Corner Post, Inc. v. Board of Governors Revisions: 7/09/24
The Supreme Court ruled that a business can challenge a federal agency rule in court even if the rule was issued more than six years earlier, as long as the business files suit within six years of when it was first harmed — not six years of when the rule was published.
The decision effectively removes any firm deadline for facial challenges to agency regulations, since newly formed businesses can always claim the clock has not yet run out for them, and it was decided alongside a separate ruling that eliminated longstanding judicial deference to agency legal interpretations.
How it got here: A federal district court dismissed Corner Post's APA challenge as time-barred; the Eighth Circuit affirmed, deepening a circuit split; the Supreme Court agreed to hear the case to resolve that split.
The Case in Depth
What happened
Corner Post is a truckstop and convenience store in North Dakota that opened in 2018. Like most merchants, it pays "interchange fees" to banks that process debit card transactions. Since 2011, the Federal Reserve Board has capped those fees under Regulation II. In 2021, Corner Post joined a lawsuit arguing that Regulation II allows fees higher than federal law permits — a full decade after the rule was issued and several years after an earlier challenge to the same rule had already failed in court.
The question before the Court
When does the six-year deadline to sue the federal government start running for a lawsuit challenging an agency rule — when the rule is published, or when a particular business is first harmed by it?
The Court's answer
Yes — the six-year clock starts when a particular plaintiff is first harmed by the agency rule, not when the rule was first published.
The Court reasoned that §2401(a)'s limitations period begins when a plaintiff has a "complete and present cause of action" — meaning when she can actually file suit and obtain relief. Because the APA requires a plaintiff to show she was injured before she can sue, and requires the agency action to be "final," the clock cannot start until both conditions are met for that specific plaintiff. The Eighth Circuit's contrary rule — treating the publication date as the universal start for the limitations period — would convert §2401(a) into a "statute of repose" protecting agencies regardless of when any given plaintiff was harmed. The Court rejected that reading, pointing to §2401(a)'s plaintiff-focused language ("the right of action first accrues"), Congress's ability to write finality-based deadlines when it wants them (as it did in other statutes), and the APA's basic presumption that anyone injured by agency action deserves access to judicial review. Because Corner Post only opened in 2018 and its harm arose no earlier than that, its 2021 lawsuit was timely.
Curious how the Court got there? See the step-by-step legal reasoning →
Why it matters
Businesses that were formed after a federal regulation took effect, or that weren't harmed until recently, can now sue to challenge those rules in court — even if the rules are decades old. Agencies, industries, and companies that have long structured their operations around settled regulations now face the prospect of perpetual legal challenges from new market entrants.
What changes now
The Eighth Circuit's dismissal of Corner Post's challenge is reversed, and the case returns to the lower courts to be decided on the merits — whether Regulation II actually allows higher interchange fees than the statute permits. More broadly, the ruling means any new business or entity can challenge a federal regulation within six years of first being harmed by it, effectively removing any firm deadline for facial APA challenges to agency rules. The Court itself noted that Congress could respond by enacting a new, finality-based limitations period specifically for APA lawsuits.
What this does not decide
The Court assumed without deciding whether the APA authorizes vacatur (nullification) of unlawful agency rules — a question Justice Kavanaugh addressed at length in his concurrence. The majority also left open whether procedural APA challenges (e.g., claims about deficient notice-and-comment rulemaking) might be governed by a different accrual rule than substantive challenges.
Concurrences and dissents
Concurrence — Justice Kavanaugh
Justice Kavanaugh agreed with the majority's accrual holding but wrote separately to address a distinct issue: Corner Post can obtain meaningful relief only if the APA authorizes courts to vacate (nullify) unlawful agency rules outright, not merely enjoin enforcement against specific plaintiffs. He argued at length that the APA's directive to 'set aside' agency action plainly means vacatur, that this has been settled law for decades, and that the Government's recent campaign against vacatur is 'novel and wrong' and would eliminate entire categories of administrative litigation brought by businesses, environmental groups, workers, and others not directly regulated by the challenged rules.
