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Opinion of the Court

If § 1915 yields no "inability to pay" standard applicable to artificial entities, neither does it guide courts in determining when to "pierce the veil" of the entity, that is, when to look beyond the entity to its owners or members in determining ability to pay. Because courts would necessarily have to do just this to avoid abuse, congressional silence on the subject indicates that Congress simply was not thinking in terms of granting in forma pauperis status to artificial entities.

While the courts that have nonetheless held § 1915 applicable to artificial entities have devised their own tests for telling when to "pierce the veil" for a look at individual members or owners, none of their tests is based on the language of § 1915 or on any assumption implicit in it. For example, the leading opinion on the subject, a dissent from a majority opinion that never reached the issue, appears to frame the issue as whether the individual shareholders of a corporation "have adopted the corporate form as a subterfuge to avoid the payment of court costs." S. O. U. P., Inc. v. FTC, 146 U. S. App. D. C. 66, 68, 449 F. 2d 1142, 1144 (1971) (Bazelon, C. J., dissenting) (footnote omitted). While this test certainly emphasizes why we could hardly hold that a court should never look beyond the organization to its individuals, it stems from nothing in § 1915 suggesting that entities claiming to have slight assets should be treated in forma pauperis unless they were organized to cheat the courts.9

United States v. Kras, 409 U. S. 434, 440 (1973), would seem to foreclose speculation about such a motive.

9 Two other decisions allowing organizations to proceed in forma pauperis appear to place importance on the "public interest" character of the organization or the litigation in question. See River Valley, Inc. v. Dubuque County, 63 F. R. D. 123, 125 (ND Iowa 1974) (noting that the corporation at issue "was formed... for the purpose of assisting the poor and underprivileged"); Harlem River Consumers Cooperative, Inc. v. Associated Grocers of Harlem, Inc., 71 F. R. D. 93, 96 (SDNY 1976) (finding that "[t]here is a public interest quality to the stated goal for which the corporation was formed" and that "there is a public interest aspect to any private suit for treble damages under the antitrust laws"). The language of

UNIT II MEN'S ADVISORY COUNCIL

Opinion of the Court

The Council makes the argument, apparently accepted by the court below, that however difficult it might be to formulate comprehensive rules for determining organizational eligibility to file in forma pauperis, we are excused from facing the difficulty in this case, because the Council's circumstances would make it eligible under any set of rules. But we cannot construe the statute very well by sidestepping the implications of deciding one way or the other, and even if we did assume that some narrow band of eligibility escaped the contrary contextual indicators, it is not wholly clear that the Council could conclusively establish in forma pauperis entitlement. It is not obvious, for example, why the Council's inability to maintain a separate bank account should conclusively establish pauper status under § 1915, any more than a bank account with a one-cent balance would be conclusive. Account or no account, the Council, like thousands of other associations, appears to have no source of revenue but the donations of its members. If members with funds must donate to pay court fees, why should it make a conclusive legal difference whether they are able to donate indirectly through an intermediate bank account, or through one member who transmits donations by making a payment to the federal court when the Council files a complaint? 10 Thus, recognizing the possibility of an organizational in forma pauperis status even in the supposedly "extreme" case of the Council would force us to delve into the difficult issues of policy and administration without any guidance from § 1915. This con

§ 1915, however, suggests indifference to the character of the litigant and to the type of litigation pursued, so long as it is not frivolous or malicious. 10 There is no evidence in the record suggesting that an inmate would not be allowed to donate part of the Council's court costs directly from his personal account to the court, or that the inmates could not coordinate such donations.

Opinion of the Court

text of congressional silence on these issues indicates the natural character of a § 1915 "person."

IV

We do not forget our cases holding that the broad definition of "person" in 1 U. S. C. § 1 applies in spite of incongruities as strong, or stronger, than those produced by the four contextual features we have noted in § 1915. But in each of these cases, some other aspect of statutory context independently indicated the broad reading. In Wilson v. Omaha Tribe, 442 U. S. 653, 666 (1979), for example, we held that a statutory burden of proof on a "white person" involved in a property dispute with an Indian applied to the artificial "persons" listed in the Dictionary Act as well as to individuals. Because a wholly legal creature has no color, and belongs to no race, the use of the adjective "white" to describe a "person" is one of the strongest contextual indicators imaginable that "person" covers only individuals, and if there had been no more to the context at issue in Omaha Tribe, we would have to concede that our decision in that case is inconsistent with our conclusion here. But Omaha Tribe involved another important, countervailing contextual indication. The larger context of the whole statute and other laws

