FEDERAL AVIATION ADMINISTRATION ET AL. v. COOPER
No. 10-1024
Supreme Court of the United States
Argued November 30, 2011—Decided March 28, 2012
566 U.S. 284
Nо. 10-1024. Argued November 30, 2011—Decided March 28, 2012
Eric J. Feigin argued the cause for petitioners. With him on the briefs were Solicitor General Verrilli, Assistant Attorney General West, Deputy Solicitor General Kneedler, and Mark B. Stern.
Raymond A. Cardozo argued the cause for respondent. With him on the brief were James M. Wood, James C. Martin, David J. Bird, and Thomas M. Pohl.*
*Briefs of amici curiae urging affirmance were filed for the AIDS Foundation of Chicago et al. by Hayley J. Gorenberg and Jon W. Davidson; for the Electronic Privacy Information Center by Marc Rotenberg; and for the National Whistleblower Center by David K. Colapinto and Stephen M. Kohn.
The Privacy Act of 1974, codified in part at
I
The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) requires pilots to obtain a pilot certificate and medical certificate as a precondition for operating an aircraft.
Respondent Stanmore Cooper has been a private pilot since 1964. In 1985, he was diagnosed with a human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) infection and began taking antiretroviral medication. At that time, the FAA did not issue medical certificates to persons with respondent‘s condition. Knowing that he would not qualify for renewal of his medical certificate, respondent initially grounded himself and chose not to apply. In 1994, however, he applied for and received a medical certificate, but he did so without disclosing his HIV status or his medication. He renewed his certificate in 1998, 2000, 2002, and 2004, each time intentionally withholding information about his condition.
In 2002, the Department of Transportation (DOT), the FAA‘s parent agency, launched a joint criminal investigation with the SSA, known as “Operation Safe Pilot,” to identify medically unfit individuals who had obtained FAA certifications to fly. The DOT gave the SSA a list of names and other identifying information of 45,000 licensed pilots in northern California. The SSA then compared the list with its own records of benefit recipients and compiled a spreadsheet, which it gave to the DOT.
The spreadsheet revealed that respondent had a current medical certificate but had also received disability benefits. After reviewing respondent‘s FAA medical file and his SSA disability file, FAA flight surgeons determined in 2005 that the FAA would not have issued a medical certificate to respondent had it known his true medical condition.
When investigators confronted respondent with what had been discovered, he admitted that he had intentionally withheld from the FAA information about his HIV status and other relevant medical information. Because of these fraudulent omissions, the FAA revoked respondent‘s pilot certificate, and he was indicted on three counts of making false statements to a Government agency, in violation of
The District Court granted summary judgment against respondent. 816 F. Supp. 2d 778, 781 (2008). The court concluded that the Government had violated the Privacy Act and that there was a triable issue of fact as to whether the violation was intentional or willful.2 But the court held that respondent could not recover damages because he alleged only mental and emotional harm, not economic loss. Finding that the term “actual damages” is “facially ambiguous,” id., at 791, and relying on the sovereign immunity canon, which provides that waivers of sovereign immunity must be strictly construed in favor of the Government, the court concluded that the Act does not authorize the recovery of damages from the Government for nonpecuniary mental or emotional harm.
The United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit reversed and remanded. 622 F. 3d 1016, 1024 (2010). The court acknowledged that the term “actual damages” is a “chameleon” in that “its meaning changes with the specific
The Government petitioned for rehearing or rehearing en banc, but a divided court denied the petition. Id., at 1019. The Government then petitioned for certiorari, and we granted review. 564 U. S. 1018 (2011).
II
Because respondent seeks to recover monetary compensatiоn from the Government for mental and emotional harm, we must decide whether the civil remedies provision of the Privacy Act waives the Government‘s sovereign immunity with respect to such a recovery.
A
We have said on many occasions that a waiver of sovereign immunity must be “unequivocally expressed” in statutory text. See, e. g., Lane v. Peña, 518 U.S. 187, 192 (1996); United States v. Nordic Village, Inc., 503 U.S. 30, 33 (1992); Irwin v. Department of Veterans Affairs, 498 U.S. 89, 95 (1990). Legislative history cannot supply a waiver that is not clearly evident from the language of the statute. Lane, supra, at 192. Any ambiguities in the statutory language are to be construed in favor of immunity, United States v. Williams, 514 U.S. 527, 531 (1995), so that the Government‘s consent to be sued is never enlarged beyond what a fair reading of the text requires, Ruckelshaus v. Sierra Club, 463 U. S. 680, 685–686 (1983) (citing Eastern Transp. Co. v. United States, 272 U.S. 675, 686 (1927)). Ambiguity exists if there is a plausible interpretation of the statute that would
The question that confronts us here is not whether Congress has consented to be sued for damages under the Privacy Act. That much is clear from the statute, which expressly authorizes recovery from the Government for “actual damages.” Rather, the question at issue concerns the scope of that waiver. For the same reason that we refuse to enforce a waiver that is not unambiguously expressed in the statute, we also construe any аmbiguities in the scope of a waiver in favor of the sovereign. Lane, supra, at 192.
