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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 dead-
line from a jurisdictional grant indicates that the time bar is not juris-
dictional.”  Id., at 411.  Here, the Quiet Title Act’s jurisdictional grant
is  in  §1346(f),  well  afield  of  §2409a(g).    And  “[n]othing  [in  §1346(f)]
conditions  the  jurisdictional  grant  on  the  limitations  perio[d  in
§2409a(g)] or otherwise links those separate provisions.”  Id., at 412. 
Pp. 3–5.

(b) None of the three decisions of this Court on which the Govern-
ment relies—Block, 461 U. S. 273, United States v. Mottaz, 476 U. S. 
834,  and  United  States  v.  Beggerly,  524  U. S.  38—definitively  inter-
preted §2409a(g) as jurisdictional.  This Court has made clear that it 
will not undo a “definitive earlier interpretation” of a statutory provi-
sion as jurisdictional without due regard for the principles of stare de-
cisis.  John R. Sand & Gravel Co. v. United States, 552 U. S. 130, 138. 
Yet the mere fact that this Court previously described something as 
jurisdictional is not dispositive, as “[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. 
To  separate  “definitive”  interpretations  of  jurisdiction  from  those  in
which the term “jurisdictional” has been used imprecisely, the Court
asks if a prior decision addressed whether a provision is “ ‘technically
jurisdictional,’ ” i.e., 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 v. Y & H Corp., 546 U. S. 
500,  512  (quoting  Steel  Co.  v.  Citizens  for  Better  Environment,  523 
U. S. 83, 91).  A decision that simply states that “the court is dismiss-