Cite as: 527 U. S. 212 (1999)
Kennedy, J., dissenting
with or without back pay," effects a waiver of the United States' sovereign immunity for some purposes. Unlike other similar statutes, however, the provision does not mention awards of compensatory damages. Compare § 717(b) with 2 U. S. C. §§ 1311(b)(1)(B), 1405(g) (1994 ed., Supp. III). A waiver of immunity to other types of relief does not provide the unequivocal statement required to establish a waiver of immunity to damages awards. See United States v. Nordic Village, Inc., 503 U. S. 30, 34 (1992) ("Though [11 U. S. C. § 106(c)], too, waives sovereign immunity, it fails to establish unambiguously that the waiver extends to monetary claims"); Lane, supra, at 192.
Nor does the statutory grant of authority to the EEOC to enforce Title VII through appropriate remedies include, in unequivocal terms or even by necessary implication, the power to award or authorize compensatory damages. Even if the phrase "appropriate remedies" had been intended, as the majority maintains, to incorporate relief authorized for violations of Title VII under other statutory provisions, it is not obvious that the phrase's meaning would have been intended also to "expand" to include remedies that were not available at the time § 717 was adopted. Ante, at 218.
It is far from clear, moreover, that the phrase was intended to incorporate other statutory provisions at all. Unlike other subsections of § 717, see § 717(d) (incorporating various provisions relating to judicial actions), § 717(b) does not make an explicit reference to other statutory provisions. In addition, the specific examples given by the statute of appropriate remedies—reinstatement or hiring of employees with or without backpay—are equitable in nature. See United States v. Burke, 504 U. S. 229, 238 (1992). The interpretive canons of noscitur a sociis and ejusdem generis suggest the appropriate remedies authorized by § 717(b) are remedies of the same nature as reinstatement, hiring, and backpay—i. e., equitable remedies. The phrase "appropriate remedies," furthermore, connotes the remedial discre-
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