. As far as we are aware, every securities case in which this Court has found a fraud to be “in connection with” a purchase or sale of a security has involved victims who took, who tried to take, who divested themselves of, who tried to divest themselves of, or who maintained an ownership interest in financial instruments that fall within the relevant statutory definition. See, e.g., Dabit, supra, at 77 (Litigation Act: victims were “holders” of covered securities that the defendant’s fraud caused to become overvalued); SEC v. Zandford, 535 U. S. 813, 822 (2002) (§10(b): victims were “duped into believing” that the defendant would “ ‘invest’ their assets in the stock market”); Wharf (Holdings) Ltd. v. United Int’l Holdings, Inc., 532 U. S. 588, 592 (2001) (§10(b): victim purchased an oral option to buy 10% of a company’s stock); O’Hagan, supra, at 655–656 (§10(b): victims were “members of the investing public” harmed by the defendant’s “gain[ing of an] advantageous market position” through insider trading); Superintendent of Ins. of N. Y. v. Bankers Life & Casualty Co., 404 U. S. 6, 10 (1971) (§10(b): victim was “injured as an investor” when the fraud deprived it of “compensation for the sale of its valuable block of securities”). We have found no Court case involving a fraud “in connection with” the purchase or sale of a statutorily defined security in which the victims did not fit one of these descriptions. And the dissent apparently has not either. Although the dissent characterizes our approach as “new,” post, at 3, and tries to describe several of our prior cases, such as Zanford or Dabit, in a different way, post, at 14–15, it cannot escape the fact that every case it cites involved a victim who took, tried to take, or maintained an ownership position in the statutorily relevant securities through “purchases” or “sales” induced by the fraud. E.g., Zandford, supra, at 815, 820 (fraudster told customershe would “ ‘conservatively invest’ their money” in the stock market and made sales of “his customer’s securities,”but pocketed the proceeds (emphasis added)); Dabit, supra, at 76, 85, 89 (the “misrepresentations and manipulative tactics caused [the plaintiffs] to hold onto overvalued securities” while also inducing third parties to trade them); In re Orlando Joseph Jett, 82 S. E. C. Docket 1211, 1236–1237 (2004) (trader’s scheme “greatly inflated the reporting trading profits” that his firm “used to determine . . . the amount of capital he was permitted to commit on the firm’s behalf” (emphasis added)). Fourth, we read the Litigation Act in light of and consistent with the underlying regulatory statutes, the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 and the Securities Act of 1933. The regulatory statutes refer to persons engaged in securities transactions that lead to the taking or dissolving of ownership positions. And they make it illegal to deceive a person when he or she is doing so. Section 5 of the 1933 Act, for example, makes it unlawful to “offer to sell or offer to buy . . . any security, unless a registration statement has been filed as to such security.” 15 U. S. C. §77e(c). Section 17 of the 1933 Act makes it unlawful “in the offer or sale of any securities . . . to employ any device, scheme, or artifice to defraud, or to obtain money or propertyby means of any untrue statement of a material fact.” §§77q(a)(1)–(2). And §10(b) of the 1934 Act makes it unlawful to “use or employ, in connection with the purchase or sale of any security . . . any manipulative or de-ceptive device or contrivance.” §78j(b). Not only language but also purpose suggests a statutory focus upon transactions involving the statutorily relevant securities. The basic purpose of the 1934 and 1933 regulatory statutes is “to insure honest securities markets and thereby promote investor confidence.” See O’Hagan, su-pra, at 658. Nothing in the regulatory statutes suggests their object is to protect persons whose connection with the statutorily defined securities is more remote than words such as “buy,” “sell,” and the like, indicate. Nor does anything in the Litigation Act provide us with reasons for interpreting its similar language more broadly. The dissent correctly points out that the federal securities laws have another purpose, beyond protecting investors. Namely, they also seek to protect securities issuers, as well as the investment advisers, accountants, and brokers who help them sell financial products, from abusive class-action lawsuits. Post, at 5. Both the PSLRA and the Litigation Act were enacted in service of that goal. By imposing heightened pleading standards, limiting damages, and pre-empting state-law suits where the claims pertained to covered securities, Congress sought to reduce frivolous suits and mitigate legal costs for firms and investment professionals that participate in the market for nationally traded securities. We fail to see, however, how our decision today undermines that objective. The dissent worries our approach will “subject many persons and entities whose profession it is to give advice, counsel, and assistance in investing in the securities markets to complex and costly state-law litigation.” Post, at 4. To the contrary, the only issuers, investment advisers, or accountants that today’s decision will continue to subject to state-law liability are those who do not sell or participate in selling securities traded on U. S. national exchanges. We concede that this means a bank, chartered in Antigua and whose sole product is a fixed-rate debt instrument not traded on a U. S. exchange, will not be able to claim the benefit of preclusion under the Litigation Act. But it is difficult to see why the federal securities laws would be—or should be—concerned with shielding such entities from lawsuits. Fifth, to interpret the necessary statutory “connection” more broadly than we do here would interfere with state efforts to provide remedies for victims of ordinary state-law frauds. A broader interpretation would allow the Litigation Act to cover, and thereby to prohibit, a lawsuit brought by creditors of a small business that falsely represented it was creditworthy, in part because it owns or intends to own exchange-traded stock. It could prohibit a lawsuit brought by homeowners against a mortgage broker for lying about the interest rates on their mortgages—if, say, the broker (not the homeowners) later sold the mortgages to a bank which then securitized them in a pool and sold off pieces as “covered securities.” Brief for Sixteen Law Professors as Amici Curiae 24. The dissent all but admits this. Its proposed rule is that whenever “the purchase or sale of the securities [including by the fraudster] is what enables the fraud,” the Litigation Act pre-empts the suit. Post, at 12. In other words, any time one person convinces another to loan him money, by pretending he owns nationally traded securities or will acquire them for himself in the future, the action constitutes federal securities fraud, is subject to federal enforcement, and is also precluded by the Litigation Act if it qualifies as a “covered class action” under §78bb(f )(5)(B) (e.g., involves more than 50 members). Leaving aside whether this would work a significant expansion of the scope of liability under the federal securities laws, it unquestionably would limit the scope of protection under state laws that seek to provide remedies to victims of garden-variety fraud. The text of the Litigation Act reflects congressional care to avoid such results. Under numerous provisions, it purposefully maintains state legal authority, especially over matters that are primarily of state concern. See §§78bb(f )(1)(A)–(B) (limiting preclusion to lawsuits in-volving “covered,” i.e., nationally traded, securities); §78bb(f )(4) (providing that the “securities commission . . . of any State shall retain jurisdiction under the laws of such State to investigate and bring enforcement actions”); §78bb(f )(3)(B) (preserving States’ authority to bring suits of the kind forbidden to private class-action plaintiffs). See also 112Stat. 3227 (“Congress finds that . . . it is appropriate to enact national standards for securities class action lawsuits involving nationally traded securities, while preserving the appropriate enforcement powers of State securities regulators”). A broad interpretation of the Litigation Act works at cross-purposes with this state-oriented concern. Cf. Zandford, 535 U. S., at 820 (warning against “constru[ing]” the phrase “in connection with” “so broadly as to convert any common-law fraud that happens to involve securities into a violation of §10(b)”); Wharf (Holdings) Ltd., 532 U. S., at 596 (recognizing that “ordinary state breach-of-contract claims” are “actions that lie outside the [Securities Exchange] Act’s basic objectives”). B Respondents and the Government make two important counterarguments. Respondents point to statements we have made suggesting we should give the phrase “in connection with” a broad interpretation. In Dabit, for example, we said that the Court has consistently “espoused a broad interpretation” of “in connection with” in the context of §10(b) and Rule 10b–5, and we added that the Litigation Act language similarly warranted a “broad construction.” 547 U. S., at 85–86. In Bankers Life, we said that, if a deceptive practice “touch[es]” a securities transaction, it meets §10(b)’s “in connection with” requirement, 404 U. S., at 12, and in O’Hagan, we said the fraud and the purchase or sale of a security must simply “coincide.” 521 U. S., at 656. The idea, we explained in Zandford, is that the phrase “should be ‘construed not technically and restrictively, but flexibly to effectuate its remedial purposes.’ ” 535 U. S., at 819 (quoting Affiliated Ute Citizens ofUtah v. United States, 406 U. S. 128, 151 (1972) ). Every one of these cases, however, concerned a false statement (or the like) that was “material” to another individual’s decision to “purchase or s[ell]” a statutorily defined “security” or “covered security.” Dabit, supra, at 75–77; Zandford, supra, at 822; Wharf (Holdings) Ltd., supra, at 590–592; O’Hagan, supra, at 655–657; Bankers Life, supra, at 10. And the relevant statements or omissions were material to a transaction in the relevant securities by or on behalf of someone other than the fraudster. Second, the Government points out that §10(b) of the Securities Exchange Act also uses the phrase “in connection with the purchase or sale of any security.” 15 U. S. C. §78j(b). And the Government warns that a narrow interpretation of “in connection with” here threatens a simi-larly narrow interpretation there, which could limit the SEC’s enforcement capabilities. See Brief for United States as Amicus Curiae 28. We do not understand, however, how our interpretation could significantly curtail the SEC’s enforcement powers. As far as the Government has explained the matter, our interpretation seems perfectly consistent with past SEC practice. For one thing, we have cast no doubt on the SEC’s ability to bring enforcement actions against Stanford and Stanford International Bank. The SEC has already done so successfully. As we have repeatedly pointed out, the term “security” under §10(b) covers a wide range of financial products beyond those traded on national exchanges, apparently including the Bank’s certificatesof deposit at issue in these cases. No one here denies that, for §10(b) purposes, the “material” misrepresentations by Stanford and his associates were made “in connection with” the “purchases” of those certificates. We find it surprising that the dissent worries that our decision will “narro[w] and constric[t] essential protection for our national securities market,” post, at 3, and put “frauds like the one here . . . not within the reach of fed-eral regulation,” post, at 11. That would be news to Allen Stanford, who was sentenced to 110 years in federal prison after a successful federal prosecution, and to Stanford International Bank, which was ordered to pay billions in federal fines, after the same. Frauds like the one here—including this fraud itself—will continue to be within the reach of federal regulation because the authority of the SEC and Department of Justice extends to all “securities,” not just to those traded on national exchanges. 15 U. S. C. §78c(a)(10); accord, §77b(a)(1), §80a–2(a)(36), §80b–2(a)(18). When the fraudster peddles an uncovered secu-rity like the CDs here, the Federal Government will have the full scope of its usual powers to act. The only difference between our approach and that of the dissent, is that we also preserve the ability for investors to obtain relief under state laws when the fraud bears so remote a connection to the national securities market that no person actually believed he was taking an ownership position in that market. Thus, despite the Government’s and the dissent’s hand wringing, neither has been able to point to an example of any prior SEC enforcement action brought during the past 80 years that our holding today would have prevented the SEC from bringing. At oral argument, the Government referred to an administrative proceeding, In re Richard Line, 62 S. E. C. Docket 2879 (1996), as its best example. Our examination of the report of that case, however, indicates that the defendant was a fraudster to whom the fraud’s victims had loaned money, expecting that he would purchase securities on their behalf. Id., at 2880 (“Line represented to investors that he would invest their non-admitted assets in various securities, including U. S. Treasury notes, mutual fund shares, and collateralized debt obligations”); ibid. (“[He] fabricated account statements which falsely recited that securities had beenpurchased on behalf of certain investors”). The Government’s brief refers to two other proceedings as demonstrating the SEC’s broad §10(b) enforcement powers. Each, however, involved defrauded investors who had tried to take an ownership interest in the relevant securities. Jett, 82 S. E. C. Docket, at 1251 (involving a §10(b) action where a defrauded trading firm’s “decision to purchase or ‘invest’ in strips or bonds . . . stemmed directly from the activity that constituted the fraud”); In re D. S. Waddy & Co., 30 S. E. C. 367, 368 (1949) (involving a §10(b) action where a broker “appropriated to his own use money paid to him by customers for securities purchases”). We have examined SEC records without finding any further examples. For these reasons, the dissent’s warning that our de-cision will “inhibit” “litigants from using federal law to police frauds” and will “undermine the primacy of federal law in policing abuses in the securities markets” rings hollow. Post, at 4, 5. The dissent cannot point to one example of a federal securities action—public or private—that would have been permissible in the past but that our approach will disallow in the future. And the irony of the dissent’s position is that federal law would have precluded private recovery in these very suits, because §10(b) does not create a private right of action for investors vis-à-vis “secondary actors” or “aiders and abettors” of securities fraud. Stoneridge Investment Partners, 552 U. S., at 152, 155; Central Bank of Denver, 511 U. S., at 180; accord, Brief for Petitioners in No. 12–86, p. 46 (“Any federal securities action against Petitioners would clearly run afoul of Central Bank and Stoneridge”); Brief for Respon-dents 48 (same); Brief for United States as Amicus Curiae 28 (same). III Respondents’ complaints specify that their claims rest upon their purchases of uncovered, not of covered, securities. Our search for allegations that might bring their allegations within the scope of the Litigation Act reveals the following: (1) The first set of Texas plaintiffs alleged that they bought certificates of deposit from Stanford International Bank because they were told “the CDs issued by SIBwere safer even than U. S. bank-issued CDs” and “could be redeemed at any time,” given that the Bank “only invested the money [i.e., the Bank’s money obtained from its certificate sale proceeds] in safe, secure, and liquid assets.” App. 433. They claimed Stanford “touted the high quality of SIB’s investment portfolio,” and such falsehoods were material to their decision to purchase the uncovered certificates. Id., at 444. (2) The second set of Texas plaintiffs contended that they, too, purchased the Bank’s certificates on the belief “that their money was being invested in safe, liquid investments.” Id., at 715. They alleged that the Bank’s marketing materials stated it devoted “the greater part of its assets” to “first grade investment bonds (AAA, AA+, AA) and shares of stock (of great reputation, liquidity, and credibility).” Id., at 744 (emphasis deleted). (3) Both groups of Louisiana plaintiffs alleged that they were induced to purchase the certificates based on misrepresentations that the Bank’s assets were “ ‘invested in a well-diversified portfolio of highly marketable securities issued by stable governments, strong multinational companies and major international banks.’ ” Id., at 253, 345. And they claimed the “ ‘liquidity/marketability of SIB’s invested assets’ ” was “the most important factor to provide security to SIB clients.” Id., at 254. These statements do not allege, for Litigation Act purposes, misrepresentations or omissions of material fact “in connection with” the “purchase or sale of a covered secu-rity.” At most, the complaints allege misrepresentations about the Bank’s ownership of covered securities—fraudulent assurances that the Bank owned, would own, or would use the victims’ money to buy for itself shares of covered securities. But the Bank is an entity that made the misrepresentations. The Bank is the fraudster, not the fraudster’s victim. Nor is the Bank some other person transacting (or refraining from transacting, see Dabit, 547 U. S., at 75–77) in covered securities. And consequently, there is not the necessary “connection” between the materiality of the misstatements and the statutorily required “purchase or sale of a covered security.” See supra, at 8. A final point: The District Court found that one of the plaintiffs acquired Bank certificates “with the proceeds of selling” covered securities contained in his IRA portfolio. App. to Pet. for Cert. in No. 12–86, p. 70. The plaintiffs, however, did not allege that the sale of these covered securities (which were used to finance the purchase of the certificates) constituted any part of the fraudulent scheme. Nor did the complaints allege that Stanford or his associates were at all interested in how the plaintiffs obtained the funds they needed to purchase the certificates. Thus, we agree with the Court of Appeals that “[u]nlike Bankers Life and Zandford, where the entirety of the fraud depended upon the tortfeasor convincing the victims of those fraudulent schemes to sell their covered securities in order for the fraud to be accomplished, the allegations here are not so tied with the sale of covered securities.” 675 F. 3d, at 523. In our view, like that of the Court of Appeals, these sales constituted no relevant part of the fraud but were rather incidental to it. For these reasons the Court of Appeals’ judgment is affirmed. It is so ordered.

573.US.1

Federal law pre-empts state-law statutes of limitations in certain tort actions involving personal injury or property damage arising from the release of a hazardous substance, pollutant, or contaminant into the environment. 42 U. S. C. §9658. Petitioner CTS Corporation sold property on which it had stored chemicals as part its operations as an electronics plant. Twenty-four years later, respondents, the owners of portions of that property and adjacent landowners, sued, alleging damages from the stored contaminants. CTS moved to dismiss, citing a state statute of repose that prevented subjecting a defendant to a tort suit brought more than 10 years after the defendant’s last culpable act. Because CTS’s last act occurred when it sold the property, the District Court granted the motion. Finding §9658 ambiguous, the Fourth Circuit reversed, holding that the statute’s remedial purpose favored pre-emption. Held: The judgment is reversed. 723 F.3d 434, reversed. Justice Kennedy delivered the opinion of the Court with respect to all but Part II–D, concluding that §9658 does not pre-empt state statutes of repose. Pp. 5–16. (a) The outcome here turns on whether §9658 distinguishes between statutes of limitations and statutes of repose, which are both used to limit the temporal extent or duration of tort liability. There is considerable common ground in the policies underlying the two, but their specified time periods are measured differently and they seek to attain different purposes and objectives. Statutes of limitations are designed to promote justice by encouraging plaintiffs to pursue claims diligently and begin to run when a claim accrues. Statutes of repose effect a legislative judgment that a defendant should be free from liability after a legislatively determined amount of time and are measured from the date of the defendant’s last culpable act or omission. The application of equitable tolling underscores their difference in purpose. Because a statute of limitations’ purpose is not furthered by barring an untimely action brought by a plaintiff who was prevented by extraordinary circumstances from timely filing, equitable tolling operates to pause the running of the statute. The purpose of statutes of repose are unaffected by such circumstances, and equitable tolling does not apply. Pp. 5–8. (b) The text and structure of §9658 resolve this case. Under that provision, pre-emption is characterized as an “[e]xception,” §9658(a)(1), to the regular rule that the “the statute of limitations established under State law” applies. The “applicable limitations period,” the “commencement date” of which is subject to pre-emption, is defined as “the period specified in a statute of limitations.” §9658(b)(2). That term appears four times, and “statute of repose” does not appear at all. While it is apparent from the historical development of the two terms that their general usage has not always been precise, their distinction was well enough established to be reflected in the 1982 Study Group Report that guided §9658’s enactment, acknowledged the distinction, and urged the repeal of both types of statutes. Because that distinction is not similarly reflected in §9658, it is proper to conclude that Congress did not intend to pre-empt statutes of repose. Other textual features further support this conclusion. It would be awkward to use the singular “applicable limitations period” to mandate pre-emption of two different time periods with two different purposes. And the definition of that limitations period as “the period” during which a “civil action” under state law “may be brought,” §9658(b)(2), presupposes that a civil action exists. A statute of repose, in contrast, can prohibit a cause of action from ever coming into existence. Section 9658’s inclusion of a tolling rule also suggests that the statute’s reach is limited to statutes of limitations, which traditionally have been subject to tolling. Respondents contend that §9658 also effects an implied pre-emption because statutes of repose create an obstacle to Congress’ purposes and objectives, see Wyeth v. Levine, 555 U.S. 555, 563–564. But the level of generality at which the statute’s purpose is framed affects whether a specific reading will further or hinder that purpose. Here, where Congress chose to leave many areas of state law untouched, respondents have not shown that statutes of repose pose an unacceptable obstacle to the attainment of statutory purposes. Pp. 8–16. Kennedy, J., delivered the opinion of the Court, except as to Part II–D. Sotomayor, and Kagan, JJ., joined that opinion in full, and Roberts, C. J., and Scalia, Thomas, and Alito, JJ., joined as to all but Part II–D. Scalia, J., filed an opinion concurring in part and concurring in the judgment, in which Roberts, C. J., and Thomas and Alito, JJ., joined. Ginsburg, J., filed a dissenting opinion, in which Breyer, J., joined.

. Congressional intent is discerned primarily from the statutory text. In any event, were the Court to adopt a presumption to help resolve ambiguity, substantial support also exists for the proposition that “the States’ coordinate role in government counsels against reading” federal laws such as §9658 “to restrict the States’ sovereign capacity to regulate” in areas of traditional state concern. FTC v. Phoebe Putney Health System, Inc., 568 U. S. ___, ___ (2013) (slip op., at 18). Turning to the statutory text, the Court notes first that §9658, in the caption of subsection (a), characterizes pre-emption as an “[e]xception” to the regular rule. §9658(a)(1). Section 9658 contains another subsection, with the heading “State law generally applicable,” that provides the rule that “the statute of limitations established under State law shall apply.” §9658(a)(2). Under this structure, state law is not pre-empted unless it fits into the precise terms of the exception. The statute defines the “applicable limitations period,” the “commencement date” of which is subject to pre-emption, as a period specified in “a statute of limitations.” §9658(b)(2). Indeed, §9658 uses the term “statute of limitations” four times (not including the caption), but not the term “statute of repose.” This is instructive, but it is not dispositive. While the term “statute of limitations” has acquired a precise meaning, distinct from “statute of repose,” and while that is its primary meaning, it must be acknowledged that the term “statute of limitations” is sometimes used in a less formal way. In that sense, it can refer to any provision restricting the time in which a plaintiff must bring suit. See Black’s 1546; see also Ernst & Ernst v. Hochfelder, 425 U. S. 185, 210 (1976) . Congress has used the term “statute of limitations” when enacting statutes of repose. See, e.g., 15 U. S. C. §78u–6(h)(1)(B)(iii)(I)(aa) (2012 ed.) (creating a statute of repose and placing it in a provision entitled “Statute of limitations”); 42 U. S. C. §2278 (same). And petitioner does not point out an example in which Congress has used the term “statute of repose.” So the Court must proceed to examine other evidence of the meaning of the term “statute of limitations” as it is used in §9658. The parties debate the historical development of the terms “statute of limitations” and “statute of repose” in an effort to show how these terms were likely understood in 1986, when Congress enacted §9658. It is apparent that the distinction between statutes of limitations and statutes of repose was understood by some courts and scholars before 1986. The 1977 Restatement of Torts noted that “[i]n recent years special ‘statutes of repose’ have been adopted in some states . . . . The statutory period in these acts is usually longer than that for the regular statute of limitations, but . . . may have run before a cause of action came fully into existence.” Restatement (Second) of Torts §899, Comment g. But that usage, now predominant, then was not the only definition of the two terms. One scholar, writing in 1981, described multiple usages of the terms, including both a usage in which the terms are equivalent and also the modern, more precise usage. McGovern, The Variety, Policy and Constitutionality of Product Liability Statutes of Repose, 30 Am. U. L. Rev. 579, 584 (1981) (describing a statute of repose as “distinct from a statute of limitation because [a statute of repose] begins to run at a time unrelated to the traditional accrual of the cause of action”). Respondents note that an entry in Black’s Law Dictionary from 1979 describes a statute of limitations as follows: “Statutes of limitations are statutes of repose.” Black’s 835 (5th ed.). That statement likely reflects an earlier, broader usage in which the term “statute of repose” referred to all provisions delineating the time in which a plaintiff must bring suit. See, e.g., Pillow v. Roberts, 13 How. 472, 477 (1852) (“Statutes of limitation . . . are statutes of repose, and should not be evaded by a forced construction”); Rosenberg v. North Bergen, 61 N. J. 190, 201, 293 A. 2d 662, 667 (1972) (“All statutes limiting in any way the time within which a judicial remedy may be sought are statutes of repose”); Black’s 1077 (rev. 4th ed. 1968) (defining “statute of limitations” as “[a] statute . . . declaring that no suit shall be maintained . . . unless brought within a specified period after the right accrued. Statutes of limitation are statutes of repose”); Ballentine’s Law Dictionary 1233 (2d ed. 1948) (similar). That usage does not necessarily support respondents’ interpretation, because the broad usage of the term “statute of repose” does not mean that the term “statute of limitations” must refer to both types of statute. From all this, it is apparent that general usage of the legal terms has not always been precise, but the concept that statutes of repose and statutes of limitations are distinct was well enough established to be reflected in the 1982 Study Group Report, commissioned by Congress. In one of its recommendations, the Study Group Report called on States to adopt the discovery rule now embodied in §9658. Study Group Report, pt. 1, at 256. The Report acknowledged that statutes of repose were not equivalent to statutes of limitations and that a recommendation to pre-empt the latter did not necessarily include the former. For immediately it went on to state: “The Recommendation is intended also to cover the repeal of the statutes of repose which, in a number of states[,] have the same effect as some statutes of limitation in barring [a] plaintiff’s claim before he knows that he has one.” Ibid. The scholars and professionals who were discussing this matter (and indeed were advising Congress) knew of a clear distinction between the two. The Report clearly urged the repeal of statutes of repose as well as statutes of limitations. But in so doing the Report did what the statute does not: It referred to statutes of repose as a distinct category. And when Congress did not make the same distinction, it is proper to conclude that Congress did not exercise the full scope of its pre-emption power. While the use of the term “statute of limitations” in §9658 is not dispositive, the Court’s textual inquiry does not end there, for other features of the statutory text further support the exclusion of statutes of repose. The text of §9658 includes language describing the covered period in the singular. The statute uses the terms “the applicable limitations period,” “such period shall commence,” and “the statute of limitations established under State law.” This would be an awkward way to mandate the pre-emption of two different time periods with two different purposes. True, the Dictionary Act states that “words importing the singular include and apply to several persons, parties, or things” unless “the context indicates otherwise.” 1 U. S. C. §1. But the Court has relied on this directive when the rule is “ ‘necessary to carry out the evident intent of the statute.’ ” United States v. Hayes, 555 U. S. 415 , n. 5 (2009) (quoting First Nat. Bank in St. Louis v. Missouri, 263 U. S. 640, 657 (1924) ). As discussed, the context here shows an evident intent not to cover statutes of repose. Further, to return again to the definition of the “applicable limitations period,” the statute describes it as “the period” during which a “civil action” under state law “may be brought.” §9658(b)(2). It is true that in a literal sense a statute of repose limits the time during which a suit “may be brought” because it provides a point after which a suit cannot be brought. Ibid.; see C. J. S. §7, at 24 (“A statute of repose . . . limits the time within which an action may be brought”). But the definition of the “applicable limitations period” presupposes that “a [covered] civil action” exists. §9658(b)(2). Black’s Law Dictionary defines a “civil action” as identical to an “action at law,” which in relevant part is defined as a “civil suit stating a legal cause of action.” Black’s 32–33, 279 (9th ed. 2009); see also id., at 222 (5th ed. 1979). A statute of repose, however, as noted above, “is not related to the accrual of any cause of action.” C. J. S. §7, at 24. Rather, it mandates that there shall be no cause of action beyond a certain point, even if no cause of action has yet accrued. Thus, a statute of repose can prohibit a cause of action from coming into existence. See, e.g., N. C. Gen. Stat. Ann. §1–52(16) (“[N]o cause of action shall accrue more than 10 years from the last act or omission of the defendant giving rise to the cause of action”); see also Hargett v. Holland, 337 N. C. 651, 654–655, 447 S. E. 2d 784, 787 (1994) (“A statute of repose creates an additional element of the claim itself which must be satisfied in order for the claim to be maintained . . . . If the action is not brought within the specified period, the plaintiff literally has no cause of action” (internal quotation marks omitted)); Lamb v. Wedgewood South Corp., 308 N. C. 419, 440–441, 302 S. E. 2d 868, 880 (1983). A statute of repose can be said to define the scope of the cause of action, and therefore the liability of the defendant. See Hargett, supra, at 655–656, 447 S. E. 2d, at 788. In light of the distinct purpose for statutes of repose, the definition of “applicable limitations period” (and thus also the definition of “commencement date”) in §9658(b)(2) is best read to encompass only statutes of limitations, which generally begin to run after a cause of action accrues and so always limit the time in which a civil action “may be brought.” A statute of repose, however, may preclude an alleged tortfeasor’s liability before a plaintiff is entitled to sue, before an actionable harm ever occurs. Another and altogether unambiguous textual indication that §9658 does not pre-empt statutes of repose is that §9658 provides for equitable tolling for “minor or incompetent plaintiff[s].” §9658(b)(4)(B). As noted in the preceding discussion, a “critical distinction” between statutes of limitations and statutes of repose “is that a repose period is fixed and its expiration will not be delayed by estoppel or tolling.” 4 Wright, Federal Practice and Procedure §1056, at 240. As a consequence, the inclusion of a tolling rule in §9658 suggests that the statute’s reach is limited to statutes of limitations, which traditionally have been subject to tolling. It would be odd for Congress, if it did seek to pre-empt statutes of repose, to pre-empt not just the commencement date of statutes of repose but also state law prohibiting tolling of statutes of repose—all without an express indication that §9658 was intended to reach the latter. In addition to their argument that §9658 expressly pre-empts statutes of repose, respondents contend that §9658 effects an implied pre-emption because statutes of repose “creat[e] an unacceptable ‘obstacle to the accomplishment and execution of the full purposes and objectives of Congress.’ ” Wyeth v. Levine, 555 U. S. 555 –564 (2009) (quoting Hines v. Davidowitz, 312 U. S. 52, 67 (1941) ). Respondents argue that pre-emption of statutes of repose advances §9658’s purpose, namely to help plaintiffs bring tort actions for harm caused by toxic contaminants. But the level of generality at which the statute’s purpose is framed affects the judgment whether a specific reading will further or hinder that purpose. CERCLA, it must be remembered, does not provide a complete reme-dial framework. The statute does not provide a general cause of action for all harm caused by toxic contaminants. Section 9658 leaves untouched States’ judgments about causes of action, the scope of liability, the duration of the period provided by statutes of limitations, burdens of proof, rules of evidence, and other important rules governing civil actions. “ ‘The case for federal pre-emption is particularly weak where Congress has indicated its awareness of the operation of state law in a field of federal interest, and has nonetheless decided to stand by both concepts and to tolerate whatever tension there [is] between them.’ ” Wyeth, supra, at 574–575 (quoting Bonito Boats v. Thunder Craft Boats, Inc., 489 U. S. 141 –167 (1989)). Respondents have not shown that in light of Congress’ decision to leave those many areas of state law untouched, statutes of repose pose an unacceptable obstacle to the attainment of CERCLA’s purposes. D Under a proper interpretation of §9658, statutes of repose are not within Congress’ pre-emption mandate. Although the natural reading of §9658’s text is that statutes of repose are excluded, the Court finds additional support for its conclusion in well-established “presumptions about the nature of pre-emption.” Medtronic, Inc. v. Lohr, 518 U. S. 470 –485 (1996) (citing Gade v. National Solid Wastes Management Assn., 505 U. S. 88, 111 (1992) (Kennedy, J., concurring in part and concurring in judgment)). “[B]ecause the States are independent sovereigns in our federal system,” the Court “ ‘assum[es] that the historic police powers of the States were not to be superseded by the Federal Act unless that was the clear and manifest purpose of Congress.’ ” Medtronic, supra, at 485 (quoting Rice v. Santa Fe Elevator Corp., 331 U. S. 218, 230 (1947) ). It follows that “when the text of a pre-emption clause is susceptible of more than one plausible reading, courts ordinarily ‘accept the reading that disfavors pre-emption.’ ” Altria Group, Inc. v. Good, 555 U. S. 70, 77 (2008) (quoting Bates v. Dow Agrosciences LLC, 544 U. S. 431, 449 (2005) ). That approach is “consistent with both federalism concerns and the historic primacy of state regulation of matters of health and safety.” Medtronic, 518 U. S., at 485. The effect of that presumption is to support, where plausible, “a narrow interpretation” of an express pre-emption provision, ibid., especially “when Congress has legislated in a field traditionally occupied by the States,” Altria, supra, at 77. The presumption has greatest force when Congress legislates in an area traditionally governed by the States’ police powers. See Rice, supra, at 230. “In our federal system, there is no question that States possess the ‘traditional authority to provide tort remedies to their citizens’ as they see fit.” Wos v. E. M. A., 568 U. S. ___, ___ (2013) (slip op., at 11) (quoting Silkwood v. Kerr-McGee Corp., 464 U. S. 238, 248 (1984) ). The result of respondents’ interpretation would be that statutes of repose would cease to serve any real function. Respondents have not shown the statute has the clarity necessary to justify that reading. * * * The judgment of the Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit is reversed. It is so ordered.

571.US.117

Plaintiffs (respondents here) are twenty-two residents of Argentina who filed suit in California Federal District Court, naming as a defendant DaimlerChrysler Aktiengesellschaft (Daimler), a German public stock company that is the predecessor to petitioner Daimler AG. Their complaint alleges that Mercedes-Benz Argentina (MB Argentina), an Argentinian subsidiary of Daimler, collaborated with state security forces during Argentina’s 1976–1983 “Dirty War” to kidnap, detain, torture, and kill certain MB Argentina workers, among them, plaintiffs or persons closely related to plaintiffs. Based on those allegations, plaintiffs asserted claims under the Alien Tort Statute and the Torture Victim Protection Act of 1991, as well as under California and Argentina law. Personal jurisdiction over Daimler was predicated on the California contacts of Mercedes-Benz USA, LLC (MBUSA), another Daimler subsidiary, one incorporated in Delaware with its principal place of business in New Jersey. MBUSA distributes Daimler-manufactured vehicles to independent dealerships throughout the United States, including California. Daimler moved to dismiss the action for want of personal jurisdiction. Opposing that motion, plaintiffs argued that jurisdiction over Daimler could be founded on the California contacts of MBUSA. The District Court granted Daimler’s motion to dismiss. Reversing the District Court’s judgment, the Ninth Circuit held that MBUSA, which it assumed to fall within the California courts’ all-purpose jurisdiction, was Daimler’s “agent” for jurisdictional purposes, so that Daimler, too, should generally be answerable to suit in that State. Held: Daimler is not amenable to suit in California for injuries allegedly caused by conduct of MB Argentina that took place entirely outside the United States. Pp. 6–24. (a) California’s long-arm statute allows the exercise of personal jurisdiction to the full extent permissible under the U. S. Constitution. Thus, the inquiry here is whether the Ninth Circuit’s holding comports with the limits imposed by federal due process. See Fed. Rule Civ. Proc. 4(k)(1)(A). P. 6. (b) For a time, this Court held that a tribunal’s jurisdiction over persons was necessarily limited by the geographic bounds of the forum. See Pennoyer v. Neff, 95 U.S. 714. That rigidly territorial focus eventually yielded to a less wooden understanding, exemplified by the Court’s pathmarking decision in International Shoe Co. v. Washington, 326 U.S. 310. International Shoe presaged the recognition of two personal jurisdiction categories: One category, today called “specific jurisdiction,” see Goodyear Dunlop Tires Operations, S. A. v. Brown, 564 U. S. ___, ___, encompasses cases in which the suit “arise[s] out of or relate[s] to the defendant’s contacts with the forum,” Helicopteros Nacionales de Colombia, S. A. v. Hall, 466 U.S. 408, 414, n. 8. International Shoe distinguished exercises of specific, case-based jurisdiction from a category today known as “general jurisdiction,” exercisable when a foreign corporation’s “continuous corporate operations within a state [are] so substantial and of such a nature as to justify suit against it on causes of action arising from dealings entirely distinct from those activities.” 326 U. S., at 318. Since International Shoe, “specific jurisdiction has become the centerpiece of modern jurisdiction theory.” Goodyear, 564 U. S., at ___. This Court’s general jurisdiction opinions, in contrast, have been few. See Perkins v. Benguet Consol. Mining Co., 342 U.S. 437, Helicopteros, 466 U. S., at 416, and Goodyear, 564 U. S., at ___. As is evident from these post-International Shoe decisions, while specific jurisdiction has been cut loose from Pennoyer’s sway, general jurisdiction has not been stretched beyond limits traditionally recognized. Pp. 6–14. (c) Even assuming, for purposes of this decision, that MBUSA qualifies as at home in California, Daimler’s affiliations with California are not sufficient to subject it to the general jurisdiction of that State’s courts. Pp. 14–23. (1) Whatever role agency theory might play in the context of general jurisdiction, the Court of Appeals’ analysis in this case cannot be sustained. The Ninth Circuit’s agency determination rested primarily on its observation that MBUSA’s services were “important” to Daimler, as gauged by Daimler’s hypothetical readiness to perform those services itself if MBUSA did not exist. But if “importan[ce]” in this sense were sufficient to justify jurisdictional attribution, foreign corporations would be amenable to suit on any or all claims wherever they have an in-state subsidiary or affiliate, an outcome that would sweep beyond even the “sprawling view of general jurisdiction” rejected in Goodyear. 564 U. S., at ___. Pp. 15–17. (2) Even assuming that MBUSA is at home in California and that MBUSA’s contacts are imputable to Daimler, there would still be no basis to subject Daimler to general jurisdiction in California. The paradigm all-purpose forums for general jurisdiction are a corporation’s place of incorporation and principal place of business. Goodyear, 564 U. S., at ___. Plaintiffs’ reasoning, however, would reach well beyond these exemplar bases to approve the exercise of general jurisdiction in every State in which a corporation “engages in a substantial, continuous, and systematic course of business.” Brief for Respondents 16–17, and nn. 7–8. The words “continuous and systematic,” plaintiffs and the Court of Appeals overlooked, were used in International Shoe to describe situations in which the exercise of specific jurisdiction would be appropriate. See 326 U. S., at 317. With respect to all-purpose jurisdiction, International Shoe spoke instead of “instances in which the continuous corporate operations within a state [are] so substantial and of such a nature as to justify suit . . . on causes of action arising from dealings entirely distinct from those activities.” Id., at 318. Accordingly, the proper inquiry, this Court has explained, is whether a foreign corporation’s “affiliations with the State are so ‘continuous and systematic’ as to render [it] essentially at home in the forum State.” Goodyear, 564 U. S., at ___. Neither Daimler nor MBUSA is incorporated in California, nor does either entity have its principal place of business there. If Daimler’s California activities sufficed to allow adjudication of this Argentina-rooted case in California, the same global reach would presumably be available in every other State in which MBUSA’s sales are sizable. No decision of this Court sanctions a view of general jurisdiction so grasping. The Ninth Circuit, therefore, had no warrant to conclude that Daimler, even with MBUSA’s contacts attributed to it, was at home in California, and hence subject to suit there on claims by foreign plaintiffs having nothing to do with anything that occurred or had its principal impact in California. Pp. 18–21. (3) Finally, the transnational context of this dispute bears attention. This Court’s recent precedents have rendered infirm plaintiffs’ Alien Tort Statute and Torture Victim Protection Act claims. See Kiobel v. Royal Dutch Petroleum Co., 569 U. S. ___, ___, and Mohamad v. Palestinian Authority, 566 U. S. ___, ___. The Ninth Circuit, moreover, paid little heed to the risks to international comity posed by its expansive view of general jurisdiction. Pp. 22–23. 644 F.3d 909, reversed. Ginsburg, J., delivered the opinion of the Court, in which Roberts, C. J., and Scalia, Kennedy, Thomas, Breyer, Alito, and Kagan, JJ., joined. Sotomayor, J., filed an opinion concurring in the judgment.

