Wilkins v. United States/Opinion of the Court
Notice: This opinion is subject to formal revision before publication in the preliminary print of the United States Reports. Readers are requested to notify the Reporter of Decisions, Supreme Court of the United States, Washington, D. C. 20543, of any typographical or other formal errors, in order that corrections may be made before the preliminary print goes to press.
SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES
No. 21–11647
LARRY STEVEN WILKINS, ET AL., PETITIONERS v. UNITED STATES
ON WRIT OF CERTIORARI TO THE UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE NINTH CIRCUIT
[March 28, 2023]
Justice Sotomayor delivered the opinion of the Court.
Larry Steven Wilkins and Jane Stanton wanted quiet titles and a quiet road. Wilkins and Stanton, the petitioners here, both live alongside Robbins Gulch Road in rural Montana. The United States has permission, called an easement, for use of the road, which the Government interprets to include making the road available for public use. Petitioners allege that the road’s public use has intruded upon their private lives, with strangers trespassing, stealing, and even shooting Wilkins’ cat.
Petitioners sued over the scope of the easement under the Quiet Title Act, which allows challenges to the United States’ rights in real property. Invoking the Act’s 12-year time limit, 28 U. S. C. §2409a(g), the Government maintains that the suit is jurisdictionally barred. Petitioners counter, and the Court holds, that §2409a(g) is a nonjurisdictional claims-processing rule.
I
Robbins Gulch Road runs through about a mile of private property. Petitioners acquired their properties along the road in 1991 and 2004. Back in 1962, petitioners’ predecessors in interest had granted the United States an easement for the road. The Government contends that the easement includes public access, which petitioners dispute. On petitioners’ telling, the easement does not allow access to the general public and requires the Government to maintain and patrol the road.
In 2018, petitioners brought suit under the Quiet Title Act. The Government moved to dismiss the action on the ground that the Act’s 12-year time limit had expired. Under the Act, “[a]ny civil action … , except for an action brought by a State, shall be barred unless it is commenced within twelve years of the date upon which it accrued.” §2409a(g). Accrual occurs “on the date the plaintiff or his predecessor in interest knew or should have known of the claim of the United States.” Ibid. The parties disagreed as to whether the Act’s time limit is jurisdictional, which is relevant to the procedures for litigating whether §2409a(g) bars petitioners’ claim.[1]
The District Court agreed with the Government and dismissed the case for lack of subject-matter jurisdiction. The Ninth Circuit affirmed the dismissal for lack of jurisdiction. 13 F. 4th 791 (2021). Applying Circuit precedent, the Court of Appeals held that this Court had already interpreted §2409a(g) as jurisdictional in Block v. North Dakota ex rel. Board of Univ. and School Lands, 461 U. S. 273 (1983). This further entrenched a divide among the Courts of Appeals.[2] This Court granted certiorari to resolve the split, 596 U. S. ___ (2022), and now reverses the Ninth Circuit’s judgment.
II
A
“Jurisdiction, this Court has observed, is a word of many, too many, meanings.” Arbaugh v. Y & H Corp., 546 U. S. 500, 510 (2006) (internal quotation marks omitted). In particular, this Court has emphasized the distinction between limits on “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. ___, ___–___ (2019) (slip op., at 6–7) (internal quotation marks omitted). The latter category generally includes 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 (2010).
To police this jurisdictional line, this Court will “treat a procedural requirement as jurisdictional only if Congress ‘clearly states’ that it is.” Boechler v. Commissioner, 596 U. S. ___, ___ (2022) (slip op., at 3) (quoting Arbaugh, 546 U. S., at 515). This principle of construction is not a burden courts impose on Congress. To the contrary, this principle seeks to avoid judicial interpretations that undermine Congress’ judgment. Loosely treating procedural requirements as jurisdictional risks undermining the very reason Congress enacted them.
