It’s less contradictory in my mind if I don’t frame it as “penalizing” the drafters of Title 7. To me - especially when read together - it says “Congress gives

It’s less contradictory in my mind if I don’t frame it as “penalizing” the drafters of Title 7. To me - especially when read together - it says “Congress gives us no choice but to apply the law in a broad fashion, because they explicitly chose not to limit it; and it’s not our fault if this results in unintended consequences.” With an implied wink and a nudge to Congress saying “you can fix this if you’re really all that bothered, you know.” :) Or maybe put another way: sure, they didn’t and couldn’t possibly have listed all exceptions to the law. But they didn’t really try; rather they listed one exception for everything (churches, basically) and didn’t bother with any other exceptions. And in light of that, the court didn’t consider it appropriate to read in exceptions when Congress very clearly wrote an extremely broad law. Essentially Congress gave no signal it wasn’t supposed to be broad.