This case concerns the authority of a court in the United States to entertain a claim brought by foreign plaintiffs against a foreign defendant based on events occurring entirely outside the United States. The litigation commenced in 2004, when twenty-two Argentinian residents[1] filed a complaint in the United States District Court for the Northern District of California against DaimlerChrysler Aktiengesellschaft (Daimler),[2] a German public stock company, headquartered in Stuttgart, that manufactures Mercedes-Benz vehicles in Germany. The complaint alleged that during Argentina’s 1976–1983 “Dirty War,” Daimler’s Argentinian subsidiary, Mercedes-Benz Argentina (MB Argentina) collaborated with state security forces to kidnap, detain, torture, and kill certain MB Argentina workers, among them, plaintiffs or persons closely related to plaintiffs. Damages for the alleged human-rights violations were sought from Daimler under the laws of the United States, California, and Argentina. Jurisdiction over the lawsuit was predicated on the California contacts of Mercedes-Benz USA, LLC (MBUSA),a subsidiary of Daimler incorporated in Delaware withits principal place of business in New Jersey. MBUSA distributes Daimler-manufactured vehicles to independ-ent dealerships throughout the United States, including California. The question presented is whether the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment precludes the District Court from exercising jurisdiction over Daimler in this case, given the absence of any California connectionto the atrocities, perpetrators, or victims described in the complaint. Plaintiffs invoked the court’s general or all-purpose jurisdiction. California, they urge, is a place where Daimler may be sued on any and all claims against it, wherever in the world the claims may arise. For example, as plaintiffs’ counsel affirmed, under the proffered jurisdictional theory, if a Daimler-manufactured vehicle overturned in Poland, injuring a Polish driver and passenger, the injured parties could maintain a design defect suit in California. See Tr. of Oral Arg. 28–29. Exercises of personal jurisdiction so exorbitant, we hold, are barred by due process constraints on the assertion of adjudicatory authority. In Goodyear Dunlop Tires Operations, S. A. v. Brown, 564 U. S. ___ (2011), we addressed the distinction between general or all-purpose jurisdiction, and specific or conduct-linked jurisdiction. As to the former, we held that a court may assert jurisdiction over a foreign corporation “to hear any and all claims against [it]” only when the corporation’s affiliations with the State in which suit is brought areso constant and pervasive “as to render [it] essentially at home in the forum State.” Id., at ___ (slip op., at 2). Instructed by Goodyear, we conclude Daimler is not “at home” in California, and cannot be sued there for injuries plaintiffs attribute to MB Argentina’s conduct in Argentina. I In 2004, plaintiffs (respondents here) filed suit in the United States District Court for the Northern District of California, alleging that MB Argentina collaborated with Argentinian state security forces to kidnap, detain, torture, and kill plaintiffs and their relatives during the military dictatorship in place there from 1976 through 1983, a period known as Argentina’s “Dirty War.” Based on those allegations, plaintiffs asserted claims under the Alien Tort Statute, 28 U. S. C. §1350, and the Torture Victim Protection Act of 1991, 106Stat. 73, note following 28 U. S. C. §1350, as well as claims for wrongful death and intentional infliction of emotional distress under the laws of California and Argentina. The incidents recounted in the complaint center on MB Argentina’s plant in Gonzalez Catan, Argentina; no part of MB Argentina’s alleged col-laboration with Argentinian authorities took place in Cali-fornia or anywhere else in the United States. Plaintiffs’ operative complaint names only one corporate defendant: Daimler, the petitioner here. Plaintiffs seek to hold Daimler vicariously liable for MB Argentina’s alleged malfeasance. Daimler is a German Aktiengesellschaft (public stock company) that manufactures Mercedes-Benz vehicles in Germany and has its headquarters in Stuttgart. At times relevant to this case, MB Argentina was a subsidiary wholly owned by Daimler’s predecessor in interest. Daimler moved to dismiss the action for want of personal jurisdiction. Opposing the motion, plaintiffs submitted declarations and exhibits purporting to demonstrate the presence of Daimler itself in California. Alternatively, plaintiffs maintained that jurisdiction over Daimler could be founded on the California contacts of MBUSA, a distinct corporate entity that, according to plaintiffs, should be treated as Daimler’s agent for jurisdictional purposes. MBUSA, an indirect subsidiary of Daimler, is a Delaware limited liability corporation.[3] MBUSA serves as Daimler’s exclusive importer and distributor in the United States, purchasing Mercedes-Benz automobiles from Daimler in Germany, then importing those vehicles, and ultimately distributing them to independent dealerships located throughout the Nation. Although MBUSA’s principal place of business is in New Jersey, MBUSA has multiple California-based facilities, including a regional office in Costa Mesa, a Vehicle Preparation Center in Carson, and a Classic Center in Irvine. According to the record developed below, MBUSA is the largest supplier of luxury vehicles to the California market. In particular, over 10% of all sales of new vehicles in the United States take place in California, and MBUSA’s California sales account for 2.4% of Daimler’s worldwide sales. The relationship between Daimler and MBUSA is delineated in a General Distributor Agreement, which sets forth requirements for MBUSA’s distribution of Mercedes-Benz vehicles in the United States. That agreementestablished MBUSA as an “independent contracto[r]”that “buy[s] and sell[s] [vehicles] . . . as an independent business for [its] own account.” App. 179a. The agreement “does not make [MBUSA] . . . a general or special agent, partner, joint venturer or employee of DAIMLERCHRYSLER or any DaimlerChrysler Group Company”; MBUSA “ha[s] no authority to make binding obligations for or act on behalf of DAIMLERCHRYSLER or any DaimlerChrysler Group Company.” Ibid. After allowing jurisdictional discovery on plaintiffs’ agency allegations, the District Court granted Daimler’s motion to dismiss. Daimler’s own affiliations with California, the court first determined, were insufficient to support the exercise of all-purpose jurisdiction over the corporation. Bauman v. DaimlerChrysler AG, No. C–04–00194 RMW (ND Cal., Nov. 22, 2005), App. to Pet. for Cert. 111a–112a, 2005 WL 3157472, *9–*10. Next, the court declined to attribute MBUSA’s California contacts to Daimler on an agency theory, concluding that plaintiffs failed to demonstrate that MBUSA acted as Daimler’s agent. Id., at 117a, 133a, 2005 WL 3157472, *12, *19; Bauman v. DaimlerChrysler AG, No. C–04–00194 RMW (ND Cal., Feb. 12, 2007), App. to Pet. for Cert. 83a–85a, 2007 WL 486389, *2. The Ninth Circuit at first affirmed the District Court’s judgment. Addressing solely the question of agency, the Court of Appeals held that plaintiffs had not shown the existence of an agency relationship of the kind that might warrant attribution of MBUSA’s contacts to Daimler. Bauman v. DaimlerChrysler Corp., 579 F. 3d 1088, 1096–1097 (2009). Judge Reinhardt dissented. In his view, the agency test was satisfied and considerations of “reason-ableness” did not bar the exercise of jurisdiction. Id., at 1098–1106. Granting plaintiffs’ petition for rehearing, the panel withdrew its initial opinion and replaced it with one authored by Judge Reinhardt, which elaborated on reasoning he initially expressed in dissent. Bauman v. Daimler-Chrysler Corp., 644 F. 3d 909 (CA9 2011). Daimler petitioned for rehearing and rehearing en banc, urging that the exercise of personal jurisdiction over Daimler could not be reconciled with this Court’s decision in Goodyear Dunlop Tires Operations, S. A. v. Brown, 564 U. S. ___ (2011). Over the dissent of eight judges, the Ninth Circuit denied Daimler’s petition. See Bauman v. DaimlerChrysler Corp., 676 F. 3d 774 (2011) (O’Scannlain, J., dissenting from denial of rehearing en banc). We granted certiorari to decide whether, consistent with the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, Daimler is amenable to suit in California courts for claims involving only foreign plaintiffs and conduct occurring entirely abroad. 569 U. S. ___ (2013). II Federal courts ordinarily follow state law in determining the bounds of their jurisdiction over persons. See Fed. Rule Civ. Proc. 4(k)(1)(A) (service of process is effective to establish personal jurisdiction over a defendant “who is subject to the jurisdiction of a court of general jurisdiction in the state where the district court is located”). Under California’s long-arm statute, California state courts may exercise personal jurisdiction “on any basis not inconsistent with the Constitution of this state or of the United States.” Cal. Civ. Proc. Code Ann. §410.10 (West 2004). California’s long-arm statute allows the exercise of personal jurisdiction to the full extent permissible under the U. S. Constitution. We therefore inquire whether the Ninth Circuit’s holding comports with the limits imposed by federal due process. See, e.g., Burger King Corp. v. Rudzewicz, 471 U. S. 462, 464 (1985) . III In Pennoyer v. Neff, 95 U. S. 714 (1878) , decided shortly after the enactment of the Fourteenth Amendment, the Court held that a tribunal’s jurisdiction over persons reaches no farther than the geographic bounds of the forum. See id., at 720 (“The authority of every tribunal is necessarily restricted by the territorial limits of the State in which it is established.”). See also Shaffer v. Heitner, 433 U. S. 186, 197 (1977) (Under Pennoyer, “any attempt ‘directly’ to assert extraterritorial jurisdiction over persons or property would offend sister States and exceed the inherent limits of the State’s power.”). In time, however, that strict territorial approach yielded to a less rigid understanding, spurred by “changes in the technology of transportation and communication, and the tremendous growth of interstate business activity.” Burnham v. Superior Court of Cal., County of Marin, 495 U. S. 604, 617 (1990) (opinion of Scalia, J.). “The canonical opinion in this area remains International Shoe [Co. v. Washington], 326 U. S. 310 [(1945)], in which we held that a State may authorize its courts to exercise personal jurisdiction over an out-of-state defendant if the defendant has ‘certain minimum contacts with [the State] such that the maintenance of the suit does not offend “traditional notions of fair play and substantial justice.” ’ ” Goodyear, 564 U. S., at ___ (slip op., at 6) (quoting International Shoe, 326 U. S., at 316). Following International Shoe, “the relationship among the defendant, the forum, and the litigation, rather than the mutually exclusive sovereignty of the States on which the rules of Pennoyer rest, became the central concern of the inquiry into personal jurisdiction.” Shaffer, 433 U. S., at 204. International Shoe’s conception of “fair play and substantial justice” presaged the development of two categories of personal jurisdiction. The first category is represented by International Shoe itself, a case in which the in-state activities of the corporate defendant “ha[d] not only been continuous and systematic, but also g[a]ve rise to the liabilities sued on.” 326 U. S., at 317.[4] International Shoe recognized, as well, that “the commission of some single or occasional acts of the corporate agent in a state” may sometimes be enough to subject the corporation to jurisdiction in that State’s tribunals with respect to suits relating to that in-state activity. Id., at 318. Adjudicatory author-ity of this order, in which the suit “aris[es] out of orrelate[s] to the defendant’s contacts with the forum,” Heli-copteros Nacionales de Colombia, S. A. v. Hall, 466 U. S. 408 , n. 8 (1984), is today called “specific jurisdiction.” See Goodyear, 564 U. S., at ___ (slip op., at 7) (citing von Mehren & Trautman, Jurisdiction to Adjudicate: A Suggested Analysis, 79 Harv. L. Rev. 1121, 1144–1163 (1966) (hereinafter von Mehren & Trautman)). International Shoe distinguished between, on the one hand, exercises of specific jurisdiction, as just described, and on the other, situations where a foreign corporation’s “continuous corporate operations within a state [are] so substantial and of such a nature as to justify suit against it on causes of action arising from dealings entirely distinct from those activities.” 326 U. S., at 318. As we have since explained, “[a] court may assert general jurisdiction over foreign (sister-state or foreign-country) corporations to hear any and all claims against them when their affiliations with the State are so ‘continuous and systematic’ as to render them essentially at home in the forum State.” Goodyear, 564 U. S., at ___ (slip op., at 2); see id., at ___ (slip op., at 7); Helicopteros, 466 U. S., at 414, n. 9.[5] Since International Shoe, “specific jurisdiction has become the centerpiece of modern jurisdiction theory, while general jurisdiction [has played] a reduced role.” Goodyear, 564 U. S., at ___ (slip op., at 8) (quoting Twitchell, The Myth of General Jurisdiction, 101 Harv. L. Rev. 610, 628 (1988)). International Shoe’s momentous departure from Pennoyer’s rigidly territorial focus, we have noted, unleashed a rapid expansion of tribunals’ ability to hear claims against out-of-state defendants when the episode-in-suit occurred in the forum or the defendant purposefully availed itself of the forum.[6] Our subsequent decisions have continued to bear out the prediction that “specific jurisdiction will come into sharper relief and form a considerably more significant part of the scene.” von Mehren & Trautman 1164.[7] Our post-International Shoe opinions on general jurisdiction, by comparison, are few. “[The Court’s] 1952 decision in Perkins v. Benguet Consol. Mining Co. remains the textbook case of general jurisdiction appropriately exercised over a foreign corporation that has not consented to suit in the forum.” Goodyear, 564 U. S., at ___ (slip op., at 11) (internal quotation marks and brackets omitted). The defendant in Perkins, Benguet, was a company incorporated under the laws of the Philippines, where it operated gold and silver mines. Benguet ceased its mining operations during the Japanese occupation of the Philippines in World War II; its president moved to Ohio, where he kept an office, maintained the company’s files, and oversaw the company’s activities. Perkins v. Benguet Consol. Mining Co., 342 U. S. 437, 448 (1952) . The plaintiff, an Ohio resident, sued Benguet on a claim that neither arose in Ohio nor related to the corporation’s activities in that State. We held that the Ohio courts could exercise general jurisdiction over Benguet without offending due process. Ibid. That was so, we later noted, because “Ohio was the corporation’s principal, if temporary, place of business.” Keeton v. Hustler Magazine, Inc., 465 U. S. 770 , n. 11 (1984).[8] The next case on point, Helicopteros, 466 U. S. 408 , arose from a helicopter crash in Peru. Four U. S. citizens perished in that accident; their survivors and representatives brought suit in Texas state court against the helicopter’s owner and operator, a Colombian corporation. That company’s contacts with Texas were confined to “sending its chief executive officer to Houston for a contract-negotiation session; accepting into its New York bank account checks drawn on a Houston bank; purchasing helicopters, equipment, and training services from [a Texas-based helicopter company] for substantial sums; and sending personnel to [Texas] for training.” Id., at 416. Notably, those contacts bore no apparent relationship to the accident that gave rise to the suit. We held that the company’s Texas connections did not resemble the “continuous and systematic general business contacts . . . found to exist in Perkins.” Ibid. “[M]ere purchases, even if occurring at regular intervals,” we clarified, “are not enough to warrant a State’s assertion of in personam jurisdiction over a nonresident corporation in a cause of action not related to those purchase transactions.” Id., at 418. Most recently, in Goodyear, we answered the question: “Are foreign subsidiaries of a United States parent corporation amenable to suit in state court on claims unrelated to any activity of the subsidiaries in the forum State? ” 564 U. S., at ___ (slip op., at 1). That case arose from a bus accident outside Paris that killed two boys from North Carolina. The boys’ parents brought a wrongful-death suit in North Carolina state court alleging that the bus’s tire was defectively manufactured. The complaint named as defendants not only The Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company (Goodyear), an Ohio corporation, but also Goodyear’s Turkish, French, and Luxembourgian subsidiaries. Those foreign subsidiaries, which manufactured tires for sale in Europe and Asia, lacked any affiliation with North Caro-lina. A small percentage of tires manufactured by the foreign subsidiaries were distributed in North Carolina, however, and on that ground, the North Carolina Court of Appeals held the subsidiaries amenable to the general jurisdiction of North Carolina courts. We reversed, observing that the North Carolina court’s analysis “elided the essential difference between case-specific and all-purpose (general) jurisdiction.” Id., at ___ (slip op., at 10). Although the placement of a product into the stream of commerce “may bolster an affiliation germane to specific jurisdiction,” we explained, such contacts “do not warrant a determination that, based on those ties, the forum has general jurisdiction over a defendant.” Id., at ___ (slip op., at 10–11). As International Shoe itself teaches, a corporation’s “continuous activity of some sorts within a state is not enough to support the demand that the corporation be amenable to suits unrelated to that activity.” 326 U. S., at 318. Because Goodyear’s foreign subsidiaries were “in no sense at home in North Carolina,” we held, those subsidiaries could not be required to submit to the general jurisdiction of that State’s courts. 564 U. S., at ___ (slip op., at 13). See also J. McIntyre Machinery, Ltd. v. Nicastro, 564 U. S. ___, ___ (2011) (Ginsburg, J., dissenting) (slip op., at 7) (noting unanimous agreement that a foreign manufacturer, which engaged an independent U. S.-based distributor to sell its machines throughout the United States, could not be exposed to all-purpose jurisdiction in New Jersey courts based on those contacts). As is evident from Perkins, Helicopteros, and Goodyear, general and specific jurisdiction have followed markedly different trajectories post-International Shoe. Specific jurisdiction has been cut loose from Pennoyer’s sway, but we have declined to stretch general jurisdiction beyond limits traditionally recognized.[9] As this Court has increasingly trained on the “relationship among the defendant, the forum, and the litigation,” Shaffer, 433 U. S., at 204, i.e., specific jurisdiction,[10] general jurisdiction has cometo occupy a less dominant place in the contemporary scheme.[11] IV With this background, we turn directly to the question whether Daimler’s affiliations with California are sufficient to subject it to the general (all-purpose) personal jurisdiction of that State’s courts. In the proceedings below, the parties agreed on, or failed to contest, certain points we now take as given. Plaintiffs have never attempted to fit this case into the specific jurisdiction category. Nor did plaintiffs challenge on appeal the District Court’s holding that Daimler’s own contacts with California were, by themselves, too sporadic to justify the exercise of general jurisdiction. While plaintiffs ultimately persuaded the Ninth Circuit to impute MBUSA’s California contacts to Daimler on an agency theory, at no point have they maintained that MBUSA is an alter ego of Daimler. Daimler, on the other hand, failed to object below to plaintiffs’ assertion that the California courts could exercise all-purpose jurisdiction over MBUSA.[12] But see Brief for Petitioner 23, n. 4 (suggestion that in light of Goodyear, MBUSA may not be amenable to general jurisdiction in California); Brief for United States as Amicus Curiae 16, n. 5 (hereinafter U. S. Brief) (same). We will assume then, for purposes of this decision only, that MBUSA qualifies as at home in California. A In sustaining the exercise of general jurisdiction over Daimler, the Ninth Circuit relied on an agency theory, determining that MBUSA acted as Daimler’s agent for jurisdictional purposes and then attributing MBUSA’s California contacts to Daimler. The Ninth Circuit’s agency analysis derived from Circuit precedent consideringprincipally whether the subsidiary “performs services that are sufficiently important to the foreign corporation that if it did not have a representative to perform them, the corporation’s own officials would undertake to perform substantially similar services.” 644 F. 3d, at 920 (quoting Doe v. Unocal Corp., 248 F. 3d 915, 928 (CA9 2001); emphasis deleted). This Court has not yet addressed whether a foreign corporation may be subjected to a court’s general jurisdiction based on the contacts of its in-state subsidiary. Daimler argues, and several Courts of Appeals have held, that a subsidiary’s jurisdictional contacts can be imputed to its parent only when the former is so dominated by the latter as to be its alter ego. The Ninth Circuit adopted a less rigorous test based on what it described as an “agency” relationship. Agencies, we note, come in many sizes and shapes: “One may be an agent for some business purposes and not others so that the fact that one may be an agent for one purpose does not make him or her an agent for every purpose.” 2A C. J. S., Agency §43, p. 367 (2013) (footnote omitted).[13] A subsidiary, for example, might be its parent’s agent for claims arising in the place where the subsidiary operates, yet not its agent regarding claims arising elsewhere. The Court of Appeals did not advert to that prospect. But we need not pass judgment on invocation of an agency theory in the context of general jurisdiction, for in no event can the appeals court’s analysis be sustained. The Ninth Circuit’s agency finding rested primarily on its observation that MBUSA’s services were “important” to Daimler, as gauged by Daimler’s hypothetical readiness to perform those services itself if MBUSA did not exist. Formulated this way, the inquiry into importance stacks the deck, for it will always yield a pro-jurisdiction answer: “Anything a corporation does through an independent contractor, subsidiary, or distributor is presumably something that the corporation would do ‘by other means’ if the independent contractor, subsidiary, or distributor did not exist.” 676 F. 3d, at 777 (O’Scannlain, J., dissenting from denial of rehearing en banc).[14] The Ninth Circuit’s agency theory thus appears to subject foreign corporations to general jurisdiction whenever they have an in-state subsidiary or affiliate, an outcome that would sweep beyond even the “sprawling view of general jurisdiction” we rejected in Goodyear. 564 U. S., at ___ (slip op., at 12).[15] B Even if we were to assume that MBUSA is at home in California, and further to assume MBUSA’s contacts are imputable to Daimler, there would still be no basis to subject Daimler to general jurisdiction in California, for Daimler’s slim contacts with the State hardly render it at home there.[16] Goodyear made clear that only a limited set of affiliations with a forum will render a defendant amenable to all-purpose jurisdiction there. “For an individual, the paradigm forum for the exercise of general jurisdiction is the individual’s domicile; for a corporation, it is an equivalent place, one in which the corporation is fairly regarded as at home.” 564 U. S., at ___ (slip op., at 7) (citing Brilmayer et al., A General Look at General Jurisdiction, 66 Texas L. Rev. 721, 728 (1988)). With respect to a corporation, the place of incorporation and principal place of business are “paradig[m] . . . bases for general jurisdiction.” Id., at 735. See also Twitchell, 101 Harv. L. Rev., at 633. Those affiliations have the virtue of being unique—that is, each ordinarily indicates only one place—as well as easily ascertainable. Cf. Hertz Corp. v. Friend, 559 U. S. 77, 94 (2010) (“Simple jurisdictional rules . . . promote greater predictability.”). These bases afford plaintiffs recourse to at least one clear and certain forum in which a corporate defendant may be sued on any and all claims. Goodyear did not hold that a corporation may be subject to general jurisdiction only in a forum where it is incor-porated or has its principal place of business; it simply typed those places paradigm all-purpose forums. Plaintiffs would have us look beyond the exemplar bases Goodyear identified, and approve the exercise of general jurisdiction in every State in which a corporation “engages in a substantial, continuous, and systematic course of business.” Brief for Respondents 16–17, and nn. 7–8. That formulation, we hold, is unacceptably grasping. As noted, see supra, at 7–8, the words “continuous and systematic” were used in International Shoe to describe instances in which the exercise of specific jurisdiction would be appropriate. See 326 U. S., at 317 (jurisdiction can be asserted where a corporation’s in-state activities are not only “continuous and systematic, but also give rise to the liabilities sued on”).[17] Turning to all-purpose jurisdiction, in contrast, International Shoe speaks of “instances in which the continuous corporate operations within a state [are] so substantial and of such a nature as to justify suit . . . on causes of action arising from dealings en-tirely distinct from those activities.” Id., at 318 (emphasis added). See also Twitchell, Why We Keep Doing Business With Doing-Business Jurisdiction, 2001 U. Chi. Legal Forum 171, 184 (International Shoe “is clearly not saying that dispute-blind jurisdiction exists whenever ‘continuous and systematic’ contacts are found.”).[18] Accordingly, the inquiry under Goodyear is not whether a foreign corporation’s in-forum contacts can be said to be in some sense “continuous and systematic,” it is whether that corporation’s “affiliations with the State are so ‘continuous and systematic’ as to render [it] essentially at home in the forum State.” 564 U. S., at ___ (slip op., at 2).[19] Here, neither Daimler nor MBUSA is incorporated in California, nor does either entity have its principal place of business there. If Daimler’s California activities sufficed to allow adjudication of this Argentina-rooted case in California, the same global reach would presumably be available in every other State in which MBUSA’s sales are sizable. Such exorbitant exercises of all-purpose jurisdiction would scarcely permit out-of-state defendants “to structure their primary conduct with some minimum assurance as to where that conduct will and will not render them liable to suit.” Burger King Corp., 471 U. S., at 472 (internal quotation marks omitted). It was therefore error for the Ninth Circuit to conclude that Daimler, even with MBUSA’s contacts attributed to it, was at home in California, and hence subject to suit there on claims by foreign plaintiffs having nothing to do with anything that occurred or had its principal impact in California.[20] C Finally, the transnational context of this dispute bears attention. The Court of Appeals emphasized, as supportive of the exercise of general jurisdiction, plaintiffs’ assertion of claims under the Alien Tort Statute (ATS), 28 U. S. C. §1350, and the Torture Victim Protection Act of 1991 (TVPA), 106Stat. 73, note following 28 U. S. C. §1350. See 644 F. 3d, at 927 (“American federal courts, be they in California or any other state, have a strong interest in adjudicating and redressing international human rights abuses.”). Recent decisions of this Court, however, have rendered plaintiffs’ ATS and TVPA claims infirm. See Kiobel v. Royal Dutch Petroleum Co., 569 U. S. ___, ___ (2013) (slip op., at 14) (presumption against extra-territorial application controls claims under the ATS); Mohamad v. Palestinian Authority, 566 U. S. ___, ___ (2012) (slip op., at 1) (only natural persons are subject to liability under the TVPA). The Ninth Circuit, moreover, paid little heed to the risks to international comity its expansive view of general jurisdiction posed. Other nations do not share the uninhibited approach to personal jurisdiction advanced by the Court of Appeals in this case. In the European Union, for example, a corporation may generally be sued in the nation in which it is “domiciled,” a term defined to refer only to the location of the corporation’s “statutory seat,” “central administration,” or “principal place of business.” European Parliament and Council Reg. 1215/2012, Arts. 4(1), and 63(1), 2012 O. J. (L. 351) 7, 18. See also id., Art. 7(5), 2012 O. J. 7 (as to “a dispute arising out of the operations of a branch, agency or other establishment,” a corporation may be sued “in the courts for the place where the branch, agency or other establishment is situated” (emphasis added)). The Solicitor General informs us, in this regard, that “foreign governments’ objections to some domestic courts’ expansive views of general jurisdiction have in the past impeded negotiations of international agreements on the reciprocal recognition and enforcement of judgments.” U. S. Brief 2 (citing Juenger, The American Law of General Jurisdiction, 2001 U. Chi. Legal Forum 141, 161–162). See also U. S. Brief 2 (expressing concern thatunpredictable applications of general jurisdiction based on activities of U. S.-based subsidiaries could discourage foreign investors); Brief for Respondents 35 (acknowledging that “doing business” basis for general jurisdiction has led to “international friction”). Considerations of international rapport thus reinforce our determination that subjecting Daimler to the general jurisdiction of courts in California would not accord with the “fair play and substantial justice” due process demands. International Shoe, 326 U. S., at 316 (quoting Milliken v. Meyer, 311 U. S. 457, 463 (1940) ). * * * For the reasons stated, the judgment of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit is Reversed.Notes 1 One plaintiff is a resident of Argentina and a citizen of Chile; all other plaintiffs are residents and citizens of Argentina. 2 Daimler was restructured in 2007 and is now known as Daimler AG. No party contends that any postsuit corporate reorganization bears on our disposition of this case. This opinion refers to members of the Daimler corporate family by the names current at the time plaintiffs filed suit. 3 At times relevant to this suit, MBUSA was wholly owned by Daimler-Chrysler North America Holding Corporation, a Daimler subsidiary. 4 was an action by the State of Washington to collect payments to the State’s unemployment fund. Liability for the payments rested on in-state activities of resident sales solicitors engaged by the corporation to promote its wares in Washington. See 326 U. S., at 313–314. 5 Colloquy at oral argument illustrated the respective provinces of general and specific jurisdiction over persons. Two hypothetical scenarios were posed: , if a California plaintiff, injured in a California accident involving a Daimler-manufactured vehicle, sued Daimler in California court alleging that the vehicle was defectively designed, that court’s adjudicatory authority would be premised on specific juris-diction. See Tr. of Oral Arg. 11 (Daimler’s counsel acknowledgedthat specific jurisdiction “may well be . . . available” in such a case, de-pending on whether Daimler purposefully availed itself of the forum). , if a similar accident took place in Poland and injured Polish plaintiffs sued Daimler in California court, the question would be one of general jurisdiction. See at 29 (on plaintiffs’ view, Daimler would be amenable to such a suit in California). 6 See v., (“The immediate effect of [’s] departure from ’s conceptual apparatus was to increase the ability of the state courts to obtain personal jurisdiction over nonresident defendants.”); v. , (“[A] trend is clearly discernible toward expanding the permissible scope of state jurisdiction over foreign corporations and other nonresidents.”). For an early codification, see Uniform Interstate and International Procedure Act §1.02 (describing jurisdiction based on “[e]nduring [r]elationship” to encompass a person’s domicile or a corporation’s place of incorporation or principal place of business, and providing that “any . . . claim for relief ” may be brought in such a place), §1.03 (describing jurisdiction “[b]ased upon [c]onduct,” limited to claims arising from the enumerated acts, “transacting any business in th[e] state,” “contracting to supply services or things in th[e] state,” or “causing tortious injury by an act or omission in th[e] state”), 9B U. L. A. 308, 310 (1966). 7 See, v., (opinion of onnor, J.) (specific jurisdiction may lie over a foreign defendant that places a product into the “stream of commerce” while also “designing the product for the market in the forum State, advertising in the forum State, establishing channels for providing regular advice to customers in the forum State, or marketing the product through a distributor who has agreed to serve as the sales agent in the forum State”); v., (“[I]f the sale of a product of a manufacturer or distributor such as Audi or Volkswagen is not simply an isolated occurrence, but arises from the efforts of the manufacturer or distributor to serve, directly or indirectly, the market for its product in other States, it is not unreasonable to subject it to suit in one of those States if its allegedly defective merchandise has there been the source of injury to its owner or to others.”); v. , –790 (1984) (California court had specific jurisdiction to hear suit brought by California plaintiff where Florida-based publisher of a newspaper having its largest circulation in California published an article allegedly defaming the complaining Californian; under those circumstances, defendants “must ‘reasonably anticipate being haled into [a California] court’ ”); v. , –781 (1984) (New York resident may maintain suit for libel in New Hampshire state court against California-based magazine that sold 10,000 to 15,000 copies in New Hampshire each month; as long as the defendant “continuously and deliberately exploited the New Hampshire market,” it could reasonably be expected to answer a libel suit there). 8 Selectively referring to the trial court record in (as summarized in an opinion of the intermediate appellate court), posits that Benguet may have had extensive operations in places other than Ohio. See at 11–12, n. 8 (opinion concurring in judgment) (“By the time the suit [in ] was commenced, the company had resumed its considerable operations in the Philippines,” “rebuilding its properties there” and “purchasing machinery, supplies and equipment.” (internal quotation marks omitted)). See also at 7–8, n. 5 (many of the corporation’s “key management decisions” were made by the out-of-state purchasing agent and chief of staff ). ’s account overlooks this Court’s opinion in and the point on which that opinion turned: All of Benguet’s activities were directed by the company’s president from within Ohio. See v. , –448 (1952) (company’s Philippine mining operations “were completely halted during the occupation . . . by the Japanese”; and the company’s president, from his Ohio office, “supervised policies dealing with the rehabilitation of the corporation’s properties in the Philippines and . . . dispatched funds to cover purchases of machinery for such rehabilitation”). On another day, joined a unanimous Court in recognizing: “To the extent that the company was conducting any business during and immediately after the Japanese occupation of the Philippines, it was doing so in Ohio . . . .” , v. , 564 U. S. ___, ___ (2011) (slip op., at 11). Given the wartime circumstances, Ohio could be considered “a surrogate for the place of incorporation or head office.” von Mehren & Trautman 1144. See also ( “should be regarded as a decision on its exceptional facts, not as a significant reaffirmation of obsolescing notions of general jurisdiction” based on nothing more than a corporation’s “doing business” in a forum). 9 See generally von Mehren & Trautman 1177–1179. See also Twitchell, The Myth of General Jurisdiction, 101 Harv. L. Rev. 610, 676 (1988) (“[W]e do not need to justify broad exercises of dispute-blind jurisdiction unless our interpretation of the scope of specific jurisdiction unreasonably limits state authority over nonresident defendants.”); Borchers, The Problem With General Jurisdiction, 2001 U. Chi. Legal Forum 119, 139 (“[G]eneral jurisdiction exists as an imperfect safety valve that sometimes allows plaintiffs access to a reasonable forum in cases when specific jurisdiction would deny it.”). 10 Remarkably, treats specific jurisdiction as though it were barely there. Given the many decades in which specific jurisdiction has flourished, it would be hard to conjure up an example of the “deep injustice” predicts as a consequence of our holding that California is not an all-purpose forum for suits against Daimler. at 16. identifies “the concept of reciprocal fairness” as the “touchstone principle of due process in this field.” at 10 (citing , 326 U. S., at 319). She over-looks, however, that in the very passage of on which she relies, the Court left no doubt that it was addressing specific—not general—jurisdiction. See , at 319 (“The exercise of th[e]privilege [of conducting corporate activities within a State] may give rise to obligations, and, , a procedure which requires the corporation to respond to a suit brought to enforce them can, in most instances, hardly be said to be undue.” (emphasis added)). 11 As the Court made plain in and repeats here, general jurisdiction requires affiliations “so ‘continuous and systematic’ as to render [the foreign corporation] essentially at home in the forum State.” 564 U. S., at ___ (slip op., at 2), comparable to a domestic enterprise in that State. 12 MBUSA is not a defendant in this case. 13 Agency relationships, we have recognized, may be relevant to the existence of jurisdiction. “[T]he corporate personality,” v. , ,observed, “is a fiction, although a fiction intended to be acted upon as though it were a fact.” ., at 316. See generally 1 W. Fletcher, Cyclopedia of the Law of Corporations §30, p. 30 (Supp. 2012–2013) (“A corporation is a distinct legal entity that can act only through its agents.”). As such, a corporation can purposefully avail itself of a forum by directing its agents or distributors to take action there. See, , 480 U. S., at 112 (opinion of O’onnor, J.) (defendant’s act of “marketing [a] product through a distributor who has agreed to serve as the sales agent in the forum State” may amount to purposeful availment); , 326 U. S., at 318 (“the commission of some single or occasional acts of the corporate agent in a state” may sometimes “be deemed sufficient to render the corporation liable to suit” on related claims). See also Brief for Petitioner 24 (acknowledging that “an agency relationship may be sufficient in some circumstances to give rise to jurisdiction”). It does not inevitably follow, however, that similar reasoning applies to jurisdiction. Cf. , 564 U. S., at ___ (slip op., at 10) (faulting analysis that “elided the essential difference between case-specific and all-purpose (general) jurisdiction”). 14 Indeed, plaintiffs do not defend this aspect of the Ninth Circuit’s analysis. See Brief for Respondents 39, n. 18 (“We do not believe that this gloss is particularly helpful.”). 15 The Ninth Circuit’s agency analysis also looked to whether the parent enjoys “the right to substantially control” the subsidiary’s activities. v. , 644 F. 3d 909, 924 (2011). The Court of Appeals found the requisite “control” demon-strated by the General Distributor Agreement between Daimler and MBUSA, which gives Daimler the right to oversee certain of MBUSA’s operations, even though that agreement expressly disavowed the creation of any agency relationship. Thus grounded, the separate inquiry into control hardly curtails the overbreadth of the Ninth Circuit’s agency holding. 16 By addressing this point, asserts, we have strayed from the question on which we granted certiorari to decide an issue not argued below. at 5–6. That assertion is doubly flawed. First, the question on which we granted certiorari, as stated in Daimler’s petition, is “whether it violates due process for a court to exercise general personal jurisdiction over a foreign corporation based solely on the fact that an indirect corporate subsidiary performs services on behalf of the defendant in the forum State.” Pet. for Cert. i. That question fairly encompasses an inquiry into whether, in light of , Daimler can be considered at home in California based on MBUSA’s in-state activities. See also this Court’s Rule 14.1(a) (a party’s statement of the question presented “is deemed to comprise every subsidiary question fairly included therein”). Moreover, both in the Ninth Circuit, see, Brief for Federation of German Industries et al. as in No. 07–15386 (CA9), p. 3, and in this Court, see, U. S. Brief 13–18; Brief for Chamber of Commerce of United States of America et al. as 6–23; Brief for Lea Brilmayer as 10–12, in support of Daimler homed in on the insufficiency of Daimler’s California contacts for general jurisdiction purposes. In short, and in light of our pathmarking opinion in , we perceive no unfairness in deciding today that California is not an all-purpose forum for claims against Daimler. 17 also recognized, as noted above, see at 7–8, that “some single or occasional acts of the corporate agent in a state. . . , because of their nature and quality and the circumstances of their commission, may be deemed sufficient to render the corporation liable to suit.” 326 U. S., at 318. 18 Plaintiffs emphasize two decisions, v. , , and v. , 220 N. Y. 259, 115 N. E. 915 (1917) (Cardozo, J.), both cited in v. , ,just after the statement that a corporation’s continuous operations in-state may suffice to establish general jurisdiction. , at 446, and n. 6. See also , 326 U. S., at 318 (citing ). and indeed upheld the exercise of general jurisdiction based on the presence of a local office, which signaled that the corporation was “doing business” in the forum. unadorned citations to these cases, both decided in the era dominated by ’s territorial thinking, see at 6–7, should not attract heavy reliance today. See generally Feder, , “Home,” and the Uncertain Future of Doing Business Jurisdiction, 63 S. C. L. Rev. 671 (2012) (questioning whether “doing business” should persist as a basis for general jurisdiction). 19 We do not foreclose the possibility that in an exceptional case, see, , described at 10–12, and n. 8,a corporation’s operations in a forum other than its formal place of incorporation or principal place of business may be so substantial and of such a nature as to render the corporation at home in that State. But this case presents no occasion to explore that question, because Daimler’s activities in California plainly do not approach that level. It is one thing to hold a corporation answerable for operations in the forum State, see , at 23, quite another to expose it to suit on claims having no connection whatever to the forum State. 20 To clarify in light of s opinion concurring in the judgment, the general jurisdiction inquiry does not “focu[s] solely on the magnitude of the defendant’s in-state contacts.” at 8. General jurisdiction instead calls for an appraisal of a corporation’s activities in their entirety, nationwide and worldwide. A corporation that operates in many places can scarcely be deemed at home in all of them. Otherwise, “at home” would be synonymous with “doing business” tests framed before specific jurisdiction evolved in the United States. See von Mehren & Trautman 1142–1144. Nothing in and its progeny suggests that “a particular quantum of local activity” should give a State authority over a “far larger quantum of . . . activity” having no connection to any in-state activity. Feder, at 694.

572.US.489

Congress and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA or Agency) have, over the course of several decades, made many efforts to deal with the complex challenge of curtailing air pollution emitted in upwind States, but causing harm in other, downwind States. As relevant here, the Clean Air Act (CAA or Act) directs EPA to establish national ambient air quality standards (NAAQS) for pollutants at levels that will protect public health. 42 U. S. C. §§7408, 7409. Once EPA settles on a NAAQS, the Agency must designate “nonattainment” areas, i.e., locations where the concentration of a regulated pollutant exceeds the NAAQS. §7407(d). Each State must submit a State Implementation Plan, or SIP, to EPA within three years of any new or revised NAAQS. §7410(a)(1). From the date EPA determines that a State SIP is inadequate, the Agency has two years to promulgate a Federal Implementation Plan, or FIP. §7410(c)(1). Among other components, the CAA mandates SIP compliance with the Good Neighbor Provision, which requires SIPs to “contain adequate provisions . . . prohibiting . . . any source or other type of emissions activity within the State from emitting any air pollutant in amounts which will . . . contribute significantly to nonattainment in, or interfere with maintenance by, any other State with respect to any . . . [NAAQS].” §7410(a)(2)(D)(i). Several times over the past two decades, EPA has attempted to delineate the Good Neighbor Provision’s scope by identifying when upwind States “contribute significantly” to nonattainment downwind. The D. C. Circuit found fault with the Agency’s 2005 attempt, the Clean Air Interstate Rule, or CAIR, which regulated both nitrogen oxide (NOX) and sulfur dioxide (SO2) emissions, the gasses at issue here. The D. C. Circuit nevertheless left CAIR temporarily in place, while encouraging EPA to act with dispatch in dealing with problems the court had identified. EPA’s response to that decision is the Cross-State Air Pollution Rule (Transport Rule), which curbs NOX and SO2 emissions in 27 upwind States to achieve downwind attainment of three NAAQS. Under the Transport Rule, an upwind State “contribute[d] significantly” to downwind nonattainment to the extent its exported pollution both (1) produced one percent or more of a NAAQS in at least one downwind State and (2) could be eliminated cost-effectively, as determined by EPA. Upwind States are obliged to eliminate only emissions meeting both of these criteria. Through complex modeling, EPA created an annual emissions “budget” for each regulated State upwind, representing the total quantity of pollution an upwind State could produce in a given year under the Transport Rule. Having earlier determined each regulated State’s SIP to be inadequate, EPA, contemporaneous with the Transport Rule, promulgated FIPs allocating each State’s emissions budgets among its in-state pollution sources. A group of state and local governments (State respondents), joined by industry and labor groups (Industry respondents), petitioned for review of the Transport Rule in the D. C. Circuit. The court vacated the rule in its entirety, holding that EPA’s actions exceeded the Agency’s statutory authority in two respects. Acknowledging that EPA’s FIP authority is generally triggered when the Agency disapproves a SIP, the court was nevertheless concerned that States would be incapable of fulfilling the Good Neighbor Provision without prior EPA guidance. The court thus concluded that EPA must give States a reasonable opportunity to allocate their emission budgets before issuing FIPs. The court also found the Agency’s two-part interpretation of the Good Neighbor Provision unreasonable, concluding that EPA must disregard costs and consider exclusively each upwind State’s physically proportionate responsibility for air quality problems downwind. Held: 1. The CAA does not command that States be given a second opportunity to file a SIP after EPA has quantified the State’s interstate pollution obligations. Pp. 13–18. (a) The State respondents do not challenge EPA’s disapproval of any particular SIP. Instead, they argue that, notwithstanding these disapprovals, the Agency was still obliged to grant upwind States anadditional opportunity to promulgate adequate SIPs after EPA had set the State’s emission budget. This claim does not turn on the validity of the prior SIP disapprovals, but on whether the CAA requires EPA do more than disapprove a SIP to trigger the Agency’s authority to issue a FIP. Pp. 13–14. (b) The CAA’s plain text supports the Agency: Disapproval of a SIP, without more, triggers EPA’s obligation to issue a FIP. The statute sets precise deadlines for the States and EPA. Once EPA issues any new or revised NAAQS, a State “shall” propose a SIP within three years, 42 U. S. C. §7410(a)(1), and that SIP “shall” include, inter alia, provisions adequate to satisfy the Good Neighbor Provision, §7410(a)(2). If the EPA finds a SIP inadequate, the Agency has a statutory duty to issue a FIP “at any time” within two years. §7410(c)(1). However sensible the D. C. Circuit’s exception to this strict time prescription may be, a reviewing court’s “task is to apply the text [of the statute], not to improve upon it.” Pavelic & LeFlore v. Marvel Entertainment Group, Div. of Cadence Industries Corp., 493 U.S. 120, 126. Nothing in the Act differentiates the Good Neighbor Provision from the several other matters a State must address in its SIP. Nor does the Act condition the duty to promulgate a FIP on EPA’s having first quantified an upwind State’s good neighbor obligations. By altering Congress’ SIP and FIP schedule, the D. C. Circuit allowed a delay Congress did not order and placed an information submission obligation on EPA Congress did not impose. Pp. 14–17. (c) The fact that EPA had previously accorded upwind States a chance to allocate emission budgets among their in-state sources does not show that the Agency acted arbitrarily by refraining to do so here. EPA retained discretion to alter its course provided it gave a reasonable explanation for doing so. Motor Vehicle Mfrs. Assn. of United States, Inc. v. State Farm Mut. Automobile Ins. Co., 463 U.S. 29, 42. Here, the Agency had been admonished by the D. C. Circuit to act with dispatch in amending or replacing CAIR. Endeavoring to satisfy that directive, EPA acted speedily, issuing FIPs and the Transport Rule contemporaneously. Pp. 17–18. 2. EPA’s cost-effective allocation of emission reductions among upwind States is a permissible, workable, and equitable interpretation of the Good Neighbor Provision. Pp. 18–31. (a) Respondents’ attack on EPA’s interpretation of the Good Neighbor Provision is not foreclosed by §7607(d)(7)(B), which provides that “[o]nly an objection to a rule . . . raised with reasonable specificity during the period for public comment . . . may be raised during judicial review.” Even assuming that respondents failed to object to the Transport Rule with “reasonable specificity,” that lapse is not jurisdictional. Section 7607(d)(7)(B) is a “mandatory,” but not“jurisdictional,” rule, see Arbaugh v. Y & H Corp., 546 U.S. 500, 510, which speaks to a party’s procedural obligations, not a court’s authority, see Kontrick v. Ryan, 540 U.S. 443, 455. Because EPA did not press this argument unequivocally before the D. C. Circuit, it does not pose an impassable hindrance to this Court’s review. Pp. 18–19. (b) This Court routinely accords dispositive effect to an agency’s reasonable interpretation of ambiguous statutory language. The Good Neighbor Provision delegates authority to EPA at least as certainly as the CAA provisions involved in Chevron U. S. A. Inc. v. Natural Resources Defense Council, Inc., 467 U.S. 837. EPA’s authority to reduce upwind pollution extends only to those “amounts” of pollution that “contribute significantly to nonattainment” in downwind States. §7410(a)(2)(D)(i). Because a downwind State’s excess pollution is often caused by multiple upwind States, however, EPA must address how to allocate responsibility among multiple contributors. The Good Neighbor Provision does not dictate a method of apportionment. Nothing in the provision, for example, directs the proportional allocation method advanced by the D. C. Circuit, a method that works neither mathematically nor in practical application. Under Chevron, Congress’ silence effectively delegates authority to EPA to select from among reasonable options. See United States v. Mead Corp., 533 U.S. 218, 229. EPA’s chosen allocation method is a “permissible construction of the statute.” Chevron, 467 U. S., at 843. The Agency, tasked with choosing which among equal “amounts” to eliminate, has chosen sensibly to reduce the amount easier, i.e., less costly, to eradicate. The Industry respondents argue that the final calculation cannot rely on costs, but nothing in the Good Neighbor Provision’s text precludes that choice. And using costs in the Transport Rule calculus is an efficient and equitable solution to the allocation problem the Good Neighbor Provision compels the Agency to address. Efficient because EPA can achieve the same levels of attainment, i.e., of emission reductions, the proportional approach aims to achieve, but at a much lower overall cost. Equitable because, by imposing uniform cost thresholds on regulated States, EPA’s rule subjects to stricter regulation those States that have done less in the past to control their pollution. Pp. 20–28. (c) Wholesale invalidation of the Transport Rule is not justified by either of the D. C. Circuit’s remaining objections: that the Transport Rule leaves open the possibility that a State might be compelled to reduce emissions beyond the point at which every affected downwind State is in attainment, so-called “over-control”; and that EPA’s use of costs does not foreclose the possibility that an upwind State would be required to reduce its emissions by so muchthat the State would be placed below the one-percent mark EPA set as the initial threshold of “significan[ce].” First, instances of “over-control” in particular downwind locations may be incidental to reductions necessary to ensure attainment elsewhere. As the Good Neighbor Provision seeks attainment in every downwind State, however, exceeding attainment in one State cannot rank as “over-control” unless unnecessary to achieving attainment in any downwind State. Second, the EPA must have leeway in fulfilling its statutory mandate to balance the possibilities of over-control and “under-control,” i.e., to maximize achievement of attainment downwind. Finally, in a voluminous record, involving thousands of upwind-to-downwind linkages, respondents point to only a few instances of “unnecessary” emission reductions, and even those are contested by EPA. Pp. 28–31. 696 F.3d 7, reversed and remanded. Ginsburg, J., delivered the opinion of the Court, in which Roberts, C. J., and Kennedy, Breyer, Sotomayor, and Kagan, JJ., joined. Scalia, J., filed a dissenting opinion, in which Thomas, J., joined. Alito, J., took no part in the consideration or decision of the cases. Notes 1 Together with No. 12–1183, American Lung Association et al. v. EME Homer City Generation, L. P., et al., also on certiorari to the same court.

