Corner Post, Inc. v. Board of Governors

(Slip Opinion) OCTOBER TERM, 2023 1

Syllabus

NOTE: Where it is feasible, a syllabus (headnote) will be released, as is

being done in connection with this case, at the time the opinion is issued.

The syllabus constitutes no part of the opinion of the Court but has been

prepared by the Reporter of Decisions for the convenience of the reader.

See United States v. Detroit Timber & Lumber Co., 200 U. S. 321, 337.

SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES

Syllabus

CORNER POST, INC. v. BOARD OF GOVERNORS OF

THE FEDERAL RESERVE SYSTEM

CERTIORARI TO THE UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR

THE EIGHTH CIRCUIT

No. 22–1008. Argued February 20, 2024—Decided July 1, 2024

Since it opened for business in 2018, petitioner Corner Post, like most

merchants, has accepted debit cards as a form of payment. Debit card

transactions require merchants to pay an “interchange fee” to the bank

that issued the card. The fee amount is set by the payment networks

(such as Visa and MasterCard) that process the transaction. In 2010

Congress tasked the Federal Reserve Board with making sure that in-

terchange fees were “reasonable and proportional to the cost incurred

by the issuer with respect to the transaction.” 15 U. S. C. §1693o–

2(a)(3)(A). Discharging this duty, in 2011 the Board published Regu-

lation II, which sets a maximum interchange fee of $0.21 per transac-

tion plus .05% of the transaction’s value.

In 2021, Corner Post joined a suit brought against the Board under

the Administrative Procedure Act (APA). The complaint challenged

Regulation II on the ground that it allows higher interchange fees than

the statute permits. The District Court dismissed the suit as time-

barred under 28 U. S. C. §2401(a), the default six-year statute of limi-

tations applicable to suits against the United States. The Eighth Cir-

cuit affirmed.

Held: An APA claim does not accrue for purposes of §2401(a)’s 6-year

statute of limitations until the plaintiff is injured by final agency ac-

tion. Pp. 4–23.

(a) The APA grants Corner Post a cause of action subject to certain

conditions, see 5 U. S. C. §702 and §704, and 28 U. S. C. §2401(a) de-

lineates the time period in which Corner Post may assert its claim.

Section 702 authorizes persons injured by agency action to obtain ju-

dicial review by suing the United States or one of its agencies, officers,

2 CORNER POST, INC. v. BOARD OF GOVERNORS, FRS

Syllabus

or employees. See Abbott Laboratories v. Gardner, 387 U. S. 136, 140–

141. The Court has explained that §702 “requir[es] a litigant to show,

at the outset of the case, that he is injured in fact by agency action.”

Director, Office of Workers’ Compensation Programs v. Newport News

Shipbuilding & Dry Dock Co., 514 U. S. 122, 127. A litigant therefore

cannot bring an APA claim unless and until she suffers an injury.

While §702 equips injured parties with a cause of action, §704 provides

that judicial review is available in most cases only for “final agency

action.” Bennett v. Spear, 520 U. S. 154, 177–178. Reading §702 and

§704 together, a plaintiff may bring an APA claim only after she is

injured by final agency action.

To determine whether Corner Post’s APA claim is timely, the Court

must interpret §2401(a), which provides that civil actions against the

United States “shall be barred unless the complaint is filed within six

years after the right of action first accrues.” The Board says an APA

claim “accrues” under §2401(a) when agency action is “final” for pur-

poses of §704; the claim can accrue for purposes of the statute of limi-

tations even before the plaintiff suffers an injury. The Court disagrees.

A right of action “accrues” when the plaintiff has a “complete and pre-

sent cause of action,” which is when she has the right to “file suit and

obtain relief.” Green v. Brennan, 578 U. S. 547, 554. Because an APA

plaintiff may not file suit and obtain relief until she suffers an injury

from final agency action, the statute of limitations does not begin to

run until she is injured. Pp. 4–6.

(b) Congress enacted §2401(a) in 1948, two years after it enacted the

APA. Section 2401(a)’s predecessor was the statute-of-limitations pro-

vision for the Little Tucker Act, which provided for district court juris-

diction over certain claims against the United States. When Congress

revised and recodified the Judicial Code in 1948, it converted the Little

Tucker Act’s statute of limitations into §2401(a)’s general statute of

limitations for all suits against the Government. But Congress contin-

ued to start the statute of limitations period when the right “accrues.”

Compare 36 Stat. 1093 (“after the right accrued for which the claim is

made”) with §2401(a) (“after the right of action first accrues”).

“Accrue” had a well-settled meaning in 1948, as it does now: A “right

accrues when it comes into existence,” United States v. Lindsay, 346

U. S. 568, 569—i.e., “when the plaintiff has a complete and present

cause of action,” Gabelli v. SEC, 568 U. S. 442, 448. This definition

has appeared “in dictionaries from the 19th century up until today,”

which explain that a cause of action accrues when a suit may be main-

tained thereon. 568 U. S., at 448. Thus, a cause of action does not

become complete and present—it does not accrue—“until the plaintiff

can file suit and obtain relief.” Bay Area Laundry and Dry Cleaning

Cite as: 603 U. S. ____ (2024) 3

Syllabus

Pension Trust Fund v. Ferbar Corp. of Cal., 522 U. S. 192, 201. Con-

temporaneous legal dictionaries explained that a claim does not “ac-

crue” as soon as the defendant acts, but only after the plaintiff suffers

the injury required to press her claim in court.

The Court’s precedent treats this definition of accrual as the “stand-

ard rule for limitations periods,” Green, 578 U. S., at 554, and the

Court has “repeatedly recognized that Congress legislates against”

this standard rule, Graham County Soil & Water Conservation Dist. v.

United States ex rel. Wilson, 545 U. S. 409, 418. Conversely, the Court

has “reject[ed]” the possibility that a “limitations period commences at

a time when the [plaintiff] could not yet file suit” as “inconsistent with

basic limitations principles.” Bay Area Laundry, 522 U. S., at 200.

The Court will not reach such a conclusion “in the absence of any such

indication in the text of the limitations period.” Green, 578 U. S., at

554. Departing from the traditional rule is particularly inappropriate

here because contemporaneous statutes demonstrate that Congress in

1948 knew how to create a limitations period that begins with the de-

fendant’s action instead of the plaintiff’s injury.

The Board would have this Court interpret §2401(a) as a defendant-

protective statute of repose that begins to run when agency action be-

comes final. A statute of repose “puts an outer limit on the right to

bring a civil action” that is “measured. . . from the date of the last cul-

pable act or omission of the defendant.” CTS Corp. v. Waldburger, 573

U. S. 1, 8. But §2401(a)’s plaintiff-focused language makes it a “stat-

ute of limitations,” which—in contradistinction to statutes of repose—

are “based on the date when the claim accrued.” Id., at 7–8. Pp. 6–10.

(c) The Board’s arguments to the contrary lack merit. Pp. 10–23.

(1) The Board points to the many specific statutory review provi-

sions that start the clock at finality, contending that such statutes re-

flect a standard administrative-law practice of starting the limitations

period when “any proper plaintiff ” can challenge the final agency ac-

tion. But unlike the specific review provisions that the Board cites,

§2401(a) does not refer to the date of the agency action’s “entry” or

“promulgat[ion]”; it says “right of action first accrues.” That textual

difference matters. The latter language reflects a statute of limita-

tions and the former a statute of repose. Moreover, the specific review

provisions illustrate that Congress has sometimes employed the

Board’s preferred final-agency-action rule—but did not do so in

§2401(a). As the Court observed in Rotkiske v. Klemm, it is “particu-

larly inappropriate” to read language into a statute of limitations

“when, as here, Congress has shown that it knows how to adopt the

omitted language or provision.” 589 U. S. 8, 14. Moreover, most of the

finality-focused statutes that the Board cites came after §2401(a) was

enacted in 1948. These other, textually distinct statutes therefore do

4 CORNER POST, INC. v. BOARD OF GOVERNORS, FRS

Syllabus

not establish a background presumption that the limitations period for

facial challenges to agency rules begins when the rule is final. Given

the settled, plaintiff-centric meaning of “right of action first accrues”

in 1948—not to mention in the Little Tucker Act before it—the Board

cannot “displace” this “standard rule” for limitations periods. Green,

578 U. S., at 554.

While the Board argues that §2401(a) should not be interpreted to

adopt a “challenger-by-challenger” approach, the standard accrual

rule that §2401(a) exemplifies is plaintiff specific. The Board reads

§2401(a) as if it says “the complaint is filed within six years after a

right of action [i.e., anyone’s right of action] first accrues”—which it

does not say. Rather, §2401(a)’s text focuses on when the specific

plaintiff had the right to sue: It says “the complaint is filed within six

years after the right of action first accrues.” (Emphasis added). And

the Court has explained that the traditional accrual rule looks to when

the plaintiff—this particular plaintiff—has a complete and present

cause of action. See Green, 578 U. S., at 554. No precedent supports

the Board’s hypothetical “when could someone else have sued” sort of

inquiry.

Importing the Board’s special administrative-law rule into §2401(a)

would create a defendant-focused rule for agency suits while retaining

the traditional challenger-specific accrual rule for other suits against

the United States. That would give the same statutory text—“right of

action first accrues”—different meanings in different contexts, even

though those words had a single, well-settled meaning when Congress

enacted §2401(a). The Court “will not infer such an odd result in the

absence of any such indication in the text of the limitations period.”

Green, 578 U. S., at 554. Pp. 10–16.

(2) The Board maintains that §2401(a)’s tolling provision—which

provides that “[t]he action of any person under legal disability or be-

yond the seas at the time the claim accrues may be commenced within

three years after the disability ceases”—“reflects Congress’s under-

standing that a claim can ‘accrue[ ]’ for purposes of Section 2401(a)”

even when a person is unable to sue. Brief for Respondent 24. While

true, the tolling exception applies when the plaintiff had a complete

and present cause of action after he was injured but his legal disability

or absence from the country prevented him from bringing a timely suit.

The exception sheds no light on when the clock started for Corner Post.

P. 16.

(3) The Court’s precedents in Reading Co. v. Koons, 271 U. S. 58,

and Crown Coat Front Co. v. United States, 386 U. S. 503, do not sup-

port the Board’s unusual interpretation of “accrual.” In Koons, the

Court held that a statutory wrongful-death claim accrued upon the

Cite as: 603 U. S. ____ (2024) 5

Syllabus

death of the employee, not on the appointment of an estate adminis-

trator, even though the latter was the “only person authorized by the

statute to maintain the action.” Koons, 271 U. S., at 60. The Board

interprets Koons to hold that a claim accrued at a time when no plain-

tiff could sue, just as it says Corner Post’s claim “accrued” before it

could sue. But in Koons, the beneficiaries on whose behalf any admin-

istrator would seek relief—the “real parties in interest”—had the right

to “procure the action” after the employee died. Given this unique con-

text, Koons does not contradict the proposition that a claim generally

accrues when the plaintiff has a complete and present cause of action.

Next, the Board relies on dicta in Crown Coat to support its contention

that the word “accrues” can take on different meanings in different

contexts. But the Board misreads Crown Coat, which did not suggest

that the words “right of action first accrues” in a single statute should

mean different things in different contexts. Instead, the Court inter-

preted §2401(a)—the very statute at issue here—to embody the tradi-

tional rule that a claim accrues when the plaintiff has the right to

bring suit in court. Pp. 16–20.

(4) Finally, the Board raises policy concerns. It emphasizes that

agencies and regulated parties need the finality of a 6-year cutoff, and

that successful facial challenges filed after six years upset the reliance

interests of those that have long operated under existing rules. But

“pleas of administrative inconvenience . . . never ‘justify departing

from the statute’s clear text.’ ” Niz-Chavez v. Garland, 593 U. S. 155,

169 (quoting Pereira v. Sessions, 585 U. S. 198, 217). Congress could

have chosen different language in §2401(a) or created a general statute

of repose for agencies, but it did not. In any event, the Board’s policy

concerns are overstated because regulated parties may always chal-

lenge a regulation as exceeding the agency’s statutory authority in en-

forcement proceedings against them. Moreover, there are significant

interests supporting the plaintiff-centric accrual rule, including the

APA’s “basic presumption” of judicial review, Abbott Labs., 387 U. S.,

at 140, and our “deep-rooted historic tradition that everyone should

have his own day in court,” Richards v. Jefferson County, 517 U. S.

793, 798. Pp. 20–23.

55 F. 4th 634, reversed and remanded.

BARRETT, J., delivered the opinion of the Court, in which in which ROB-

ERTS, C. J., and THOMAS, ALITO, GORSUCH, and KAVANAUGH, JJ., joined.

KAVANAUGH, J., filed a concurring opinion. JACKSON, J., filed a dissenting

opinion, in which SOTOMAYOR, J., and KAGAN, J., joined.

Cite as: 603 U. S. ____ (2024) 1

Opinion of the Court

NOTICE: This opinion is subject to formal revision before publication in the

United States Reports. Readers are requested to notify the Reporter of

Decisions, Supreme Court of the United States, Washington, D. C. 20543,

pio@supremecourt.gov, of any typographical or other formal errors.

SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES

_________________

No. 22–1008

_________________

CORNER POST, INC., PETITIONER v. BOARD

OF GOVERNORS OF THE FEDERAL

RESERVE SYSTEM

ON WRIT OF CERTIORARI TO THE UNITED STATES COURT OF

APPEALS FOR THE EIGHTH CIRCUIT

[July 1, 2024]

JUSTICE BARRETT delivered the opinion of the Court.

The default statute of limitations for suits against the

United States requires “the complaint [to be] filed within

six years after the right of action first accrues.” 28 U. S. C.

§2401(a). We must decide when a claim brought under the

Administrative Procedure Act “accrues” for purposes of this

provision. The answer is straightforward. A claim accrues

when the plaintiff has the right to assert it in court—and in

the case of the APA, that is when the plaintiff is injured by

final agency action.

I

Corner Post is a truckstop and convenience store located

in Watford City, North Dakota. It was incorporated in

2017, and in 2018, it opened for business. Like most mer-

chants, Corner Post accepts debit cards as a form of pay-

ment. While convenient for customers, debit cards are

costly for merchants: Every transaction requires them to

pay an “interchange fee” to the bank that issued the card.

The amount of the fee is set by the payment networks, like

Visa and Mastercard, that process the transaction between

2 CORNER POST, INC. v. BOARD OF GOVERNORS, FRS

Opinion of the Court

the banks of merchants and cardholders. The cost quickly

adds up. Since it opened, Corner Post has paid hundreds of

thousands of dollars in interchange fees—which has meant

higher prices for its customers.

Interchange fees have long been a sore point for mer-

chants. For many years, payment networks had free rein

over the fee amount—and because they used the promise of

per-transaction profit to compete for the banks’ business,

they had significant incentive to raise the fees. Mer-

chants—who would lose customers if they declined debit

cards—had little choice but to pay whatever the networks

charged. Left unregulated, interchange fees ballooned.

Congress eventually stepped in. The Durbin Amendment

to the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Pro-

tection Act of 2010 tasks the Federal Reserve Board with

setting “standards for assessing whether the amount of any

interchange transaction fee . . . is reasonable and propor-

tional to the cost incurred by the issuer with respect to the

transaction.” 124 Stat. 2068, 15 U. S. C. §1693o–2(a)(3)(A).

Discharging this duty, the Board promulgated Regulation

II, which sets a maximum interchange fee of $0.21 per

transaction plus .05% of the transaction’s value. See Debit

Card Interchange Fees and Routing, 76 Fed. Reg. 43394,

43420 (2011). The Board published the rule on July 20,

2011.

Four months later, a group of retail-industry trade asso-

ciations and individual retailers sued the Board, arguing

that Regulation II allows costs that the statute does not.

See NACS v. Board of Governors of FRS, 958 F. Supp. 2d

85, 95–96 (DC 2013). The District Court agreed, id., at 99–

109, but the D. C. Circuit reversed, concluding “that the

Board’s rules generally rest on reasonable constructions of

the statute,” NACS v. Board of Governors of FRS, 746 F. 3d

474, 477 (2014).

Corner Post, of course, did not exist when the Board

Cite as: 603 U. S. ____ (2024) 3

Opinion of the Court

adopted Regulation II or even during the D. C. Circuit liti-

gation. But after opening its doors, it too became frustrated

by interchange fees, and in 2021, joined a suit brought

against the Board under the Administrative Procedure Act

(APA). The complaint alleges that Regulation II is unlawful

because it allows payment networks to charge higher fees

than the statute permits. See 5 U. S. C. §§706(2)(A), (C).

The District Court dismissed the suit as barred by 28

U. S. C. §2401(a), the applicable statute of limitations, 2022

WL 909317, *7–*9 (ND, Mar. 11, 2022), and the Eighth Cir-

cuit affirmed, North Dakota Retail Assn. v. Board of Gover-

nors of FRS, 55 F. 4th 634 (2022). Following other Circuits,

it distinguished between “facial” challenges to a rule (like

Corner Post’s challenge to Regulation II) and challenges to

a rule “as-applied” to a particular party. Id., at 640–641.

