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A

The 2000 amendments do not require a contrary conclusion. The Civil Asset Forfeiture Reform Act of 2000 (CAFRA), as applicable here, limits the operation of §2680(c)'s exception. See §3(a), 114 Stat. 211. The limitation (i.e. the exception to the exception) applies where there has been an injury or loss of goods and "the property was seized for the purpose of forfeiture under any provision of Federal law." 28 U.S.C. 2680(c)(1). In my view the amendment establishes that officers of customs and excise, and law enforcement officials performing functions traditionally reserved for revenue officers, shall be liable in tort for damage to the property when the owner's interest in the goods in the end is not forfeited (and when other conditions apply). And this is so regardless of whether the officer acted under the revenue laws of the United States or, alternatively, another civil or criminal forfeiture provision.

The majority's reading of CAFRA for a contrary proposition is premised on the assumption that there is no circumstance in which a customs or excise officer, or a officer acting in such a capacity, would "enforce civil forfeiture laws unrelated to customs or excise." Ante, at 9. But customs and tax officials, along with law enforcement officers performing customs and tax duties, routinely do just that. See, e.g., Customs and Border Protection, Seizures and Penalties Links, http://www.cbp.gov/xp/cgov/ toolbox/legal/authority_enforce/seizures_penalties.xml (CBP has "full authority to . . . seize merchandise for violation of CBP laws or those of other federal agencies that are enforced by CBP"). Indeed, the customs laws expressly contemplate forfeitures and seizures of property under nonrevenue provisions. See, e.g., 19 U.S.C. 1600 ("The procedures [governing seizures of property] set forth in [§§1602-1619] shall apply to seizures of any property effected by customs officers under any law enforced or administered by the Customs Service unless such law specifies different procedures").

By way of example, a customs or excise official might effect a civil forfeiture of currency or monetary instruments under the Bank Secrecy Act, 31 U.S.C. 5317(c) (2000 ed., Supp. V); or of counterfeit instruments, illegal music recordings, or firearms under the Contraband Act, 49 U.S.C. 80302 et seq. Similarly, a DEA agent assisting a customs official in a border search (and thus acting in a customs capacity) might effect a civil forfeiture of vehicles or goods associated with the drug trade under federal drug laws. See 21 U.S.C. 881; see also, e.g., Formula One Motors, 777 F. 2d, at 822-823. Though acting pursuant to a civil forfeiture law that is not specific to customs and taxes, the DEA agent would be covered by §2680(c)'s exception to the exception because he or she would be acting in a traditional revenue capacity-that of conducting a routine search of persons and effects of persons crossing an international boundary.

The Court counters that the Bank Secrecy Act, 31 U.S.C. 5317(c), is not "unrelated to customs or excise" because it cross-references a requirement for exporting and importing monetary instruments, §5316. See ante, at 8, n. 5. But §5316, despite being "[r]elated" to customs duties, is part of the federal Currency and Foreign Transactions Reporting Act, see §5311 et seq. (2000 ed. and Supp. IV), not the United States' customs laws.

The Court also notes that customs agents have the authority to seize contraband under the customs laws, particularly 19 U.S.C. 1595a(c)(1). I do not dispute that customs agents often act under customs laws when seizing property. My point, which goes unrefuted by the Court, is that it was reasonable for Congress to have specified that customs and excise officers would be covered by the exception to the exception even when acting pursuant to federal laws more generally. For instance, §1595a(c)(1) applies only where "[m]erchandise . . . is introduced . . . into the United States contrary to law," which appears to target the importation of property subject to duty or entry restrictions. Title 28 U.S.C. 2680(c), by contrast, was amended in 2000 to encompass not only the detention of "goods or merchandise" but the detention of all "property." §3(a), 114 Stat. 211. In circumstances not involving imported "merchandise," then, the customs official would be acting pursuant to law enforcement authority derived not from the customs laws but, inter alia, the Contraband and Bank Secrecy Acts. The same is true of noncustoms officers acting in a customs capacity.

At the very least this renders the Court's reliance on the views of a subsequent Congress suspect. We have said "subsequent acts can shape or focus" the meaning of a statute. FDA v. Brown & Williamson Tobacco Corp., 529 U. S. 120, 143 (2000). There is no indication, however, that by adding a forfeiture exception to the exception, Congress intended to broaden the scope of the original immunity. Cf. SEC v. Capital Gains Research Bureau, Inc., 375 U. S. 180, 199-200 (1963).

