Opinion of the Court
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–