The Eighth Circuit held that “when plaintiffs bring a facial

challenge to a final agency action, the right of action ac-

crues, and the limitations period begins to run, upon publi-

cation of the regulation.” Id., at 641. On this view,

§2401(a)’s 6-year limitations period began in 2011, when

the Board published Regulation II, and expired in 2017, be-

fore Corner Post swiped its first debit card. See id., at 643.

Corner Post’s suit was therefore too late.

The Eighth Circuit’s decision deepened a circuit split over

when §2401(a)’s statute of limitations begins to run for APA

suits challenging agency action. At least six Circuits now

hold that the limitations period for “facial” APA challenges

begins on the date of final agency action—e.g., when the

rule was promulgated—regardless of when the plaintiff was

injured. See, e.g., id., at 641; Wind River Min. Corp. v.

United States, 946 F. 2d 710, 715 (CA9 1991); Dunn-

McCampbell Royalty Interest, Inc. v. National Park Serv.,

112 F. 3d 1283, 1287 (CA5 1997); Harris v. FAA, 353 F. 3d

1006, 1009–1010 (CADC 2004); Hire Order Ltd. v.

Marianos, 698 F. 3d 168, 170 (CA4 2012); Odyssey Logistics

& Tech. Corp. v. Iancu, 959 F. 3d 1104, 1111–1112 (CA Fed.

4 CORNER POST, INC. v. BOARD OF GOVERNORS, FRS

Opinion of the Court

2020). By contrast, the Sixth Circuit has stated a generally

applicable rule that §2401(a)’s limitations period begins

when the plaintiff is injured by agency action, even if that

injury did not occur until many years after the action be-

came final. Herr v. United States Forest Serv., 803 F. 3d

809, 820–822 (2015) (“When a party first becomes aggrieved

by a regulation that exceeds an agency’s statutory authority

more than six years after the regulation was promulgated,

that party may challenge the regulation without waiting for

enforcement proceedings” (emphasis deleted)). We granted

certiorari to resolve the split. 600 U. S. ___ (2023).

II

Three statutory provisions control our analysis: 5 U. S. C.

§702 and §704, the relevant APA provisions, and 28 U. S. C.

§2401(a), the relevant statute of limitations. The APA pro-

visions grant Corner Post a cause of action subject to cer-

tain conditions, and §2401(a) sets the window within which

Corner Post can assert its claim.

Section 702 authorizes persons injured by agency action

to obtain judicial review by suing the United States or one

of its agencies, officers, or employees. See Abbott Laborato-

ries v. Gardner, 387 U. S. 136, 140–141 (1967). It provides

that “[a] person suffering legal wrong because of agency ac-

tion, or adversely affected or aggrieved by agency action

within the meaning of a relevant statute, is entitled to judi-

cial review thereof.” 5 U. S. C. §702. We have explained

that §702 “requir[es] a litigant to show, at the outset of the

case, that he is injured in fact by agency action.” Director,

Office of Workers’ Compensation Programs v. Newport News

Shipbuilding & Dry Dock Co., 514 U. S. 122, 127 (1995).

Thus, a litigant cannot bring an APA claim unless and until

she suffers an injury.1

——————

1 The dissent asserts that §702 “restricts who may challenge agency

Cite as: 603 U. S. ____ (2024) 5

Opinion of the Court

While §702 equips injured parties with a cause of action,

§704 limits the agency actions that are subject to judicial

review. Unless another statute makes the agency’s action

reviewable (and none does for Regulation II), judicial re-

view is available only for “final agency action.” §704. In

most cases, then, a plaintiff can only challenge an action

that “mark[s] the consummation of the agency’s deci-

sionmaking process” and is “one by which rights or obliga-

tions have been determined, or from which legal conse-

quences will flow.” Bennett v. Spear, 520 U. S. 154, 177–

178 (1997) (internal quotation marks omitted). Note that

§702’s injury requirement and §704’s finality requirement

work hand in hand: Each is a “necessary, but not by itself

. . . sufficient, ground for stating a claim under the APA.”

Herr, 803 F. 3d, at 819.

The applicable statute of limitations, 28 U. S. C.

§2401(a), contains the language we must interpret: “[E]very

civil action commenced against the United States shall be

barred unless the complaint is filed within six years after

the right of action first accrues.” (Emphasis added.) This

provision applies generally to suits against the United

States unless the timing provision of a more specific statute

displaces it. See, e.g., 33 U. S. C. §1369(b) (deadline to chal-

lenge certain agency actions under the Clean Water Act).

The Board contends that an APA claim “accrues” when

agency action is “final” for purposes of §704—injury, it says,

——————

action,” yet its injury requirement “says nothing about” the cause of ac-

tion or elements of the claim. Post, at 16. But surely the dissent does

not mean to suggest that an uninjured person may bring an APA claim.

Whether one calls injury a restriction on who may sue or an element of

the cause of action, the relevant, undisputed point is that a plaintiff can-

not sue under the APA unless she is “injured in fact by agency action.”

Newport News, 514 U. S., at 127.

6 CORNER POST, INC. v. BOARD OF GOVERNORS, FRS

Opinion of the Court

is necessary for the suit but irrelevant to the statute of lim-

itations.2 We disagree. A right of action “accrues” when the

plaintiff has a “complete and present cause of action”—i.e.,

when she has the right to “file suit and obtain relief.” Green

v. Brennan, 578 U. S. 547, 554 (2016) (internal quotation

marks omitted). An APA plaintiff does not have a complete

and present cause of action until she suffers an injury from

final agency action, so the statute of limitations does not

begin to run until she is injured.

III

Congress enacted §2401(a) in 1948, two years after it en-

acted the APA. See 62 Stat. 971. Section 2401(a)’s prede-

cessor was the statute-of-limitations provision for the Little

Tucker Act, which gave district courts jurisdiction over non-

tort monetary claims not exceeding $10,000 against the

United States. See §24, 36 Stat. 1093 (“That no suit against

the Government of the United States shall be allowed under

this paragraph unless the same shall have been brought

within six years after the right accrued for which the claim

is made”); Brief for Professor Aditya Bamzai et al. as Amici

Curiae 5–6. When Congress revised and recodified the Ju-

dicial Code in 1948, it converted the Little Tucker Act’s stat-

ute of limitations into a general statute of limitations for all

——————

2 The Board leaves open the possibility that someone could bring an as-

applied challenge to a rule when the agency relies on that rule in enforce-

ment proceedings against that person, even if more than six years have

passed since the rule’s promulgation. But Corner Post, as a merchant

rather than a payment network, is not regulated by Regulation II—so it

will never be the target of an enforcement action in which it could chal-

lenge that rule. JUSTICE KAVANAUGH asserts that “Corner Post can ob-

tain relief in this case only because the APA authorizes vacatur of agency

rules.” Post, at 1 (concurring opinion). Whether the APA authorizes va-

catur has been subject to thoughtful debate by Members of this Court.

See, e.g., United States v. Texas, 599 U. S. 670, 693–702 (2023)

(GORSUCH, J., concurring in judgment). We took this case only to decide

how §2401(a)’s statute of limitations applies to APA claims. We therefore

assume without deciding that vacatur is available under the APA.

Cite as: 603 U. S. ____ (2024) 7

Opinion of the Court

suits against the Government—replacing “under this para-

graph” with “every civil action against the United States.”

But Congress continued to start the 6-year limitations pe-

riod when the right “accrues.” Compare 36 Stat. 1093 (“af-

ter the right accrued for which the claim is made”) with

§2401(a) (“after the right of action first accrues”).

In 1948, as now, “accrue” had a well-settled meaning: A

“right accrues when it comes into existence,” United States

v. Lindsay, 346 U. S. 568, 569 (1954)—i.e., “ ‘when the plain-

tiff has a complete and present cause of action,’ ” Gabelli v.

SEC, 568 U. S. 442, 448 (2013) (quoting Wallace v. Kato,

549 U. S. 384, 388 (2007)). This definition has appeared “in

dictionaries from the 19th century up until today.” Gabelli,

568 U. S., at 448. Legal dictionaries in the 1940s and 1950s

uniformly explained that a cause of action “ ‘accrues’ when

a suit may be maintained thereon.” Black’s Law Dictionary

37 (4th ed. 1951) (Black’s); see also, e.g., Ballentine’s Law

Dictionary 15–16 (2d ed. 1948) (Ballentine’s) (“[A]ccrual of

cause of action” defined as the “coming or springing into ex-

istence of a right to sue” (boldface deleted)). Thus, we have

explained that a cause of action “does not become ‘complete

and present’ for limitations purposes”—it does not accrue—

“until the plaintiff can file suit and obtain relief.” Bay Area

Laundry and Dry Cleaning Pension Trust Fund v. Ferbar

Corp. of Cal., 522 U. S. 192, 201 (1997).

Importantly, contemporaneous dictionaries also ex-

plained that a cause of action accrues “on [the] date that

damage is sustained and not [the] date when causes are set

in motion which ultimately produce injury.” Black’s 37.

“[I]f an act is not legally injurious until certain conse-

quences occur, it is not the mere doing of the act that gives

rise to a cause of action, but the subsequent occurrence of

damage or loss as the consequence of the act, and in such

case no cause of action accrues until the loss or damage oc-

curs.” Ballentine’s 16 (emphasis added). Thus, when Con-

gress used the phrase “right of action first accrues” in

8 CORNER POST, INC. v. BOARD OF GOVERNORS, FRS

Opinion of the Court

§2401(a), it was well understood that a claim does not “ac-

crue” as soon as the defendant acts, but only after the plain-

tiff suffers the injury required to press her claim in court.

Our precedent treats this definition of accrual as the

“standard rule for limitations periods.” Green, 578 U. S., at

554. “We have repeatedly recognized that Congress legis-

lates against the ‘standard rule that the limitations period

commences when the plaintiff has a complete and present

cause of action.’ ” Graham County Soil & Water Conserva-

tion Dist. v. United States ex rel. Wilson, 545 U. S. 409, 418

(2005) (quoting Bay Area Laundry, 522 U. S., at 201). It is

“unquestionably the traditional rule” that “[a]bsent other

indication, a statute of limitations begins to run at the time

the plaintiff ‘has the right to apply to the court for relief.’ ”

TRW Inc. v. Andrews, 534 U. S. 19, 37 (2001) (Scalia, J.,

concurring in judgment) (quoting 1 H. Wood, Limitation of

Actions §122a, p. 684 (rev. 4th ed. 1916) (Wood)). Con-

versely, we have “reject[ed]” the possibility that a “limita-

tions period commences at a time when the [plaintiff] could

not yet file suit” as “inconsistent with basic limitations prin-

ciples.” Bay Area Laundry, 522 U. S., at 200.

This traditional rule constitutes a strong background pre-

sumption. While the “standard rule can be displaced such

that the limitations period begins to run before a plaintiff

can file a suit,” we “ ‘will not infer such an odd result in the

absence of any such indication’ in the text of the limitations

period.” Green, 578 U. S., at 554 (quoting Reiter v. Cooper,

507 U. S. 258, 267 (1993)). “Unless Congress has told us

otherwise in the legislation at issue, a cause of action does

not become ‘complete and present’ for limitations purposes

until the plaintiff can file suit and obtain relief.” Bay Area

Laundry, 522 U. S., at 201.

There is good reason to conclude that Congress codified

the traditional accrual rule in §2401(a). Nothing “in the

text of [§2401(a)’s] limitations period” gives any indication

that it begins to run before the plaintiff has a complete and

Cite as: 603 U. S. ____ (2024) 9

Opinion of the Court

present cause of action. Green, 578 U. S., at 554. Rather,

§2401(a) uses standard language that had a well-settled

meaning in 1948: “right of action first accrues.” Moreover,

Congress knew how to depart from the traditional rule to

create a limitations period that begins with the defendant’s

action instead of the plaintiff ’s injury: Just six years before

it enacted §2401(a), Congress passed the Emergency Price

Control Act of 1942, which required challenges to Office of

Price Administration actions to be filed “[w]ithin a period of

sixty days after the issuance of any regulation or order.”

§203(a), 56 Stat. 31 (emphasis added); see also Administra-

tive Orders Review Act (Hobbs Act), §4, 64 Stat. 1130 (1950)

(allowing petitions for review “within sixty days after entry

of ” a “final order reviewable under this Act”). Section

2401(a), by contrast, stuck with the standard accrual lan-

guage.

Section 2401(a) thus operates as a statute of limitations

rather than a statute of repose. “[A] statute of limitations

creates ‘a time limit for suing in a civil case, based on the

date when the claim accrued.’ ” CTS Corp. v. Waldburger,

573 U. S. 1, 7–8 (2014) (quoting Black’s 1546 (9th ed. 2009)).

That describes §2401(a), with its reference to when the

right of action “accrues,” to a tee. “A statute of repose, on

the other hand, puts an outer limit on the right to bring a

civil action” that is “measured not from the date on which

the claim accrues but instead from the date of the last cul-

pable act or omission of the defendant.” 573 U. S., at 8.

Such statutes bar “ ‘any suit that is brought after a specified

time since the defendant acted . . . even if this period ends

before the plaintiff has suffered a resulting injury.’ ” Ibid.

(quoting Black’s 1546). That describes statutes like the

Hobbs Act, which sets a filing deadline of 60 days from the

“entry” of the agency order. 64 Stat. 1130. Statutes of lim-

itations “require plaintiffs to pursue diligent prosecution of

known claims”; statutes of repose reflect a “legislative judg-

ment that a defendant should be free from liability after the

10 CORNER POST, INC. v. BOARD OF GOVERNORS, FRS

Opinion of the Court

legislatively determined period of time.” CTS Corp., 573

U. S., at 8–9 (internal quotation marks omitted).3 The

Board asks us to interpret §2401(a) as a defendant-

protective statute of repose that begins to run when agency

action becomes final. But §2401(a)’s plaintiff-focused lan-

guage makes it an accrual-based statute of limitations.

* * *

Section 2401(a) embodies the plaintiff-centric traditional

rule that a statute of limitations begins to run only when

the plaintiff has a complete and present cause of action. Be-

cause injury, not just finality, is required to sue under the

APA, Corner Post’s cause of action was not complete and

present until it was injured by Regulation II. Therefore, its

suit is not barred by the statute of limitations.

IV

The Board concedes that some claims accrue for purposes

of §2401(a) when the plaintiff has a complete and present

cause of action—in other words, it admits that “accrue” car-

ries its usual meaning for some claims. But it argues that

facial challenges to agency rules are different, accruing

when agency action is final rather than when the plaintiff

can assert her claim. See also post, at 5–6 (JACKSON, J.,

dissenting). The Board raises several arguments to support

its position, but none work.

A

The Board puts the most weight on the many specific

statutory review provisions that start the clock at finality.

See also post, at 12–15 (JACKSON, J., dissenting). The

——————

3 Perplexingly, the dissent rejects this distinction, post, at 10–11, even

though our precedent clearly recognizes it: CTS Corp. acknowledged the

“substantial overlap between the policies of the two types of statute” but

concluded nonetheless that “each has a distinct purpose and each is tar-

geted at a different actor.” 573 U. S., at 8.

Cite as: 603 U. S. ____ (2024) 11

Opinion of the Court

Hobbs Act, for example, requires persons aggrieved by cer-

tain final orders and regulations of the Federal Communi-

cations Commission, Secretary of Agriculture, and Secre-

tary of Transportation, among others, to petition for review

“within 60 days after [the] entry” of the final agency action.

28 U. S. C. §§2342, 2344; see also, e.g., 29 U. S. C. §655(f )

(suits challenging Occupational Safety and Health Admin-

istration standards must be filed “prior to the sixtieth day

after such standard is promulgated”). The Board contends

that such statutes reflect a standard administrative-law

practice of starting the limitations period when “any proper

plaintiff ” can challenge the final agency action. Brief for

Respondent 9. There is “no sound basis,” it insists, “for in-

stead applying a challenger-by-challenger approach to cal-

culate the limitations period on APA claims.” Ibid.; see also

post, at 9–10 (JACKSON, J., dissenting).

1

This argument hits the immutable obstacle of §2401(a)’s

text. Unlike the specific review provisions that the Board

cites, §2401(a) does not refer to the date of the agency ac-

tion’s “entry” or “promulgat[ion]”; it says “right of action

first accrues.” That textual difference matters. To begin,

the latter language reflects a statute of limitations and the

former a statute of repose. Moreover, the specific review

provisions actually undercut the Board’s argument, be-

cause they illustrate that Congress has sometimes em-

ployed the Board’s preferred final-agency-action rule—but

did not do so in §2401(a). As we observed in Rotkiske v.