Dissent — Justice Jackson
Justice Jackson argued that 'accrues' is context-dependent, not fixed in meaning, and that in the administrative-law context every statute Congress has written starts the limitations period at the moment of final agency action — not a particular plaintiff's injury. She stressed that APA facial challenges focus on what the agency did, not on any individual plaintiff's harm, making a plaintiff-specific accrual rule a poor fit. She warned that the majority's ruling effectively eliminates any meaningful statute of limitations for APA claims, invites manipulation through creation of new entities, and — combined with the Court's simultaneous elimination of Chevron deference — will unleash a tsunami of challenges to long-settled agency rules.
How the Court got there
The legal reasoning, step by step
- The Court identified three statutory provisions that control the analysis: APA §702 (which requires a plaintiff to be 'injured in fact by agency action' before she may sue), APA §704 (which limits judicial review to 'final agency actions'), and 28 U.S.C. §2401(a) (the default six-year limitations period for suits against the United States). Both §702's injury requirement and §704's finality requirement must be satisfied before an APA plaintiff can bring a claim — each is necessary but not by itself sufficient.
- The key interpretive question was what it means for a 'right of action' to 'accrue' under §2401(a). The Court applied the well-settled traditional rule: a cause of action accrues when the plaintiff has a 'complete and present cause of action' — that is, when she can file suit and obtain relief. This definition was firmly established in legal dictionaries and Court precedent in 1948, when Congress enacted §2401(a), and has been treated as the 'standard rule for limitations periods' ever since.
- Because APA plaintiffs cannot file suit until they are injured by final agency action, their claims cannot be 'complete and present' — and therefore cannot accrue — until that injury occurs. The limitations period thus runs from the plaintiff's injury, not from the date the agency published its rule. The Board's contrary position — that finality alone triggers the clock regardless of injury — would decouple the statute of limitations from any harm to the actual plaintiff.
- The Court distinguished §2401(a) from a 'statute of repose.' Statutes of repose start the clock at the defendant's last act, cutting off claims even before a plaintiff is harmed. Statutes of limitations are tied to when the plaintiff's claim accrues. Section 2401(a)'s language ('right of action first accrues') is classic limitations language, not repose language. Congress knows how to write finality-based deadlines — it did so in statutes like the Hobbs Act and the Emergency Price Control Act — but chose different language in §2401(a).
- The Board argued that dozens of specific administrative-law review statutes uniformly peg deadlines to the date of final agency action, showing a congressional background presumption that APA deadlines should work the same way. The Court rejected this: those statutes use different language ('after entry of' or 'after promulgation of') that expressly starts the clock at the agency's act, and most post-date §2401(a). Their existence shows Congress uses distinct language when it wants finality-based rules — and did not use that language in §2401(a).
- The Court dismissed the Board's policy concerns — that agencies need certainty after six years, and that long-delayed facial challenges upset reliance interests — as insufficient to override the statute's clear text. Congress could create a statute of repose for APA challenges or use finality-based language in §2401(a); it has not. Meanwhile, the plaintiff-centric rule vindicates the APA's basic presumption that anyone injured by agency action should have a day in court.
Doctrinal impact
Cases affected by this decision
Distinguishes Crown Coat Front Co. v. United States (386 U.S. 503)
The Court said the Board and dissent 'misread' Crown Coat; it actually supports starting the clock when the plaintiff can sue.
Distinguishes Reading Co. v. Koons (271 U.S. 58)
Koons involved a unique wrongful-death context where real parties in interest could immediately act; it does not contradict the traditional plaintiff-specific accrual rule.
Reaffirms Green v. Brennan (578 U.S. 547)
Reaffirmed as the authoritative statement of the traditional rule that a claim accrues when this particular plaintiff can file suit and obtain relief.