Page:United States Reports 502 OCT. TERM 1991.pdf/381

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Cite as: 502 U. S. 215 (1991)

223

Opinion of the Court

III The judgment of the Court of Appeals is reversed, and the case is remanded for proceedings consistent with this opinion. It is so ordered. Justice Thomas took no part in the consideration or decision of this case.

ted). Such circumstances are not present here; as we indicate below, the hospital’s invocation of legislative history does not make its case. The hospital relies heavily on 1960 Senate and House Reports citing short-term leaves as covered by § 2024. See S. Rep. No. 1672, 86th Cong., 2d Sess., 2; H. R. Rep. No. 1263, 86th Cong., 2d Sess., 6; see also Brief for Respondent 17, n. 31. While this history may demonstrate that in 1960 § 2024(d) applied to short leaves, the significance of this is surely blunted by Congress’ undoubted intention 20 years later to apply the subsection to long leaves when it brought AGR participants under § 2024(d). See Veterans’ Rehabilitation and Education Amendments of 1980, § 511(b), 94 Stat. 2207. The inference that Congress intended no such limits as the hospital espouses is buttressed by a joint House-Senate Conference Committee’s disapproval of a shift in the position taken by the Department of Labor on this issue. Before 1981 the Department took the position we adopt. See United States Department of Labor, Veterans’ Reemployment Rights Handbook 111 (1970). After Lee v. Pensacola, 634 F. 2d 886 (CA5 1981), the Department adopted the different view that § 2024(d) protection applied only to leaves of 90 days or less. See H. R. Rep. No. 97–782, p. 8 (1982). Subsequently, a joint House-Senate Conference Committee Report announced that the House and Senate Veterans’ Affairs Committees “d[id] not believe that the 90-day limit [was] well-founded either as legislative interpretation or application of the pertinent case law.” 128 Cong. Rec. 25513 (1982). Coming as it did in the aftermath of Congress’ decision to place AGR participants under the coverage of § 2024(d), this statement is decidedly at odds with the hospital’s position, and confirms the conclusion that enactment of the AGR program was not intended to modify the ostensibly unconditional application of § 2024(d).