Cite as: 538 U. S. 119 (2003)
Opinion of the Court
game of war profiteering that the FCA was meant to stop. Of course, this is true, but in no way does it affect the fact that Congress wrote expansively, meaning "to reach all types of fraud, without qualification, that might result in financial loss to the Government." United States v. Neifert-White Co., 390 U. S. 228, 232 (1968). Whatever municipal corporations may have been doing in 1863, in 2003 local governments are commonly at the receiving end of all sorts of federal funding schemes and thus no less able than individuals or private corporations to impose on the federal fisc and exploit the exercise of the federal spending power. Cf. Monell, supra, at 685-686 (noting that municipalities can, "equally with natural persons, create the harms intended to be remedied [by 42 U. S. C. § 1983]"). In sum, neither history nor text points to exclusion of municipalities from the class of "persons" covered by the FCA in 1863.
III
Nor is the application of this reading of the statute affected by the County's alternative position, based on the evolution of the FCA's provisions for relief. The County's argument leads off, at least, with a sound premise about the historical tension between municipal liability and damages imposed as punishment. Although it was well established in 1863 "that a municipality, like a private corporation, was to be treated as a natural person subject to suit for a wide range of tortious activity, . . . this understanding did not extend to the award of punitive or exemplary damages," Newport v. Fact Concerts, Inc., 453 U. S. 247, 259-260 (1981). Since municipalities' common law resistance to punitive damages still obtains, "[t]he general rule today is that no punitive damages are allowed unless expressly authorized by statute." Id., at 260, n. 21.
The County relies on this general statement in asking us to infer a remarkable consequence unstated in the 1986 amendments to the FCA. As part of an effort to modernize
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