Volume 598 U. S. Part 1 Pages 152–174

OFFICIAL REPORTS OF

THE SUPREME COURT March 28, 2023

Page Proof Pending Publication

REBECCA A. WOMELDORF reporter of decisions

NOTICE: This preliminary print is subject to formal revision before the bound volume is published. Users are requested to notify the Reporter of Decisions, Supreme Court of the United States, Washington, D.C. 20543, pio@supremecourt.gov, of any typographical or other formal errors. 152 OCTOBER TERM, 2022

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WILKINS et al. v. UNITED STATES certiorari to the united states court of appeals for the ninth circuit No. 21–1164. Argued November 30, 2022—Decided March 28, 2023 Petitioners Larry Steven Wilkins and Jane Stanton own properties in rural Montana that border a road for which the United States has held an easement since 1962. The Government claims that the easement includes public access, which petitioners dispute. In 2018, petitioners sued the Government under the Quiet Title Act, which allows challenges to the United States' rights in real property. The Government moved to dismiss on the ground that petitioners' claim is barred by the Act's 12-year time bar. 28 U. S. C. § 2409a(g). Petitioners countered that § 2409a(g)'s time limit is a nonjurisdictional claims-processing rule. The District Court agreed with the Government and dismissed the case for lack of subject-matter jurisdiction. The Ninth Circuit held that § 2409a(g) had already been interpreted as jurisdictional in Block v. North Dakota ex rel. Board of Univ. and School Lands, 461 U. S. 273, Page Proof Pending Publication and affrmed. Held: Section 2409a(g) is a nonjurisdictional claims-processing rule. Pp. 156–165. (a) Jurisdiction is a word of many meanings. This Court has empha- sized the distinction between “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 requir- ing that the parties take certain procedural steps at certain specifed times.” Fort Bend County v. Davis, 587 U. S. –––, –––. Nonjurisdic- tional claim-processing rules generally include a range of “threshold re- quirements that claimants must complete, or exhaust, before fling a lawsuit.” Reed Elsevier, Inc. v. Muchnick, 559 U. S. 154, 166. Ju- risdictional bars—which may be raised by any party at any time dur- ing the proceedings and which are required to be raised by a court sua sponte—run the risk of disrupting the “orderly progress of litiga- tion” that procedural rules often “seek to promote.” Henderson v. Shinseki, 562 U. S. 428, 435. Given the risk of disruption and waste that accompanies the jurisdic- tional label, a procedural requirement will be construed as jurisdictional only if Congress “clearly states” that it is. Boechler v. Commissioner, 596 U. S. –––, –––. To determine whether the statutory text “plainly Cite as: 598 U. S. 152 (2023) 153

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show[s] that Congress imbued a procedural bar with jurisdictional con- sequences,” courts apply “traditional tools of statutory construction.” United States v. Kwai Fun Wong, 575 U. S. 402, 410. Section 2409a(g) lacks a jurisdictional clear statement, and nothing about § 2409a(g)'s text or context gives reason to depart from this Court's observation that “most time bars are nonjurisdictional.” Ibid. Section 2409a(g) states that an action “shall be barred unless it is com- menced within twelve years of the date upon which it accrued.” This “text speaks only to a claim's timeliness,” and its “mundane statute-of- limi