Page:Gary Thacker v. Tennessee Valley Authority.pdf/7

Rh to an agency of the Federal Government. See Loeffler, 486 U. S., at 554. By the TVA Act’s terms, that waiver is subject to “[e]xcept[ions] as “specifically provided in” the statute itself. §831c. But the TVA Act contains no exceptions relevant to tort claims, let alone one turning on whether the challenged conduct is discretionary.

Nor does the FTCA’s exception for discretionary functions apply to the TVA. As described earlier, see supra, at 3, the FTCA retained the Federal Government’s immunity from tort suits challenging discretionary conduct, even while allowing other tort claims to go forward. See 28 U. S. C. §§1346(b), 2680(a); United States v. Gaubert, 499 U. S. 315, 322–325 (1991) (describing the discretionary function exception’s scope). But Congress made clear that the FTCA does “not apply to[] [a]ny claim arising from the activities of the [TVA].” §2680(l). That means the FTCA’s discretionary function provision has no relevance to this case. Even the Government concedes as much. It acknowledges that the FTCA’s discretionary function exception “does not govern [Thacker’s] suit.” Brief for Respondent 15. Rather, it says, the TVA Act’s sue-and-be-sued clause does so. See id., at 6. And that is the very clause we have just described as containing no express exception for discretionary functions.

But that is not quite the end of the story, because, in Federal Housing Administration v. Burr, 309 U. S. 242 (1940), this Court recognized that a sue-and-be-sued clause might contain “implied exceptions.” Id., at 245. The Court in that case permitted a suit to proceed against a government entity (providing mortgage insurance) whose organic statute had a sue-and-be-sued clause much like the TVA Act’s. And the Court made clear that in green-lighting the suit, it was doing what courts normally should. Sue-and-be-sued clauses, the Court explained, “should be liberally construed.” Ibid.; see FDIC v. Meyer, 510 U. S. 471, 475 (1994) (similarly calling such clauses