Although this canon of interpretation requires an unmistakable statutory expression of congressional intent to waive the Government‘s immunity, Congress need not state its intent in any particular way. We have never required that Congress use magic words. To the contrary, we have observed that the sovereign immunity canon “is a tool for interpreting the law” and that it does not “displac[e] the other traditional tools of statutory construction.” Richlin Security Service Co. v. Chertoff, 553 U.S. 571, 589 (2008). What we thus require is that the scope of Congress’ waiver be clearly discernable from the statutory text in light of traditional interpretive tools. If it is not, then we take the interpretation most favorable to the Government.
B
The civil remedies provision of the Privacy Act provides that, for any “intentional or willful” refusal or failure to comply with the Act, the United States shall be liable for “actual damages sustained by the individual as a result of the refusal or failure, but in no case shall a person entitled to recovery receive less than the sum of $1,000.”
Even as a legal term, however, the meaning of “actual damages” is far from clear. The latest edition of Black‘s Law Dictionary available when Congress enacted the Privacy Act defined “actual damages” as “[r]eal, substantial and just damages, or the amount awarded to a complainant in compensation for his actual and real loss or injury, as opposed on the one hand to ‘nominal’ damages, and on the other to ‘exemplary’ or ‘punitive’ damages.” Black‘s Law Dictionary 467 (rev. 4th ed. 1968). But this general (and notably circular) definition is of little value here because, as the Court of Appeals accurately observed, the precise meaning of the term “changes with the specific statute in which it is found.” 622 F. 3d, at 1029.
The term is sometimes understood to include nonpecuniary harm. Take, for instance, some courts’ interpretations of the Fair Housing Act (FHA),
In other contexts, however, the term has been used or construed more narrowly to authorize damages for only pecuniary harm. In the wrongful-death provision of the Federal Tort Claims Act (FTCA), for example, Congress authorized “actual or compensatory damages, measured by the pecuniary injuries resulting from such death.”
C
The Privacy Act directs agencies to establish safeguards to protect individuals against the disclosure of confidential records “which could result in substantial harm, embarrass-
Notes
In Doe v. Chao, 540 U. S. 614 (2004), we held that the Privacy Act‘s remedial provision authorizes plaintiffs to recover a guaranteed minimum award of $1,000 for violations of the Act, but only if they prove at least some “actual damages.” Id., at 620, 627; see
This parallel between the Privacy Act and the common-law torts of libel per quod and slander suggests the possibility that Congress intended the term “actual damages” in the Act to mean special damages. The basic idea is that Privacy Act victims, like victims of libel per quod or slander, are barred from any recovery unless they can first show actual—that is, pecuniary or material—harm. Upon showing some pecuniary harm, no matter how slight, they can recover the statutory minimum of $1,000, presumably for any unproven harm. That Congress would choose to use the term “actual damages” instead of “special damages” was not without precedent. The terms had occasionally been used interchangeably. See, e. g., Wetzel v. Gulf Oil Corp., 455 F. 2d 857, 862 (CA9 1972) (holding that plaintiff could not establish libel per quod because he “did not introduce any valid and sufficient evidence of actual damage“); Electric Furnace Corp. v. Deering Milliken Research Corp., 325 F. 2d 761, 765 (CA6 1963) (stating that “libel per quod standing alone without proof of actual damages ... will not support a verdict for the plaintiff“); M & S Furniture Sales Co. v. Edward J. De Bartolo Corp., 249 Md. 540, 544, 241 A. 2d 126, 128 (1968) (“In the
Any doubt about the plausibility of construing “actual damages” in the Privacy Act synonymously with “special damages” is put to rest by Congress’ refusal to authorize “general damages.” In an uncodified section of the Act, Congress established the Privacy Protection Study Commission to consider, among other things, “whether the Federal Government should be liable for general damages.”
