Opinion of the Court
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 claim-