11 JUSTICE THOMAS asserts that, by drawing an inference from congressional silence, we "depar[t] from the definition of 'context' set out at the beginning of [our] opinion." Post, at 221, n. 9. It is not from some dimensionless void, however, that we draw our conclusion. Rather, it is from a pointed silence in the face of obvious problems created by applying to artificial entities the text of § 1915, in this case the requirement that the person seeking in forma pauperis status be "unable to pay" costs, fees, and security. As the dissent is willing to affirm without itself addressing these problems, it is apparently confident that workable, uncontroversial solutions can be drawn from the statute. Yet the rule it would affirm (that an unincorporated association is "unable to pay" whenever its "chairman" says that it cannot maintain a bank account in its own name) does not inspire confidence.

UNIT II MEN'S ADVISORY COUNCIL

Opinion of the Court

related to it revealed that the statute's purpose was "to protect Indians from claims made by non-Indian squatters on their lands," id., at 665, and we recognized that construing the disability placed on "white persons" by the statute as extending only to individuals would virtually frustrate this purpose. "[I]n terms of the protective purposes of the Acts of which [the property dispute provision was] a part, it would make little sense to construe the provision so that individuals, otherwise subject to its burdens, could escape its reach merely by incorporating and carrying on business as usual." Id., at 666.

United States v. A & P Trucking Co., 358 U. S. 121 (1958), is a comparable case, involving two criminal statutes applying to truckers, one of which expressly applied to partnerships, and the other of which imposed criminal liability on "whoever" knowingly violated Interstate Commerce Commission regulations on transporting dangerous articles. The issue was whether partnerships could violate the statutes. We noted that the statutes required proof of knowing violations, and that a partnership at common law was deemed not to be a separate entity for purposes of suit. Id., at 124. Nonetheless, given that "[t]he purpose of both statutes [was] clear: to ensure compliance by motor carriers, among others, with safety and other requirements laid down by the Interstate Commerce Commission in the exercise of its statutory duty to regulate the operations of interstate carriers for hire," id., at 123-124, we concluded that it would make no sense if motor carriers could avoid criminal liability for violating the trucking regulations "merely because of the form under which they were organized to do business," id., at 124 (footnote omitted).

Thus, in both Omaha Tribe and A & P Trucking Co., we found that the statutes in question manifested a purpose that would be substantially frustrated if we did not construe the statute to reach artificial entities. Section 1915, however, manifests no such single purpose subject to substantial frus

Opinion of the Court

tration by limiting the statutory reach to natural persons. Denying artificial entities the benefits of § 1915 will not in any sense render nugatory the benefits that § 1915 still provides to individuals. Thus, Omaha Tribe and A & P Trucking Co. confirm our focus on context, but turned on contextual indicators not present here.12

V

The Council argues that denying it in forma pauperis status would place an unconstitutional burden on its members' First Amendment rights to associate, to avoid which we should construe § 1915 broadly. See, e. g., NLRB v. Catholic Bishop of Chicago, 440 U. S. 490, 500 (1979) (“[A]n Act of Congress ought not be construed to violate the Constitution if any other possible construction remains available"). We find no merit in this argument. It is true that to file a suit in forma pauperis, not in the Council's name, as such, but under the title "X, Y, and Z, known as the Council v. Rowland," X, Y, and Z would each need to file an affidavit stating that he met the indigency requirements of § 1915. Nothing, however, in § 1915 suggests that the requirements would be less burdensome if the suit were titled "The Council v. Rowland"; even if we held that an association could proceed in forma pauperis, our prior discussion shows that a court could hardly ignore the assets of the association's members in making the indigency determination. Because the extension of § 1915 to artificial entities need not lighten its practi

12 JUSTICE THOMAS suggests that our reference to statutory purpose here is inconsistent with our interpretation of "context" in 1 U. S. C. § 1. Post, at 213-214, n. 1. A focus on statutory text, however, does not preclude reasoning from statutory purpose. To the contrary, since "[s]tatutes . . . are not inert exercises in literary composition[, but] instruments of government," United States v. Shirey, 359 U. S. 255, 260 (1959) (per Frankfurter, J.), a statute's meaning is inextricably intertwined with its purpose, and we will look to statutory text to determine purpose because "the purpose of an enactment is embedded in its words even though it is not always pedantically expressed in words," id., at 261.

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