Cite as: 506 U. S. 194 (1993)
Opinion of the Court
text of congressional silence on these issues indicates the natural character of a § 1915 "person." 11
IV
We do not forget our cases holding that the broad definition of "person" in 1 U. S. C. § 1 applies in spite of incongruities as strong, or stronger, than those produced by the four contextual features we have noted in § 1915. But in each of these cases, some other aspect of statutory context independently indicated the broad reading. In Wilson v. Omaha Tribe, 442 U. S. 653, 666 (1979), for example, we held that a statutory burden of proof on a "white person" involved in a property dispute with an Indian applied to the artificial "persons" listed in the Dictionary Act as well as to individuals. Because a wholly legal creature has no color, and belongs to no race, the use of the adjective "white" to describe a "person" is one of the strongest contextual indicators imaginable that "person" covers only individuals, and if there had been no more to the context at issue in Omaha Tribe, we would have to concede that our decision in that case is inconsistent with our conclusion here. But Omaha Tribe involved another important, countervailing contextual indication. The larger context of the whole statute and other laws
11 Justice Thomas asserts that, by drawing an inference from congressional silence, we "depar[t] from the definition of 'context' set out at the beginning of [our] opinion." Post, at 221, n. 9. It is not from some dimensionless void, however, that we draw our conclusion. Rather, it is from a pointed silence in the face of obvious problems created by applying to artificial entities the text of § 1915, in this case the requirement that the person seeking in forma pauperis status be "unable to pay" costs, fees, and security. As the dissent is willing to affirm without itself addressing these problems, it is apparently confident that workable, uncontroversial solutions can be drawn from the statute. Yet the rule it would affirm (that an unincorporated association is "unable to pay" whenever its "chairman" says that it cannot maintain a bank account in its own name) does not inspire confidence.
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