Washington State Dept. of Social and Health Servs. v. Guardianship Estate of Keffeler, 537 U.S. 371, 14 (2003)

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384

WASHINGTON STATE DEPT. OF SOCIAL AND HEALTH SERVS. v. GUARDIANSHIP ESTATE OF KEFFELER

Opinion of the Court

important here, for in the abstract the department does use legal process as the avenue to reimbursement: by a federal legal process the Commissioner appoints the department a representative payee,7 and by a state legal process the department makes claims against the accounts kept by the state treasurer. The statute, however, uses the term "other legal process" far more restrictively, for under the established interpretative canons of noscitur a sociis and ejusdem generis, " '[w]here general words follow specific words in a statutory enumeration, the general words are construed to embrace only objects similar in nature to those objects enumerated by the preceding specific words.' " Circuit City Stores, Inc. v. Adams, 532 U. S. 105, 114-115 (2001); see Gutierrez v. Ada, 528 U. S. 250, 255 (2000) ("[W]ords . . . are known by their companions"); Jarecki v. G. D. Searle & Co., 367 U. S. 303, 307 (1961) ("The maxim noscitur a sociis . . . is often wisely applied where a word is capable of many

7 Quite apart from any consequence of the interpretive canons discussed in the succeeding text, the mere fact of the department's appointment as representative payee could not reasonably be taken to contravene the antiattachment provision, contrary to respondents' suggestion. As already noted, the department's appointment is consistent with the sections of the Act governing appointment of representative payees, see 42 U. S. C. §§ 405(j)(2)(C), (3)(B) and (F), (4)(B), 1383(a)(2)(B)(v), (vii)(II), (C)(ii), (D)(ii), and with the Commissioner's regulations interpreting that section to authorize appointment of custodial institutions as a last resort, see 20 CFR §§ 404.2021(b)(7), 416.621(b)(7). To suggest that the department's appointment as representative payee, under the same statutory scheme that forbids the use of "other legal process," is itself forbidden legal process disregards the "cardinal rule that a statute is to be read as a whole," King v. St. Vincent's Hospital, 502 U. S. 215, 221 (1991), and ignores the Commissioner's reasonable regulations implementing the Act. See King v. Schafer, 940 F. 2d 1182, 1185 (CA8 1991) ("We cannot believe Congress contemplated this result in enacting § 407(a), particularly when this result would be contrary to another provision of the Social Security Act: § 405(j), providing for the appointment of representative payees"), cert. denied sub nom. Crytes v. Schafer, 502 U. S. 1095 (1992); 940 F. 2d, at 1185 ("Section 407(a) was not intended to outlaw a procedure expressly authorized by the Social Security Administration's own regulations").

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