B

Though the Court does not much rely on the point, perhaps it has concerns respecting suits like the one now before us. Petitioner sues for lost property valued at about $177. Law enforcement officers in the federal prison system must take inventory of the property they store, and with just under 200,000 persons in the federal prison population, see Federal Bureau of Prisons, Weekly Population Report, online at http://www.bop.gov/news/ weekly_report.jsp (reporting 199,342 federal inmates as of January 7, 2008), the burden on the Government to account for missing items of little value could be a substantial one.

There are sound reasons, though, for rejecting this concern in interpreting the statute. To begin with, as already discussed, if it were a congressional objective to give a comprehensive exception to all officers who detain property, Congress most likely would have written a specific provision to address the point, quite apart from the special concerns it had with customs and revenue. The exception as the Court now interprets it extends not only to trivial detentions, not only to prison officials, not only to those in custody, but to all detentions of property of whatever value held by all law enforcement officials, a reading that simply does not comport with the plain text and context of the statute.

Second, as the Court observed when interpreting another exception that raised the concern of numerous frivolous claims, liability for negligent transmission "is a risk shared by any business [involved in management of detention facilities]," including the Government. Dolan, 546 U. S., at 491. Third, there are already in place administrative procedures that must be exhausted before the suit is allowed, diminishing the number of frivolous suits that would be heard in federal court. See 42 U.S.C. 1997e(a) ("No action shall be brought with respect to prison conditions under section 1983 of this title, or any other Federal law, by a prisoner confined in any jail, prison, or other correctional facility until such administrative remedies as are available are exhausted"). Under 28 CFR §543.31(a) (2007), the "owner of the damaged or lost property" first must file an FTCA claim with the Bureau of Prisons (BOP) regional office; the BOP, in turn, is authorized by statute to settle administrative claims for not more than $1,000, see 31 U.S.C. 3723(a), which likely encompasses most claims brought by federal prisoners. Only if the prisoner is "dissatisfied with the final agency action" may he or she file suit in an "appropriate U. S. District Court." 28 CFR §543.32(g).

* * *

If Congress had intended to give sweeping immunity to all federal law enforcement officials from liability for the detention of property, it would not have dropped this phrase onto the end of the statutory clause so as to appear there as something of an afterthought. The seizure of property by an officer raises serious concerns for the liberty of our people and the Act should not be read to permit appropriation of property without a remedy in tort by language so obscure and indirect. For these reasons, in my view, the judgment of the Court of Appeals ought to be reversed.

SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES

No. 06-9130

ABDUS-SHAHID M. S. ALI, PETITIONER v. FEDERAL BUREAU OF PRISONS ET AL.

ON WRIT OF CERTIORARI TO THE UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE ELEVENTH CIRCUIT

[January 22, 2008]

JUSTICE BREYER, with whom JUSTICE STEVENS joins, dissenting.

I agree with JUSTICE KENNEDY that context makes clear that Congress intended the phrase "any other law enforcement officer" to apply only to officers carrying out customs or excise duties. See 28 U.S.C. 2680(c). But I write separately to emphasize, as JUSTICE KENNEDY's dissent itself makes clear, that the relevant context extends well beyond Latin canons and other such purely textual devices.

As with many questions of statutory interpretation, the issue here is not the meaning of the words. The dictionary meaning of each word is well known. Rather, the issue is the statute's scope. What boundaries did Congress intend to set? To what circumstances did Congress intend the phrase, as used in this statutory provision, to apply? The majority answers this question by referring to an amendment that creates an exception for certain forfeitures and by emphasizing the statutory word "any." As to the amendment, I find JUSTICE KENNEDY's counterargument convincing. See ante, at 11-13. And, in my view, the word "any" provides no help whatsoever.

