212
Opinion of the Court
areas as . . . institutionalization," § 12101(a)(3), can be thought to include penal institutions. But assuming it to be true, and assuming further that it proves, as petitioners contend, that Congress did not "envisio[n] that the ADA would be applied to state prisoners," Brief for Petitioners 13-14, in the context of an unambiguous statutory text that is irrelevant. As we have said before, the fact that a statute can be " 'applied in situations not expressly anticipated by Congress does not demonstrate ambiguity. It demonstrates breadth.' " Sedima, S. P. R. L. v. Imrex Co., 473 U. S. 479, 499 (1985) (citation omitted).
Our conclusion that the text of the ADA is not ambiguous causes us also to reject petitioners' appeal to the doctrine of constitutional doubt, which requires that we interpret statutes to avoid "grave and doubtful constitutional questions," United States ex rel. Attorney General v. Delaware & Hudson Co., 213 U. S. 366, 408 (1909). That doctrine enters in only "where a statute is susceptible of two constructions," ibid. And for the same reason we disregard petitioners' invocation of the statute's title, "Public Services," 104 Stat. 337. "[T]he title of a statute . . . cannot limit the plain meaning of the text. For interpretive purposes, [it is] of use only when [it] shed[s] light on some ambiguous word or phrase." Trainmen v. Baltimore & Ohio R. Co., 331 U. S. 519, 528- 529 (1947).
We do not address another issue presented by petitioners: whether application of the ADA to state prisons is a constitutional exercise of Congress's power under either the Commerce Clause, compare Printz v. United States, 521 U. S. 898 (1997), with Garcia v. San Antonio Metropolitan Transit Authority, 469 U. S. 528 (1985), or § 5 of the Fourteenth Amendment, see City of Boerne v. Flores, 521 U. S. 507 (1997). Petitioners raise this question in their brief, see Brief for Petitioners 22-23, but it was addressed by neither the District Court nor the Court of Appeals, where petitioners raised only the Gregory plain-statement issue. "Where
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