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DRAFT FOR ATTORNEY REVIEW — NOT FINAL

Section 7

Citation
Section 7
Parent Document
Bostock v. Clayton County, 590 U.S. 644 (2020)
Effective Date
2020-06-15

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Another longstanding canon of statutory interpretation-the absurdity canon-similarly reflects the law's focus on ordinary meaning rather than literal meaning. That canon tells courts to avoid construing a statute in a way that would lead to absurd consequences. The absurdity canon, properly understood, is "an implementation of (rather than ... an exception to) the ordinary meaning rule." W. Eskridge, Interpreting Law 72 (2016). "What the rule of absurdity seeks to do is what all rules of interpretation seek to do: make sense of the text." A. Scalia & B. Garner, Reading Law 235 (2012).