Brown v. Gardner, 513 U.S. 115, 6 (1994)

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120

BROWN v. GARDNER

Opinion of the Court

of" language is underscored by the incongruity of applying it to the fourth category for which compensation is available under § 1151, cases of injury resulting from a veteran's "pursuit of vocational rehabilitation." If Congress had meant to require a showing of VA fault, it would have been odd to refer to "the pursuit [by the veteran] of vocational rehabilitation" rather than to "the provision [by the VA] of vocational rehabilitation."

The poor fit of this language with any implicit requirement of VA fault is made all the more obvious by the statute's express treatment of a claimant's fault. The same sentence of § 1151 that contains the terms "injury" and "as a result of" restricts compensation to those whose additional disability was not the result of their "own willful misconduct." This reference to claimant's fault in a statute keeping silent about any fault on the VA's part invokes the rule that "[w]here Congress includes particular language in one section of a statute but omits it in another section of the same Act, it is generally presumed that Congress acts intentionally and purposely in the disparate inclusion or exclusion." Russello v. United States, 464 U. S. 16, 23 (1983) (internal quotation marks omitted). Without some mention of the VA's fault, it would be unreasonable to read the text of § 1151 as imposing a burden of demonstrating it upon seeking compensation for a further disability.

In sum, the text and reasonable inferences from it give a clear answer against the Government, and that, as we have said, is " 'the end of the matter.' " Good Samaritan Hospital v. Shalala, 508 U. S. 402, 409 (1993) (quoting Chevron U. S. A. Inc. v. Natural Resources Defense Council, Inc., 467 U. S. 837, 842 (1984)). Thus this clear textually grounded conclusion in Gardner's favor is fatal to the remaining principal arguments advanced against it.

The Government contends that Congress ratified the VA's practice of requiring a showing of fault when it reenacted the predecessor of § 1151 in 1934, or, alternatively, that Con-

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