FDIC v. Meyer, 510 U.S. 471, 13 (1994)

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Cite as: 510 U. S. 471 (1994)

Opinion of the Court

trast, FDIC argues that a sue-and-be-sued agency's liability should never be greater than that of a private entity; that is, it attempts to use the liability of a private entity as a ceiling. Again, nothing in Burr, Franchise Tax Board, or Loeffler supports such a result.

Finally, we hesitate to engraft language from § 1346(b) onto the sue-and-be-sued clause when Congress, in § 2679(a), expressly set out how the former provision would limit the latter. As provided in § 2679(a), § 1346(b) limits sue-and-be-sued waivers for claims that are "cognizable" under § 1346(b). Thus, § 2679(a) contemplates that a sue-and-be-sued waiver could encompass claims not cognizable under § 1346(b) and render an agency subject to suit unconstrained by the express limitations of the FTCA. FDIC's construction—taken to its logical conclusion—would not permit this result because it would render coextensive the scope of the waivers contained in § 1346(b) and sue-and-be-sued clauses generally. Had Congress wished to achieve that outcome, it surely would not have employed the language it did in § 2679(a). See Connecticut Nat. Bank v. Germain, 503 U. S. 249, 253- 254 (1992) ("[C]ourts must presume that a legislature says in a statute what it means and means in a statute what it says there"). Because "[n]o showing has been made to overcome [the] presumption" that the sue-and-be-sued clause "fully waived" FSLIC's immunity in this instance, Franchise Tax Board, supra, at 520; International Primate Protection League, 500 U. S., at 86, n. 8, we hold that FSLIC's sue-andbe-sued clause waives the agency's sovereign immunity for Meyer's constitutional tort claim.

III

Although we have determined that Meyer's claim falls within the sue-and-be-sued waiver, our inquiry does not end at this point. Here we part ways with the Ninth Circuit, which determined that Meyer had a cause of action for damages against FSLIC because there had been a waiver of sov-

483

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