Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/23pdf/22-1008_1b82.pdf
Page Number: 3.0

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

3 

Syllabus 

Pension Trust Fund v. Ferbar Corp. of Cal., 522 U. S. 192, 201.  Con-
temporaneous legal dictionaries explained that a claim does not “ac-
crue” as soon as the defendant acts, but only after the plaintiff suffers
the injury required to press her claim in court.

The Court’s precedent treats this definition of accrual as the “stand-
ard  rule  for  limitations  periods,”  Green,  578  U. S.,  at  554,  and  the 
Court  has  “repeatedly  recognized  that  Congress  legislates  against” 
this standard rule, Graham County Soil & Water Conservation Dist. v. 
United States ex rel. Wilson, 545 U. S. 409, 418.  Conversely, the Court 
has “reject[ed]” the possibility that a “limitations period commences at
a time when the [plaintiff] could not yet file suit” as “inconsistent with 
basic  limitations  principles.”    Bay  Area  Laundry,  522  U. S.,  at  200. 
The Court will not reach such a conclusion “in the absence of any such 
indication in the text of the limitations period.”  Green, 578 U. S., at 
554.  Departing from the traditional rule is particularly inappropriate
here because contemporaneous statutes demonstrate that Congress in
1948 knew how to create a limitations period that begins with the de-
fendant’s action instead of the plaintiff’s injury. 

The Board would have this Court interpret §2401(a) as a defendant-
protective statute of repose that begins to run when agency action be-
comes final.  A statute of repose “puts an outer limit on the right to 
bring a civil action” that is “measured. . . from the date of the last cul-
pable act or omission of the defendant.”  CTS Corp. v. Waldburger, 573 
U. S. 1, 8.  But §2401(a)’s plaintiff-focused language makes it a “stat-
ute of limitations,” which—in contradistinction to statutes of repose—
are “based on the date when the claim accrued.”  Id., at 7–8.  Pp. 6–10. 
(c)  The Board’s arguments to the contrary lack merit.  Pp. 10–23.

(1) The Board points to the many specific statutory review provi-
sions that start the clock at finality, contending that such statutes re-
flect a standard administrative-law practice of starting the limitations
period when “any proper plaintiff ” can challenge the final agency ac-
tion.  But  unlike  the  specific  review  provisions  that  the  Board  cites,
§2401(a)  does  not  refer  to  the  date  of  the  agency  action’s  “entry”  or 
“promulgat[ion]”; it says “right of action first accrues.”  That textual 
difference  matters.    The  latter  language  reflects  a  statute  of  limita-
tions and the former a statute of repose.  Moreover, the specific review 
provisions  illustrate  that  Congress  has  sometimes  employed  the 
Board’s  preferred  final-agency-action  rule—but  did  not  do  so  in 
§2401(a).  As the Court observed in Rotkiske v. Klemm, it is “particu-
larly  inappropriate”  to  read  language  into  a  statute  of  limitations 
“when, as here, Congress has shown that it knows how to adopt the 
omitted language or provision.”  589 U. S. 8, 14.  Moreover, most of the 
finality-focused statutes that the Board cites came after §2401(a) was 
enacted in 1948.  These other, textually distinct statutes therefore do