These cases concern the efforts of Congress and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA or Agency) to cope with a complex problem: air pollution emitted in one State, but causing harm in other States. Left unregulated, the emitting or upwind State reaps the benefits of the economic activity causing the pollution without bearing all the costs. See Revesz, Federalism and Interstate Environmental Externalities, 144 U. Pa. L. Rev. 2341, 2343 (1996). Conversely, downwind States to which the pollution travels are unable to achieve clean air because of the influx of out-of-state pollution they lack authority to control. See S. Rep. No. 101–228, p. 49 (1989). To tackle the problem, Congress included a Good Neighbor Provision in the Clean Air Act (Act or CAA). That provision, in its current phrasing, instructs States to prohibit in-state sources “from emitting any air pollutant in amounts which will . . . contribute significantly” to downwind States’ “nonattainment . . . , or interfere with maintenance,” of any EPA-promulgated national air quality standard. 42 U. S. C. §7410(a)(2)(D)(i). Interpreting the Good Neighbor Provision, EPA adopted the Cross-State Air Pollution Rule (commonly and hereinafter called the Transport Rule). The rule calls for consideration of costs, among other factors, when determining the emission reductions an upwind State must make to improve air quality in polluted downwind areas. The Court of Appeals for the D. C. Circuit vacated the rule in its entirety. It held, 2 to 1, that the Good Neighbor Provision requires EPA to consider only each upwind State’s physically proportionate responsibility for each downwind State’s air quality problem. That reading is demanded, according to the D. C. Circuit, so that no State will be required to decrease its emissions by more than its ratable share of downwind-state pollution. In Chevron U. S. A. Inc. v. Natural Resources Defense Council, Inc., 467 U. S. 837 (1984) , we reversed a D. C. Circuit decision that failed to accord deference to EPA’s reasonable interpretation of an ambiguous Clean Air Act provision. Satisfied that the Good Neighbor Provision does not command the Court of Appeals’ cost-blind construction, and that EPA reasonably interpreted the provision, we reverse the D. C. Circuit’s judgment. I A Air pollution is transient, heedless of state boundaries. Pollutants generated by upwind sources are often transported by air currents, sometimes over hundreds of miles, to downwind States. As the pollution travels out of state, upwind States are relieved of the associated costs. Those costs are borne instead by the downwind States, whose ability to achieve and maintain satisfactory air quality is hampered by the steady stream of infiltrating pollution. For several reasons, curtailing interstate air pollution poses a complex challenge for environmental regulators. First, identifying the upwind origin of downwind air pollution is no easy endeavor. Most upwind States propel pollutants to more than one downwind State, many downwind States receive pollution from multiple upwind States, and some States qualify as both upwind and downwind. See Brief for Federal Petitioners 6. The overlapping and interwoven linkages between upwind and downwind States with which EPA had to contend number in the thousands.[1] Further complicating the problem, pollutants do not emerge from the smokestacks of an upwind State and uniformly migrate downwind. Some pollutants stay within upwind States’ borders, the wind carries others to downwind States, and some subset of that group drifts to States without air quality problems. “The wind bloweth where it listeth, and thou hearest the sound thereof, but canst not tell whence it cometh, and whither it goeth.” The Holy Bible, John 3:8 (King James Version). In crafting a solution to the problem of interstate air pollution, regulators must account for the vagaries of the wind. Finally, upwind pollutants that find their way downwind are not left unaltered by the journey. Rather, as the gases emitted by upwind polluters are carried downwind, they are transformed, through various chemical processes, into altogether different pollutants. The offending gases at issue in these cases—nitrogen oxide (NOX) and sulfur dioxide (SO2)—often develop into ozone and fine particulate matter (PM2.5) by the time they reach the atmospheres of downwind States. See 76 Fed. Reg. 48222–48223 (2011). See also 69 Fed. Reg. 4575–4576 (2004) (describing the components of ozone and PM2.5). Downwind air quality must therefore be measured for ozone and PM2.5 concentrations. EPA’s chore is to quantify the amount of upwind gases (NOX and SO2) that must be reduced to enable downwind States to keep their levels of ozone and PM2.5 in check. B Over the past 50 years, Congress has addressed interstate air pollution several times and with increasing rigor. In 1963, Congress directed federal authorities to “encourage cooperative activities by the States and local governments for the prevention and control of air pollution.” 77Stat. 393, 42 U. S. C. §1857a (1964 ed.). In 1970, Congress made this instruction more concrete, introducing features still key to the Act. For the first time, Congress directed EPA to establish national ambient air quality standards (NAAQS) for pollutants at levels that will protect public health. See 84Stat. 1679–1680, as amended, 42 U. S. C. §§7408, 7409 (2006 ed.). Once EPA settles on a NAAQS, the Act requires the Agency to designate “nonattainment” areas, i.e., locations where the concentration of a regulated pollutant exceeds the NAAQS. §7407(d). The Act then shifts the burden to States to propose plans adequate for compliance with the NAAQS. Each State must submit a State Implementation Plan, or SIP, to EPA within three years of any new or revised NAAQS. §7410(a)(1). If EPA determines that a State has failed to submit an adequate SIP, either in whole or in part, the Act requires the Agency to promulgate a Federal Implementation Plan, or FIP, within two years of EPA’s determina-tion, “unless the State corrects the deficiency” before a FIP is issued. §7410(c)(1).[2] The Act lists the matters a SIP must cover. Among SIP components, the 1970 version of the Act required SIPs to include “adequate provisions for intergovernmental cooperation” concerning interstate air pollution. §110(a)(2)(E), 84Stat. 1681, 42 U. S. C. §1857c–5(a)(2)(E). This statutory requirement, with its text altered over time, has cometo be called the Good Neighbor Provision. In 1977, Congress amended the Good Neighbor Provision to require more than “cooperation.” It directed States to submit SIPs that included provisions “adequate” to “prohibi[t] any stationary source within the State from emitting any air pollutant in amounts which will . . . prevent attainment or maintenance [of air quality standards] by any other State.” §108(a)(4), 91Stat. 693, 42 U. S. C. §7410(a)(2)(E) (1976 ed., Supp. II). The amended provision thus explicitly instructed upwind States to reduce emissions to account for pollution exported beyond their borders. As then written, however, the provision regulated only individual sources that, considered alone, emitted enough pollution to cause nonattainment in a downwind State. Because it is often “impossible to say that any single source or group of sources is the one which actually prevents attainment” downwind, S. Rep. No. 101–228, p. 21 (1989), the 1977 version of the Good Neighbor Provision proved ineffective, see ibid. (noting the provision’s inability to curb the collective “emissions [of] multiple sources”). Congress most recently amended the Good Neighbor Provision in 1990. The statute, in its current form, requires SIPs to “contain adequate provisions . . . prohibiting . . . any source or other type of emissions activity within the State from emitting any air pollutant in amounts which will . . . contribute significantly to nonattainment in, or interfere with maintenance by, any other State with respect to any . . . [NAAQS].” 42 U. S. C. §7410(a)(2)(D)(i) (2006 ed.). The controversy before us centers on EPA’s most recent attempt to construe this provision. C Three times over the past two decades, EPA has attempted to delineate the Good Neighbor Provision’s scope by identifying when upwind States “contribute significantly” to nonattainment downwind. In 1998, EPA issued arule known as the “NOX SIP Call.” That regulation limited NOX emissions in 23 upwind States to the extent such emissions contributed to nonattainment of ozone standards in downwind States. See 63 Fed. Reg. 57356, 57358. In Michigan v. EPA, 213 F. 3d 663 (2000), the D. C. Circuit upheld the NOX SIP Call, specifically affirming EPA’s use of costs to determine when an upwind State’s contribution was “significan[t]” within the meaning of the statute. Id., at 674–679. In 2005, EPA issued the Clean Air Interstate Rule, or CAIR. 70 Fed. Reg. 25162. CAIR regulated both NOX and SO2 emissions, insofar as such emissions contributed to downwind nonattainment of two NAAQS, both set in 1997, one concerning the permissible annual measure of PM2.5, and another capping the average ozone level gauged over an 8-hour period. See id., at 25171. The D. C. Circuit initially vacated CAIR as arbitrary and capricious. See North Carolina v. EPA, 531 F. 3d 896, 921 (2008) (per curiam). On rehearing, the court decided to leave the rule in place, while encouraging EPA to act with dispatch in dealing with problems the court had identified. See North Carolina v. EPA, 550 F. 3d 1176, 1178 (2008) (per curiam). The rule challenged here—the Transport Rule—is EPA’s response to the D. C. Circuit’s North Carolina decision. Finalized in August 2011, the Transport Rule curtails NOX and SO2 emissions of 27 upwind States to achieve downwind attainment of three different NAAQS: the two 1997 NAAQS previously addressed by CAIR, and the 2006 NAAQS for PM2.5 levels measured on a daily basis. See 76 Fed. Reg. 48208–48209. Under the Transport Rule, EPA employed a “two-step approach” to determine when upwind States “contribute[d] significantly to nonattainment,” id., at 48254, and therefore in “amounts” that had to be eliminated. At step one, called the “screening” analysis, the Agency excluded as de minimis any upwind State that contributed less than one percent of the three NAAQS[3] to any downwind State “receptor,” a location at which EPA measures air quality. See id., at 48236–48237.[4] If all of an upwind State’s contributions fell below the one-percent threshold, that State would be considered not to have “contribute[d] signifi-cantly” to the nonattainment of any downwind State. Id., at 48236. States in that category were screened out and exempted from regulation under the rule. The remaining States were subjected to a second inquiry, which EPA called the “control” analysis. At this stage, the Agency sought to generate a cost-effective allocation of emission reductions among those upwind States “screened in” at step one. The control analysis proceeded this way. EPA first calculated, for each upwind State, the quantity of emissions the State could eliminate at each of several cost thresholds. See id., at 48248–48249. Cost for these purposes is measured as cost per ton of emissions prevented, for instance, by installing scrubbers on powerplant smokestacks.[5] EPA estimated, for example, the amount each upwind State’s NOX emissions would fall if all pollution sources within each State employed every control measure available at a cost of $500 per ton or less. See id., at 48249–48251. The Agency then repeated that analysis at ascending cost thresholds. See ibid.[6] Armed with this information, EPA conducted complex modeling to establish the combined effect the upwind reductions projected at each cost threshold would have on air quality in downwind States. See id., at 48249. The Agency then identified “significant cost threshold[s],” points in its model where a “noticeable change occurred in downwind air quality, such as . . . where large upwind emission reductions become available because a certain type of emissions control strategy becomes cost-effective.” Ibid. For example, reductions of NOX sufficient to resolve or significantly curb downwind air quality problems could be achieved, EPA determined, at a cost threshold of $500 per ton (applied uniformly to all regulated upwind States). “Moving beyond the $500 cost threshold,” EPA concluded, “would result in only minimal additional . . . reductions [in emissions].” Id., at 48256.[7] Finally, EPA translated the cost thresholds it had se-lected into amounts of emissions upwind States would be required to eliminate. For each regulated upwind State, EPA created an annual emissions “budget.” These budgets represented the quantity of pollution an upwind State would produce in a given year if its in-state sources implemented all pollution controls available at the chosen cost thresholds. See id., at 48249.[8] If EPA’s projected improvements to downwind air quality were to be realized, an upwind State’s emissions could not exceed the level this budget allocated to it, subject to certain adjustments not relevant here. Taken together, the screening and control inquiries defined EPA’s understanding of which upwind emissions were within the Good Neighbor Provision’s ambit. In short, under the Transport Rule, an upwind State “contribute[d] significantly” to downwind nonattainment to the extent its exported pollution both (1) produced one percent or more of a NAAQS in at least one downwind State (step one) and (2) could be eliminated cost-effectively, as determined by EPA (step two). See id., at 48254. Upwind States would be obliged to eliminate all and only emissions meeting both of these criteria.[9] For each State regulated by the Transport Rule, EPA contemporaneously promulgated a FIP allocating that State’s emission budget among its in-state sources. See id., at 48271, 48284–48287.[10] For each of these States, EPA had determined that the State had failed to submita SIP adequate for compliance with the Good Neighbor Provision. These determinations regarding SIPs became final after 60 days, see 42 U. S. C. §7607(b)(1)(2006 ed., Supp. V ), and many went unchallenged.[11] EPA views the SIP determinations as having triggered its statutory obligation to promulgate a FIP within two years, see §7410(c), a view contested by respondents, see Part II, infra. D A group of state and local governments (State respondents), joined by industry and labor groups (Industry respondents), petitioned for review of the Transport Rule in the U. S. Court of Appeals for the D. C. Circuit. Over the dissent of Judge Rogers, the Court of Appeals vacated the rule in its entirety. See 696 F. 3d 7, 37 (2012). EPA’s actions, the appeals court held, exceeded the Agency’s statutory authority in two respects. By promulgating FIPs before giving States a meaningful opportunity to adopt their own implementation plans, EPA had, in the court’s view, upset the CAA’s division of responsibility between the States and the Federal Government. In the main, the Court of Appeals acknowledged, EPA’s FIP authority is triggered at the moment the Agency disapproves a SIP. See id., at 30. Thus, when a State proposes a SIP inadequate to achieve a NAAQS, EPA could promulgate a FIP immediately after disapproving that SIP. See id., at 32. But the Court of Appeals ruled that a different regime applies to a State’s failure to meet its obligations under the Good Neighbor Provision. While a NAAQS was a “clear numerical target,” a State’s good neighbor obligation remained “nebulous and unknown,” the court observed, until EPA calculated the State’s emission budget. Ibid. Without these budgets, the Court of Appeals said, upwind States would be compelled to take a “stab in the dark” at calculating their own significant contribution to interstate air pollution. Id., at 35. The D. C. Circuit read the Act to avoid putting States in this position: EPA had an implicit statutory duty, the court held, to give upwind States a reasonable opportunity to allocate their emission budgets among in-state sources before the Agency’s authority to issue FIPs could be triggered. Id., at 37. The D. C. Circuit also held that the Agency’s two-part interpretation of the Good Neighbor Provision ignored three “red lines . . . cabin[ing the] EPA’s authority.” Id., at 19. First, the D. C. Circuit interpreted the Good Neighbor Provision to require upwind States to reduce emissions in “a manner proportional to their contributio[n]” to pollution in downwind States. Id., at 21. The Transport Rule, however, treated all regulated upwind States alike, regardless of their relative contribution to the overall problem. See id., at 23. It required all upwind States “screened in” at step one to reduce emissions in accord with the uniform cost thresholds set during the step two control analysis. Imposing these uniform cost thresholds, the Court of Appeals observed, could force some upwind States to reduce emissions by more than their “fair share.” Id., at 27. According to the Court of Appeals, EPA had also failed to ensure that the Transport Rule did not mandate up-wind States to reduce pollution unnecessarily. The Good Neighbor Provision, the D. C. Circuit noted, “targets [only] those emissions from upwind States that ‘contribute significantly to nonattainment’ ” of a NAAQS in downwind States. Id., at 22. Pollution reduction beyond that goal was “unnecessary over-control,” outside the purview of the Agency’s statutory mandate. Ibid. Because the emission budgets were calculated by reference to cost alone, the court concluded that EPA had done nothing to guard against, or even measure, the “over-control” potentially imposed by the Transport Rule. See ibid. Finally, by deciding, at the screening analysis, that upwind contributions below the one-percent threshold were insignificant, EPA had established a “floor” on the Agency’s authority to act. See id., at 20, and n. 13. Again pointing to the rule’s reliance on costs, the Court of Appeals held that EPA had failed to ensure that upwind States were not being forced to reduce emissions below the one-percent threshold. See ibid. In dissent, Judge Rogers criticized the majority for deciding two questions that were not, in her view, properly before the court. See id., at 40–46, 51–58. First, she addressed the majority’s insistence that FIPs abide a State’s opportunity to allocate its emission budget among in-state sources. She regarded the respondents’ plea to that effect as an untimely attack on EPA’s previous SIP disapprovals. See id., at 40–46. Second, in Judge Rogers’ assessment, the respondents had failed to raise their substantive objections to the Transport Rule with the specificity necessary to preserve them for review. See id., at 51–58. On the merits, Judge Rogers found nothing in the Act to require, or even suggest, that EPA must quan-tify a State’s good neighbor obligations before it promulgated a FIP. See id., at 46–51. She also disagreed with the court’s conclusion that the Transport Rule unreasonably interpreted the Act. See id., at 58–60. We granted certiorari to decide whether the D. C. Circuit had accurately construed the limits the CAA places on EPA’s authority. See 570 U. S. ___ (2013). II A Once EPA has calculated emission budgets, the D. C. Circuit held, the Agency must give upwind States the opportunity to propose SIPs allocating those budgets among in-state sources before issuing a FIP. 696 F. 3d, at 37. As the State respondents put it, a FIP allocating a State’s emission budget “must issue after EPA has quantified the States’ good-neighbor obligations [in an emission budget] and given the States a reasonable opportunity to meet those obligations in SIPs.” Brief for State Respondents 20. Before reaching the merits of this argument, we first reject EPA’s threshold objection that the claim is untimely. According to the Agency, this argument—and the D. C. Circuit’s opinion accepting it—rank as improper collateral attacks on EPA’s prior SIP disapprovals. As earlier recounted, see supra, at 9–10, EPA, by the time it issued the Transport Rule, had determined that each regulated upwind State had failed to submit a SIP adequate to satisfy the Good Neighbor Provision. Many of those determinations, because unchallenged, became final after 60 days, see 42 U. S. C. §7607(b)(1), and did so before the petitions here at issue were filed. EPA argues that the Court cannot question exercise of the Agency’s FIP authority without subjecting these final SIP disapprovals to untimely review. We disagree. The gravamen of the State respondents’ challenge is not that EPA’s disapproval of any particular SIP was erroneous. Rather, respondents urge that, notwithstanding these disapprovals, the Agency was obliged to grant an upwind State a second opportunity to promul-gate adequate SIPs once EPA set the State’s emission budget. This claim does not depend on the validity of the prior SIP disapprovals. Even assuming the legitimacy of those disapprovals, the question remains whether EPA was required to do more than disapprove a SIP, as the State respondents urge, to trigger the Agency’s statutory authority to issue a FIP.[12] B Turning to the merits, we hold that the text of the statute supports EPA’s position. As earlier noted, see supra, at 4–5, the CAA sets a series of precise deadlines to which the States and EPA must adhere. Once EPA issues any new or revised NAAQS, a State has three years to adopt a SIP adequate for compliance with the Act’s requirements. See 42 U. S. C. §7410(a)(1). Among those requirements is the Act’s mandate that SIPs “shall” include provisions sufficient to satisfy the Good Neighbor Provision. §7410(a)(2). If EPA determines a SIP to be inadequate, the Agency’s mandate to replace it with a FIP is no less absolute: “[EPA] shall promulgate a [FIP] at any time within 2 years after the [Agency] “(A) finds that a State has failed to make a required submission or finds that the plan or plan revision submitted by the State does not satisfy the minimum [relevant] criteria . . . , or “(B) disapproves a [SIP] in whole or in part, “unless the State corrects the deficiency, and [EPA] approves the plan or plan revision, before the [Agency] promulgates such [FIP].” §7410(c)(1). In other words, once EPA has found a SIP inadequate, the Agency has a statutory duty to issue a FIP “at any time” within two years (unless the State first “corrects the deficiency,” which no one contends occurred here). The D. C. Circuit, however, found an unwritten exception to this strict time prescription for SIPs aimed at implementing the Good Neighbor Provision. Expecting any one State to develop a “comprehensive solution” to the “collective problem” of interstate air pollution without first receiving EPA’s guidance was, in the Court of Appeals’ assessment, “set[ting] the States up to fail.” 696 F. 3d, at 36–37. The D. C. Circuit therefore required EPA, after promulgating each State’s emission budget, to give the State a “reasonable” period of time to propose SIPs implementing its budget. See id., at 37. However sensible (or not) the Court of Appeals’ position,[13] a reviewing court’s “task is to apply the text [of the statute], not to improve upon it.” Pavelic & LeFlore v. Marvel Entertainment Group, Div. of Cadence Industries Corp., 493 U. S. 120, 126 (1989) . Nothing in the Act dif-ferentiates the Good Neighbor Provision from the several other matters a State must address in its SIP. Rather, the statute speaks without reservation: Once a NAAQS has been issued, a State “shall” propose a SIP within three years, §7410(a)(1), and that SIP “shall” include, among other components, provisions adequate to satisfy the Good Neighbor Provision, §7410(a)(2). Nor does the Act condition the duty to promulgate a FIP on EPA’s having first quantified an upwind State’s good neighbor obligations. As Judge Rogers observed in her dissent from the D. C. Circuit’s decision, the Act does not require EPA to furnish upwind States with information of any kind about their good neighbor obligations before a FIP issues. See 696 F. 3d, at 47. Instead, a SIP’s failure to satisfy the Good Neighbor Provision, without more, triggers EPA’s obligation to issue a federal plan within two years. §7410(c). After EPA has disapproved a SIP, the Agency can wait up to two years to issue a FIP, during which time the State can “correc[t] the deficiency” on its own. Ibid. But EPA is not obliged to wait two years or postpone its action even a single day: The Act empowers the Agency to promulgate a FIP “at any time” within the two-year limit. Ibid. Carving out an exception to the Act’s precise deadlines, as the D. C. Circuit did, “rewrites a decades-old statute whose plain text and structure establish a clear chronology of federal and State responsibilities.” 696 F. 3d, at 47 (Rogers, J., dissenting). The practical difficulties cited by the Court of Appeals do not justify departure from the Act’s plain text. See Barnhart v. Sigmon Coal Co., 534 U. S. 438 –462 (2002) (We “must presume that a legislature says in a statute what it means and means in a statute what it says there.” (internal quotation marks omitted)). When Congress elected to make EPA’s input a prerequisite to state action under the Act, it did so expressly. States developing vehicle inspection and maintenance programs under the CAA, for example, must await EPA guidance before issuing SIPs. 42 U. S. C. §7511a(c)(3)(B). A State’s obligation to adopt a SIP, moreover, arises only after EPA has first set the NAAQS the State must meet. §7410(a)(1). Had Congress intended similarly to defer States’ discharge of their obligations under the Good Neighbor Provision, Congress, we take it, would have included a similar direction in that section. See Jama v. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, 543 U. S. 335, 341 (2005) (“We do not lightly assume that Congress has omitted from its adopted text requirements that it nonetheless intends to apply, and our reluctance is even greater when Congress has shown elsewhere in the same statute that it knows how to make such a requirement manifest.”). In short, nothing in the statute places EPA under an obligation to provide specific metrics to States before they undertake to fulfill their good neighbor obligations. By altering the schedule Congress provided for SIPs and FIPs, the D. C. Circuit stretched out the process. It allowed a delay Congress did not order and placed an information submission obligation on EPA Congress did not impose. The D. C. Circuit, we hold, had no warrant thus to revise the CAA’s action-ordering prescriptions. C At oral argument, the State respondents emphasized EPA’s previous decisions, in the NOX SIP Call and CAIR, to quantify the emission reductions required of upwind States before the window to propose a SIP closed. See Tr. of Oral Arg. 37–39, 42–43, 45–46. In their view, by failing to accord States a similar grace period after issuing States’ emission budgets, EPA acted arbitrarily. See ibid. Whatever pattern the Agency followed in its NOX SIP call and CAIR proceedings, EPA retained discretion to alter its course provided it gave a reasonable explanation for doing so. Motor Vehicle Mfrs. Assn. of United States, Inc. v. State Farm Mut. Automobile Ins. Co., 463 U. S. 29, 42 (1983) . The Agency presented such an explanation in the Transport Rule. As noted, see supra, at 6, the D. C. Circuit’s North Carolina decision admonished EPA to act with dispatch in amending or replacing CAIR, the Transport Rule’s predecessor. See 550 F. 3d, at 1178 (warning EPA that the stay of the court’s decision to vacate CAIR would not persist “indefinite[ly]”). Given North Carolina’s stress on expeditious action to cure the infir-mities the court identified in CAIR, EPA thoughtit “[in]appropriate to establish [the] lengthy transition period” entailed in allowing States time to propose new or amended SIPs implementing the Transport Rule emission budgets. See 76 Fed. Reg. 48220 (citing North Carolina, 550 F. 3d 1176). Endeavoring to satisfy the D. C. Circuit’s directive, EPA acted speedily, issuing FIPs contemporaneously with the Transport Rule. In light of the firm deadlines imposed by the Act, which we hold the D. C. Circuit lacked authority to alter, we cannot condemn EPA’s decision as arbitrary or capricious.[14] III A The D. C. Circuit also held that the Transport Rule’s two-step interpretation of the Good Neighbor Provision conflicts with the Act. Before addressing this holding, we take up a jurisdictional objection raised by EPA. The CAA directs that “[o]nly an objection to a rule . . . raised with reasonable specificity during the period for public comment . . . may be raised during judicial review.” 42 U. S. C. §7607(d)(7)(B). Respondents failed to state their objections to the Transport Rule during the comment period with the “specificity” required for preservation, EPA argues. See Brief for Federal Petitioners 34–42. This failure at the administrative level, EPA urges, forecloses judicial review. Id., at 34. Assuming, without deciding, that respondents did not meet the Act’s “reasonable specificity” requirement during the comment period, we do not regard that lapse as “jurisdictional.” This Court has cautioned against “profligate use” of the label “jurisdictional.” Sebelius v. Auburn Regional Medical Center, 568 U. S. ___, ___ (2013) (slip op., at 6). A rule may be “mandatory,” yet not “jurisdictional,” we have explained. See Arbaugh v. Y & H Corp., 546 U. S. 500, 510 (2006) . Section 7607(d)(7)(B), we hold, is of that character. It does not speak to a court’s authority, but only to a party’s procedural obligations. See Kontrick v. Ryan, 540 U. S. 443, 455 (2004) . Had EPA pursued the “reasonable specificity” argument vigorously before the D. C. Circuit, we would be obligated to address the merits of the argument. See Gonzalez v. Thaler, 565 U. S. ___, ___ (2012) (slip op., at 10). But EPA did not press the argument unequivocally. Before the D. C. Circuit, it indicated only that the “reasonable specificity” prescription might bar judicial review. Brief for Respondent EPA et al. in No. 11–1302 (CADC), p. 30. See also id., at 32. We therefore do not count the prescription an impassable hindrance to our adjudication of the respondents’ attack on EPA’s interpretation of the Transport Rule. We turn to that attack mindful of the importance of the issues respondents raise to the ongoing implementation of the Good Neighbor Provision. B We routinely accord dispositive effect to an agency’s reasonable interpretation of ambiguous statutory language. Chevron U. S. A. Inc. v. Natural Resources Defense Council, Inc., 467 U. S. 837 (1984) , is the pathmarking decision, and it bears a notable resemblance to the cases before us. Chevron concerned EPA’s definition of the term “source,” as used in the 1977 Amendments to the CAA. Id., at 840, n. 1. Those amendments placed additional restrictions on companies’ liberty to add new pollution “sources” to their factories. See id., at 840. Although “source” might have been interpreted to refer to an individual smokestack, EPA construed the term to refer to an entire plant, thereby “treat[ing] all of the pollution-emitting devices within the [plant] as though they were encased within a single ‘bubble.’ ” Ibid. Under the Agency’s interpretation, a new pollution-emitting device would not subject a plant to the additional restrictions if the “alteration [did] not increase the total emissions [produced by] the plant.” Ibid. This Court held EPA’s interpretation of “source” a reasonable construction of an ambiguous statutory term. When “Congress has not directly addressed the precise [interpretative] question at issue,” we cautioned, a reviewing court cannot “simply impose its own construction o[f] the statute.” Id., at 843. Rather, the agency is charged with filling the “gap left open” by the ambiguity. Id., at 866. Because “ ‘a full understanding of the force of the statutory policy . . . depend[s] upon more than ordinary knowledge’ ” of the situation, the administering agency’s construction is to be accorded “controlling weight unless . . . arbitrary, capricious, or manifestly contrary to the statute.” Id., at 844 (quoting United States v. Shimer, 367 U. S. 374, 382 (1961) ). Determining that none of those terms fit EPA’s interpretation of “source,” the Court deferred to the Agency’s judgment. We conclude that the Good Neighbor Provision delegates authority to EPA at least as certainly as the CAA provisions involved in Chevron. The statute requires States to eliminate those “amounts” of pollution that “contribute significantly to nonattainment” in downwind States. 42 U. S. C. §7410(a)(2)(D)(i) (emphasis added). Thus, EPA’s task[15] is to reduce upwind pollution, but only in “amounts” that push a downwind State’s pollution concentrations above the relevant NAAQS. As noted earlier, however, the nonattainment of downwind States results from the collective and interwoven contributions of multiple upwind States. See supra, at 3. The statute therefore callsupon the Agency to address a thorny causation problem: How should EPA allocate among multiple contributing up-wind States responsibility for a downwind State’s excess pollution? A simplified example illustrates the puzzle EPA faced. Suppose the Agency sets a NAAQS, with respect to a particular pollutant, at 100 parts per billion (ppb), and that the level of the pollutant in the atmosphere of downwind State A is 130 ppb. Suppose further that EPA has determined that each of three upwind States—X, Y, and Z—contributes the equivalent of 30 ppb of the relevant pollutant to State A’s airspace. The Good Neighbor Provision, as just observed, prohibits only upwind emissions that contribute significantly to downwind nonattainment. EPA’s authority under the provision is therefore limited to eliminating a total of 30 ppb,[16] i.e., the overage caused by the collective contribution of States X, Y, and Z.[17] How is EPA to divide responsibility among the three States? Should the Agency allocate reductions proportionally (10 ppb each), on a per capita basis, on the basis of the cost of abatement, or by some other metric? See Brief for Federal Petitioners 50 (noting EPA’s consideration of different approaches). The Good Neighbor Provision does not answer that question for EPA. Cf. Chevron, 467 U. S., at 860 (“[T]he language of [the CAA] simply does not compel any given interpretation of the term ‘source.’ ”). Under Chevron, we read Congress’ silence as a delegation of authority to EPA to select from among reasonable options. See United States v. Mead Corp., 533 U. S. 218, 229 (2001) .[18] Yet the Court of Appeals believed that the Act speaks clearly, requiring EPA to allocate responsibility for reducing emissions in “a manner proportional to” each State’s “contributio[n]” to the problem. 696 F. 3d, at 21. Nothing in the text of the Good Neighbor Provision propels EPA down this path. Understandably so, for as EPA notes, the D. C. Circuit’s proportionality approach could scarcely be satisfied in practice. See App. in No. 11–1302 etc. (CADC), p. 2312 (“[W]hile it is possible to determine an emission reduction percentage if there is a single downwind [receptor], most upwind states contribute to multiple downwind [receptors] (in multiple states) and would have a different reduction percentage for each one.”). To illustrate, consider a variation on the example set out above. Imagine that States X and Y now contribute air pollution to State A in a ratio of one to five, i.e., State Y contributes five times the amount of pollution to State A than does State X. If State A were the only downwind State to which the two upwind States contributed, the D. C. Circuit’s proportionality requirement would be easy to meet: EPA could require State Y to reduce its emissions by five times the amount demanded of State X. The realities of interstate air pollution, however, are not so simple. Most upwind States contribute pollution to multiple downwind States in varying amounts. See 76 Fed. Reg. 48239–48246. See also Brief for Respondent Calpine Corp. et al. in Support of Petitioners 48–49 (offering examples). Suppose then that States X and Y also contribute pollutants to a second downwind State (State B), this time in a ratio of seven to one. Though State Y contributed a relatively larger share of pollution to State A, with respect to State B, State X is the greater offender. Following the proportionality approach with respect to State B would demand that State X reduce its emissions by seven times as much as State Y. Recall, however, that State Y, as just hypothesized, had to effect five times as large a reduction with respect to State A. The Court of Appeals’ proportionality edict with respect to both State A and State B appears to work neither mathematically nor in practical application. Proportionality as to one down-wind State will not achieve proportionality as to others. Quite the opposite. And where, as is generally true, upwind States contribute pollution to more than two downwind receptors, proportionality becomes all the more elusive. Neither the D. C. Circuit nor respondents face up to this problem. The dissent, for its part, strains to give meaning to the D. C. Circuit’s proportionality constraint as applied to a world in which multiple upwind States contribute emissions to multiple downwind locations. In the dissent’s view, upwind States must eliminate emissions by “whatever minimum amount reduces” their share of the overage in each and every one of the downwind States to which they are linked. See post, at 8. In practical terms, this means each upwind State will be required to reduce emissions by the amount necessary to eliminate that State’s largest downwind contribution. The dissent’s formulation, however, does not account for the combined and cumu-lative effect of each upwind State’s reductions on attainment in multiple downwind locations. See ibid. (“Under a proportional-reduction approach, State X would be required to eliminate emissions of that pollutant by whatever minimum amount reduces both State A’s level by 0.2 unit and State B’s by 0.7 unit.” (emphasis added)). The result would be costly overregulation unnecessary to, indeedin conflict with, the Good Neighbor Provision’s goal of attainment.[19] In response, the dissent asserts that EPA will “simply be required to make allowance for” the overregulation caused by its “proportional-reduction” approach. Post, at 11. What criterion should EPA employ to determine which States will have to make those “allowance[s]” and by how much? The dissent admits there are “multiple ways” EPA might answer those questions. Ibid. But proportionality cannot be one of those ways, for theproportional-reduction approach is what led to the overregulation in the first place. And if a nonproportional approach can play a role in setting the final allocation of reduction obligations, then it is hardly apparent why EPA, free to depart from proportionality at the back end, cannot do so at the outset. Persuaded that the Good Neighbor Provision does not dictate the particular allocation of emissions among contributing States advanced by the D. C. Circuit, we must next decide whether the allocation method chosen by EPA is a “permissible construction of the statute.” Chevron, 467 U. S., at 843. As EPA interprets the statute, upwind emissions rank as “amounts [that] . . . contribute significantly to nonattainment” if they (1) constitute one percent or more of a relevant NAAQS in a nonattaining downwind State and (2) can be eliminated under the cost threshold set by the Agency. See 76 Fed. Reg. 48254. In other words, to identify which emissions were to be eliminated, EPA considered both the magnitude of upwind States’ contributions and the cost associated with eliminating them. The Industry respondents argue that, however EPA ultimately divides responsibility among upwind States, the final calculation cannot rely on costs. The Good Neighbor Provision, respondents and the dissent emphasize, “requires each State to prohibit only those ‘amounts’ of air pollution emitted within the State that ‘contribute significantly’ to another State’s nonattaintment.” Brief for Industry Respondents 23 (emphasis added). See also post, at 6. The cost of preventing emissions, they urge, iswholly unrelated to the actual “amoun[t]” of air pollution an upwind State contributes. Brief for Industry Respondents 23. Because the Transport Rule considers costs, respondents argue, “States that contribute identical ‘amounts’ . . . may be deemed [by EPA] to have [made] substantially different” contributions. Id., at 30. But, as just explained, see supra, at 21–22, the Agency cannot avoid the task of choosing which among equal “amounts” to eliminate. The Agency has chosen, sensibly in our view, to reduce the amount easier, i.e., less costly, to eradicate, and nothing in the text of the Good Neighbor Provision precludes that choice. Using costs in the Transport Rule calculus, we agree with EPA, also makes good sense. Eliminating those amounts that can cost-effectively be reduced is an efficient and equitable solution to the allocation problem the Good Neighbor Provision requires the Agency to address. Efficient because EPA can achieve the levels of attainment, i.e., of emission reductions, the proportional approach aims to achieve, but at a much lower overall cost. Equita-ble because, by imposing uniform cost thresholds on regulated States, EPA’s rule subjects to stricter regulation those States that have done relatively less in the past to control their pollution. Upwind States that have not yet implemented pollution controls of the same stringency as their neighbors will be stopped from free riding on their neighbors’ efforts to reduce pollution. They will have to bring down their emissions by installing devices of the kind in which neighboring States have already invested. Suppose, for example, that the industries of upwind State A have expended considerable resources installing modern pollution-control devices on their plants. Factories in upwind State B, by contrast, continue to run old, dirty plants. Yet, perhaps because State A is more populous and therefore generates a larger sum of pollution overall, the two States’ emissions have equal effects on downwind attainment. If State A and State B are required to eliminate emissions proportionally (i.e., equally), sources in State A will be compelled to spend far more per ton of reductions because they have already utilized lower cost pollution controls. State A’s sources will also have to achieve greater reductions than would have been required had they not made the cost-effective reductions in the first place. State A, in other words, will be tolled for having done more to reduce pollution in the past.[20] EPA’s cost-based allocation avoids these anomalies. Obligated to require the elimination of only those “amounts” of pollutants that contribute to the nonattainment of NAAQS in downwind States, EPA must decide how to differentiate among the otherwise like contributions of multiple upwind States. EPA found decisive the difficulty of eliminating each “amount,” i.e., the cost incurred in doing so. Lacking a dispositive statutory instruction to guide it, EPA’s decision, we conclude, is a “reasonable” way of filling the “gap left open by Congress.” Chevron, 467 U. S., at 866.[21] C The D. C. Circuit stated two further objections to EPA’s cost-based method of defining an upwind State’s contribution. Once a State was screened in at step one of EPA’s analysis, its emission budget was calculated solely with reference to the uniform cost thresholds the Agency selected at step two. The Transport Rule thus left open thepossibility that a State might be compelled to reduce emissions beyond the point at which every affected downwind State is in attainment, a phenomenon the Court of Appeals termed “over-control.” 696 F. 3d, at 22; see supra, at 12. Second, EPA’s focus on costs did not foreclose, as the D. C. Circuit accurately observed, the possibility that an upwind State would be required to reduce its emissions by so much that the State no longer contributed one per-cent or more of a relevant NAAQS to any downwind State. This would place the State below the mark EPA had set, during the screening phase, as the initial threshold of “significan[ce].” See id., at 20, and n. 13. We agree with the Court of Appeals to this extent: EPA cannot require a State to reduce its output of pollution by more than is necessary to achieve attainment in every downwind State or at odds with the one-percent threshold the Agency has set. If EPA requires an upwind State to reduce emissions by more than the amount necessary to achieve attainment in every downwind State to which it is linked, the Agency will have overstepped its authority, under the Good Neighbor Provision, to eliminate those “amounts [that] contribute . . . to nonattainment.” Nor can EPA demand reductions that would drive an upwind State’s contribution to every downwind State to which it is linked below one percent of the relevant NAAQS. Doing so would be counter to step one of the Agency’s interpretation of the Good Neighbor Provision. See 76 Fed. Reg. 48236 (“[S]tates whose contributions are below th[e] thresholds do not significantly contribute to nonattainment . . . of the relevant NAAQS.”). Neither possibility, however, justifies wholesale invalidation of the Transport Rule. First, instances of “over-control” in particular downwind locations, the D. C. Circuit acknowledged, see 696 F. 3d, at 22, may be incidental to reductions necessary to ensure attainment elsewhere. Because individual upwind States often “contribute significantly” to nonattainment in multiple downwind locations, the emissions reduction required to bring one linked downwind State into attainment may well be large enough to push other linked downwind States over the attainment line.[22] As the Good Neighbor Provision seeks attainment in every downwind State, however, exceeding attainment in one State cannot rank as “over-control” unless unnecessary to achieving attainment in any downwind State. Only reductions unnecessary to downwind attainment anywhere fall outside the Agency’s statutory authority.[23] Second, while EPA has a statutory duty to avoid over-control, the Agency also has a statutory obligation to avoid “under-control,” i.e., to maximize achievement of attainment downwind. For reasons earlier explained, see supra, at 3–4, a degree of imprecision is inevitable in tackling the problem of interstate air pollution. Slight changes in wind patterns or energy consumption, for example, may vary downwind air quality in ways EPA might not have anticipated. The Good Neighbor Provision requires EPA to seek downwind attainment of NAAQS notwithstanding the uncertainties. Hence, some amount of over-control, i.e., emission budgets that turn out to be more demanding than necessary, would not be surprising. Required to balance the possibilities of under-control and over-control, EPA must have leeway in fulfilling its statutory mandate. Finally, in a voluminous record, involving thousands of upwind-to-downwind linkages, respondents point to only a few instances of “unnecessary” emission reductions, and even those are contested by EPA. Compare Brief for Industry Respondents 19 with Reply Brief for Federal Petitioners 21–22. EPA, for its part, offers data, contested by respondents, purporting to show that few (if any) upwind States have been required to limit emissions below the one-percent threshold of significance. Compare Brief for Federal Petitioners 37, 54–55, with Brief for Industry Respondents 40. If any upwind State concludes it has been forced to regulate emissions below the one-percent threshold or beyond the point necessary to bring all downwind States into attainment, that State may bring a particularized, as-applied challenge to the Transport Rule, along with any other as-applied challenges it may have. Cf. Babbitt v. Sweet Home Chapter, Communities for Great Ore., 515 U. S. 687 –700 (1995) (approving agency’s reasonable interpretation of statute despite possibility of improper applications); American Hospital Assn. v. NLRB, 499 U. S. 606, 619 (1991) (rejecting facial challenge to National Labor Relations Board rule despite possible arbitrary applications). Satisfied that EPA’s cost-based methodol-ogy, on its face, is not “arbitrary, capricious, or manifestly contrary to the statute,” Chevron, 467 U. S., at 844, we uphold the Transport Rule. The possibility that the rule, in uncommon particular applications, might exceed EPA’s statutory authority does not warrant judicial condemnation of the rule in its entirety. In sum, we hold that the CAA does not command that States be given a second opportunity to file a SIP after EPA has quantified the State’s interstate pollution obligations. We further conclude that the Good Neighbor Provision does not require EPA to disregard costs and consider exclusively each upwind State’s physically proportionate responsibility for each downwind air quality problem. EPA’s cost-effective allocation of emission reductions among upwind States, we hold, is a permissible, work-able, and equitable interpretation of the Good Neighbor Provision. * * * For the reasons stated, the judgment of the United States Court of Appeals for the D. C. Circuit is reversed, and the cases are remanded for further proceedings consistent with this opinion. It is so ordered. Justice Alito took no part in the consideration or decision of these cases.Notes 1 For the rule challenged here, EPA evaluated 2,479 separate link-ages between downwind and upwind States. Brief for Federal Petitioners 6. 2 FIPs and SIPs were introduced in the 1970 version of the Act; the particular deadlines discussed here were added in 1990. See –2423, 42 U. S. C. §§7401(a)(1), 7410(c) (2006 ed.). 3 With respect to each NAAQS addressed by the rule, the one-percent threshold corresponded to levels of 0.15 micrograms per cubic meter (µg/m) for annual PM, 0.35 µg/m for daily PM, and 0.8 parts per billion (ppb) for 8-hour ozone. See 76 Fed. Reg. 48236–48237. 4 If, for example, the NAAQS for ozone were 100 ppb, a contribution of less than 1 ppb to any downwind location would fall outside EPA’s criteria for significance. 5 To illustrate, a technology priced at $5,000 and capable of eliminating two tons of pollution would be stated to “cost” $2,500 per ton. 6 For SO, EPA modeled reductions that would be achieved at cost levels of $500, $1,600, $2,300, $2,800, $3,300, and $10,000 per ton eliminated. See , at 48251–48253. 7 For SO, EPA determined that, for one group of upwind States, all downwind air quality problems would be resolved at the $500 per ton threshold. See , at 48257. For another group of States, however, this level of controls would not suffice. For those States, EPA found that pollution controls costing $2,300 per ton were necessary. See at 48259. 8 In 2014, for example, pollution sources within Texas would be permitted to emit no more than 243,954 tons of SO, subject to variations specified by EPA. See , at 48269 (Table VI.F–1). 9 Similarly, upwind States EPA independently determined to be “interfer[ing] with [the] maintenance” of NAAQS downwind were required to eliminate pollution only to the extent their emissions satisfied both of these criteria. See at48254. 10 These FIPs specified the maximum amount of pollution each in-state pollution source could emit. Sources below this ceiling could sell unused “allocations” to sources that could not reduce emissions to the necessary level as cheaply. See , at 48271–48272. This type of “cap-and-trade” system cuts costs while still reducing pollution to target levels. 11 Three States did challenge EPA’s determinations. See Petition for Review in v. , No. 11–3988 (CA6); Petition for Review in v. , No. 12–1019 (CADC); Notice in v. , No. 11–1427 (CADC). Those challenges were not consolidated with this proceeding, and they remain pending (held in abeyance for these cases) in the Sixth and D. C. Circuits. See Twelfth Joint Status Report in v. , No. 11–3988 (CA6); Order in v. , No. 11–1333 (CADC, May 10, 2013); Order in v. , No. 11–1427 (CADC, May 10, 2013). 12 The State respondents make a second argument we do not reach. They urge that EPA could not impose FIPs on several upwind States whose SIPs had been previously approved by the Agency under CAIR. EPA changed those approvals to disapprovals when it issued the Transport Rule, see 76 Fed. Reg. 48220, and the States assert that the process by which EPA did so was improper. That argument was not passed on by the D. C. Circuit, see 696 F. 3d 7, 31, n. 29 (2012), and we leave it for the Court of Appeals to consider in the first instance on remand. 13 On this point, the dissent argues that it is “beyond responsible debate that the States cannot possibly design FIP-proof SIPs without knowing the EPA-prescribed targets at which they must aim.” , at 18. Many of the State respondents thought otherwise, however, when litigating the matter in v. 213 F. 3d 663 (CADC 2000). See Final Brief for Petitioning States in No. 98–1497 (CADC), p. 34 (“EPA has the responsibility to establish NAAQS,” but without further intervention by EPA, “States [have] the duty and right to develop . . . SIPs . . . to meet those NAAQS.”). See also at37 (“EPA’s role is to determine whether the SIP submitted is ‘adequate’ . . . not to dictate contents of the submittal in the first instance. . . . [E]ach State has the right and the obligation to write a SIP that complies with §[74]10(a)(2), including the ‘good neighbor’ provision.”). 14 In light of the CAA’s “core principle” of cooperative federalism, the dissentbelieves EPA abused its discretion by failing to give States an additional opportunity to submit SIPs in satisfaction of the Good Neighbor Provision. , at 19.But nothing in the statute so restricts EPA. To the contrary, as earlier observed, see , at 16,the plain text of the CAA grants EPA plenary authority to issue a FIP “at time” within the two-year period that begins the moment EPA determines a SIP to be inadequate. §7410(c)(1) (emphasis added). 15 Though we speak here of “EPA’s task,” the Good Neighbor Provision is initially directed to upwind States. As earlier explained, see Part II–B, , only after a State has failed to propose a SIP adequate for compliance with the provision is EPA called upon to act. 16 Because of the uncertainties inherent in measuring interstate air pollution, see at 3–4, reductions of 30 ppb likely are unattainable. See , at 30–31. 17 For simplicity’s sake, the hypothetical assumes that EPA has not required any emission reductions by the downwind State itself. 18 The statutory gap identified also exists in the Good Neighbor Provision’s second instruction. That instruction requires EPA to eliminate amounts of upwind pollution that “interfere with maintenance” of a NAAQS by a downwind State. §7410(a)(2)(D)(i). This mandate contains no qualifier analogous to “significantly,” and yet it entails a delegation of administrative authority of the same character as the one discussed above. Just as EPA is constrained, under the first part of the Good Neighbor Provision, to eliminate only those amounts that “contribute . . . to ,” EPA is limited, by the second part of the provision, to reduce only by “amounts” that “interfere with ,” by just enough to permit an already-attaining State to maintain satisfactory air quality. (Emphasis added.) With multiple upwind States contributing to the maintenance problem, however, EPA confronts the same challenge that the “contribute significantly” mandate creates: How should EPA allocate reductions among multiple upwind States, many of which contribute in amounts sufficient to impede downwind maintenance? Nothing in clause of the Good Neighbor Provision provides the criteria by which EPA is meant to apportion responsibility. 19 To see why, one need only slightly complicate the world envisioned by the dissent. Assume the world is made up of only four States—two upwind (States X and Y), and two downwind (States A and B). Suppose also, as the dissent allows, see , at 9, that the reductions State X must make to eliminate its share of the amount by which State A is in nonattainment are more than necessary for State X to eliminate its share of State B’s nonattainment. As later explained, see , at 29–30, this kind of “over-control,” we agree with the dissent, is acceptable under the statute. Suppose, however, that State Y also contributes to pollution in both State A and State B such that the reductions it must make to eliminate its proportion of State B’s overage exceed the reductions it must make to bring State A into attainment. In this case, the dissent would have State X reduce by just enough to eliminate its share of State A’s nonattainment and more than enough to eliminate its share of State B’s overage. The converse will be true as to State Y: Under the dissent’s approach, State Y would have to reduce by the “minimum” necessary to eliminate its proportional share of State B’s nonattainment and more than enough to eliminate its proportion of State A’s overage. The result is that the total amount by which both States X and Y are required to reduce will exceed what is necessary for attainment (inboth State A and State B). Over-control thus unnecessary to achieving attainment in all involved States is impermissible under the Good Neighbor Provision. See , at 30, n. 23. The problem would worsen were the hypothetical altered to include more than two downwind States and two upwind States, the very real circumstances EPA must address. 20 The dissent’s approach is similarly infirm. It, too, would toll those upwind States that have already invested heavily in means to reduce the pollution their industries cause, while lightening the burden on States that have done relatively less to control pollution emanating from local enterprises. 21 The dissent, see at12–13, relies heavily on our decision in v. , . In ,we held that the relevant text of the CAA “unambiguously bars” EPA from considering costs when determining a NAAQS. at 471. Section 7409(b)(1) commands EPA to set NAAQS at levels “requisite to protect the public health” with “an adequate margin of safety.” This mandate, we observed in , was “absolute,” and precluded any other consideration (cost) in the NAAQS calculation. , at 465 (internal quotation marks omitted). Not so of the Good Neighbor Provision, which grants EPA discretion to eliminate “amounts [of pollution that] . . . contribute significantly to nonattainment” downwind. On the particular “amounts” that should qualify for elimination, the statute is silent. Unlike the provision at issue in , which provides express criteria by which EPA is to set NAAQS, the Good Neighbor Provision, as earlier explained, fails to provide metric by which EPA can differentiate among the contributions of multiple upwind States. See at 21–22. 22 The following example, based on the record, is offered in Brief for Respondent Calpine Corp. et al. in Support of Petitioners 52–54. Ohio, West Virginia, Pennsylvania, and Indiana each contribute in varying amounts to five different nonattainment areas in three downwind States. at52 Implementation of the Transport Rule, EPA modeling demonstrates, will bring three of these five areas into attainment by a comfortable margin, and a fourth only barely. See at 53, fig. 2. The fifth downwind receptor, however, will still fall short of attainment despite the reductions the rule requires. See But if EPA were to lower the emission reductions required of the upwind States to reduce over-attainment in the first three areas, the area barely achieving attainment would no longer do so, and the area still in nonattainment would fall even further behind. Thus, “over-control” of the first three downwind receptors is essential to the attainment achieved by the fourth and to the fifth’s progress toward that goal. 23 The dissentsuggests that our qualification of the term “over-control” is tantamount to an admission that “nothing stands in the way of [a] proportional-reduction approach.” at 9. Not so. Permitting “over-control” as to one State for the purpose of achieving attainment in another furthers the stated goal of the Good Neighbor Provision, attainment of NAAQS. By contrast, a proportional-reduction scheme is neither necessary to achieve downwind attainment, nor mandated by the terms of the statute, as earlier discussed, see at 21–25. Permitting “over-control” for the purpose of achieving proportionality would thus contravene the clear limits the statute places on EPA’s good neighbor authority, to eliminate only those “amounts” of upwind pollutants essential to achieving attainment downwind.

573.US.25

Bellingham Insurance Agency, Inc. (BIA), filed a voluntary chapter 7 bankruptcy petition. Respondent Peter Arkison, the bankruptcy trustee, filed a complaint in the Bankruptcy Court against petitioner Executive Benefits Insurance Agency (EBIA) and others alleging the fraudulent conveyance of assets from BIA to EBIA. The Bankruptcy Court granted summary judgment for the trustee. EBIA appealed to the District Court, which affirmed the Bankruptcy Court’s decision after de novo review and entered judgment for the trustee. While EBIA’s appeal to the Ninth Circuit was pending, this Court held that Article III did not permit a Bankruptcy Court to enter final judgment on a counterclaim for tortious interference, even though final adjudication of that claim by the Bankruptcy Court was authorized by statute. Stern v. Marshall, 564 U. S. ___, ___. In light of Stern, EBIA moved to dismiss its appeal for lack of jurisdiction. The Ninth Circuit rejected EBIA’s motion and affirmed. It acknowledged the trustee’s claims as “Stern claims,” i.e., claims designated for final adjudication in the bankruptcy court as a statutory matter, but prohibited from proceeding in that way as a constitutional matter. The Court of Appeals nevertheless concluded that EBIA had impliedly consented to jurisdiction. The Court of Appeals also observed that the Bankruptcy Court’s judgment could instead be treated as proposed findings of fact and conclusions of law, subject to de novo review by the District Court. Held: 1. Under the Bankruptcy Amendments and Federal Judgeship Act of 1984, federal district courts have original jurisdiction in bankruptcy cases and may refer to bankruptcy judges two statutory categories of proceedings: “core” proceedings and “non-core” proceedings. See generally 28 U. S. C. §157. In core proceedings, a bankruptcy judge “may hear and determine . . . and enter appropriate orders and judgments,” subject to the district court’s traditional appellate review. §157(b)(1). In non-core proceedings—those that are “not . . . core” but are “otherwise related to a case under title 11,” §157(c)(1)—final judgment must be entered by the district court after de novo review of the bankruptcy judge’s proposed findings of fact and conclusions of law, ibid., except that the bankruptcy judge may enter final judgment if the parties consent, §157(c)(2). In Stern, the Court confronted an underlying conflict between the 1984 Act and the requirements of Article III. The Court held that Article III prohibits Congress from vesting a bankruptcy court with the authority to finally adjudicate the “core” claim of tortious interference. The Court did not, however, address how courts should proceed when they encounter a Stern claim. Pp. 4–8. 2. Stern claims may proceed as non-core within the meaning of §157(c). Lower courts have described Stern claims as creating a statutory “gap,” since bankruptcy judges are not explicitly authorized to propose findings of fact and conclusions of law in a core proceeding. However, this so-called gap is closed by the Act’s severability provision, which instructs that where a “provision of the Act or [its] application . . . is held invalid, the remainder of th[e] Act . . . is not affected thereby.” 98Stat. 344. As applicable here, when a court identifies a Stern claim, it has “held invalid” the “application” of §157(b), and the “remainder” not affected includes §157(c), which governs non-core proceedings. Accordingly, where a claim otherwise satisfies §157(c)(1), the bankruptcy court should simply treat the Stern claim as non-core. This conclusion accords with the Court’s general approach to severability, which is to give effect to the valid portion of a statute so long as it “remains ‘fully operative as a law,’ ” Free Enterprise Fund v. Public Company Accounting Oversight Bd., 561 U.S. 477, 509, and so long as the statutory text and context do not suggest that Congress would have preferred no statute at all, ibid. Pp. 8–10. 3. Section 157(c)(1)’s procedures apply to the fraudulent conveyance claims here. This Court assumes without deciding that these claims are Stern claims, which Article III does not permit to be treated as “core” claims under §157(b). But because the claims assert that property of the bankruptcy estate was improperly removed, they are self-evidently “related to a case under title 11.” Accordingly, they fit comfortably within the category of claims governed by §157(c)(1). The Bankruptcy Court would have been permitted to follow that provision’s procedures, i.e., to submit proposed findings of fact and conclusions of law to the District Court for de novo review. Pp. 11–12. 4. Here, the District Court’s de novo review of the Bankruptcy Court’s order and entry of its own valid final judgment cured any potential error in the Bankruptcy Court’s entry of judgment. EBIA contends that it was constitutionally entitled to review by an Article III court regardless of whether the parties consented to bankruptcy court adjudication. In the alternative, EBIA asserts that even if such consent were constitutionally permissible, it did not in fact consent. Neither contention need be addressed here, because EBIA received the same review from the District Court that it would have received had the Bankruptcy Court treated the claims as non-core proceedings under §157(c)(1). Pp. 12–13. 702 F.3d 553, affirmed. Thomas, J., delivered the opinion for a unanimous Court.

In Stern v. Marshall, 564 U. S. ___ (2011), this Court held that even though bankruptcy courts are statutorily authorized to enter final judgment on a class of bankruptcy-related claims, Article III of the Constitution prohibits bankruptcy courts from finally adjudicating certain of those claims. Stern did not, however, decide how bankruptcy or district courts should proceed when a “Stern claim” is identified. We hold today that when, under Stern’s reasoning, the Constitution does not permit a bankruptcy court to enter final judgment on a bankruptcy-related claim, the relevant statute nevertheless permits a bankruptcy court to issue proposed findings of fact and conclusions of law to be reviewed de novo by the district court. Because the District Court in this case conducted the de novo review that petitioner demands, we affirm the judgment of the Court of Appeals upholding the District Court’s decision. I Nicolas Paleveda and his wife owned and operated two companies—Aegis Retirement Income Services, Inc. (ARIS), and Bellingham Insurance Agency, Inc. (BIA). By early 2006, BIA had become insolvent, and on January 31, 2006, the company ceased operation. The next day, Paleveda used BIA funds to incorporate Executive Benefits Insurance Agency, Inc. (EBIA), petitioner in this case. Paleveda and others initiated a scheme to transfer assets from BIA to EBIA. The assets were deposited into an account held jointly by ARIS and EBIA and ultimately credited to EBIA at the end of the year. On June 1, 2006, BIA filed a voluntary Chapter 7 bankruptcy petition in the United States Bankruptcy Court for the Western District of Washington. Peter Arkison, the bankruptcy trustee and respondent in this case, filed a complaint in the same Bankruptcy Court against EBIA and others. As relevant here, the complaint alleged that Paleveda used various methods to fraudulently convey BIA assets to EBIA.[1] EBIA filed an answer and denied many of the trustee’s allegations. After some disagreement as to whether the trustee’s claims should continue in the Bankruptcy Court or instead proceed before a jury in Federal District Court, the trustee filed a motion for summary judgment against EBIA in the Bankruptcy Court. The Bankruptcy Court granted summary judgment for the trustee on all claims, including the fraudulent conveyance claims. EBIA then appealed that determination to the District Court. The District Court conducted de novo review, affirmed the Bankruptcy Court’s decision, and entered judgment for the trustee. EBIA appealed to the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. After EBIA filed its opening brief, this Court decided Stern, supra. In Stern, we held that Article III of the Constitution did not permit a bankruptcy court to enter final judgment on a counterclaim for tortious interference, id., at ___, even though final adjudication of that claim by the Bankruptcy Court was authorized by statute, see Part II–B, infra.[2] In light of Stern, EBIA moved to dismiss its appeal in the Ninth Circuit for lack of jurisdiction, contending that Article III did not permit Congress to vest authority in a bankruptcy court to finally decide the trustee’s fraudulent conveyance claims. The Ninth Circuit rejected EBIA’s motion and affirmed the District Court. In re Bellingham Ins. Agency, Inc., 702 F. 3d 553 (2012). As relevant here, the court held that Stern, supra, and Granfinanciera, S. A. v. Nordberg, 492 U. S. 33 (1989) ,[3] taken together, lead to the conclusion that Article III does not permit a bankruptcy court to enter final judgment on a fraudulent conveyance claim against a noncreditor unless the parties consent. 702 F. 3d, at 565. The Ninth Circuit concluded that EBIA had impliedly consented to the Bankruptcy Court’s jurisdiction, and that the Bankruptcy Court’s adjudication of the fraudulent conveyance claim was therefore permissible. Id., at 566, 568. The Court of Appeals also observed that the Bankruptcy Court’s judgment could instead be treated as proposed findings of fact and conclusions of law, subject to de novo review by the District Court. Id., at 565–566. We granted certiorari, 570 U. S. ___ (2013). II In Stern, we held that Article III prohibits Congress from vesting a bankruptcy court with the authority to finally adjudicate certain claims. 564 U. S., at ___. But we did not address how courts should proceed when they encounter one of these “Stern claims”—a claim designated for final adjudication in the bankruptcy court as a statu-tory matter, but prohibited from proceeding in that way as a constitutional matter.[4] As we explain in greater detail below, when a bankruptcy court is presented with such a claim, the proper courseis to issue proposed findings of fact and conclusions of law. The district court will then review the claim de novo and enter judgment. This approach accords with the bankruptcy statute and does not implicate the constitutional defect identified by Stern. A We begin with an overview of modern bankruptcy legislation. Prior to 1978, federal district courts could refer matters within the traditional “summary jurisdiction” of bankruptcy courts to specialized bankruptcy referees.[5] See Northern Pipeline Constr. Co. v. Marathon Pipe Line Co., 458 U. S. 50, 53 (1982) (plurality opinion). Summary jurisdiction covered claims involving “property in the actual or constructive possession of the [bankruptcy] court,” ibid., i.e., claims regarding the apportionment of the existing bankruptcy estate among creditors. See Brubaker, A “Summary” Statutory and Constitutional Theory of Bankruptcy Judges’ Core Jurisdiction After Stern v. Marshall, 86 Am. Bankr. L. J. 121, 124 (2012). Proceedings to augment the bankruptcy estate, on the other hand, implicated the district court’s plenary jurisdiction and were not referred to the bankruptcy courts absent both parties’ consent. See MacDonald v. Plymouth County Trust Co., 286 U. S. 263, 266 (1932) ; see also Brubaker, supra, at 128. In 1978, Congress enacted sweeping changes to the federal bankruptcy laws. See 92Stat. 2549. The Bankruptcy Reform Act eliminated the historical distinction between “ ‘summary’ ” jurisdiction belonging to bankruptcy courts and “ ‘plenary’ ” jurisdiction belonging to either a district court or an appropriate state court. Northern Pipeline, supra, at 54 (plurality opinion); see also 1 W. Norton & W. Norton Bankruptcy Law and Practice §4:12, p. 4–44 (3d ed. 2013). Instead, the 1978 Act mandated that bankruptcy judges “shall exercise” jurisdiction over “all civil proceedings arising under title 11 or arising in or related to cases under title 11.” 28 U. S. C. §§1471(b)–(c) (1976 ed., Supp. IV). Under the 1978 Act, bankruptcy judges were “vested with all of the ‘powers of a court of equity, law, and admiralty,’ ” with only a few limited exceptions. Northern Pipeline, 458 U. S., at 55 (plurality opinion) (quoting §1481). Notwithstanding their expanded jurisdiction and authority, these bankruptcy judges were not afforded the protections of Article III—namely, life tenure and a salary that may not be diminished. Id.,at 53. In Northern Pipeline, this Court addressed whether bankruptcy judges under the 1978 Act could “constitutionally be vested with jurisdiction to decide [a] state-law contract claim” against an entity not otherwise a party to the proceeding. Id., at 53, 87, n. 40. The Court concluded that assignment of that claim for resolution by the bankruptcy judge “violates Art. III of the Constitution.” Id., at 52, 87 (plurality opinion); see id., at 91 (Rehnquist, J., concurring in judgment). The Court distinguished between cases involving so-called “public rights,” which may be removed from the jurisdiction of Article III courts, and cases involving “private rights,” which may not. See id., at 69–71 (plurality opinion); id., at 91 (Rehnquist, J., concurring in judgment). Specifically, the plurality noted that “the restructuring of debtor-creditor relations, which is at the core of the federal bankruptcy power, must be distinguished from the adjudication of state-created private rights,” which belong in an Article III court. Id., at 71–72, and n. 26. B Against that historical backdrop, Congress enacted the Bankruptcy Amendments and Federal Judgeship Act of 1984—the Act at issue in this case. See 28 U. S. C. §151 et seq. Under the 1984 Act, federal district courts have “original and exclusive jurisdiction of all cases under title 11,” §1334(a), and may refer to bankruptcy judges any “proceedings arising under title 11 or arising in or related to a case under title 11,” §157(a).[6] Bankruptcy judges serve 14-year terms subject to removal for cause, §§152(a)(1), (e), and their salaries are set by Congress, §153(a). The 1984 Act largely restored the bifurcated jurisdictional scheme that existed prior to the 1978 Act. The 1984 Act implements that bifurcated scheme by dividing all matters that may be referred to the bankruptcy courtinto two categories: “core” and “non-core” proceedings. See generally §157.[7] It is the bankruptcy court’s responsibility to determine whether each claim before it is core or non-core. §157(b)(3); cf. Fed. Rule Bkrtcy. Proc. 7012. For core proceedings, the statute contains a nonexhaustive list of examples, including—as relevant here—“proceedings to determine, avoid, or recover fraudulent conveyances.” §157(b)(2)(H). The statute authorizes bankruptcy judges to “hear and determine” such claims and “enter appropriate orders and judgments” on them. §157(b)(1). A final judgment entered in a core proceeding is appealable to the district court, §158(a)(1), which reviews the judgment under traditional appellate standards, Rule 8013. As for “non-core” proceedings—i.e., proceedings that are “not . . . core” but are “otherwise related to a case under title 11”—the statute authorizes a bankruptcy court to “hear [the] proceeding,” and then “submit proposed findings of fact and conclusions of law to the district court.” §157(c)(1). The district court must then review those proposed findings and conclusions de novo and enter any final orders or judgments. Ibid. There is one statutory exception to this rule: If all parties “consent,” the statute permits the bankruptcy judge “to hear and determine and to enter appropriate orders and judgments” as if the proceeding were core. §157(c)(2). Put simply: If a matter is core, the statute empowers the bankruptcy judge to enter final judgment on the claim, subject to appellate review by the district court. If a matter is non-core, and the parties have not consented to final adjudication by the bankruptcy court, the bankruptcy judge must propose findings of fact and conclusions of law. Then, the district court must review the proceeding de novo and enter final judgment. C Stern v. Marshall, 564 U. S. ___, confronted an underlying conflict between the 1984 Act and the requirements of Article III. In particular, Stern considered a constitutional challenge to the statutory designation of a particular claim as “core.” The bankrupt in that case had filed a common-law counterclaim for tortious interference against a creditor to the estate. Id., at ___. Section 157(b)(2)(C), as added by the 1984 Act, lists “counterclaims by the estate against persons filing claims against the estate” as a core proceeding, thereby authorizing the bankruptcy court to adjudicate the claim to final judgment. See supra this page. The respondent in Stern objected that Congress had violated Article III by vesting the power to adjudicate the tortious interference counterclaim in bankruptcy court. Stern, 564 U. S., at ___. We agreed. Id., at ___. In that circumstance, we held, Congress had improperly vested the Bankruptcy Court with the “ ‘ judicial Power of the United States,’ ” just as in Northern Pipeline. 564 U. S., at ___, ___ (slip op., at 21, 38). Because “[n]o ‘public right’ exception excuse[d] the failure to comply with Article III,” we concluded that Congress could not confer on the Bankruptcy Court the authority to finally decide the claim. Id., at ___. (slip op., at 21). III Stern made clear that some claims labeled by Congress as “core” may not be adjudicated by a bankruptcy court in the manner designated by §157(b). Stern did not, how-ever, address how the bankruptcy court should proceed under those circumstances. We turn to that question now. The Ninth Circuit held that the fraudulent conveyance claims at issue here are Stern claims—that is, proceedings that are defined as “core” under §157(b) but may not, as a constitutional matter, be adjudicated as such (at least in the absence of consent, see n. 4, supra. See 702 F. 3d, at 562. Neither party contests that conclusion. The lower courts, including the Ninth Circuit in this case, have described Stern claims as creating a statutory “gap.” See, e.g., 702 F. 3d, at 565. By definition, a Stern claim may not be adjudicated to final judgment by the bankruptcy court, as in a typical core proceeding. But the alternative procedure, whereby the bankruptcy court submits proposed findings of fact and conclusions of law, applies only to non-core claims. See §157(c)(1). Because §157(b) does not explicitly authorize bankruptcy judges to submit proposed findings of fact and conclusions of law in a core proceeding, the argument goes, Stern created a “gap” in the bankruptcy statute. See 702 F. 3d, at 565. That gap purportedly renders the bankruptcy court powerless to act on Stern claims, see Brief for Petitioner 46–48, thus requiring the district court to hear all Stern claims in the first instance. We disagree. The statute permits Stern claims to proceed as non-core within the meaning of §157(c). In particular, the statute contains a severability provision that accounts for decisions, like Stern, that invalidate certain applications of the statute: “If any provision of this Act or the application thereof to any person or circumstance is held invalid, the remainder of this Act, or the application of that provision to persons or circumstances other than those as to which it is held invalid, is not affected thereby.” 98Stat. 344, note following 28 U. S. C. §151. The plain text of this severability provision closes the so-called “gap” created by Stern claims. When a court identifies a claim as a Stern claim, it has necessarily “held invalid” the “application” of §157(b)—i.e., the “core” label and its attendant procedures—to the litigant’s claim. Note following §151. In that circumstance, the statute instructs that “the remainder of th[e] Act . . . is not affected thereby.” Ibid. That remainder includes §157(c), which governs non-core proceedings. With the “core” category no longer available for the Stern claim at issue, we look to §157(c)(1) to determine whether the claim may be adjudicated as a non-core claim—specifically, whether it is “not a core proceeding” but is “otherwise related to a case under title 11.” If the claim satisfies the criteria of §157(c)(1), the bankruptcy court simply treats the claims as non-core: The bankruptcy court should hear the proceeding and submit proposed findings of fact and conclusions of lawto the district court for de novo review and entry ofjudgment. The conclusion that the remainder of the statute may continue to apply to Stern claims accords with our general approach to severability. We ordinarily give effect to the valid portion of a partially unconstitutional statute so long as it “remains ‘ “fully operative as a law,” ’ ” Free Enterprise Fund v. Public Company Accounting Oversight Bd., 561 U. S. 477, 509 (2010) (quoting New York v. United States, 505 U. S. 144, 186 (1992) ), and so long as it is not “ ‘evident’ ” from the statutory text and context that Congress would have preferred no statute at all, 561 U. S., at 509 (quoting Alaska Airlines, Inc. v. Brock, 480 U. S. 678, 684 (1987) ). Neither of those concerns applies here. Thus, §157(c) may be applied naturally to Stern claims. And, EBIA has identified “nothing in the statute’s text or historical context” that makes it “evident” that Congress would prefer to suspend Stern claims in limbo. 561 U. S., at 509.[8] IV A Now we must determine whether the procedures set forth in §157(c)(1) apply to the fraudulent conveyance claims at issue in this case. The Court of Appeals held, and we assume without deciding, that the fraudulent conveyance claims in this case are Stern claims. See Part III, supra. For purposes of this opinion, the “application” of both the “core” label and the procedures of §157(b) to the trustee’s claims has therefore been “held invalid.” Note following §151. Accordingly, we must decide whether the fraudulent conveyance claims brought by the trustee are within the scope of §157(c)(1)—that is, “not . . . core” proceedings but “otherwise related to a case under title 11.” We hold that this language encompasses the trustee’s claims of fraudulent conveyance. First, the fraudulent conveyance claims in this case are “not . . . core.” The Ninth Circuit held—and no party disputes—that Article III does not permit these claims to be treated as “core.” See Part III, supra. Second, the fraudulent conveyance claims are self-evidently “related to a case under title 11.” At bottom, a fraudulent conveyance claim asserts that property that should have been part of the bankruptcy estate and therefore available for distribution to creditors pursuant to Title 11 was improperly removed. That sort of claim is “related to a case under title 11” under any plausible construction of the statutory text, and no party contends otherwise. See, e.g., Celotex Corp. v. Edwards, 514 U. S. 300 , n. 5, 308 (1995) (“Proceedings ‘related to’ the bankruptcy include . . . suits between third parties which have an effect on the bankruptcy estate”). Accordingly, because these Stern claims fit comfortably within the category of claims governed by §157(c)(1), the Bankruptcy Court would have been permitted to follow the procedures required by that provision, i.e., to submit proposed findings of fact and conclusions of law to the District Court to be reviewed de novo. B Although this case did not proceed in precisely that fashion, we affirm nonetheless. A brief procedural history of the case helps explain why. As noted, §157 permits a bankruptcy court to adjudicate a claim to final judgment in two circumstances—in core proceedings, see §157(b), and in non-core proceedings “with the consent of all the parties,” §157(c)(2). In this case, the Bankruptcy Court entered judgment in favor of the bankruptcy trustee without specifying in its order whether it was acting pursuant to §157(b) (core) or §157(c)(2) (non-core with consent). EBIA immediately appealed to the District Court, see §158, but it did not argue that the Bankruptcy Court lacked constitutional authority to grant summary judgment. As a result, the District Court did not analyze whether there was a Stern problem and did not, as some district courts have done, relabel the bankruptcy order as mere proposed findings of fact and conclusions of law. See, e.g., In re Parco Merged Media Corp., 489 B. R. 323, 326 (Me. 2013) (collecting cases). The District Court did, however, review de novo the Bankruptcy Court’s grant of summary judgment for the trustee—a legal question—and issued a reasoned opinion affirming the Bankruptcy Court. The District Court then separately entered judgment in favor of the trustee. See 28 U. S. C. §1334(b) (“[T]he district courts shall have original but not exclusive jurisdiction of all civil proceedings . . . related to cases under title 11”). EBIA now objects on constitutional grounds to the Bankruptcy Court’s disposition of the fraudulent conveyance claims. EBIA contends that it was constitutionally entitled to review of its fraudulent conveyance claims by an Article III court regardless of whether the parties consented to adjudication by a bankruptcy court. Brief for Petitioner 25–27. In an alternative argument, EBIA asserts that even if the Constitution permitted the Bankruptcy Court to adjudicate its claim with the consent of the parties, it did not in fact consent. Id., at 38. In light of the procedural posture of this case, however, we need not decide whether EBIA’s contentions are correct on either score. At bottom, EBIA argues that it was entitled to have an Article III court review de novo and enter judgment on the fraudulent conveyance claims asserted by the trustee. In effect, EBIA received exactly that. The District Court conducted de novo review of the summary judgment claims, concluding in a written opinion that there were no disputed issues of material fact and that the trustee was entitled to judgment as a matter of law. In accordance with its statutory authority over matters related to the bankruptcy, see §1334(b), the District Court then separately entered judgment in favor of the trustee. EBIA thus received the same review from the District Court that it would have received if the Bankruptcy Court had treated the fraudulent conveyance claims as non-core proceedings under §157(c)(1). In short, even if EBIA is correct that the Bankruptcy Court’s entry of judgment was invalid, the District Court’s de novo review and entry of its own valid final judgment cured any error. Cf. Carter v. Kubler, 320 U. S. 243, 248 (1943) (bankruptcy commissioner’s error was cured after the District Court “madean independent and complete review of the conflicting evidence”). Accordingly, we affirm the judgment of the Court of Appeals. It is so ordered.Notes 1 The trustee asserted claims of fraudulent conveyance under , and under state law, Wash. Rev. Code, ch. 19.40 (2012). 2 As we explain below, see Part II–B, ,the statutory schemeat issue both in and in this case grants bankruptcy courts the authority to “hear and determine” and “enter appropriate orders and judgments” in “core” proceedings. . The statute lists counterclaims like the one brought in as “core” claims. §157(b)(2)(C). 3 held that a fraudulent conveyance claim under Title 11 is not a matter of “public right” for purposes of Article III, 492 U. S., at 55, and that the defendant to such a claim is entitled to a jury trial under the , , at 64. 4 Because we conclude that EBIA received the review and entry of judgment to which it claims constitutional entitlement, see Part IV–B, this case does not require us to address whether EBIA in fact consented to the Bankruptcy Court’s adjudication of a claim and whether Article III permits a bankruptcy court, with the consent of the parties, to enter final judgment on a claim. We reserve that question for another day. 5 Bankruptcy referees were designated “judges” in 1973. See v. , n. 2 (1982) (plurality opinion). 6 In addition, district courts may also withdraw such matters from the bankruptcy courts for “cause shown.” §157(d). 7 In using the term “core,” Congress tracked the plurality’s use of the same term as a description of those claims that fell within the scope of the historical bankruptcy court’s power. See 458 U. S., at 71 (“[T]he restructuring of debtor-creditor relations, which is at the of the federal bankruptcy power, must be distinguished from the adjudication of state-created private rights . . .” (emphasis added)). 8 To the contrary, we noted in that removal of claims from core bankruptcy jurisdiction does not “meaningfully chang[e] the division of labor in the current statute.” 564 U. S., at ___ (slip op., at 37). Accepting EBIA’s contention that district courts are required to hear all claims in the first instance, see Brief for Petitioner 46–48, would dramatically alter the division of responsibility set by Congress.

