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UNITED STATES v. WASHINGTON 

Syllabus 

law such that the workers’ compensation scheme no longer applied ex-
clusively to Hanford site workers who work for the United States.  But 
a  case  is  not  moot  unless  it  is  impossible  for  the  Court  to  grant  any
effectual relief.  Mission Product Holdings, Inc. v. Tempnology, LLC, 
587 U. S. ___, ___.  The United States asserts that a ruling in its favor 
will allow it to recoup or to avoid paying millions of dollars in workers’ 
compensation  claims.    Washington  disagrees,  arguing  that  the  new 
statute  applies  retroactively  and  is  broad  enough  to  encompass  any
claim filed under the earlier law.  But it is not the Court’s practice to 
interpret statutes in the first instance, Zivotofsky v. Clinton, 566 U. S. 
189, 201, nor does the Court know how Washington’s state courts will 
interpret the new law.  It is thus not impossible for the United States 
to  recover  money  if  the  Court  rules  in  its  favor,  and  the  case  is  not 
moot.  Pp. 3–4.

(b) Since McCulloch v. Maryland, 4 Wheat. 316, this Court has in-
terpreted the Supremacy Clause as prohibiting States from interfering 
with  or  controlling  the  operations  of  the  Federal  Government.    This 
constitutional doctrine—often called the intergovernmental immunity 
doctrine—has evolved to bar state laws that either regulate the United
States directly or discriminate against the Federal Government or its 
contractors.  A  state  law  discriminates  against  the  Federal  Govern-
ment  or  its  contractors  if  it  “single[s  them]  out”  for  less  favorable 
“treatment,” Washington v. United States, 460 U. S. 536, 546, or if it 
regulates them unfavorably on some basis related to their governmen-
tal “status,” North Dakota v. United States, 495 U. S. 423, 438 (plural-
ity opinion).

Washington’s law violates these principles by singling out the Fed-
eral Government for unfavorable treatment.  The law explicitly treats
federal workers differently than state or private workers, and imposes 
costs upon the Federal Government that state and private entities do
not bear.  The law thus violates the Supremacy Clause unless Congress
has consented to such regulation through waiver.  Pp. 4–6.

(c) Congress waives the Federal Government’s immunity “only when
and to the extent there is a clear congressional mandate.”  Hancock v. 
Train,  426  U. S.  167,  179.    Washington  argues  that  Congress  has 
waived  federal  immunity  from  state  workers’  compensation  laws  on 
federal lands and projects through §3172(a).  Section 3172(a) says that
“[t]he state authority charged with enforcing and requiring compliance
with the state workers’ compensation laws . . . may apply [those] laws 
to all land and premises in the State which the Federal Government 
owns,”  as  well  as  “to  all  projects,  buildings,  constructions,  improve-
ments, and property in the State and belonging to the Government, in 
the same way and to the same extent as if the premises were under 
the exclusive jurisdiction of the State.”  Washington reads the statute’s