By authorizing recovery for “actual” but not for “general” damages, Congress made clear that it viewed those terms as mutually exclusive. In actions for defamation and related
Not surprisingly, this interpretation was accepted by the Privacy Protection Study Commission, an expert body authorized by Congress and highly sensitive to the Act‘s goals. The Commission understood “actual damages” in the Act to be “a synonym for special damages as that term is used in defamation cases.” Personal Privacy in an Information Society: The Report of the Privacy Protection Study Commission 530 (July 1977); see also ibid. (“The legislative history and language of the Act suggest that Congress meant to re-
D
We do not claim that the contrary reading of the statute accepted by the Court of Appeals and advanced now by respondent is inconceivable. But because the Privacy Act waives the Federal Government‘s sovereign immunity, the question we must answer is whether it is plausible to read the statute, as the Government does, to authorize only damages for economic loss. Nordic Village, 503 U. S., at 34, 37. When waiving the Government‘s sovereign immunity, Congress must speak unequivocally. Lane, 518 U.S., at 192. Here, we conclude that it did not. As a consequence, we adopt an interpretation of “actual damages” limited to proven pecuniary or economic harm. To do otherwise would expand the scope of Congress’ sovereign immunity waiver beyond what the statutory text clearly requires.
III
None of respondent‘s contrary arguments suffices to overcome the sovereign immunity canon.
A
Respondent notes that the term “actual damages” has often been defined broadly in common-law cases, and in our own, to include all compensatory damages. See Brief for Respondent 18–25. For example, in Birdsall v. Coolidge, 93 U. S. 64 (1876), a patent infringement case, we observed that “[c]ompensatory damages and actual damages mean the same thing.” Ibid. And in Gertz v. Robert Welch, Inc., 418 U. S. 323 (1974), we wrote that actual injury in the defama-
These cases and others cited by respondent stand for the unremarkable point that the term “actual damages” can include nonpecuniary loss. But this generic meaning does not establish with the requisite clarity that the Privacy Act, with its distinctive features, authorizes damages for mental and emotional distress. As we already explained, the term “actual damages” takes on different meanings in different contexts.
B
Respondent‘s stronger argument is that the exclusion of “general damages” from the statute simply means that there can be no recovery for presumed damages. Privacy Act victims can still recover for mental and emotional distress, says respondent, so long as it is proved. See Brief for Respondent 54–56.10
This argument is flawed because it suggests that proven mental and emotional distress does not count as general damages. The term “general damages” is not limited to compensation for unproven injuries; it includes compensation for proven injuries as well. See 3 Restatement § 621, Comment a (noting that general damages compensate for “harm which ... is proved, or, in the absence of proof, is assumed to have caused to [the plaintiff‘s] reputation“). To be sure, specific proof of emotional harm is not required to recover general damages for dignitary torts. Dobbs § 7.3, at 529. But it does not follow that general damages cannot be recovered for emotional harm that is actually proved.
Aside from the fact that general damages need not be proved, what distinguishes those damages, whether proved
C
Looking beyond the Privacy Act‘s text, respondent points to the use of the term “actual” damages in the remedial provisions of the FHA,
Assuming for the sake of argument that these lower court decisions are correct, they provide only weak support for respondent‘s argument here. Since the term “actual damages” can mean different things in different contexts, statutes other than the Privacy Act provide only limited in-
Respondent also points to the FTCA, but the FTCA‘s general liability provision does not even use the term “actual damages.” It instead provides that the “United States shall be liable” for certain tort claims “in the same manner and to the same extent as a private individual” under relevant state law.
Finally, respondent argues that excluding damages for mental and emotional harm would lead to absurd results. Persons suffering relatively minor pecuniary loss would be entitled to recover $1,000, while others suffering only severe and debilitating mеntal or emotional distress would get nothing. See Brief for Respondent 33–35.
Contrary to respondent‘s suggestion, however, there is nothing absurd about a scheme that limits the Government‘s Privacy Act liability to harm that can be substantiated by proof of tangible economic loss. Respondent insists that such a scheme would frustrate the Privacy Act‘s remedial purpose, but that ignores the fact that, by deliberately refusing to authorize general damages, Congress intended to cabin relief, not to maximize it.12
In sum, applying traditional rules of construction, we hold that the
It is so ordered.
JUSTICE KAGAN took no part in the consideration or decision of this case.
JUSTICE SOTOMAYOR, with whom JUSTICE GINSBURG and JUSTICE BREYER join, dissenting.
