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Supreme Court lets a truck stop sue the Federal Reserve in latest threat to agency regulations
https://www.cnn.com/2024/07/01/politics/corner-post-sec-supreme-court/index.html
{John Fritze | 01 July 2024}
The Supreme Court on Monday revived a lawsuit by a North Dakota truck stop that is challenging the fees banks can charge for debit-card transactions in a ruling that could have deeper implications for other government regulations.
The decision was the latest from the Supreme Court this term that would make it easier for industries to challenge what conservative critics describe as the “administrative state.”
“Today’s ruling is especially significant in light of Friday’s decision overruling Chevron, because it means that even old agency rules can be challenged anew so long as they produce any contemporary harm,” said Steve Vladeck, CNN Supreme Court analyst and professor at the University of Texas School of Law.
“In other words, even understandings of agency authority that are a half-century old can now be challenged on the ground that some recent agency action, however minor, has injured a plaintiff, ” Vladeck added. “Given how much Friday’s ruling in Loper Bright destabilizes administrative law, today’s ruling applies that destabilization retroactively.”
Justice Amy Coney Barrett wrote the opinion for a 6-3 majority, with the liberal justices in dissent. She rejected the Justice Department’s argument that the statute of limitations runs from when a regulation is finalized.
“Under the Board’s finality rule, only those fortunate enough to suffer an injury within six years of a rule’s promulgation may bring an (Administrative Procedure Act) suit. Everyone else – no matter how serious the injury or how illegal the rule – has no recourse,” Barrett wrote.
Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson blasted the decision in her dissent.
“The flawed reasoning and far-reaching results of the Court’s ruling in this case are staggering,” Jackson wrote.
“The majority refuses to accept the straightforward, commonsense, and singularly plausible reading of the limitations statute that Congress wrote. In doing so, the Court wreaks havoc on Government agencies, businesses, and society at large,” she added. “At the end of a momentous Term, this much is clear: The tsunami of lawsuits against agencies that the Court’s holdings in this case and Loper Bright have authorized has the potential to devastate the functioning of the Federal Government.”
The truck stop, Corner Post, is fighting a 2011 Federal Reserve rule that capped “interchange fees” at 21 cents per transaction plus a small percentage of that transaction’s value. Retail stores have long chafed at those fees.
The issue before the Supreme Court was more technical: The government argued the truck stock couldn’t sue over the rule because a six-year statute of limitations had already run out.
But Corner Post did not incorporate until 2017 and it argued the statute-of-limitations clock didn’t start ticking until it opened its doors. It claimed that any other outcome would mean a company would be barred from suing over a government regulation before it even began operations.
The federal government said Corner Post’s position would allow opponents of a regulation to challenge it forever by simply finding a new company willing to sue. A federal district court and the 8th US Circuit Court of Appeals sided with the federal government.
The Supreme Court rules for a North Dakota truck stop in a new blow to federal regulators
https://apnews.com/article/supreme-...-debit-cards-9ff39be52325ea4d11bd0742e5f3c344
{Mark Sherman | 01 July 2024}
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court opened the door Monday to new, broad challenges to regulations long after they take effect, the third blow in a week to federal agencies.
The justices ruled 6-3 in favor of a truck stop in North Dakota that wants to sue over a regulation on debit card swipe fees that the federal appeals court in Washington upheld 10 years ago.
Federal law sets a six-year deadline for broad challenges to regulations. In this case, the regulation from the Federal Reserve governing the fees merchants must pay banks whenever customers use a debit card took effect in 2011.
The deadline for lawsuits over the regulation was in 2017, the Biden administration argued. A federal appeals court agreed that Corner Post, a truck stop in Watford City in western North Dakota, mounted its challenge too late, even though it didn’t open its doors until 2018.
The company appealed to the Supreme Court. The administration had urged the court to uphold the dismissal because otherwise, governmental agencies would be subject to endless challenges.
Justice Amy Coney Barrett wrote for the court’s conservative majority that the six-year clock didn’t begin to run for Corner Post until it started accepting debit cards when it opened for business in 2018.
The decision could take on new significance in the wake of last week’s ruling that overturned the 1984 Chevron decision [see this thread - OB] that had made it easier to uphold regulations across a wide swath of American life. The court also stripped the Securities and Exchange Commission of a major tool to fight securities fraud [see this thread - OB].
In a dissent joined by her liberal colleagues, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson wrote, “The tsunami of lawsuits against agencies that the Court’s holdings in this case and Loper Bright have authorized has the potential to devastate the functioning of the Federal Government.” Loper Bright is the case that overturned Chevron.
Barrett called Jackson’s claim “baffling — indeed, bizarre,” though she agreed with Jackson that Congress could step in to change the time frame for challenging regulations.
Dan Jarcho, a former Justice Department lawyer who has been following the case, predicted that parties like Corner Post would win their cases more often following this term’s rulings. “Combined with last week’s decision eliminating Chevron deference, the Corner Post decision will unquestionably lead to more successful litigation challenges to federal regulations, no matter which agency issued them,” Jarcho said.
Chief Justice John Roberts captured the dilemma facing the court when the Corner Post case was argued in February. Agencies could face repeated challenges “10 years later, 20 years later” and “sort of have to create the universe, you know, repeatedly.”
On the other hand, Roberts said, “You have an individual or an entity that is harmed by something the government is doing, and you’re saying, well, that’s just too bad, you can’t do anything about it because other people had six years to do something about it.”
The legal principle that everybody is entitled to their day in court, Roberts said, “doesn’t say unless somebody else had a day in court.”
Roberts was part of Monday’s majority.
