Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/19pdf/17-1498_8mjp.pdf
Page Number: 40

Cite as:  590 U. S. ____ (2020) 

5 

Opinion of GORSUCH, J. 

cleanup duties with the federal government.

They are hardly that.  When interpreting a statute, this 
Court applies the law’s ordinary public meaning at the time 
of the statute’s adoption, here 1980.  See Wisconsin Central 
Ltd. v. United States, 585 U. S. ___, ___ (2018) (slip op., at 
9).  To  be  “potentially  responsible”  for  something  meant
then, as it does today, that a person could possibly be held 
accountable  for  it;  the  outcome  is  capable  of  happening.
American Heritage Dictionary 1025 (1981); Webster’s New 
Collegiate  Dictionary  893  (1980).   And  there  is  simply  no 
way the landowners here are potentially, possibly, or capa-
ble of being held liable by the federal government for any-
thing.  In the first place, the federal government never no-
tified  the  landowners  that  they  might  be  responsible
parties, as it must under §122(e)(1).  Additionally, everyone
admits  that  the  period  allowed  for  bringing  a  CERLCA 
long  since  passed  under 
claim  against  them  has 
§113(g)(2)(B).  On any reasonable account, the landowners
are  potentially  responsible  to  the  government  for  exactly
nothing.

Statutory  context  is  of  a  piece  with  the  narrow  text. 
Nothing in §122 affects the rights of strangers to the federal 
government’s settlement process.  Everything in the section
speaks to the details of that process.  The section requires 
the government to provide all potentially responsible par-
ties with notice that they might be held responsible for re-
medial measures.  §9622(e)(1).  It instructs the government 
to give a potentially responsible party a list of everyone else 
so  designated.  Ibid.  It  specifies  procedures  for  sharing 
proposals  and  counterproposals  among 
this  group.
§§9622(e)(2)–(3).  It allows the government to release from
federal liability those who agree to settle and clean up haz-
ardous sites.  See §§9622(a)–(c).  And because parties who
settle with the federal government may seek cleanup costs
they incurred prior to settlement from other potentially re-