The word "any" is of no help because all speakers (including writers and legislators) who use general words such as "all," "any," "never," and "none" normally rely upon context to indicate the limits of time and place within which they intend those words to do their linguistic work. And with the possible exception of the assertion of a universal truth, say by a mathematician, scientist, philosopher, or theologian, such limits almost always exist. When I call out to my wife, "There isn't any butter," I do not mean, "There isn't any butter in town." The context makes clear to her that I am talking about the contents of our refrigerator. That is to say, it is context, not a dictionary, that sets the boundaries of time, place, and circumstance within which words such as "any" will apply. See United States v. Palmer, 3 Wheat. 610, 631 (1818) (Marshall, C. J.) ("[G]eneral words," such as the word " 'any'," must "be limited" in their application "to those objects to which the legislature intended to apply them"); Small v. United States, 544 U. S. 385 , 388 (2005) ("The word 'any' considered alone cannot answer" the question "whether the statutory reference 'convicted in any court' includes a conviction entered in a foreign court"); Nixon v. Missouri Municipal League, 541 U. S. 125, 132 (2004) (" '[A]ny' " means "different things depending upon the setting"); United States v. Alvarez-Sanchez, 511 U. S. 350, 357 (1994) ("[R]espondent errs in placing dispositive weight on the broad statutory reference to 'any' law enforcement officer or agency without considering the rest of the statute").

Context, of course, includes the words immediately surrounding the phrase in question. And canons such as ejusdem generis and noscitur a sociis offer help in evaluating the significance of those surrounding words. Yet that help is limited. That is because other contextual features can show that Congress intended a phrase to apply more broadly than the immediately surrounding words by themselves suggest. See Circuit City Stores, Inc. v. Adams, 532 U. S. 105, 138-140 (2001) (SOUTER, J., dissenting) (finding "good reasons" not to apply ejusdem generis because the statute's history and purposes make clear that the words "any other class of workers" in the phrase "seamen, railroad employees, or any other class of workers" refer, not just to other transportation workers, but to workers of all kinds including retail store clerks). It is because canons of construction are not "conclusive" and "are often countered . . . by some maxim pointing in a different direction." Id., at 115 (majority opinion). And it is because these particular canons simply crystallize what English speakers already know, namely, that lists often (but not always) group together items with similar characteristics. (That is why we cannot, without comic effect, yoke radically different nouns to a single verb, e.g., "He caught three salmon, two trout, and a cold.")

In this case, not only the immediately surrounding words but also every other contextual feature supports JUSTICE KENNEDY's conclusion. The textual context includes the location of the phrase within a provision that otherwise exclusively concerns customs and revenue duties. And the nontextual context includes several features that, taken together, indicate that Congress intended a narrow tort-liability exception related to customs and excise.

First, drafting history shows that the relevant portion of the bill that became the Federal Tort Claims Act concerned only customs and excise. Initially, the relevant provision of the bill exempted only claims "arising in respect of the assessment or collection of any tax or customs duty." See, e.g., S. 4377, 71st Cong., 2d Sess., p. 4 (1930). In 1931, a Special Assistant to the Attorney General, Alexander Holtzoff, wrote additional draft language, namely, "or the detention of any goods or merchandise by any officer of customs or excise or any other law enforcement officer." Report on Proposed Federal Tort Claims Bill 2 (1931) (emphasis added). Holtzoff, in a report to a congressional agency, said that the expanded language sought "to include immunity from liability in respect of loss in connection with the detention of goods or merchandise by any officer of customs or excise." Id., at 16. Holtzoff explained that the language was suggested by a similar British bill that mentioned only customs and excise officials. Ibid. (referring to the bill proposed in the Crown Proceedings Committee Report §11(5)(c), pp. 17-18 (Apr. 1927) (Cmd. 2842) ("No proceedings shall lie under this section . . . for or in respect of the loss of or any deterioration or damage occasioned to, or any delay in the release of, any goods or merchandise by reason of anything done or omitted to be done by any officer of customs and excise acting as such")); see Kosak v. United States, 465 U. S. 848, 857, n. 13 (1984) (While "the ideas expressed [in Holtzoff's report] should not be given great weight in determining the intent of the Legislature," at least in some circumstances, "it seems to us senseless to ignore entirely the views of [the provision's] draftsman"). And Members of Congress repeatedly referred to the exception as encompassing claims involving customs and excise functions. See, e.g., H. R. Rep. No. 2428, 76th Cong., 3d Sess., p. 5 (1940); S. Rep. No. 1196, 77th Cong., 2d Sess., p. 7 (1942); H. R. Rep. No. 2245, 77th Cong., 2d Sess., p. 10 (1942); H. R. Rep. No. 1287, 79th Cong., 1st Sess., p. 6 (1945); S. Rep. No. 1400, 79th Cong., 2d Sess., p. 33 (1946).

