Cite as: 531 U. S. 533 (2001)
Scalia, J., dissenting
litigation); § 504(a)(4) (local, state, and federal lobbying); § 504(a)(7) (class-action lawsuits); § 504(a)(12) (training programs for, inter alia, boycotts, picketing, and demonstrations); § 504(a)(14) (litigation with respect to abortion). The severability question here is, essentially, whether, without the restriction that the Court today invalidates, the permission for conducting welfare litigation would have been accorded. As far as appears from the best evidence (which is the structure of the statute), I think the answer must be no.
We have in some cases stated that when an "excepting proviso is found unconstitutional the substantive provisions which it qualifies cannot stand," for "to hold otherwise would be to extend the scope of the law . . . so as to embrace [situations] which the legislature passing the statute had, by its very terms, expressly excluded." Frost v. Corporation Comm'n of Okla., 278 U. S. 515, 525 (1929); see also Davis v. Wallace, 257 U. S. 478, 484 (1922) ("Where an excepting provision in a statute is found unconstitutional, courts very generally hold that this does not work an enlargement of the scope or operation of other provisions with which that provision was enacted, and which it was intended to qualify or restrain"). I frankly doubt whether this approach has been followed consistently enough to be called the "general" rule, but if there were ever an instance in which it is appropriate it is here. To strike the restriction on welfare benefits suits is to void § 504(a)(16) altogether. Subsection (a)(16) prohibits involvement in three types of activities with respect to welfare reform: lobbying, rulemaking, and litigation. But the proscriptions against using LSC funds to participate in welfare lobbying and rulemaking are superfluous, since as described above subsections (a)(2), (a)(3), and (a)(4) of § 504 withhold LSC funds from those activities generally. What is unique about subsection (a)(16)—the only thing it achieves—is its limit on litigation. To remove that limit is to repeal subsection (a)(16) altogether, and thus to eliminate a significant quid pro quo of the legislative compromise. We
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