Ragsdale v. Wolverine World Wide, Inc., 535 U.S. 81, 18 (2002)

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92

RAGSDALE v. WOLVERINE WORLD WIDE, INC.

Opinion of the Court

enact rules purporting to make these kinds of determinations for the courts, § 825.700(a) has this precise effect.

For this reason, the Government's reliance upon Mourning v. Family Publications Service, Inc., 411 U. S. 356 (1973), is misplaced. Just as the FMLA does not itself require employers to give individualized notice, see supra, at 88, the Truth in Lending Act did not itself require lenders to make certain disclosures mandated by the regulation at issue in Mourning. In sustaining the regulation, we observed that the disclosure requirement was not contrary to the statute and that the Federal Reserve Board's rulemaking authority was much broader than the Secretary's is here. See 411 U. S., at 361-362 (quoting 15 U. S. C. § 1604 (1970 ed.) (em-powering the Board to issue regulations not only necessary "to carry out the purposes of [the statute]," but also "necessary or proper . . . to prevent circumvention or evasion [of the statute], or to facilitate compliance therewith")). The crucial distinction, however, is that although we referred to the Board's regulation as a "remedial measure," 411 U. S., at 371, the disclosure requirement was in fact enforced through the statute's pre-existing remedial scheme and in a manner consistent with it. The Board simply assessed violators the $100 minimum statutory fine applicable to lenders who failed to make required disclosures. See id., at 376. In contrast, § 825.700(a) enforces the individualized notice requirement in a way that contradicts and undermines the FMLA's preexisting remedial scheme. While § 2617 says that employees must prove impairment of their statutory rights and resulting harm, the Secretary's regulation instructs the courts to ignore this command. Our previous decisions, Mourning included, do not authorize agencies to contravene Congress' will in this manner.

Furthermore, even if the Secretary were authorized to reconfigure the FMLA's cause of action for her administrative convenience, this particular rule would be an unreasonable choice. As we have noted in other contexts, categorical

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