Klemm, it is “particularly inappropriate” to read language

into a statute of limitations “when, as here, Congress has

shown that it knows how to adopt the omitted language or

provision.” 589 U. S. 8, 14 (2019).

In arguing to the contrary, post, at 12–16, the dissent ig-

nores the textual differences between §2401(a) and finality-

12 CORNER POST, INC. v. BOARD OF GOVERNORS, FRS

Opinion of the Court

focused specific review provisions—flouting Rotkiske’s ad-

monition to heed such distinctions. According to the dis-

sent, we cannot expect “Congress to have explicitly stated

that accrual in §2401(a) starts at the point of final agency

action when §2401(a) is a residual provision” that applies

generally. Post, at 15. But §2401(a)’s text reflects a choice:

Congress took the Little Tucker Act’s plaintiff-focused lim-

itations period—which began when “the right accrued for

which the claim is made,” 36 Stat. 1093—and made it gen-

erally applicable to “every” suit against the United States,

§2401(a); see Part III, supra. Congress could have created

a separate residual provision for suits challenging agency

action and pegged its limitations period to the moment of

finality, using statutes like the Emergency Price Control

Act as a model. It chose a different path.

Undeterred, the dissent insists that by the time §2401(a)

was enacted, Congress had “uniformly expressed [a] judg-

ment” that the limitations period for agency suits should be

defendant-centric and start with finality. Post, at 14.

Again, this argument disregards §2401(a)’s text in favor of

alleged congressional intent divined from other statutes

with very different language. “As this Court has repeatedly

stated, the text of a law controls over purported legislative

intentions unmoored from any statutory text”; the Court

“may not ‘replace the actual text with speculation as to Con-

gress’ intent.’ ” Oklahoma v. Castro-Huerta, 597 U. S. 629,

642 (2022) (quoting Magwood v. Patterson, 561 U. S. 320,

334 (2010)).

In any event, the dissent misunderstands the history.

See post, at 14, and n. 6. (Notably, the Board itself does not

make this argument.) While the Emergency Price Control

Act of 1942 preceded the APA (1946) and §2401(a) (1948),

most finality-focused limitations provisions, like the Hobbs

Act (1950), came later. See post, at 12–13, and n. 5; e.g., 5

U. S. C. §7703(b)(1) (added by 92 Stat. 1143 (1978)). To con-

jure its supposed backdrop, the dissent cites a hodgepodge

Cite as: 603 U. S. ____ (2024) 13

Opinion of the Court

of other pre-1948 statutes that started the clock at finality.

Post, at 14, n. 6. But these statutes generally governed

challenges to orders adjudicating a party’s own rights—

what we today might call “as-applied” challenges. For ex-

ample, 7 U. S. C. §194(a) provided a 30-day limitations pe-

riod for a meatpacker to appeal an order finding that the

packer “has violated or is violating any provision” of the

statute regulating business practices in the meatpacking

industry. 42 Stat. 161–162; see also, e.g., 15 U. S. C. §45(c)

(persons required by a Federal Trade Commission order to

cease a business practice may obtain review of that order

within 60 days). Statutes like these do not contradict the

plaintiff-centric standard accrual rule, because a party sub-

ject to such an order suffers legally cognizable injury at the

same time that the order becomes final.4

Thus, even if the “intention” Congress “expressed” in tex-

tually distinct statutes could overcome §2401(a)’s language,

post, at 14, the dissent’s history would not support its sup-

posed background presumption—that the limitations pe-

riod for facial challenges to regulations begins when the

rule becomes final even if the plaintiff does not yet have a

complete and present cause of action. Instead, the best

course, as always, is to stick with the ordinary meaning of

the text that actually applies, §2401(a). Given the settled,

plaintiff-centric meaning of “right of action first accrues” in

——————

4 There is another reason to doubt the dissent’s supposed background

limitations principle for facial challenges to agency rules: In the 1940s,

“most administrative activity was adjudicative in nature”; agencies

“rarely, if ever, adopted sweeping regulations.” K. Hickman & R. Pierce,

1 Administrative Law §1.3, p. 26 (7th ed. 2024). The dissent errs by ex-

trapolating a general congressional intent that all agency suits be subject

to a finality-based limitations rule based on pre-1948 statutes that gov-

erned a subset of agency actions—adjudicative orders—and were enacted

before facial challenges to regulations became common. It is hard to see

how provisions governing when a party may challenge an order adjudi-

cating her own rights could set any kind of background rule for facial

APA challenges to generally applicable regulations.

14 CORNER POST, INC. v. BOARD OF GOVERNORS, FRS

Opinion of the Court

1948—not to mention in the Little Tucker Act—the dissent

cannot “displace” this “standard rule” with scattered cita-

tions to different, inapposite statutes. Green, 578 U. S., at

554.

2

The standard accrual rule that §2401(a)’s limitations pe-

riod exemplifies is plaintiff specific—even if repose provi-

sions like the Hobbs Act eschew a “challenger-by-

challenger” approach. Brief for Respondent 9. The Board’s

rule would start the limitations period applicable to the

plaintiff not when she had a complete and present cause of

action but when the agency action was final and, theoreti-

cally, some other plaintiff was injured and could have sued.

But §2401(a)’s text focuses on a specific plaintiff: “the com-

plaint is filed within six years after the right of action first

accrues.” (Emphasis added.)

The dissent disputes §2401(a)’s plaintiff specificity by

pointing out that it does not say “the plaintiff ’s right of ac-

tion first accrues.” Post, at 9. True, but it does use the def-

inite article “the” to link “the complaint” with “the right of

action.” So the most natural interpretation is that its limi-

tations period begins when the cause of action associated

with the complaint—the plaintiff ’s cause of action—is com-

plete. And while the dissent cites dictionary definitions of

“accrue” that mention “ ‘a right to sue,’ ” ibid., the statute’s

use of the definite article “the” takes precedence. The Board

and the dissent read §2401(a) as if it says “the complaint is

filed within six years after a right of action [i.e., anyone’s

right of action] first accrues”—which, of course, it does not.

In fact, we have explained that the traditional accrual

rule looks to when “the plaintiff ”—this particular plain-

tiff—“has a complete and present cause of action.” Green,

578 U. S., at 554 (internal quotation marks omitted; em-

phasis added). No precedent suggests that the traditional

rule contemplates the Board’s hypothetical “when could

Cite as: 603 U. S. ____ (2024) 15

Opinion of the Court

someone else have sued” sort of inquiry.5 Rather, the “stat-

ute of limitations begins to run at the time the plaintiff has

the right to apply to the court for relief.” TRW Inc., 534

U. S., at 37 (opinion of Scalia, J.) (internal quotation marks

omitted; emphasis added).6

Importing the Board’s special administrative-law rule

into §2401(a) would create a defendant-focused rule for

agency suits while retaining the traditional challenger-

specific accrual rule for other suits against the United

States. That would give the same statutory text—“right of

action first accrues”—different meanings in different con-

texts, even though those words had a single, well-settled

meaning when Congress enacted §2401(a). See Part III, su-

pra. The Board’s interpretation would thereby decouple the

statute of limitations from any injury “such that the limita-

tions period begins to run before a plaintiff can file a suit”—

for some, but not all, suits governed by §2401(a). Green, 578

U. S., at 554. We “will not infer such an odd result in the

——————

5 While the dissent attempts to cabin our precedent describing the

plaintiff-specific standard accrual rule, nothing in those cases suggests

that the rule is only plaintiff-specific for “plaintiff-specific causes of ac-

tion.” Post, at 10; see, e.g., Gabelli v. SEC, 568 U. S. 442, 448 (2013) (The

“ ‘standard rule’ ” that a “claim accrues ‘when the plaintiff has a complete

and present cause of action’ ” has “governed since the 1830s” and “ap-

pears in dictionaries from the 19th century up until today”). And regard-

less, the dissent’s assertion that “administrative-law claims” are not

“plaintiff specific,” post, at 6, is mystifying given that an APA plaintiff

cannot sue until she suffers an injury, see 5 U. S. C. §702; n. 1, supra. By

emphasizing the plaintiff-agnostic aspects of facial challenges to agency

action, post, at 10, 16–18, the dissent conflates the defendant-focused

substance of an APA claim with its plaintiff-specific cause of action.

6 Moreover, there may be cases where no one is injured and able to sue

at the time of final agency action—e.g., if the agency delays a rule’s en-

forcement—but the Board would still start the clock then. Cf. Toilet

Goods Assn., Inc. v. Gardner, 387 U. S. 158, 162–166 (1967) (agency rule

was final but challenge was not yet ripe). So the Board’s position cannot

be reconciled even with a challenger-agnostic form of the traditional ac-

crual rule, which at least would require that someone have a complete

and present cause of action before the limitations period begins.

16 CORNER POST, INC. v. BOARD OF GOVERNORS, FRS

Opinion of the Court

absence of any such indication in the text of the limitations

period.” Ibid. (internal quotation marks omitted).

B

Turning to §2401(a)’s text, the Board draws significance

from this sentence: “The action of any person under legal

disability or beyond the seas at the time the claim accrues

may be commenced within three years after the disability

ceases.” This language, the Board stresses, “necessarily re-

flects Congress’s understanding that a claim can ‘accrue[]’

for purposes of Section 2401(a)” even when a person is un-

able to sue. Brief for Respondent 24. True enough. It is a

mystery, however, why the Board finds this helpful. The

tolling exception applies when the plaintiff had a complete

and present cause of action after he was injured but his le-

gal disability or absence from the country “prevent[ed] him

from bringing a timely suit.” Goewey v. United States, 222

Ct. Cl. 104, 113, 612 F. 2d 539, 544 (1979) (per curiam).

What matters for accrual is when the plaintiff had “the

right to apply to the court for relief,” not whether some ex-

ternal impediment prevented her from doing so. Wood

§122a, at 684 (emphasis added). The exception, therefore,

sheds no light on when the clock started ticking for Corner

Post—but it does show Congress’s concern for plaintiffs who

might lose a cause of action through no fault of their own.

C

The Board also leans on our precedent—namely, Reading

Co. v. Koons, 271 U. S. 58 (1926), and Crown Coat Front Co.

v. United States, 386 U. S. 503 (1967)—to support its unu-

sual interpretation of “accrual.” See also post, at 6–9

(JACKSON, J., dissenting). Again, the Board comes up

empty.

In Koons, we interpreted the statute of limitations under

the Federal Employers’ Liability Act, which barred actions

Cite as: 603 U. S. ____ (2024) 17

Opinion of the Court

brought more than two years after “ ‘the cause of action ac-

crued.’ ” 271 U. S., at 60 (quoting ch. 149, §6, 35 Stat. 66).

We held that the plaintiff ’s wrongful-death claim accrued

when the employee died, even though the estate’s adminis-

trator was not appointed until later and the administrator

was “the only person authorized by the statute to maintain

the action.” 271 U. S., at 60. The Board interprets Koons

to hold that a claim accrued at a time when no plaintiff

could sue. Thus, the Board reasons, it is consistent with the

meaning of “accrue” to say that Corner Post’s claim “ac-

crued” before it could sue.

The Board’s characterization of Koons is incomplete.

Koons explained that the administrator “acts only for the

benefit of persons specifically designated in the statute,”

and at the “time of death there are identified persons for

whose benefit the liability exists and who can start the ma-

chinery of the law in motion to enforce it, by applying for

the appointment of an administrator.” Id., at 62. If a ben-

eficiary sued in her individual capacity immediately after

the employee’s death, she could amend her suit to describe

herself as “executor or administrator of the decedent.” Ibid.

So “at the death of decedent, there are real parties in inter-

est who may procure the action to be brought.” Id., at 62–

63. While it is true that the claim accrued before any par-

ticular administrator was appointed, the beneficiaries on

whose behalf any administrator would seek relief—the

“real parties in interest”—had the right to “procure the ac-

tion” after the employee died. Given this unique context,

Koons does not contradict the proposition that a claim gen-

erally accrues when the plaintiff has a complete and pre-

sent cause of action.

Nor does Crown Coat. That case concerned a contract

dispute in which a Government contractor sought an equi-

table adjustment to the payment it received. 386 U. S., at

507. The contract required the contractor to present its

claim to the contracting officer and Armed Services Board

18 CORNER POST, INC. v. BOARD OF GOVERNORS, FRS

Opinion of the Court

of Contract Appeals; its claim was “not subject to adjudica-

tion in the courts” until it was denied by the Board. Id., at

511. The question presented was whether §2401(a)’s stat-

ute of limitations began to run when the Board issued its

final determination or at an earlier date. Id., at 507.

We held that the right of action first accrued when the

Board denied the contractor’s claim, because the contractor

had “the right to resort to the courts only upon the making

of that administrative determination.” Id., at 512. We ex-

plained that §2401(a)’s phrase “right of action” refers to “the

right to file a civil action in the courts against the United

States.” Id., at 511. Given the contract’s administrative-

exhaustion requirement, “the contractor’s claim was sub-

ject only to administrative, not judicial, determination in

the first instance”; the plaintiff was “not legally entitled to

ask the courts to adjudicate [its] claim as an original mat-

ter.” Id., at 511–512, 515. So its “claim or right to bring a

civil action against the United States” did not “matur[e]”

until the Board made its final decision. Id., at 514. Crown

Coat thus supports Corner Post: The Court interpreted

§2401(a) to embody the traditional rule that a claim accrues

when the plaintiff has the right to bring suit in court.

Notwithstanding Crown Coat’s holding, the Board and

the dissent try to marshal support from its dicta. The Court

noted that it is hazardous “to define for all purposes when

a ‘cause of action’ first ‘accrues’ ”; it cautioned that those

words should be “ ‘interpreted in the light of the general

purposes of the statute and of its other provisions’ ” and the

“ ‘practical ends’ ” served by time limitations. Id., at 517

(quoting Koons, 271 U. S., at 62). Seizing on this language,

the Board insists that the word “accrues” is a chameleon,

taking on different meanings in different contexts—and in

the administrative-law context, a right of action “accrues”

when a regulation is final, full stop. See also post, at 6

(JACKSON, J., dissenting) (citing Crown Coat for the propo-

sition that “the word ‘accrues’ lacks any fixed meaning”).

Cite as: 603 U. S. ____ (2024) 19

Opinion of the Court

The Board and the dissent vastly overread—in fact, they

misread—Crown Coat. The Court did not suggest that the

same words “right of action first accrues” in a single statute

should mean different things in different contexts—which

is how the Board and the dissent would have us interpret

§2401(a). Rather, the Court made its observation in the

course of distinguishing §2401(a) from a statutory scheme

that departed from the traditional accrual rule.7 386 U. S.,

at 516–517. Moreover, as we have already explained, the

Court interpreted §2401(a)—the very statute at issue in

this case—to start the clock when the plaintiff is “legally

entitled” to file suit. Id., at 515. It also specifically rejected

the Government’s position that the time can run even be-

fore a plaintiff ’s “civil action against the United States ma-

tures.” Id., at 514; see also ibid. (noting that the Govern-

ment’s position “would have unfortunate impact”). We

therefore do not read Crown Coat’s “general purposes” lan-

guage to contradict either its holding or the “ ‘standard rule’

for limitations periods.” Green, 578 U. S., at 554.

Even if Crown Coat’s dicta supported sapping “accrues”

of any “fixed meaning,” post, at 6 (JACKSON, J., dissenting),

this approach has been contravened by the weight of subse-

——————

7 The Court distinguished the limitations scheme at issue in McMahon

v. United States, 342 U. S. 25 (1951). That scheme involved two statutes:

one requiring “actions to be brought within two years after ‘the cause of

action arises’ ” and another “permit[ting] court action only if the claim

ha[d] been administratively disallowed, but set[ting] no time within

which a claim must be presented to the administrative body.” Crown

Coat, 386 U. S., at 516–517. The McMahon Court held that the claim

accrued not after the administrative disallowance that would enable the

plaintiff to sue in court, but at the time of the plaintiff ’s earlier injury.

342 U. S., at 27. Crown Coat attributed this holding to the unique two-

statute context: “[P]ostpon[ing] the usual time of accrual of the cause of

action [i.e., the time of injury] until the date of disallowance” would have

“permit[ted] the claimant to postpone indefinitely the commencement of

the running of the statutory period.” 386 U. S., at 517; see McMahon,

342 U. S., at 27.

20 CORNER POST, INC. v. BOARD OF GOVERNORS, FRS

Opinion of the Court

quent precedent. Our limitations cases from the last sev-

eral decades have instead emphasized the strength of the

traditional, plaintiff-centric accrual rule and demanded

that departures be justified by the statutory “text of the lim-

itations period.” Green, 578 U. S., at 554; see also, e.g., Gra-

ham County, 545 U. S., at 418–419 (explaining that in

Reiter v. Cooper, 507 U. S., at 267, the Court “declin[ed] to

countenance the ‘odd result’ that a federal cause of action

and statute of limitations arise at different times ‘absen[t]

. . . any such indication in the statute’ ”); Bay Area Laundry,

522 U. S., at 201.

D

Finally, the Board raises policy concerns. It emphasizes

that agencies and regulated parties need the finality of a 6-

year cutoff. After that point, facial challenges impose sig-

nificant burdens on agencies and courts. Moreover, if they

are successful, such challenges upset the reliance interests

of the agencies and regulated parties that have long oper-

ated under existing rules. See also post, at 18–24

(JACKSON, J., dissenting).

