Cite as: 522 U. S. 479 (1998)
Syllabus
class of plaintiffs before a plaintiff from that class could have standing under the APA to sue. Petitioners also mistakenly rely on Air Courier Conference v. Postal Workers, 498 U. S. 517, 519. Unlike the plaintiffs there who were denied standing, respondents here have "competitive and direct injury," id., at 528, n. 5, as well as an interest "arguably . . . to be protected" by the statute in question. Under the Court's precedents, it is irrelevant that in enacting the FCUA, Congress did not specifically intend to protect commercial banks, as is the fact that respondents' objectives in this action are not eleemosynary in nature. Pp. 495-499.
2. The NCUA's interpretation of § 109—whereby a common bond of occupation must unite only the members of each unrelated employer group—is impermissible under the first step of the analysis set forth in Chevron, see 467 U. S., at 842-843, because that interpretation is contrary to the unambiguously expressed intent of Congress that the same common bond of occupation must unite each member of an occupationally defined federal credit union. Several considerations compel this conclusion. First, the NCUA's interpretation makes the statutory phrase "common bond" surplusage when applied to a federal credit union made up of multiple unrelated employer groups, because each such "group" already has its own "common bond," employment with a particular employer. If the phrase "common bond" is to be given any meaning when the employees in such groups are joined together, a different "common bond"—one extending to each and every employee considered together—must be found to unite them. Second, the interpretation violates the established canon of construction that similar language within the same statutory section must be accorded a consistent meaning. Section 109 consists of two parallel clauses: Federal credit union membership is limited "to groups having a common bond of occupation or association, or to groups within a well-defined neighborhood, community, or rural district." The NCUA has never interpreted, and does not contend that it could interpret, the geographic limitation to permit a credit union to be composed of members from an unlimited number of unrelated geographic units. The occupational limitation must be interpreted in the same way. Finally, the NCUA's interpretation has the potential to read the words "shall be limited" out of the statute entirely. The interpretation would allow the chartering of a conglomerate credit union whose members included the employees of every company in the United States. Section 109 cannot be considered a limitation on credit union membership if at the same time it permits such a limitless result. Pp. 499-503.
90 F. 3d 525, affirmed.
481
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