Second, insofar as Congress sought, through the Act's exceptions, to preclude tort suits against the Government where "adequate remedies were already available," Kosak, supra, at 858; see S. Rep. No. 1400, supra, at 33; H. R. Rep. No. 1287, supra, at 6 (setting forth that purpose), a limited exception makes sense; a broad exception does not. Other statutes already provided recovery for plaintiffs harmed by federal officers enforcing customs and tax laws but not for plaintiffs harmed by all other federal officers enforcing most other laws. See Bazuaye v. United States, 83 F. 3d 482, 485-486 (CADC 1996) (detailing history).

Third, the practical difference between a limited and a broad interpretation is considerable, magnifying the importance of the congressional silence to which JUSTICE

KENNEDY points, see ante, at 11. A limited interpretation of the phrase "any other law enforcement officer" would likely encompass only those law enforcement officers working, say, at borders and helping to enforce customs and excise laws. The majority instead interprets this provision to include the tens of thousands of officers performing unrelated tasks. The Justice Department estimates that there are more than 100,000 law enforcement officers, not including members of the armed services. See, e.g., Dept. of Justice, Bureau of Justice Statistics Bulletin, Federal Law Enforcement Officers, 2004, p. 1 (July 2006). And although the law's history contains much that indicates the provision's scope is limited to customs and excise, it contains nothing at all suggesting an intent to apply the provision more broadly, indeed, to multiply the number of officers to whom it applies by what is likely one or more orders of magnitude. It is thus not the Latin canons, ejusdem generis and noscitur a sociis, that shed light on the application of the statutory phrase but JUSTICE SCALIA's more pertinent and easily remembered English-language observation that Congress "does not . . . hide elephants in mouseholes." Whitman v. American Trucking Assns., Inc., 531 U. S. 457, 468 (2001).

For these reasons, I dissent and I join JUSTICE KEN-NEDY's dissent.

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The Eleventh Circuit joined five other Courts of Appeals in construing §2680(c) to encompass all law enforcement officers. See Bramwell v. Bureau of Prisons, 348 F. 3d 804, 806-807 (CA9 2003); Chapa v. Dept. of Justice, 339 F. 3d 388, 390 (CA5 2003) (per curiam); Hatten v. White, 275 F. 3d 1208, 1210 (CA10 2002); Cheney v. United States, 972 F. 2d 247, 248 (CA8 1992) (per curiam); Ysasi v. Rivkind, 856 F. 2d 1520, 1525 (CA Fed. 1988). Five other Courts of Appeals reached the contrary conclusion, interpreting the clause as limited to officers performing customs or excise functions. See ABC v. DEF, 500 F. 3d 103, 107 (CA2 2007); Dahler v. United States, 473 F. 3d 769, 771-772 (CA7 2007) (per curiam); Andrews v. United States, 441 F. 3d 220, 227 (CA4 2006); Bazuaye v. United States, 83 F. 3d 482, 486 (CADC 1996); Kurinsky v. United States, 33 F. 3d 594, 598 (CA6 1994).

We assume, without deciding, that the BOP officers "detained" Ali's property and thus satisfy §2680(c)'s "arising in respect of . . . detention" requirement. The Court of Appeals held that the "detention" clause was satisfied, and petitioner expressly declined to raise the issue on certiorari. See 204 Fed. Appx. 778, 779-780 (CA11 2006) (per curiam); Brief for Petitioner 10-11, n. 9.

We consider this question for the first time in this case. Petitioner argues that this Court concluded in Kosak v. United States, 465 U. S. 848 (1984), that the phrase "any other law enforcement officer" is ambiguous. Reply Brief for Petitioner 4. In that case, the Court construed a portion of the same clause at issue here, but the decision had no bearing on the meaning of "any other law enforcement officer." 465 U. S., at 853-862 (holding that "detention" encompasses claims resulting from negligent handling or storage). Indeed, the Court expressly declined to reach the issue. Id., at 852, n. 6 ("We have no occasion in this case to decide what kinds of 'law-enforcement officer[s],' other than customs officials, are covered by the exception." (alteration in original)). Petitioner's reliance on the footnote as concluding that the phrase is ambiguous reads too much into the Court's reservation of a question that was not then before it.

