JUSTICE SCALIA
expense allowance. For the Court’s
more strained interpretation still
produces a situation in which a debtor
who owes only a single remaining
payment on his car gets the full
allowance. As for the Court’s imagined
horrible in which “a debtor entering
bankruptcy might purchase for a song a
junkyard car,” ante, at 17: That is fairly
matched by the imagined horrible that,
under the Court’s scheme, a debtor
entering bankruptcy might purchase
a junkyard car for a song plus a $10
promissory note payable over several
years. He would get the full ownership
expense deduction.
242 S.Ct. at 732.
In Hamilton v Lanning, 560 U.S. 505,
130 S.Ct. 2464 (2010), Justice Scalia
was the sole dissenter in an 8-1
ruling. The majority held that “when a
bankruptcy court calculates a debtor’s
projected disposable income, the
court may account for changes in the
debtor’s income or expenses that are
known or virtually certain at the time
of confirmation.” In other words, rather
than a mechanical application of the
debtor’s “current monthly income,” as
required by the Means Test, the court
can take into consideration changes
in income that have occurred or “are
known or virtually certain at the time of
confirmation.” Justice Scalia disagreed.
Finding that the Code itself provided no
support for the majority’s conclusion,
he argued for a strict interpretation of
language of 11 U.S.C. § 1325(b).
Justice Scalia said:
That interpretation runs aground
because it either renders superfluous
text Congress included or requires
adding text Congress did not. It would
be pointless to define disposable
income in such detail, based on data
during a specific 6-month period, if
a court were free to set the resulting
figure aside whenever it appears to be
a poor predictor. And since “disposable
income” appears nowhere else in
§ 1325(b), then unless § 1325(b)
(2)’s definition applies to “projected
disposable income