“[P]leas of administrative inconvenience . . . never ‘justify

departing from the statute’s clear text.’ ” Niz-Chavez v.

Garland, 593 U. S. 155, 169 (2021) (quoting Pereira v. Ses-

sions, 585 U. S 198, 217 (2018)). Congress could have cho-

sen different language in §2401(a) or created a general stat-

ute of repose for agencies. It did not.

That is enough to dispatch the Board’s policy arguments,

but we add that its concerns are overstated. Put aside facial

challenges like Corner Post’s. Regulated parties “may al-

ways assail a regulation as exceeding the agency’s statutory

authority in enforcement proceedings against them” or “pe-

tition an agency to reconsider a longstanding rule and then

appeal the denial of that petition.” Herr, 803 F. 3d, at 821–

822. So even on the Board’s preferred interpretation, “[a]

federal regulation that makes it six years without being

Cite as: 603 U. S. ____ (2024) 21

Opinion of the Court

contested does not enter a promised land free from legal

challenge.” Id., at 821. Likewise, the dissent imagines an

alternative reality of total finality that simply does not ex-

ist. See post, at 21–23.

Moreover, the opportunity to challenge agency action

does not mean that new plaintiffs will always win or that

courts and agencies will need to expend significant re-

sources to address each new suit. Given that major regula-

tions are typically challenged immediately, courts enter-

taining later challenges often will be able to rely on binding

Supreme Court or circuit precedent. If neither this Court

nor the relevant court of appeals has weighed in, a court

may be able to look to other circuits for persuasive author-

ity. And if no other authority upholding the agency action

is persuasive, the court may have more work to do, but

there is all the more reason for it to consider the merits of

the newcomer’s challenge.8

Turning to the other side of the policy ledger, the Board

slights the arguments supporting the plaintiff-centric ac-

crual rule. In addition to being compelled by §2401(a)’s

text, this rule vindicates the APA’s “basic presumption”

that anyone injured by agency action should have access to

judicial review. Abbott Labs., 387 U. S., at 140. It also re-

spects our “deep-rooted historic tradition that everyone

——————

8 It also may be that some injuries can only be suffered by entities that

existed at the time of the challenged action. Corner Post suggests that

only parties that existed during the rulemaking process can claim to

have been injured by a “procedural” shortcoming, like a deficient notice

of proposed rulemaking. Reply Brief 18–19. We need not resolve that

issue here because there is no dispute that Corner Post proffered an in-

jury that does not depend on its having existed when the Board promul-

gated Regulation II: the rule’s alleged conflict with the Durbin Amend-

ment. The dissent’s observation that “the claims in this case are

procedural,” post, at 18, is confused. Even if some of Corner Post’s claims

might be procedural, its central claim—that the regulation violates the

statute—is a prototypical substantive challenge.

22 CORNER POST, INC. v. BOARD OF GOVERNORS, FRS

Opinion of the Court

should have his own day in court.” Richards v. Jefferson

County, 517 U. S. 793, 798 (1996) (internal quotation marks

omitted). Under the Board’s finality rule, only those fortu-

nate enough to suffer an injury within six years of a rule’s

promulgation may bring an APA suit. Everyone else—no

matter how serious the injury or how illegal the rule—has

no recourse.9

The dissent also raises a host of policy arguments mas-

querading as “matter[s] of congressional intent.” Post, at

18–24. And it warns that today’s opinion will “devastate

the functioning of the Federal Government.” Post, at 23.

This claim is baffling—indeed, bizarre—in a case about a

statute of limitations. The Solicitor General, whose man-

date is to protect the interests of the Federal Government,

comes nowhere close to suggesting that a plaintiff-centric

interpretation of §2401(a) spells the end of the United

States as we know it. Perhaps the dissent believes that the

Code of Federal Regulations is full of substantively illegal

regulations vulnerable to meritorious challenges; or per-

haps it believes that meritless challenges will flood federal

courts that are too incompetent to reject them. We have

more confidence in both the Executive Branch and the Ju-

diciary. But we do agree with the dissent on one point:

“ ‘[T]he ball is in Congress’ court.’ ” Post, at 24 (quoting

Ledbetter v. Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co., 550 U. S. 618, 661

(2007) (Ginsburg, J., dissenting)). Section 2401(a) is 75

years old. If it is a poor fit for modern APA litigation, the

——————

9 Corner Post has no other way to obtain meaningful review of Regula-

tion II. Because Regulation II does not directly regulate it, it will never

be subject to enforcement actions in which it may challenge the rule’s

legality. See n. 2, supra. Nor is the ability to petition the Board for rule-

making to change Regulation II a sufficient substitute for de novo judi-

cial review of its lawfulness: The agency’s “discretionary decision to de-

cline to take new action” would be subject only to “deferential judicial

review.” PDR Network, LLC v. Carlton & Harris Chiropractic, Inc., 588

U. S. 1, 25 (2019) (KAVANAUGH, J., concurring in judgment).

Cite as: 603 U. S. ____ (2024) 23

Opinion of the Court

solution is for Congress to enact a distinct statute of limita-

tions for the APA.

* * *

An APA claim does not accrue for purposes of §2401(a)’s

6-year statute of limitations until the plaintiff is injured by

final agency action. Because Corner Post filed suit within

six years of its injury, §2401(a) did not bar its challenge to

Regulation II. We reverse the Eighth Circuit’s judgment to

the contrary and remand the case for further proceedings

consistent with this opinion.

It is so ordered.

Cite as: 603 U. S. ____ (2024) 1

KAVANAUGH, J., concurring

SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES

_________________

No. 22–1008

_________________

CORNER POST, INC., PETITIONER v. BOARD

OF GOVERNORS OF THE FEDERAL

RESERVE SYSTEM

ON WRIT OF CERTIORARI TO THE UNITED STATES COURT OF

APPEALS FOR THE EIGHTH CIRCUIT

[July 1, 2024]

JUSTICE KAVANAUGH, concurring.

I agree with the Court that a claim under the

Administrative Procedure Act accrues when the plaintiff is

injured by the challenged agency rule. I also agree with the

Court that today’s decision vindicates the APA’s “ ‘basic

presumption’ that anyone injured by agency action should

have access to judicial review.” Ante, at 21 (quoting Abbott

Laboratories v. Gardner, 387 U. S. 136, 140 (1967)).

I write separately to explain a crucial additional point:

Corner Post can obtain relief in this case only because the

APA authorizes vacatur of agency rules.

Corner Post challenged an agency rule that regulates the

fees that banks may charge. But Corner Post is not a bank

regulated by the rule. Rather, it is a business that must

pay the fees charged by the banks who are regulated by the

rule. Corner Post complains that the agency rule allows

banks to charge fees that are unreasonably high.

Corner Post’s suit is a typical APA suit. An unregulated

plaintiff such as Corner Post often will sue under the APA

to challenge an allegedly unlawful agency rule that

regulates others but also has adverse downstream effects

on the plaintiff. In those cases, an injunction barring the

agency from enforcing the rule against the plaintiff would

not help the plaintiff, because the plaintiff is not regulated

2 CORNER POST, INC. v. BOARD OF GOVERNORS, FRS

KAVANAUGH, J., concurring

by the rule in the first place. Instead, the unregulated

plaintiff can obtain meaningful relief only if the APA

authorizes vacatur of the agency rule, thereby remedying

the adverse downstream effects of the rule on the

unregulated plaintiff.

The APA empowers federal courts to “hold unlawful and

set aside agency action” that, as relevant here, is arbitrary

and capricious or is contrary to law. 5 U. S. C. §706(2). The

Federal Government and the federal courts have long

understood §706(2) to authorize vacatur of unlawful agency

rules, including in suits by unregulated plaintiffs who are

adversely affected by an agency’s regulation of others.

Recently, the Government has advanced a far-reaching

argument that the APA does not allow vacatur. See Brief

for Respondent 42; Brief for United States in United States

v. Texas, O. T. 2022, No. 22–58, pp. 40–44. Invoking a few

law review articles, the Government contends that the

APA’s authorization to “set aside” agency action does not

allow vacatur, but instead permits a court only to enjoin an

agency from enforcing a rule against the plaintiff.

If the Government were correct on that point, Corner Post

could not obtain any relief in this suit because, to reiterate,

Corner Post is not regulated by the rule to begin with. And

the APA would supply no remedy for most other

unregulated but adversely affected parties who

traditionally have brought, and regularly still bring, APA

suits challenging agency rules.

The Government’s position would revolutionize long-

settled administrative law—shutting the door on entire

classes of everyday administrative law cases. The

Government’s newly minted position is both novel and

wrong. It “disregards a lot of history and a lot of law.” M.

Sohoni, The Past and Future of Universal Vacatur, 133

Yale L. J. 2305, 2311 (2024).

The APA authorizes vacatur of agency rules; therefore,

Corner Post can obtain relief in this case.

Cite as: 603 U. S. ____ (2024) 3

KAVANAUGH, J., concurring

I

Corner Post owns a truck stop and convenience store in

rural North Dakota. When a customer uses a debit card at

its business, Corner Post must pay a fee (known as an

interchange fee) to the bank that processes the customer’s

transaction.

As the Court explains, the Dodd-Frank Act requires the

Federal Reserve Board to “prescribe regulations” for

assessing whether interchange fees are “reasonable and

proportional to the cost incurred” in processing a debit-card

transaction. 15 U. S. C. §1693o–2(a)(3)(A); see ante, at 2.

Pursuant to the Act, the Board has issued a rule that sets a

maximum fee of about 21 cents per transaction. 76 Fed.

Reg. 43394, 43420 (2011). For convenience, I will refer to

that rule as the fee rule.

Corner Post is not subject to the fee rule. Corner Post

does not charge interchange fees to its customers, and

Corner Post lacks any authority to set those fees. But

because Corner Post must pay the fees to banks, it is

affected by the agency’s rule setting the maximum fees that

banks may charge. In particular, Corner Post would be

harmed by a fee rule that allows unreasonably high fees

and would benefit from a fee rule that more strictly limits

the fees that banks may charge.

The APA authorizes any person who has been “adversely

affected or aggrieved” by a “final agency action” to obtain

judicial review in federal district court. 5 U. S. C. §§702,

704. In an APA suit, the district court “shall” “hold

unlawful and set aside agency action” that is “arbitrary,

capricious, an abuse of discretion, or otherwise not in

accordance with law.” §706(2)(A).

Corner Post filed this APA suit because it believes that

the fee rule allows banks to charge unreasonably high fees.

In particular, Corner Post argues that the Board’s 21-cent

fee cap is unreasonably high and therefore arbitrary and

capricious under the APA. Corner Post asked the Federal

4 CORNER POST, INC. v. BOARD OF GOVERNORS, FRS

KAVANAUGH, J., concurring

District Court to vacate the fee rule on the ground that the

Board must more strictly regulate bank fees (in other

words, that the Board must set a lower cap on the fees that

banks may charge).

Corner Post would not be able to obtain relief in its

lawsuit through any remedy other than vacatur. Corner

Post could not obtain relief through an injunction

forbidding the Board from enforcing the rule against it.

That is because the rule does not regulate Corner Post and

therefore is not and cannot be enforced against Corner Post

in the first place. Nor could Corner Post secure relief

through an injunction against banks; the APA does not

authorize suits against private parties.

Corner Post instead needs a remedy that acts directly on

the fee rule—specifically, by vacating it. Indeed, without

vacatur, it is hard to imagine what kind of lawsuit Corner

Post could file. At oral argument, the Government

ultimately seemed to acknowledge that reality and the

necessity of the vacatur remedy if Corner Post is to obtain

any relief in this case. See Tr. of Oral Arg. 76 (“it’s possible

that the only way to provide this party relief would be

vacatur”).1

II

For Corner Post to obtain relief, an important question

therefore is whether the APA authorizes vacatur of

unlawful agency actions, including agency rules.

The answer is yes—in light of the text and history of the

——————

1 A plaintiff could not challenge the fee rule by suing to “compel agency

action” that is “unlawfully withheld or unreasonably delayed.” 5 U. S. C.

§706(1). The remedy of compelling agency action applies if an agency

fails to issue a required rule. But here, the Board issued a rule, and the

question is whether the rule set a reasonable fee cap. It would therefore

make little sense to say that the fee rule has been “withheld” or

“delayed.” Indeed, it seems that §706(1) has almost never been used to

challenge extant agency rules, as opposed to challenging the absence of

required rules.

Cite as: 603 U. S. ____ (2024) 5

KAVANAUGH, J., concurring

APA, the longstanding and settled precedent adhering to

that text and history, and the radical consequences for

administrative law and individual liberty that would ensue

if vacatur were suddenly no longer available.

The text and history of the APA authorize vacatur. The

text directs courts to “set aside” unlawful agency actions. 5

U. S. C. §706(2)(A). When Congress enacted the APA in

1946, the phrase “set aside” meant “cancel, annul, or

revoke.” Black’s Law Dictionary 1612 (3d ed. 1933); see also

Black’s Law Dictionary 1537 (4th ed. 1951) (same);

Bouvier’s Law Dictionary 1103 (W. Baldwin ed. 1926) (“To

annul; to make void; as, to set aside an award”). At that

time, it was common for an appellate court that reversed

the decision of a lower court to direct that the lower court’s

“judgment” be “set aside,” meaning vacated. E.g., Shawkee

Mfg. Co. v. Hartford-Empire Co., 322 U. S. 271, 274 (1944).

Likewise, Congress used the phrase “set aside” in many

pre-APA statutes that plainly contemplated the vacatur of

agency actions.2

The APA incorporated that common and

contemporaneous meaning of “set aside.” When a federal

court sets aside an agency action, the federal court vacates

that order—in much the same way that an appellate court

vacates the judgment of a trial court.

The APA prescribes the same “set aside” remedy for all

categories of “agency action,” including agency adjudicative

orders and agency rules. §§551(13), 706(2). When a federal

court concludes that an agency adjudicative order is

——————

2 See, e.g., Hepburn Act of 1906, ch. 3591, §5, 34 Stat. 584, 592 (courts

could “enjoin, set aside, annul, or suspend any order or requirement of ”

the Interstate Commerce Commission); Securities Exchange Act of 1934,

ch. 404, §25(a), 48 Stat. 881, 902 (authorizing courts “to affirm, modify,

and enforce or set aside [an] order” of the SEC); Federal Food, Drug, and

Cosmetic Act of 1938, ch. 675, §701(f )(3), 52 Stat. 1040, 1055–1056

(authorizing a court to “affirm the order” of the FDA, “or to set it aside

in whole or in part, temporarily or permanently”).

6 CORNER POST, INC. v. BOARD OF GOVERNORS, FRS

KAVANAUGH, J., concurring

unlawful, the court must vacate that order. Around the

time when Congress enacted the APA, the phrase “set

aside” the agency order meant vacate that order. See, e.g.,

United States v. L. A. Tucker Truck Lines, Inc., 344 U. S.

33, 38 (1952). And because federal courts must “set aside”

agency rules in the same way that they set aside agency

orders, successful challenges to agency rules must award

the same remedy. See M. Sohoni, The Power To Vacate a

Rule, 88 Geo. Wash. L. Rev. 1121, 1131–1134 (2020). In

short, to “set aside” a rule is to vacate it.

Longstanding precedent reinforces the text. Over the

decades, this Court has affirmed countless decisions that

vacated agency actions, including agency rules. See, e.g.,

Department of Homeland Security v. Regents of Univ. of

Cal., 591 U. S. 1, 36, and n. 7 (2020); Whitman v. American

Trucking Assns., Inc., 531 U. S. 457, 486 (2001); Board of

Governors, FRS v. Dimension Financial Corp., 474 U. S.

361, 364–365 (1986). Those decisions vacated the

challenged agency rules rather than merely providing

injunctive relief that enjoined enforcement of the rules

against the specific plaintiffs. See, e.g., Regents of Univ. of

Cal., 591 U. S., at 9 (holding that the rescission of a major

federal program “must be vacated”). And the D. C.

Circuit—which handles the lion’s share of the country’s

administrative law cases—has likewise long recognized

vacatur as the usual relief when a court holds that agency

rules are unlawful. See, e.g., National Mining Assn. v.

United States Army Corps of Engineers, 145 F. 3d 1399,

1409 (CADC 1998). In the words of the D. C. Circuit:

“When a reviewing court determines that agency

regulations are unlawful, the ordinary result is that the

rules are vacated—not that their application to the

individual petitioners is proscribed.” Harmon v.

