Guam v. United States
The Supreme Court unanimously ruled that Guam cannot use the federal Superfund law's cost-sharing provision to seek money from the United States, because Guam's 2004 settlement resolved a Clean Water Act lawsuit — not a Superfund liability.
The decision means parties can only use Superfund's cost-sharing mechanism after resolving a Superfund-specific claim, not after settling under any other environmental law — a ruling with practical consequences for how states, territories, and companies handle multi-statute environmental cleanups.
“The most natural reading of §113(f)(3)(B) is that a party may seek contribution under CERCLA only after settling a CERCLA-specific liability, as opposed to resolving environmental liability under some other law.”
The Court's plain-language conclusion on what kind of settlement triggers CERCLA's contribution provision.
How it got here: Guam sued the United States under CERCLA; the D.C. Circuit dismissed all of Guam's claims as either time-barred or unavailable; Guam asked the Supreme Court to step in and the Court agreed to hear it.
The Case in Depth
What happened
The Ordot Dump — described in court documents as a "280-foot mountain of trash" near the center of Guam — was built by the U.S. Navy in the 1940s, and both the Navy and Guam allegedly deposited waste there for decades. In 2004, Guam settled an EPA lawsuit over Clean Water Act violations at the dump, agreeing to pay penalties and close the site. More than a decade later, Guam sued the United States under CERCLA, the federal Superfund law, seeking to recover some of its cleanup costs from the government.
The question before the Court
Does settling an environmental lawsuit brought under a different law — like the Clean Water Act — allow a party to seek cost-sharing from others under CERCLA, the federal Superfund cleanup law?
The Court's answer
No — CERCLA's contribution provision requires that a prior settlement have resolved a CERCLA-specific liability, not just any environmental obligation under another law. The Court read §113(f)(3)(B) within the full structure of CERCLA's contribution rules, all of which presuppose that a CERCLA liability is at stake. The provision's reference to "response action" — a term appearing dozens of times throughout CERCLA specifically — and its express cross-references to other CERCLA provisions confirm that Congress wrote the contribution right narrowly.
Because Guam's 2004 settlement resolved a Clean Water Act claim and not a CERCLA claim, Guam never had a CERCLA contribution claim in the first place. The case was sent back to the D.C. Circuit, which had dismissed all of Guam's claims on the flawed assumption that an expired contribution claim blocked Guam from also pursuing a cost-recovery action.
Curious how the Court got there? See the step-by-step legal reasoning →
Why it matters
States, territories, and companies involved in environmental cleanups who settle cases under laws other than CERCLA (Superfund) cannot later use CERCLA's cost-sharing provision to recover money from other parties responsible for the contamination. To preserve that option, they must make sure any settlement expressly resolves a CERCLA liability — not just a Clean Water Act or other environmental obligation.
What changes now
The case returns to the D.C. Circuit for further proceedings. Because Guam never had a CERCLA contribution claim, the lower court's reason for blocking Guam's cost-recovery claim under §107(a) disappears. The Supreme Court expressed no opinion on the other aspects of the D.C. Circuit's reasoning — including whether §107(a) cost-recovery is available and whether any such claim is timely — leaving those questions open on remand.
What this does not decide
The Court did not decide whether Guam can now successfully pursue a CERCLA cost-recovery claim against the United States, whether such a claim would be timely, or whether the 2004 consent decree adequately "resolved" any liability in the alternative sense Guam argued. Those issues remain open on remand.
How the Court got there
The legal reasoning, step by step
- The Court focused on CERCLA §113(f)(3)(B), which allows a party that 'has resolved its liability' in a settlement to seek contribution — a share of costs — from others. The central question was whether that resolved liability must be a CERCLA liability specifically, or whether settling under any environmental law would do.
- The Court read §113(f)'s provisions as a unified, interlocking set. The anchor provision, §113(f)(1), explicitly limits contribution to actions 'during or following' a CERCLA civil action, making clear that CERCLA liability is the baseline assumption running through the entire subsection. Sections (f)(2) and (f)(3) were written to work together with that anchor, not to depart from it.
- The specific phrase 'response action' in §113(f)(3)(B) further ties the provision to the CERCLA regime. That term appears dozens of times throughout CERCLA and is not a generic environmental term — so reading it as covering any settlement that resembles a CERCLA cleanup would stretch Congress's actual language beyond its plain meaning.
- The Court also relied on the ordinary meaning of 'resolved': the word conveys certainty and finality. It would be odd to say a party has 'resolved its liability' if it remains vulnerable to a separate CERCLA suit — which it would be if only a non-CERCLA settlement were in hand.
- The Court rejected the government's argument that because §113(f)(3)(B) doesn't explicitly require a predicate CERCLA action the way §113(f)(1) does, it must cover a broader range of environmental settlements. The strong textual links among all three subsections — shared terminology, cross-references, and placement in the statutory scheme — overrode that negative implication.
- The Court also rejected a surplusage argument: even if both §113(f)(1) and §113(f)(3)(B) allow contribution only for CERCLA liabilities, they serve distinct purposes — §113(f)(3)(B) specifically addresses the consequences of resolving liability by settlement and reinforces that contribution cannot reach parties who have already settled. Some overlap between provisions is not unusual and does not compel an all-encompassing reading.