Procedural rules often “seek to promote the orderly progress of litigation” within our adversarial system. Henderson v. Shinseki, 562 U. S. 428, 435 (2011). Limits on subject-matter jurisdiction, in contrast, have a unique potential to disrupt the orderly course of litigation. “Branding a rule as going to a court’s subject-matter jurisdiction alters the normal operation of our adversarial system.” Id., at 434. “For purposes of efficiency and fairness, our legal system is replete with rules” like forfeiture, which require parties to raise arguments themselves and to do so at certain times. Ibid. Jurisdictional bars, however, “may be raised at any time” and courts have a duty to consider them sua sponte. Ibid. When such eleventh-hour jurisdictional objections prevail post-trial or on appeal, “many months of work on the part of the attorneys and the court may be wasted.” Id., at 435. Similarly, doctrines like waiver and estoppel ensure efficiency and fairness by precluding parties from raising arguments they had previously disavowed. Because these doctrines do not apply to jurisdictional objections, parties can disclaim such an objection, only to resurrect it when things go poorly for them on the merits. Ibid.
Given this risk of disruption and waste that accompanies the jurisdictional label, courts will not lightly apply it to procedures Congress enacted to keep things running smoothly and efficiently. Courts will also not assume that in creating a mundane claims-processing rule, Congress made it “unique in our adversarial system” by allowing parties to raise it at any time and requiring courts to consider it sua sponte. Sebelius v. Auburn Regional Medical Center, 568 U. S. 145, 153 (2013). Instead, “traditional tools of statutory construction must plainly show that Congress imbued a procedural bar with jurisdictional consequences.” United States v. Kwai Fun Wong, 575 U. S. 402, 410 (2015).
Under this clear statement rule, the analysis of §2409a(g) is straightforward.[3] “[I]n applying th[e] clear statement rule, we have made plain that most time bars are nonjurisdictional.” Ibid. Nothing about §2409a(g)’s text or context gives reason to depart from this beaten path. 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.” Id., at 410. 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. The Quiet Title Act’s jurisdictional grant is in 28 U. S. C. §1346(f),[4] well afield of §2409a(g). And “[n]othing conditions the jurisdictional grant on the limitations perio[d], or otherwise links those separate provisions.” Wong, 575 U. S., at 412. Section 2409a(g) therefore lacks a jurisdictional clear statement.
B
The Government does not focus on the text of §2409a(g), but instead points to a trilogy of decisions by this Court that purportedly establish that the provision is jurisdictional. None of these three decisions 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 principles of stare decisis. John R. Sand & Gravel Co. v. United States, 552 U. S. 130, 138 (2008). At the same time, however, “[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 (slip op., at 5–6, n. 4) (some internal quotation marks and alterations omitted). The mere fact that this Court previously described something “without elaboration” as jurisdictional therefore does not end the inquiry. Henderson, 562 U. S., at 437. To separate the wheat from the chaff, this Court has asked if the prior decision addressed whether a provision is “ ‘technically jurisdictional’ ”—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, 546 U. S., at 512 (quoting Steel Co. v. Citizens for Better Environment, 523 U. S. 83, 91 (1998)); see also Zipes v. Trans World Airlines, Inc., 455 U. S. 385, 395 (1982) (looking to whether “the legal character of the requirement was … at issue”). If a decision simply states that “the court is dismissing ‘for lack of jurisdiction’ when some threshold fact has not been established,” it is understood as a “drive-by jurisdictional rulin[g]” that receives “no precedential effect.” Arbaugh, 546 U. S., at 511 (some internal quotation marks omitted).
