168
Opinion of the Court
bined operation of the two subsections, there is thus no implication that the Commissioner is powerless to make an initial assignment to an operator after the specified date; any suggestion goes the other way.
Second, there is no reason to read the provision in § 9706(f) for correction of erroneous assignments as implying that the Commissioner should not employ her § 9706(a) authority to make a tardy initial assignment in a situation like this. We do not read the enumeration of one case to exclude another unless it is fair to suppose that Congress considered the unnamed possibility and meant to say no to it. United Dominion Industries, Inc. v. United States, 532 U. S. 822, 836 (2001). As we have held repeatedly, the canon expressio unius est exclusio alterius does not apply to every statutory listing or grouping; it has force only when the items expressed are members of an "associated group or series," justifying the inference that items not mentioned were excluded by deliberate choice, not inadvertence. United States v. Vonn, 535 U. S. 55, 65 (2002). We explained this point as recently as last Term's unanimous opinion in Chevron U. S. A. Inc. v. Echazabal, 536 U. S. 73, 81 (2002):
"Just as statutory language suggesting exclusiveness is missing, so is that essential extrastatutory ingredient of an expression-exclusion demonstration, the series of terms from which an omission bespeaks a negative implication. The canon depends on identifying a series of two or more terms or things that should be understood to go hand in hand, which [is] abridged in circumstances supporting a sensible inference that the term left out must have been meant to be excluded. E. Crawford, Construction of Statutes 337 (1940) (expressio unius ' "properly applies only when in the natural association of ideas in the mind of the reader that which is expressed is so set over by way of strong contrast to that which is omitted that the contrast enforces the affirmative inference" ' (quoting State ex rel. Curtis v. De Corps,
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