571.US.292

Police officers observed a suspect in a violent robbery run into an apartment building, and heard screams coming from one of the apartments. They knocked on the apartment door, which was answered by Roxanne Rojas, who appeared to be battered and bleeding. When the officers asked her to step out of the apartment so that they could conduct a protective sweep, petitioner came to the door and objected. Suspecting that he had assaulted Rojas, the officers removed petitioner from the apartment and placed him under arrest. He was then identified as the perpetrator in the earlier robbery and taken to the police station. An officer later returned to the apartment and, after obtaining Rojas’ oral and written consent, searched the premises, where he found several items linking petitioner to the robbery. The trial court denied petitioner’s motion to suppress that evidence, and he was convicted. The California Court of Appeal affirmed. It held that because petitioner was not present when Rojas consented to the search, the exception to permissible warrantless consent searches of jointly occupied premises that arises when one of the occupants present objects to the search, Georgia v. Randolph, 547 U.S. 103, did not apply, and therefore, petitioner’s suppression motion had been properly denied. Held: Randolph does not extend to this situation, where Rojas’ consent was provided well after petitioner had been removed from their apartment. Pp. 5–15. (a) Consent searches are permissible warrantless searches, Schneckloth v. Bustamonte, 412 U.S. 218, 228, 231–232, and are clearly reasonable when the consent comes from the sole occupant of the premises. When multiple occupants are involved, the rule extends to the search of the premises or effects of an absent, nonconsenting occupant so long as “the consent of one who possesses common authority over [the] premises or effects” is obtained. United States v. Matlock, 415 U.S. 164, 170. However, when “a physically present inhabitan[t]” refuses to consent, that refusal “is dispositive as to him, regardless of the consent of a fellow occupant.” Randolph, 547 U. S., at 122–123. A controlling factor in Randolph was the objecting occupant’s physical presence. See, e.g., id., at 106, 108, 109, 114. Pp. 5–9. (b) Petitioner contends that, though he was not present when Rojas consented, Randolph nevertheless controls, but neither of his arguments is sound. Pp. 9–14. (1) He first argues that his absence should not matter since it occurred only because the police had taken him away. Dictum in Randolph suggesting that consent by one occupant might not be sufficient if “there is evidence that the police have removed the potentially objecting tenant from the entrance for the sake of avoiding a possible objection,” 547 U. S., at 121, is best understood to refer to situations in which the removal of the potential objector is not objectively reasonable. Petitioner does not contest the fact that the police had reasonable grounds for his removal or the existence of probable cause for his arrest. He was thus in the same position as an occupant absent for any other reason. Pp. 9–10. (2) Petitioner also argues that the objection he made while at the threshold remained effective until he changed his mind and withdrew it. This is inconsistent with Randolph in at least two important ways. It cannot be squared with the “widely shared social expectations” or “customary social usage” upon which Randolph’s holding was based. 547 U. S., at 111, 121. It also creates the sort of practical complications that Randolph sought to avoid by adopting a “formalis[tic]” rule, id., at 121, e.g., requiring that the scope of an objection’s duration and the procedures necessary to register a continuing objection be defined. Pp. 10–14. (c) Petitioner claims that his expansive interpretation of Randolph would not hamper law enforcement because in most cases where officers have probable cause to arrest a physically present objector they also have probable cause to obtain a warrant to search the premises that the objector does not want them to enter. But he misunderstands the constitutional status of consent searches, which are permissible irrespective of the availability of a warrant. Requiring officers to obtain a warrant when a warrantless search is justified may interfere with law enforcement strategies and impose an unmerited burden on the person willing to consent to an immediate search. Pp. 14–15. 208 Cal. App. 4th 100, 145 Cal. Rptr. 3d 51, affirmed. Alito, J., delivered the opinion of the Court, in which Roberts, C. J., and Scalia, Kennedy, Thomas, and Breyer, JJ., joined. Scalia, J., and Thomas, J., filed concurring opinions. Ginsburg, J., filed a dissenting opinion, in which Sotomayor and Kagan, JJ., joined.

Our cases firmly establish that police officers may search jointly occupied premises if one of the occupants[1] consents. See United States v. Matlock, 415 U. S. 164 (1974) . In Georgia v. Randolph, 547 U. S. 103 (2006) , we recognized a narrow exception to this rule, holding that the consent of one occupant is insufficient when another occupant is present and objects to the search. In this case, we consider whether Randolph applies if the objecting occupant is absent when another occupant consents. Our opinion in Randolph took great pains to emphasize that its holding was limited to situations in which the objecting occupant is physically present. We therefore refuse to extend Randolph to the very different situation in this case, where consent was provided by an abused woman well after her male partner had been removed from the apartment they shared. I A The events involved in this case occurred in Los Angeles in October 2009. After observing Abel Lopez cash a check, petitioner Walter Fernandez approached Lopez and asked about the neighborhood in which he lived. When Lopez responded that he was from Mexico, Fernandez laughed and told Lopez that he was in territory ruled by the “D.F.S.,” i.e., the “Drifters” gang. App. 4–5. Petitioner then pulled out a knife and pointed it at Lopez’ chest. Lopez raised his hand in self-defense, and petitioner cut him on the wrist. Lopez ran from the scene and called 911 for help, but petitioner whistled, and four men emerged from a nearby apartment building and attacked Lopez. After knocking him to the ground, they hit and kicked him and took his cell phone and his wallet, which contained $400 in cash. A police dispatch reported the incident and mentioned the possibility of gang involvement, and two Los Angeles police officers, Detective Clark and Officer Cirrito, droveto an alley frequented by members of the Drifters. A man who appeared scared walked by the officers and said: “ ‘[T]he guy is in the apartment.’ ” Id., at 5. The officers then observed a man run through the alley and into the building to which the man was pointing. A minute or two later, the officers heard sounds of screaming and fighting coming from that building. After backup arrived, the officers knocked on the door of the apartment unit from which the screams had been heard. Roxanne Rojas answered the door. She was holding a baby and appeared to be crying. Her face was red, and she had a large bump on her nose. The officers also saw blood on her shirt and hand from what appeared to be a fresh injury. Rojas told the police that she had been in a fight. Officer Cirrito asked if anyone else was in the apartment, and Rojas said that her 4-year-old son was the only other person present. After Officer Cirrito asked Rojas to step out of the apartment so that he could conduct a protective sweep, petitioner appeared at the door wearing only boxer shorts. Apparently agitated, petitioner stepped forward and said, “ ‘You don’t have any right to come in here. I know my rights.’ ” Id., at 6. Suspecting that petitioner had assaulted Rojas, the officers removed him from the apartmentand then placed him under arrest. Lopez identified petitioner as his initial attacker, and petitioner was taken to the police station for booking. Approximately one hour after petitioner’s arrest, Detective Clark returned to the apartment and informed Rojas that petitioner had been arrested. Detective Clark requested and received both oral and written consent from Rojas to search the premises.[2] In the apartment, the police found Drifters gang paraphernalia, a butterfly knife, clothing worn by the robbery suspect, and ammunition. Rojas’ young son also showed the officers where petitioner had hidden a sawed-off shotgun. B Petitioner was charged with robbery, Cal. Penal Code Ann. §211 (West 2008), infliction of corporal injury on a spouse, cohabitant, or child’s parent, §273.5(a), possession of a firearm by a felon, §12021(a)(1)(West 2009), possession of a short-barreled shotgun, §12020(a)(1), and felony possession of ammunition, §12316(b)(1). Before trial, petitioner moved to suppress the evidence found in the apartment, but after a hearing, the court denied the motion. Petitioner then pleaded nolo conten-dere to the firearms and ammunition charges. On the re-maining counts—for robbery and infliction of corporal injury—he went to trial and was found guilty by a jury. The court sentenced him to 14 years of imprisonment. The California Court of Appeal affirmed. 208 Cal. App. 4th 100, 145 Cal. Rptr. 3d 51 (2012). Because Randolph did not overturn our prior decisions recognizing that an occupant may give effective consent to search a shared residence, the court agreed with the majority of the federal circuits that an objecting occupant’s physical presence is “indispensible to the decision in Randolph.” Id., at 122, 145 Cal. Rptr. 3d, at 66.[3] And because petitioner was not present when Rojas consented, the court held that petitioner’s suppression motion had been properly denied. Id., at 121, 145 Cal. Rptr. 3d, at 65. The California Supreme Court denied the petition for review, and we granted certiorari. 569 U. S. ___ (2013). II A The Fourth Amendment prohibits unreasonable searches and seizures and provides that a warrant may not be issued without probable cause, but “the text of the Fourth Amendment does not specify when a search warrant must be obtained.” Kentucky v. King, 563 U. S. ___, ___ (2011) (slip op., at 5). Our cases establish that a warrant is generally required for a search of a home, Brigham City v. Stuart, 547 U. S. 398, 403 (2006) , but “the ultimate touchstone of the Fourth Amendment is ‘reasonableness,’ ” ibid.; see also Michigan v. Fisher, 558 U. S. 45, 47 (2009) ( per curiam). And certain categories of permissible warrantless searches have long been recognized. Consent searches occupy one of these categories. “Consent searches are part of the standard investigatorytechniques of law enforcement agencies” and are “a con-stitutionally permissible and wholly legitimate aspect of effective police activity.” Schneckloth v. Bustamonte, 412 U. S. 218 –232 (1973). It would be unreasonable—indeed, absurd—to require police officers to obtain a warrant when the sole owner or occupant of a house or apartment voluntarily consents to a search. The owner of a home has a right to allow others to enter and examine the premises, and there is no reason why the owner should not be permitted to extend this same privilege to police officers if that is the owner’s choice. Where the owner believes that he or she is under suspicion, the owner may want the police to search the premises so that their suspicions are dispelled. This may be particularly important where the owner has a strong interest in the apprehension of the perpetrator of a crime and believes that the suspicions of the police are deflecting the course of their investigation. An owner may want the police to search even where they lack probable cause, and if a warrant were always required, this could not be done. And even where the police could establish probable cause, requiring a warrant despite the owner’s consent would needlessly inconvenience everyone involved—not only the officers and the magistrate but also the occupant of the premises, who would generally either be compelled or would feel a need to stay until the search was completed. Michigan v. Summers, 452 U. S. 692, 701 (1981) .[4] While it is clear that a warrantless search is reasonable when the sole occupant of a house or apartment consents, what happens when there are two or more occupants? Must they all consent? Must they all be asked? Is consent by one occupant enough? The Court faced that problem 40 years ago in United States v. Matlock, 415 U. S. 164 (1974) . In that case, Matlock and a woman named Graff were living together in a house that was also occupied by several of Graff’s siblings and by her mother, who had rentedthe house. While in the front yard of the house, Matlock was arrested for bank robbery and was placed in a squad car. Although the police could have easily asked him for consent to search the room that he and Graff shared, they did not do so. Instead, they knocked on the door and obtained Graff’s permission to search. The search yielded incriminating evidence, which the defendant sought to suppress, but this Court held that Graff’s consent justified the warrantless search. As the Court put it, “the consent of one who possesses common authority over premises or effects is valid as against the absent, nonconsenting person with whom that authority is shared.” Id., at 170. In Illinois v. Rodriguez, 497 U. S. 177 (1990) , the Court reaffirmed and extended the Matlock holding. In Rodriguez, a woman named Fischer told police officers that she had been assaulted by Rodriguez in what she termed “ ‘our’ apartment.” 497 U. S., at 179. She also informed the officers that Rodriguez was asleep in the apartment, and she then accompanied the officers to that unit. When they arrived, the officers could have knocked on the door and awakened Rodriguez, and had they done so, Rodriguez might well have surrendered at the door and objected to the officers’ entry. Instead, Fischer unlocked the door, the officers entered without a warrant, and they saw drug paraphernalia and containers filled with white powder in plain view. After the search, the police learned that Fischer no longer resided at the apartment, and this Court held that she did not have common authority over the premises at the time in question. The Court nevertheless held that the warrantless entry was lawful because the police reasonably believed that Fischer was a resident. Id., at 188–189. B While consent by one resident of jointly occupied premises is generally sufficient to justify a warrantless search, we recognized a narrow exception to this rule in Georgia v. Randolph, 547 U. S. 103 (2006) . In that case, police offi-cers responded to the Randolphs’ home after receiving a report of a domestic dispute. When the officers arrived, Janet Randolph informed the officers that her estranged husband, Scott Randolph, was a cocaine user and that there were “items of drug evidence” in the house. Id., at 107 (internal quotation marks omitted). The officers first asked Scott for consent to search, but he “unequivocally refused.” Ibid. The officers then turned to Janet, and she consented to the search, which produced evidence that was later used to convict Scott for possession of cocaine. Without questioning the prior holdings in Matlock and Rodriguez, this Court held that Janet Randolph’s consent was insufficient under the circumstances to justify the warrantless search. The Court reiterated the proposition that a person who shares a residence with others assumes the risk that “any one of them may admit visitors, with the consequence that a guest obnoxious to one may nevertheless be admitted in his absence by another.” 547 U. S., at 111. But the Court held that “a physically present inhabitant’s express refusal of consent to a police search [of his home] is dispositive as to him, regardless of the consent of a fellow occupant.” Id., at 122–123 (emphasis added). The Court’s opinion went to great lengths to make clear that its holding was limited to situations in which the objecting occupant is present. Again and again, the opinion of the Court stressed this controlling factor. See id., at 106 (“present at the scene”); ibid. (“physically present”); id., at 108 (“a co-tenant who is present”); id., at 109 (“physically present”); id., at 114 (“a present and objecting co-tenant”); id., at 119 (a co-tenant “standing at the door and expressly refusing consent”); id., at 120 (“a physically present resident”), id., at 121 (“a physically present fellow tenant objects”); ibid. (“[A] potential defendant with self-interest in objecting is at the door and objects”); id., at 122 (“[A] physically present inhabitant’s express refusal of consent to a police search is dispositive as to him”). The Court’s opinion could hardly have been clearer on this point, and the separate opinion filed by Justice Breyer, whose vote was decisive, was equally unambiguous. See id., at 126 (concurring) (“The Court’s opinion does not apply where the objector is not present ‘and object[ing]’ ”). III In this case, petitioner was not present when Rojas consented, but petitioner still contends that Randolph is controlling. He advances two main arguments. First, he claims that his absence should not matter since he was absent only because the police had taken him away. Second, he maintains that it was sufficient that he objected to the search while he was still present. Such an objection, he says, should remain in effect until the objecting party “no longer wishes to keep the police out of his home.” Brief for Petitioner 8. Neither of these arguments is sound. A We first consider the argument that the presence of the objecting occupant is not necessary when the police are responsible for his absence. In Randolph, the Court suggested in dictum that consent by one occupant might not be sufficient if “there is evidence that the police have removed the potentially objecting tenant from the entrance for the sake of avoiding a possible objection.” 547 U. S., at 121. We do not believe the statement should be read to suggest that improper motive may invalidate objectively justified removal. Hence, it does not govern here. The Randolph dictum is best understood not to require an inquiry into the subjective intent of officers who detain or arrest a potential objector but instead to refer to situations in which the removal of the potential objector is not objectively reasonable. As petitioner acknowledges, see Brief for Petitioner 25, our Fourth Amendment cases “have repeatedly rejected” a subjective approach. Brigham City, 547 U. S., at 404 (alteration and internal quotation marks omitted). “Indeed, we have never held, outside limited contexts such as an ‘inventory search or administrative inspection . . . , that an officer’s motive invalidates objectively justifiable behavior under the Fourth Amendment.’ ” King, 563 U. S., at ___ (slip op.,at 10). Petitioner does not claim that the Randolph Court meant to break from this consistent practice, and we do not think that it did. And once it is recognized that the test is one of objective reasonableness, petitioner’s argument collapses. He does not contest the fact that the police had reasonable grounds for removing him from the apartment so that they could speak with Rojas, an apparent victim of domestic violence, outside of petitioner’s potentially intimidating presence. In fact, he does not even contest the existence of probable cause to place him under arrest. We therefore hold that an occupant who is absent due to a lawful detention or arrest stands in the same shoes as an occupant who is absent for any other reason. This conclusion does not “make a mockery of Randolph,” as petitioner protests. Brief for Petitioner 9. It simply accepts Randolph on its own terms. The Randolph holding unequivocally requires the presence of the objecting occupant in every situation other than the one mentioned in the dictum discussed above. B This brings us to petitioner’s second argument, viz., that his objection, made at the threshold of the premises that the police wanted to search, remained effective until he changed his mind and withdrew his objection. This argument is inconsistent with Randolph’s reasoning in at least two important ways. First, the argument cannot be squared with the “widely shared social expectations” or “customary social usage” upon which the Randolph holding was based. See 547 U. S., at 111, 121. Explaining why consent by one occupant could not override an objection by a physically present occupant, the Randolph Court stated: “[I]t is fair to say that a caller standing at the door of shared premises would have no confidence that one occupant’s invitation was a sufficiently good reason to enter when a fellow tenant stood there saying, ‘stay out.’ Without some very good reason, no sensible person would go inside under those conditions.” Id., at 113. It seems obvious that the calculus of this hypothetical caller would likely be quite different if the objecting tenant was not standing at the door. When the objecting occupant is standing at the threshold saying “stay out,” a friend or visitor invited to enter by another occupant can expect at best an uncomfortable scene and at worst violence if he or she tries to brush past the objector. But when the objector is not on the scene (and especially when it is known that the objector will not return during the course of the visit), the friend or visitor is much more likely to accept the invitation to enter.[5] Thus, petitioner’s argument is inconsistent with Randolph’s reasoning. Second, petitioner’s argument would create the very sort of practical complications that Randolph sought to avoid. The Randolph Court recognized that it was adopting a “formalis[tic]” rule, but it did so in the interests of “simple clarity” and administrability. Id., at 121, 122. The rule that petitioner would have us adopt would produce a plethora of practical problems. For one thing, there is the question of duration. Petitioner argues that an objection, once made, should last until it is withdrawn by the objector, but such a rule would be unreasonable. Suppose that a husband and wife owned a house as joint tenants and that the husband, after objecting to a search of the house, was convicted and sentenced to a 15-year prison term. Under petitioner’s proposed rule, the wife would be unable to consent to a search of the house 10 years after the date on which her husband objected. We refuse to stretch Randolph to such strange lengths. Nor are we persuaded to hold that an objection lasts for a “reasonable” time. “[I]t is certainly unusual for this Court to set forth precise time limits governing police action,” Maryland v. Shatzer, 559 U. S. 98, 110 (2010) , and what interval of time would be reasonable in this context? A week? A month? A year? Ten years? Petitioner’s rule would also require the police and ultimately the courts to determine whether, after the passage of time, an objector still had “common authority” over the premises, and this would often be a tricky question. Suppose that an incarcerated objector and a consenting co-occupant were joint tenants on a lease. If the objector, after incarceration, stopped paying rent, would he still have “common authority,” and would his objection retain its force? Would it be enough that his name remainedon the lease? Would the result be different if the object-ing and consenting lessees had an oral month-to-month tenancy? Another problem concerns the procedure needed to register a continuing objection. Would it be necessary for an occupant to object while police officers are at the door? If presence at the time of consent is not needed, would an occupant have to be present at the premises when the objection was made? Could an objection be made pre-emptively? Could a person like Scott Randolph, suspecting that his estranged wife might invite the police to view his drug stash and paraphernalia, register an objection in advance? Could this be done by posting a sign in front of the house? Could a standing objection be registered by serving notice on the chief of police? Finally, there is the question of the particular law enforcement officers who would be bound by an objection. Would this set include just the officers who were present when the objection was made? Would it also apply to other officers working on the same investigation? Would it extend to officers who were unaware of the objection? How about officers assigned to different but arguably related cases? Would it be limited by law enforcement agency? If Randolph is taken at its word—that it applies only when the objector is standing in the door saying “stay out” when officers propose to make a consent search—all of these problems disappear. In response to these arguments, petitioner argues that Randolph’s requirement of physical presence is not without its own ambiguity. And we acknowledge that if, as we conclude, Randolph requires presence on the premises to be searched, there may be cases in which the outer boundary of the premises is disputed. The Court confronted a similar problem last Term in Bailey v. United States, 568 U. S. ___ (2013), but despite arguments similar to those now offered by petitioner, the Court adopted a rule that applies only when the affected individual is near the premises being searched. Having held that a premises rule is workable in that context, we see no ground for reaching a different conclusion here. C Petitioner argues strenuously that his expansive interpretation of Randolph would not hamper law enforcement because in most cases where officers have probable cause to arrest a physically present objector they also have probable cause to search the premises that the objector does not want them to enter, see Brief for Petitioner 20–23, but this argument misunderstands the constitutional status of consent searches. A warrantless consent search is reasonable and thus consistent with the Fourth Amendment irrespective of the availability of a warrant. Even with modern technological advances, the warrant procedure imposes burdens on the officers who wish to search, the magistrate who must review the warrant application, and the party willing to give consent. Whena warrantless search is justified, requiring the police to obtain a warrant may “unjustifiably interfer[e] with legitimate law enforcement strategies.” King, 563 U. S., at ___ (slip op., at 13). Such a requirement may also impose an unmerited burden on the person who consents to an immediate search, since the warrant application procedure entails delay. Putting the exception the Court adopted in Randolph to one side, the lawful occupant of a house or apartment should have the right to invite the police to enter the dwelling and conduct a search. Any other rule would trample on the rights of the occupant who is willing to consent. Such an occupant may want the police to search in order to dispel “suspicion raised by sharing quarters with a criminal.” 547 U. S., at 116; see also Schneckloth, 412 U. S., at 243 (evidence obtained pursuant to a consent search “may insure that a wholly innocent person is not wrongly charged with a criminal offense”). And an occupant may want the police to conduct a thorough search so that any dangerous contraband can be found and removed. In this case, for example, the search resulted in the discovery and removal of a sawed-off shotgun to which Rojas’ 4-year-old son had access. Denying someone in Rojas’ position the right to allow the police to enter her home would also show disrespect for her independence. Having beaten Rojas, petitioner would bar her from controlling access to her own home until such time as he chose to relent. The Fourth Amendment does not give him that power. * * * The judgment of the California Court of Appeal isaffirmed. It is so ordered.Notes 1 We use the terms “occupant,” “resident,” and “tenant” interchangeably to refer to persons having “common authority” over premises within the meaning of . See v. , . 2 Both petitioner and the dissent suggest that Rojas’ consent was coerced. , at 9, n. 5 (opinion of .). But the trial court found otherwise, App. 152, and the correctness of that finding is not before us. In suggesting that Rojas’ consent was coerced, the dissent recites portions of Rojas’ testimony from the suppression hearing that the trial judge appears to have rejected. Similarly, the jury plainly did not find Rojas to be credible. At trial, she testified for the defense and told the jury, among other things, that the wounds observed by the officers who came to her door were not inflicted by petitioner but by a woman looking for petitioner during a fight. 208 Cal. App. 4th 100, 109–110, 145 Cal. Rptr. 3d 51, 56 (2012). The jury obviously did not believe this testimony because it found petitioner guilty of inflicting corporal injury on her. 3 See v. , 674 F. 3d 491, 498 (CA5 2012) (“ was a narrow exception to the general rule permitting cotenant consent, relevant only as to physically present objectors”); v. , 518 F. 3d 954, 960 (CA8 2008) (concluding that “the narrow holding of , which repeatedly referenced the defendant’s physical presence immediate objection is inapplicable”); v. , 536 F. 3d 776, 777 (CA7 2008) (recognizing that “ left the bulk of third-party consent law in place; its holding applies only when the defendant is both present and objects to the search of his home”); v. , 491 F. 3d 1221, 1227 (CA10 2007) (“carefully delineated the narrow circumstances in which its holding applied, and . . . consciously employed a rule requiring an express objection by a present co-tenant”); but see v. , 516 F. 3d 1117, 1124–1125 (CA9 2008) (holding that “when a co-tenant objects to a search and another party with common authority subsequently gives consent to that search in the absence of the first co-tenant the search is invalid as to the objecting co-tenant” because “[o]nce a co-tenant has registered his objection, his refusal to grant consent remains effective barring some objective manifestation that he has changed his position and no longer objects”). 4 A main theme of the dissent is that the police in this case had probable cause to search the apartment and therefore could have obtained a warrant. Of course, this will not always be so in cases in which one occupant consents to a search and the other objects, and the dissent does not suggest that a warrant should be required only when probable cause is present. As a result, the dissent’s repeated references to the availability of a warrant in this case are beside the point. 5 Although the dissent intimates that “customary social usage” goes further than this, see , at 4, the dissent provides no support for this doubtful proposition. In the present case, for example, suppose that Rojas had called a relative, a friend, a supportive neighbor, or a person who works for a group that aids battered women and had invited that individual to enter and examine the premises while petitioner was in jail. Would any of those invitees have felt that it was beyond Rojas’ authority to extend that invitation over petitioner’s objection?

573.US.409

Petitioner Fifth Third Bancorp maintains a defined-contribution retirement savings plan for its employees. Plan participants may direct their contributions into any of a number of investment options, including an “employee stock ownership plan” (ESOP), which invests its funds primarily in Fifth Third stock. Respondents, former Fifth Third employees and ESOP participants, filed this lawsuit against petitioners, Fifth Third and several of its officers who are alleged to be fiduciaries of the ESOP. The complaint alleges that petitioners breached the fiduciary duty of prudence imposed by the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974 (ERISA), 29 U. S. C. §1104(a)(1)(B). Specifically, the complaint alleges that petitioners should have known—on the basis of both publicly available information and inside information available to petitioners because they were Fifth Third officers—that Fifth Third stock was overpriced and excessively risky. It further alleges that a prudent fiduciary in petitioners’ position would have responded to this information by selling off the ESOP’s holdings of Fifth Third stock, refraining from purchasing more Fifth Third stock, or disclosing the negative inside information so that the market could correct the stock’s price downward. According to the complaint, petitioners did none of these things, and the price of Fifth Third stock ultimately fell, reducing respondents’ retirement savings. The District Court dismissed the complaint for failure to state a claim, but the Sixth Circuit reversed. It concluded that ESOP fiduciaries are entitled to a “presumption of prudence” that does not apply to other ERISA fiduciaries but that the presumption is an evidentiary one and therefore does not apply at the pleading stage. The court went on to hold that the complaint stated a claim for breach of fiduciary duty. Held: 1. ESOP fiduciaries are not entitled to any special presumption of prudence. Rather, they are subject to the same duty of prudence that applies to ERISA fiduciaries in general, §1104(a)(1)(B), except that they need not diversify the fund’s assets, §1104(a)(2). This conclusion follows from the relevant provisions of ERISA. Section 1104(a)(1)(B) “imposes a ‘prudent person’ standard by which to measure fiduciaries’ investment decisions and disposition of assets.” Massachusetts Mut. Life Ins. Co. v. Russell, 473 U.S. 134, 143, n. 10. Section 1104(a)(1)(C) requires ERISA fiduciaries to diversify plan assets. And §1104(a)(2) establishes the extent to which those duties are loosened in the ESOP context by providing that “the diversification requirement of [§1104(a)(1)(C)] and the prudence requirement (only to the extent that it requires diversification) of [§1104(a)(1)(B)] [are] not violated by acquisition or holding of [employer stock].” Section 1104(a)(2) makes no reference to a special “presumption” in favor of ESOP fiduciaries and does not require plaintiffs to allege that the employer was, e.g., on the “brink of collapse.” It simply modifies the duties imposed by §1104(a)(1) in a precisely delineated way. Thus, aside from the fact that ESOP fiduciaries are not liable for losses that result from a failure to diversify, they are subject to the duty of prudence like other ERISA fiduciaries. Pp. 4–15. 2. On remand, the Sixth Circuit should reconsider whether the complaint states a claim by applying the pleading standard as discussed in Ashcroft v. Iqbal, 556 U.S. 662, 677–680, and Bell Atlantic Corp. v. Twombly, 550 U.S. 544, 554–563, in light of the following considerations. Pp. 15–20. (a) Where a stock is publicly traded, allegations that a fiduciary should have recognized on the basis of publicly available information that the market was overvaluing or undervaluing the stock are generally implausible and thus insufficient to state a claim under Twombly and Iqbal. Pp. 16–18. (b) To state a claim for breach of the duty of prudence, a complaint must plausibly allege an alternative action that the defendant could have taken, that would have been legal, and that a prudent fiduciary in the same circumstances would not have viewed as more likely to harm the fund than to help it. Where the complaint alleges that a fiduciary was imprudent in failing to act on the basis of inside information, the analysis is informed by the following points. First, ERISA’s duty of prudence never requires a fiduciary to break the law, and so a fiduciary cannot be imprudent for failing to buy or sell stock in violation of the insider trading laws. Second, where a complaint faults fiduciaries for failing to decide, based on negative inside infor-mation, to refrain from making additional stock purchases or for failing to publicly disclose that information so that the stock would no longer be overvalued, courts should consider the extent to which imposing an ERISA-based obligation either to refrain from making a planned trade or to disclose inside information to the public could conflict with the complex insider trading and corporate disclosure requirements set forth by the federal securities laws or with the objectives of those laws. Third, courts confronted with such claims should consider whether the complaint has plausibly alleged that a prudent fiduciary in the defendant’s position could not have concluded that stopping purchases or publicly disclosing negative information would do more harm than good to the fund by causing a drop in the stock price and a concomitant drop in the value of the stock already held by the fund. Pp. 18–20. 692 F.3d 410, vacated and remanded. Breyer, J., delivered the opinion for a unanimous Court.

The Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974 (ERISA), 88Stat. 829, as amended, 29 U. S. C. §1001 et seq., requires the fiduciary of a pension plan to act prudently in managing the plan’s assets. §1104(a)(1)(B). This case focuses upon that duty of prudence as applied to the fiduciary of an “employee stock ownership plan” (ESOP), a type of pension plan that invests primarily in the stock of the company that employs the plan participants. We consider whether, when an ESOP fiduciary’s decision to buy or hold the employer’s stock is challenged in court, the fiduciary is entitled to a defense-friendly standard that the lower courts have called a “presumption of prudence.” The Courts of Appeals that have considered the question have held that such a presumption does apply, with the presumption generally defined as a requirement that the plaintiff make a showing that would not be required in an ordinary duty-of-prudence case, such as that the employer was on the brink of collapse. We hold that no such presumption applies. Instead, ESOP fiduciaries are subject to the same duty of prudence that applies to ERISA fiduciaries in general, except that they need not diversify the fund’s assets. §1104(a)(2). I Petitioner Fifth Third Bancorp, a large financial services firm, maintains for its employees a defined-contribution retirement savings plan. Employees may choose to contribute a portion of their compensation to the Plan as retirement savings, and Fifth Third provides matching contributions of up to 4% of an employee’s compensation. The Plan’s assets are invested in 20 separate funds, including mutual funds and an ESOP. Plan participants can allocate their contributions among the funds however they like; Fifth Third’s matching contributions, on the other hand, are always invested initially in the ESOP, though the participant can then choose to move them to another fund. The Plan requires the ESOP’s funds to be “invested primarily in shares of common stock of Fifth Third.” App. 350. Respondents, who are former Fifth Third employees and ESOP participants, filed this putative class action in Federal District Court in Ohio. They claim that petitioners, Fifth Third and various Fifth Third officers, were fiduciaries of the Plan and violated the duties of loyalty and prudence imposed by ERISA. See §§1109(a), 1132(a)(2). We limit our review to the duty-of-prudence claims. The complaint alleges that by July 2007, the fiduciaries knew or should have known that Fifth Third’s stock was overvalued and excessively risky for two separate reasons. First, publicly available information such as newspaper articles provided early warning signs that subprime lending, which formed a large part of Fifth Third’s business, would soon leave creditors high and dry as the housing market collapsed and subprime borrowers became unable to pay off their mortgages. Second, nonpublic information (which petitioners knew because they were Fifth Third insiders) indicated that Fifth Third officers had deceived the market by making material misstatements about the company’s financial prospects. Those misstatements led the market to overvalue Fifth Third stock—the ESOP’s primary investment—and so petitioners, using the participants’ money, were consequently paying more for that stock than it was worth. The complaint further alleges that a prudent fiduciary in petitioners’ position would have responded to this information in one or more of the following ways: (1) by selling the ESOP’s holdings of Fifth Third stock before the value of those holdings declined, (2) by refraining from purchasing any more Fifth Third stock, (3) by canceling the Plan’s ESOP option, and (4) by disclosing the inside information so that the market would adjust its valuation of Fifth Third stock downward and the ESOP would no longer be overpaying for it. Rather than follow any of these courses of action, petitioners continued to hold and buy Fifth Third stock. Then the market crashed, and Fifth Third’s stock price fell by 74% between July 2007 and September 2009, when the complaint was filed. Since the ESOP’s funds were invested primarily in Fifth Third stock, this fall in price elimi-nated a large part of the retirement savings that the participants had invested in the ESOP. (The stock has since made a partial recovery to around half of its July 2007 price.) The District Court dismissed the complaint for failure to state a claim. 757 F. Supp. 2d 753 (SD Ohio 2010). The court began from the premise that where a lawsuit challenges ESOP fiduciaries’ investment decisions, “the plan fiduciaries start with a presumption that their ‘decision to remain invested in employer securities was reasonable.’ ” Id., at 758 (quoting Kuper v. Iovenko, 66 F. 3d 1447, 1459 (CA6 1995)). The court next held that this rule is applica-ble at the pleading stage and then concluded that the complaint’s allegations were insufficient to overcome it. 757 F. Supp. 2d, at 758–759, 760–762. The Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit reversed. 692 F. 3d 410 (2012). Although it agreed that ESOP fiduciaries are entitled to a presumption of prudence, it took the view that the presumption is evidentiary only and therefore does not apply at the pleading stage. Id., at 418–419. Thus, the Sixth Circuit simply asked whether the allegations in the complaint were sufficient to state a claim for breach of fiduciary duty. Id., at 419. It held that they were. Id., at 419–420. In light of differences among the Courts of Appeals as to the nature of the presumption of prudence applicable to ESOP fiduciaries, we granted the fiduciaries’ petition for certiorari. Compare In re Citigroup ERISA Litigation, 662 F. 3d 128, 139–140 (CA2 2011) (presumption of prudence applies at the pleading stage and requires the plaintiff to establish that the employer was “in a ‘dire situation’ that was objectively unforeseeable by the settlor” (quoting Edgar v. Avaya, Inc., 503 F. 3d 340, 348 (CA3 2007))), with Pfeil v. State Street Bank & Trust Co., 671 F. 3d 585, 592–596 (CA6 2012) (presumption of prudence applies only at summary judgment and beyond and only requires the plaintiff to establish that “ ‘a prudent fiduciary acting under similar circumstances would have made a different investment decision’ ” (quoting Kuper, supra, at 1459)). II A In applying a “presumption of prudence” that favors ESOP fiduciaries’ purchasing or holding of employer stock, the lower courts have sought to reconcile congressional directives that are in some tension with each other. On the one hand, ERISA itself subjects pension plan fiduciaries to a duty of prudence. In a section titled “Fiduciary duties,” it says: “(a) Prudent man standard of care “(1) Subject to sections 1103(c) and (d), 1342, and 1344 of this title, a fiduciary shall discharge his duties with respect to a plan solely in the interest of the participants and beneficiaries and— “(A) for the exclusive purpose of: “(i) providing benefits to participants and their beneficiaries; and “(ii) defraying reasonable expenses of administering the plan; “(B) with the care, skill, prudence, and diligence under the circumstances then prevailing that a prudent man acting in a like capacity and familiar with such matters would use in the conduct of an enterprise of a like character and with like aims; “(C) by diversifying the investments of the plan so as to minimize the risk of large losses, unless under the circumstances it is clearly prudent not to do so; and “(D) in accordance with the documents and instruments governing the plan insofar as such documents and instruments are consistent with the provisions of this subchapter and subchapter III of this chapter.” §1104. See also Central States, Southeast & Southwest Areas Pension Fund v. Central Transport, Inc., 472 U. S. 559, 570 (1985) (Section 1104(a)(1) imposes “strict standards of trustee conduct . . . derived from the common law of trusts—most prominently, a standard of loyalty and a standard of care”). On the other hand, Congress recognizes that ESOPs are “designed to invest primarily in” the stock of the participants’ employer, §1107(d)(6)(A), meaning that they are not prudently diversified. And it has written into law its “interest in encouraging” their use. One statutory provision says: “Intent of Congress Concerning Employee Stock Ownership Plans.—The Congress, in a series of laws [including ERISA] has made clear its interest in encouraging [ESOPs] as a bold and innovative method of strengthening the free private enterprise system which will solve the dual problems of securing capital funds for necessary capital growth and of bringing about stock ownership by all corporate employees. The Congress is deeply concerned that the objectives sought by this series of laws will be made unattainable by regulations and rulings which treat [ESOPs] as conventional retirement plans, which reduce the freedom of the employee trusts and employers to take the necessary steps to implement the plans, and which otherwise block the establishment and success of these plans.” Tax Reform Act of 1976, §803(h), 90Stat. 1590. In addition, and in keeping with this statement of intent, Congress has given ESOP fiduciaries a statutory exemption from some of the duties imposed on ERISA fiduciaries. ERISA specifically provides that, in the case of ESOPs and other eligible individual account plans, “the diversification requirement of [§1104(a)(1)(C)] and the prudence requirement (only to the extent that it requires diversification) of [§1104(a)(1)(B)] [are] not violated by acquisition or holding of [employer stock].” §1104(a)(2). Thus, an ESOP fiduciary is not obliged under §1104(a)(1)(C) to “diversif[y] the investments of the plan so as to minimize the risk of large losses” or under §1104(a)(1)(B) to act “with the care, skill, prudence, and diligence” of a “prudent man” insofar as that duty “re-quires diversification.” B Several Courts of Appeals have gone beyond ERISA’s express provision that ESOP fiduciaries need not diversify by giving ESOP fiduciaries a “presumption of prudence” when their decisions to hold or buy employer stock are challenged as imprudent. Thus, the Third Circuit has held that “an ESOP fiduciary who invests the [ESOP’s] assets in employer stock is entitled to a presumption that it acted consistently with ERISA” in doing so. Moench v. Robertson, 62 F. 3d 553, 571 (1995). The Ninth Circuit has said that to “overcome the presumption of prudent investment, plaintiffs must . . . make allegations that clearly implicate the company’s viability as an ongoing concern or show a precipitous decline in the employer’s stock . . . combined with evidence that the company is on the brink of collapse or is undergoing serious mismanagement.” Quan v. Computer Sciences Corp., 623 F. 3d 870, 882 (2010) (brackets and internal quotation marks omitted). And the Seventh Circuit has described the presumption as requiring plaintiffs to “allege and ultimately prove that the company faced ‘impending collapse’ or ‘dire circumstances’ that could not have been foreseen by the founder of the plan.” White v. Marshall & Ilsley Corp., 714 F. 3d 980, 989 (2013). The Sixth Circuit agreed that some sort of presumption favoring an ESOP fiduciary’s purchase of employer stock is appropriate. But it held that this presumption is an evidentiary rule that does not apply at the pleading stage. It further held that, to overcome the presumption, a plaintiff need not show that the employer was on the “brink of collapse” or the like. Rather, the plaintiff need only show that “ ‘a prudent fiduciary acting under similar circumstances would have made a different investment decision.’ ” 692 F. 3d, at 418 (quoting Kuper, 66 F. 3d, at 1459). Petitioners argue that the lower courts are right to apply a presumption of prudence, that it should apply from the pleading stage onward, and that the presumption should be strongly in favor of ESOP fiduciaries’ purchasing and holding of employer stock. In particular, petitioners propose a rule that a challenge to an ESOP fiduciary’s decision to hold or buy company stock “cannot prevail unless extraordinary circumstances, such as a serious threat to the employer’s viability, mean that continued investment would substantially impair the purpose of the plan.” Brief for Petitioners 16. In petitioners’ view, the “purpose of the plan,” in the case of an ESOP, is promoting employee ownership of the employer’s stock over the long term. And, petitioners assert, that purpose is “substantially impair[ed]”—rendering continued investment imprudent—only when “a serious threat to the employer’s viability” makes it likely that the employer will go out of business. This is because the goal of employee ownership will be substantially impaired only if the em-ployer goes out of business, leaving the employees withno company to own. Id., at 24. We must decide whether ERISA contains some such presumption. III A In our view, the law does not create a special presumption favoring ESOP fiduciaries. Rather, the same standard of prudence applies to all ERISA fiduciaries, including ESOP fiduciaries, except that an ESOP fiduciary is under no duty to diversify the ESOP’s holdings. This conclusion follows from the pertinent provisions of ERISA, which are set forth above. Section 1104(a)(1)(B) “imposes a ‘prudent person’ standard by which to measure fiduciaries’ investment decisions and disposition of assets.” Massachusetts Mut. Life Ins. Co. v. Russell, 473 U. S. 134, 143, n. 10 (1985) . Section 1104(a)(1)(C) requires ERISA fiduciaries to diversify plan assets. And §1104(a)(2) establishes the extent to which those duties are loosened in the ESOP context to ensure that employers are permitted and encouraged to offer ESOPs. Section 1104(a)(2) makes no reference to a special “presumption” in favor of ESOP fiduciaries. It does not require plaintiffs to allege that the employer was on the “brink of collapse,” under “extraordinary circumstances,” or the like. Instead, §1104(a)(2) simply modifies the duties imposed by §1104(a)(1) in a precisely delineated way: It provides that an ESOP fiduciary is exempt from §1104(a)(1)(C)’s diversification requirement and also from §1104(a)(1)(B)’s duty of prudence, but “only to the extent that it requires diversification.” §1104(a)(2) (emphasis added). Thus, ESOP fiduciaries, unlike ERISA fiduciaries generally, are not liable for losses that result from a failure to diversify. But aside from that distinction, because ESOP fiduciaries are ERISA fiduciaries and because §1104(a)(1)(B)’s duty of prudence applies to all ERISA fiduciaries, ESOP fiduciaries are subject to the duty of prudence just as other ERISA fiduciaries are. B Petitioners make several arguments to the contrary. First, petitioners argue that the special purpose of an ESOP—investing participants’ savings in the stock of their employer—calls for a presumption that such investments are prudent. Their argument is as follows: ERISA defines the duty of prudence in terms of what a prudent person would do “in the conduct of an enterprise of a like character and with like aims.” §1104(a)(1)(B). The “character” and “aims” of an ESOP differ from those of an ordinary retirement investment, such as a diversified mutual fund. An ordinary plan seeks (1) to maximize retirement savings for participants while (2) avoiding excessive risk. But an ESOP also seeks (3) to promote employee ownership of employer stock. For instance, Fifth Third’s Plan requires the ESOP’s assets to be “invested primarily in shares of common stock of Fifth Third.” App. 350. In light of this additional goal, an ESOP fiduciary’s decision to buy more shares of employer stock, even if it would be imprudent were it viewed solely as an attempt to secure financial retirement benefits while avoiding excessive risk, might nonetheless be prudent if understood as an attempt to promote employee ownership of employer stock, a goal that Congress views as important. See Tax Reform Act of 1976, §803(h), 90Stat. 1590. Thus, a claim that an ESOP fiduciary’s investment in employer stock was imprudent as a way of securing retirement savings should be viewed unfavorably because, unless the company was about to go out of business, that investment was advancing the additional goal of employee ownership of employer stock. We cannot accept the claim that underlies this argument, namely, that the content of ERISA’s duty of prudence varies depending upon the specific nonpecuniary goal set out in an ERISA plan, such as what petitioners claim is the nonpecuniary goal here. Taken in context, §1104(a)(1)(B)’s reference to “an enterprise of a like character and with like aims” means an enterprise with what the immediately preceding provision calls the “exclusive purpose” to be pursued by all ERISA fiduciaries: “providing benefits to participants and their beneficiaries” while “defraying reasonable expenses of administering the plan.” §§1104(a)(1)(A)(i), (ii). Read in the context of ERISA as a whole, the term “benefits” in the provision just quoted must be understood to refer to the sort of financial benefits (such as retirement income) that trustees who manage investments typically seek to secure for the trust’s beneficiaries. Cf. §1002(2)(A) (defining “employee pension bene-fit plan” and “pension plan” to mean plans that provide employees with “retirement income” or other “deferral of income”). The term does not cover nonpecuniary benefits like those supposed to arise from employee ownership of employer stock. Consider the statute’s requirement that fiduciaries act “in accordance with the documents and instruments governing the plan insofar as such documents and instruments are consistent with the provisions of this subchapter.” §1104(a)(1)(D) (emphasis added). This provision makes clear that the duty of prudence trumps the instructions of a plan document, such as an instruction to invest exclusively in employer stock even if financial goals demand the contrary. See also §1110(a) (With irrelevant exceptions, “any provision in an agreement or instrument which purports to relieve a fiduciary from responsibility . . . for any . . . duty under this part shall be void as against public policy”). This rule would make little sense if, as petitioners argue, the duty of prudence is defined by the aims of the particular plan as set out in the plan documents, since in that case the duty of prudence could never conflict with a plan document. Consider also §1104(a)(2), which exempts an ESOP fiduciary from §1104(a)(1)(B)’s duty of prudence but “only to the extent that it requires diversification.” What need would there be for this specific provision were the nature of §1104(a)(1)(B)’s duty of prudence altered anyway in the case of an ESOP in light of the ESOP’s aim of promoting employee ownership of employer stock? Cf. Arlington Central School Dist. Bd. of Ed. v. Murphy, 548 U. S. 291 , n. 1 (2006) (“[I]t is generally presumed that statutes do not contain surplusage”). Petitioners are right to point out that Congress, in seeking to permit and promote ESOPs, was pursuing purposes other than the financial security of plan participants. See, e.g., Tax Reform Act of 1976, §803(h), 90Stat. 1590 (Con-gress intended ESOPs to help “secur[e] capital funds for necessary capital growth and . . . brin[g] about stock ownership by all corporate employees”). Congress pursued those purposes by promoting ESOPs with tax incentives. See 26 U. S. C. §§402(e)(4), 404(k), 1042. And it also pursued them by exempting ESOPs from ERISA’s diversification requirement, which otherwise would have precluded their creation. 29 U. S. C. §1104(a)(2). But we are not convinced that Congress also sought to promote ESOPs by further relaxing the duty of prudence as ap-plied to ESOPs with the sort of presumption proposed by petitioners. Second, and relatedly, petitioners contend that the duty of prudence should be read in light of the rule under the common law of trusts that “the settlor can reduce or waive the prudent man standard of care by specific language in the trust instrument.” G. Bogert & G. Bogert, Law of Trusts and Trustees §541, p. 172 (rev. 2d ed. 1993); see also Restatement (Second) of Trusts §174, Comment d (1957) (“By the terms of the trust the requirement of care and skill may be relaxed or modified”). The argument is that, by commanding the ESOP fiduciary to invest primarily in Fifth Third stock, the plan documents waived the duty of prudence to the extent that it comes into conflict with investment in Fifth Third stock—at least unless “extraordinary circumstances” arise that so threaten the goal of employee ownership of Fifth Third stock that the fiduciaries must assume that the settlor would want them to depart from that goal under the common-law “deviation doctrine.” See id., §167. This argument fails, however, in light of this Court’s holding that, by contrast to the rule at common law, “trust documents cannot excuse trustees from their duties under ERISA.” Central States, Southeast & Southwest Areas Pension Fund, 472 U. S., at 568; see also 29 U. S. C. §§1104(a)(1)(D), 1110(a). Third, petitioners argue that subjecting ESOP fiduciar-ies to a duty of prudence without the protection of a special presumption will lead to conflicts with the legal prohibition on insider trading. The potential for conflict arises because ESOP fiduciaries often are company insiders and because suits against insider fiduciaries frequently allege, as the complaint in this case alleges, that the fiduciaries were imprudent in failing to act on inside information they had about the value of the employer’s stock. This concern is a legitimate one. But an ESOP-specific rule that a fiduciary does not act imprudently in buying or holding company stock unless the company is on the brink of collapse (or the like) is an ill-fitting means of addressing it. While ESOP fiduciaries may be more likely to have insider information about a company that the fund is investing in than are other ERISA fiduciaries, the potential for conflict with the securities laws would be the same for a non-ESOP fiduciary who had relevant inside information about a potential investment. And the potential for conflict is the same for an ESOP fiduciary whose company is on the brink of collapse as for a fiduciary who is invested in a healthier company. (Surely a fiduciary is not obligated to break the insider trading laws even if his company is about to fail.) The potential for conflict therefore does not persuade us to accept a presumption of the sort adopted by the lower courts and proposed by petitioners. We discuss alternative means of dealing with the potential for conflict in Part IV, infra. Finally, petitioners argue that, without some sort of special presumption, the threat of costly duty-of-prudence lawsuits will deter companies from offering ESOPs to their employees, contrary to the stated intent of Congress. Cf. Massachusetts Mut. Life Ins. Co., 473 U. S., at 148, n. 17 (“Congress was concerned lest the cost of federal standards discourage the growth of private pension plans”). ESOP plans instruct their fiduciaries to invest in company stock, and §1104(a)(1)(D) requires fiduciaries to follow plan documents so long as they do not conflict with ERISA. Thus, in many cases an ESOP fiduciary who fears that continuing to invest in company stock may be imprudent finds himself between a rock and a hard place: If he keeps investing and the stock goes down he may be sued for acting imprudently in violation of §1104(a)(1)(B), butif he stops investing and the stock goes up he may besued for disobeying the plan documents in violation of§1104(a)(1)(D). See, e.g., White, 714 F. 3d, at 987 (“[F]iduciaries could be liable either for the company stock’s poor performance if they continue to invest in employer stock, or for missing the opportunity to benefit from good performance if they do not. . . . Such a high exposure to litigation risks in either direction could discourage employers from offering ESOPs, which are favored by Congress”); Evans v. Akers, 534 F. 3d 65, 68 (CA1 2008) (describing two lawsuits challenging the decisions of a plan’s fiduciaries with “diametrically opposed theor[ies] of liability”: one arguing that the fiduciaries acted imprudently by continuing to invest in company stock, and the other contending that they acted imprudently by divesting “despite the company’s solid potential to emerge from bankruptcy with substantial value for shareholders”). Petitioners argue that, given the threat of such expensive litigation, ESOPs cannot thrive unless their fiduciaries are granted a defense-friendly presumption. Petitioners are basically seeking relief from what they believe are meritless, economically burdensome lawsuits. We agree that Congress sought to encourage the creation of ESOPs. And we have recognized that “ERISA represents a ‘ “careful balancing” between ensuring fair and prompt enforcement of rights under a plan and the encouragement of the creation of such plans.’ ” Conkright v. Frommert, 559 U. S. 506, 517 (2010) (quoting Aetna Health Inc. v. Davila, 542 U. S. 200, 215 (2004) ); see also Varity Corp. v. Howe, 516 U. S. 489, 497 (1996) (In “inter-pret[ing] ERISA’s fiduciary duties,” “courts may have to take account of competing congressional purposes, such as Congress’ desire to offer employees enhanced protection for their benefits, on the one hand, and, on the other, its desire not to create a system that is so complex that administrative costs, or litigation expenses, unduly discourage employers from offering welfare benefit plans in the first place”). At the same time, we do not believe that the presumption at issue here is an appropriate way to weed out meritless lawsuits or to provide the requisite “balancing.” The proposed presumption makes it impossible for a plaintiff to state a duty-of-prudence claim, no matter how meritorious, unless the employer is in very bad economic circumstances. Such a rule does not readily divide the plausible sheep from the meritless goats. That important task can be better accomplished through careful, context-sensitive scrutiny of a complaint’s allegations. We consequently stand by our conclusion that the law does not create a special presumption of prudence for ESOP fiduciaries. IV We consider more fully one important mechanism for weeding out meritless claims, the motion to dismiss for failure to state a claim. That mechanism, which gave rise to the lower court decisions at issue here, requires careful judicial consideration of whether the complaint states a claim that the defendant has acted imprudently. See Fed. Rule Civ. Proc. 12(b)(6); Ashcroft v. Iqbal, 556 U. S. 662 –680 (2009); Bell Atlantic Corp. v. Twombly, 550 U. S. 544 –563 (2007). Because the content of the duty of prudence turns on “the circumstances . . . prevailing” at the time the fiduciary acts, §1104(a)(1)(B), the appropriate inquiry will necessarily be context specific. The District Court in this case granted petitioners’ motion to dismiss the complaint because it held that re-spondents could not overcome the presumption of prudence. The Court of Appeals, by contrast, concluded that no presumption applied. And we agree with that conclusion. The Court of Appeals, however, went on to hold that respondents had stated a plausible duty-of-prudence claim. 692 F. 3d, at 419–420. The arguments made here, along with our review of the record, convince us that the judgment of the Court of Appeals should be vacated and the case remanded. On remand, the Court of Appeals should apply the pleading standard as discussed in Twombly and Iqbal in light of the following considerations. A Respondents allege that, as of July 2007, petitioners knew or should have known in light of publicly available information, such as newspaper articles, that continuing to hold and purchase Fifth Third stock was imprudent. App. 48–53. The complaint alleges, among other things, that petitioners “continued to allow the Plan’s investment in Fifth Third Stock even during the time that the stock price was declining in value as a result of [the] collapse of the housing market” and that “[a] prudent fiduciary facing similar circumstances would not have stood idly by as the Plan’s assets were decimated.” Id., at 53. In our view, where a stock is publicly traded, allegations that a fiduciary should have recognized from publicly available information alone that the market was over- or undervaluing the stock are implausible as a general rule, at least in the absence of special circumstances. Many investors take the view that “ ‘they have little hope of outperforming the market in the long run based solely on their analysis of publicly available information,’ ” and accordingly they “ ‘rely on the security’s market price as an unbiased assessment of the security’s value in light of all public information.’ ” Halliburton Co. v. Erica P. John Fund, Inc. ___ U. S. ___, ___ (2014) (slip op., at 11–12) (quoting Amgen Inc. v. Connecticut Retirement Plans and Trust Funds, 568 U. S. ___, ___ (2013) (slip op., at 5)). ERISA fiduciaries, who likewise could reasonably see “little hope of outperforming the market . . . based solely on their analysis of publicly available information,” ibid., may, as a general matter, likewise prudently rely on the market price. In other words, a fiduciary usually “is not imprudent to assume that a major stock market . . . provides the best estimate of the value of the stocks traded on it that is available to him.” Summers v. State Street Bank & Trust Co., 453 F. 3d 404, 408 (CA7 2006); see also White, 714 F. 3d, at 992 (A fiduciary’s “fail[ure] to outsmart a presumptively efficient market . . . is . . . not a sound basis for imposing liability”); cf. Quan, 623 F. 3d, at 881 (“Fiduciaries are not expected to predict the future of the company stock’s performance”). We do not here consider whether a plaintiff could nonetheless plausibly allege imprudence on the basis of pub-licly available information by pointing to a special circum-stance affecting the reliability of the market price as “ ‘an unbiased assessment of the security’s value in light of all public information,’ ” Halliburton Co., supra, at ___ (slip op., at 12) (quoting Amgen Inc., supra, at ___ (slip op., at 5)), that would make reliance on the market’s valuation imprudent. In this case, the Court of Appeals held that the complaint stated a claim because respondents “allege that Fifth Third engaged in lending practices that were equivalent to participation in the subprime lending market, that Defendants were aware of the risks of such investments by the start of the class period, and that such risks made Fifth Third stock an imprudent investment.” 692 F. 3d, at 419–420. The Court of Appeals did not point to any special circumstance rendering reliance on the market price imprudent. The court’s decision to deny dismissal therefore appears to have been based on an erroneous understanding of the prudence of relying on market prices. B Respondents also claim that petitioners behaved imprudently by failing to act on the basis of nonpublic information that was available to them because they were Fifth Third insiders. In particular, the complaint alleges that petitioners had inside information indicating that the market was overvaluing Fifth Third stock and that they could have used this information to prevent losses to the fund by (1) selling the ESOP’s holdings of Fifth Third stock; (2) refraining from future stock purchases (including by removing the Plan’s ESOP option altogether); or (3) publicly disclosing the inside information so that the market would correct the stock price downward, with the result that the ESOP could continue to buy Fifth Third stock without paying an inflated price for it. See App. 17, 88–89, 113. To state a claim for breach of the duty of prudence on the basis of inside information, a plaintiff must plausibly allege an alternative action that the defendant could have taken that would have been consistent with the securities laws and that a prudent fiduciary in the same circumstances would not have viewed as more likely to harm the fund than to help it. The following three points inform the requisite analysis. First, in deciding whether the complaint states a claim upon which relief can be granted, courts must bear in mind that the duty of prudence, under ERISA as under the common law of trusts, does not require a fiduciary to break the law. Cf. Restatement (Second) of Trusts §166, Comment a (“The trustee is not under a duty to the beneficiary to do an act which is criminal or tortious”). Federal securities laws “are violated when a corporate insider trades in the securities of his corporation on the basis of material, nonpublic information.” United States v. O’Hagan, 521 U. S. 642 –652 (1997). As every Court of Appeals to address the question has held, ERISA’s duty of prudence cannot require an ESOP fiduciary to perform an action—such as divesting the fund’s holdings of the employer’s stock on the basis of inside information—that would violate the securities laws. See, e.g., Rinehart v. Akers, 722 F. 3d 137, 146–147 (CA2 2013); Kirschbaum v. Reliant Energy, Inc., 526 F. 3d 243, 256 (CA5 2008); White, supra, at 992; Quan, supra, at 881–882, and n. 8; Lanfear v. Home Depot, Inc., 679 F. 3d 1267, 1282 (CA11 2012). To the extent that the Sixth Circuit denied dismissal based on the theory that the duty of prudence required petitioners to sell the ESOP’s holdings of Fifth Third stock, its denial of dismissal was erroneous. Second, where a complaint faults fiduciaries for failing to decide, on the basis of the inside information, to refrain from making additional stock purchases or for failing to disclose that information to the public so that the stock would no longer be overvalued, additional considerations arise. The courts should consider the extent to which an ERISA-based obligation either to refrain on the basis of inside information from making a planned trade or to disclose inside information to the public could conflict with the complex insider trading and corporate disclosure requirements imposed by the federal securities laws or with the objectives of those laws. Cf. 29 U. S. C. §1144(d) (“Nothing in this subchapter [which includes §1104] shall be construed to alter, amend, modify, invalidate, impair, or supersede any law of the United States . . . or any rule or regulation issued under any such law”); Black & Decker Disability Plan v. Nord, 538 U. S. 822, 831 (2003) (“Although Congress ‘expect[ed]’ courts would develop ‘a fed-eral common law of rights and obligations under ERISA-regulated plans,’ the scope of permissible judicial innova-tion is narrower in areas where other federal actors are engaged” (quoting Pilot Life Ins. Co. v. Dedeaux, 481 U. S. 41, 56 (1987) ; citation omitted)); Varity Corp., 516 U. S., at 506 (reserving the question “whether ERISA fiduciaries have any fiduciary duty to disclose truthful information on their own initiative, or in response to employee inquiries”). The U. S. Securities and Exchange Commission has not advised us of its views on these matters, and we believe those views may well be relevant. Third, lower courts faced with such claims should also consider whether the complaint has plausibly alleged that a prudent fiduciary in the defendant’s position could not have concluded that stopping purchases—which the market might take as a sign that insider fiduciaries viewed the employer’s stock as a bad investment—or publicly disclosing negative information would do more harm than good to the fund by causing a drop in the stock price and a concomitant drop in the value of the stock already held by the fund. * * * We leave it to the courts below to apply the foregoing to the complaint in this case in the first instance. The judgment of the Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit is vacated and the case is remanded for further proceedings consistent with this opinion. It is so ordered.

572.US.701

After this Court held that the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments forbid the execution of persons with intellectual disability, see Atkins v. Virginia, 536 U.S. 304, 321, Hall asked a Florida state court to vacate his sentence, presenting evidence that included an IQ test score of 71. The court denied his motion, determining that a Florida statute mandated that he show an IQ score of 70 or below before being permitted to present any additional intellectual disability evidence. The State Supreme Court rejected Hall’s appeal, finding the State’s 70-point threshold constitutional. Held: The State’s threshold requirement, as interpreted by the Florida Supreme Court, is unconstitutional. Pp. 5–22. (a) The Eighth Amendment, which “reaffirms the duty of the government to respect the dignity of all persons,” Roper v. Simmons, 543 U.S. 551, 560, prohibits the execution of persons with intellectual disability. No legitimate penological purpose is served by executing the intellectually disabled. Atkins, 563 U. S., at 317, 320. Prohibiting such executions also protects the integrity of the trial process for individuals who face “a special risk of wrongful execution” because they are more likely to give false confessions, are often poor witnesses, and are less able to give meaningful assistance to their counsel. Id., at 320–321. In determining whether Florida’s intellectual disability definition implements these principles and Atkins’ holding, it is proper to consider the psychiatric and professional studies that elaborate on the purpose and meaning of IQ scores and how the scores relate to Atkins, and to consider how the several States have implemented Atkins. Pp. 5–7. (b) Florida’s rule disregards established medical practice. On its face, Florida’s statute could be consistent with the views of the medical community discussed in Atkins and with the conclusions reached here. It defines intellectual disability as the existence of concurrent deficits in intellectual and adaptive functioning, long the defining characteristic of intellectual disability. See Atkins, supra, at 308. And nothing in the statute precludes Florida from considering an IQ test’s standard error of measurement (SEM), a statistical fact reflecting the test’s inherent imprecision and acknowledging that an individual score is best understood as a range, e.g., five points on either side of the recorded score. As interpreted by the Florida Supreme Court, however, Florida’s rule disregards established medical practice in two interrelated ways: It takes an IQ score as final and conclusive evidence of a defendant’s intellectual capacity, when experts would consider other evidence; and it relies on a purportedly scientific measurement of a defendant’s abilities, while refusing to recognize that measurement’s inherent imprecision. While professionals have long agreed that IQ test scores should be read as a range, Florida uses the test score as a fixed number, thus barring further consideration of other relevant evidence, e.g., deficits in adaptive functioning, including evidence of past performance, environment, and upbringing. Pp. 7–12. (c) The rejection of a strict 70-point cutoff in the vast majority of States and a “consistency in the trend,” Roper, supra, at 567, toward recognizing the SEM provide strong evidence of consensus that society does not regard this strict cutoff as proper or humane. At most, nine States mandate a strict IQ score cutoff at 70. Thus, in 41 States, an individual in Hall’s position would not be deemed automatically eligible for the death penalty. The direction of change has been consistent. Since Atkins, many States have passed legislation to comply with the constitutional requirement that persons with intellectual disability not be executed. Two of those States appear to set a strict cutoff at 70, but at least 11 others have either abolished the death penalty or passed legislation allowing defendants to present additional intellectual disability evidence when their IQ score is above 70. Every state legislature, save one, to have considered the issue after Atkins and whose law has been interpreted by its courts has taken a position contrary to Florida’s. Pp. 12–16. (d) Atkins acknowledges the inherent error in IQ testing and provides substantial guidance on the definition of intellectual disability. The States play a critical role in advancing the protections of Atkins and providing this Court with an understanding of how intellectual disability should be measured and assessed, but Atkins did not give them unfettered discretion to define the full scope of the constitutional protection. Clinical definitions for intellectual disability which, by their express terms, rejected a strict IQ test score cutoff at 70, and which have long included the SEM, were a fundamental premise of Atkins. See 536 U. S., at 309, nn. 3, 5. A fleeting mention of Florida in a citation listing States that had outlawed the execution of the intellectually disabled, id., at 315, did not signal the Atkins Court’s approval of the State’s current understanding of its law, which had not yet been interpreted by the Florida Supreme Court to require a strict 70-point cutoff. Pp. 16–19. (e) When a defendant’s IQ test score falls within the test’s acknowledged and inherent margin of error, the defendant must be able to present additional evidence of intellectual disability, including testimony regarding adaptive deficits. This legal determination of intellectual disability is distinct from a medical diagnosis but is informed by the medical community’s diagnostic framework, which is of particular help here, where no alternative intellectual disability definition is presented, and where this Court and the States have placed substantial reliance on the medical profession’s expertise. Pp. 19–22. 109 So. 3d 704, reversed and remanded. Kennedy, J., delivered the opinion of the Court, in which Ginsburg, Breyer, Sotomayor, and Kagan, JJ., joined. Alito, J., filed a dissenting opinion, in which Roberts, C. J., and Scalia and Thomas, JJ., joined.

This Court has held that the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments to the Constitution forbid the execution of persons with intellectual disability. Atkins v. Virginia, 536 U. S. 304, 321 (2002) . Florida law defines intellectual disability to require an IQ test score of 70 or less. If, from test scores, a prisoner is deemed to have an IQ above 70, all further exploration of intellectual disability is foreclosed. This rigid rule, the Court now holds, creates an unacceptable risk that persons with intellectual disability will be executed, and thus is unconstitutional. I On February 21, 1978, Freddie Lee Hall, petitioner here, and his accomplice, Mark Ruffin, kidnaped, beat, raped, and murdered Karol Hurst, a pregnant, 21-year-old newlywed. Afterward, Hall and Ruffin drove to a convenience store they planned to rob. In the parking lot of the store, they killed Lonnie Coburn, a sheriff’s deputy who attempted to apprehend them. Hall received the death penalty for both murders, although his sentence for the Coburn murder was later reduced on account of insufficient evidence of premeditation. Hall v. Florida, 403 So. 2d 1319, 1321 (Fla. 1981) (per curiam). Hall argues that he cannot be executed because of his intellectual disability. Previous opinions of this Court have employed the term “mental retardation.” This opinion uses the term “intellectual disability” to describe the identical phenomenon. See Rosa’s Law, 124Stat. 2643 (changing entries in the U. S. Code from “mental retardation” to “intellectual disability”); Schalock et. al, The Renaming of Mental Retardation: Understanding the Change to the Term Intellectual Disability, 45 Intellectual & Developmental Disabilities 116 (2007). This change in terminology is approved and used in the latest edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, one of the basic texts used by psychiatrists and other experts; the manual is often referred to by its initials “DSM,” followed by its edition number, e.g., “DSM–5.” See American Psychiatric Association, Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders 33 (5th ed. 2013). When Hall was first sentenced, this Court had not yet ruled that the Eighth Amendment prohibits States from imposing the death penalty on persons with intellectual disability. See Penry v. Lynaugh, 492 U. S. 302, 340 (1989) . And at the time, Florida law did not consider intellectual disability as a statutory mitigating factor. After this Court held that capital defendants must be permitted to present nonstatutory mitigating evidence in death penalty proceedings, Hitchcock v. Dugger, 481 U. S. 393 –399 (1987), Hall was resentenced. Hall then presented substantial and unchallenged evidence of intellectual disability. School records indicated that his teachers identified him on numerous occasions as “[m]entally retarded.” App. 482–483. Hall had been prosecuted for a different, earlier crime. His lawyer in that matter later testified that the lawyer “[c]ouldn’t really understand anything [Hall] said.” Id., at 480. And, with respect to the murder trial given him in this case, Hall’s counsel recalled that Hall could not assist in his own defense because he had “ ‘a mental . . . level much lower than his age,’ ” at best comparable to the lawyer’s 4-year-old daughter. Brief for Petitioner 11. A number of medical clinicians testified that, in their professional opinion, Hall was “significantly retarded,” App. 507; was “mentally retarded,” id., at 517; and had levels of understanding “typically [seen] with toddlers,” id., at 523. As explained below in more detail, an individual’s ability or lack of ability to adapt or adjust to the requirements of daily life, and success or lack of success in doing so, is central to the framework followed by psychiatrists and other professionals in diagnosing intellectual disability. See DSM–5, at 37. Hall’s siblings testified that there was something “very wrong” with him as a child. App. 466. Hall was “slow with speech and . . . slow to learn.” Id., at 490. He “walked and talked long after his other brothers and sisters,” id., at 461, and had “great difficulty forming his words,” id., at 467. Hall’s upbringing appeared to make his deficits in adaptive functioning all the more severe. Hall was raised—in the words of the sentencing judge—“under the most horrible family circumstances imaginable.” Id., at 53. Al-though “[t]eachers and siblings alike immediately recognized [Hall] to be significantly mentally retarded . . . [t]his retardation did not garner any sympathy from his mother, but rather caused much scorn to befall him.” Id., at 20. Hall was “[c]onstantly beaten because he was ‘slow’ or because he made simple mistakes.” Ibid. His mother “would strap [Hall] to his bed at night, with a rope thrown over a rafter. In the morning, she would awaken Hall by hoisting him up and whipping him with a belt, rope, or cord.” Ibid. Hall was beaten “ten or fifteen times a week sometimes.” Id., at 477. His mother tied him “in a ‘croaker’ sack, swung it over a fire, and beat him,” “buried himin the sand up to his neck to ‘strengthen his legs,’ ” and “held a gun on Hall . . . while she poked [him] with sticks.” Hall v. Florida, 614 So. 2d 473, 480 (Fla. 1993) (Barkett, C. J., dissenting). The jury, notwithstanding this testimony, voted to sentence Hall to death, and the sentencing court adopted the jury’s recommendation. The court found that there was “substantial evidence in the record” to support the finding that “Freddie Lee Hall has been mentally retarded his entire life.” App. 46. Yet the court also “suspect[ed] that the defense experts [were] guilty of some professional overkill,” because “[n]othing of which the experts testified could explain how a psychotic, mentally-retarded, brain-damaged, learning-disabled, speech-impaired person could formulate a plan whereby a car was stolen and a convenience store was robbed.” Id., at 42. The sentencing court went on to state that, even assuming the expert testimony to be accurate, “the learning disabilities, mental retardation, and other mental difficulties . . . cannot be used to justify, excuse or extenuate the moral culpability of the defendant in this cause.” Id., at 56. Hall was again sentenced to death. The Florida Supreme Court affirmed, concluding that “Hall’s argument that his mental retardation provided a pretense of moral or legal justification” had “no merit.” Hall, 614 So. 2d, at 478. Chief Justice Barkett dissented, arguing that executing a person with intellectual disability violated the State Constitution’s prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment. Id., at 481–482. In 2002, this Court ruled that the Eighth Amendment prohibited the execution of persons with intellectual disability. Atkins v. Virginia, 536 U. S., at 321. On November 30, 2004, Hall filed a motion claiming that he had intellectual disability and could not be executed. More than five years later, Florida held a hearing to consider Hall’s motion. Hall again presented evidence of intellectual disability, including an IQ test score of 71. (Hall had received nine IQ evaluations in 40 years, with scores ranging from 60 to 80, Brief for Respondent 8, but the sentencing court excluded the two scores below 70 for evidentiary reasons, leaving only scores between 71 and 80. See App. 107; 109 So. 3d 704, 707 (Fla. 2012)). In response, Florida argued that Hall could not be found intellectually disabled because Florida law requires that, as a threshold matter, Hall show an IQ test score of 70 or below before presenting any additional evidence of his intellectual disability. App. 278–279 (“[U]nder the law, if an I. Q. is above 70, a person is not mentally retarded”). The Florida Supreme Court rejected Hall’s appeal and held that Florida’s 70-point threshold was constitutional. 109 So. 3d, at 707–708. This Court granted certiorari. 571 U. S. ___ (2013). II The Eighth Amendment provides that “[e]xcessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted.” The Fourteenth Amendment applies those restrictions to the States. Roper v. Simmons, 543 U. S. 551, 560 (2005) ; Furman v. Georgia, 408 U. S. 238 –240 (1972) (per curiam). “By protecting even those convicted of heinous crimes, the Eighth Amendment reaffirms the duty of the government to respect the dignity of all persons.” Roper, supra, at 560; see also Trop v. Dulles, 356 U. S. 86, 100 (1958) (plurality opinion) (“The basic concept underlying the Eighth Amendment is nothing less than the dignity of man”). The Eighth Amendment “is not fastened to the obsolete but may acquire meaning as public opinion becomes enlightened by a humane justice.” Weems v. United States, 217 U. S. 349, 378 (1910) . To enforce the Constitution’s protection of human dignity, this Court looks to the “evolving standards of decency that mark the progress of a maturing society.” Trop, supra, at 101. The Eighth Amendment’s protection of dignity reflects the Nation we have been, the Nation we are, and the Nation we aspire to be. This is to affirm that the Nation’s constant, unyielding purpose must be to transmit the Constitution so that its precepts and guarantees retain their meaning and force. The Eighth Amendment prohibits certain punishments as a categorical matter. No natural-born citizen may be denaturalized. Ibid. No person may be sentenced to death for a crime committed as a juvenile. Roper, supra, at 578. And, as relevant for this case, persons with intellectual disability may not be executed. Atkins, 536 U. S., at 321. No legitimate penological purpose is served by executing a person with intellectual disability. Id., at 317, 320. To do so contravenes the Eighth Amendment, for to impose the harshest of punishments on an intellectually disabled person violates his or her inherent dignity as a human being. “[P]unishment is justified under one or more of three principal rationales: rehabilitation, deterrence, and retribution.” Kennedy v. Louisiana, 554 U. S. 407, 420 (2008) . Rehabilitation, it is evident, is not an applicable rationale for the death penalty. See Gregg v. Georgia, 428 U. S. 153, 183 (1976) (joint opinion of Stewart, Powell, and Stevens, JJ.). As for deterrence, those with intellectual disability are, by reason of their condition, likely unable to make the calculated judgments that are the premise for the deterrence rationale. They have a “diminished ability” to “process information, to learn from experience, to engage in logical reasoning, or to control impulses . . . [which] make[s] it less likely that they can process the information of the possibility of execution as a penalty and, as a result, control their conduct based upon that information.” Atkins, 536 U. S., at 320. Retributive values are also ill-served by executing those with intellectual disability. The diminished capacity of the intellectually disabled lessens moral culpability and hence the retributive value of the punishment. See id., at 319 (“If the culpability of the average murderer is insufficient to justify the most extreme sanction available to the State, the lesser culpability of the mentally retarded offender surely does not merit that form of retribution”). A further reason for not imposing the death penalty on a person who is intellectually disabled is to protect the integrity of the trial process. These persons face “a special risk of wrongful execution” because they are more likely to give false confessions, are often poor witnesses, and are less able to give meaningful assistance to their counsel. Id., at 320–321. This is not to say that under current law persons with intellectual disability who “meet the law’s requirements for criminal responsibility” may not be tried and punished. Id., at 306. They may not, however, receive the law’s most severe sentence. Id., at 318. The question this case presents is how intellectual disability must be defined in order to implement these principles and the holding of Atkins. To determine if Florida’s cutoff rule is valid, it is proper to consider the psychiatric and professional studies that elaborate on the purpose and meaning of IQ scores to determine how the scores relate to the holding of Atkins. This in turn leads to a better understanding of how the legislative policies of various States, and the holdings of state courts, implement the Atkins rule. That understanding informs our determination whether there is a consensus that instructs how to decide the specific issue presented here. And, in conclusion, this Court must express its own independent determination reached in light of the instruction found in those sources and authorities. III A That this Court, state courts, and state legislatures consult and are informed by the work of medical experts in determining intellectual disability is unsurprising. Those professionals use their learning and skills to study and consider the consequences of the classification schemes they devise in the diagnosis of persons with mental or psychiatric disorders or disabilities. Society relies upon medical and professional expertise to define and explain how to diagnose the mental condition at issue. And the definition of intellectual disability by skilled professionals has implications far beyond the confines of the death penalty: for it is relevant to education, access to social programs, and medical treatment plans. In determining who qualifies as intellectually disabled, it is proper to consult the medical community’s opinions. As the Court noted in Atkins, the medical community defines intellectual disability according to three criteria: significantly subaverage intellectual functioning, deficits in adaptive functioning (the inability to learn basic skills and adjust behavior to changing circumstances), and onset of these deficits during the developmental period. See id., at 308, n. 3; DSM–5, at 33; Brief for American Psychological Association et al. as Amici Curiae 12–13 (hereinafter APA Brief). This last factor, referred to as “age of onset,” is not at issue. The first and second criteria—deficits in intellectual functioning and deficits in adaptive functioning—are central here. In the context of a formal assessment, “[t]he existence of concurrent deficits in intellectual and adaptive functioning has long been the defining characteristic of intellectual disability.” Id., at 11. On its face, the Florida statute could be consistent with the views of the medical community noted and discussed in Atkins. Florida’s statute defines intellectual disability for purposes of an Atkins proceeding as “significantly subaverage general intellectual functioning existing concurrently with deficits in adaptive behavior and manifested during the period from conception to age 18.” Fla. Stat. §921.137(1) (2013). The statute further defines “significantly subaverage general intellectual functioning” as “performance that is two or more standard deviations from the mean score on a standardized intelligence test.” Ibid. The mean IQ test score is 100. The concept of standard deviation describes how scores are dispersed in a population. Standard deviation is distinct from standard error of measurement, a concept which describes the reliability of a test and is discussed further below. The standard deviation on an IQ test is approximately 15 points, and so two standard deviations is approximately 30 points. Thus a test taker who performs “two or more standard deviations from the mean” will score approximately 30 points below the mean on an IQ test, i.e., a score of approximately 70 points. On its face this statute could be interpreted consistently with Atkins and with the conclusions this Court reaches in the instant case. Nothing in the statute precludes Florida from taking into account the IQ test’s standard error of measurement, and as discussed below there is evidence that Florida’s Legislature intended to include the measurement error in the calculation. But the Florida Supreme Court has interpreted the provisions more nar-rowly. It has held that a person whose test score is above 70, including a score within the margin for measurement error, does not have an intellectual disability and is barred from presenting other evidence that would show his faculties are limited. See Cherry v. State, 959 So. 2d 702, 712–713 (Fla. 2007) (per curiam). That strict IQ test score cutoff of 70 is the issue in this case. Pursuant to this mandatory cutoff, sentencing courts cannot consider even substantial and weighty evidence of intellectual disability as measured and made manifest by the defendant’s failure or inability to adapt to his social and cultural environment, including medical histories, behavioral records, school tests and reports, and testimony regarding past behavior and family circumstances. This is so even though the medical community accepts that all of this evidence can be probative of intellectual disability, including for individuals who have an IQ test score above 70. See APA Brief 15–16 (“[T]he relevant clinical authorities all agree that an individual with an IQ score above 70 may properly be diagnosed with intellectual disability if significant limitations in adaptive functioning also exist”); DSM–5, at 37 (“[A] person with an IQ score above 70 may have such severe adaptive behavior problems . . . that the person’s actual functioning is comparable to that of individuals with a lower IQ score”). Florida’s rule disregards established medical practice in two interrelated ways. It takes an IQ score as final and conclusive evidence of a defendant’s intellectual capacity, when experts in the field would consider other evidence. It also relies on a purportedly scientific measurement of the defendant’s abilities, his IQ score, while refusing to recognize that the score is, on its own terms, imprecise. The professionals who design, administer, and interpret IQ tests have agreed, for years now, that IQ test scores should be read not as a single fixed number but as a range. See D. Wechsler, The Measurement of Adult Intelligence 133 (3d ed. 1944) (reporting the range of error on an early IQ test). Each IQ test has a “standard error of measurement,” ibid., often referred to by the abbreviation “SEM.” A test’s SEM is a statistical fact, a reflection of the inherent imprecision of the test itself. See R. Furr & V. Bacharach, Psychometrics 118 (2d ed. 2014) (identifying the SEM as “one of the most important concepts in measurement theory”). An individual’s IQ test score on any given exam may fluctuate for a variety of reasons. These include the test-taker’s health; practice from earlier tests; the environment or location of the test; the examiner’s demeanor; the subjective judgment involved in scoring certain questions on the exam; and simple lucky guessing. See American Association on Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities, R. Schalock et al., User’s Guide To Accompany the 11th Edition of Intellectual Disability: Definition, Classification, and Systems of Supports 22 (2012) (hereinafter AAIDD Manual); A. Kaufman, IQ Testing 101, pp. 138–139 (2009). The SEM reflects the reality that an individual’s intellectual functioning cannot be reduced to a single numerical score. For purposes of most IQ tests, the SEM means that an individual’s score is best understood as a range of scores on either side of the recorded score. The SEM allows clinicians to calculate a range within which one may say an individual’s true IQ score lies. See APA Brief 23 (“SEM is a unit of measurement: 1 SEM equates to a confidence of 68% that the measured score falls within a given score range, while 2 SEM provides a 95% confidence level that the measured score is within a broader range”). A score of 71, for instance, is generally considered to reflect a range between 66 and 76 with 95% confidence and a range of 68.5 and 73.5 with a 68% confidence. See DSM–5, at 37 (“Individuals with intellectual disability have scores of approximately two standard deviations or more below the population mean, including a margin for measurement error (generally +5 points). . . . [T]his involves a score of 65–75 (70 ± 5)”); APA Brief 23 (“For example, the average SEM for the WAIS-IV is 2.16 IQ test points and the average SEM for the Stanford-Binet 5 is 2.30 IQ test points (test manuals report SEMs by different age groupings; these scores are similar, but not identical, often due to sampling error)”). Even when a person has taken multiple tests, each separate score must be assessed using the SEM, and the analysis of multiple IQ scores jointly is a complicated endeavor. See Schneider, Principles of Assessment of Aptitude and Achievement, in The Oxford Handbook of Child Psychological Assessment 286, 289–291, 318 (D. Saklofske, C. Reynolds, V. Schwean, eds. 2013). In addition, because the test itself may be flawed, or administered in a consistently flawed manner, multiple examinations may result in repeated similar scores, so that even a consistent score is not conclusive evidence of intellectual functioning. Despite these professional explanations, Florida law used the test score as a fixed number, thus barring further consideration of other evidence bearing on the question of intellectual disability. For professionals to diagnose—and for the law then to determine—whether an intellectual disability exists once the SEM applies and the individual’s IQ score is 75 or below the inquiry would consider factors indicating whether the person had deficits in adaptive functioning. These include evidence of past performance, environment, and upbringing. B A significant majority of States implement the protections of Atkins by taking the SEM into account, thus acknowledging the error inherent in using a test score without necessary adjustment. This calculation provides “objective indicia of society’s standards” in the context of the Eighth Amendment. Roper, 543 U. S., at 563. Only the Kentucky and Virginia Legislatures have adopted a fixed score cutoff identical to Florida’s. Ky. Rev. Stat. Ann. §532.130(2) (Lexis Supp. 2013); Bowling v. Commonwealth, 163 S. W. 3d 361, 375 (Ky. 2005); Va. Code Ann. §19.2–264.3:1.1 (Lexis Supp. 2013); Johnson v. Commonwealth, 267 Va. 53, 75, 591 S. E. 2d 47, 59 (2004), vacated and remanded on other grounds, 544 U. S. 901 (2005) . Alabama also may use a strict IQ score cutoff at 70, although not as a result of legislative action. See Smith v. State, 71 So. 3d 12, 20 (Ala. Crim. App. 2008) (“The Alabama Supreme Court . . . did not adopt any ‘margin of error’ when examining a defendant’s IQ score”). Petitioner does not question the rule in States which use a bright-line cutoff at 75 or greater, Tr. of Oral Arg. 9, and so they are not included alongside Florida in this analysis. In addition to these States, Arizona, Delaware, Kansas, North Carolina, and Washington have statutes which could be interpreted to provide a bright-line cutoff leading to the same result that Florida mandates in its cases. See Ariz. Rev. Stat. Ann. §13–753(F) (West 2013); Del. Code Ann. Tit. 11, §4209(d)(3) (2012 Supp.); Kan. Stat. Ann. §76–12b01 (2013 Supp.); N. C. Gen. Stat. Ann. §15A–2005 (Lexis 2013); Wash. Rev. Code §10.95.030(2)(c) (2012). That these state laws might be interpreted to require a bright-line cutoff does not mean that they will be so interpreted, however. See, e.g., State v. Vela, 279 Neb. 94, 126, 137, 777 N. W. 2d 266, 292, 299 (2010) (Although Nebraska’s statute specifies “[a]n intelligence quotient of seventy or below on a reliably administered intelligence quotient test,” “[t]he district court found that [the defendant’s] score of 75 on the [IQ test], considered in light of the standard error of measurement, could be considered as subaverage general intellectual functioning for purposes of diagnosing mental retardation”). Arizona’s statute appears to set a broad statutory cutoff at 70, Ariz. Rev. Stat. Ann. §13–753(F) (West 2013), but another provision instructs courts to “take into account the margin of error for a test administered.” Id. at §14-753(K)(5). How courts are meant to interpret the statute in a situation like Hall’s is not altogether clear. The principal Arizona case on the matter, State v. Roque, 141 P. 3d 368, (Ariz 2006), states that “the statute accounts for margin of error by requiring multiple tests,” and that “if the defendant achieves a full-scale score of 70 or below on any one of the tests, then the court proceeds to a hearing.” Id. at 403. But that case also notes that the defendant had an IQ score of 80, well outside the margin of error, and that all but one of the sub-parts of the IQ test were “above 75.” Id. Kansas has not had an execution in almost five decades, and so its laws and jurisprudence on this issue are unlikely to receive attention on this specific question. See Atkins, 536 U. S., at 316 (“[E]ven in those States that allow the execution of mentally retarded offenders, the practiceis uncommon. Some States . . . continue to authorize executions, but none have been carried out in decades. Thus there is little need to pursue legislation barring the execution of the mentally retarded in those States”). Delaware has executed three individuals in the past decade, while Washington has executed one person, and has recently suspended its death penalty. None of the four individuals executed recently in those States appears to have brought a claim similar to that advanced here. Thus, at most nine States mandate a strict IQ score cutoff at 70. Of these, four States (Delaware, Kansas, North Carolina, and Washington) appear not to have considered the issue in their courts. On the other side of the ledger stand the 18 States that have abolished the death penalty, either in full or for new offenses, and Oregon, which has suspended the death penalty and executed only two individuals in the past 40 years. See Roper, 543 U. S., at 574 (“[The] Court should have considered those States that had abandoned the death penalty altogether as part of the consensus against the juvenile death penalty”). In those States, of course, a person in Hall’s positioncould not be executed even without a finding of intellectual disability. Thus in 41 States an individual in Hall’sposition—an individual with an IQ score of 71—would not be deemed automatically eligible for the death penalty. These aggregate numbers are not the only considerations bearing on a determination of consensus. Consistency of the direction of change is also relevant. See id., at565–566 (quoting Atkins, supra, at 315). Since Atkins, many States have passed legislation to comply with the constitutional requirement that persons with intellectual disability not be executed. Two of these States, Virginia and Delaware, appear to set a strict cutoff at 70, although as discussed, Delaware’s courts have yet to interpret the law. In contrast, at least 11 States have either abolished the death penalty or passed legislation allowing defendants to present additional evidence of intellectual disability when their IQ test score is above 70. Since Atkins, five States have abolished the death penalty through legislation. See 2012 Conn. Pub. Acts no. 12–5; Ill. Comp. Stat. ch. 725, §119–1 (West 2012); Md. Correc. Servs. Code Ann. §3–901 et seq. (Lexis 2008); N. J. Stat. Ann. §2C:11–3(b)(1) (West Supp. 2013); 2009 N. M. Laws ch. 11, §§5–7. In addition, the New York Court of Appeals invalidated New York’s death penalty under the State Constitution in 2004, see People v. LeValle, 3 N. Y. 3d 88, 817 N. E. 2d 341 (2004), and legislation has not been passed to reinstate it. And when it did impose the death penalty, New York did not employ an IQ cutoff in determining intellectual disability. N. Y. Crim. Proc. Law Ann. §400.27(12)(e) (West 2005). In addition to these States, at least five others have passed legislation allowing a defendant to present additional evidence of intellectual disability even when an IQ test score is above 70. See Cal. Penal Code Ann. §1376 (West Supp. 2014) (no IQ cutoff); Idaho Code §19–2515A (Lexis Supp. 2013) (“seventy (70) or below”); Pizzutto v. State, 146 Idaho 720, 729, 202 P. 3d 642, 651 (2008) (“The alleged error in IQ testing is plus or minus five points. The district court was entitled to draw reasonable inferences from the undisputed facts”); La. Code Crim. Proc. Ann., Art. 905.5.1 (West Supp. 2014) (no IQ cutoff); Nev. Rev. Stat. §174.098.7 (2013) (no IQ cutoff); Utah Code Ann §77–15a–102 (Lexis 2012) (no IQ cutoff). The U. S. Code likewise does not set a strict IQ cutoff. See 18 U. S. C. §3596(c). And no State that previously allowed defendants with an IQ score over 70 to present additional evidence of intellectual disability has modified its law to create a strict cutoff at 70. Cf. Roper, supra, at 566 (“Since Stanford v. Kentucky, 492 U. S. 361 (1989) , no State that previously prohibited capital punishment for juveniles has reinstated it”). In summary, every state legislature to have considered the issue after Atkins—save Virginia’s—and whose law has been interpreted by its courts has taken a position contrary to that of Florida. Indeed, the Florida Legislature, which passed the relevant legislation prior to Atkins, might well have believed that its law would not createa fixed cutoff at 70. The staff analysis accompanyingthe 2001 bill states that it “does not contain a set IQlevel . . . . Two standard deviations from these tests is ap-proximately a 70 IQ, although it can be extended up to 75.” Fla. Senate Staff Analysis and Economic Impact Statement, CS/SB 238, p. 11 (Feb. 14, 2001). But the Florida Supreme Court interpreted the law to require a bright-line cutoff at 70, see Cherry, 959 So. 2d, at 712–713, and the Court is bound by that interpretation. The rejection of the strict 70 cutoff in the vast majority of States and the “consistency in the trend,” Roper, supra, at 567, toward recognizing the SEM provide strong evidence of consensus that our society does not regard this strict cutoff as proper or humane. C Atkins itself acknowledges the inherent error in IQ testing. It is true that Atkins “did not provide definitive procedural or substantive guides for determining when a person who claims mental retardation” falls within the protection of the Eighth Amendment. Bobby v. Bies, 556 U. S. 825, 831 (2009) . In Atkins, the Court stated: “Not all people who claim to be mentally retarded will be so impaired as to fall within the range of mentally retarded offenders about whom there is a national consensus. As was our approach in Ford v. Wainwright with regard to insanity, ‘we leave to the State[s] the task of developing appropriate ways to enforce the constitutional restriction upon [their] execution of sentences.’ ” 536 U. S., at 317 (quoting Ford v. Wainwright, 477 U. S. 399 –417 (1986); citation omitted). As discussed above, the States play a critical role in advancing protections and providing the Court with information that contributes to an understanding of how intellectual disability should be measured and assessed. But Atkins did not give the States unfettered discretion to define the full scope of the constitutional protection. The Atkins Court twice cited definitions of intellectual disability which, by their express terms, rejected a strict IQ test score cutoff at 70. Atkins first cited the definition provided in the DSM–IV: “ ‘Mild’ mental retardation is typically used to describe people with an IQ level of 50–55 to approximately 70.” 536 U. S., at 308, n. 3 (citing Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders 41 (4th ed. 2000)). The Court later noted that “ ‘an IQ between 70 and 75 or lower . . . is typically considered the cutoff IQ score for the intellectual function prong of the mental retardation definition.’ ” 536 U. S., at 309, n. 5. Furthermore, immediately after the Court declared that it left “ ‘to the States the task of developing appropriate ways to enforce the constitutional restriction,’ ” id., at 317, the Court stated in an accompanying footnote that “[t]he [state] statutory definitions of mental retardation are not identical, but generally conform to the clinical definitions,” ibid. Thus Atkins itself not only cited clinical definitions for intellectual disability but also noted that the States’ standards, on which the Court based its own conclusion, conformed to those definitions. In the words of Atkins, those persons who meet the “clinical definitions” of intellectual disability “by definition . . . have diminished capacities to understand and process information, to communicate, to abstract from mistakes and learn from experience, to engage in logical reasoning, to control impulses, and to understand the reactions of others.” Id., at 318. Thus, they bear “diminish[ed] . . . personal culpability.” Ibid. The clinical definitions of intellectual disability, which take into account that IQ scores represent a range, not a fixed number, were a fundamental premise of Atkins. And those clinical definitions have long included the SEM. See Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders 28 (rev. 3d ed. 1987) (“Since any measurement is fallible, an IQ score is generally thought to involve an error of measurement of approximately five points; hence, an IQ of 70 is considered to represent a band or zone of 65 to 75. Treating the IQ with some flexibility permits inclusion in the Mental Retardation category of people with IQs somewhat higher than 70 who exhibit significant deficits in adaptive behavior”). Respondent argues that the current Florida law was favorably cited by the Atkins Court. See Brief for Respondent 18 (“As evidence of the national consensus, the Court specifically cited Florida’s statute at issue here, which has not substantively changed”). While Atkins did refer to Florida’s law in a citation listing States which had outlawed the execution of the intellectually disabled, 536 U. S., at 315, that fleeting mention did not signal the Court’s approval of Florida’s current understanding of the law. As discussed above, when Atkins was decided the Florida Supreme Court had not yet interpreted the law to require a strict IQ cutoff at 70. That new interpretation runs counter to the clinical definition cited throughout Atkins and to Florida’s own legislative report indicating this kind of cutoff need not be used. Respondent’s argument also conflicts with the logic of Atkins and the Eighth Amendment. If the States were to have complete autonomy to define intellectual disability as they wished, the Court’s decision in Atkins could become a nullity, and the Eighth Amendment’s protection of human dignity would not become a reality. This Court thus reads Atkins to provide substantial guidance on the definition of intellectual disability. D The actions of the States and the precedents of this Court “give us essential instruction,” Roper, 543 U. S., at 564, but the inquiry must go further. “[T]he Constitution contemplates that in the end our own judgment will be brought to bear on the question of the acceptability of the death penalty under the Eighth Amendment.” Coker v. Georgia, 433 U. S. 584, 597 (1977) (plurality opinion). That exercise of independent judgment is the Court’s judicial duty. See Roper, supra, at 574 (“[T]o the extent Stanford was based on a rejection of the idea that this Court is required to bring its independent judgment to bear on the proportionality of the death penalty for a particular class of crimes or offenders, it suffices to note that this rejection was inconsistent with prior Eighth Amendment decisions” (citation omitted). In this Court’s independent judgment, the Florida statute, as interpreted by its courts, is unconstitutional. In addition to the views of the States and the Court’s precedent, this determination is informed by the views of medical experts. These views do not dictate the Court’s decision, yet the Court does not disregard these informed assessments. See Kansas v. Crane, 534 U. S. 407, 413 (2002) (“[T]he science of psychiatry . . . informs but does not control ultimate legal determinations . . .”). It is the Court’s duty to interpret the Constitution, but it need not do so in isolation. The legal determination of intellectual disability is distinct from a medical diagnosis, but it is informed by the medical community’s diagnostic framework. Atkins itself points to the diagnostic criteria employed by psychiatric professionals. And the professional community’s teachings are of particular help in this case, where no alternative definition of intellectual disability is presented and where this Court and the States have placed substantial reliance on the expertise of the medical profession. By failing to take into account the SEM and setting a strict cutoff at 70, Florida “goes against the unanimous professional consensus.” APA Brief 15. Neither Florida nor its amici point to a single medical professional who supports this cutoff. The DSM–5 repudiates it: “IQ test scores are approximations of conceptual functioning but may be insufficient to assess reasoning in real-life situations and mastery of practical tasks.” DSM–5, at 37. This statement well captures the Court’s independent assessment that an individual with an IQ test score “between 70 and 75 or lower,” Atkins, supra, at 309, n. 5, may show intellectual disability by presenting additional evidence regarding difficulties in adaptive functioning. The flaws in Florida’s law are the result of the inherent error in IQ tests themselves. An IQ score is an approximation, not a final and infallible assessment of intellectual functioning. See APA Brief 24 (“[I]t is standard pyschometric practice to report the ‘estimates of relevant reliabilities and standard errors of measurement’ when reporting a test score”); ibid. (the margin of error is “inherent to the accuracy of IQ scores”); Furr, Psychometrics, at 119 (“[T]he standard error of measurement is an important psychometric value with implications for applied measurement”). SEM is not a concept peculiar to the psychiatric profession and IQ tests. It is a measure that is recognized and relied upon by those who create and devise tests of all sorts. Id., at 118 (identifying the SEM as “one of the most important concepts in measurement theory”). This awareness of the IQ test’s limits is of particular importance when conducting the conjunctive assessment necessary to assess an individual’s intellectual ability. See American Association on Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities, Intellectual Disability: Definition, Classification, and Systems of Supports 40 (11th ed. 2010) (“It must be stressed that the diagnosis of [intellectual disability] is intended to reflect a clinical judgment rather than an actuarial determination”). Intellectual disability is a condition, not a number. See DSM–5, at 37. Courts must recognize, as does the medical community, that the IQ test is imprecise. This is not to say that an IQ test score is unhelpful. It is of considerable significance, as the medical community recognizes. But in using these scores to assess a defendant’s eligibility for the death penalty, a State must afford these test scores the same studied skepticism that those who design and use the tests do, and understand that an IQ test score represents a range rather than a fixed number. A State that ignores the inherent imprecision of these tests risks executing a person who suffers from intellectual disability. See APA Brief 17 (“Under the universally accepted clinical standards for diagnosing intellectual disability, the court’s determination that Mr. Hall is not intellectually disabled cannot be considered valid”). This Court agrees with the medical experts that when a defendant’s IQ test score falls within the test’s acknowledged and inherent margin of error, the defendant must be able to present additional evidence of intellectual disability, including testimony regarding adaptive deficits. It is not sound to view a single factor as dispositive of a conjunctive and interrelated assessment. See DSM–5, at 37 (“[A] person with an IQ score above 70 may have such severe adaptive behavior problems . . . that the person’s actual functioning is comparable to that of individuals with a lower IQ score”). The Florida statute, as interpreted by its courts, misuses IQ score on its own terms; andthis, in turn, bars consideration of evidence that must be considered in determining whether a defendant in a capital case has intellectual disability. Florida’s rule is invalid under the Constitution’s Cruel and Unusual Punishments Clause. E Florida seeks to execute a man because he scored a 71 instead of 70 on an IQ test. Florida is one of just a few States to have this rigid rule. Florida’s rule misconstrues the Court’s statements in Atkins that intellectually dis-ability is characterized by an IQ of “approximately 70.” 536U. S., at 308, n. 3. Florida’s rule is in direct opposition to the views of those who design, administer, and interpret the IQ test. By failing to take into account the standard error of measurement, Florida’s law not only contradicts the test’s own design but also bars an essential part of a sentencing court’s inquiry into adaptive functioning. Freddie Lee Hall may or may not be intellectually dis-abled, but the law requires that he have the opportunity topresent evidence of his intellectual disability, including deficits in adaptive functioning over his lifetime. The death penalty is the gravest sentence our society may impose. Persons facing that most severe sanction must have a fair opportunity to show that the Constitution prohibits their execution. Florida’s law contravenes our Nation’s commitment to dignity and its duty to teach human decency as the mark of a civilized world. The States are laboratories for experimentation, but those experiments may not deny the basic dignity the Constitution protects. The judgment of the Florida Supreme Court is reversed, and the case is remanded for further proceedings not inconsistent with this opinion. So ordered.