Congress enacted the
Today the Court holds that “actual damages” is limited to pecuniary loss. Consequently, individuals can no longer recover what our precedents and common sense understand to be the primary, and often only, damages sustained as a result of an invasion of privacy, namely, mental or emotional distress. That result is at odds with the text, structure, and drafting history of the Act. And it cripples the Act‘s core purpose of redressing and deterring violations of privacy interests. I respectfully dissent.
I
The majority concludes that “actual damages” in the civil-remedies provision of the
The canon simply cannot bear the weight the majority ascribes it. “The sovereign immunity canon is just that—a canon of construction. It is a tool for interpreting the law, and we have never held that it displaces the other traditional tools of statutory construction.” Richlin Security Service Co. v. Chertoff, 553 U.S. 571, 589 (2008) (majority opinion of ALITO, J.). Here, traditional tools of statutory construction—the statute‘s text, structure, drafting history, and purpose—provide a clear answer: The term “actual damages” permits recovery for all injuries established by competent evidence in the record, whether pecuniary or nonpecuniary, and so encompasses damages for mental and emotional distress. There is no need to seek refuge in a canon of construction, see id., at 589-590 (declining to rely on canon as there is “no ambiguity left for us to construe” after application of “traditional tools of statutory construction and considerations of stare decisis“), much less one that has been used so haphazardly in thе Court‘s history, see United States v. Nordic Village, Inc., 503 U. S. 30, 42 (1992) (Stevens, J., dissenting) (canon is “nothing but a judge-made rule that is sometimes favored and sometimes disfavored” (footnote omitted)) (collecting cases).
It bears emphasis that we have said repeatedly that, while “we should not take it upon ourselves to extend the waiver
II
A
“In a statutory construction case, the beginning point must be the language of the statute, and when a statute speaks with clarity to an issue judicial inquiry into the statute‘s meaning, in all but the most extraordinary circumstance, is finished.” Estate of Cowart v. Nicklos Drilling Co., 505 U. S. 469, 475 (1992). The language of the civil-remedies provision of the
At the time Congress drafted the Act, Black‘s Law Diсtionary defined “actual damages” as “[r]eal, substantial and just damages, or the amount awarded to a complainant in compensation for his actual and real loss or injury” and as “[s]ynonymous with ‘compensatory damages.‘” Black‘s Law Dictionary 467 (rev. 4th ed. 1968) (hereinafter Black‘s). The majority claims this is a “general” and “notably circular” definition, ante, at 292, but it is unclear why. The definition is plain enough: “Actual damages” compensate for actual injury, and thus the term is synonymous with compensatory dam
It is the definition this Court adopted more than a century ago when we recognized that “[c]ompensatory damages and actual damages mean the same thing; that is, that the damages shall be the result of the injury alleged and proved, and that the amount awarded shall be precisely commensurate with the injury suffered.” Birdsall v. Coolidge, 93 U. S. 64 (1876). It is the definition embraced in current legal dictionaries. See Black‘s 445 (9th ed. 2009) (defining “actual dаmages” as “[a]n amount awarded to a complainant to compensate for a proven injury or loss; damages that repay actual losses.—Also termed compensatory damages; tangible damages; real damages” (italics omitted)). And it is the definition that accords with the plain and ordinary meaning of the term. See Webster‘s Third New International Dictionary 22, 571 (2002) (defining “actual” as “existing in fact or reality” and “damages” as “compensation or satisfaction imposed by law for a
The majority discards all this on the asserted ground that “the precise meaning of the term ‘changes with the specific statute in which it is found.‘” Ante, at 292 (quoting 622 F. 3d 1016, 1029 (CA9 2010)). Context, of course, is relevant to statutory interpretation; it may provide clues that Congress did not employ a word or phrase in its ordinary meaning. That well-established interpretive rule cannot, however, render irrelevant—as the majority would have it—the ordinary meaning of “actual damages.”
Moreover, the authority the majority cites for its claim that “actual damages” has no fixed meaning undermines—rather than supports—its holding. Each cited authority involves either a statute in which Congress expressly directed that compensation be measured in strictly economic terms, or else a statute (e. g., the
B
Indeed, the relevant statutory context—the substantive provisions whose breach may trigger suit under the civil-remedies provision—only reinforces the ordinary meaning of “actual damages.”
Congress established substantive duties in the Act that are expressly designed to prevent agency conduct resulting in intangible harms to the individual. The Act requires agencies to “establish appropriate administrative, technical, and physical safeguards” to ensure against security breaches that could result in “substantial harm, embarrassment, inconvenience, or unfairness to any individual.”
