Ejusdem.

Reed, whose sole income came from Social Security benefits, and who was subject to a Texas law requiring him to pay for GPS monitoring, contended that the law violated section 407(a) of the Social Security Act, which protects benefits from “execution, levy, attachment, garnishment, or other legal process.” (emphasis added).

To resolve Reed’s argument, the Fifth Circuit first summarized the general importance of statutory-construction canons, even in a focus on “plain meaning”: “Statutory language, like all language, is suffused with age-old interpretive conventions. And judges, like all readers, must be attentive not to words standing alone but to surrounding structure and other contextual cues that illuminate meaning.”

The Court then applied the concept of ejusdem generis: “‘Where 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.’ Section 407(a) follows this familiar semantic structure, meaning the follow-on
phrase ‘other legal process’ is limited to processes like “execution, levy, attachment, [or] garnishment.” Common phrasing; common-sense meaning.” Reed v. Taylor, No. 17-20519 (May 2, 2019).