573.US.258

Investors can recover damages in a private securities fraud action only if they prove that they relied on the defendant’s misrepresentation in deciding to buy or sell a company’s stock. In Basic Inc. v. Levinson, 485 U.S. 224, this Court held that investors could satisfy this reliance requirement by invoking a presumption that the price of stock traded in an efficient market reflects all public, material information—including material misrepresentations. The Court also held, however, that a defendant could rebut this presumption by showing that the alleged misrepresentation did not actually affect the stock price—that is, that it had no “price impact.” Respondent Erica P. John Fund, Inc. (EPJ Fund), filed a putative class action against Halliburton and one of its executives (collectively Halliburton), alleging that they made misrepresentations designed to inflate Halliburton’s stock price, in violation of section 10(b) of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 and Securities and Exchange Commission Rule 10b–5. The District Court initially denied EPJ Fund’s class certification motion, and the Fifth Circuit affirmed. But this Court vacated that judgment, concluding that securities fraud plaintiffs need not prove loss causation—a causal connection between the defendants’ alleged misrepresentations and the plaintiffs’ economic losses—at the class certification stage in order to invoke Basic’s presumption of reliance. On remand, Halliburton argued that class certification was nonetheless inappropriate because the evidence it had earlier introduced to disprove loss causation also showed that its alleged misrepresentations had not affected its stock price. By demonstrating the absence of any “price impact,” Halliburton contended, it had rebutted the Basic presumption. And without the benefit of that presumption, investors would have to prove reliance on an individual basis, meaning that individual issues would predominate over common ones and class certification would be inappropriate under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 23(b)(3). The District Court rejected Halliburton’s argument and certified the class. The Fifth Circuit affirmed, concluding that Halliburton could use its price impact evidence to rebut the Basic presumption only at trial, not at the class certification stage. Held: 1. Halliburton has not shown a “special justification,” Dickerson v. United States, 530 U.S. 428, 443, for overruling Basic’s presumption of reliance. Pp. 4–16. (a) To recover damages under section 10(b) and Rule 10b–5, a plaintiff must prove, as relevant here, “ ‘reliance upon the misrepresentation or omission.’ ” Amgen Inc. v. Connecticut Retirement Plans and Trust Funds, 568 U. S. ___, ___. The Court recognized in Basic, however, that requiring direct proof of reliance from every individual plaintiff “would place an unnecessarily unrealistic evidentiary burden on the . . . plaintiff who has traded on an impersonal market,” 485 U. S., at 245, and “effectively would” prevent plaintiffs “from proceeding with a class action” in Rule 10b–5 suits, id., at 242. To address these concerns, the Court held that plaintiffs could satisfy the reliance element of a Rule 10b–5 action by invoking a rebuttable presumption of reliance. The Court based that presumption on what is known as the “fraud-on-the-market” theory, which holds that “the market price of shares traded on well-developed markets reflects all publicly available information, and, hence, any material misrepresentations.” Id., at 246. The Court also noted that the typical “investor who buys or sells stock at the price set by the market does so in reliance on the integrity of that price.” Id., at 247. As a result, whenever an investor buys or sells stock at the market price, his “reliance on any public material misrepresentations . . . may be presumed for purposes of a Rule 10b–5 action.” Id. at 247. Basic also emphasized that the presumption of reliance was rebuttable rather than conclusive. Pp. 5–7. (b) None of Halliburton’s arguments for overruling Basic so discredit the decision as to constitute a “special justification.” Pp. 7–12. (1) Halliburton first argues that the Basic presumption is inconsistent with Congress’s intent in passing the 1934 Exchange Act—the same argument made by the dissenting Justices in Basic. The Basic majority did not find that argument persuasive then, and Halliburton has given no new reason to endorse it now. Pp. 7–8. (2) Halliburton also contends that Basic rested on two premises that have been undermined by developments in economic theory. First, it argues that the Basic Court espoused “a robust view of market efficiency” that is no longer tenable in light of empirical evidence ostensibly showing that material, public information often is not quickly incorporated into stock prices. The Court in Basic acknowledged, however, the debate among economists about the efficiency of capital markets and refused to endorse “any particular theory of how quickly and completely publicly available information is reflected in market price.” 485 U. S., at 248, n. 28. The Court instead based the presumption of reliance on the fairly modest premise that “market professionals generally consider most publicly announced material statements about companies, thereby affecting stock market prices.” Id., at 247, n. 24. Moreover, in making the presumption rebuttable, Basic recognized that market efficiency is a matter of degree and accordingly made it a matter of proof. Halliburton has not identified the kind of fundamental shift in economic theory that could justify overruling a precedent on the ground that it misunderstood, or has since been overtaken by, economic realities. Halliburton also contests the premise that investors “invest ‘in reliance on the integrity of [the market] price,’ ” id., at 247, identifying a number of classes of investors for whom “price integrity” is supposedly “marginal or irrelevant.” But Basic never denied the existence of such investors, who in any event rely at least on the facts that market prices will incorporate public information within a reasonable period and that market prices, however inaccurate, are not distorted by fraud. Pp. 8–12. (c) The principle of stare decisis has “ ‘special force’ ” “in respect to statutory interpretation” because “ ‘Congress remains free to alter what [the Court has] done.’ ” John R. Sand & Gravel Co. v. United States, 552 U.S. 130, 139. So too with Basic’s presumption of reliance. The presumption is not inconsistent with this Court’s more recent decisions construing the Rule 10b–5 cause of action. In Central Bank of Denver, N. A. v. First Interstate Bank of Denver, N. A., 511 U.S. 164, and Stoneridge Investment Partners, LLC v. Scientific-Atlanta, Inc., 552 U.S. 148, the Court declined to effectively eliminate the reliance element by extending liability to entirely new categories of defendants who themselves had not made any material, public misrepresentation. The Basic presumption, by contrast, merely provides an alternative means of satisfying the reliance element. Nor is the Basic presumption inconsistent with the Court’s recent decisions governing class action certification, which require plaintiffs to prove—not simply plead—that their proposed class satisfies each requirement of Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 23, including, if applicable, the predominance requirement of Rule 23(b)(3). See, e.g., Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. v. Dukes, 564 U. S. ___, ___. The Basic presumption does not relieve plaintiffs of that burden but rather sets forth what plaintiffs must prove to demonstrate predominance. Finally, Halliburton emphasizes the possible harmful consequences of the securities class actions facilitated by the Basic presumption, but such concerns are more appropriately addressed to Congress, which has in fact responded, to some extent, to many of them. Pp. 12–16. 2. For the same reasons the Court declines to overrule Basic’s presumption of reliance, it also declines to modify the prerequisites for invoking the presumption by requiring plaintiffs to prove “price impact” directly at the class certification stage. The Basic presumption incorporates two constituent presumptions: First, if a plaintiff shows that the defendant’s misrepresentation was public and material and that the stock traded in a generally efficient market, he is entitled to a presumption that the misrepresentation affected the stock price. Second, if the plaintiff also shows that he purchased the stock at the market price during the relevant period, he is entitled to a further presumption that he purchased the stock in reliance on the defendant’s misrepresentation. Requiring plaintiffs to prove price impact directly would take away the first constituent presumption. Halliburton’s argument for doing so is the same as its argument for overruling the Basic presumption altogether, and it meets the same fate. Pp. 16–18. 3. The Court agrees with Halliburton, however, that defendants must be afforded an opportunity to rebut the presumption of reliance before class certification with evidence of a lack of price impact. Defendants may already introduce such evidence at the merits stage to rebut the Basic presumption, as well as at the class certification stage to counter a plaintiff’s showing of market efficiency. Forbidding defendants to rely on the same evidence prior to class certification for the particular purpose of rebutting the presumption altogether makes no sense, and can readily lead to results that are inconsistent with Basic’s own logic. Basic allows plaintiffs to establish price impact indirectly, by showing that a stock traded in an efficient market and that a defendant’s misrepresentations were public and material. But an indirect proxy should not preclude consideration of a defendant’s direct, more salient evidence showing that an alleged misrepresentation did not actually affect the stock’s price and, consequently, that the Basic presumption does not apply. Amgen does not require a different result. There, the Court held that materiality, though a prerequisite for invoking the Basic presumption, should be left to the merits stage because it does not bear on the predominance requirement of Rule 23(b)(3). In contrast, the fact that a misrepresentation has price impact is “Basic’s fundamental premise.” Erica P. John Fund, Inc. v. Halliburton Co., 563 U. S. ___, ___. It thus has everything to do with the issue of predominance at the class certification stage. That is why, if reliance is to be shown through the Basic presumption, the publicity and market efficiency prerequisites must be proved before class certification. Given that such indirect evidence of price impact will be before the court at the class certification stage in any event, there is no reason to artificially limit the inquiry at that stage by excluding direct evidence of price impact. Pp. 18–23. 718 F.3d 423, vacated and remanded. Roberts, C. J., delivered the opinion of the Court, in which Kennedy, Ginsburg, Breyer, Sotomayor, and Kagan, JJ., joined. Ginsburg, J., filed a concurring opinion, in which Breyer and Sotomayor, JJ., joined. Thomas, J., filed an opinion concurring in the judgment, in which Scalia and Alito, JJ., joined.

Investors can recover damages in a private securities fraud action only if they prove that they relied on the defendant’s misrepresentation in deciding to buy or sell a company’s stock. In Basic Inc. v. Levinson, 485 U. S. 224 (1988) , we held that investors could satisfy this reliance requirement by invoking a presumption that the price of stock traded in an efficient market reflects all public, material information—including material misstatements. In such a case, we concluded, anyone who buys or sells the stock at the market price may be considered to have relied on those misstatements. We also held, however, that a defendant could rebut this presumption in a number of ways, including by showing that the alleged misrepresentation did not actually affect the stock’s price—that is, that the misrepresentation had no “price impact.” The questions presented are whether we should overrule or modify Basic’s presumption of reliance and, if not, whether defendants should nonetheless be afforded an opportunity in securities class action cases to rebut the presumption at the class certification stage, by showing a lack of price impact. I Respondent Erica P. John Fund, Inc. (EPJ Fund), is the lead plaintiff in a putative class action against Halliburton and one of its executives (collectively Halliburton) alleging violations of section 10(b) of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, 48Stat. 891, 15 U. S. C. §78j(b), and Securities and Exchange Commission Rule 10b–5, 17 CFR §240.10b–5 (2013). According to EPJ Fund, between June 3, 1999, and December 7, 2001, Halliburton made a series of misrepresentations regarding its potential liability in asbestos litigation, its expected revenue from certain construction contracts, and the anticipated benefits of its merger with another company—all in an attempt to inflate the price of its stock. Halliburton subsequently made a number of corrective disclosures, which, EPJ Fund contends, caused the company’s stock price to drop and investors to lose money. EPJ Fund moved to certify a class comprising all investors who purchased Halliburton common stock during the class period. The District Court found that the proposed class satisfied all the threshold requirements of Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 23(a): It was sufficiently numerous, there were common questions of law or fact, the representative parties’ claims were typical of the class claims, and the representatives could fairly and adequately protect the interests of the class. App. to Pet. for Cert. 54a. And except for one difficulty, the court would have also concluded that the class satisfied the requirement of Rule 23(b)(3) that “the questions of law or fact common to class members predominate over any questions affecting only individual members.” See id., at 55a, 98a. The difficulty was that Circuit precedent required securities fraud plaintiffs to prove “loss causation”—a causal connection between the defendants’ alleged misrepresentations and the plaintiffs’ economic losses—in order to invoke Basic’s presumption of reliance and obtain class certification. App. to Pet. for Cert. 55a, and n. 2. Because EPJ Fund had not demonstrated such a connection for any of Halliburton’s alleged misrepresentations, the District Court refused to certify the proposed class. Id., at 55a, 98a. The United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit affirmed the denial of class certification on the same ground. Archdiocese of Milwaukee Supporting Fund, Inc. v. Halliburton Co., 597 F. 3d 330 (2010). We granted certiorari and vacated the judgment, finding nothing in “Basic or its logic” to justify the Fifth Circuit’s requirement that securities fraud plaintiffs prove loss causation at the class certification stage in order to invoke Basic’s presumption of reliance. Erica P. John Fund, Inc. v. Halliburton Co., 563 U. S. ___, ___ (2011) (Halliburton I ) (slip op., at 6). “Loss causation,” we explained, “addresses a matter different from whether an investor relied on a misrepresentation, presumptively or otherwise, when buying or selling a stock.” Ibid. We remanded the case for the lower courts to consider “any further arguments against class certification” that Halliburton had preserved. Id., at ___ (slip op., at 9). On remand, Halliburton argued that class certification was inappropriate because the evidence it had earlier introduced to disprove loss causation also showed that none of its alleged misrepresentations had actually af-fected its stock price. By demonstrating the absence of any “price impact,” Halliburton contended, it had rebutted Basic’s presumption that the members of the proposed class had relied on its alleged misrepresentations simply by buying or selling its stock at the market price. And without the benefit of the Basic presumption, investors would have to prove reliance on an individual basis, meaning that individual issues would predominate over common ones. The District Court declined to consider Halliburton’s argument, holding that the Basic presumption applied and certifying the class under Rule 23(b)(3). App. to Pet. for Cert. 30a. The Fifth Circuit affirmed. 718 F. 3d 423 (2013). The court found that Halliburton had preserved its price impact argument, but to no avail. Id., at 435–436. While acknowledging that “Halliburton’s price impact evidence could be used at the trial on the merits to refute the presumption of reliance,” id., at 433, the court held that Halliburton could not use such evidence for that purpose at the class certification stage, id., at 435. “[P]rice impact evidence,” the court explained, “does not bear on the question of common question predominance [under Rule 23(b)(3)], and is thus appropriately considered only on the merits after the class has been certified.” Ibid. We once again granted certiorari, 571 U. S. ___ (2013), this time to resolve a conflict among the Circuits over whether securities fraud defendants may attempt to rebut the Basic presumption at the class certification stage with evidence of a lack of price impact. We also accepted Halliburton’s invitation to reconsider the presumption of reliance for securities fraud claims that we adopted in Basic. II Halliburton urges us to overrule Basic’s presumption of reliance and to instead require every securities fraud plaintiff to prove that he actually relied on the defendant’s misrepresentation in deciding to buy or sell a company’s stock. Before overturning a long-settled precedent, however, we require “special justification,” not just an argument that the precedent was wrongly decided. Dickerson v. United States, 530 U. S. 428, 443 (2000) (internal quotation marks omitted). Halliburton has failed to make that showing. A Section 10(b) of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 and the Securities and Exchange Commission’s Rule 10b–5 prohibit making any material misstatement or omission in connection with the purchase or sale of any security. Although section 10(b) does not create an express private cause of action, we have long recognized an implied private cause of action to enforce the provision and its implementing regulation. See Blue Chip Stamps v. Manor Drug Stores, 421 U. S. 723, 730 (1975) . To recover damages for violations of section 10(b) and Rule 10b–5, a plaintiff must prove “ ‘(1) a material misrepresentation or omission by the defendant; (2) scienter; (3) a connection between the misrepresentation or omission and the purchase or sale of a security; (4) reliance upon the misrepresentation or omission; (5) economic loss; and (6) loss causation.’ ” Amgen Inc. v. Connecticut Retirement Plans and Trust Funds, 568 U. S. ___, ___ (2013) (slip op., at 3–4) (quoting Matrixx Initiatives, Inc. v. Siracusano, 563 U. S. ___, ___ (2011) (slip op., at 9)). The reliance element “ ‘ensures that there is a proper connection between a defendant’s misrepresentation and a plaintiff’s injury.’ ” 568 U. S., at ___ (slip op., at 4) (quoting Halliburton I, 563 U. S., at ___ (slip op., at 4)). “The traditional (and most direct) way a plaintiff can demonstrate reliance is by showing that he was aware of a company’s statement and engaged in a relevant transaction—e.g., purchasing common stock—based on that specific misrepresentation.” Id., at ___ (slip op., at 4). In Basic, however, we recognized that requiring such direct proof of reliance “would place an unnecessarily unrealistic evidentiary burden on the Rule 10b–5 plaintiff who has traded on an impersonal market.” 485 U. S., at 245. That is because, even assuming an investor could prove that he was aware of the misrepresentation, he would still have to “show a speculative state of facts, i.e., how he would have acted . . . if the misrepresentation had not been made.” Ibid. We also noted that “[r]equiring proof of individualized reliance” from every securities fraud plaintiff “effectively would . . . prevent[ ] [plaintiffs] from proceeding with a class action” in Rule 10b–5 suits. Id., at 242. If every plaintiff had to prove direct reliance on the defendant’s misrepresentation, “individual issues then would . . . overwhelm[ ] the common ones,” making certification under Rule 23(b)(3) inappropriate. Ibid. To address these concerns, Basic held that securities fraud plaintiffs can in certain circumstances satisfy the reliance element of a Rule 10b–5 action by invoking a rebuttable presumption of reliance, rather than proving direct reliance on a misrepresentation. The Court based that presumption on what is known as the “fraud-on-the-market” theory, which holds that “the market price of shares traded on well-developed markets reflects all publicly available information, and, hence, any material misrepresentations.” Id., at 246. The Court also noted that, rather than scrutinize every piece of public information about a company for himself, the typical “investor who buys or sells stock at the price set by the market does so in reliance on the integrity of that price”—the belief that it reflects all public, material information. Id., at 247. As a result, whenever the investor buys or sells stock at the market price, his “reliance on any public material misrepresentations . . . may be presumed for purposes of a Rule 10b–5 action.” Ibid. Based on this theory, a plaintiff must make the following showings to demonstrate that the presumption of reliance applies in a given case: (1) that the alleged misrepresentations were publicly known, (2) that they were material, (3) that the stock traded in an efficient market, and (4) that the plaintiff traded the stock between the time the misrepresentations were made and when the truth was revealed. See id., at 248, n. 27; Halliburton I, supra, at ___ (slip op., at 5–6). At the same time, Basic emphasized that the presumption of reliance was rebuttable rather than conclusive. Specifically, “[a]ny showing that severs the link between the alleged misrepresentation and either the price received (or paid) by the plaintiff, or his decision to trade at a fair market price, will be sufficient to rebut the presumption of reliance.” 485 U. S., at 248. So for example, if a defendant could show that the alleged misrepresentation did not, for whatever reason, actually affect the market price, or that a plaintiff would have bought or sold the stock even had he been aware that the stock’s price was tainted by fraud, then the presumption of reliance would not apply. Id., at 248–249. In either of those cases, a plaintiff would have to prove that he directly relied on the defendant’s misrepresentation in buying or selling the stock. B Halliburton contends that securities fraud plaintiffs should always have to prove direct reliance and that the Basic Court erred in allowing them to invoke a presumption of reliance instead. According to Halliburton, the Basic presumption contravenes congressional intent and has been undermined by subsequent developments in economic theory. Neither argument, however, so discredits Basic as to constitute “special justification” for overruling the decision. 1 Halliburton first argues that the Basic presumption is inconsistent with Congress’s intent in passing the 1934 Exchange Act. Because “[t]he Section 10(b) action is a ‘judicial construct that Congress did not enact,’ ” this Court, Halliburton insists, “must identify—and borrow from—the express provision that is ‘most analogous to the private 10b–5 right of action.’ ” Brief for Petitioners 12 (quoting Stoneridge Investment Partners, LLC v. Scientific-Atlanta, Inc., 552 U. S. 148, 164 (2008) ; Musick, Peeler& Garrett v. Employers Ins. of Wausau, 508 U. S. 286, 294 (1993) ). According to Halliburton, the closest analogueto section 10(b) is section 18(a) of the Act, which cre-ates an express private cause of action allowing inves-tors to recover damages based on misrepresentations made in certain regulatory filings. 15 U. S. C. §78r(a). That provision requires an investor to prove that he bought or sold stock “in reliance upon” the defendant’s misrepresentation. Ibid. In ignoring this direct reliance requirement, the argument goes, the Basic Court relieved Rule 10b–5 plaintiffs of a burden that Congress would have imposed had it created the cause of action. EPJ Fund contests both premises of Halliburton’s argument, arguing that Congress has affirmed Basic’s construction of section 10(b) and that, in any event, the closest analogue to section 10(b) is not section 18(a) but section 9, 15 U. S. C. §78i—a provision that does not require actual reliance. We need not settle this dispute. In Basic, the dissenting Justices made the same argument based on section 18(a) that Halliburton presses here. See 485 U. S., at 257–258 (White, J., concurring in part and dissenting in part). The Basic majority did not find that argument persuasive then, and Halliburton has given us no new reason to endorse it now. 2 Halliburton’s primary argument for overruling Basic is that the decision rested on two premises that can no longer withstand scrutiny. The first premise concerns what is known as the “efficient capital markets hypothesis.” Basic stated that “the market price of shares traded on well-developed markets reflects all publicly available information, and, hence, any material misrepresentations.” Id., at 246. From that statement, Halliburton concludes that the Basic Court espoused “a robust view of market efficiency” that is no longer tenable, for “ ‘overwhelming empirical evidence’ now ‘suggests that capital markets are not fundamentally efficient.’ ” Brief for Petitioners 14–16 (quoting Lev & de Villiers, Stock Price Crashes and 10b–5 Damages: A Legal, Economic, and Policy Analysis, 47 Stan. L. Rev 7, 20 (1994)). To support this contention, Halliburton cites studies purporting to show that “public information is often not incorporated immediately (much less rationally) into market prices.” Brief for Petitioners 17; see id., at 16–20. See also Brief for Law Professors as Amici Curiae 15–18. Halliburton does not, of course, maintain that capital markets are always inefficient. Rather, in its view, Basic’s fundamental error was to ignore the fact that “ ‘efficiency is not a binary, yes or no question.’ ” Brief for Petitioners 20 (quoting Langevoort, Basic at Twenty: Rethinking Fraud on the Market, 2009 Wis. L. Rev. 151, 167)). The markets for some securities are more efficient than the markets for others, and even a single market can process different kinds of information more or less efficiently, depending on how widely the information is disseminated and how easily it is understood. Brief for Petitioners at 20–21. Yet Basic, Halliburton asserts, glossed over these nuances, assuming a false dichotomy that renders the presumption of reliance both underinclusive and overinclusive: A misrepresentation can distort a stock’s market price even in a generally inefficient market, and a misrepresentation can leave a stock’s market price unaffected even in a generally efficient one. Brief for Petitioners at 21. Halliburton’s criticisms fail to take Basic on its own terms. Halliburton focuses on the debate among economists about the degree to which the market price of a company’s stock reflects public information about the company—and thus the degree to which an investor can earn an abnormal, above-market return by trading on such information. See Brief for Financial Economists as Amici Curiae 4–10 (describing the debate). That debate is not new. Indeed, the Basic Court acknowledged it and declined to enter the fray, declaring that “[w]e need not determine by adjudication what economists and social scientists have debated through the use of sophisticated statistical analysis and the application of economic the-ory.” 485 U. S., at 246–247, n. 24. To recognize the presumption of reliance, the Court explained, was not “conclusively to adopt any particular theory of how quickly and completely publicly available information is reflected in market price.” Id., at 248, n. 28. The Court instead based the presumption on the fairly modest premise that “market professionals generally consider most publicly announced material statements about companies, thereby affecting stock market prices.” Id., at 247, n. 24. Basic’s presumption of reliance thus does not rest on a “binary” view of market efficiency. Indeed, in making the presumption rebuttable, Basic recognized that market efficiency is a matter of degree and accordingly made it a matter of proof. The academic debates discussed by Halliburton have not refuted the modest premise underlying the presumption of reliance. Even the foremost critics of the efficient-capital-markets hypothesis acknowledge that public information generally affects stock prices. See, e.g., Shiller, We’ll Share the Honors, and Agree to Disagree, N. Y. Times, Oct. 27, 2013, p. BU6 (“Of course, prices reflect available information”). Halliburton also conceded as much in its reply brief and at oral argument. See Reply Brief 13 (“market prices generally respond to new, material information”); Tr. of Oral Arg. 7. Debates about the precise degree to which stock prices accurately reflect public information are thus largely beside the point. “That the . . . price [of a stock] may be inaccurate does not detract from the fact that false statements affect it, and cause loss,” which is “all that Basic requires.” Schleicher v. Wendt, 618 F. 3d 679, 685 (CA7 2010) (Easterbrook, C. J.). Even though the efficient capital markets hypothesis may have “garnered substantial criticism since Basic,” post, at 6 (Thomas, J., concurring in judgment), Halliburton has not identified the kind of fundamental shift in economic the-ory that could justify overruling a precedent on the ground that it misunderstood, or has since been overtaken by, economic realities. Contrast State Oil Co. v. Khan, 522 U. S. 3 (1997) , unanimously overruling Albrecht v. Herald Co., 390 U. S. 145 (1968) . Halliburton also contests a second premise underlying the Basic presumption: the notion that investors “invest ‘in reliance on the integrity of [the market] price.’ ” Reply Brief 14 (quoting 485 U. S., at 247; alteration in original). Halliburton identifies a number of classes of investors for whom “price integrity” is supposedly “marginal or irrelevant.” Reply Brief 14. The primary example is the value investor, who believes that certain stocks are undervalued or overvalued and attempts to “beat the market” by buying the undervalued stocks and selling the overvalued ones. Brief for Petitioners 15–16 (internal quotation marks omitted). See also Brief for Vivendi S. A. as Amicus Curiae 3–10 (describing the investment strategies of day trad-ers, volatility arbitragers, and value investors). If many investors “are indifferent to prices,” Halliburton contends, then courts should not presume that investors rely on the integrity of those prices and any misrepresentations incorporated into them. Reply Brief 14. But Basic never denied the existence of such investors. As we recently explained, Basic concluded only that “it is reasonable to presume that most investors—knowing that they have little hope of outperforming the market in the long run based solely on their analysis of publicly available information—will rely on the security’s market price as an unbiased assessment of the security’s value in light of all public information.” Amgen, 568 U. S., at ___ (slip op., at 5) (emphasis added). In any event, there is no reason to suppose that even Halliburton’s main counterexample—the value investor—is as indifferent to the integrity of market prices as Halliburton suggests. Such an investor implicitly relies on the fact that a stock’s market price will eventually reflect material information—how else could the market correction on which his profit depends occur? To be sure, the value investor “does not believe that the market price accurately reflects public information at the time he transacts.” Post, at 11. But to indirectly rely on a misstatement in the sense relevant for the Basic presumption, he need only trade stock based on the belief that the market price will incorporate public information within a reasonable period. The value investor also presumably tries to estimate how undervalued or overvalued a particular stock is, and such estimates can be skewed by a market price tainted by fraud. C The principle of stare decisis has “ ‘special force’ ” “in respect to statutory interpretation” because “ ‘Congress remains free to alter what we have done.’ ” John R. Sand & Gravel Co. v. United States, 552 U. S. 130, 139 (2008) (quoting Patterson v. McLean Credit Union, 491 U. S. 164 –173 (1989)). So too with Basic’s presumption of reliance. Although the presumption is a judicially created doctrine designed to implement a judicially created cause of action, we have described the presumption as “a substantive doctrine of federal securities-fraud law.” Amgen, supra, at ___ (slip op., at 5). That is because it provides a way of satisfying the reliance element of the Rule 10b–5 cause of action. See, e.g., Dura Pharmaceuticals, Inc. v. Broudo, 544 U. S. 336 –342 (2005). As with any other element of that cause of action, Congress may overturnor modify any aspect of our interpretations of the reli-ance requirement, including the Basic presumption it-self. Given that possibility, we see no reason to exempt the Basic presumption from ordinary principles of stare decisis. To buttress its case for overruling Basic, Halliburton contends that, in addition to being wrongly decided, the decision is inconsistent with our more recent decisions construing the Rule 10b–5 cause of action. As Halliburton notes, we have held that “we must give ‘narrow dimensions . . . to a right of action Congress did not authorize when it first enacted the statute and did not expand when it revisited the law.’ ” Janus Capital Group, Inc. v. First Derivative Traders, 564 U. S. ___, ___ (2011) (slip op., at 6) (quoting Stoneridge, 552 U. S., at 167); see, e.g., Central Bank of Denver, N. A. v. First Interstate Bank of Denver, N. A., 511 U. S. 164 (1994) (refusing to recognize aiding-and-abetting liability under the Rule 10b–5 cause of action); Stoneridge, supra (refusing to extend Rule 10b–5 liability to certain secondary actors who did not themselves make material misstatements). Yet the Basic presumption, Halliburton asserts, does just the opposite, expanding the Rule 10b–5 cause of action. Brief for Petitioners 27–29. Not so. In Central Bank and Stoneridge, we declined to extend Rule 10b–5 liability to entirely new categories of defendants who themselves had not made any material, public misrepresentation. Such an extension, we explained, would have eviscerated the requirement that a plaintiff prove that he relied on a misrepresentation made by the defendant. See Central Bank, supra, at 180; Stone-ridge, supra, at 157, 159. The Basic presumption doesnot eliminate that requirement but rather provides an alternative means of satisfying it. While the presumption makes it easier for plaintiffs to prove reliance, it does not alter the elements of the Rule 10b–5 cause of action and thus maintains the action’s original legal scope. Halliburton also argues that the Basic presumption cannot be reconciled with our recent decisions governing class action certification under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 23. Those decisions have made clear that plaintiffs wishing to proceed through a class action must actually prove—not simply plead—that their proposed class satisfies each requirement of Rule 23, including (if applicable) the predominance requirement of Rule 23(b)(3). See Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. v. Dukes, 564 U. S. ___, ___ (2011) (slip op., at 10); Comcast Corp. v. Behrend, 569 U. S. ___, ___ (2013) (slip op., at 5–6). According to Halliburton, Basic relieves Rule 10b–5 plaintiffs of that burden, allowing courts to presume that common issues of reliance predominate over individual ones. That is not the effect of the Basic presumption. In securities class action cases, the crucial requirement for class certification will usually be the predominance requirement of Rule 23(b)(3). The Basic presumption does not relieve plaintiffs of the burden of proving—before class certification—that this requirement is met. Basic instead establishes that a plaintiff satisfies that burden by proving the prerequisites for invoking the presumption—namely, publicity, materiality, market efficiency, and market timing. The burden of proving those prerequisites still rests with plaintiffs and (with the exception of materiality) must be satisfied before class certification. Basic does not, in other words, allow plaintiffs simply to plead that common questions of reliance predominate over individual ones, but rather sets forth what they must prove to demonstrate such predominance. Basic does afford defendants an opportunity to rebut the presumption of reliance with respect to an individual plaintiff by showing that he did not rely on the integrity of the market price in trading stock. While this has the effect of “leav[ing] individualized questions of reliance in the case,” post, at 12, there is no reason to think that these questions will overwhelm common ones and render class certification inappropriate under Rule 23(b)(3). That the defendant might attempt to pick off the occasional class member here or there through individualized rebuttal does not cause individual questions to predominate. Finally, Halliburton and its amici contend that, by facilitating securities class actions, the Basic presumption produces a number of serious and harmful consequences. Such class actions, they say, allow plaintiffs to extort large settlements from defendants for meritless claims; punish innocent shareholders, who end up having to pay settlements and judgments; impose excessive costs on businesses; and consume a disproportionately large share of judicial resources. Brief for Petitioners 39–45. These concerns are more appropriately addressed to Congress, which has in fact responded, to some extent, to many of the issues raised by Halliburton and its amici. Congress has, for example, enacted the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 (PSLRA), 109Stat. 737, which sought to combat perceived abuses in securities litigation with heightened pleading requirements, limits on damages and attorney’s fees, a “safe harbor” for certain kinds of statements, restrictions on the selection of lead plaintiffs in securities class actions, sanctions for frivolous litigation, and stays of discovery pending motions to dismiss. See Amgen, 568 U. S., at ___ (slip op., at 19–20). And to prevent plaintiffs from circumventing these restrictions by bringing securities class actions under state law in state court, Congress also enacted the Securities Litigation Uniform Standards Act of 1998, 112Stat. 3227, which precludes many state law class actions alleging securities fraud. See Amgen, supra, at ___ (slip op., at 20). Such legislation demonstrates Congress’s willingness to consider policy concerns of the sort that Halliburton says should lead us to overrule Basic. III Halliburton proposes two alternatives to overruling Basic that would alleviate what it regards as the decision’s most serious flaws. The first alternative would require plaintiffs to prove that a defendant’s misrepresentation actually affected the stock price—so-called “price impact”—in order to invoke the Basic presumption. It should not be enough, Halliburton contends, for plaintiffs to demonstrate the general efficiency of the market in which the stock traded. Halliburton’s second proposed alternative would allow defendants to rebut the presumption of reliance with evidence of a lack of price impact, not only at the merits stage—which all agree defendants may already do—but also before class certification. A As noted, to invoke the Basic presumption, a plaintiff must prove that: (1) the alleged misrepresentations were publicly known, (2) they were material, (3) the stock traded in an efficient market, and (4) the plaintiff traded the stock between when the misrepresentations were made and when the truth was revealed. See Basic, 485 U. S., at 248, n. 27; Amgen, supra, at ___ (slip op., at 15). Each of these requirements follows from the fraud-on-the-market theory underlying the presumption. If the misrepresentation was not publicly known, then it could not have distorted the stock’s market price. So too if the misrepresentation was immaterial—that is, if it would not have “ ‘been viewed by the reasonable investor as having significantly altered the “total mix” of information made available,’ ” Basic, supra, at 231–232 (quoting TSC Industries, Inc. v. Northway, Inc., 426 U. S. 438, 449 (1976) )—or if the market in which the stock traded was inefficient. And if the plaintiff did not buy or sell the stock after the misrepresentation was made but before the truth was revealed, then he could not be said to have acted in reliance on a fraud-tainted price. The first three prerequisites are directed at price impact—“whether the alleged misrepresentations affected the market price in the first place.” Halliburton I, 563 U. S., at ___ (slip op., at 8). In the absence of price impact, Basic’s fraud-on-the-market theory and presumption of reliance collapse. The “fundamental premise” underlying the presumption is “that an investor presumptively relies on a misrepresentation so long as it was reflected in the market price at the time of his transaction.” 563 U. S., at ___ (slip op., at 7). If it was not, then there is “no grounding for any contention that [the] investor[ ] indirectly relied on th[at] misrepresentation[ ] through [his] reliance on the integrity of the market price.” Amgen, supra, at ___ (slip op., at 17). Halliburton argues that since the Basic presumption hinges on price impact, plaintiffs should be required to prove it directly in order to invoke the presumption. Proving the presumption’s prerequisites, which are at best an imperfect proxy for price impact, should not suffice. Far from a modest refinement of the Basic presumption, this proposal would radically alter the required showing for the reliance element of the Rule 10b–5 cause of action. What is called the Basic presumption actually incorporates two constituent presumptions: First, if a plaintiff shows that the defendant’s misrepresentation was public and material and that the stock traded in a generally efficient market, he is entitled to a presumption that the misrepresentation affected the stock price. Second, if the plaintiff also shows that he purchased the stock at the market price during the relevant period, he is entitled to a further presumption that he purchased the stock in reliance on the defendant’s misrepresentation. By requiring plaintiffs to prove price impact directly, Halliburton’s proposal would take away the first constituent presumption. Halliburton’s argument for doing so is the same as its primary argument for overruling the Basic presumption altogether: Because market efficiency is not a yes-or-no proposition, a public, material misrepresentation might not affect a stock’s price even in a generally efficient market. But as explained, Basic never suggested otherwise; that is why it affords defendants an opportunity to rebut the presumption by showing, among other things, that the particular misrepresentation at issue did not affect the stock’s market price. For the same reasons we declined to completely jettison the Basic presumption, we decline to effectively jettison half of it by revising the prerequisites for invoking it. B Even if plaintiffs need not directly prove price impact to invoke the Basic presumption, Halliburton contends that defendants should at least be allowed to defeat the presumption at the class certification stage through evidence that the misrepresentation did not in fact affect the stock price. We agree. 1 There is no dispute that defendants may introduce such evidence at the merits stage to rebut the Basic presumption. Basic itself “made clear that the presumption was just that, and could be rebutted by appropriate evidence,” including evidence that the asserted misrepresentation (or its correction) did not affect the market price of the defendant’s stock. Halliburton I, supra, at ___ (slip op., at 5); see Basic, supra, at 248. Nor is there any dispute that defendants may introduce price impact evidence at the class certification stage, so long as it is for the purpose of countering a plaintiff ’s showing of market efficiency, rather than directly rebutting the presumption. As EPJ Fund acknowledges, “[o]f course . . . defendants can introduce evidence at class certification of lack of price impact as some evidence that the market is not efficient.” Brief for Respondent 53. See also Brief for United States as Amicus Curiae 26. After all, plaintiffs themselves can and do introduce evidence of the existence of price impact in connection with “event studies”—regression analyses that seek to show that the market price of the defendant’s stock tends to respond to pertinent publicly reported events. See Brief for Law Professors as Amici Curiae 25–28. In this case, for example, EPJ Fund submitted an event study of various episodes that might have been expected to affect the price of Halliburton’s stock, in order to demonstrate that the market for that stock takes account of material, public information about the company. See App. 217–230 (describing the results of the study). The episodes examined by EPJ Fund’s event study included one of the alleged misrepresentations that form the basis of the Fund’s suit. See id., at 230, 343–344. See also In re Xcelera.com Securities Litigation, 430 F. 3d 503, 513 (CA1 2005) (event study included effect of misrepresentation challenged in the case). Defendants—like plaintiffs—may accordingly submit price impact evidence prior to class certification. What defendants may not do, EPJ Fund insists and the Court of Appeals held, is rely on that same evidence prior to class certification for the particular purpose of rebutting the presumption altogether. This restriction makes no sense, and can readily lead to bizarre results. Suppose a defendant at the certification stage submits an event study looking at the impact on the price of its stock from six discrete events, in an effort to refute the plaintiffs’ claim of general market efficiency. All agree the defendant may do this. Suppose one of the six events is the specific misrepresentation asserted by the plaintiffs. All agree that this too is perfectly acceptable. Now suppose the district court determines that, despite the defendant’s study, the plaintiff has carried its burden to prove market efficiency, but that the evidence shows no price impact with respect to the specific misrepresentation challenged in the suit. The evidence at the certification stage thus shows an efficient market, on which the alleged misrepresentation had no price impact. And yet under EPJ Fund’s view, the plaintiffs’ action should be certified and proceed as a class action (with all that entails), even though the fraud-on-the-market theory does not apply and common reliance thus cannot be presumed. Such a result is inconsistent with Basic’s own logic. Under Basic’s fraud-on-the-market theory, market efficiency and the other prerequisites for invoking the presumption constitute an indirect way of showing price impact. As explained, it is appropriate to allow plaintiffs to rely on this indirect proxy for price impact, rather than requiring them to prove price impact directly, given Basic’s rationales for recognizing a presumption of reliance in the first place. See supra, at 6–7, 16–17. But an indirect proxy should not preclude direct evidence when such evidence is available. As we explained in Basic, “[a]ny showing that severs the link between the alleged misrepresentation and . . . the price received (or paid) by the plaintiff . . . will be sufficient to rebut the presumption of reliance” because “the basis for finding that the fraud had been transmitted through market price would be gone.” 485 U. S., at 248. And without the presumption of reliance, a Rule 10b–5 suit cannot proceed as a class action: Each plaintiff would have to prove reliance individually, so common issues would not “predominate” over individual ones, as required by Rule 23(b)(3). Id., at 242. Price impact is thus an essential precondition for any Rule 10b–5 class action. While Basic allows plaintiffs to establish that precondition indirectly, it does not require courts to ignore a defendant’s direct, more salient evidence showing that the alleged misrepresentation did not actually affect the stock’s market price and, consequently, thatthe Basic presumption does not apply. 2 The Court of Appeals relied on our decision in Amgen in holding that Halliburton could not introduce evidence of lack of price impact at the class certification stage. The question in Amgen was whether plaintiffs could be required to prove (or defendants be permitted to disprove) materiality before class certification. Even though materiality is a prerequisite for invoking the Basic presumption, we held that it should be left to the merits stage, because it does not bear on the predominance requirement of Rule 23(b)(3). We reasoned that materiality is an objective issue susceptible to common, classwide proof. 568 U. S., at ___ (slip op., at 11). We also noted that a failure to prove materiality would necessarily defeat every plaintiff’s claim on the merits; it would not simply preclude invocation of the presumption and thereby cause individual questions of reliance to predominate over common ones. Ibid. See also id., at ___ (slip op., at 17–18). In this latter respect, we explained, materiality differs from the publicity and market efficiency prerequisites, neither of which is necessary to prove a Rule 10b–5 claim on the merits. Id., at ___–___ (slip op., at 16–18). EPJ Fund argues that much of the foregoing could be said of price impact as well. Fair enough. But price impact differs from materiality in a crucial respect. Given that the other Basic prerequisites must still be proved at the class certification stage, the common issue of materiality can be left to the merits stage without risking the certification of classes in which individual issues will end up overwhelming common ones. And because materiality is a discrete issue that can be resolved in isolation from the other prerequisites, it can be wholly confined to the merits stage. Price impact is different. The fact that a misrepresentation “was reflected in the market price at the time of [the] transaction”—that it had price impact—is “Basic’s fundamental premise.” Halliburton I, 563 U. S., at ___ (slip op., at 7). It thus has everything to do with the issue of predominance at the class certification stage. That is why, if reliance is to be shown through the Basic presumption, the publicity and market efficiency prerequisites must be proved before class certification. Without proof of those prerequisites, the fraud-on-the-market theory underlying the presumption completely collapses, rendering class certification inappropriate. But as explained, publicity and market efficiency are nothing more than prerequisites for an indirect showing of price impact. There is no dispute that at least such indirect proof of price impact “is needed to ensure that the questions of law or fact common to the class will ‘predominate.’ ” Amgen, 568 U. S., at ___ (slip op., at 10) (emphasis deleted); see id., at ___ (slip op., at 16–17). That is so even though such proof is also highly relevant at the merits stage. Our choice in this case, then, is not between allowing price impact evidence at the class certification stage or relegating it to the merits. Evidence of price impact will be before the court at the certification stage in any event. The choice, rather, is between limiting the price impact inquiry before class certification to indirect evidence, or allowing consideration of direct evidence as well. As explained, we see no reason to artificially limit the inquiry at the certification stage to indirect evidence of price impact. Defendants may seek to defeat the Basic presumption at that stage through direct as well as indirect price impact evidence. * * * More than 25 years ago, we held that plaintiffs could satisfy the reliance element of the Rule 10b–5 cause of action by invoking a presumption that a public, material misrepresentation will distort the price of stock traded in an efficient market, and that anyone who purchases the stock at the market price may be considered to have done so in reliance on the misrepresentation. We adhere to that decision and decline to modify the prerequisites for invoking the presumption of reliance. But to maintain the consistency of the presumption with the class certification requirements of Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 23, defendants must be afforded an opportunity before class certification to defeat the presumption through evidence that an alleged misrepresentation did not actually affect the market price of the stock. Because the courts below denied Halliburton that opportunity, we vacate the judgment of the Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit and remand the case for further proceedings consistent with this opinion. It is so ordered.