Thornburgh, 878 F. 2d 484, 495, n. 21 (CADC 1989).

Importantly, as Corner Post’s lawsuit shows, the

availability of vacatur determines not only the extent of the

Cite as: 603 U. S. ____ (2024) 7

KAVANAUGH, J., concurring

relief that courts may award in APA suits by regulated

parties, but also whether unregulated parties can obtain

relief under the APA at all. In most APA litigation brought

by unregulated but adversely affected parties, a plaintiff

can obtain relief only through vacatur of the adverse agency

action. Prohibiting courts from vacating agency actions

would essentially close the courthouse doors on those

unregulated plaintiffs—a radical change to administrative

law that would insulate a broad swath of agency actions

from any judicial review.3

Vacatur is therefore essential to fulfill the “basic

presumption of judicial review” for parties who have been

“adversely affected or aggrieved” by federal agency action.

Abbott Laboratories v. Gardner, 387 U. S. 136, 140 (1967)

(quotation marks omitted). The Court has long applied that

“strong presumption” unless there is a “persuasive reason

to believe” that Congress intended to bar review of certain

actions. Bowen v. Michigan Academy of Family Physicians,

476 U. S. 667, 670 (1986) (quotation marks omitted); see

also, e.g., Weyerhaeuser Co. v. United States Fish and

Wildlife Serv., 586 U. S. 9, 22–23 (2018); Sackett v. EPA,

566 U. S. 120, 128–131 (2012). Eliminating the vacatur

remedy would contravene the strong Abbott Laboratories

presumption by insulating many agency rules from

meaningful judicial review (which perhaps is the

Government’s motivation for its recent campaign).

The absence of vacatur would also create an asymmetry.

For example, without the vacatur remedy, a bank could still

challenge the Board’s regulation of interchange fees in a

suit for injunctive relief. The bank might argue that the fee

cap is too low and that the Board should be enjoined from

enforcing the cap against the bank—a result that would

——————

3 Most of the recent academic and judicial discussion of this issue has

addressed suits by regulated parties. That discussion has largely missed

a major piece of the issue—suits by unregulated but adversely affected

parties.

8 CORNER POST, INC. v. BOARD OF GOVERNORS, FRS

KAVANAUGH, J., concurring

allow the bank to charge higher fees. But because Corner

Post is not subject to the Board’s regulation, it could not

contend that the fee cap is too high and that the Board

should be enjoined from keeping the cap so high. So Corner

Post would be precluded from suing even though the

allegedly unlawful regulation is causing it monetary

injury.4

III

Eliminating vacatur as a remedy would terminate entire

classes of administrative litigation that have traditionally

been brought by unregulated parties.5

One example is the wide range of administrative law

suits in which businesses target the allegedly unlawful

under-regulation of other businesses, such as their

——————

4 Absent vacatur, the remedy for a regulated plaintiff would not

automatically extend to other regulated parties. For example, if a

district court issued an injunction that prevents the Board from

enforcing the fee rule against one bank, the Board would still be able to

enforce the fee rule against other banks. For those other banks to obtain

the same relief, they would need to either (i) file similar APA suits and

request similar injunctions or (ii) wait and see if the fee rule is

temporarily enjoined or held unlawful by either the relevant court of

appeals or this Court. In that respect, eliminating the vacatur remedy

would delay relief for many regulated parties. That said, in light of

vertical stare decisis, the consequences for regulated parties of

eliminating vacatur would not be as severe as the consequences for

unregulated parties. See Labrador v. Poe, 601 U. S. ___, ___ (2024)

(KAVANAUGH, J., concurring in grant of stay) (slip op., at 8–9); cf. W.

Baude & S. Bray, Proper Parties, Proper Relief, 137 Harv. L. Rev. 153,

183 (2023) (when the Supreme Court “holds a statute to be

unconstitutional or a rule to be unlawful, it may be as good as vacated”).

5 This opinion focuses primarily on administrative litigation that arises

under the APA. But Congress has also enacted special statutory review

provisions that similarly authorize federal courts to “set aside” specific

agency actions. See, e.g., 15 U. S. C. §78y(a) (orders of the SEC); 16

U. S. C. §825l(b) (FERC); 28 U. S. C. §2342 (the FCC, the Atomic Energy

Commission, and other agencies). By arguing that the APA’s use of “set

aside” does not authorize vacatur, the Government implies that vacatur

is also unavailable under those similar review provisions.

Cite as: 603 U. S. ____ (2024) 9

KAVANAUGH, J., concurring

competitors. For example, in National Credit Union

Administration v. First National Bank & Trust Co., several

banks challenged the decision of a federal agency to approve

a series of amendments to the charter of a federal credit

union, a competitor of the banks. 522 U. S. 479, 484–485

(1998). The amendments were controversial because they

expanded the markets in which the credit union could

operate, thereby increasing competition against the banks.

The Court held that the banks could sue under the APA to

challenge the agency’s approval of those charter

amendments, and also that the agency’s approval of the

amendments was unlawful. Of course, the District Court

could remedy the banks’ harm only by vacating the

approval of the amendments. In short, for the plaintiff in

First National Bank to have a remedy, the APA must have

authorized vacatur.

Those competitor suits are ubiquitous in administrative

law. Some plaintiffs have challenged the favorable

classification of a competitor’s drugs or medical products,

see, e.g., American Bioscience, Inc. v. Thompson, 269 F. 3d

1077 (CADC 2001); a research guideline that increased

competition for federal grants, see, e.g., Sherley v. Sebelius,

610 F. 3d 69 (CADC 2010); and a competitor’s exemption

from a generally applicable rule, see, e.g., Regular Common

Carrier Conference v. United States, 793 F. 2d 376 (CADC

1986) (arose under the review provision in 28 U. S. C.

§2342). The Court has consistently held that the plaintiffs

incurring those injuries are “adversely affected or aggrieved

by agency action” within the meaning of the APA. 5 U. S. C.

§702; see First Nat. Bank, 522 U. S., at 488, 499; Investment

Company Institute v. Camp, 401 U. S. 617, 618–621 (1971);

Association of Data Processing Service Organizations, Inc.

v. Camp, 397 U. S. 150, 157 (1970). But such competitor

suits would be largely if not entirely eradicated if the APA

and similar statutory review provisions did not authorize

vacatur.

10 CORNER POST, INC. v. BOARD OF GOVERNORS, FRS

KAVANAUGH, J., concurring

Suits where one business challenges the under-

regulation of another go well beyond competitor suits. One

example is the Court’s landmark decision in Motor Vehicle

Manufacturers Association of United States, Inc. v. State

Farm Mutual Automobile Insurance Co., 463 U. S. 29

(1983). That case arose when several insurance companies

challenged a federal agency’s rescission of safety standards

for new motor vehicles. The Court held that the agency’s

decision to rescind those safety standards was subject to the

same degree of judicial review as the decision to issue the

standards in the first place. See id., at 40–44. The Court

also concluded that the rescission of the safety standards

was arbitrary and capricious. See id., at 44–57.

At no point in that landmark opinion on the judicial

review of agency actions did the Court state (or need to

state) the obvious: Because the agency did not regulate the

insurers themselves, the insurers could obtain relief from

the downstream effects of the agency’s rescission of the

safety standards only if the insurers could obtain vacatur of

that rescission. The Court did not dwell on that remedial

point because the availability of vacatur was presumably

obvious to all involved. Only now—some 40 years later—

does the Government imply that the premise of State Farm

was mistaken.

The Government’s new position would also largely

eliminate the common form of environmental litigation

where private citizens sue a federal agency based on the

externalities that an agency action is likely to produce.

Litigation often arises when a federal agency approves a

development project with potential effects on the

environment or on other property owners. Examples

include the construction of a new pipeline, see Delaware

Riverkeeper Network v. FERC, 753 F. 3d 1304 (CADC

2014), or the mining of federal land, see WildEarth

Guardians v. Jewell, 738 F. 3d 298 (CADC 2013). In those

cases, the plaintiff generally cannot bring an APA suit

Cite as: 603 U. S. ____ (2024) 11

KAVANAUGH, J., concurring

against the developer, who is usually a private party. See

§704 (authorizing review of “agency action”). Instead, the

plaintiff typically sues the federal agency that approved the

development and asks a federal court to vacate that

approval.

Some of those suits proceed under the APA; others

proceed under federal statutory review provisions that

similarly authorize courts to “set aside” agency action. See,

e.g., 15 U. S. C. §717r(b) (Natural Gas Act); 16 U. S. C.

§825l(b) (Federal Power Act). Regardless, all of those suits

depend on the availability of vacatur.

Many APA suits similarly challenge federal emissions

limits or efficiency standards for cars, trucks, and other

sources of pollution. See, e.g., American Public Gas Assn.

v. Department of Energy, 72 F. 4th 1324 (CADC 2023).

When a plaintiff alleges that an emissions limit does too

little to stop third parties from polluting the environment,

the plaintiff cannot bring an APA suit against the third

party. Rather, the plaintiff must sue the agency that

enacted the emissions limit. If the vacatur remedy were

unavailable, the agency that enacted the emissions limit

would never face litigation from unregulated parties

seeking stricter limits; the agency could face litigation only

from regulated parties seeking looser limits.

Workers and their unions also regularly challenge agency

rules that rescind or loosen federal workplace safety

standards. See, e.g., Transportation Div. of Int’l Assn. of

Sheet Metal, Air, Rail, and Transp. Workers v. Federal

Railroad Admin., 988 F. 3d 1170 (CA9 2021) (railroad

industry); United Steel v. Mine Safety and Health Admin.,

925 F. 3d 1279 (CADC 2019) (mining industry). Those suits

often arise under statutory review provisions that, like the

APA, authorize courts to “set aside” agency actions. See,

e.g., 28 U. S. C. §2342(7) (railroad industry); 30 U. S. C.

§816(a)(1) (mining industry). And the suits all depend on

the availability of vacatur as a remedy. In particular, the

12 CORNER POST, INC. v. BOARD OF GOVERNORS, FRS

KAVANAUGH, J., concurring

workers may prevail in those suits only through vacatur of

the agency rules. So if “set aside” did not mean vacate,

workplace safety rules could be challenged from only one

direction—by employers who want less regulation, not by

workers who want more regulation.

The examples of standard agency litigation that depend

on the availability of vacatur are seemingly endless.

Vacatur was essential when American workers challenged

a Department of Labor rule that unlawfully allowed

employers to access inexpensive foreign labor, with the

effect of lowering American workers’ wages. See Mendoza

v. Perez, 754 F. 3d 1002 (CADC 2014). Vacatur was

essential when a county challenged the Department of the

Interior’s allowance for Indian gaming on nearby land. See

Butte Cty. v. Hogen, 613 F. 3d 190 (CADC 2010). Vacatur

is often essential when a State challenges an agency action

that does not regulate the State directly but has adverse

downstream effects on the State. See, e.g., Department of

Commerce v. New York, 588 U. S. 752 (2019).6

I will stop there. But to be clear, I could go on all day

(and then some) listing cases where vacatur was necessary

for an unregulated but adversely affected plaintiff in an

——————

6 In some circumstances, usually when a court rules that an agency

must provide additional explanation for the challenged agency action or

must regulate some entity or activity more extensively, some courts have

remanded to the agency without vacatur. Remand without vacatur is

essentially a shorthand way of vacating a rule and staying the vacatur

pending the agency’s completion of an additional required action, such

as providing additional explanation or issuing a new, more stringent

rule. I do not address that practice here, which has been the subject of

some debate. See Checkosky v. SEC, 23 F. 3d 452, 462–465 (CADC 1994)

(Silberman, J.) (explaining the practice); see also id., at 493, n. 37

(Randolph, J.) (noting that courts and parties alternatively may avoid

any “difficulties” associated with vacatur by “a stay of the mandate”).

Importantly for present purposes, the view that vacatur is “authorized

by the APA is a basic proposition shared by both sides of the debate over

remand without vacatur.” M. Sohoni, The Power To Vacate a Rule, 88

Geo. Wash. L. Rev. 1121, 1178 (2020).

Cite as: 603 U. S. ____ (2024) 13

KAVANAUGH, J., concurring

APA suit to obtain relief.

IV

Against all of that text, history, precedent, and common

sense, the Government has recently rejected the

straightforward and long-accepted conclusion that the

phrase “set aside” in the APA authorizes vacatur. Instead,

the Government contends that plaintiffs harmed by agency

rules must seek injunctions against enforcement of those

rules. See Brief for United States in United States v. Texas,

O. T. 2022, No. 22–58, pp. 40–44. One effect of the

Government’s new position would be to insulate many

agency rules from meaningful judicial review in suits by

unregulated but adversely affected parties.

To support its new position, the Government has offered

an array of arguments.

First, the Government says that vacatur of a federal rule

is akin to a nationwide injunction—in other words, an

injunction that prohibits the Government from enforcing a

law against anyone, not just the parties in a specific case.

The Government has contended that equitable relief is

ordinarily limited to the parties in a specific case.

Therefore, nationwide injunctions would be permissible

only if Congress authorized them.

But in the APA, Congress did in fact depart from that

baseline and authorize vacatur. As noted above, the text of

the APA expressly authorizes federal courts to “set aside”

agency action. 5 U. S. C. §706(2). “Unlike judicial review

of statutes, in which courts enter judgments and decrees

only against litigants, the APA” and related statutory

review provisions “go further by empowering the judiciary

to act directly against the challenged agency action.” J.

Mitchell, The Writ-of-Erasure Fallacy, 104 Va. L. Rev. 933,

1012 (2018). The text of §706(2) directs federal courts to

vacate agency actions in the same way that appellate courts

vacate the judgments of trial courts. See M. Sohoni, The

14 CORNER POST, INC. v. BOARD OF GOVERNORS, FRS

KAVANAUGH, J., concurring

Power To Vacate a Rule, 88 Geo. Wash. L. Rev. 1121, 1131–

1134 (2020). The text of the APA therefore authorizes

vacatur of agency rules. By contrast, Congress has rarely

authorized courts to act directly on federal statutes or to

prohibit their enforcement against nonparties. As a result,

background equitable principles may control in those non-

APA cases.

Second, the Government argues that the remedies

available in APA suits are not governed by §706(2), which

directs courts to “set aside” agency action, but instead are

governed by §703. That argument is weak. Section 703

determines the “form of proceeding” for suits under the APA

and identifies the federal actors against whom an “action

for judicial review may be brought.”7 But “no court has ever

held that Section 703 implicitly delimits the kinds of

remedies available in an APA suit.” M. Sohoni, The Past

and Future of Universal Vacatur, 133 Yale L. J. 2305, 2337

(2024). For good reason: As explained above, the ordinary

meaning of “set aside” in §706(2) has long been understood

to refer to the remedy of vacatur. The conclusion that §706

governs remedies is also supported by §706(1), which

authorizes courts to “compel agency action unlawfully

withheld or unreasonably delayed”—unmistakably a

remedy. By contrast, the text of §703 “speaks to venue and

forms of proceedings, not to remedies, and regardless, its

——————

7 Section 703 states: “The form of proceeding for judicial review is the

special statutory review proceeding relevant to the subject matter in a

court specified by statute or, in the absence or inadequacy thereof, any

applicable form of legal action, including actions for declaratory

judgments or writs of prohibitory or mandatory injunction or habeas

corpus, in a court of competent jurisdiction. If no special statutory review

proceeding is applicable, the action for judicial review may be brought

against the United States, the agency by its official title, or the

appropriate officer. Except to the extent that prior, adequate, and

exclusive opportunity for judicial review is provided by law, agency

action is subject to judicial review in civil or criminal proceedings for

judicial enforcement.”

Cite as: 603 U. S. ____ (2024) 15

KAVANAUGH, J., concurring

listing of the available forms of proceedings is

nonexhaustive.” Sohoni, The Past and Future of Universal

Vacatur, 133 Yale L. J., at 2337.

To support its novel reliance on §703, the Government

suggests that the phrase “set aside” in §706(2) may refer to

a “rule of decision directing the reviewing court to disregard

unlawful” agency actions in “resolving the case before it,”

rather than the remedy of vacatur. Brief for United States

in United States v. Texas, O. T. 2022, No. 22–58, at 40. But

the leading cases and legal dictionaries at the time of the

APA’s enactment did not use “set aside” in that manner.

They instead referred to setting aside (that is, vacating)

judgments—a meaning entirely consistent with the APA’s

authorization to vacate agency actions. See supra, at 5.

The Government’s position instead relies on some colloquial

uses of the phrase “set aside” in federal constitutional

challenges to state statutes. See, e.g., Brief for United

States in United States v. Texas, O. T. 2022, No. 22–58,

at 41 (citing Mallinckrodt Chemical Works v. Missouri ex

rel. Jones, 238 U. S. 41, 54 (1915)); see also Mallinckrodt,

238 U. S., at 54 (referring to “one who seeks to set aside a

state statute as repugnant to the Federal Constitution”).

