Page:Wilkins v. United States (2023).pdf/6

Rh 596 U. S. ___ (2022), and now reverses the Ninth Circuit’s judgment.

“Jurisdiction, this Court has observed, is a word of many, too many, meanings.” Arbaugh v. Y & H Corp., 546 U. S. 500, 510 (2006) (internal quotation marks omitted). In particular, this Court has emphasized the distinction between limits on “the classes of cases a court may entertain (subject-matter jurisdiction)” and “nonjurisdictional claim-processing rules, which seek to promote the orderly progress of litigation by requiring that the parties take certain procedural steps at certain specified times.” Fort Bend County v. Davis, 587 U. S. ___, ___–___ (2019) (slip op., at 6–7) (internal quotation marks omitted). The latter category generally includes a range of “threshold requirements that claimants must complete, or exhaust, before filing a lawsuit.” Reed Elsevier, Inc. v. Muchnick, 559 U. S. 154, 166 (2010).

To police this jurisdictional line, this Court will “treat a procedural requirement as jurisdictional only if Congress ‘clearly states’ that it is.” Boechler v. Commissioner, 596 U. S. ___, ___ (2022) (slip op., at 3) (quoting Arbaugh, 546 U. S., at 515). This principle of construction is not a burden courts impose on Congress. To the contrary, this principle seeks to avoid judicial interpretations that undermine Congress’ judgment. Loosely treating procedural requirements as jurisdictional risks undermining the very reason Congress enacted them.

Procedural rules often “seek to promote the orderly progress of litigation” within our adversarial system. Henderson v. Shinseki, 562 U. S. 428, 435 (2011). Limits on subject-matter jurisdiction, in contrast, have a unique potential to disrupt the orderly course of litigation. “Branding a rule as going to a court’s subject-matter jurisdiction