The Government begins with Block, 461 U. S. 273. The case presented “two separate issues” about the Quiet Title Act, neither of which was whether the 12-year limit was jurisdictional. Id., at 276. First, the Court held that the Act was “the exclusive procedure” for challenging “the title of the United States to real property.” Id., at 276–277, 286. Second, the Court held that the 12-year limit applied to States. Id., at 277. It was only in the opinion’s conclusion that, in remanding, the Court remarked that if the time limit applied, “the courts below had no jurisdiction to inquire into the merits.” Id., at 292. The opinion contains no discussion of whether the provision was “ ‘technically jurisdictional’ ” or what in the case would have “turn[ed] on that characterization.” Arbaugh, 546 U. S., at 512 (quoting Steel Co., 523 U. S., at 91). There is nothing more than an “unrefined dispositio[n]” stating that a “threshold fact” must “b[e] established” for there to be “jurisdiction.” 546 U. S., at 511 (internal quotation marks omitted). This is a textbook “drive-by jurisdictional rulin[g]” that Arbaugh held “should be accorded no precedential effect” as to whether a limit is jurisdictional. Ibid. (internal quotation marks omitted).
In an effort to endow a fleeting statement with lasting significance, the Government and the dissent invoke historical context. Block described the Act’s time limit as “a condition on the waiver of sovereign immunity.” 461 U. S., at 287. Block never stated, however, that the Act’s time limit was therefore truly a limit on subject-matter jurisdiction. Yet according to the Government and the dissent, this went without saying because the case law at the time was “unmistakably” clear that conditions on waivers of immunity were subject-matter jurisdictional. Post, at 9.
This reading is undermined by the very history on which it draws. In Irwin v. Department of Veterans Affairs, 498 U. S. 89 (1990), the Court surveyed the case law about whether “time limits in suits against the Government” are subject to “equitable tolling, waiver, and estoppel.” Id., at 94. If associating time limits with waivers of sovereign immunity clearly made those limits jurisdictional, equitable exceptions would be just as clearly foreclosed. Instead, Irwin described the Court’s approach to this question as “ad hoc” and “unpredictab[le],” “leaving open” whether equitable exceptions were available in any given case. Id., at 94–95. Accordingly, even if “a statute of limitations [was] a condition on the waiver of sovereign immunity and thus must be strictly construed,” this still “d[id] not answer the question whether equitable tolling can be applied to this statute of limitations.” Bowen v. City of New York, 476 U. S. 467, 479 (1986). The Court instead analyzed the specific statutory scheme at issue, with varying results. Ibid. (citing Honda v. Clark, 386 U. S. 484 (1967)).
Block itself reflected the ambivalent nature of time limits for suits against the Government. Block recognized that “we should not construe such a time-bar provision unduly restrictively,” 461 U. S., at 287, which the Court quoted just a few years later in support of the proposition that some such limits are subject to equitable tolling, Bowen, 476 U. S., at 479; see also Irwin, 498 U. S., at 94. Similarly, while Block cautioned that exceptions to such time limits will not “be lightly implied,” it did not hold they were categorically precluded. 461 U. S., at 287. Block thus acknowledged nothing more than a general proposition, echoed by Irwin, that “a condition to the waiver of sovereign immunity … must be strictly construed.” Irwin, 498 U. S., at 94. In Irwin, as elsewhere, this did not mean that time limits accompanying such waivers are necessarily jurisdictional.
Next, the Government offers United States v. Mottaz, 476 U. S. 834 (1986). Once again, the question presented was not whether the Quiet Title Act’s 12-year time limit was technically jurisdictional. The Court instead had to decide which of two possible statutory time bars applied. Id., at 841. This analysis proceeded in two steps. First, the Court asked which of several federal statutes—“the Quiet Title Act; the Allotment Acts; [or] the Tucker Act”—was the “source of … jurisdiction” based on the nature of the plaintiff’s claim and the relief sought. Ibid. (citations omitted). The Court explained that the Quiet Title Act applied because it was “ ‘the exclusive means by which adverse claimants could challenge the United States’ title to real property,’ ” and the plaintiff’s claim fell “within the Act’s scope.” Id., at 841–842 (quoting Block, 461 U. S., at 286). Second, the Court “then determine[d] whether [the] suit was brought within the relevant limitations period.” Mottaz, 476 U. S., at 841. The Court concluded that the plaintiff had notice over 12 years before she sued, and “[h]er claim [was] therefore barred.” Id., at 843–844. Neither step in the Court’s analysis “turn[ed] on” whether any time limits were “ ‘technically jurisdictional.’ ” Arbaugh, 546 U. S., at 512 (quoting Steel Co., 523 U. S., at 91).