That is a thin basis for suddenly prohibiting entire

categories of long-common administrative litigation.

Third, the Government seizes on legislative history to

argue that Congress did not expect the APA to create new

remedies against unlawful agency actions. But vacatur was

not a new remedy. On the contrary, several pre-APA

statutes authorized courts to “set aside” specific kinds of

agency actions, such as orders by the Interstate Commerce

Commission. See n. 2, supra. This Court correctly

understood those statutes to authorize vacatur. For

example, in litigation regarding the regulation of railroads,

this Court held that an unlawful ICC order was “void.”

United States v. Baltimore & Ohio R. Co., 293 U. S. 454, 464

(1935). Similar examples abound. See, e.g., Sohoni, The

16 CORNER POST, INC. v. BOARD OF GOVERNORS, FRS

KAVANAUGH, J., concurring

Past and Future of Universal Vacatur, 133 Yale L. J., at

2329–2335 (collecting cases). By similarly authorizing

courts to “set aside” agency actions, the APA likewise

authorized vacatur. §706(2).

Moreover, although vacatur was not as common in the

years surrounding the APA’s enactment, there is a simple

explanation for that: Courts had few occasions to set aside

agency rules before this Court’s 1967 decision in Abbott

Laboratories v. Gardner, which significantly expanded the

opportunities for facial, pre-enforcement review of agency

rules. 387 U. S. 136, 139–141. Indeed, it was not until

Abbott Laboratories that “preenforcement review of agency

rules” became “the norm, not the exception.” S. Breyer &

R. Stewart, Administrative Law and Regulatory Policy

1137 (2d ed. 1985).

The Government’s current position on vacatur would

de facto overrule Abbott Laboratories as to suits by

unregulated parties. Not surprisingly, the Government’s

current position on vacatur sounds very similar to Justice

Fortas’ dissent in a companion case to Abbott Laboratories,

where he lamented that in the wake of those decisions, a

court would be able to “suspend the operation of regulations

in their entirety.” Gardner v. Toilet Goods Assn., Inc., 387

U. S. 167, 175 (1967). In any event, to the extent that the

Government worries that vacatur of rules (as opposed to

orders) is more common today than it was in the 1950s, the

Government’s true grievance is with Abbott Laboratories.

Fourth, the Government objects to the real-world

consequences that occur when a federal district court

wrongly vacates a lawful rule. I appreciate that concern.

But federal law already gives the Government tools to

mitigate those consequences—if not avoid them altogether.

When the Government believes that a district court has

erroneously vacated a rule (or erroneously issued a

preliminary injunction against a rule), the Government

may promptly seek a stay in the relevant federal court of

Cite as: 603 U. S. ____ (2024) 17

KAVANAUGH, J., concurring

appeals. To determine whether to grant a stay, the court of

appeals may then promptly review the Government’s

likelihood of success on the merits, among other factors. If

the court of appeals denies a stay, the Government may

seek further review in this Court. See Labrador v. Poe, 601

U. S. ___, ___ (2024) (KAVANAUGH, J., concurring in grant

of stay) (slip op., at 2). The Government’s frustration with

the occasional incorrect district court vacatur of an agency

rule is understandable. But especially given the readily

accessible and regularly utilized procedures for staying a

district court’s vacatur,8 we should not overreact by entirely

gutting vacatur as a remedy and thereby barring

unregulated but adversely affected parties from bringing

APA suits.

Not surprisingly, when asked at oral argument in this

case about the extraordinary consequences of its new no-

vacatur position, the Government seemed to backpedal and

hedge a bit. The Government suggested that vacatur may

actually still be appropriate if it is “the only way to give the

party before the court relief.” Tr. of Oral Arg. 76. The

Government also said that “it’s possible that the only way

to provide” Corner Post “relief would be vacatur.” Ibid.

I appreciate the Government’s apparent attempt to back

away from its extreme stance. But in doing so, the

Government also revealed the weakness of its position. The

meaning of “set aside” in the APA cannot reasonably

depend on the specific party before the court. Either the

APA authorizes vacatur, or it does not.

More to the point, the Government’s answer at oral

argument is a solution in search of a problem. The federal

courts have long interpreted the APA to authorize vacatur

of agency actions. Both the text and the history of the APA

support that interpretation, and courts have had no real

——————

8 If the problem became sufficiently severe, the Executive Branch could

always ask Congress to limit the remedies available under the APA.

18 CORNER POST, INC. v. BOARD OF GOVERNORS, FRS

KAVANAUGH, J., concurring

difficulty applying the remedy in practice. Some 78 years

after the APA and 57 years after Abbott Laboratories, I

would not suddenly throw out that sound and settled

interpretation of the APA and eliminate entire classes of

historically common and vitally important litigation

against federal agencies.

* * *

The Government’s crusade against vacatur would create

“strange and even absurd consequences.” Sohoni, The Past

and Future of Universal Vacatur, 133 Yale L. J., at 2340.

In this opinion, I have described one such consequence: It

would leave unregulated plaintiffs like Corner Post without

a remedy in APA challenges to agency rules. The

Government’s position therefore would fundamentally

reshape administrative law, leaving administrative

agencies with extraordinary new power to issue rules free

from potential suits by unregulated but adversely affected

parties—businesses, environmental plaintiffs, workers, the

list goes on.

I agree with the longstanding consensus—a consensus

based on text, history, precedent, and common sense—that

vacatur is an appropriate remedy when a federal court

holds that an agency rule is unlawful. Because vacatur

remains an available remedy under the APA, Corner Post

can obtain meaningful relief if it prevails in this lawsuit.

Cite as: 603 U. S. ____ (2024) 1

JACKSON, J., dissenting

SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES

_________________

No. 22–1008

_________________

CORNER POST, INC., PETITIONER v. BOARD

OF GOVERNORS OF THE FEDERAL

RESERVE SYSTEM

ON WRIT OF CERTIORARI TO THE UNITED STATES COURT OF

APPEALS FOR THE EIGHTH CIRCUIT

[July 1, 2024]

JUSTICE JACKSON, with whom JUSTICE SOTOMAYOR and

JUSTICE KAGAN join, dissenting.

More than half a century ago, this Court highlighted the

long-recognized “hazards inherent in attempting to define

for all purposes when a ‘cause of action’ first ‘accrues.’ ”

Crown Coat Front Co. v. United States, 386 U. S. 503, 517

(1967). Today, the majority throws that caution to the wind

and engages in the same kind of misguided reasoning about

statutory limitations periods that we have previously ad-

monished.

The flawed reasoning and far-reaching results of the

Court’s ruling in this case are staggering. First, the reason-

ing. The text and context of the relevant statutory provi-

sions plainly reveal that, for facial challenges to agency reg-

ulations, the 6-year limitations period in 28 U. S. C.

§2401(a) starts running when the rule is published. The

Court says otherwise today, holding that the broad statu-

tory term “accrues” requires us to conclude that the limita-

tions period for Administrative Procedure Act (APA) claims

runs from the time of a plaintiff ’s injury. Never mind that

this Court’s precedents tell us that the meaning of “accrues”

is context specific. Never mind that, in the administrative-

law context, limitations statutes uniformly run from the

2 CORNER POST, INC. v. BOARD OF GOVERNORS, FRS

JACKSON, J., dissenting

moment of agency action. Never mind that a plaintiff ’s in-

jury is utterly irrelevant to a facial APA claim. According

to the Court, we must ignore all of this because, for other

kinds of claims, accrual begins at the time of a plaintiff ’s

injury.

Next, the results. The Court’s baseless conclusion means

that there is effectively no longer any limitations period for

lawsuits that challenge agency regulations on their face.

Allowing every new commercial entity to bring fresh facial

challenges to long-existing regulations is profoundly desta-

bilizing for both Government and businesses. It also allows

well-heeled litigants to game the system by creating new

entities or finding new plaintiffs whenever they blow past

the statutory deadline.

The majority refuses to accept the straightforward, com-

monsense, and singularly plausible reading of the limita-

tions statute that Congress wrote. In doing so, the Court

wreaks havoc on Government agencies, businesses, and so-

ciety at large. I respectfully dissent.

I

When a claim accrues depends on the nature of the claim.

See Crown Coat, 386 U. S., at 517. So, understanding the

context in which these claims arose is essential to determin-

ing when Congress meant for them to accrue. The facts of

this very case illustrate the absurdity of the majority’s one-

size-fits-all approach. The procedural history is also a

prime example of the gamesmanship that statutory limita-

tions periods are enacted to prevent.

A

Start with the relevant agency regulation. In 2010, Con-

gress required the Federal Reserve Board to issue rules for

debit-card transaction fees. See 15 U. S. C. §1693o–2(a)(1).

The Board did as Congress instructed. As relevant here, in

Cite as: 603 U. S. ____ (2024) 3

JACKSON, J., dissenting

2011, the Board issued Regulation II, capping debit-card in-

terchange fees at 21 cents per transaction plus 0.05 percent

of the transaction. 76 Fed. Reg. 43420 (2011) (codified at

12 CFR §253.3(b) (2022)).

As often happens, affected parties challenged Regula-

tion II almost immediately after the Board issued it Sev-

eral large trade groups sued under the APA, alleging that

Regulation II was, in several respects, arbitrary, capricious,

and not in accordance with law. NACS v. Board of Gover-

nors of FRS, 958 F. Supp. 2d 85, 95–96 (DC 2013). Ulti-

mately, the D. C. Circuit rejected that challenge in relevant

part. NACS v. Board of Governors of FRS, 746 F. 3d 474,

477 (2014). And, a few months after that, we denied certi-

orari. See 574 U. S. 1121 (2015).

B

Now consider the facts of this challenge. In the majority’s

telling, this is about a single “truckstop and convenience

store located in Watford City, North Dakota.” Ante, at 1.

Not quite. Rather, two large trade groups initially filed

this action in 2021—a full decade after the Federal Reserve

Board finalized the debit-card-fee regulations at issue.

Those groups were the North Dakota Petroleum Marketers

Association, a “trade association that has existed since the

mid-1950s,” and the North Dakota Retail Association, an-

other trade group. App. to Pet. for Cert. 53. Corner Post,

which had only opened its doors in 2018, was not a party to

the trade groups’ initial complaint. The Government moved

to dismiss the pleading, invoking §2401(a)’s 6-year statute

of limitations. In response, the trade groups sought leave

to amend.

It was only then that Corner Post was added as a plain-

tiff. And, importantly, other than the addition of Corner

Post, the trade groups’ complaint remained practically

identical to the untimely one they had filed before. Other

than a few changes of phrasing and some newly available

4 CORNER POST, INC. v. BOARD OF GOVERNORS, FRS

JACKSON, J., dissenting

2019 data, the amended complaint alleged the same facts

and sought the same relief as the original pleading. It also

included the exact same legal claims—verbatim. The only

material change to the amended complaint was the addition

of Corner Post.

Thus, even before I analyze the statute of limitations ar-

guments, one can see that this case is the poster child for

the type of manipulation that the majority now invites—

new groups being brought in (or created) just to do an end

run around the statute of limitations.1 To repeat: The

claims in Corner Post’s lawsuit were not new or in any way

distinct (even in wording) from the pre-existing and un-

timely claims of the trade organizations that had been

around for decades.

This time, however, when the Government renewed its

motion to dismiss, the plaintiffs made the case all about

Corner Post. The plaintiffs argued that, because Corner

Post had not yet formed as a company when the Board is-

sued Regulation II, it simply could not be subjected to a 6-

year limitations period that ran from when the challenged

regulation issued back in 2011. (One wonders how a com-

pany that formed against the backdrop of a long-settled rule

could possibly be entitled to complain, or claim injury, re-

lated to the regulatory environment in which it willingly

entered—but I digress.) Rather than accepting that the un-

timely challenge remained so, Corner Post demanded a per-

sonalized, plaintiff-specific limitations rule, giving an en-

tity six years from when it was first affected by a

——————

1 If this case illustrates one type of gamesmanship, one does not need

to think hard to imagine other examples. A cash-only business that an-

nounces its intent to accept debit cards and thereby claiming injury from

the debit-card rule. New owners that buy out a shop, insisting that they

too are entitled to challenge the debit-card rule based on their status as

new entrants into the marketplace. It is telling that, even as the major-

ity says that the moment of the plaintiff ’s injury marks the start of the

limitations period for facial APA challenges, the majority fails to describe

precisely when that injury occurs in this context.

Cite as: 603 U. S. ____ (2024) 5

JACKSON, J., dissenting

Government action to file a facial challenge.

The District Court rejected Corner Post’s argument, fol-

lowing the lead of every court of appeals that had ever ad-

dressed accrual of an APA facial challenge.2 It held that the

addition of Corner Post as a plaintiff did not make a differ-

ence to the timeliness of the business groups’ claims. The

Eighth Circuit affirmed, holding that “when plaintiffs bring

a facial challenge to a final agency action, the right of action

accrues, and the limitations period begins to run, upon pub-

lication of the regulation.” North Dakota Retail Assn. v.

Board of Governors of FRS, 55 F. 4th 634, 641 (2022).

II

But here we are. Three-quarters of a century after Con-

gress enacted the APA, a majority of this Court rejects the

consensus view that, for facial challenges to agency rules,

the statutory 6-year limitations period runs from the publi-

cation of the rule. Instead, it holds that an APA claim ac-

crues “when the plaintiff is injured by final agency action.”

Ante, at 1. The majority maintains that the text of §2401(a)

demands this result. But if that answer is so obvious, one

wonders why no court proclaimed it until more than 75

years after all the statutory pieces were in place.

To explain how the majority got this ruling wrong, I find

it necessary to provide the right answer. Here, the relevant

——————

2 The majority’s opinion says we took this case to resolve a circuit split,

suggesting that the Sixth Circuit had reached the contrary conclusion.

See ante, at 3–4. It had not. In Herr v. United States Forest Serv., 803

F. 3d 809 (2015), the Sixth Circuit addressed accrual in the context of an

as-applied challenge after the Government had threatened enforcement.

There, the Circuit pegged accrual to the moment of the injury allegedly

caused by application of the rule to the plaintiff, see id., at 820, and did

not discuss whether that same accrual rule would apply to facial chal-

lenges. Since Herr, neither the Sixth Circuit nor any district court within

it has extended Herr’s rule to facial challenges to final agency actions,

and at least one District Court has expressly rejected such an extension.

See Linney’s Pizza, LLC v. Board of Governors of FRS, 2023 WL 6050569,

*2–*4 (ED Ky., Sept. 15, 2023).

6 CORNER POST, INC. v. BOARD OF GOVERNORS, FRS

JACKSON, J., dissenting

statutory text is the catchall limitations provision for suits

brought against the United States: §2401(a) of Title 28 of

the United States Code. All agree that there are two key

terms in that provision—“accrues” and “the right of action.”

Ibid. The majority misreads both. Contrary to the Court’s

rigid reading, the word “accrues” lacks any fixed meaning.

See Crown Coat, 386 U. S., at 517. Instead, the meaning of

accrue for the purpose of a statute of limitations is deter-

mined by the particular “right of action” at issue. For many

kinds of legal claims, accrual is plaintiff specific because the

claims themselves are plaintiff specific. But facial admin-

istrative-law claims are not. This means that, in the ad-

ministrative-law context, the limitations period begins not

when a plaintiff is injured, but when a rule is finalized.

A

When sovereign immunity has been waived, the Federal

Government is often sued, and Congress has enacted stat-

utes of limitations to ensure that those lawsuits are brought

in a timely fashion. Because such suits arise in different

contexts, Congress has enacted different statutes of limita-

tions for different types of suits.

Most statutes of limitations are context specific. For ex-

ample, a tort claim against the United States typically must

be brought “within two years after such claim accrues.” 28

U. S. C. §2401(b). By contrast, a party challenging certain

administrative orders must seek review “within 60 days af-

ter [the order’s] entry.” §2344. Many more examples of con-

text-specific limitations periods in the U. S. Code abound.

See, e.g., §2501 (claims over which the United States Court

of Federal Claims has jurisdiction must be brought within

six years); 33 U. S. C. §1369(b)(1) (challenges to certain

standards adopted by the Environmental Protection

Agency under the Clean Water Act must commence “within

120 days from the date of . . . promulgation”).

Cite as: 603 U. S. ____ (2024) 7

JACKSON, J., dissenting

The statute at issue here—28 U. S. C. §2401(a)—supple-

ments those specific provisions. In doing so, §2401(a) serves

a special purpose: to act as a catchall that imposes an outer

time limit on claims brought against the United States

when no other statute of limitations applies. Under

§2401(a), “every civil action commenced against the United

States shall be barred unless the complaint is filed within

six years after the right of action first accrues.” This

catchall limitations statute has been applied in a range of

contexts, including APA claims (like this one), contract

claims, see Crown Coat, 386 U. S., at 510–511, and more,

see, e.g., Natural Resources Defense Council v. Haaland,

102 F. 4th 1045, 1074 (CA9 2024) (claims under the Endan-

gered Species Act).

