Page:United States Reports 502 OCT. TERM 1991.pdf/380

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KING v. ST. VINCENT’S HOSPITAL Opinion of the Court

as their tours of duty do not exceed five years; 12 and at what the hospital claims to be “the bottom of the employment rights scheme,” Brief for Respondent 16, fall the reemployment rights protected by § 2024(d). Ibid. It is not unnatural, on this view, that the least protected veterans should be subject to an imprecise limit of reasonableness on the length of voluntary duty giving rise to their job protection.13 But the hospital’s argument does not convince. While it invokes the significance of context, its conclusion rests on quite circular reasoning. There are, as we have just pointed out, differences of treatment among the various classes of service people protected by various provisions of the statute. But differences do not necessarily make hierarchies, and the differences revealed by the hospital’s examples do not point inexorably downward without assuming the point at issue, that the reservists subject to training duty within the meaning of subsection (d) really do get less protection than inductees, enlistees, and so on, covered by other provisions. Without such an assumption there are simply differences of treatment, to be respected by limiting protection where the text contains a limit and leaving textually unlimited protection just where the Congress apparently chose to leave it. Because the text of § 2024(d) places no limit on the length of a tour after which King may enforce his reemployment rights against St. Vincent’s, we hold it plain that no limit was implied.14 12

See 38 U. S. C. §§ 2024(a), 2024(b)(1). The basic limit here is four years, with an additional year of protection if the Government requests additional service. 13 The hospital claims to find additional support for this declension in the legislative history of § 2024(d), relying heavily on excerpts from the House and Senate Reports on the 1960 bill that eventuated in the current statute. Brief for Respondent 17–18, and n. 31. 14 “When we find the terms of a statute unambiguous, judicial inquiry is complete, except in rare and exceptional circumstances.” Rubin v. United States, 449 U. S. 424, 430 (1981) (internal quotation marks omit-