6
Opinion of the Court
review thereof, in the same manner and to the same extent as a private individual under like circumstances: Provided, That no judgment for costs shall be entered against the United States in any such suit." 43 U. S. C. § 666(a).
According to Idaho, the amendment requires the United States to comply with all state laws applicable to general water right adjudications. Idaho argues that the first sentence of the amendment, the joinder provision, allows joinder of the United States as a defendant in suits for the adjudication of water rights. It then construes the amendment's second sentence, the pleading provision, to waive the United States' immunity from all state laws pursuant to which those adjudications are conducted. Idaho relies heavily on the language of the second sentence stating that the United States shall be "deemed to have waived any right to plead that the State laws are inapplicable." Because the "filing fees" at issue here are assessed in connection with a comprehensive adjudication of water rights, Idaho contends that they fall within the McCarran Amendment's waiver of sovereign immunity.
The United States, on the other hand, contends that the critical language of the second sentence renders it amenable only to state substantive law of water rights, and not to any of the state adjective law governing procedure, fees, and the like. The Government supports its position by arguing that the phrase "the State laws" in the second sentence must be referring to the same "State law" mentioned in the first sentence, and that since the phrase in the first sentence is clearly directed to substantive state water law, the phrase in the second sentence must be so directed as well.
There is no doubt that waivers of federal sovereign immunity must be "unequivocally expressed" in the statutory text. See Irwin v. Department of Veterans Affairs, 498 U. S. 89, 95 (1990); Department of Energy v. Ohio, 503 U. S. 607, 615 (1992); United States v. Nordic Village, Inc., 503 U. S. 30,
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