Chevron U. S. A. Inc. v. Echazabal, 536 U.S. 73, 10 (2002)

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82

CHEVRON U. S. A. INC. v. ECHAZABAL

Opinion of the Court

Act says nothing about threats to self that particular employment might pose. 42 U. S. C. § 12113(b). The EEOC nonetheless extended the exception to cover threat-to-self employment, 29 CFR § 1613.702(f) (1990), and Echazabal argues that Congress's adoption only of the threat-to-others exception in the ADA must have been a deliberate omission of the Rehabilitation Act regulation's tandem term of threat-to-self, with intent to exclude it.

But two reasons stand in the way of treating the omission as an unequivocal implication of congressional intent. The first is that the EEOC was not the only agency interpreting the Rehabilitation Act, with the consequence that its regulation did not establish a clear, standard pairing of threats to self and others. While the EEOC did amplify upon the text of the Rehabilitation Act exclusion by recognizing threats to self along with threats to others, three other agencies adopting regulations under the Rehabilitation Act did not. See 28 CFR § 42.540(l)(1) (1990) (Department of Justice), 29 CFR § 32.3 (1990) (Department of Labor), and 45 CFR § 84.3(k)(1) (1990) (Department of Health and Human Services).4 It

would be a stretch, then, to say that there was a standard usage, with its source in agency practice or elsewhere, that connected threats to others so closely to threats to self that leaving out one was like ignoring a twin.

Even if we put aside this variety of administrative experience, however, and look no further than the EEOC's Rehabil-4 In fact, we have said that the regulations issued by the Department of Health and Human Services, which had previously been the regulations of the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare, are of "particular significance" in interpreting the Rehabilitation Act because "HEW was the agency responsible for coordinating the implementation and enforcement of § 504 of the Rehabilitation Act, 29 U. S. C. § 794," prohibiting discrimination against individuals with disabilities by recipients of federal funds. Toyota Motor Mfg., Ky., Inc. v. Williams, 534 U. S. 184, 195 (2002). Unfortunately for Echazabal's argument, the congruence of the ADA with the HEW regulations does not produce an unequivocal statement of congressional intent.

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