Plaintiffs claim, as a threshold matter, that we should affirm the Court of Appeals without reaching any issues of constitutional law. They contend that we should interpret the material-support statute, when applied to speech, to require proof that a defendant intended to further a foreign terrorist organization’s illegal activities. That interpretation, they say, would end the litigation because plaintiffs’ proposed activities consist of speech, but plaintiffs do not intend to further unlawful conduct by the PKK or the LTTE.
We reject plaintiffs’ interpretation of §2339B because it is inconsistent with the text of the statute. Section 2339B(a)(1) prohibits “knowingly” providing material support. It then specifically describes the type of knowledge that is required: “To violate this paragraph, a person must have knowledge that the organization is a designated terrorist organization . . ., that the organization has engaged or engages in terrorist activity . . ., or that the organization has engaged or engages in terrorism. . . .” Ibid.
Congress plainly spoke to the necessary mental state for a violation of §2339B, and it chose knowledge about the organization’s connection to terrorism, not specific intent to further the organization’s terrorist activities. Plaintiffs’ interpretation is also untenable in light of the sections immediately surrounding §2339B, both of which do refer to intent to further terrorist activity. See §2339A(a) (establishing criminal penalties for one who “provides material support or resources . . . knowing or intending that they are to be used in preparation for, or in carrying out, a violation of” statutes prohibiting violent terrorist acts); §2339C(a)(1) (setting criminal penalties for one who “unlawfully and willfully provides or collectsfunds with the intention that such funds be used, or with the knowledge that such funds are to be used, in full or in part, in order to carry out” other unlawful acts).
Congress enacted §2339A in 1994 and §2339C in 2002. See §120005(a), 108 Stat. 2022 (§2339A); §202(a), 116 Stat.724 (§2339C). Yet Congress did not import the intent language of those provisions into §2339B, either when it enacted §2339B in 1996, or when it clarified §2339B’s knowledge requirement in 2004.
Finally, plaintiffs give the game away when they argue that a specific intent requirement should apply only when the material-support statute applies to speech. There is no basis whatever in the text of §2339B to read the same provisions in that statute as requiring intent in some circumstances but not others. It is therefore clear that plaintiffs are asking us not to interpret §2339B, but to revise it. “Although this Court will often strain to construe legislation so as to save it against constitutional attack, it must not and will not carry this to the point of perverting the purpose of a statute.” Scales v. United States, 367 U. S. 203, 211 (1961).
Scales is the case on which plaintiffs most heavily rely, but it is readily distinguishable. That case involved the Smith Act, which prohibited membership in a group advocating the violent overthrow of the government. The Court held that a person could not be convicted under the statute unless he had knowledge of the group’s illegal advocacy and a specific intent to bring about violent overthrow. Id., at 220–222, 229.
This action is different: Section 2339B does not criminalize mere membership in a designated foreign terrorist organization. It instead prohibits providing “material support” to such a group. See infra, at 20–21, 35. Nothing about Scales suggests the need for a specific intent requirement in such a case. The Court in Scales, moreover, relied on both statutory text and precedent that had interpreted closely related provisions of the Smith Act to require specific intent. 367 U. S., at 209, 221–222. Plaintiffs point to nothing similar here.
We cannot avoid the constitutional issues in this litigation through plaintiffs’ proposed interpretation of §2339B.[3]
[3] The dissent would interpret the statute along the same lines as the plaintiffs, to prohibit speech and association “only when the defendant knows or intends that those activities will assist the organization’sunlawful terrorist actions.” Post, at 17 (opinion of BREYER, J.). According to the dissent, this interpretation is “fairly possible” and adopting itwould avoid constitutional concerns. Ibid. (internal quotation marks omitted). The dissent’s interpretation of §2339B fails for essentially the same reasons as plaintiffs’. Congress explained what “knowingly” means in §2339B, and it did not choose the dissent’s interpretation of that term. In fact, the dissent proposes a mental-state requirement indistinguishable from the one Congress adopted in §§2339A and 2339C, even though Congress used markedly different language in §2339B.
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