Wilkins v. United States

by Supreme Court of the United States

Note: Where it is feasible, a syllabus (headnote) will be released, as is being done in connection with this case, at the time the opinion is issued. The syllabus constitutes no part of the opinion of the Court but has been prepared by the Reporter of Decisions for the convenience of the reader. See United States v. Detroit Timber & Lumber Co., 200 U. S. 321, 337.

SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES

Syllabus

WILKINS ET AL. v. UNITED STATES
CERTIORARI TO THE UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE NINTH CIRCUIT
No. 21–1164. Argued November 30, 2022—Decided March 28, 2023

Petitioners Larry Steven Wilkins and Jane Stanton own properties in rural Montana that border a road for which the United States has held an easement since 1962. The Government claims that the easement includes public access, which petitioners dispute. In 2018, petitioners sued the Government under the Quiet Title Act, which allows challenges to the United States’ rights in real property. The Government moved to dismiss on the ground that petitioners’ claim is barred by the Act’s 12-year time bar. 28 U. S. C. §2409a(g). Petitioners countered that §2409a(g)’s time limit is a nonjurisdictional claims-processing rule. The District Court agreed with the Government and dismissed the case for lack of subject-matter jurisdiction. The Ninth Circuit held that §2409a(g) had already been interpreted as jurisdictional in Block v. North Dakota ex rel. Board of Univ. and School Lands, 461 U. S. 273, and affirmed.

Held: Section 2409a(g) is a nonjurisdictional claims-processing rule. Pp. 3–12.

(a) Jurisdiction is a word of many meanings. This Court has emphasized the distinction between “the classes of cases a court may entertain (subject-matter jurisdiction)” and “nonjurisdictional claim-processing rules, which seek to promote the orderly progress of litigation by requiring that the parties take certain procedural steps at certain specified times.” Fort Bend County v. Davis, 587 U. S. ___, ___. Nonjurisdictional claim-processing rules generally include a range of “threshold requirements that claimants must complete, or exhaust, before filing a lawsuit.” Reed Elsevier, Inc. v. Muchnick, 559 U. S. 154, 166. Jurisdictional bars—which may be raised by any party at any time during the proceedings and which are required to be raised by a court sua sponte—run the risk of disrupting the “orderly progress of litigation” that procedural rules often “seek to promote.” Henderson v. Shinseki, 562 U. S. 428, 435.

Given the risk of disruption and waste that accompanies the jurisdictional label, a procedural requirement will be construed as jurisdictional only if Congress “clearly states” that it is. Boechler v. Commissioner, 596 U. S. ___, ___. To determine whether the statutory text “plainly show[s] that Congress imbued a procedural bar with jurisdictional consequences,” courts apply “traditional tools of statutory construction.” United States v. Kwai Fun Wong, 575 U. S. 402, 410.

Section 2409a(g) lacks a jurisdictional clear statement, and nothing about §2409a(g)’s text or context gives reason to depart from this Court’s observation that “most time bars are nonjurisdictional.” Ibid. Section 2409a(g) states that an action “shall be barred unless it is commenced within twelve years of the date upon which it accrued.” This “text speaks only to a claim’s timeliness,” and its “mundane statute-of-limitations language say[s] only what every time bar, by definition, must: that after a certain time a claim is barred.” Ibid. Further, “[t]his Court has often explained that Congress’s separation of a filing deadline from a jurisdictional grant indicates that the time bar is not jurisdictional.” Id., at 411. Here, the Quiet Title Act’s jurisdictional grant is in §1346(f), well afield of §2409a(g). And “[n]othing [in §1346(f)] conditions the jurisdictional grant on the limitations perio[d in §2409a(g)] or otherwise links those separate provisions.” Id., at 412. Pp. 3–5.

(b) None of the three decisions of this Court on which the Government relies—Block, 461 U. S. 273, United States v. Mottaz, 476 U. S. 834, and United States v. Beggerly, 524 U. S. 38—definitively interpreted §2409a(g) as jurisdictional. This Court has made clear that it will not undo a “definitive earlier interpretation” of a statutory provision as jurisdictional without due regard for the principles of stare decisis. John R. Sand & Gravel Co. v. United States, 552 U. S. 130, 138. Yet the mere fact that this Court previously described something as jurisdictional is not dispositive, as “[c]ourts, including this Court, have more than occasionally misused the term ‘jurisdictional’ to refer to nonjurisdictional prescriptions.” Fort Bend, 587 U. S., at ___–___, n. 4. To separate “definitive” interpretations of jurisdiction from those in which the term “jurisdictional” has been used imprecisely, the Court asks if a prior decision addressed whether a provision is “ ‘technically jurisdictional,’ ” i.e., whether it truly operates as a limit on a court’s subject-matter jurisdiction, and whether anything in the decision “turn[ed] on that characterization.” Arbaugh v. Y & H Corp., 546 U. S. 500, 512 (quoting Steel Co. v. Citizens for Better Environment, 523 U. S. 83, 91). A decision that simply states that “the court is dismissing ‘for lack of jurisdiction’ when some threshold fact has not been established” is understood as a “drive-by jurisdictional rulin[g]” and receives “no precedential effect.” Arbaugh, 546 U. S., at 511.

Block is a textbook “drive-by jurisdictional rulin[g].” Arbaugh, 546 U. S., at 511. The Government points to a statement in that opinion’s conclusion that if the Quiet Title Act’s time limit applied, “the courts below had no jurisdiction to inquire into the merits,” Block, 461 U. S., at 292. Yet there is no discussion in Block about whether the provision is “ ‘technically jurisdictional’ ”—just a mere statement that a “threshold fact” must “b[e] established” for there to be “jurisdiction.” Arbaugh, 546 U. S., at 512. While Block did describe the Act’s time limit as “a condition on the waiver of sovereign immunity,” 461 U. S., at 287, Block never addressed whether the Act’s time limit was truly a limit on subject-matter jurisdiction, nor did anything in the case turn on this question. Contrary to the Government’s contentions, even in that era, time limits in suits against the Government were not necessarily subject-matter jurisdictional under this Court’s caselaw.

Like Block, Mottaz contains no discussion of whether the Quiet Title Act’s 12-year time bar was technically jurisdictional. Instead, the Court decided which of two possible time bars applied and, having determined it was the Quiet Title Act’s 12-year limit, concluded that the plaintiff had notice over 12 years before she sued. Neither step in the Court’s analysis “turn[ed] on” whether any time limits were “ ‘technically jurisdictional.’ ” Arbaugh, 546 U. S., at 512. Once again, general statements in the opinion about waivers of immunity cannot change this basic fact.

Finally, in Beggerly, the Court carefully analyzed whether the text and context of §2409a(g) were consistent with equitable tolling. This would have been a mere waste of words if the Court had already held in Block and Mottaz that §2409a(g) was jurisdictional.

These three cases point in one direction: This Court has never definitively interpreted §2409a(g) as jurisdictional. The Government’s argument about legislative acquiescence is unavailing given the absence of any definitive judicial interpretation to which Congress could acquiesce. Pp. 5–12.

13 F. 4th 791, reversed and remanded.

Sotomayor, J., delivered the opinion of the Court, in which Kagan, Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, Barrett, and Jackson, JJ., joined. Thomas, J., filed a dissenting opinion, in which Roberts, C. J., and Alito, J., joined.