General statements in the opinion about waivers of immunity cannot change this basic fact. At the outset of its analysis, the Court observed that “the terms of [the United States’] waiver of sovereign immunity define the extent of the court’s jurisdiction” and that “ ‘a statute of limitations … constitutes a condition on the waiver.’ ” Mottaz, 476 U. S., at 841 (quoting Block, 461 U. S., at 287). Neither of these statements, however, played a role in determining which statute applied or whether the plaintiff brought her claim within 12 years after it accrued. There is also no indication in the opinion that the parties raised tolling or other equitable exceptions. As such, “ ‘the legal character’ ” of the time limit was never “ ‘at issue.’ ” Reed Elsevier, 559 U. S., at 169, n. 8 (quoting Zipes, 455 U. S., at 395).
The Government also points to Mottaz’s procedural background section. Buried in a paragraph recounting a tangled procedural history, the Court remarked that the Government raised the Quiet Title Act, “apparently for the first time,” in a petition for rehearing. 476 U. S., at 840. This supposedly reveals that the Court sua sponte and sub silentio raised, considered, and rejected an argument that the Government had forfeited the Quiet Title Act’s time limit, doing so all because the time limit was jurisdictional. Yet a background section is an unlikely place for such a ruling. This is particularly true where, as the word “apparently” indicates, the Court did not pause over its passing remark. Nor did the Court mention this again. Further, even if the Court had secretly considered forfeiture, there were nonjurisdictional reasons the Court could have concluded forfeiture did not apply.[5] Speculating about what this Court might have thought about arguments it never addressed needlessly introduces confusion. This Court looks for definitive interpretations, not holdings in hiding.
Finally, there is United States v. Beggerly, 524 U. S. 38 (1998). The Court in Beggerly addressed whether §2409a(g) could be equitably tolled. Id., at 48–49. Subject-matter jurisdiction, as noted, is never subject to equitable tolling. If Block and Mottaz had definitely interpreted §2409a(g) as subject-matter jurisdictional, the Court could have just cited those cases and ended the matter without further discussion.[6] Instead, the Court parsed the provision’s text and context, concluding that “by providing that the statute of limitations will not begin to run until the plaintiff ‘knew or should have known of the claim of the United States,’ ” the law “has already effectively allowed for equitable tolling.” Beggerly, 524 U. S., at 48. Also relevant were “the unusually generous” time limit and the importance of clarity when it comes to land rights. Id., at 48–49. This careful analysis of whether the text and context were consistent with equitable tolling would have been wasted words if the Court had already held that §2409a(g) was jurisdictional. Precisely because the Court’s inquiry was so focused on the particular nature of equitable tolling, Beggerly also did not address whether other exceptions such as “fraudulent concealment or equitable estoppel might apply,” as Justice Stevens noted in his concurrence. Id., at 49. If anything, Beggerly’s discussion of nonjurisdictional reasons why tolling specifically was unavailable indicates the Court understood §2409a(g) not to be jurisdictional. Thus, Beggerly undermines any notion that Block and Mottaz had put the jurisdictional question to rest.
All three cases therefore point in one direction: This Court has never definitively interpreted §2409a(g) as jurisdictional.[7] For similar reasons, the Government’s argument about legislative acquiescence is unavailing. Congress amended the Act in 1986 to provide special rules for States in the wake of Block. See 100 Stat. 3351–3352. Then, as now, “none of our decisions establishe[d]” that the time limit was jurisdictional, so there was no definitive judicial interpretation to which Congress could acquiesce. Alexander v. Sandoval, 532 U. S. 275, 291 (2001). The mere existence of a decision employing the term jurisdiction without elaboration does not show Congress adopted that view. Nor can the Government’s handful of lower court opinions stand in for a ruling of this Court, especially where some of these decisions contain only fleeting references to jurisdiction.[8] See Boechler, 596 U. S., at ___–___ (slip op., at 7–8).
