112
Opinion of the Court
II
A
Section 706 of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, as amended, 42 U. S. C. § 2000e-5, governs the filing of charges of discrimination with the EEOC. Section 706(b) requires "[c]harges" to "be in writing under oath or affirmation . . . contain[ing] such information and . . . in such form as the Commission requires." § 2000e-5(b). Section 706(e)(1) provides that "[a] charge . . . shall be filed within one hundred and eighty [or in some cases, three hundred] days after the alleged unlawful employment practice occurred." § 2000e-5(e)(1).
Neither provision defines "charge," which is likewise undefined elsewhere in the statute. Section 706(b) merely requires the verification of a charge, without saying when it must be verified; § 706(e)(1) provides that a charge must be filed within a given period, without indicating whether the charge must be verified when filed. Neither provision incorporates the other so as to give a definition by necessary implication.
The assumption of the Court of Appeals that the two provisions must be read as one, with "charge" defined as "under oath or affirmation," was thus a structural and logical leap. Nor is the gap bridged by the rule of common sense that statutes are to be read as a whole, see United States v. Morton, 467 U. S. 822, 828 (1984). Although reading the two provisions together would not be facially inconsistent, doing that would ignore the two quite different objectives of the timing and verification requirements, which stand in the way of reading "charge" to subsume them both by definition. The point of the time limitation is to encourage a potential charging party to raise a discrimination claim before it gets
cert. denied, 495 U. S. 932 (1990); Casavantes v. California State Univ., 732 F. 2d 1441, 1443 (CA9 1984); Price v. Southwestern Bell Tel. Co., 687 F. 2d 74, 77, and n. 3 (CA5 1982).
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