Page:Wilkins v. United States (2023).pdf/8

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Cite as: 598 U. S. ____ (2023)
5

Opinion of the Court

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),[1] 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.


    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.).

  1. 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.”