Gorsuch Delivers His First Supreme Court Opinion

The decision in the Henson v. Santander Consumer USA case was unanimous.

Neil Gorsuch, the newest of the Supreme Court justices, recently got his first chance to write a ruling on a case that appeared before the Court.

The case, Henson v. Santander Consumer USA, focused on whether the 1977 Fair Debt Collection Practices Act applies to companies that buy defaulted debt and try to collect it themselves.

The Fair Debt Collection Practices Act defines debt collectors as those seeking to collect debts owed to a third party. But in the Henson case, Santander bought defaulted auto loans from CitiFinancial Auto and then tried to collect on them.

The plaintiffs in the case argued that because their debts were previously owed to a third party, the Act applies to Santander and its practices as well. Their argument hinged on a grammatical question—the law’s use of the word “owed” rather than “owing.”

Gorsuch was not impressed by the semantic argument.

“This much doesn’t follow even as a matter of good grammar, let alone ordinary meaning,” Gorsuch wrote in his June 12 opinion. “Past participles like ‘owed’ are routinely used as adjectives to describe the present state of a thing—so, for example, burnt toast is inedible, a fallen branch blocks the path, and (equally) a debt owed to a current owner may be collected by him or her.”

Ultimately, Gorsuch argued, judges should be bound by the text of laws and should not speculate on what those laws might mean in the context of new developments. “It is never our job to rewrite a constitutionally valid statutory text, under the banner of speculation about what Congress might have done had it faced a question that, on everyone’s account, it never faced,” he wrote.

“It’s hardly unknown for new business models to emerge in response to regulation, and for regulation in turn to address new business models,” Gorsuch wrote. “Constant competition between constable and quarry, regulator and regulated, can come as no surprise in our changing world. But neither should the proper role of the judiciary in that process—to apply, not amend, the work of the People’s representatives.”

The Supreme Court unanimously ruled to affirm the decision of a district court and the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals, which sided with Santander.

Civil rights groups representing low-income and minority communities were displeased with the decision. “The court’s decision will incentivize the further expansion of a growing industry of companies that have been focused on the purchase of debt as a means to evading the important protections afforded by the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act,” Kristen Clarke, president of the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, told USA Today. “Congress and states must act now to provide necessary protection for consumers.”