Of course, other circumstances may counteract the effect of expansive modifiers. For example, we have construed an "any" phrase narrowly when it included a term of art that compelled that result. See Circuit City Stores, Inc. v. Adams, 532 U. S. 105, 115-116 (2001) (construing "any other class of workers engaged in . . . commerce," 9 U.S.C. 1, narrowly based on the Court's previous interpretation of "in commerce" as a term of art with a narrower meaning). We also have construed such phrases narrowly when another term in the provision made sense only under a narrow reading, see United States v. Alvarez-Sanchez, 511 U. S. 350, 357-358 (1994) (limiting "any law-enforcement officer" to federal officers because the statute's reference to "delay" made sense only with respect to federal officers), and when a broad reading would have implicated sovereignty concerns, see Raygor v. Regents of Univ. of Minn., 534 U. S. 533, 541-542 (2002) (applying the "clear statement rule" applicable to waivers of sovereign immunity to construe the phrase "all civil actions" to exclude a category of claims, "even though nothing in the statute expressly exclude[d]" them). None of the circumstances that motivated our decisions in these cases is present here.

JUSTICE KENNEDY'S dissent (hereinafter the dissent) argues that, during border searches, customs and excise officers "routinely" enforce civil forfeiture laws unrelated to customs or excise. Post, at 12-13. But the examples the dissent provides do not support that assertion. The dissent maintains that a customs officer who seizes material defined as contraband under 49 U.S.C. 80302 et seq., is one such example. Post, at 12-13. But a customs officer's authority to effect a forfeiture of such contraband derives from a specific customs law. See 19 U.S.C. 1595a(c)(1)(C). Similarly, the dissent suggests that a DEA agent "assisting a customs official" in a border search who seizes drug-related contraband under 21 U.S.C. 881 is acting in a "traditional revenue capacity." Post, at 12-13. But that argument is based on the assumption that an officer who assists in conducting a border search acts in a customs capacity even if he is not a customs officer and is not enforcing a customs law. That assumption, far from self-evident, only underscores the difficulty that would attend any attempt to define the contours of the implied limitation on §2680(c)'s reach proposed by petitioner and embraced by the dissent. "Acting in a customs or excise capacity" is not a self-defining concept, and not having included such a limitation in the statute's language, Congress of course did not provide a definition. Finally, the dissent points out that a customs or excise officer might effect a forfeiture of currency or monetary instruments under 31 U.S.C. 5317(c). Post, at 12-13. But §5317(c) is hardly a civil forfeiture law unrelated to customs or excise. See §5317(c)(2) (authorizing forfeiture of property involved in a violation of, inter alia, §5316, which sets forth reporting requirements for exporting and importing monetary instruments).


As an example of "other law enforcement officer[s]" acting in an excise or customs capacity, petitioner cites Formula One Motors, Ltd. v. United States, 777 F. 2d 822, 823-824 (CA2 1985) (holding that the seizure of a vehicle still in transit from overseas by Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) agents who searched it for drugs was "sufficiently akin to the functions carried out by Customs officials to place conduct within the scope of section 2680(c)"). But it is not clear that the agents in that case were acting in an excise or customs capacity rather than in their ordinary capacity as law enforcement agents. It seems to us that DEA agents searching a car for drugs are acting in their capacity as officers charged with enforcing the Nation's drug laws, not the customs or excise laws. Similarly, the dissent notes that 14 U.S.C. 89(a) authorizes Coast Guard officers to enforce customs laws. Post, at 5-6. But the very next subsection of §89 provides that Coast Guard officers effectively are customs officers when they enforce customs laws. See §89(b)(1) (providing that Coast Guard officers "insofar as they are engaged, pursuant to the authority contained in this section, in enforcing any law of the United States shall . . . be deemed to be acting as agents of the particular executive department . . . charged with the administration of the particular law"). As a result, a Coast Guard officer enforcing a customs law is a customs officer, not some "other law enforcement officer."
Congress, we note, did provide an administrative remedy for lost property claimants like petitioner. Federal agencies have authority under 31 U.S.C. 3723(a)(1) to settle certain "claim[s] for not more than $1,000 for damage to, or loss of, privately owned property that . . . is caused by the negligence of an officer or employee of the United States Government acting within the scope of employment." The BOP has settled more than 1,100 such claims in the last three years. Brief for Respondents 41, n. 17.
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