Adopting a reading of “actual damages” that permits recovery for pecuniary loss alone creates a disconnect between the Act‘s substantive and remedial provisions. It allows a swath of Government violations to go unremedied: A federal agency could intentionally or willfully forgo establishing safeguards to protect against embarrassment and no successful private action could be taken against it for the harm Congress identified. Only an interpretation of “actual damages” that permits recovery for nonpecuniary harms harmonizes the Act‘s substantive and remedial provisions. Robinson v. Shell Oil Co., 519 U. S. 337, 341 (1997) (statutory interpreta
The majority draws a different conclusion from the substantive provisions of the
The majority, moreover, is wrong to conclude that the Act‘s parallels with defamation per quod actions suggest Congress intended “actual damages” to mean “special damages.” Quite the opposite. The fact that Congress “would probably have known about” defamation per quod actions, id., at 625, makes it all the more significant that Congress did not write “special damages” in the civil-remedies provision. This Court is typically not in the business of substituting words we think Congress intended to use for words Congress in fact used. Yet that is prеcisely what the majority does when it rewrites “actual damages” to mean “special damages.”6 In sum, the statutory context, and in particular the Act‘s substantive provisions, confirms the ordinary meaning of “actual damages.” Although the Act shares parallels with common-law defamation torts, such analogies do
C
An uncodified provision of the Act, tied to the Act‘s drafting history, also reinforces the ordinary meaning of “actual damages.” As the majority notes, prior to reconciliation, the Senate and House bills contained civil-remedies provisions that were different in a critical respect: The Senate bill allowed for the recovery of “actual and general damages,” whereas the House bill allowed for the recovery of “actual damages” alone.8 In the reconciliation process, the provision for “general damages” was dropped and an uncodified section of the Act was amended to require the newly established Privacy Protection Study Commission to consider, among its other jobs, “whether the Federal Government should be liable for general damages incurred by an individual as the result of a willful or intentional violation of the provisions of sections 552a(g)(1)(C) or (D).”
As the Court explained in Doe, “[t]he deletion of ‘general damages’ from the bill is fairly seen . . . as a deliberate elimination of any possibility of imputing harm and awarding presumed damages.” Id., at 623; see also id., at 622, n. 5 (“Congress explicitly rejected the proposal to make presumed
Rather than view the deletion of general damages (presumеd damages) as leaving the converse (proven damages), the majority supposes that the deletion leaves only a subset of proven damages—those of an economic nature, i. e., “special damages.” Once again, however, the majority‘s insistence that “Congress intended ‘actual damages’ in the
At its core, the majority opinion relies on the following syllogism: The common law employed two terms of art in defamation actions. Because Congress excluded recovery for “general damages,” it must have meant to retain recovery only for “special damages.” That syllogism, of course, ignores that there is another category of damages. It is the very category Congress used in the text of the
D
I turn finally to the statute‘s purpose, for “[a]s in all cases of statutory construction, our task is to interpret the words of th[e] statut[e] in light of the purposes Congress sought to serve.” Chapman v. Houston Welfare Rights Organization, 441 U. S. 600, 608 (1979); see also Dolan v. Postal Serv-ice, 546 U. S. 481, 486 (2006) (“Interpretation of a word or phrase depends upon reading the whole statutory text, considering the purpose and context of the statute, and consulting any precedents or authorities that inform the analysis“). The purposes of the
“The historical context of the Act is important to an understanding of its remedial purposes. In 1974, Congress was concerned with curbing the illegal surveillance and investigation of individuals by federal agencies that had been exposed during the Watergate scandal.” Dept. of Justice, Office of Privacy and Civil Liberties, Overview of the Privacy Act of 1974, p. 4 (2010). In particular, Congress recognized that “the increasing use of computers and sophisticated information technology . . . has greatly magnified the harm to individual privacy that can occur from any collection, maintenance, use, or dissemination of personal information.”
Congress explained that the “purpose of this Act is to provide certain safeguards for an individual against an invasion of personal privacy by requiring Federal agencies, except as otherwise provided by law, to,” inter alia, “be subject to civil suit for any damages which occur as a result of willful or intentional action which violates any individual‘s rights under this Act.”
In interpreting the civil-remedies provision, we must not forget Congress enacted the
* * *
After today, no matter how debilitating and substantial the resulting mental anguish, an individual harmed by a federal agency‘s intentional or willful violation of the
