Mullin v. Al Otro Lado · ¶46
We have acknowledged that Congress sometimes “enacts provisions that are superfluous.” Microsoft Corp. v. i4i Ltd. Partnership, 564 U. S. 91, 107 (2011) (internal quotation marks omitted). For that reason, we have adopted interpretations under which, for example, three distinct verbs in the same clause “all mean the same thing.” Freeman, 566 U. S., at 635. Nor are other examples of redundancy “uncommon.” Ibid. Some statutes, for instance, pick out a “general” category alongside a “specific” subcategory that “might in other circumstances be deemed surplusage.” Lo renzo v. SEC, 587 U. S. 71, 80 (2019) (internal quotation marks omitted). And statutory context can rebut the “idea that each subsection” must have wholly independent meaning. Id., at 81. The anti-surplusage canon is useful, but it is “subordinate to the ‘cardinal canon’ that ‘a legislature says in a statute what it means and…Read in context ›
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