573.US.616

Illinois’ Home Services Program (Rehabilitation Program) allows Medicaid recipients who would normally need institutional care to hire a “personal assistant” (PA) to provide homecare services. Under State law, the homecare recipients (designated “customers”) and the State both play some role in the employment relationship with the PAs. Customers control most aspects of the employment relationship, including the hiring, firing, training, supervising, and disciplining of PAs; they also define the PA’s duties by proposing a “Service Plan.” Other than compensating PAs, the State’s involvement in employment matters is minimal. Its employer status was created by executive order, and later codified by the legislature, solely to permit PAs to join a labor union and engage in collective bargaining under Illinois’ Public Labor Relations Act (PLRA). Pursuant to this scheme, respondent SEIU Healthcare Illinois & Indiana (SEIU–HII) was designated the exclusive union representative for Rehabilitation Program employees. The union entered into collective-bargaining agreements with the State that contained an agency-fee provision, which requires all bargaining unit members who do not wish to join the union to pay the union a fee for the cost of certain activities, including those tied to the collective-bargaining process. A group of Rehabilitation Program PAs brought a class action against SEIU–HII and other respondents in Federal District Court, claiming that the PLRA violated the First Amendment insofar as it authorized the agency-fee provision. The District Court dismissed their claims, and the Seventh Circuit affirmed in relevant part, concluding that the PAs were state employees within the meaning of Abood v. Detroit Bd. of Ed., 431 U.S. 209. Held: The First Amendment prohibits the collection of an agency fee from Rehabilitation Program PAs who do not want to join or support the union. Pp. 8–40. (a) In upholding the Illinois law’s constitutionality, the Seventh Circuit relied on Abood, which, in turn, relied on Railway Employes v. Hanson, 351 U.S. 225, and Machinists v. Street, 367 U.S. 740. Unlike Abood, those cases involved private-sector collective-bargaining agreements. The Abood Court treated the First Amendment issue as largely settled by Hanson and Street and understood those cases to have upheld agency fees based on the desirability of “labor peace” and the problem of “ ‘free riders[hip].’ ” 431 U. S., 220–222, 224. However, “preventing nonmembers from free-riding on the union’s efforts” is a rationale “generally insufficient to overcome First Amendment objections,” Knox v. Service Employees, 567 U. S. ___, ___, and in this respect, Abood is “something of an anomaly,” 567 U. S., at ___. The Abood Court’s analysis is questionable on several grounds. The First Amendment analysis in Hanson was thin, and Street was not a constitutional decision. And the Court fundamentally misunderstood Hanson’s narrow holding, which upheld the authorization, not imposition, of an agency fee. The Abood Court also failed to appreciate the distinction between core union speech in the public sector and core union speech in the private sector, as well as the conceptual difficulty in public-sector cases of distinguishing union expenditures for collective bargaining from those designed for political purposes. Nor does the Abood Court seem to have anticipated the administrative problems that would result in attempting to classify union expenditures as either chargeable or nonchargeable, see, e.g., Lehnert v. Ferris Faculty Assn., 500 U.S. 507, or the practical problems that would arise from the heavy burden facing objecting nonmembers wishing to challenge the union’s actions. Finally, the Abood Court’s critical “labor peace” analysis rests on the unsupported empirical assumption that exclusive representation in the public sector depends on the right to collect an agency fee from nonmembers. Pp. 8–20. (b) Because of Abood’s questionable foundations, and because Illinois’ PAs are quite different from full-fledged public employees, this Court refuses to extend Abood to the situation here. Pp. 20–29. (1) PAs are much different from public employees. Unlike full-fledged public employees, PAs are almost entirely answerable to the customers and not to the State, do not enjoy most of the rights and benefits that inure to state employees, and are not indemnified by the State for claims against them arising from actions taken during the course of their employment. Even the scope of collective bargaining on their behalf is sharply limited. Pp. 20–25. (2) Abood’s rationale is based on the assumption that the union possesses the full scope of powers and duties generally available under American labor law. Even the best argument for Abood’s anomalous approach is a poor fit here. What justifies the agency fee in the Abood context is the fact that the State compels the union to promote and protect the interests of nonmembers in “negotiating and administering a collective-bargaining agreement and representing the interests of employees in settling disputes and processing grievances.” Lehnert, supra, at 556. That rationale has little application here, where Illinois law requires that all PAs receive the same rate of pay and the union has no authority with respect to a PA’s grievances against a customer. Pp. 25–27. (3) Extending Abood’s boundaries to encompass partial public employees would invite problems. State regulations and benefits affecting such employees exist along a continuum, and it is unclear at what point, short of full-fledged public employment, Abood should apply. Under respondents’ view, a host of workers who currently receive payments from a government entity for some sort of service would become candidates for inclusion within Abood’s reach, and it would be hard to see where to draw the line. Pp. 27–29. (c) Because Abood does not control here, generally applicable First Amendment standards apply. Thus, the agency-fee provision here must serve a “ ‘compelling state interes[t] . . . that cannot be achieved through means significantly less restrictive of associational freedoms.’ ” Knox, supra, at ___. None of the interests that respondents contend are furthered by the agency-fee provision is sufficient. Pp. 29–34. (1) Their claim that the agency-fee provision promotes “labor peace” misses the point. Petitioners do not contend that they have a First Amendment right to form a rival union or that SEIU–HII has no authority to serve as the exclusive bargaining representative. This, along with examples from some federal agencies and many state laws, demonstrates that a union’s status as exclusive bargaining agent and the right to collect an agency fee from nonmembers are not inextricably linked. Features of the Illinois scheme—e.g., PAs do not work together in a common state facility and the union’s role is very restricted—further undermine the “labor peace” argument. Pp. 31–32. (2) Respondents also argue that the agency-fee provision promotes the welfare of PAs, thereby contributing to the Rehabilitation Program’s success. Even assuming that SEIU–HII has been an effective advocate, the agency-fee provision cannot be sustained unless the union could not adequately advocate without the receipt of nonmember agency fees. No such showing has been made. Pp. 32–34. (d) Respondents’ additional arguments for sustaining the Illinois scheme are unconvincing. First, they urge the application of a balancing test derived from Pickering v. Board of Ed. of Township High School Dist. 205, Will Cty., 391 U.S. 563. This Court has never viewed Abood and its progeny as based on Pickering balancing. And even assuming that Pickering applies, that case’s balancing test clearly tips in favor of the objecting employees’ First Amendment interests. Second, respondents err in contending that a refusal to extend Abood here will call into question this Court’s decisions in Keller v. State Bar of Cal., 496 U.S. 1, and Board of Regents of Univ. of Wis. System v. Southworth, 529 U.S. 217, for those decisions fit comfortably within the framework applied here. Pp. 34–40. 656 F.3d 692, reversed in part, affirmed in part, and remanded. Alito, J., delivered the opinion of the Court, in which Roberts, C. J., and Scalia, Kennedy, and Thomas, JJ., joined. Kagan, J., filed a dissenting opinion, in which Ginsburg, Breyer, and Sotomayor, JJ., joined.

This case presents the question whether the First Amendment permits a State to compel personal care providers to subsidize speech on matters of public concern by a union that they do not wish to join or support. We hold that it does not, and we therefore reverse the judgment of the Court of Appeals. I A Millions of Americans, due to age, illness, or injury, are unable to live in their own homes without assistance and are unable to afford the expense of in-home care. In order to prevent these individuals from having to enter a nursing home or other facility, the federal Medicaid program funds state-run programs that provide in-home services to individuals whose conditions would otherwise require institutionalization. See 42 U. S. C. §1396n(c)(1). A State that adopts such a program receives federal funds to compensate persons who attend to the daily needs of individuals needing in-home care. Ibid.; see also 42 CFR §§440.180, 441.300–441.310 (2013). Almost every State has established such a program. See Dept. of Health and Human Services, Understanding Medicaid Home and Community Services: A Primer (2010). One of those States is Illinois, which has created the Illinois Department of Human Services Home Services Program, known colloquially as the state “Rehabilitation Program.” Ill. Comp. Stat., ch. 20, §2405/3(f ) (West 2012); 89 Ill. Admin. Code §676.10 (2007). “[D]esigned to prevent the unnecessary institutionalization of individuals who may instead be satisfactorily maintained at home at a lesser cost to the State,” §676.10(a), the Rehabilitation Program allows participants to hire a “personal assistant” who provides homecare services tailored to the individual’s needs. Many of these personal assistants are relatives of the person receiving care, and some of them provide care in their own homes. See App. 16–18. Illinois law establishes an employer-employee relationship between the person receiving the care and the person providing it. The law states explicitly that the person receiving home care—the “customer”—“shall be the employer of the [personal assistant].” 89 Ill. Admin. Code §676.30(b) (emphasis added). A “personal assistant” is defined as “an individual employed by the customer to provide . . . varied services that have been approved by the customer’s physician,” §676.30(p) (emphasis added), and the law makes clear that Illinois “shall not have control or input in the employment relationship between the customer and the personal assistants.” §676.10(c). Other provisions of the law emphasize the customer’s employer status. The customer “is responsible for controlling all aspects of the employment relationship between the customer and the [personal assistant (or PA)], including, without limitation, locating and hiring the PA, training the PA, directing, evaluating and otherwise supervising the work performed by the personal assistant, imposing . . . disciplinary action against the PA, and terminating the employment relationship between the customer and the PA.” §676.30(b).[1] In general, the customer “has complete discretion in which Personal Assistant he/she wishes to hire.” §684.20(b). A customer also controls the contents of the document, the Service Plan, that lists the services that the customer will receive. §684.10(a). No Service Plan may take effect without the approval of both the customer and the customer’s physician. See §684.10, 684.40, 684.50, 684.75. Service Plans are highly individualized. The Illinois State Labor Relations Board noted in 1985 that “[t]here is no typical employment arrangement here, public or otherwise; rather, there simply exists an arrangement whereby the state of Illinois pays individuals . . . to work under the direction and control of private third parties.” Illinois Dept. of Central Management Serv., No. S–RC–115, 2 PERI ¶2007, p. VIII–30, (1985), superseded, 2003 Ill. Laws p. 1929. While customers exercise predominant control over their employment relationship with personal assistants, the State, subsidized by the federal Medicaid program, pays the personal assistants’ salaries. The amount paid varies depending on the services provided, but as a general matter, it “corresponds to the amount the State would expect to pay for the nursing care component of institutionalization if the individual chose institutionalization.” 89 Ill. Admin. Code §679.50(a). Other than providing compensation, the State’s role is comparatively small. The State sets some basic threshold qualifications for employment. See §§686.10(h)(1)–(10).[2] (For example, a personal assistant must have a Social Security number, must possess basic communication skills, and must complete an employment agreement with the customer. §§686.10, 686.20, 686.40.) The State mandates an annual performance review by the customer, helps the customer conduct that review, and mediates disagreements between customers and their personal assistants. §686.30. The State suggests certain duties that personal assistants should assume, such as performing “household tasks,” “shopping,” providing “personal care,” performing “incidental health care tasks,” and “monitoring to ensure the health and safety of the cus-tomer.” §686.20. In addition, a state employee must “identify the appropriate level of service provider” “based on the customer’s approval of the initial Service Plan,” §684.20(a) (emphasis added), and must sign each customer’s Service Plan. §684.10. B Section 6 of the Illinois Public Labor Relations Act (PLRA) authorizes state employees to join labor unions and to bargain collectively on the terms and conditions of employment. Ill. Comp. Stat., ch. 5, §315/6(a). This law applies to “[e]mployees of the State and any political subdivision of the State,” subject to certain exceptions, and it provides for a union to be recognized if it is “designated by the [Public Labor Relations] Board as the representative of the majority of public employees in an appropriate unit . . . .” §§315/6(a), (c). The PLRA contains an agency-fee provision, i.e., a provision under which members of a bargaining unit who do not wish to join the union are nevertheless required to pay a fee to the union. See Workers v. Mobil Oil Corp., 426 U. S. 407, 409, n. 1 (1976) . Labeled a “fair share” provision, this section of the PLRA provides: “When a collective bargaining agreement is entered into with an exclusive representative, it may include in the agreement a provision requiring employees covered by the agreement who are not members of the organization to pay their proportionate share of the costs of the collective-bargaining process, contract administration and pursuing matters affecting wages, hours and conditions of employment.” §315/6(e). This payment is “deducted by the employer from the earnings of the nonmember employees and paid to the em-ployee organization.” Ibid. In the 1980’s, the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) petitioned the Illinois Labor Relations Board for permission to represent personal assistants employed by customers in the Rehabilitation Program, but the board rebuffed this effort. Illinois Dept. of Central Management Servs., supra, at VIII–30. The board concluded that “it is clear . . . that [Illinois] does not exercise the type of control over the petitioned-for employees necessary to be considered, in the collective bargaining context envisioned by the [PLRA], their ‘employer’ or, at least, their sole employer.” Ibid. In March 2003, however, Illinois’ newly elected Governor, Rod Blagojevich, circumvented this decision by issuing Executive Order 2003–08. See App. to Pet. for Cert. 45a–47a. The order noted the Illinois Labor Relations Board decision but nevertheless called for state recognition of a union as the personal assistants’ exclusive representative for the purpose of collective bargaining with the State. This was necessary, Gov. Blagojevich declared, so that the State could “receive feedback from the personal assistants in order to effectively and efficiently deliver home services.” Id., at 46a. Without such representation, the Governor proclaimed, personal assistants “cannot effectively voice their concerns about the organization of the Home Services program, their role in the program, or the terms and conditions of their employment under the Program.” Ibid. Several months later, the Illinois Legislature codified that executive order by amending the PLRA. Pub. Act no. 93–204, §5, 2003 Ill. Laws p. 1930. While acknowledging “the right of the persons receiving services . . . to hire and fire personal assistants or supervise them,” the Act declared personal assistants to be “public employees” of the State of Illinois—but “[s]olely for the purposes of coverage under the Illinois Public Labor Relations Act.” Ill. Comp. Stat., ch. 20, §2405/3(f ). The statute emphasized that personal assistants are not state employees for any other purpose, “including but not limited to, purposes of vicarious liability in tort and purposes of statutory retirement or health insurance benefits.” Ibid. Following a vote, SEIU Healthcare Illinois & Indiana (SEIU–HII) was designated as the personal assistants’ exclusive representative for purposes of collective bargaining. See App. 23. The union and the State subsequently entered into collective-bargaining agreements that require all personal assistants who are not union members to pay a “fair share” of the union dues. Id., at 24–25. These payments are deducted directly from the personal assistants’ Medicaid payments. Ibid. The record in this case shows that each year, personal assistants in Illinois pay SEIU–HII more than $3.6 million in fees. Id., at 25. C Three of the petitioners in the case now before us—Theresa Riffey, Susan Watts, and Stephanie Yencer-Price—are personal assistants under the Rehabilitation Program. They all provide in-home services to family members or other individuals suffering from disabilities.[3] Susan Watts, for example, serves as personal assistant for her daughter, who requires constant care due to quadriplegic cerebral palsy and other conditions. See App. 18. In 2010, these petitioners filed a putative class action on behalf of all Rehabilitation Program personal assistants in the United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois. See 656 F. 3d 692, 696 (CA7 2011). Their complaint, which named the Governor and the union as defendants, sought an injunction against enforcement of the fair-share provision and a declaration that the Illinois PLRA violates the First Amendment insofar as it requires personal assistants to pay a fee to a union that they do not wish to support. Ibid. The District Court dismissed their claims with prejudice, and the Seventh Circuit affirmed in relevant part, concluding that the case was controlled by this Court’s decision in Abood v. Detroit Bd. of Ed. 431 U. S. 209 (1977) . 656 F. 3d, at 698. The Seventh Circuit held that Illinois and the customers who receive in-home care are “joint employers” of the personal assistants, and the court stated that it had “no difficulty concluding that the State employs personal assistants within the meaning of Abood.” Ibid. Petitioners sought certiorari. Their petition pointed out that other States were following Illinois’ lead by enacting laws or issuing executive orders that deem personal assistants to be state employees for the purpose of unionization and the assessment of fair-share fees. See App. to Pet. for Cert. 22a. Petitioners also noted that Illinois has enacted a law that deems “individual maintenance home health workers”—a category that includes registered nurses, licensed practical nurses, and certain therapists who work in private homes—to be “public employees” for similar purposes. Ill. Pub. Act no. 97–1158, 2012 Ill. Laws p. 7823. In light of the important First Amendment questions these laws raise, we granted certiorari. 570 U. S. ___ (2013). II In upholding the constitutionality of the Illinois law, the Seventh Circuit relied on this Court’s decision in Abood supra, which held that state employees who choose not to join a public-sector union may nevertheless be compelled to pay an agency fee to support union work that is related to the collective-bargaining process. Id., at 235–236. Two Terms ago, in Knox v. Service Employees, 567 U. S. ___ (2012), we pointed out that Abood is “something of an anomaly.” Id., at ___ (slip op., at 11). “ ‘The primary purpose’ of permitting unions to collect fees from nonmembers,” we noted, “is ‘to prevent nonmembers from free-riding on the union’s efforts, sharing the employment benefits obtained by the union’s collective bargaining without sharing the costs incurred.’ ” Id., at ___ (slip op., at 10) (quoting Davenport v. Washington Ed. Assn., 551 U. S. 177, 181 (2007) ). But “[s]uch free-rider arguments . . . are generally insufficient to overcome First Amendment objections.” 567 U. S., at ___ (slip op., at 10–11). For this reason, Abood stands out, but the State of Illinois now asks us to sanction what amounts to a very significant expansion of Abood—so that it applies, not just to full-fledged public employees, but also to others who are deemed to be public employees solely for the purpose of unionization and the collection of an agency fee. Faced with this argument, we begin by examining the path that led to this Court’s decision in Abood. A The starting point was Railway Employes v. Hanson, 351 U. S. 225 (1956) , a case in which the First Amendment was barely mentioned. The dispute in Hanson resulted from an amendment to the Railway Labor Act (RLA). Id., at 229, 232. As originally enacted in 1926, the Act did not permit a collective-bargaining agreement to require employees to join or make any payments to a union. See Machinists v. Street, 367 U. S. 740, 750 (1961) . At that time and for many years thereafter, there was “a strong and long-standing tradition of voluntary unionism on the part of the standard rail unions.” Ibid. Eventually, however, the view of the unions changed. See id., at 760–761. The RLA’s framework for resolving labor disputes “is more complex than that of any other industry,” id., at 755, and amendments enacted in 1934 increased the financial burden on unions by creating the 36-member National Railroad Adjustment Board, one-half of whose members were appointed and paid by the unions. Id., at 759–760. In seeking authorization to enter into union-shop agreements, i.e., agreements requiring all employees to join a union and thus pay union dues, see Oil Workers, 426 U. S., at 409, n. 1, the unions’ principal argument “was based on their role in this regulatory framework.” Street, 367 U. S., at 761. A union spokesman argued that the financial burdens resulting from the Act’s unique and complex scheme justified union-shop provisions in order to provide the unions with needed dues. Ibid. These arguments were successful, and the Act was amended in 1951 to permit a railroad and a union to enter into an agreement containing a union-shop provision. This amendment brought the Act into conflict with the laws of States that guaranteed the “right to work” and thereby outlawed the union shop. Nebraska, the setting of Hanson, was one such State. 351 U. S., at 228. In Hanson, the Union Pacific Railroad Company and its unionized workers entered into a collective-bargaining agreement that contained a provision requiring employees, “as a condition of their continued employment,” to join and remain members of the union. Id., at 227. Employees who did not want to join the union brought suit in state court, contending that the union-shop provision violated a provision of the Nebraska Constitution banning adverse employment actions “ ‘because of refusal to join or affiliate with a labor organization.’ ” Id., at 228 (quoting Neb. Const., Art. XV, §13). The employer countered that the RLA trumped the Nebraska provision, but the Nebraska courts agreed with the employees and struck down the union-shop agreement. When the case reached this Court, the primary issue was whether the provision of the RLA that authorized union-shop agreements was “germane to the exercise of power under the Commerce Clause.” 351 U. S., at 234–235. In an opinion by Justice Douglas, the Court held that this provision represented a permissible regulation of commerce. The Court reasoned that the challenged provision “ ‘stabilized labor-management relations’ ” and thus furthered “ ‘industrial peace.’ ” Id., at 233–234. The employees also raised what amounted to a facial constitutional challenge to the same provision of the RLA. The employees claimed that a “union shop agreement forces men into ideological and political associations which violate their right to freedom of conscience, freedom of association, and freedom of thought protected by the Bill of Rights.” Id., at 236. But because the lawsuit had been filed shortly after the collective-bargaining agreement was approved, the record contained no evidence that the union had actually engaged in political or ideological activities.[4] The Hanson Court dismissed the objecting employees’ First Amendment argument with a single sentence. The Court wrote: “On the present record, there is no more an infringement or impairment of First Amendment rights than there would be in the case of a lawyer who by state law is required to be a member of an integrated bar.” Id., at 238. This explanation was remarkable for two reasons. First, the Court had never previously held that compulsory membership in and the payment of dues to an integrated bar was constitutional, and the constitutionality of such a requirement was hardly a foregone conclusion. Indeed, that issue did not reach the Court until five years later, and it produced a plurality opinion and four separate writings. See Lathrop v. Donohue, 367 U. S. 820 (1961) (plurality opinion).[5] Second, in his Lathrop dissent, Justice Douglas, the author of Hanson, came to the conclusion that the First Amendment did not permit compulsory membership in an integrated bar. See 367 U. S., at 878–880. The analogy drawn in Hanson, he wrote, fails. “Once we approve this measure,” he warned, “we sanction a device where men and women in almost any profession or calling can be at least partially regimented behind causes which they oppose.” 367 U. S., at 884. He continued: “I look on the Hanson case as a narrow exception to be closely confined. Unless we so treat it, we practically give carte blanche to any legislature to put at least professional people into goose-stepping brigades. Those brigades are not compatible with the First Amendment.” Id., at 884–885 (footnote omitted). The First Amendment analysis in Hanson was thin, and the Court’s resulting First Amendment holding was narrow. As the Court later noted, “all that was held in Hanson was that [the RLA] was constitutional in its bare authorization of union-shop contracts requiring workers to give ‘financial support’ to unions legally authorized to act as their collective bargaining agents.” Street, 367 U. S., at 749 (emphasis added). The Court did not suggest that “industrial peace” could justify a law that “forces men into ideological and political associations which violate their right to freedom of conscience, freedom of association, and freedom of thought,” or a law that forces a person to “conform to [a union’s] ideology.” Hanson, supra, at 236–237. The RLA did not compel such results, and the record in Hanson did not show that this had occurred. B Five years later, in Street, supra, the Court considered another case in which workers objected to a union shop. Employees of the Southern Railway System raised a First Amendment challenge, contending that a substantial part of the money that they were required to pay to the union was used to support political candidates and causes with which they disagreed. A Georgia court enjoined the enforcement of the union-shop provision and entered judgment for the dissenting employees in the amount of the payments that they had been forced to make to the union. The Georgia Supreme Court affirmed. Id., at 742–745. Reviewing the State Supreme Court’s decision, this Court recognized that the case presented constitutional questions “of the utmost gravity,” id., at 749, but the Court found it unnecessary to reach those questions. Instead, the Court construed the RLA “as not vesting the unions with unlimited power to spend exacted money.” Id., at 768. Specifically, the Court held, the Act “is to be construed to deny the unions, over an employee’s objection, the power to use his exacted funds to support political causes which he opposes.” Id., at 768–769. Having construed the RLA to contain this restriction, the Street Court then went on to discuss the remedies available for employees who objected to the use of union funds for political causes. The Court suggested two: The dissenting employees could be given a refund of the portion of their dues spent by the union for political or ideological purposes, or they could be given a refund of the portion spent on those political purposes that they had advised the union they disapproved.[6] Id., at 774–775. Justice Black, writing in dissent, objected to the Court’s suggested remedies, and he accurately predicted that the Court’s approach would lead to serious practical problems. Id., at 796–797. That approach, he wrote, while “very lucrative to special masters, accountants and lawyers,” would do little for “the individual workers whose First Amendment freedoms have been flagrantly violated.” Id., at 796. He concluded: “Unions composed of a voluntary membership, like all other voluntary groups, should be free in this country to fight in the public forum to advance their own causes, to promote their choice of candidates and parties and to work for the doctrines or the laws they favor. But to the extent that Government steps in to force people to help espouse the particular causes of a group, that group—whether composed of railroad workers or lawyers—loses its status as a voluntary group.” Ibid. Justice Frankfurter, joined by Justice Harlan, also dissented, arguing that the Court’s remedy was conceptually flawed because a union may further the objectives of members by political means. See id., at 813–815. He noted, for example, that reports from the AFL–CIO Executive Council “emphasize that labor’s participation in urging legislation and candidacies is a major one.” Id., at 813. In light of “the detailed list of national and international problems on which the AFL–CIO speaks,” he opined, “it seems rather naive” to believe “that economic and political concerns are separable.” Id., at 814. C This brings us to Abood, which, unlike Hanson and Street, involved a public-sector collective-bargaining agreement. The Detroit Federation of Teachers served “as the exclusive representative of teachers employed by the Detroit Board of Education.” 431 U. S., at 211–212. The collective-bargaining agreement between the union and the board contained an agency-shop clause requiring every teacher to “pay the Union a service charge equal to the regular dues required of Union members.” Id., at 212. A putative class of teachers sued to invalidate this clause. Asserting that “they opposed collective bargaining in the public sector,” the plaintiffs argued that “ ‘a substantial part’ ” of their dues would be used to fund union “ ‘activities and programs which are economic, political, professional, scientific and religious in nature of which Plaintiffs do not approve, and in which they will have no voice.’ ” Id., at 212–213. This Court treated the First Amendment issue as largely settled by Hanson and Street. 431 U. S., at 217, 223.The Court acknowledged that Street was resolved as a matter of statutory construction without reaching any constitutional issues, 431 U. S., at 220, and the Court recognized that forced membership and forced contributions impinge on free speech and associational rights, id., at 223. But the Court dismissed the objecting teachers’ constitutional arguments with this observation: “[T]he judgment clearly made in Hanson and Street is that such interference as exists is constitutionally justified by the legislative assessment of the important contribution of the union shop to the system of labor relations established by Congress.” Id., at 222. The Abood Court understood Hanson and Street to have upheld union-shop agreements in the private sector based on two primary considerations: the desirability of “labor peace” and the problem of “ ‘free riders[hip].’ ” 431 U. S., at 220–222, 224. The Court thought that agency-shop provisions promote labor peace because the Court saw a close link between such provisions and the “principle of exclusive union representation.” Id., at 220. This principle, the Court explained, “prevents inter-union rivalries from creating dissension within the work force and eliminating the advantages to the employee of collectivization.” Id., at 220–221. In addition, the Court noted, the “designation of a single representative avoids the confusion that would result from attempting to enforce two or more agreements specifying different terms and conditions of employment.” Id., at 220. And the Court pointed out that exclusive representation “frees the employer from the possibility of facing conflicting demands from different unions, and permits the employer and a single union to reach agreements and settlements that are not subject to attack from rival labor organizations.” Id., at 221. Turning to the problem of free ridership, Abood noted that a union must “ ‘fairly and equitably . . . represent all employees’ ” regardless of union membership, and the Court wrote as follows: The “union-shop arrangement has been thought to distribute fairly the cost of these activities among those who benefit, and it counteracts the incentive that employees might otherwise have to become ‘free riders’ to refuse to contribute to the union while obtaining benefits of union representation.” Id., at 221–222. The plaintiffs in Abood argued that Hanson and Street should not be given much weight because they did not arise in the public sector, and the Court acknowledged that public-sector bargaining is different from private-sector bargaining in some notable respects. 431 U. S., at 227–228. For example, although public and private employers both desire to keep costs down, the Court recognized that a public employer “lacks an important discipline against agreeing to increases in labor costs that in a market system would require price increases.” Id., at 228. The Court also noted that “decisionmaking by a public employer is above all a political process” undertaken by people “ultimately responsible to the electorate.” Ibid. Thus, whether a public employer accedes to a union’s demands, the Court wrote, “will depend upon a blend of political ingredients,” thereby giving public employees “more influence in the decisionmaking process that is possessed by employees similarly organized in the private sector.” Ibid. But despite these acknowledged differences between private- and public-sector bargaining, the Court treated Hanson and Street as essentially controlling. Instead of drawing a line between the private and public sectors, the Abood Court drew a line between, on the one hand, a union’s expenditures for “collective-bargaining, contract administration, and grievance-adjustment purposes,” 431 U. S., at 232, and, on the other, expenditures for political or ideological purposes. Id., at 236. D The Abood Court’s analysis is questionable on several grounds. Some of these were noted or apparent at or before the time of the decision, but several have become more evident and troubling in the years since then. The Abood Court seriously erred in treating Hanson and Street as having all but decided the constitutionality of compulsory payments to a public-sector union. As we have explained, Street was not a constitutional decision at all, and Hanson disposed of the critical question in a single, unsupported sentence that its author essentially abandoned a few years later. Surely a First Amendment issue of this importance deserved better treatment. The Abood Court fundamentally misunderstood the holding in Hanson, which was really quite narrow. As the Court made clear in Street, “all that was held in Hanson was that [the RLA] was constitutional in its bare authorization of union-shop contracts requiring workers to give ‘financial support’ to unions legally authorized to act as their collective bargaining agents.” 367 U. S., at 749 (emphasis added). In Abood, on the other hand, the State of Michigan did more than simply authorize the imposition of an agency fee. A state instrumentality, the Detroit Board of Education, actually imposed that fee. This presented a very different question. Abood failed to appreciate the difference between the core union speech involuntarily subsidized by dissenting public-sector employees and the core union speech involuntarily funded by their counterparts in the private sector. In the public sector, core issues such as wages, pensions, and benefits are important political issues, but that is generally not so in the private sector. In the years since Abood, as state and local expenditures on employee wages and benefits have mushroomed, the importance of the difference between bargaining in the public and private sectors has been driven home.[7] Abood failed to appreciate the conceptual difficulty of distinguishing in public-sector cases between union expenditures that are made for collective-bargaining pur-poses and those that are made to achieve political ends. In the private sector, the line is easier to see. Collective bargaining concerns the union’s dealings with the em-ployer; political advocacy and lobbying are directed at the government. But in the public sector, both collective-bargaining and political advocacy and lobbying are directed at the government. Abood does not seem to have anticipated the magnitude of the practical administrative problems that would result in attempting to classify public-sector union expenditures as either “chargeable” (in Abood’s terms, expendituresfor “collective-bargaining, contract administration, andgrievance-adjustment purposes,” id., at 232) or noncharge-able (i.e., expenditures for political or ideological purposes, id., at 236). In the years since Abood, the Court has strug-gled repeatedly with this issue. See Ellis v. Railway Clerks, 466 U. S. 435 (1984) ; Teachers v. Hudson, 475 U. S. 292 (1986) ; Lehnert v. Ferris Faculty Assn., 500 U. S. 507 (1991) ; Locke v. Karass, 555 U. S. 207 (2009) . In Lehnert, the Court held that “chargeable activities must (1) be ‘germane’ to collective-bargaining activity; (2) be justified by the government’s vital policy interest in labor peace and avoiding ‘free riders’; and (3) not significantly add to the burdening of free speech that is inherent in the allowance of an agency or union shop.” 500 U. S., at 519. But as noted in Justice Scalia’s dissent in that case, “each one of the three ‘prongs’ of the test involves a substantial judgment call (What is ‘germane’? What is ‘justified’? What is a ‘significant’ additional burden).” Id., at 551 (opinion concurring in judgment in part and dissenting in part). Abood likewise did not foresee the practical problems that would face objecting nonmembers. Employees who suspect that a union has improperly put certain expenses in the “germane” category must bear a heavy burden if they wish to challenge the union’s actions. “[T]he onus is on the employees to come up with the resources to mount the legal challenge in a timely fashion,” Knox, 567 U. S., at ___ (slip op., at 19) (citing Lehnert, supra, at 513), and litigating such cases is expensive. Because of the open-ended nature of the Lehnert test, classifying particular categories of expenses may not be straightforward. See Jibson v. Michigan Ed. Assn.–NEA, 30 F. 3d 723, 730 (CA6 1994)). And although Hudson required that a union’s books be audited, auditors do not themselves review the correctness of a union’s categorization. See Knox, supra, at ___ (slip op., at 18–19) (citing Andrews v. Education Assn. of Cheshire, 829 F. 2d 335, 340 (CA2 1987)). See also American Federation of Television and Recording Artists, Portland Local, 327 N. L. R. B. 474, 477 (1999) (“It is settled that determinations concerning whether particular expenditures are chargeable are legal determinations which are outside the expertise of the auditor. Thus, as we have stated, the function of the auditor is to verify that the expenditures that the union claims it made were in fact made for the purposes claimed, not to pass on the correctness of the union’s allocation of expenditures to the chargeable and nonchargeable categories”); California Saw and Knife Works, 320 N. L. R. B. 224, 241 (1995) (“We first agree [that the company at issue] did not violate its duty of fair representation by failing to use an independent auditor to determine the allocation of chargeable and nonchargeable expenditures”); Price v. International Union, United Auto, Aerospace & Agricultural Implement Workers of Am., 927 F. 2d 88, 93–94 (CA2 1991) (“Hudson requires only that the usual function of an auditor be performed, i.e., to determine that the expenses claimed were in fact made. That function does not require that the auditor make a legal decision as to the appropriateness of the allocation of expenses to the chargeable and non-chargeable categories”). Finally, a critical pillar of the Abood Court’s analysis rests on an unsupported empirical assumption, namely, that the principle of exclusive representation in the public sector is dependent on a union or agency shop. As we will explain, see infra, at 31–34, this assumption is unwarranted. III A Despite all this, the State of Illinois now asks us to approve a very substantial expansion of Abood’s reach. Abood involved full-fledged public employees, but in this case, the status of the personal assistants is much different. The Illinois Legislature has taken pains to specify that personal assistants are public employees for one purpose only: collective bargaining. For all other pur-poses, Illinois regards the personal assistants as private-sector employees. This approach has important practical consequences. For one thing, the State’s authority with respect to these two groups is vastly different. In the case of full-fledged public employees, the State establishes all of the duties imposed on each employee, as well as all of the qualifications needed for each position. The State vets applicants and chooses the employees to be hired. The State provides or arranges for whatever training is needed, and it supervises and evaluates the employees’ job performance and imposes corrective measures if appropriate. If a state employee’s performance is deficient, the State may discharge the employee in accordance with whatever procedures are required by law. With respect to the personal assistants involved in this case, the picture is entirely changed. The job duties of personal assistants are specified in their individualized Service Plans, which must be approved by the customer and the customer’s physician. 89 Ill. Admin. Code §684.10. Customers have complete discretion to hire any personal assistant who meets the meager basic qualifications that the State prescribes in §686.10. See §676.30(b) (the customer “is responsible for controlling all aspects of the employment relationship between the customer and the [personal assistant], including, without limitation, locating and hiring the [personal assistant]” (emphasis added)); §684.20(b) (“complete discretion in which Per-sonal Assistant [the customer] wishes to hire” subject to baseline eligibility requirements). Customers supervise their personal assistants on a daily basis, and no provision of the Illinois statute or implementing regulations gives the State the right to enter the home in which the personal assistant is employed for the purpose of checking on the personal assistant’s job performance. Cf. §676.20(b) (customer controls “without limitation . . . supervising the work performed by the [personal assistant], imposing . . . disciplinary action against the [personal assistant]”). And while state law mandates an annual review of each personal assistant’s work, that evaluation is also controlled by the customer. §§686.10(k), 686.30. A state counselor is assigned to assist the customer in performing the review but has no power to override the customer’s evaluation. See ibid. Nor do the regulations empower the State to discharge a personal assistant for substandard performance. See n. 1, supra. Discharge, like hiring, is entirely in the hands of the customer. See §676.30. Consistent with this scheme, under which personal assistants are almost entirely answerable to the customers and not to the State, Illinois withholds from personal assistants most of the rights and benefits enjoyed by full-fledged state employees. As we have noted already, state law explicitly excludes personal assistants from statutory retirement and health insurance benefits. Ill. Comp. Stat., ch. 20, §2405/3(f ). It also excludes personal assistants from group life insurance and certain other employee benefits provided under the State Employees Group Insurance Act of 1971. Ibid. (“Personal assistants shall not be covered by the State Employees Group Insurance Act of 1971”). And the State “does not provide paid vacation, holiday, or sick leave” to personal assistants. 89 Ill. Admin. Code §686.10(h)(7). Personal assistants also appear to be ineligible for a host of benefits under a variety of other state laws, including the State Employee Vacation Time Act (see Ill. Stat., ch. 5, §360/1); the State Employee Health Savings Account Law (see Ill. Stat., ch. 5, §377/10–1); the State Employee Job Sharing Act (see Ill. Stat., ch. 5, §380/0.01); the State Employee Indemnification Act (see Ill. Stat., ch. 5, §350/2); and the Sick Leave Bank Act. See Ill. Stat., ch. 5, §400/1. Personal assistants are apparently not entitled to the protection that the Illinois Whistleblower Act provides for full-fledged state employees. See Ill. Stat., ch. 740, §174/1. And it likewise appears that personal assistants are shut out of many other state employee programs and benefits. The Illinois Department of Central Management Services lists many such programs and benefits, including a deferred compensation program, full worker’s compensation privileges,[8] behavioral health programs, a program that allows state employees to retain health insurance for a time after leaving state employment, a commuter savings program, dental and vision programs, and a flexible spending program.[9] All of these programs and benefits appear to fall within the provision of the Rehabilitation Program declaring that personal assistants are not state employees for “any purposes” other than collective bargaining. See Ill. Comp. Stat., ch. 20, §2405/3(f ). Just as the State denies personal assistants most of the rights and benefits enjoyed by full-fledged state workers, the State does not assume responsibility for actions taken by personal assistants during the course of their employment. The governing statute explicitly disclaims “vicarious liability in tort.” Ibid. So if a personal assistant steals from a customer, neglects a customer, or abuses a customer, the State washes its hands. Illinois deems personal assistants to be state employees for one purpose only, collective bargaining,[10] but the scope of bargaining that may be conducted on their behalf is sharply limited. Under the governing Illinois statute, collective bargaining can occur only for “terms and conditions of employment that are within the State’s control.” Ill. Comp. Stat., ch. 20, §2405/3(f ). That is not very much. As an illustration, consider the subjects of mandatory bargaining under federal and state labor law that are out of bounds when it comes to personal assistants. Under federal law, mandatory subjects include the days of the week and the hours of the day during which an employee must work,[11] lunch breaks,[12] holidays,[13] vacations,[14] termination of employment,[15] and changes in job duties.[16] Illinois law similarly makes subject to mandatory collective-bargaining decisions concerning the “hours and terms and conditions of employment.” Belvidere v. Illinois State Labor Relations Bd., 181 Ill. 2d 191, 201, 692 N. E. 2d 295, 301 (1998); see also, e.g., Aurora Sergeants Assn., 24 PERI ¶25 (2008) (holding that days of the week worked by police officers is subject to mandatory collective bargaining). But under the Rehabilitation Program, all these topics are governed by the Service Plan, with respect to which the union has no role. See §676.30(b) (the customer “is responsible for controlling all aspects of the employment relationship between the customer and the PA, including, without limitation, locating and hiring the PA, training the PA, directing, evaluating, and otherwise supervising the work performed by the PA, imposing . . . disciplinary action against the PA, and terminating the employment relationship between the customer and the PA”); §684.50 (the Service Plan must specify “the frequency with which the specific tasks are to be provided” and “the number of hours each task is to be provided per month”). B 1 The unusual status of personal assistants has important implications for present purposes. Abood’s rationale, whatever its strengths and weaknesses, is based on the assumption that the union possesses the full scope of powers and duties generally available under American labor law. Under the Illinois scheme now before us, however, the union’s powers and duties are sharply circumscribed, and as a result, even the best argument for the “extraordinary power” that Abood allows a union to wield, see Davenport, 551 U. S., at 184, is a poor fit. In our post-Abood cases involving public-sector agency-fee issues, Abood has been a given, and our task has been to attempt to understand its rationale and to apply it in a way that is consistent with that rationale. In that vein, Abood’s reasoning has been described as follows. The mere fact that nonunion members benefit from union speech is not enough to justify an agency fee because “private speech often furthers the interests of nonspeakers, and that does not alone empower the state to compel the speech to be paid for.” Lehnert, 500 U. S., at 556 (opinion of Scalia, J.). What justifies the agency fee, the argument goes, is the fact that the State compels the union to promote and protect the interests of nonmembers. Ibid. Specifically, the union must not discriminate between members and nonmembers in “negotiating and administering a collective-bargaining agreement and representing the interests of employees in settling disputes and processing grievances.” Ibid. This means that the union “cannot, for example, negotiate particularly high wage increases for its members in exchange for accepting no increases for others.” Ibid. And it has the duty to provide equal and effective representation for nonmembers in grievance proceedings, see Ill. Comp. Stat. Ann., ch. 5, §§315/6, 315/8, an undertaking that can be very involved. See, e.g., SEIU: Member Resources, available at www.seiu.or /a/members /disputes-and-grievances-rights-procedures-and-best-practices.php (detailing the steps involved in adjusting grievances). This argument has little force in the situation now before us. Illinois law specifies that personal assistants “shall be paid at the hourly rate set by law,” see 89 Ill. Admin. Code §686.40(a), and therefore the union cannot be in the position of having to sacrifice higher pay for its members in order to protect the nonmembers whom it is obligated to represent. And as for the adjustment of grievances, the union’s authority and responsibilities are narrow, as we have seen. The union has no authority with respect to any grievances that a personal assistant may have with a customer, and the customer has virtually complete control over a personal assistant’s work. The union’s limited authority in this area has important practical implications. Suppose, for example that a customer fires a personal assistant because the customer wrongly believes that the assistant stole a fork. Or suppose that a personal assistant is discharged because the assistant shows no interest in the customer’s favorite daytime soaps. Can the union file a grievance on behalf of the assistant? The answer is no. It is true that Illinois law requires a collective-bargaining agreement to “contain a grievance resolution procedure which shall apply to all employees in the bargaining unit,” Ill. Comp. Stat., ch. 5, §315/8, but in the situation here, this procedure appears to relate solely to any grievance that a personal assistant may have with the State,[17] not with the customer for whom the personal assistant works.[18] 2 Because of Abood’s questionable foundations, and because the personal assistants are quite different from full-fledged public employees, we refuse to extend Abood to the new situation now before us.[19] Abood itself has clear boundaries; it applies to public employees. Extending those boundaries to encompass partial-public employees, quasi-public employees, or simply private employees would invite problems. Consider a continuum, ranging, on the one hand, from full-fledged state employees to, on the other hand, individuals who follow a common calling and benefit from advocacy or lobbying conducted by a group to which they do not belong and pay no dues. A State may not force every person who benefits from this group’s efforts to make payments to the group. See Lehnert, 500 U. S., at 556 (opinion of Scalia, J.). But what if regulation of this group is increased? What if the Federal Government or a State begins to provide or increases subsidies in this area? At what point, short of the point at which the individuals in question become full-fledged state employees, should Abood apply? If respondents’ and the dissent’s views were adopted, a host of workers who receive payments from a governmental entity for some sort of service would be candidates for inclusion within Abood’s reach. Medicare-funded home health employees may be one such group. See Brief for Petitioners 51; 42 U. S. C. §1395x(m); 42 CFR §424.22(a). The same goes for adult foster care providers in Oregon (Ore. Rev. Stat. §443.733 (2013)) and Washington (Wash. Rev. Code §41.56.029 (2012)) and certain workers under the federal Child Care and Development Fund programs (45 CFR §98.2). If we allowed Abood to be extended to those who are not full-fledged public employees, it would be hard to see just where to draw the line,[20] and we therefore confine Abood’s reach to full-fledged state employees.[21] IV A Because Abood is not controlling, we must analyze the constitutionality of the payments compelled by Illinois law under generally applicable First Amendment standards. As we explained in Knox, “[t]he government may not prohibit the dissemination of ideas that it disfavors, nor compel the endorsement of ideas that it approves.” 567 U. S., at ___ (slip op. at 8–9); see also, e.g., R.A.V. v. St. Paul, 505 U. S. 377, 382 (1992) ; Riley v. National Federation of Blind of N.C., 487 U. S. 781, 797 (1988) West Virginia Bd. of Ed. v. Barnette, 319 U. S. 624 (1943) ; Wooley v. Maynard, 430 U. S. 705 –715 (1977). And “compelled funding of the speech of other private speakers or groups” presents the same dangers as compelled speech. Knox, supra, at ___ (slip op. at 9). As a result, we explained in Knox that an agency-fee provision imposes “a ‘significant impingement on First Amendment rights,’ ” and this cannot be tolerated unless it passes “exacting First Amendment scrutiny.” 567 U. S., at ___ (slip op. at 9–10). In Knox, we considered specific features of an agency-shop agreement—allowing a union to impose upon nonmembers a special assessment or dues increase without providing notice and without obtaining the nonmembers’ affirmative agreement—and we held that these features could not even satisfy the standard employed in United States v. United Foods, Inc., 533 U. S. 405, 415 (2001) , where we struck down a provision that compelled the subsidization of commercial speech. We did not suggest, however, that the compelled speech in Knox was like the commercial speech in United Foods. On the contrary, we observed that “[t]he subject of the speech at issue [in United Foods]—promoting the sale of mushrooms—was not one that is likely to stir the passions of many, but the mundane commercial nature of that speech only highlights the importance of our analysis and our holding.” Knox, supra, at ___ (slip op. at 9). While the features of the agency-fee provision in Knox could not meet even the commercial-speech standard employed in United Foods, it is apparent that the speech compelled in this case is not commercial speech. Our precedents define commercial speech as “speech that does no more than propose a commercial transaction,” United Foods, supra, at 409 (citing Virginia Bd. of Pharmacy v. Virginia Citizens Consumer Council, Inc., 425 U. S.748, 761–762 (1976)), and the union speech in question in this case does much more than that. As a consequence,it is arguable that the United Foods standard is toopermissive. B For present purposes, however, no fine parsing of levels of First Amendment scrutiny is needed because the agency-fee provision here cannot satisfy even the test used in Knox. Specifically, this provision does not serve a “ ‘compelling state interes[t] . . . that cannot be achieved through means significantly less restrictive of associational freedoms.’ ” Knox, supra, at ___ (slip op. at 10) (quoting Roberts v. United States Jaycees, 468 U. S. 609, 623 (1984) ). Respondents contend that the agency-fee provision in this case furthers several important interests, but none is sufficient. 1 Focusing on the benefits of the union’s status as the exclusive bargaining agent for all employees in the unit, respondents argue that the agency-fee provision promotes “labor peace,” but their argument largely misses the point. Petitioners do not contend that they have a First Amendment right to form a rival union. Nor do they challenge the authority of the SEIU–HII to serve as the exclusive representative of all the personal assistants in bargaining with the State. All they seek is the right not to beforced to contribute to the union, with which they broadly disagree. A union’s status as exclusive bargaining agent and the right to collect an agency fee from non-members are not inextricably linked. For example, employees in some federal agencies may choose a union to serve as the exclusive bargaining agent for the unit, but no employee is required to join the union or to pay any union fee. Under federal law, in agencies in which unionization is permitted, “[e]ach employee shall have the right to form, join, or assist any labor organization, or to refrain from any such activity, freely and without fear of penalty or reprisal, and each employee shall be protected in the exercise of such right.” 5 U. S. C. §7102 (emphasis added).[22] Moreover, even if the agency fee provision at issue here were tied to the union’s status as exclusive bargaining agents, features of the Illinois scheme would still undermine the argument that the agency fee plays an important role in maintaining labor peace. For one thing, any threat to labor peace is diminished because the personal assistants do not work together in a common state facility but instead spend all their time in private homes, either the customers’ or their own. Cf. Perry Ed. Assn. v. Perry Local Educators’ Assn., 460 U. S. 37, 51 (1983) (“[E]xclusion of the rival union may reasonably be considered a means of insuring labor-peace within the schools”). Federal labor law reflects the fact that the organization of household workers like the personal assistants does not further the interest of labor peace. “[A]ny individual employed . . . in the domestic service of any family or person at his home” is excluded from coverage under the National Labor Relations Act. See 29 U. S. C. §152(3). The union’s very restricted role under the Illinois lawis also significant. Since the union is largely limited to petitioning the State for greater pay and benefits, the specter of conflicting demands by personal assistants is lessened. And of course, State officials must deal on a daily basis with conflicting pleas for funding in many contexts. 2 Respondents also maintain that the agency-fee provision promotes the welfare of personal assistants and thus contributes to the success of the Rehabilitation Program. As a result of unionization, they claim, the wages and benefits of personal assistants have been substantially improved;[23] orientation and training programs, background checks, and a program to deal with lost and erroneous paychecks have been instituted;[24] and a procedure was established to resolve grievances arising under the collective-bargaining agreement (but apparently not grievances relating to a Service Plan or actions taken by a customer).[25] The thrust of these arguments is that the union has been an effective advocate for personal assistants in the State of Illinois, and we will assume that this is correct. But in order to pass exacting scrutiny, more must be shown. The agency-fee provision cannot be sustained unless the cited benefits for personal assistants could not have been achieved if the union had been required to depend for funding on the dues paid by those personal assistants who chose to join. No such showing has been made. In claiming that the agency fee was needed to bring about the cited improvements, the State is in a curious position. The State is not like the closed-fisted employer that is bent on minimizing employee wages and benefits and that yields only grudgingly under intense union pressure. As Governor Blagojevich put it in the executive order that first created the Illinois program, the State took the initiative because it was eager for “feedback” regarding the needs and views of the personal assistants. See App. to Pet. for Cert. 46. Thereafter, a majority of the personal assistants voted to unionize. When they did so, they must have realized that this would require the payment of union dues, and therefore it may be presumed that a high percentage of these personal assistants became union members and are willingly paying union dues. Why are these dues insufficient to enable the union to provide “feedback” to a State that is highly receptive to suggestions for increased wages and other improvements? A host of organizations advocate on behalf of the interests of persons falling within an occupational group, and many of these groups are quite successful even though they are dependent on voluntary contributions. Respondents’ showing falls far short of what the First Amendment demands. V Respondents and their supporting amici make two additional arguments that must be addressed. A First, respondents and the Solicitor General urge us to apply a balancing test derived from Pickering v. Board of Ed. of Township High School Dist. 205, Will Cty., 391 U. S. 563 (1968) . See Brief for Respondent Quinn 25–26; Brief for SEIU–HII 35–36; Brief for United States as Amicus Curiae 11. And they claim that under the Picker-ing analysis, the Illinois scheme must be sustained. This argument represents an effort to find a new justification for the decision in Abood, because neither in that case nor in any subsequent related case have we seen Abood as based on Pickering balancing.[26] In any event, this effort to recast Abood falls short. To begin, the Pickering test is inapplicable because with respect to the personal assistants, the State is not acting in a traditional employer role.[27] But even if it were, application of Pickering would not sustain the agency-feeprovision. Pickering and later cases in the same line concern the constitutionality of restrictions on speech by public employees. Under those cases, employee speech is unprotected if it is not on a matter of public concern (or is pursuantto an employee’s job duties), but speech on matters of public concern may be restricted only if “the interest of the state, as an employer, in promoting the efficiency of the public services it performs through its employees” outweighs “the interests of the [employee], as a citizen, in commenting upon matters of public concern.” 391 U. S., at 568. See also Borough of Duryea v. Guarnieri, 564 U. S. ___ (2011); Garcetti v. Ceballos, 547 U. S. 410 (2006) ; Waters v. Churchill, 511 U. S. 661, 674 (1994) (plurality opinion); Connick v. Myers, 461 U. S. 138 (1983) . Attempting to fit Abood into the Pickering framework, the United States contends that union speech that is germane to collective bargaining does not address matters of public concern and, as a result, is not protected. Taking up this argument, the dissent insists that the speech at issue here is not a matter of public concern. According to the dissent, this is “the prosaic stuff of collective bargaining.” Post, at 9. Does it have any effect on the public? The dissent’s answer is: “not terribly much.” Post, at 20. As the dissent sees it, speech about such funding is not qualitatively different from the complaints of a small-town police chief regarding such matters as the denial of $338 in overtime pay or directives concerning the use of police vehicles and smoking in the police station. See post, at 20; Borough of Duryea, supra, at ___ (slip op. at 3).[28] This argument flies in the face of reality. In this case, for example, the category of union speech that is germane to collective bargaining unquestionably includes speech in favor of increased wages and benefits for personal assistants. Increased wages and benefits for personal assistants would almost certainly mean increased expenditures under the Medicaid program, and it is impossible to argue that the level of Medicaid funding (or, for that matter, state spending for employee benefits in general) is not a matter of great public concern. In recent years, Medicaid expenditures have represented nearly a quarter of all state expenditures. See National Association of State Budget Officers, Summary: Fall 2013 Fiscal Survey of States (Dec. 10, 2013), online at http:// www.nasbo.org. “Medicaid has steadily eaten up a growing share of state budgets.”[29] In fiscal year 2014, “[t]hirty-five states increased spending for Medicaid for a net increase of $6.8 billion.” Ibid. Accordingly, speech by a powerful union that relates to the subject of Medicaid funding cannot be equated with the sort of speech that our cases have treated as concerning matters of only private concern. See, e.g., San Diego v. Roe, 543 U. S. 77 (2004) (per curiam); Connick, supra, at 148 (speech that “reflect[ed] one employee’s dissatisfaction with a transfer and an attempt to turn that displeasure into a cause célèbre” (emphasis added)). For this reason, if Pickering were to be applied, it would be necessary to proceed to the next step of the analysis prescribed in that case, and this would require an assessment of both the degree to which the agency-fee provision promotes the efficiency of the Rehabilitation Program and the degree to which that provision interferes with the First Amendment interests of those personal assistants who do not wish to support the union. We need not discuss this analysis at length because it is covered by what we have already said. Agency-fee provisions unquestionably impose a heavy burden on the First Amendment interests of objecting employees. See Knox, 567 U. S., at ___ (slip op. at 19) (citing Lehnert, 500 U. S., at 513; Jibson v. Michigan Ed. Assn., 30 F. 3d 723, 730 (CA6 1994). And on the other side of the balance, the arguments on which the United States relies—relating to the promotion of labor peace and the problem of free riders—have already been discussed. Thus, even if the permissibility of the agency-shop provision in the collective-bargaining agreement now at issue were analyzed under Pickering, that provision could not be upheld. B Respondents contend, finally, that a refusal to extend Abood to cover the situation presented in this case will call into question our decisions in Keller v. State Bar of Cal. 496 U. S. 1 (1990) , and Board of Regents of Univ. of Wis. System v. Southworth, 529 U. S. 217 (2000) . Respondents are mistaken. In Keller, we considered the constitutionality of a rule applicable to all members of an “integrated” bar, i.e., “an association of attorneys in which membership and dues are required as a condition of practicing law.” 496 U. S., at 5. We held that members of this bar could not be required to pay the portion of bar dues used for political or ideological purposes but that they could be required to pay the portion of the dues used for activities connected with proposing ethical codes and disciplining bar members. Id., at 14. This decision fits comfortably within the framework applied in the present case. Licensed attorneys are subject to detailed ethics rules, and the bar rule requiring the payment of dues was part of this regulatory scheme. The portion of the rule that we upheld served the “State’s interest in regulating the legal profession and improving the quality of legal services.” Ibid. States also have a strong interest in allocating to the members of the bar, rather than the general public, the expense of ensuring that attorneys adhere to ethical practices. Thus, our decision in this case is wholly consistent with our holding in Keller. Contrary to respondents’ submission, the same is true with respect to Southworth, supra. In that case, we upheld the constitutionality of a university-imposed mandatory student activities fee that was used in part to support a wide array of student groups that engaged in expressive activity. The mandatory fee was challenged by students who objected to some of the expression that the fee was used to subsidize, but we rejected that challenge, and our holding is entirely consistent with our decision in this case. Public universities have a compelling interest in promoting student expression in a manner that is viewpoint neutral. See Rosenberger v. Rector and Visitors of Univ. of Va., 515 U. S. 819 (1995) . This may be done by providing funding for a broad array of student groups. If the groups funded are truly diverse, many students are likely to disagree with things that are said by some groups. And if every student were entitled to a partial exemption from the fee requirement so that no portion of the student’s fee went to support a group that the student did not wish to support, the administrative problems would likely be insuperable. Our decision today thus does not undermine Southworth. * * * For all these reasons, we refuse to extend Abood in the manner that Illinois seeks. If we accepted Illinois’ argument, we would approve an unprecedented violation of the bedrock principle that, except perhaps in the rarest of circumstances, no person in this country may be compelled to subsidize speech by a third party that he or she does not wish to support. The First Amendment prohibits the collection of an agency fee from personal assistants in the Rehabilitation Program who do not want to join or support the union. The judgment of the Court of Appeals is reversed in part and affirmed in part,[30] and the case is remanded for further proceedings consistent with this opinion. It is so ordered.Notes 1 Although this regulation states clearly that a customer has complete discretion with respect to hiring and firing a personal assistant, the dissent contends that the State also has the authority to end the employment of a personal assistant whose performance is not satisfactory. Nothing in the regulations supports this view. Under 89 Ill. Admin. Code §677.40(d), the State may stop paying a personal assistant if it is found that the assistant does not meet “the standards established by DHS as found at 89 Ill. Adm. Code 686.” These standards are the basic hiring requirements set out in §686.10, see n. 2, . Providing adequate performance after hiring is nowhere mentioned in §686.10. 2 It is true, as the dissent notes, , at 4, that a personal assistant must provide two written or oral references, see §686.10(c), but judging the adequacy of these references is the sole prerogative of the customer. See §676.30(b). And while the regulations say that an applicant must have either previous experience or training, see §686.10(f ), they also provide that a customer has complete discretion to judge the adequacy of training and prior experience. See §684.20(b) (the customer has complete discretion with respect to hiring and training a personal assistant). See also §686.10(b) (the customer may hire a minor—even under some circumstances, a person as young as 14); §686.10(f ) (the customer may hire a personal assistant who was never previously employed so long as the assistant has adequate training); §684.20(b) (criminal record check not required). 3 The other five petitioners are personal assistants under a similar Illinois program called the “Disabilities Program.” See, , at 39–40, and n. 30. 4 The employees’ claim necessarily raised the question of governmental action, since the does not restrict private conduct, and the Court, in a brief passage, concluded that governmental action was present. This was so, the Court reasoned, because the union-shop provision of the RLA took away a right that employees had previously enjoyed under state law. 351 U. S., at 232–233. 5 A related question arose in v. , , which we discuss , at 37–38. 6 Only four Justices fully agreed with this approach, but a fifth, Justice Douglas, went along due to “the practical problem of mustering five Justices for a judgment in this case.” ., at 778–779 (concurring opinion). 7 Recent experience has borne out this concern. See DiSalvo, The Trouble with Public Sector Unions, National Affairs No. 5, p. 15 (2010) (“In Illinois, for example, public-sector unions have helped create a situation in which the state’s pension funds report a liability of more than $100 billion, at least 50% of it unfunded”). 8 Under §686.10(h)(9), a personal assistant “may apply for Workers' Compensation benefits through [the State] . . . however, . . . the customer, not DHS, is the employer for these purposes.” 9 See www2.illinois.gov/cms/Employees/benefits/StateEmployee/Pages/default. 10 What is significant is not the label that the State assigns to the personal assistants but the substance of their relationship to the customers and the State. Our decision rests in no way on state-law labels. Cf. , at 10. Indeed, it is because the ’s meaning does not turn on state-law labels that we refuse to allow the state to make a nonemployee a full-fledged employee “[s]olely for purposes of coverage under the Illinois Public Labor Relations Act,” Ill. Comp. Stat., ch. 20, §2405/3(f), through the use of a statutory label. 11 See v. , . 12 See , 75 N. L. R. B. 905 (1948). 13 See , 24 N. L. R. B. 444 (1940). 14 See v. , 127 F. 2d 180 (CA4 1942). 15 See, 332 N. L. R. B. 547, 551 (2000). 16 See , 281 N. L. R. B. 1163, 1168 (1986). 17 Under the current collective-bargaining agreement, a “grievance” is “a dispute regarding the meaning or implementation of a specific provision brought by the Union or a Personal Assistant.” App. 51; see also , at 51–54. “Neither the Union nor the Personal Assistant can grieve the hiring or termination of the Personal Assistant, reduction in the number of hours worked by the Personal Assistant or assigned to the Customer, and/or any action taken by the Customer.” , at 51. That apparently limits the union’s role in grievance adjustments to the State’s failure to perform its duties under the collective-bargaining agreement, , if the State were to issue an incorrect paycheck, the union could bring a grievance. See , at 48 18 Contrary to the dissent’s argument, , at 10–11, the scope of the union’s bargaining authority has an important bearing on the question whether should be extended to the situation now before us. As we have explained, the best argument that can be mounted in support of is based on the fact that a union, in serving as the exclusive representative of all the employees in a bargaining unit, is required by law to engage in certain activities that benefit nonmembers and that the union would not undertake if it did not have a legal obligation to do so. But where the law withholds from the union the authority to engage in most of those activities, the argument for is weakened. Here, the dissent does not claim that the union’s approach to negotiations on wages or benefits would be any different if it were not required to negotiate on behalf of the nonmembers as well as members. And there is no dispute that the law does not require the union to undertake the burden of representing personal assistants with respect to their grievances with customers; on the contrary, the law entirely excludes the union from that process. The most that the dissent can identify is the union’s obligation to represent nonmembers regarding grievances with the State, but since most aspects of the personal assistants’ work is controlled entirely by the customers, this obligation is relatively slight. It bears little resemblance to the obligation imposed on the union in . 19 It is therefore unnecessary for us to reach petitioners’ argument that should be overruled, and the dissent’s extended discussion of is beside the point. Cf. v. , –166 (2008) (declining to extend the “implied” right of action under §10(b) of the Securities Exchange Act “beyond its present boundaries”). 20 The dissent suggests that the concept of joint employment already supplies a clear line of demarcation, see , at 8–9, but absent a clear statutory definition, employer status is generally determined based on a variety of factors that often do not provide a clear answer. See generally 22 Illinois Jurisprudence: Labor and Employment §1:02 (2012); v. , 216 Ill. 2d 567, 578–582, 839 N. E. 2d 479, 486–487 (2005); v. , 50 Ill. App. 3d 9, 12–16, 365 N. E. 2d 1045, 1048–1050 (1977). More important, the joint-employer standard was developed for use in other contexts. What matters here is whether the relationship between the State and the personal assistants is sufficient to bring this case within s reach. 21 The dissent claims that our refusal to extend to the Rehabilitation Program personal assistants produces a “perverse result” by penalizing the State for giving customers extensive control over the care they receive. , at 12. But it is not at all perverse to recognize that a State may exercise more control over its full-fledged employees than it may over those who are not full-fledged state employees or are privately employed. 22 A similar statute adopts the same rule specifically as to the U. S. Postal Service. See . 23 Wages rose from $7 per hour in 2003 to $13 per hour in 2014. Brief for Respondent Quinn 7. Current wages, according to respondents, are $11.65 per hour. Brief for Respondent SEIU–HII 6. 24 See generally Brief for Respondent Quinn 6–8; Brief for Respondent SEIU–HII 6. 25 See Brief for Respondent Quinn 7. 26 The majority cited once, in a footnote, for the proposition that “there may be limits on the extent to which an employee in a sensitive or policymaking position may freely criticize his superiors and the policies they espouse.” 431 U. S., at 230, n. 27. And it was cited once in Justice Powell’s concurrence, for the uncontroversial proposition that “ ‘the State has interests as an employer in regulating the speech of its employees that differ significantly from those it possesses in connection with regulation of the speech of the citizenry in general.’ ” at 259 (opinion concurring in judgment) (quoting , 391 U. S., at 568). v. , cited only once—in dissent. 533 U. S., at 425 (opinion of , J.). Neither v. , , nor cited a single time. 27 Nor is the State acting as a “proprietor in managing its internal operations” with respect to personal assistants. See v. , 562 U. S. ___ (2011) (slip op. at 1–2, 14). 28 The dissent misunderstands or mischaracterizes our cases in this line. We have never held that the wages paid to a public-sector bargaining unit are not a matter of public concern. The $338 payment at issue in had a negligible impact on public coffers, but payments made to public-sector bargaining units may have massive implications for government spending. See at 18, and n. 7. That is why the dissent’s “analogy,” , at 20–21, is not illustrative at all. We do not doubt that a single public employee’s pay is usually not a matter of public concern. But when the issue is pay for an entire collective-bargaining unit involving millions of dollars, that matter affects statewide budgeting decisions. 29 See Cooper, Bigger Share of State Cash for Medicaid, N. Y. Times, Dec. 14, 2011. 30 The Court of Appeals held—and we agree—that the claims of the petitioners who work, not in the Rehabilitation Program, but in a different but related program, the “Disabilities Program,” are not ripe. This latter program is similar in its basic structure to the Rehabilitation Program, see App. to Pet. for Cert. 14a, but the Disabilities Program personal assistants have not yet unionized. The Disabilities Program petitioners claim that under Illinois Executive Order No. 2009–15, they face imminent unionization and, along with it, compulsory dues payments. Executive Order No. 2009–15, they note, is “almost identical to EO 2003–08, except that it targets providers in the Disabilities Program.” Brief for Petitioners 10.

