622
Opinion of the Court
court order or by assuring that a potentially contumacious party adheres to an injunction by setting forth in advance the penalties the court will impose if the party deviates from the path of obedience"); Vincent v. Preiser, 175 W. Va. 797, 803, 338 S. E. 2d 398, 403 (1985) (discussing contempt "sanctions" imposed "to compel compliance with a court order"); Maltaman v. State Bar of Cal., 43 Cal. 3d 924, 936, 741 P. 2d 185, 189-190 (1987) (describing as "sanctions" daily fine imposed on party until it complied with order directing it to transfer certain property); Labor Relations Comm'n v. Fall River Educators' Assn., 382 Mass. 465, 475-476, 416 N. E. 2d 1340, 1347 (1981) (affirming propriety of imposition of "coercive contempt sanction"); Cal. Civ. Proc. Code Ann. § 2023(b)(4) (West Supp. 1992) (authorizing, in response to litigant's failure to obey discovery order, "terminating sanction[s]," including "contempt sanction[s]" and orders staying further proceedings by recalcitrant litigant). Cf. 42 U. S. C. § 6992e(a) (waiving federal medical-waste disposal facilities' sovereign immunity from various requirements, including such "sanctions as may be imposed by a court to enforce [injunctive] relief"); id., § 6961 (using same language to waive other federal facilities' immunity from RCRA provisions). Thus, resort to a "sanction" carries no necessary implication of the punitive as against the coercive.
The term's context, of course, may supply a clarity that the term lacks in isolation, see, e. g., Shell Oil Co. v. Iowa Dept. of Revenue, 488 U. S. 19, 26 (1988). It tends to do so here, but once again the clarity so found cuts against Ohio's position. The word "sanction" appears twice in § 1323(a), each time within the phrase "process and sanction[s]." The first sentence subjects Government agencies to "process and sanctions," while the second explains that the Government's corresponding liability extends to "any process and sanction, whether enforced in Federal, State, or local courts or in any other manner."
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