Opinion of the Court
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
