Court Opinion

ID: 9485867
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 11:32:24.436288+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:51:24.705801
License: Public Domain

PLAGER, Circuit Judge,
concurring.
I concur in the judgment and join the opinion of the court, which holds that Court of Federal Claims (CFC) Rule 6(a) effectively defines the outer limit of the statutory 12-month period provided for filing a timely appeal under the Contract Disputes Act of 1978 (CDA). The concurrence/dissent, although agreeing with the result, finds in that holding an unwarranted assault on Supreme Court precedent and “an unbroken line of decisions” of this court. Since I join the majority opinion, I should explain why this is not so.
There is no quarrel with the statement in the coneurrence/dissent that the difference in holding an issue to be jurisdictional or nonju-risdietional is not a technical quibble. Op. at 967. But I do not think useful the recited existence of two categories of statutory time periods applicable to suits against the government: those that are “a jurisdictional limitation on the court itself’ and those that are “only a statute of limitations ...” Op. at 965.
For one thing, there has yet to be a satisfactory articulation of a principled basis for distinguishing between these ideas as applied to specific kinds of statutorily imposed time periods.1 The concurrenee/dissent’s response to this argument is to refer us to the 1982 decision of the Supreme Court in Zipes v. Trans World Airlines, 455 U.S. 385, 392-398, 102 S.Ct. 1127, 1131-35, 71 L.Ed.2d 234. Op. at 968. But the discussion in that case proves the point — the Court spends seven pages explaining why language in its earlier cases, indicating that compliance with the time limit for filing of an EEOC complaint is jurisdictional, is not to be taken literally. The Court on further thought concludes that “filing a timely charge of discrimination with the EEOC is not a jurisdictional prerequisite to suit in federal court, but a requirement that, like a statute of limitations, is subject to waiver, estoppel, and equitable tolling.” 455 U.S. at 393, 102 S.Ct. at 1132. (Emphasis mine.)
That a statute imposes a requirement that operates “like a statute of limitations” defines the consequences, it does not tell us when a statute is of that type. The most the Court offered on that question in Zipes was one sentence: “The structure of Title VII, the congressional policy underlying it, and the reasoning of our cases all lead to this conclusion.” Id.
*969A considerably clearer answer came in 1990 in the case of Irwin v. Department of Veterans Affairs, 498 U.S. 89, 111 S.Ct. 453, 112 L.Ed.2d 435. The Fifth Circuit, affirming the district court, held that the petitioner’s failure to file her complaint within 30 days of receipt of the ‘right-to-sue’ letter sent by the EEOC, as mandated by the statute, deprived the courts of jurisdiction — the statutory time limit was viewed as operating as an absolute jurisdictional limit. The Supreme Court rejected that conclusion. After noting that various time limit statutes contain various phraseologies, some more stringent sounding than others, the Court stated: “... a continuing effort on our part to decide each ease on an ad hoc basis, as we appear to have done in the past, would have the disadvantage of continuing unpredictability without the corresponding advantage of greater fidelity to the intent of Congress. We think that this case affords us an opportunity to adopt a more general rule to govern the applicability of equitable tolling in suits against the Government.” Id. at 95, 111 S.Ct. at 457.
The general rule the Court adopted was that statutorily-imposed time limits in suits against the Government, for purposes of equitable tolling, were to be treated in the same manner as they would be in suits against a private party. In effect, there would be a presumption, rebuttable presumably by explicit language of Congressional intent to the contrary, that Congressional waivers of sovereign immunity would be construed to incorporate traditional notions of equitable (or other) relief from statutory time limit provisions.2
It is no longer necessary for courts to offer unconvincing explanations as to why some statutory time limits are waivable and some not. It is now presumed that Congress intends traditional waivers to be available, unless Congress expressly specifies otherwise. The rule makes good sense, and makes the language dance of Zipes no longer necessary.3
In the ease before us, if I understand correctly, the concurrence/dissent permits the statutory twelve-month period to extend to twelve months and two days because in this case the statute falls under the category of those that are “merely statutes of limitations,” and thus may be extended under appropriate circumstances. The statute, we *970are told, is not one that contains a time period that “defines the court’s subject matter jurisdiction,” which is not extendable. (Op. at 968.)
Consistent with Irwin, I am of the view that these efforts to distinguish between categories of statutory phraseology are not productive. Even less productive is trying to guess when Congress intended the waiver of sovereign immunity to be strictly limited in time, and when it incorporates traditional rules of extendibility, absent an explicit statement by Congress on the point. In Irwin the Supreme Court freed us from that unproductive exercise; the majority opinion properly eschews this stale debate.
At heart, the problem lies with the long outmoded and increasingly archaic notion of sovereign immunity. Congress, by ‘waiving’ in a variety of statutes the King’s historic claim to immunity from suit, has leveled the playing field for citizens who contract with, are injured by, or otherwise find themselves dealing with the Federal Government in its myriad activities. That seems only fair, and what a responsible government of the people should do.
On the other hand, the Government’s Department of Justice as a litigator invokes sovereign immunity at every opportunity, rather than litigate on the merits; that presumably is its privilege.4 Courts then seek ways to keep the Government from taking unfair advantage of its citizenry, including those it invites into its contractual embrace; that is their privilege. For us to quarrel over elusive distinctions does not, it seems to me, further the issue. Reserving claims of sovereign immunity to those areas in which the Government’s fundamental interests are truly at stake might, and Congress can clearly tell us what those are.

