Cite as: 525 U. S. 255 (1999)
Opinion of the Court
actions seeking relief "other than money damages," allows subcontractors to place liens on funds held by the United States Government for work completed on a prime contract. We have frequently held, however, that a waiver of sovereign immunity is to be strictly construed, in terms of its scope, in favor of the sovereign. See, e. g., Lane v. Peña, 518 U. S. 187, 192 (1996) (citing cases); Library of Congress v. Shaw, 478 U. S. 310, 318 (1986). Such a waiver must also be "unequivocally expressed" in the statutory text. See Lane, supra, at 192. Respondent's claim must therefore meet this high standard.
Respondent argues, and the court below held, that our analysis of § 702 in Bowen compels the allowance of respond-ent's lien. We disagree. In Bowen, we examined the text and legislative history of § 702 to determine whether the Commonwealth of Massachusetts could sue the Secretary of Health and Human Services to enforce a provision of the Medicaid Act that required the payment of certain amounts to the State for Medicaid services. We held that the State's complaint in Bowen was not barred by the APA's prohibition on suits for money damages. The Court of Appeals below read our decision in Bowen as interpreting § 702's reference to "other than money damages" as waiving immunity from all actions that are equitable in nature. See 121 F. 3d, at 1361 ("Since the APA waives immunity for equitable actions, the district court had jurisdiction under the APA").
Bowen's analysis of § 702, however, did not turn on distinctions between "equitable" actions and other actions, nor could such a distinction have driven the Court's analysis in light of § 702's language. As Bowen recognized, the crucial question under § 702 is not whether a particular claim for relief is "equitable" (a term found nowhere in § 702), but rather what Congress meant by "other than money damages" (the precise terms of § 702). Bowen held that Congress employed this language to distinguish between specific relief and compensatory, or substitute, relief. The Court stated:
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