Supreme Court lets a truck stop sue the Federal Reserve in latest threat to agency regulations
https://www.cnn.com/2024/07/01/politics/corner-post-sec-supreme-court/index.html
{John Fritze | 01 July 2024}
The Supreme Court on Monday revived a lawsuit by a North Dakota truck stop that is challenging the fees banks can charge for debit-card transactions in a ruling that could have deeper implications for other government regulations.
The decision was the latest from the Supreme Court this term that would make it easier for industries to challenge what conservative critics describe as the “administrative state.”
“Today’s ruling is especially significant in light of Friday’s decision overruling Chevron, because it means that even old agency rules can be challenged anew so long as they produce any contemporary harm,” said Steve Vladeck, CNN Supreme Court analyst and professor at the University of Texas School of Law.
“In other words, even understandings of agency authority that are a half-century old can now be challenged on the ground that some recent agency action, however minor, has injured a plaintiff, ” Vladeck added. “Given how much Friday’s ruling in Loper Bright destabilizes administrative law, today’s ruling applies that destabilization retroactively.”
Justice Amy Coney Barrett wrote the opinion for a 6-3 majority, with the liberal justices in dissent. She rejected the Justice Department’s argument that the statute of limitations runs from when a regulation is finalized.
“Under the Board’s finality rule, only those fortunate enough to suffer an injury within six years of a rule’s promulgation may bring an (Administrative Procedure Act) suit. Everyone else – no matter how serious the injury or how illegal the rule – has no recourse,” Barrett wrote.
Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson blasted the decision in her dissent.
“The flawed reasoning and far-reaching results of the Court’s ruling in this case are staggering,” Jackson wrote.
“The majority refuses to accept the straightforward, commonsense, and singularly plausible reading of the limitations statute that Congress wrote. In doing so, the Court wreaks havoc on Government agencies, businesses, and society at large,” she added. “At the end of a momentous Term, this much is clear: The tsunami of lawsuits against agencies that the Court’s holdings in this case and Loper Bright have authorized has the potential to devastate the functioning of the Federal Government.”
The truck stop, Corner Post, is fighting a 2011 Federal Reserve rule that capped “interchange fees” at 21 cents per transaction plus a small percentage of that transaction’s value. Retail stores have long chafed at those fees.
The issue before the Supreme Court was more technical: The government argued the truck stock couldn’t sue over the rule because a six-year statute of limitations had already run out.
But Corner Post did not incorporate until 2017 and it argued the statute-of-limitations clock didn’t start ticking until it opened its doors. It claimed that any other outcome would mean a company would be barred from suing over a government regulation before it even began operations.
The federal government said Corner Post’s position would allow opponents of a regulation to challenge it forever by simply finding a new company willing to sue. A federal district court and the 8th US Circuit Court of Appeals sided with the federal government.
The Supreme Court rules for a North Dakota truck stop in a new blow to federal regulators
https://apnews.com/article/supreme-...-debit-cards-9ff39be52325ea4d11bd0742e5f3c344
{Mark Sherman | 01 July 2024}
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court opened the door Monday to new, broad challenges to regulations long after they take effect, the third blow in a week to federal agencies.
The justices ruled 6-3 in favor of a truck stop in North Dakota that wants to sue over a regulation on debit card swipe fees that the federal appeals court in Washington upheld 10 years ago.
Federal law sets a six-year deadline for broad challenges to regulations. In this case, the regulation from the Federal Reserve governing the fees merchants must pay banks whenever customers use a debit card took effect in 2011.
The deadline for lawsuits over the regulation was in 2017, the Biden administration argued. A federal appeals court agreed that Corner Post, a truck stop in Watford City in western North Dakota, mounted its challenge too late, even though it didn’t open its doors until 2018.
The company appealed to the Supreme Court. The administration had urged the court to uphold the dismissal because otherwise, governmental agencies would be subject to endless challenges.
Justice Amy Coney Barrett wrote for the court’s conservative majority that the six-year clock didn’t begin to run for Corner Post until it started accepting debit cards when it opened for business in 2018.
The decision could take on new significance in the wake of last week’s ruling that overturned the 1984 Chevron decision [see this thread - OB] that had made it easier to uphold regulations across a wide swath of American life. The court also stripped the Securities and Exchange Commission of a major tool to fight securities fraud [see this thread - OB].
In a dissent joined by her liberal colleagues, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson wrote, “The tsunami of lawsuits against agencies that the Court’s holdings in this case and Loper Bright have authorized has the potential to devastate the functioning of the Federal Government.” Loper Bright is the case that overturned Chevron.
Barrett called Jackson’s claim “baffling — indeed, bizarre,” though she agreed with Jackson that Congress could step in to change the time frame for challenging regulations.
Dan Jarcho, a former Justice Department lawyer who has been following the case, predicted that parties like Corner Post would win their cases more often following this term’s rulings. “Combined with last week’s decision eliminating Chevron deference, the Corner Post decision will unquestionably lead to more successful litigation challenges to federal regulations, no matter which agency issued them,” Jarcho said.
Chief Justice John Roberts captured the dilemma facing the court when the Corner Post case was argued in February. Agencies could face repeated challenges “10 years later, 20 years later” and “sort of have to create the universe, you know, repeatedly.”
On the other hand, Roberts said, “You have an individual or an entity that is harmed by something the government is doing, and you’re saying, well, that’s just too bad, you can’t do anything about it because other people had six years to do something about it.”
The legal principle that everybody is entitled to their day in court, Roberts said, “doesn’t say unless somebody else had a day in court.”
Roberts was part of Monday’s majority.
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