Consistent with the broad scope of its potential applica-

tion, §2401(a) uses broad language. It starts the 6-year

clock when “the right of action first accrues.” §2401(a). No

more elaboration or specificity is given. So, what does the

sparse text of §2401(a) tell us?

To start, the statute tells us to look at when “the right of

action first accrues.” (Emphasis added.) The word “first”

directs us to start the clock at the earliest possible oppor-

tunity once the claim accrues. From the text alone, then,

we know that this moment in time should happen sooner

rather than later. But when that moment occurs depends

on the meaning of both “the right of action” and “accrues.”

Next, the provision uses the unadorned phrase “the right

of action.” Because this statute is applicable to a broad

range of causes of action against the Government, the un-

derlying statute (here the APA) provides “the right of ac-

tion,” not §2401(a) itself. Put another way, the §2401(a)

catchall applies to different causes of action, and those

causes of action establish different legal claims. Though the

right of action is not the same for an APA claim as it is for

an Endangered Species Act claim, §2401(a)’s broad “right of

action” language applies to both of these claims, and more.

8 CORNER POST, INC. v. BOARD OF GOVERNORS, FRS

JACKSON, J., dissenting

B

A proper understanding of the word “accrues” makes

clear that this term is far more flexible and context depend-

ent than the majority appreciates. Crucially, the Court has

said this very thing before—more than once, in fact. We

have long understood that it is simply not “possible to as-

sign the word ‘accrued’ any definite technical meaning

which by itself would enable us to say whether the statutory

period begins to run at one time or the other.” Reading Co.

v. Koons, 271 U. S. 58, 61–62 (1926); see also Crown Coat,

386 U. S., at 517 (recognizing “the hazards inherent in at-

tempting to define for all purposes when a ‘cause of action’

first ‘accrues’ ”).

But, for some reason, that does not stop the majority from

trying here. Its opinion repeatedly asserts that the ordi-

nary meaning of accrual is that claims accrue only when a

plaintiff can sue. See ante, at 6–10.3 But even the majority

acknowledges that its preferred definition of accrual is not

universal; it is, at most, “the ‘standard rule’ ” that “can be

displaced.” Ante, at 8 (quoting Green v. Brennan, 578 U. S.

547, 554 (2016); emphasis added).

Far from imposing a one-size-fits-all definition of the

word “accrue,” this Court has traditionally taken a claim-

specific view: “[A] right accrues when it comes into exist-

ence. ” United States v. Lindsay, 346 U. S. 568, 569 (1954).

For example, in McMahon v. United States, 342 U. S. 25

(1951), we held that, under the Suits in Admiralty Act, a

claim accrued when a seaman was injured, even though he

could not yet sue at that time. See id., at 27–28. In Crown

——————

3 The majority insists on a single definition of “accrued,” but it cannot

keep its story straight as to what that definition is. Its opinion offers

multiple formulations, stating that a claim accrues “when it comes into

existence,” “when the plaintiff has a complete and present cause of ac-

tion,” “when a suit may be maintained thereon,” and, also, “after the

plaintiff suffers the injury.” Ante, at 7–8 (internal quotation marks omit-

ted). These distinctions can make a difference.

Cite as: 603 U. S. ____ (2024) 9

JACKSON, J., dissenting

Coat, we held the opposite—a claim brought under 28

U. S. C. §1346 did not accrue at the time of injury, but ra-

ther at the moment of final administrative action, because

a plaintiff could not sue until the agency action was final.

See 386 U. S., at 513–514, 517–518. The point is not that

these cases all point in one direction or the other with re-

spect to the meaning of accrue. Instead, our cases illustrate

what this Court has expressly stated: The term “accrued”

lacks “any definite technical meaning,” Reading, 271 U. S.,

at 61.

The majority nevertheless decrees today that accrual

must always be plaintiff specific—i.e., that a claim cannot

accrue until “this particular plaintiff ” can bring suit. Ante,

at 14. But that is not what §2401(a) says. It does not say

that the clock starts when the plaintiff ’s right of action first

accrues; rather, §2401(a) starts the clock when “the right of

action first accrues.” (Emphasis added.) In other words,

the limitations provision here focuses on the claim being

brought without regard for who brings it.

The dictionary definitions on which the majority relies

further highlight this important observation. A claim ac-

crues, according to those definitions, “ ‘when a suit may be

maintained thereon’ ” or upon the “ ‘coming or springing into

existence of a right to sue.’ ” Ante, at 7 (emphasis added)

(first quoting Black’s Law Dictionary 37 (4th ed. 1951), then

quoting Ballentine’s Law Dictionary 15–16 (2d ed. 1948)).

Again, and notably, these dictionaries speak of a right to

sue, not the plaintiff ’s right to sue. Like §2401(a) itself,

these definitions do not support the majority’s assertion

that accrual is necessarily plaintiff specific.

Of course, many of our cases do say that a claim accrues

when “ ‘the plaintiff has a complete and present cause of ac-

tion.’ ” E.g., Gabelli v. SEC, 568 U. S. 442, 448 (2013); Wal-

lace v. Kato, 549 U. S. 384, 388 (2007); Graham County Soil

& Water Conservation Dist. v. United States ex rel. Wilson,

545 U. S. 409, 418 (2005); Bay Area Laundry and Dry

10 CORNER POST, INC. v. BOARD OF GOVERNORS, FRS

JACKSON, J., dissenting

Cleaning Pension Trust Fund v. Ferbar Corp. of Cal., 522

U. S. 192, 201 (1997). But those statements were made in

the context of particular cases, each of which dealt with

plaintiff-specific causes of action. See, e.g., Gabelli, 568

U. S., at 446 (civil enforcement claim by the Securities and

Exchange Commission); Wallace, 549 U. S., at 388 (false

imprisonment and arrest claims); Graham County, 545

U. S., at 412 (retaliation claim against an employer); Bay

Area Laundry, 522 U. S., at 195 (claim alleging failure to

make required payments to employee pension funds).

Here is what I mean by this. When a complaint brought

against a defendant asserts, “You falsely imprisoned me,”

or “You retaliated against me,” it is making a legal claim

that is specific to the particular plaintiff. But, as discussed

below, it is not similarly plaintiff specific to bring a claim

saying, for example, that a particular regulation is invalid

because it “exceeds the Board’s statutory authority,” or be-

cause the Government “failed to consider important aspects

of the problem,” as the complaint here alleges. App. to Pet.

for Cert. 80, 82. So, while accrual may sometimes—even

usually—be plaintiff specific, that is just because underly-

ing legal claims are often plaintiff specific. The precedents

the majority cites never say otherwise; i.e., they do not tell

us that accrual must always be plaintiff specific.

The majority’s other hard-and-fast distinction—between

statutes of limitations and statutes of repose—fares no bet-

ter. See ante, at 9–10. The majority sets up a dichotomy:

Statutes of limitations are plaintiff-centric rules that “ ‘re-

quire plaintiffs to pursue diligent prosecution of known

claims,’ ” while statutes of repose emphasize finality and

are tied to “ ‘the last culpable act or omission of the defend-

ant.’ ” Ante, at 9 (quoting CTS Corp. v. Waldburger, 573

U. S. 1, 8 (2014)). The problem is that statutes of limita-

tions and statutes of repose, while different, are not nearly

as different as the majority imagines. It is true that stat-

utes of repose are considered to be “defendant-protective.”

Cite as: 603 U. S. ____ (2024) 11

JACKSON, J., dissenting

Ante, at 10. But the same is true of statutes of limitations.

“The very purpose of a period of limitation is that there may

be, at some definitely ascertainable period, an end to litiga-

tion.” Reading, 271 U. S., at 65; see also Gabelli, 568 U. S.,

at 448 (repose is a “ ‘basic polic[y] of all limitations provi-

sions’ ”). In fact, according to one of the dictionaries the ma-

jority cites, “[s]tatutes of limitation are statutes of repose.”

Black’s Law Dictionary, at 1077 (emphasis added). The dif-

ference is that unlike statutes of repose, statutes of limita-

tions have more than one purpose: they bring finality for

defendants and prevent plaintiffs from sleeping on their

rights. Understanding these dual functions sheds no light

whatsoever on what to do when those competing purposes

point in different directions.4

III

Because different claims accrue at different times, we

must look to the specific types of claims that the plaintiffs

have brought and consider the context in which the limita-

tions period operates. “Cases under [one statute] do not

necessarily rule . . . claims” brought under another. Crown

Coat, 386 U. S., at 517. And our understanding of accrual

for limitations purposes has always been context specific.

See, e.g., Wallace, 549 U. S., at 389 (relying on torts trea-

tises to explain the “distinctive rule” for commencement of

limitations period for false imprisonment suits); Franconia

Associates v. United States, 536 U. S. 129, 142–144 (2002)

(citing contracts treatises to explain that contract claims ac-

crue at the moment of breach); Merck & Co. v. Reynolds,

——————

4 Here, these purposes are at odds because repose favors starting the

clock at the moment of final agency action, whereas a plaintiff-specific

limitations rule would be targeted at a plaintiff’s injury to ensure plain-

tiffs don’t sleep on their rights. In the administrative-law context, one

has to choose between those objectives; no one rule can equally achieve

both of these ends.

12 CORNER POST, INC. v. BOARD OF GOVERNORS, FRS

JACKSON, J., dissenting

559 U. S. 633, 644–646 (2010) (applying fraud-specific dis-

covery rule to determine accrual). In other words, to under-

stand when “the right of action” accrues under §2401(a), we

must understand what the right of action is.

A

The right of action that is invoked in many administra-

tive-law cases, including this one, is a statutory claim that

an agency has violated certain legal requirements when it

took a certain action, such that the agency’s action itself is

invalid. See, e.g., 5 U. S. C. §706(2). And Congress has re-

peatedly made clear, through various statutory enact-

ments, that in the administrative-law context, the statute

of limitations for filing a claim that seeks to invalidate the

agency action runs from the moment of final agency action.

Take the Administrative Orders Review Act (also known

as the Hobbs Act), for example. See 28 U. S. C. §2342. That

statute is the exclusive mechanism for reviewing certain or-

ders issued by over a half-dozen federal agencies. The Act

requires suits to be brought “within 60 days after [the] en-

try” of any final agency order. §2344. There are many other

similar statutes. In its brief, the Government provided us

with more than two dozen statutory provisions where the

limitations period starts running at the moment of final

agency action—whether that action is the publication of a

rule, or the issuance of an order, or something else. See

Brief for Respondent 15–17, and n. 4. And, as the Govern-

ment itself acknowledges, even that list is not comprehen-

sive. See Tr. of Oral Arg. 51 (“Candidly, we got to a page-

long footnote and stopped”).5

——————

5 No kidding. On top of the dozens of examples that the Government

provided, there are many, many others. See, e.g., 5 U. S. C.

§7703(b)(1)(A) (“[A] petition to review a final order or final decision of the

[Merit Systems Protection] Board shall be filed . . . within 60 days after

the Board issues notice of the final order or decision of the Board”); 15

U. S. C. §80b–13(a) (“Any person or party aggrieved by an order issued

by the [Securities and Exchange] Commission under this subchapter

Cite as: 603 U. S. ____ (2024) 13

JACKSON, J., dissenting

Despite the dozens of statutes that start the limitations

period at the moment of final agency action, neither Corner

Post nor the majority identifies a single statute in the ad-

ministrative-law context—either now or before 1948—that

takes any other approach. This tells us exactly the message

that Congress might have expected courts to infer when in-

terpreting §2401(a): For administrative-law actions, a

claim accrues at the moment of final agency action.

The Court says we must ignore these other statutes be-

cause they post-date Congress’s 1948 enactment of

§2401(a). See ante, at 12–14. The majority’s reasoning is

doubly wrong. First, it is wrong on the facts. Even before

1948, Congress consistently started limitations periods in

the administrative-law context at the moment of the last

——————

may obtain a review of such order . . . by filing . . . within sixty days after

the entry of such order, a written petition”); 30 U. S. C. §1276(a)(2) (“Any

[covered] order or decision . . . shall be subject to judicial review on or

before 30 days from the date of such order or decision”); 38 U. S. C.

§7266(a) (“[T]o obtain review . . . of a final decision of the Board of Vet-

erans’ Appeals, a person adversely affected by such decision shall file a

notice of appeal with the Court within 120 days after the date on which

notice of the decision is issued”); 42 U. S. C. §405(g) (“Any individual,

after any final decision of the Commissioner of Social Security made after

a hearing to which he was a party . . . may obtain a review of such deci-

sion by a civil action commenced within sixty days after the mailing to

him of notice of such decision”); §1395oo(f )(1) (“Providers shall have the

right to obtain judicial review of any final decision of the [Provider Re-

imbursement Review] Board . . . by a civil action commenced within 60

days of the date on which notice of any final decision by the Board . . . is

received”); §7607(b)(1) (“Any petition for review under this subsection

shall be filed within sixty days from the date notice of such promulgation,

approval, or action appears in the Federal Register, except that if such

petition is based solely on grounds arising after such sixtieth day, then

any petition for review under this subsection shall be filed within sixty

days after such grounds arise”); 49 U. S. C. §1153(b)(1) (petitions seeking

review of National Transportation Safety Board orders that relate to avi-

ation matters “must be filed not later than 60 days after the order is

issued”).

14 CORNER POST, INC. v. BOARD OF GOVERNORS, FRS

JACKSON, J., dissenting

agency action.6 Then, as now, Congress decided that the

deadline for reviewing agency actions should be pegged to

the action under review. Second, the majority misses the

broader point: Whenever Congress imposes a deadline to

challenge an agency decision, the limitations period always

starts at the moment of the last agency action. We should

pay attention to the uniformly expressed judgment of Con-

gress, and read §2401(a) accordingly.

Somehow, the majority draws the opposite conclusion. In

its view, either Congress’s consistently expressed intention

is irrelevant to what §2401(a) means, or Congress’s failure

to explicitly express that intention in the text of §2401(a)

indicates that Congress decided otherwise in this particular

statute (after all, Congress could have expressly pegged ac-

crual to final agency action in §2401(a) but did not do so).

See ante, at 8–10. 7 But mechanically drawing these sorts

——————

6 See, e.g., 42 Stat. 162 (1921) (codified at 7 U. S. C. §194(a)) (meat-

packers must appeal agency orders within 30 days after service of order);

48 Stat. 1093 (1934) (codified as amended at 47 U. S. C. §402(c)) (Federal

Communications Commission orders must be challenged in court “within

twenty days after the decision complained of is effective”); 49 Stat. 860

(1935) (codified at 16 U. S. C. §825l(b)) (orders issued by the Federal

Power Commission pursuant to the Public Utility Act of 1935 must be

challenged in court “within sixty days after the order of the Commis-

sion”); 49 Stat. 980 (1935) (codified at 27 U. S. C. §204(h)) (orders related

to alcohol permits must be challenged “within sixty days after the entry

of such order”); 52 Stat. 112 (1938) (codified at 15 U. S. C. §45) (Federal

Trade Commission cease-and-desist orders must be challenged “within

sixty days from the date of the service of such order”); 52 Stat. 831 (1938)

(codified at 15 U. S. C. §717r(b)) (orders issued by the Federal Power

Commission pursuant to the Natural Gas Act must be challenged in

court “within sixty days after the order of the Commission”); 52 Stat.

1053 (1938) (codified at 21 U. S. C. §355(h)) (orders related to new drug

applications must be challenged in court “within sixty days after the en-

try of such order”); 54 Stat. 501 (1940) (orders apportioning costs for cer-

tain bridge projects must be challenged in court “within three months

after the date such order is issued”).

7 The majority criticizes my review of congressional action in this area,

but fails to adequately explore the record itself. Ante, at 12–14. The

Cite as: 603 U. S. ____ (2024) 15

JACKSON, J., dissenting

of negative inferences when interpreting statutes can be

risky. “Context counts, and it is sometimes difficult to read

much into the absence of a word that is present elsewhere

in a statute.” Bartenwerfer v. Buckley, 598 U. S. 69, 78

(2023).

The majority’s approach overlooks relevant context in all

sorts of ways, including the fact that §2401(a) is a catchall

provision that applies to a variety of actions—that is, the

language we are interpreting here does not apply only in

the administrative-law context. It applies to every suit

against the United States not covered by another statute of

limitations. One cannot expect for Congress to have explic-

itly stated that accrual in §2401(a) starts at the point of fi-

nal agency action when §2401(a) is a residual provision that

also applies to claims that do not involve agency action at

all.8

Frankly, it was also entirely unnecessary for Congress to

be explicit regarding its intentions. Again, in the adminis-

trative-law context, the consistent rule is not the plaintiff-

specific accrual rule that exists in other contexts (e.g.,

torts), but the rule that applies every time Congress has

ever mentioned a limitations period with respect to a suit

against an agency: The claim accrues at the moment of final

agency action. So it is no wonder that Congress did not ex-

pressly mention this in the text of §2401(a)—it did not have

to, for those who have a basic understanding of its statutes.