. For a collection of the cases dealing with this issue in the context of Rule 6(a) of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, and some of the metaphysical arguments that have been used to support the varied results, see 4A Charles A. Wright & Arthur B. Miller, Federal Practice and Procedure § 1163 (1987). See also Cynthia Reed, Time Limits for Federal Employees Under Title VII: Jurisdictional Prerequisites or Statutes of Limitation?, 74 Minn.L.Rev. 1371 (1990), for an exhaustive treatment of the differing views among the Circuit Courts pre-Irwin.

. The concurrence/dissent states that "I do not believe that the Supreme Court [in Irwin] inadvertently affirmed a dismissal for lack of jurisdiction and really meant to say that the case was dismissed on the merits.” I believe the Court did exactly what it said it did. The Court rejected the Fifth Circuit's view that the time limit was a jurisdictional bar and unwaivable. It considered whether, on the merits, Irwin had presented adequate grounds for waiver of the time limit. Finding none, it dismissed the case as barred for failure to have been filed within the allowable time period. (That of course implicates court jurisdiction, see fn. 3, supra.) I do not believe that Chief Justice Rehnquist, writing for the majority regarding an important issue of federal jurisdiction, inadvertently addressed the merits of the case, while all along intending to affirm simply on the ground that the Court lacked jurisdiction. Certainly the two justices who concurred in the result in Irwin referred to that portion of the opinion regarding the availability of equitable tolling as a "holding,” and, since they were not in accord with it, refused to join it. Id. at 97, 111 S.Ct. at 458 (Justice White, with whom Justice Marshall joined). See also Richard Parker, Is the Doctrine of Equitable Tolling Applicable to the Limitations Periods in the Federal Tort Claims Act?, 135 Mil.L.Rev. 1, 4-5 (1992): "The Supreme Court [in Irwin ] completely eviscerated the jurisdictional rationale employed by the court of appeals ... [and] in a few brief paragraphs ... struck down the time-honored principle that limitations periods contained in consent to suit statutes are jurisdictional and 'mean just that period and no more.’ ”

. Of course all requirements, including limits on the time to file, imposed by law for invoking a federal court’s jurisdiction are by definition ultimately jurisdictional, in the sense that plaintiffs ultimately must bring themselves within the time period allowed, however measured. Failure to bring oneself within a federal court’s grant of jurisdiction means the court cannot entertain the suit. But that is quite different from saying that statutory time limits for suits against the Government, unless otherwise specified by Congress, are jurisdictional and unwaivable. That was the rule, pre-Irwin. Since Irwin, compliance with statutory time limits is no longer jurisdictional, in the old sense that when a Congressionally specified time limit had expired a court had no power to entertain the case. The presumption is now to the contrary. The court has jurisdiction to entertain the suit and to determine on the merits if equitable relief from the time bar is warranted. (Congress may if it chooses make a specified time limit jurisdictional and unwaiva-ble, but it must do so unmistakably.)

. But see, Abraham Lincoln: "It is as much the duty of government to render prompt justice against itself, in favor of citizens, as it is to administer the same, between private individuals.” This quotation is engraved on the entry hall of the National Courts Building, Washington, D.C., which houses both the Court of Federal Claims and this court.