Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/23pdf/22-1008_1b82.pdf
Page Number: 24.0

Cite as:  603 U. S. ____ (2024) 

19 

Opinion of the Court 

The Board and the dissent vastly overread—in fact, they
misread—Crown Coat.  The Court did not suggest that the 
same words “right of action first accrues” in a single statute 
should mean different things in different contexts—which
is how the Board and the dissent would have us interpret 
§2401(a).  Rather,  the  Court  made  its  observation  in  the 
course of distinguishing §2401(a) from a statutory scheme
that departed from the traditional accrual rule.7  386 U. S., 
at 516–517.  Moreover, as we have already explained, the 
Court  interpreted  §2401(a)—the  very  statute  at  issue  in 
this  case—to  start  the  clock  when  the  plaintiff  is  “legally
entitled” to file suit.  Id., at 515.  It also specifically rejected 
the Government’s position that the time can run even be-
fore a plaintiff ’s “civil action against the United States ma-
tures.”  Id., at 514; see also ibid. (noting that the Govern-
ment’s  position  “would  have  unfortunate  impact”).  We 
therefore do not read Crown Coat’s “general purposes” lan-
guage to contradict either its holding or the “ ‘standard rule’ 
for limitations periods.”  Green, 578 U. S., at 554. 
  Even if Crown Coat’s dicta supported sapping “accrues”
of any “fixed meaning,” post, at 6 (JACKSON, J., dissenting),
this approach has been contravened by the weight of subse-

—————— 

7 The Court distinguished the limitations scheme at issue in McMahon 
v. United States, 342 U. S. 25 (1951).  That scheme involved two statutes: 
one requiring “actions to be brought within two years after ‘the cause of
action  arises’ ”  and  another “permit[ting] court  action  only  if  the  claim
ha[d]  been  administratively  disallowed,  but  set[ting]  no  time  within
which  a  claim  must  be  presented  to  the  administrative  body.”    Crown 
Coat, 386 U. S., at 516–517.  The McMahon Court held that the claim 
accrued not after the administrative disallowance that would enable the 
plaintiff to sue in court, but at the time of the plaintiff ’s earlier injury. 
342 U. S., at 27.  Crown Coat attributed this holding to the unique two-
statute context: “[P]ostpon[ing] the usual time of accrual of the cause of 
action [i.e., the time of injury] until the date of disallowance” would have
“permit[ted] the claimant to postpone indefinitely the commencement of
the running of the statutory period.”  386 U. S., at 517; see McMahon, 
342 U. S., at 27.