All told, neither this Court’s precedents nor Congress’ actions established that §2409a(g) is jurisdictional. While the Government warns that revisiting precedent results in uncertainty, no revisiting is necessary here. Far more uncertainty would follow from the Government’s method of divining definitive interpretations from stray remarks. *** Section 2409a(g) is a nonjurisdictional claims-processing rule. The Court of Appeals’ contrary judgment is reversed, and the case is remanded for further proceedings consistent with this opinion.
It is so ordered.
- ↑ The parties dispute the precise implications on remand of a ruling that §2409a(g) is nonjurisdictional. This Court takes no position on that dispute.
- ↑ Compare Wisconsin Valley Improvement Co. v. United States, 569 F. 3d 331, 333–335 (CA7 2009), with, e.g., Bank One Texas v. United States, 157 F. 3d 397, 402–403 (CA5 1998); Spirit Lake Tribe v. North Dakota, 262 F. 3d 732, 737–738 (CA8 2001); Kane County v. United States, 772 F. 3d 1205, 1214–1215 (CA10 2014); and F.E.B. Corp. v. United States, 818 F. 3d 681, 685–686 (CA11 2016).
- ↑ The dissent maintains that this Court’s settled clear statement rule does not apply here because §2409a(g) is a condition on a waiver of sovereign immunity and “as such, this Court should interpret it as a jurisdictional bar to suit.” Post, at 2 (opinion of Thomas, J.). Over three decades ago, this Court in “Irwin … foreclose[d] th[e] argument” that “time limits” are jurisdictional simply because they “function as conditions on the Government’s waiver of sovereign immunity.” Wong, 575 U. S., at 417–418 (citing Irwin v. Department of Veterans Affairs, 498 U. S. 89 (1990)). Contrary to the dissent’s suggestion, Irwin extends to the “many statutes that create claims for relief against the United States or its agencies [and] apply only to Government defendants.” Scarborough v. Principi, 541 U. S. 401, 422 (2004); cf. also Boechler v. Commissioner, 596 U. S. ___, ___ (2022) (slip op., at 3) (applying clear statement rule to petitions for review of agency action). Notably, even the dissent in Wong did not engage in such an attempt to turn back the clock, instead arguing that the provision in that case was jurisdictional based on its specific text and history. See 575 U. S., at 423–428 (opinion of Alito, J.).
- ↑ Section 1346(f) provides that “[t]he district courts shall have exclusive original jurisdiction of civil actions under section 2409a to quiet title to an estate or interest in real property in which an interest is claimed by the United States.”
- ↑ For example, the Court might have concluded forfeiture did not apply because of the confusing way the case had been pleaded, see Brief for United States in United States v. Mottaz, O. T. 1985, No. 85–546, p. 22, n. 11, or that any forfeiture argument had itself been forfeited. Or the Court might have, on reflection, agreed with the Government that it had sufficiently raised the Quiet Title Act prior to rehearing. Ibid. The dissent, post, at 8, n. 3, mistakes these observations as a suggestion that Mottaz actually took one of those approaches. Far from it. This Court is merely declining to read tea leaves to divine lost meanings about what the Mottaz Court might have thought about a forfeiture argument it never raised and over which “the parties did not cross swords.” Arbaugh v. Y & H Corp., 546 U. S. 500, 512 (2006).
- ↑ The Court was not unaware of Block, quoting it for a different point in the very same section. Beggerly, 524 U. S., at 48.
- ↑ The dissent invokes a fourth case, United States v. Dalm, 494 U. S. 596 (1990), which offers no more support. Dalm involved a separate provision of a separate statute, see id., at 601–602, and cannot render §2490a(g) jurisdictional when Quiet Title Act cases like Block, Mottaz, and Beggerly failed to do so.
- ↑ See Fulcher v. United States, 696 F. 2d 1073, 1078 (CA4 1982).