628
Opinion of the Court
ing punitive measures." Mitzelfelt v. Department of Air Force, 903 F. 2d 1293, 1295 (1990).
We have already observed that substantive requirements can be enforced either punitively or coercively, and the Tenth Circuit's understanding that Congress intended the latter finds strong support in the textual indications of the kinds of requirements meant to bind the Government. Significantly, all of them refer either to mechanisms requiring review for substantive compliance (permit and reporting requirements) or to mechanisms for enforcing substantive compliance in the future (injunctive relief and sanctions to enforce it). In stark contrast, the statute makes no mention of any mechanism for penalizing past violations, and this absence of any example of punitive fines is powerful evidence that Congress had no intent to subject the United States to an enforcement mechanism that could deplete the federal fisc regardless of a responsible officer's willingness and capacity to comply in the future.
The drafters' silence on the subject of punitive sanctions becomes virtually audible after one reads the provision's final sentence, waiving immunity "from any process or sanction of any State or Federal Court with respect to the enforcement of any such injunctive relief." The fact that the drafters' only specific reference to an enforcement mechanism described "sanction" as a coercive means of injunctive enforcement bars any inference that a waiver of immunity from "requirements" somehow unquestionably extends to punitive fines that are never so much as mentioned.17
17 We also reject Ohio's argument purporting to rest on Hancock v. Train, 426 U. S. 167 (1976). In Hancock we determined that, as then written, § 118 of the Clean Air Act, 42 U. S. C. § 1857f (1970 ed.), did not require federal facilities to obtain state pollution permits as a condition of continued operation. The relevant portion of § 1857 required the National Government to "comply with Federal, State, interstate, and local requirements respecting control . . . of air pollution." Ohio and its amici stress the point in our analysis where we found it significant that § 1857 did not require federal compliance with "all federal, state, interstate, and local
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