571.US.99

Respondent Hartford Life & Accident Insurance Co. (Hartford) is the administrator of Wal-Mart Stores, Inc.’s (Wal-Mart) Group Long Term Disability Plan (Plan), an employee benefit plan covered by the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974 (ERISA). The Plan’s insurance policy requires any suit to recover benefits pursuant to the judicial review provision in ERISA §502(a)(1)(B), 29 U. S. C. §1132(a)(1)(B), to be filed within three years after “proof of loss” is due. Petitioner Heimeshoff filed a claim for long-term disability benefits with Hartford. After petitioner exhausted the mandatory administrative review process, Hartford issued its final denial. Almost three years after that final denial but more than three years after proof of loss was due, Heimeshoff filed a claim for judicial review pursuant to ERISA §502(a)(1)(B). Hartford and Wal-Mart moved to dismiss on the ground that the claim was untimely. The District Court granted the motion, recognizing that while ERISA does not provide a statute of limitations, the contractual 3-year limitations period was enforceable under applicable State law and Circuit precedent. The Second Circuit affirmed. Held: The Plan’s limitations provision is enforceable. Pp. 4–16. (a) The courts of appeals require participants in an employee benefit plan covered by ERISA to exhaust the plan’s administrative remedies before filing suit to recover benefits. A plan participant’s cause of action under ERISA §502(a)(1)(B) therefore does not accrue until the plan issues a final denial. But it does not follow that a plan and its participants cannot agree to commence the limitations period before that time. Pp. 4–8. (1) The rule set forth in Order of United Commercial Travelers of America v. Wolfe, 331 U.S. 586, 608, provides that a contractual limitations provision is enforceable so long as the limitations period is of reasonable length and there is no controlling statute to the contrary. That is the appropriate framework for determining the enforceability of the Plan’s limitations provision. The Wolfe approach necessarily allows parties to agree both to the length of a limitations period and to its commencement. Pp. 5–7. (2) The principle that contractual limitations provisions should ordinarily be enforced as written is especially appropriate in the context of an ERISA plan. Heimeshoff’s cause of action is bound up with the written terms of the Plan, and ERISA authorizes a participant to bring suit “to enforce his rights under the terms of the plan.” §1132(a)(1)(B). This Court has thus recognized the particular importance of enforcing plan terms as written in §502(a)(1)(B) claims, see, e.g., CIGNA Corp. v. Amara, 563 U. S. ___, ___, and will not presume from statutory silence that Congress intended a different approach here. Pp. 7–8. (b) Unless the limitations period is unreasonably short or there is a “controlling statute to the contrary,” Wolfe, supra, at 608, the Plan’s limitations provision must be given effect. Pp. 8–16. (1) The Plan’s period is not unreasonably short. Applicable regulations mean for mainstream claims to be resolved by plans in about one year. Here, the Plan’s administrative review process (“internal review”) required more time than usual but still left Heimeshoff with approximately one year to file suit. Her reliance on Occidental Life Ins. Co. of Cal. v. EEOC, 432 U.S. 355, in which this Court declined to enforce a 12-month statute of limitations applied to Title VII employment discrimination actions where the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission faced an 18- to 24-month backlog, is unavailing in the absence of any evidence that similar obstacles exist to bringing a timely ERISA §502(a)(1)(B) claim. Pp. 9–10. (2) This Court rejects the contentions of Heimeshoff and the United States that the limitations provision is unenforceable because it will undermine ERISA’s two-tiered remedial scheme. Pp. 10–15. (i) Enforcement of the Plan’s limitation provision is unlikely to cause participants to shortchange the internal review process. The record for judicial review generally has been limited to the administrative record, so participants who fail to develop evidence during internal review risk forfeiting the use of that evidence in district court. In addition, many plans vest discretion over benefits determinations in the plan administrator, and courts ordinarily review such determinations only for abuse of discretion. Pp. 11–12. (ii) It is also unlikely that enforcing limitations periods that begin to run before the internal review process is exhausted will endanger judicial review. To the extent that administrators attempt to prevent judicial review by delaying the resolution of claims in bad faith, the penalty for failure to meet the regulatory deadlines is immediate access to judicial review for the participant. Evidence from forty years of ERISA administration of this common contractual provision suggests that the good-faith administration of internal review will not diminish the availability of judicial review either. Heimeshoff identifies only a handful of cases in which ERISA §502(a)(1)(B) plaintiffs have been time barred as a result of the 3-year limitations provision, and these cases suggest that the bar falls on participants who have not diligently pursued their rights. More- over, courts are well equipped to apply traditional doctrines, such as waiver or estoppel, see, e.g., Thompson v. Phenix Ins. Co., 136 U.S. 287, 298–299, and equitable tolling, see, e.g., Irwin v. Department of Veterans Affairs, 498 U.S. 89, 95, that nevertheless may allow participants to proceed. Finally, plans offering appeals or dispute resolution beyond what is contemplated in the internal review regulations must agree to toll the limitations provision during that time. 29 CFR §2560.503–1(c)(3)(ii). Pp. 12–15. (3) Heimeshoff’s additional arguments are unpersuasive. The limitations period need not be tolled as a matter of course during internal review because that would be inconsistent with the text of the limitations provision, which is enforceable. And federal courts need not inquire whether state law would toll the limitations period during internal review because the limitations period is set by contract, not borrowed from state law. Pp. 15–16. 496 Fed. Appx. 129, affirmed. Thomas, J., delivered the opinion for a unanimous Court.

A participant in an employee benefit plan covered by the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974 (ERISA), 88Stat. 829, as amended, 29 U. S. C. §1001 et seq., may bring a civil action under §502(a)(1)(B) to re- cover benefits due under the terms of the plan. 29 U. S. C. §1132(a)(1)(B). Courts have generally required participants to exhaust the plan’s administrative remedies before filing suit to recover benefits. ERISA does not, however, specify a statute of limitations for filing suit under §502(a)(1)(B). Filling that gap, the plan at issue here requires participants to bring suit within three years after “proof of loss” is due. Because proof of loss is due before a plan’s administrative process can be completed, the ad- ministrative exhaustion requirement will, in practice, shorten the contractual limitations period. The question presented is whether the contractual limitations provision is enforceable. We hold that it is. I In 2005, petitioner Julie Heimeshoff began to report chronic pain and fatigue that interfered with her duties as a senior public relations manager for Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. Her physician later diagnosed her with lupus and fibromyalgia. Heimeshoff stopped working on June 8. On August 22, 2005, Heimeshoff filed a claim for long-term disability benefits with Hartford Life & Accident Insurance Co., the administrator of Wal-Mart’s Group Long Term Disability Plan (Plan). Her claim form, supported by a statement from her rheumatologist, listed her symptoms as “ ‘extreme fatigue, significant pain, and difficulty in concentration.’ ” [ 1 ] App. to Pet. for Cert. 7. In November 2005, Hartford notified Heimeshoff that it could not determine whether she was disabled because her rheumatologist had never responded to Hartford’s request for additional information. Hartford denied the claim the following month for failure to provide satisfactory proof of loss. Hartford instructed Heimeshoff that it would con- sider an appeal filed within 180 days, but later informed her that it would reopen her claim, without the need for an appeal, if her rheumatologist provided the requested information. In July 2006, another physician evaluated Heimeshoff and concluded that she was disabled. Heimeshoff sub- mitted that evaluation and additional medical evidence in October 2006. Hartford then retained a physician to review Heimeshoff’s records and speak with her rheumatologist. That physician issued a report in November 2006 concluding that Heimeshoff was able to perform the activities required by her sedentary occupation. Hartford denied Heimeshoff’s claim later that November. In May 2007, Heimeshoff requested an extension of the Plan’s appeal deadline until September 30, 2007, in order to provide additional evidence. Hartford granted the extension. On September 26, 2007, Heimeshoff submitted her appeal along with additional cardiopulmonary and neuropsychological evaluations. After two additional physicians retained by Hartford reviewed the claim, Hartford issued its final denial on November 26, 2007. On November 18, 2010, almost three years later (but more than three years after proof of loss was due), Heimeshoff filed suit in District Court seeking review of her denied claim pursuant to ERISA §502(a)(1)(B). Hartford and Wal-Mart moved to dismiss on the ground that Heimeshoff’s complaint was barred by the Plan’s limitations provision, which stated: “Legal action cannot be taken against The Hartford . . . [more than] 3 years after the time written proof of loss is required to be furnished according to the terms of the policy.” Id., at 10. The District Court granted the motion to dismiss. Recognizing that ERISA does not provide a statute of limitations for actions under §502(a)(1)(B), the court explained that the limitations period provided by the most nearly analogous state statute applies. See North Star Steel Co. v. Thomas, 515 U. S. 29 –34 (1995). Under Connecticut law, the Plan was permitted to specify a limitations period expiring “[not] less than one year from the time when the loss insured against occurs.” [ 2 ] Conn. Gen. Stat. §38a–290 (2012); see App. to Pet. for Cert. 13. The court held that, under Circuit precedent, a 3-year limitations period set to begin when proof of loss is due is enforceable, and Heimeshoff’s claim was therefore untimely. [ 3 ] Id., at 13, 15 (citing Burke v. PriceWaterHouseCoopers LLP Long Term Disability Plan, 572 F. 3d 76, 79–81 (CA2 2009) (per curiam)). On appeal, the Second Circuit affirmed. 496 Fed. Appx. 129 (2012). Applying the precedent relied on by the District Court, the Court of Appeals concluded that it did not offend ERISA for the limitations period to commence before the plaintiff could file suit under §502(a)(1)(B). Because the policy language unambiguously provided that the 3-year limitations period ran from the time that proof of loss was due under the Plan, and because Heimeshoff filed her claim more than three years after that date, her action was time barred. We granted certiorari to resolve a split among the Courts of Appeals on the enforceability of this common contractual limitations provision. 569 U. S. ___ (2013). Compare, e.g., Burke, supra, at 79–81 (plan provision requiring suit within three years after proof-of-loss deadline is enforceable); and Rice v. Jefferson Pilot Financial Ins. Co., 578 F. 3d 450, 455–456 (CA6 2009) (same), with White v. Sun Life Assurance Co. of Canada, 488 F. 3d 240, 245–248 (CA4 2007) (not enforceable); and Price v. Provident Life & Acc. Ins. Co., 2 F. 3d 986, 988 (CA9 1993) (same). We now affirm. II Statutes of limitations establish the period of time within which a claimant must bring an action. As a general matter, a statute of limitations begins to run when the cause of action “ ‘accrues’ ”—that is, when “the plaintiff can file suit and obtain relief.” Bay Area Laundry and Dry Cleaning Pension Trust Fund v. Ferbar Corp. of Cal., 522 U. S. 192, 201 (1997) . ERISA and its regulations require plans to provide certain presuit procedures for reviewing claims after par- ticipants submit proof of loss (internal review). See 29 U. S. C. §1133; 29 CFR §2560.503–1 (2012). The courts of appeals have uniformly required that participants exhaust internal review before bringing a claim for judicial review under §502(a)(1)(B). See LaRue v. DeWolff, Boberg & Associates, Inc., 552 U. S. 248 –259 (2008) (Roberts, C. J., concurring in part and concurring in judgment). A participant’s cause of action under ERISA accordingly does not accrue until the plan issues a final denial. ERISA §502(a)(1)(B) does not specify a statute of limitations. Instead, the parties in this case have agreed by contract to a 3-year limitations period. The contract specifies that this period begins to run at the time proof of loss is due. Because proof of loss is due before a participant can exhaust internal review, Heimeshoff contends that this limitations provision runs afoul of the general rule that statutes of limitations commence upon accrual of the cause of action. For the reasons that follow, we reject that argument. Absent a controlling statute to the contrary, a participant and a plan may agree by contract to a particular limitations period, even one that starts to run before the cause of action accrues, as long as the period is reasonable. A Recognizing that Congress generally sets statutory limitations periods to begin when their associated causes of action accrue, this Court has often construed statutes of limitations to commence when the plaintiff is permitted to file suit. See, e.g., Graham County Soil & Water Conservation Dist. v. United States ex rel. Wilson, 545 U. S. 409, 418 (2005) (resolving an ambiguity in light of “the ‘standard rule that the limitations period commences when the plaintiff has a complete and present cause of action’ ” (quoting Bay Area Laundry, supra, at 201)); Rawlings v. Ray, 312 U. S. 96, 98 (1941) . At the same time, we have recognized that statutes of limitations do not inexorably commence upon accrual. See Reiter v. Cooper, 507 U. S. 258, 267 (1993) (noting the possibility that a cause of action may “accru[e] at one time for the purpose of calculating when the statute of limitations begins to run, but at another time for the purpose of bringing suit”); see also Dodd v. United States, 545 U. S. 353, 358 (2005) (the statute of limitations in the federal habeas statute runs from “ ‘the date on which the right asserted was initially recognized by the Supreme Court’ ” even if the right has not yet been “ ‘made retroactively applicable to cases on collateral review’ ”); McMahon v. United States, 342 U. S. 25 –27 (1951) (the limitations period in the Suits in Admiralty Act runs from the date of injury rather than when plaintiffs may sue). None of those decisions, however, addresses the critical aspect of this case: the parties have agreed by contract to commence the limitations period at a particular time. For that reason, we find more appropriate guidance in precedent confronting whether to enforce the terms of a contractual limitations provision. Those cases provide a well-established framework suitable for resolving the ques- tion in this case: “[I]n the absence of a controlling statute to the con-trary, a provision in a contract may validly limit, between the parties, the time for bringing an action on such contract to a period less than that prescribed in the general statute of limitations, provided that the shorter period itself shall be a reasonable period.” Order of United Commercial Travelers of America v. Wolfe, 331 U. S. 586, 608 (1947) . We have recognized that some statutes of limitations do not permit parties to choose a shorter period by contract. See, e.g., Louisiana & Western R. Co. v. Gardiner, 273 U. S. 280, 284 (1927) (contractual provision requiring suit against common carrier within two years and one day after delivery was invalid under a federal statute “declar[ing] unlawful any limitation shorter than two years from the time notice is given of the disallowance of the claim”). The rule set forth in Wolfe recognizes, however, that other statutes of limitations provide only a default rule that permits parties to choose a shorter limitations period. See Riddlesbarger v. Hartford Ins. Co., 7 Wall. 386, 390 (1869) (finding “nothing in th[e] language or object [of statutes of limitations] which inhibits parties from stipulating for a shorter period within which to assert their respective claims”); see also Missouri, K. & T. R. Co. v. Harriman, 227 U. S. 657 –673 (1913) (citing examples). If parties are permitted to contract around a default statute of limitations, it follows that the same rule applies where the statute creating the cause of action is silent regarding a limitations period. The Wolfe rule necessarily allows parties to agree not only to the length of a limitations period but also to its commencement. The duration of a limitations period can be measured only by reference to its start date. Each is therefore an integral part of the limitations provision, and there is no basis for categorically preventing parties from agreeing on one aspect but not the other. See Electrical Workers v. Robbins & Myers, Inc., 429 U. S. 229, 234 (1976) (noting that “the parties could conceivably have agreed to a contract” specifying the “ ‘occurrence’ ” that commenced the statutory limitations period). B The principle that contractual limitations provisions ordinarily should be enforced as written is especially appropriate when enforcing an ERISA plan. “The plan, in short, is at the center of ERISA.” US Airways, Inc. v. McCutchen, 569 U. S. ___, ___ (2013) (slip op., at 11). “[E]mployers have large leeway to design disability and other welfare plans as they see fit.” Black & Decker Dis- ability Plan v. Nord, 538 U. S. 822, 833 (2003) . And once a plan is established, the administrator’s duty is to see that the plan is “maintained pursuant to [that] written instrument.” 29 U. S. C. §1102(a)(1). This focus on the written terms of the plan is the linchpin of “a system that is [not] so complex that administrative costs, or litigation expenses, unduly discourage employers from offering [ERISA] plans in the first place.” Varity Corp. v. Howe, 516 U. S. 489, 497 (1996) . Heimeshoff’s cause of action for benefits is likewise bound up with the written instrument. ERISA §502(a)(1)(B) authorizes a plan participant to bring suit “to recover benefits due to him under the terms of his plan, to enforce his rights under the terms of the plan, or to clarify his rights to future benefits under the terms of the plan.” 29 U. S. C. §1132(a)(1)(B) (emphasis added). That “statutory language speaks of ‘enforc[ing]’ the ‘terms of the plan,’ not of changing them.” CIGNA Corp. v. Amara, 563 U. S. ___, ___ (2011) (slip op., at 13). For that reason, we have recognized the particular importance of enforcing plan terms as written in §502(a)(1)(B) claims. See id., at ___ (slip op., at 13–14); Conkright v. Frommert, 559 U. S. 506 –513 (2010); Kennedy v. Plan Administrator for DuPont Sav. and Investment Plan, 555 U. S. 285 –301 (2009). Because the rights and duties at issue in this case are no less “built around reliance on the face of written plan documents,” Curtiss-Wright Corp. v. Schoonejongen, 514 U. S. 73, 83 (1995) , we will not presume from statu- tory silence that Congress intended a different approach here. III We must give effect to the Plan’s limitations provision unless we determine either that the period is unreason- ably short, or that a “controlling statute” prevents the limitations provision from taking effect. Wolfe, 331 U. S., at 608. Neither condition is met here. A Neither Heimeshoff nor the United States claims that the Plan’s 3-year limitations provision is unreasonably short on its face. And with good reason: the United States acknowledges that the regulations governing internal review mean for “mainstream” claims to be resolved in about one year, Tr. of Oral Arg. 22, leaving the participant with two years to file suit. [ 4 ] Even in this case, where the administrative review process required more time than usual, Heimeshoff was left with approximately one year in which to file suit. Heimeshoff does not dispute that a hypothetical 1-year limitations period commencing at the conclusion of internal review would be reasonable. Id., at 4. We cannot fault a limitations provision that would leave the same amount of time in a case with an unusually long internal review process while providing for a significantly longer period in most cases. Heimeshoff’s reliance on Occidental Life Ins. Co. of Cal. v. EEOC, 432 U. S. 355 (1977) , is therefore misplaced. There, we declined to enforce a State’s 1-year statute of limitations as applied to Title VII employment discrimination actions where the limitations period commenced before accrual. We concluded that “[i]t would hardly be reasonable” to suppose that Congress intended to enforce state statutes of limitations as short as 12 months where the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission faced a backlog of 18 to 24 months, leaving claimants with little chance of bringing a claim not barred by the State’s statute of limitations. Id., at 369–371. In the absence of any evidence that there are similar obstacles to bringing a timely §502(a)(1)(B) claim, we conclude that the Plan’s limitations provision is reasonable. B Heimeshoff and the United States contend that even if the Plan’s limitations provision is reasonable, ERISA is a “controlling statute to the contrary.” Wolfe, supra, at 608. But they do not contend that ERISA’s statute of limitations for claims of breach of fiduciary duty controls this action to recover benefits. See 29 U. S. C. §1113. Nor do they claim that ERISA’s text or regulations contradict the Plan’s limitations provision. Rather, they assert that the limitations provision will “undermine” ERISA’s two-tiered remedial scheme. Brief for Petitioner 39; Brief for United States as Amicus Curiae 19. We cannot agree. 1 The first tier of ERISA’s remedial scheme is the internal review process required for all ERISA disability-benefit plans. 29 CFR §2560.503–1. After the participant files a claim for disability benefits, the plan has 45 days to make an “adverse benefit determination.” §2560.503–1(f)(3). Two 30-day extensions are available for “matters beyond the control of the plan,” giving the plan a total of up to 105 days to make that determination. Ibid. The plan’s time for making a benefit determination may be tolled “due to a claimant’s failure to submit information necessary to decide a claim.” §2560.503–1(f)(4). Following denial, the plan must provide the participant with “at least 180 days . . . within which to appeal the determination.” §§2560.503–1(h)(3)(i), (h)(4). The plan has 45 days to resolve that appeal, with one 45-day extension available for “special circumstances (such as the need to hold a hearing).” §§2560.503–1(i)(1)(i), (i)(3)(i). The plan’s time for resolving an appeal can be tolled again if the participant fails to submit necessary information. §2560.503–1(i)(4). In the ordinary course, the regulations contemplate an internal review process lasting about one year. Tr. of Oral Arg. 22. If the plan fails to meet its own deadlines under these procedures, the participant “shall be deemed to have exhausted the administrative remedies.” §2560.503–1(l). Upon exhaustion of the internal review process, the participant is entitled to proceed immediately to judicial review, the second tier of ERISA’s remedial scheme. 2 Heimeshoff and the United States first claim that the Plan’s limitations provision will undermine the foregoing internal review process. They contend that participants will shortchange their own rights during that process in order to have more time in which to seek judicial review. Their premise—that participants will sacrifice the benefits of internal review to preserve additional time for filing suit—is highly dubious in light of the consequences of that course of action. First, to the extent participants fail to develop evidence during internal review, they risk forfeiting the use of that evidence in district court. The Courts of Appeals have generally limited the record for judicial review to the administrative record compiled during internal review. See, e.g., Foster v. PPG Industries, Inc., 693 F. 3d 1226, 1231 (CA10 2012); Fleisher v. Standard Ins. Co., 679 F. 3d 116, 121 (CA3 2012); McCartha v. National City Corp., 419 F. 3d 437, 441 (CA6 2005). Second, participants are not likely to value judicial review of plan determinations over internal review. Many plans (including this Plan) vest discretion over benefits determinations in plan administrators. See Firestone Tire & Rubber Co. v. Bruch, 489 U. S. 101 –112 (1989) (permitting the vesting of discretion); see also App. in No. 12–651–cv (CA2), p. 34. Courts ordinarily review determinations by such plans only for abuse of discretion. Metropolitan Life Ins. Co. v. Glenn, 554 U. S. 105 –116 (2008). In short, participants have much to lose and little to gain by giving up the full measure of internal review in favor of marginal extra time to seek judicial review. 3 Heimeshoff and the United States next warn that it will endanger judicial review to allow plans to set limitations periods that begin to run before internal review is complete. The United States suggests that administrators may attempt to prevent judicial review by delaying the resolution of claims in bad faith. Brief for United States as Amicus Curiae 19; see also White, 488 F. 3d, at 247–248. But administrators are required by the regulations governing the internal review process to take prompt action, see supra, at 10–11, and the penalty for failure to meet those deadlines is immediate access to judicial review for the participant. 29 CFR §2560.503–1(l). In addition, that sort of dilatory behavior may implicate one of the traditional defenses to a statute of limitations. See infra, at 14–15. The United States suggests that even good-faith administration of internal review will significantly diminish the availability of judicial review if this limitations provision is enforced. Forty years of ERISA administration sug- gest otherwise. The limitations provision at issue is quite common; the vast majority of States require certain insurance policies to include 3-year limitations periods that run from the date proof of loss is due. [ 5 ] But there is no significant evidence that limitations provisions like the one here have similarly thwarted judicial review. As explained above, see supra, at 10–11, ERISA regulations structure internal review to proceed in an expeditious manner. It stands to reason that the cases in which internal review leaves participants with less than one year to file suit are rare. Heimeshoff identifies only a handful of cases in which §502(a)(1)(B) plaintiffs are actually time barred as a result of this 3-year limitations provision. See Abena v. Metropolitan Life Ins. Co., 544 F. 3d 880 (CA7 2008); Touqan v. Metropolitan Life Ins. Co., 2012 WL 3465493 (ED Mich., Aug. 14, 2012); Smith v. Unum Provident, 2012 WL 1436458 (WD Ky., Apr. 24, 2012); Fry v. Hartford Ins. Co., 2011 WL 1672474 (WDNY, May 3, 2011); Rotondi v. Hartford Life & Acc. Group, 2010 WL 3720830 (SDNY, Sept. 22, 2010). Those cases suggest that this barrier falls on participants who have not diligently pursued their rights. See Abena, supra, at 884 (by his own admission, there was “no reason” plaintiff could not have filed suit during the remaining seven months of limitations period); Smith, supra, at *2 (plaintiff filed suit four years after the limitations period expired, and six years after final de- nial); Rotondi, supra, at *8 (“Application of the . . . limitations period works no unfairness here”); see also Rice, 578 F. 3d, at 457 (the participant “has not established that he has been diligently pursuing his rights” and “has given no reason for his late filing”); Burke, 572 F. 3d, at 81 (following exhaustion, “two years and five months of the limitations period remained”); Salerno v. Prudential Ins. Co. of America, 2009 WL 2412732, *6 (NDNY, Aug. 3, 2009) (“Plaintiff’s proof of loss was untimely by over ten years”). The evidence that this 3-year limitations provision harms diligent participants is far too insubstantial to set aside the plain terms of the contract. Moreover, even in the rare cases where internal review prevents participants from bringing §502(a)(1)(B) actions within the contractual period, courts are well equipped to apply traditional doctrines that may nevertheless allow participants to proceed. If the administrator’s conduct causes a participant to miss the deadline for judicial review, waiver or estoppel may prevent the administrator from invoking the limitations provision as a defense. See, e.g., Thompson v. Phenix Ins. Co., 136 U. S. 287 –299 (1890); LaMantia v. Voluntary Plan Adm’rs, Inc., 401 F. 3d 1114, 1119 (CA9 2005). To the extent the participant has diligently pursued both internal review and judicial review but was prevented from filing suit by extraordinary circumstances, equitable tolling may apply. Irwin v. Department of Veterans Affairs, 498 U. S. 89, 95 (1990) (limitations defenses “in lawsuits between private litigants are customarily subject to ‘equitable tolling’ ”). [ 6 ] Finally, in addition to those traditional remedies, plans that offer appeals or dispute resolution beyond what is contemplated in the internal review regulations must agree to toll the limitations provision during that time. 29 CFR §2560.503–1(c)(3)(ii). Thus, we are not persuaded that the Plan’s limitations provision is inconsistent with ERISA. C Two additional arguments warrant mention. First, Heimeshoff argues—for the first time in this litigation—that the limitations period should be tolled as a matter of course during internal review. By effectively delaying the commencement of the limitations period until the conclusion of internal review, however, this approach reconstitutes the contractual revision we declined to make. As we explained, the parties’ agreement should be enforced unless the limitations period is unreasonably short or foreclosed by ERISA. The limitations period here is neither. See supra, at 9–10, 11–14, and this page. Nor do the ERISA regulations require tolling during internal review. A plan must agree to toll the limitations provision only in one particular circumstance: when a plan offers voluntary internal appeals beyond what is permitted by regulation. §2560.503–1(c)(3)(ii). Even then, the limitations period is tolled only during that specific portion of internal review. This limited tolling requirement would be superfluous if the regulations contemplated tolling throughout the process. Finally, relying on our decision in Hardin v. Straub, 490 U. S. 536 (1989) , Heimeshoff contends that we must inquire whether state law would toll the limitations period throughout the exhaustion process. In Hardin, we interpreted 42 U. S. C. §1983 to borrow a State’s statutory limitations period. We recognized that when a federal statute is deemed to borrow a State’s limitations period, the State’s tolling rules are ordinarily borrowed as well because “ ‘[i]n virtually all statutes of limitations the chronological length of the limitation period is interrelated with provisions regarding tolling . . . .’ ” 490 U. S., at 539 (quoting Johnson v. Railway Express Agency, Inc., 421 U. S. 454, 464 (1975) ); see also Board of Regents of Univ. of State of N. Y. v. Tomanio, 446 U. S. 478, 484 (1980) (in §1983 actions “a state statute of limitations and the coordinate tolling rules” are “binding rules of law”). But here, unlike in Hardin, the parties have adopted a limitations period by contract. Under these circumstances, where there is no need to borrow a state statute of limitations there is no need to borrow concomitant state tolling rules. IV We hold that the Plan’s limitations provision is enforceable. The judgment is, accordingly, affirmed. It is so ordered. Notes 1 The insurance policy provides: “ ‘Written proof of loss must be sent to The Hartford within 90 days after the start of the period for which The Hartford owes payment. After that, The Hartford may require further written proof that you are still Disabled.’ ” App. to Pet. for Cert. 10. 2 The parties do not dispute that Connecticut provides the relevant state law governing the limitations period in this case. 3 Heimeshoff also argued before the District Court that even if the Plan’s limitations provision were enforceable, her suit was still timely because Hartford had granted her request for an extension until September 30, 2007. Even crediting the contention that proof of loss was not due until that date, the court held that the Plan’s limitations provision barred her from bringing legal action any later than September 30, 2010. Heimeshoff did not file suit until November 18, 2010. 4 Heimeshoff, drawing on a study by the American Council of Life Insurers of recent §502(a)(1)(B) cases where timeliness was at issue, states that exhaustion can take 15 to 16 months in a typical case. Reply Brief 17–18, n. 3 (citing Brief for American Council of Life Insurers et al. as Amici Curiae 29). In our view, that still leaves ample time for filing suit. 5 See Ala. Code §§27–19–14, 27–20–5(7) (2007); Alaska Stat. §21.54.030(7) (2012); Ark. Code Ann. §§23–85–116, 23–86–102(c)(7) (2004); Cal. Ins. Code Ann. §10350.11 (West 2013); Colo. Rev. Stat. Ann. §10–16–202(12) (2013); Conn. Gen. Stat. §38a–483(a)(11) (2012); Del. Code Ann., Tit. 18, §§3315, 3541(7) (1999); Ga. Code Ann. §33–29–3(b)(11) (2013); Haw. Rev. Stat. §431:10A–105(11) (Cum. Supp. 2012); Idaho Code §§41–2115, 41–2207(7) (Lexis 2010); Ill. Comp. Stat., ch. 215, §5/357.12 (West 2012); Ind. Code §27–8–5–3(a)(11) (2004); Iowa Code §514A.3(1)(k) (2008); Ky. Rev. Stat. Ann. §§304.17–150, 304.18–070(7) (West 2012); Me. Rev. Stat. Ann., Tit. 24–A, §2715 (2000); Mass. Gen. Laws, ch. 175, §108(3)(a)(11) (West 2011); Mich. Comp. Laws §500.3422 (2002); Minn. Stat. §62A.04(2)(11) (2012); Miss. Code Ann. §83–9–5(1)(k) (2011); Mo. Rev. Stat. §376.777(1)(11) (2000); Mont. Code Ann. §33–22–602(7) (2013); Neb. Rev. Stat. §44–710.03(11) (2010);Nev. Rev. Stat. §§689A.150, 689B.080(9) (2011); N. H. Rev. Stat.Ann. §415:6(I)(11) (West Supp. 2012); N. J. Stat. Ann. §17B:26–14 (West 2006); N. M. Stat. Ann. §59A–22–14 (2013); N. Y. Ins. Law §3216(d)(1)(K) (West Supp. 2013); N. C. Gen. Stat. Ann. §58–51–15(a)(11) (Lexis 2011); N. D. Cent. Code Ann. §26.1–36–05(14) (Lexis 2010); Ohio Rev. Code Ann. §3923.04(K) (Lexis 2010); Okla. Stat., Tit. 36, §4405(A)(11) (West 2011); Ore. Rev. Stat. §743.441 (2011); 40 Pa. Cons. Stat. §753(A)(11) (1999); R. I. Gen. Laws §27–18–3(a)(11) (Lexis 2008); S. D. Codified Laws §58–18–27 (2004); Tenn. Code Ann. §56–26–108(11) (2008); Tex. Ins. Code Ann. §1201.217 (West Supp. 2012); Vt. Stat. Ann., Tit. 8, §4065(11) (2009); Va. Code Ann. §38.2–3540 (Lexis 2007); Wash. Rev. Code §48.20.142 (2012); W. Va. Code Ann. §33–15–4(k) (Lexis 2011); Wyo. Stat. Ann. §§26–18–115, 26–19–107(a)(vii) (2013). 6 Whether the Court of Appeals properly declined to apply those doctrines in this case is not before us. 569 U. S. ___, ___ (2013); Pet. for Cert. i.

572.US.559

Petitioner Highmark Inc. moved for fees under the Patent Act’s fee-shifting provision, which authorizes a district court to award attorney’s fees to the prevailing party in “exceptional cases.” 35 U. S. C. §285. The District Court found the case “exceptional” and granted Highmark’s motion. The Federal Circuit, reviewing the District Court’s determination de novo, reversed in part. Held: All aspects of a district court’s exceptional-case determination under §285 should be reviewed for abuse of discretion. Prior to Octane Fitness, LLC v. ICON Health & Fitness, Inc., ante, p. ___, this determination was governed by the framework established by the Federal Circuit in Brooks Furniture Mfg., Inc. v. Dutailier Int’l, Inc., 393 F.3d 1378. Octane rejects the Brooks Furniture framework as unduly rigid and holds that district courts may make the exceptional-case determination under §285 in the exercise of their discretion. The holding in Octane settles this case. Decisions on “matters of discretion” are traditionally “reviewable for ‘abuse of discretion,’ ” Pierce v. Underwood, 487 U.S. 552, 558, and this Court previously has held that to be the proper standard of review in cases involving similar determinations, see, e.g., id., at 559; Cooter & Gell v. Hartmarx Corp., 496 U.S. 384, 405. The exceptional-case determination is based on statutory text that “emphasizes the fact that the determination is for the district court,” Pierce, 487 U. S., at 559; that court “is better positioned” to make the determination, id., at 560; and the determination is “multifarious and novel,” not susceptible to “useful generalization” of the sort that de novo review provides, and “likely to profit from the experience that an abuse-of discretion rule will permit to develop,” id., at 562. Pp. 4–5. 687 F.3d 1300, vacated and remanded. Sotomayor, J., delivered the opinion for a unanimous Court.

Section 285 of the Patent Act provides: “The court in exceptional cases may award reasonable attorney fees to the prevailing party.” 35 U. S. C. §285. In Brooks Furniture Mfg., Inc. v. Dutailier Int’l, Inc., 393 F. 3d 1378 (2005), the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit interpreted §285 as authorizing fee awards only in two circumstances. It held that “[a] case may be deemed exceptional” under §285 “when there has been some material inappropriate conduct,” or when it is both “brought in subjective bad faith” and “objectively baseless.” Id., at 1381. We granted certiorari to determine whether an appellate court should accord deference to a district court’s determination that litigation is “objectively baseless.” On the basis of our opinion in Octane Fitness, LLC v. ICON Health & Fitness, Inc., ante, p. ___, argued together with this case and also issued today, we hold that an appellate court should review all aspects of a district court’s §285 determination for abuse of discretion. I Allcare Health Management System, Inc., owns U. S. Patent No. 5,301,105 (’105 patent), which covers “utilization review” in “ ‘managed health care systems.’ ”[1] 687 F. 3d 1300, 1306 (CA Fed 2012). Highmark Inc., a health insurance company, sued Allcare seeking a declaratory judgment that the ’105 patent was invalid and unenforceable and that, to the extent it was valid, Highmark’s actions were not infringing it. Allcare counterclaimed for patent infringement. Both parties filed motions for summary judgment, and the District Court entered a final judgment of noninfringement in favor of Highmark. The Federal Circuit affirmed. 329 Fed. Appx. 280 (2009) (per curiam). Highmark then moved for fees under §285. The District Court granted Highmark’s motion. 706 F. Supp. 2d 713 (ND Tex. 2010). The court reasoned that Allcare had engaged in a pattern of “vexatious” and “deceitful” conduct throughout the litigation. Id., at 737. Specifically, it found that Allcare had “pursued this suit as part of a bigger plan to identify companies potentially infringing the ’105 patent under the guise of an informational survey, and then to force those companies to purchase a license of the ’105 patent under threat of litigation.” Id., at 736–737. And it found that Allcare had “maintained infringement claims [against Highmark] well after such claims had been shown by its own experts to be without merit” and had “asserted defenses it and its attorneys knew to be frivolous.” Id., at 737. In a subsequent opinion, the District Court fixed the amount of the award at $4,694,727.40 in attorney’s fees and $209,626.56 in expenses, in addition to $375,400.05 in expert fees. 2010 WL 6432945, *7 (ND Tex., Nov. 5, 2010). The Federal Circuit affirmed in part and reversed in part. 687 F. 3d 1300. It affirmed the District Court’s exceptional-case determination with respect to the allegations that Highmark’s system infringed one claim of the ’105 patent, id., at 1311–1313, but reversed the determination with respect to another claim of the patent, id., at 1313–1315. In reversing the exceptional-case determination as to one claim, the court reviewed it de novo. The court held that because the question whether litigation is “objectively baseless” under Brooks Furniture “ ‘is a question of law based on underlying mixed questions of law and fact,’ ” an objective-baselessness determination is reviewed on appeal “ ‘de novo’ ” and “without deference.” 687 F. 3d, at 1309; see also ibid., n. 1. It then determined, contrary to the judgment of the District Court, that “Allcare’s argument” as to claim construction “was not ‘so unreasonable that no reasonable litigant could believe it would succeed.’ ” Id., at 1315. The court further found that none of Allcare’s conduct warranted an award of fees under the litigation-misconduct prong of Brooks Furniture. 687 F. 3d, at 1315–1319. Judge Mayer dissented in part, disagreeing with the view “that no deference is owed to a district court’s finding that the infringement claims asserted by a litigant at trial were objectively unreasonable.” Id., at 1319. He would have held that “reasonableness is a finding of fact which may be set aside only for clear error.” Ibid. The Federal Circuit denied rehearing en banc, over the dissent of five judges. 701 F. 3d 1351 (2012). The dissenting judges criticized the court’s decision to adopt a de novo standard of review for the “objectively baseless” determination as an impermissible invasion of the province of the district court. Id., at 1357. We granted certiorari, 570 U. S. ___ (2013), and now vacate and remand. II Our opinion in Octane Fitness, LLC v. ICON Health & Fitness, Inc., rejects the Brooks Furniture framework as unduly rigid and inconsistent with the text of §285. It holds, instead, that the word “exceptional” in §285 should be interpreted in accordance with its ordinary meaning. Ante, at 7. An “exceptional” case, it explains, “is simply one that stands out from others with respect to the substantive strength of a party’s litigating position (considering both the governing law and the facts of the case) or the unreasonable manner in which the case was litigated.” Ante, at 7–8. And it instructs that “[d]istrict courts may determine whether a case is ‘exceptional’ in the case-by-case exercise of their discretion, considering the totality of the circumstances.” Ante, at 8. Our holding in Octane settles this case: Because §285 commits the determination whether a case is “exceptional” to the discretion of the district court, that decision is to be reviewed on appeal for abuse of discretion. Traditionally, decisions on “questions of law” are “reviewable de novo,” decisions on “questions of fact” are “reviewable for clear error,” and decisions on “matters of discretion” are “reviewable for ‘abuse of discretion.’ ” Pierce v. Underwood, 487 U. S. 552, 558 (1988) . For reasons we explain in Octane, the determination whether a case is “exceptional” under §285 is a matter of discretion. And as in our prior cases involving similar determinations, the exceptional-case determination is to be reviewed only for abuse of discretion.[2] See Pierce, 487 U. S., at 559 (determinations whether a litigating position is “substan-tially justified” for purposes of fee-shifting under the Equal Access to Justice Act are to be reviewed for abuse of discretion); Cooter & Gell v. Hartmarx Corp., 496 U. S. 384, 405 (1990) (sanctions under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 11 are to be reviewed for abuse of discretion). As in Pierce, the text of the statute “emphasizes the fact that the determination is for the district court,” which “suggests some deference to the district court upon appeal,” 487 U. S., at 559. As in Pierce, “as a matter of the sound administration of justice,” the district court “is better positioned” to decide whether a case is exceptional, id., at 559–560, because it lives with the case over a prolonged period of time. And as in Pierce, the question is “multifarious and novel,” not susceptible to “useful generalization” of the sort that de novo review provides, and “likely to profit from the experience that an abuse-of-discretion rule will permit to develop,” id., at 562. We therefore hold that an appellate court should apply an abuse-of-discretion standard in reviewing all aspects of a district court’s §285 determination. Although questions of law may in some cases be relevant to the §285 inquiry, that inquiry generally is, at heart, “rooted in factual determinations,” Cooter, 496 U. S., at 401. * * * The judgment of the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit is vacated, and the case is remanded for further proceedings consistent with this opinion. It is so ordered.Notes 1 “ ‘Utilization review’ is the process of determining whether a health insurer should approve a particular treatment for a patient.” 687 F. 3d, at 1306. 2 The abuse-of-discretion standard does not preclude an appellate court’s correction of a district court’s legal or factual error: “A district court would necessarily abuse its discretion if it based its ruling on an erroneous view of the law or on a clearly erroneous assessment of the evidence.” v. , .