Conflicting Statutes

Lockhart v. United States

James Lockhart acquired student loan debts between 1984 and 1989, and were transferred to the Treasury Offset Program, where the Government began withholding some of his Social Security payments to offset the debt. Generally, Social Security is not "subject to execution, levy, attachment, garnishment, or other legal process,"(§407) and this protection cannot be overridden except by another law's "direct reference" to this protection. Another provision, which prohibited collection on claims over ten years old, was eliminated in 1991. This provision's eliminating statute did not, however, did not make "direct reference" to §407. Then in 1996, the Debt Collection Improvement Act was passed which stated that “[n]otwithstanding any other provision of law (including [§407] . . .) ... all payment due an individual under . . . the Social Security Act . . . shall be subject to offset under this section.”

The Court asserts that "the Debt Collection Improvement Act clearly makes Social Security benefits subject to offset" and that the 1991 law (Higher Educational Technical Amendments) remove the 10 year limit. Lockhart argues that because the 1991 law removed time limits before Social Security was subject to offset, Congress could not have meant for it to apply to Social Security. The majority holds that the fact that the 1996 law retained the general protection for 10+ year debts does not extend this protection's scope, and that since the direct reference was only necessary to apply attachments at all, that Congress did not foresee the consequences of its legislation should not stray the Court from a plain reading of the text. Finally, the opinion declines to read into a failed legislative attempt to change the law because “[F]ailed legislative proposals are ‘a particularly dangerous ground on which to rest an interpretation of a prior statute.’”

Scalia, concurring, argues that express reference clauses impermissibly abridge the powers of a succeeding legislature, and that "an express-reference or express-statement provision cannot nullify the unambiguous import of a subsequent statute." Congress' 1991, and 1996 laws "flatly contradicted, and thereby effectively repealed, part of §207(a) of the Social Security Act. This repeal is effective, regardless of whether the express-reference requirement of §207(b) is fulfilled."