Syllabus

NOTE: Where it is feasible, a syllabus (headnote) will be released, as is being done in connection with this case, at the time the opinion is issued. The syllabus constitutes no part of the opinion of the Court but has been prepared by the Reporter of Decisions for the convenience of the reader. See United States v. Detroit Timber & Lumber Co., 200 U. S. 321, 337.

SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES

Syllabus

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 chal- lenges 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, and affirmed. Held: Section 2409a(g) is a nonjurisdictional claims-processing rule. Pp. 3–12. (a) Jurisdiction is a word of many meanings. This Court has empha- sized the distinction between “the classes of cases a court may enter- tain (subject-matter jurisdiction)” and “nonjurisdictional claim-pro- cessing rules, which seek to promote the orderly progress of litigation by requiring that the parties take certain procedural steps at certain specified times.” Fort Bend County v. Davis, 587 U. S. ___, ___. Non- jurisdictional claim-processing rules generally include a range of “threshold requirements that claimants must complete, or exhaust, be- fore filing a lawsuit.” Reed Elsevier, Inc. v. Muchnick, 559 U. S. 154, 166. Jurisdictional bars—which may be raised by any party at any time during the proceedings and which are required to be raised by a court sua sponte—run the risk of disrupting the “orderly progress of 2 WILKINS v. UNITED STATES

Syllabus

litigation” 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 juris- dictional label, a procedural requirement will be construed as jurisdic- tional only if Congress “clearly states” that it is. Boechler v. Commis- sioner, 596 U. S. ___, ___. To determine whether the statutory text “plainly show[s] that Congress imbued a procedural bar with jurisdic- tional consequences,” courts apply “traditional tools of statutory con- struction.” 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- limitations language say[s] only what every time bar, by definition, must: that after a certain time a claim is barred.” Ibid. Further, “[t]his Court has often explained that Congress’s separation of a filing dea