What is more, the standard accrual rule for the adminis-

trative-law context makes perfect sense. The APA itself fo-

cuses on the agency’s action, not on the plaintiff. Section

704 subjects certain “agency action[s]” to judicial review.

——————

majority’s conclusion that the accrual rule is plaintiff specific for APA

claims is no more than ipse dixit.

8 Contra the majority, see ante, at 12, the fact that Congress could have

opted to enact a specific statutory review provision for APA claims says

nothing about how we should apply the catchall review provision here.

16 CORNER POST, INC. v. BOARD OF GOVERNORS, FRS

JACKSON, J., dissenting

Section 706 lays out the scope of judicial review. As rele-

vant here, courts shall “hold unlawful and set aside agency

action” that is “arbitrary, capricious, an abuse of discretion,

or otherwise not in accordance with law.” 5 U. S. C.

§706(2)(A). Other subsections of §706 likewise focus exclu-

sively on what the agency did. Did the agency act “in excess

of statutory jurisdiction”? §706(2)(C). Did the agency act

“without observance of procedure required by law”?

§706(2)(D).

Section 702 is not to the contrary. The majority suggests

otherwise, characterizing §702 as “equip[ping] injured par-

ties with a cause of action.” Ante, at 5. This is a misleading

characterization. Section 702 restricts who may challenge

agency action: only those “person[s] suffering legal wrong

because of agency action, or adversely affected or aggrieved

by agency action.” It is simply a limitation on who can sue.

As such, it says nothing about the cause of action that such

a person might bring, nor does it establish that an injury is

an element of the claim, as the majority mistakenly sug-

gests.9 And that is for good reason, since, in administrative

——————

9 The majority puts too much stock in the fact that §702 references an

injury: That reference actually does no more than highlight the distinc-

tion between what constitutes a claim and who can bring that claim. See

ante, at 4–5, and n. 1. This type of distinction is commonplace in many

areas of our jurisprudence. Take, for example, the constitutional stand-

ing doctrine, which limits eligible plaintiffs to those who have suffered

an injury in fact that is both traceable to the defendant’s conduct and

redressable in court. See FDA v. Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine, 602

U. S. 367, 380–385 (2024). Whether a particular plaintiff has standing

to sue says nothing about the elements of the claim itself. See Haaland

v. Brackeen, 599 U. S. 255, 291 (2023) (“We do not reach the merits of

these claims because no party before the Court has standing to raise

them”). The distinction between what a claim is and who can bring it

applies with full force here. Section 702 codifies an injury requirement

for bringing APA claims. Whether a particular plaintiff was “adversely

affected or aggrieved by agency action within the meaning of a relevant

statute” under §702 is a threshold inquiry about whether she is an ap-

propriate plaintiff; it has no bearing on whether the agency did, in fact,

Cite as: 603 U. S. ____ (2024) 17

JACKSON, J., dissenting

actions, the claim itself remains focused on the agency. See

Crown Coat, 386 U. S., at 513 (“The focus of the court action

is the validity of the administrative decision”).

The way that courts review agency actions also reinforces

this basic observation. Courts do not look at what hap-

pened to the plaintiff or what happened after the rulemak-

ing—they look only at the rule and the rulemaking process

itself. See SEC v. Chenery Corp., 318 U. S. 80, 95 (1943).

“[T]he focal point for judicial review should be the adminis-

trative record already in existence, not some new record

made initially in the reviewing court.” Camp v. Pitts, 411

U. S. 138, 142 (1973) (per curiam). Anything that happened

after the rule’s publication (including, perhaps, some injury

to a regulated party) does not matter to an APA claim. So,

the available claims, causes of action, and evidence are the

same regardless of who brings the challenge or when they

bring it.

Again, the complaint in this case proves the point. Before

Corner Post was added as a plaintiff, the complaint alleged

that (1) Regulation II is contrary to law and exceeds the

Board’s statutory authority, and (2) Regulation II is arbi-

trary and capricious. See Complaint in North Dakota Retail

Assn. v. Board of Governors of FRS, No. 1:21–cv–00095

(D ND), ECF Doc. 1, pp. 32–36. After Corner Post was

added as a plaintiff, the complaint made exactly those same

two legal claims. See App. to Pet. for Cert. 79–84. Before

Corner Post was added, the contrary-to-law claim said that

the Board considered impermissible costs and capped inter-

change fees in a way that was not proportional to the spe-

cific costs of each transaction. See ECF Doc. 1, at 32–34.

After Corner Post was added, the contrary-to-law claim said

the exact same thing. See App. to Pet. for Cert. 79–81. Be-

——————

act in a manner that was “arbitrary, capricious, an abuse of discretion,

or otherwise not in accordance with law,” §706(2).

18 CORNER POST, INC. v. BOARD OF GOVERNORS, FRS

JACKSON, J., dissenting

fore the addition of Corner Post, the arbitrary-and-capri-

cious claim said that the Board failed to consider certain

congressional instructions, relied on factors that Congress

did not intend for it to consider, and ran counter to evidence

before the Board. See ECF Doc. 1, at 34–36. Those claims,

too, were unchanged after the addition of Corner Post. See

App. to Pet. for Cert. 82–84.

From the pleadings filed in this case, three observations

stand out. First, these APA claims, like all APA claims, are

about what the agency itself did, so the logical point to start

the clock is the moment the agency acted. Second, the

claims that Corner Post brings are not specific to it—they

are identical to the untimely claims the coplaintiff trade

groups brought before. And, finally, although the majority

puts procedural challenges to the side—asserting that its

holding does not extend to those, see ante, at 21, n. 8—the

claims in this case are procedural, so the majority’s line-

drawing exercise is meaningless.

B

On the matter of congressional intent, the consistent ac-

crual rule in the administrative-law context (the limitations

period starts running at the time of the final agency action)

is patently superior to the majority’s reading of §2401(a).

Congress enacts statutes of limitations to achieve basic pol-

icy goals: “repose, elimination of stale claims, and certainty

about a plaintiff ’s opportunity for recovery and a defend-

ant’s potential liabilities.” Rotella v. Wood, 528 U. S. 549,

555 (2000); see also Gabelli, 568 U. S., at 448. For APA

claims, where rulemakings apply to the public writ large,

repose and certainty would never exist if any and every

newly formed entity can challenge every agency regulation

in existence. Stated simply, the majority has adopted an

implausible reading of §2401(a), because, as I explain be-

low, a plaintiff-specific accrual rule operating in this con-

text undermines each of the central goals of all limitations

Cite as: 603 U. S. ____ (2024) 19

JACKSON, J., dissenting

provisions.

First, repose. This principle means that, at some point,

litigation must end. Under the majority’s reading of the

statute, it never will. Instead of putting a stop to things

after six years, §2401(a) now does nothing to prevent

agency rules from being forever subjected to legal challenge

by newly formed entities (or, as this case illustrates, by old

entities that can find or create new entities to graft onto

their complaint).10

Second, elimination of stale claims. The majority forces

courts and agencies to parse cold administrative records.

Long after the action in question, courts may be ill equipped

to review decades-old administrative explanations.

Last, certainty. As I explain in Part IV, infra, the major-

ity’s approach creates uncertainty for the Government and

every entity that relies on the Government to function.

Agency rulemaking serves important “notice and predicta-

bility purposes.” Talk America, Inc. v. Michigan Bell Tele-

phone Co., 564 U. S. 50, 69 (2011) (Scalia, J., concurring).

When an administrative agency changes its own rules, it

follows specific, established processes, so parties have some

predictability about how the rules of the road might change.

But when every rule on the books can perpetually be chal-

lenged by any new plaintiff, and is thus subject to limitless

ad hoc amendment, no policy determination can ever be put

to rest, and certainty about the rules that govern will for-

ever remain elusive.

——————

10 The fact that “courts entertaining later challenges often will be able

to rely on binding Supreme Court or circuit precedent,” ante, at 21, is

irrelevant. What we are deciding now is how the statute of limitations

should be interpreted, and more specifically, whether it makes sense to

interpret it in a way that is inconsistent with the purpose of such stat-

utes.

20 CORNER POST, INC. v. BOARD OF GOVERNORS, FRS

JACKSON, J., dissenting

IV

Today’s ruling is not only baseless. It is also extraordi-

narily consequential. In one fell swoop, the Court has effec-

tively eliminated any limitations period for APA lawsuits,

despite Congress’s unmistakable policy determination to

cut off such suits within six years of the final agency action.

The Court has decided that the clock starts for limitations

purposes whenever a new regulated entity is created. This

means that, from this day forward, administrative agencies

can be sued in perpetuity over every final decision they

make.

The majority’s ruling makes legal challenges to decades-

old agency decisions fair game, even though courts of ap-

peals had previously applied §2401(a) to find untimely a

range of belated APA challenges. For example, a lower

court rejected an APA challenge to the Food and Drug Ad-

ministration’s approval of the abortion medication mife-

pristone that was brought more than two decades after the

relevant agency action. See Alliance for Hippocratic Medi-

cine v. FDA, 78 F. 4th 210, 242 (CA5 2023). A 2008 APA

challenge to a 1969 ruling by the Bureau of Alcohol, To-

bacco, Firearms and Explosives implementing the Gun

Control Act was also bounced on statute of limitations

grounds. See Hire Order Ltd. v. Marianos, 698 F. 3d 168,

170 (CA4 2012). Other unquestionably tardy APA suits

have been dismissed on similar grounds too.11

No more. After today, even the most well-settled agency

——————

11 See, e.g., Alabama v. PCI Gaming Auth., 801 F. 3d 1278, 1292 (CA11

2015) (2013 challenge to Secretary of Interior’s 1984, 1992, and 1995 de-

cisions to take certain land into trust for tribes); Wong v. Doar, 571 F. 3d

247, 263 (CA2 2009) (2007 challenge to 1980 Medicaid regulation); Dunn-

McCampbell Royalty Interest, Inc. v. National Park Serv., 112 F. 3d 1283,

1286–1287 (CA5 1997) (1994 challenge to 1979 National Park Service

regulations); Shiny Rock Mining Corp. v. United States, 906 F. 2d 1362,

1365–1366 (CA9 1990) (1984 challenges to 1964 and 1965 land manage-

ment orders).

Cite as: 603 U. S. ____ (2024) 21

JACKSON, J., dissenting

regulations can be placed on the chopping block. And

please take note: The fallout will not stop with new chal-

lenges to old rules involving the most contentious issues of

today. Any established government regulation about any

issue—say, workplace safety, toxic waste, or consumer pro-

tection—can now be attacked by any new regulated entity

within six years of the entity’s formation. A brand new en-

tity could pop up and challenge a regulation that is decades

old; perhaps even one that is as old as the APA itself. No

matter how entrenched, heavily relied upon, or central to

the functioning of our society a rule is, the majority has an-

nounced open season.

Still, in issuing its ruling in this case, the Court seems

oddly oblivious to the most foreseeable consequence of the

accrual rule it is adopting: Giving every new entity in a reg-

ulated industry its own personal statute of limitations to

challenge longstanding regulations affects our Nation’s

economy. Why? Because administrative agencies establish

the baseline rules around which businesses and individuals

order their lives. When an agency publishes a final rule,

and the period for challenging that rule passes, people in

that industry understand that the agency’s policy choice is

the law and act accordingly. They make investments be-

cause of it. They change their practices because of it. They

enter contracts in light of it. They may not like the rule,

but they live and work with it, because that is what the Rule

of Law requires. It is profoundly destabilizing—and also

acutely unfair—to permit newcomers to bring legal chal-

lenges that can overturn settled regulations long after the

rest of the competitive marketplace has adapted itself to the

regulatory environment.

Moreover, as I have explained, the Court’s ruling in this

case allows for every new entity to challenge any and every

rule that an agency has ever adopted. It is extraordinarily

presumptuous that an entity formed in full view of an

22 CORNER POST, INC. v. BOARD OF GOVERNORS, FRS

JACKSON, J., dissenting

agency’s rules, by founders who can choose to enter the in-

dustry or not, can demand that well-established rules of en-

gagement be revisited. But even setting aside those com-

monsense fairness concerns, the constant churn of potential

attacks on an agency’s rules by new entrants can harm all

entities in a regulated industry. At any time, anyone can

come along and potentially cause every entity to have to ad-

just its whole operations manual, since any rule (no matter

how well settled) might be subject to alteration. Indeed, the

obvious need for stability in the rules that govern an indus-

try is precisely why a defined period for challenging the

rules was needed at all.

Knowledgeable amici have explained that the majority’s

approach to accrual of the statute of limitations for APA

claims undermines the “[s]tability, predictability, and con-

sistency [that] enable[s] small businesses to survive and

thrive.” Brief for Small Business Associations as Amici Cu-

riae 5. And there is no question that long-term uncertainty

“hinders the ability of businesses to plan effectively.” Id.,

at 9. The majority’s accrual rule unnecessarily creates “fre-

quent, inconsistent, judicially-driven policy changes that do

not involve the sort of careful balancing envisioned in the

normal process of regulatory change.” Id., at 12. And,

again, one might think that preventing such chaos is pre-

cisely why Congress enacted a statute of limitations in the

first place.

Seeking to minimize the fully foreseeable and potentially

devastating impact of its ruling, the majority maintains

that there is nothing to see here, because not every lawsuit

brought by a new industry upstart will win, and, at any

rate, many agency regulations are already subject to chal-

lenge. See ante, at 21. But this myopic rationalization over-

looks other significant changes that this Court has wrought

this Term with respect to the longstanding rules governing

review of agency actions. The discerning reader will know

that the Court has handed down other decisions this Term

Cite as: 603 U. S. ____ (2024) 23

JACKSON, J., dissenting

that likewise invite and enable a wave of regulatory chal-

lenges—decisions that carry with them the possibility that

well-established agency rules will be upended in ways that

were previously unimaginable. Doctrines that were once

settled are now unsettled, and claims that lacked merit a

year ago are suddenly up for grabs.

In Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo, 603 U. S. ___

(2024), for example, the Court has reneged on a blackletter

rule of administrative law that had been foundational for

the last four decades. Id., at ___ (slip op., at 30). Under

that prior interpretive doctrine, courts deferred to agency

interpretations of ambiguous statutes that Congress au-

thorized the agency to administer. Now, every legal claim

conceived of in those last four decades—and before—can

possibly be brought before courts newly unleashed from the

constraints of any such deference. See Tr. of Oral Arg. 74

(Assistant to the Solicitor General explaining that this re-

sult “would magnify the effect of” overruling Chevron).

Put differently, a fixed statute of limitations, running

from the agency’s action, was one barrier to the chaotic up-

ending of settled agency rules; the requirement that defer-

ence be given to an agency’s reasonable interpretations con-

cerning its statutory authority to issue rules was another.

The Court has now eliminated both. Any new objection to

any old rule must be entertained and determined de novo

by judges who can now apply their own unfettered judg-

ment as to whether the rule should be voided.

* * *

At the end of a momentous Term, this much is clear: The

tsunami of lawsuits against agencies that the Court’s hold-

ings in this case and Loper Bright have authorized has the

potential to devastate the functioning of the Federal Gov-

ernment. Even more to the present point, that result

simply cannot be what Congress intended when it enacted

legislation that stood up and funded federal agencies and

24 CORNER POST, INC. v. BOARD OF GOVERNORS, FRS

JACKSON, J., dissenting

vested them with authority to set the ground rules for the

individuals and entities that participate in the our economy

and our society. It is utterly inconceivable that §2401(a)’s

statute of limitations was meant to permit fresh attacks on

settled regulations from all new comers forever. Yet, that

is what the majority holds today.

But Congress still has a chance to address this absurdity

and forestall the coming chaos. It can opt to correct this

Court’s mistake by clarifying that the statutes it enacts are

designed to facilitate the functioning of agencies, not to hob-

ble them. In particular, Congress can amend §2401(a), or

enact a specific review provision for APA claims, to state

explicitly what any such rule must mean if it is to operate

as a limitations period in this context: Regulated entities

have six years from the date of the agency action to bring a

lawsuit seeking to have it changed or invalidated; after

that, facial challenges must end. By doing this, Congress

can make clear that lawsuits bringing facial claims against

agencies are not personal attack vehicles for new entities

created just for that purpose. So, while the Court has made

a mess of this pivotal statute, and the consequences are pro-

found, “the ball is in Congress’ court.” Ledbetter v. Good-

year Tire & Rubber Co., 550 U. S. 618, 661 (2007) (Gins-

burg, J., dissenting).