Page:Azar v. Allina Health Services, 587 U.S. (2019) (slip opinion).pdf/12

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Cite as: 587 U. S. ____ (2019)
9

Opinion of the Court

subsection (e)(1) can’t carry the meaning it wishes to ascribe to the same word in subsection (a)(2). Tr. of Oral Arg. 16–18. So that leaves the government to suggest (again) that the same word should mean two different things in the same statute. In (e)(1), the government says, it may bear the meaning the hospitals propose, but in (a)(2) it means the same thing it does in the APA. But, once more, the government fails to offer any good reason or evidence to unseat our normal presumption that, when Congress uses a term in multiple places within a single statute, the term bears a consistent meaning throughout. See Law, 571 U. S., at 422.

Third, the government suggests Congress used the phrase “substantive legal standard” in the Medicare Act as a way to exempt interpretive rules and policy statements from notice and comment. But Congress had before it— and rejected—a much more direct path to that destination. In a single sentence the APA sets forth two exemptions from the government’s usual notice-and-comment obligations:

“Except when notice or hearing is required by statute, this subsection [requiring notice and comment] does not apply—

“(A) to interpretative rules, general statements of policy, or rules of agency organization, procedure, or practice; or

“(B) when the agency for good cause finds . . . that notice and public procedure thereon are impracticable, unnecessary, or contrary to the public interest.” 5 U. S. C. §553(b).

In the Medicare Act, Congress expressly borrowed one of the APA’s exemptions, the good cause exemption, by cross-referencing it in §1395hh(b)(2)(C). If, as the government supposes, Congress had also wanted to borrow the other APA exemption, for interpretive rules and policy state-