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U.S. Supreme Court
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The Supreme Court on Monday revived a lawsuit by a North Dakota truck stop challenging fees banks charge for debit card transactions, a decision that could have larger implications for other government regulations.
The ruling is the latest by the Supreme Court this term to make it easier for industry to challenge what conservative critics call the “administrative state.”
“Today’s decision is especially important in light of Friday’s decision overturning the Chevron decision, because it means that even old agency rules can be challenged anew as long as they currently cause some harm,” said Steve Vladeck, CNN Supreme Court analyst and University of Texas law professor.
“In other words, even a half-century-old understanding of agency authority can be challenged on the grounds that recent agency actions, however minor, have caused harm to plaintiffs,” Vladeck added. “Given how Friday’s Loper Bright decision destabilizes administrative law, today’s ruling applies that destabilization retroactively.”
Justice Amy Coney Barrett wrote the decision for a 6-3 majority, with the liberal justices dissenting. She rejected the Justice Department’s argument that the statute of limitations starts running once the regulations are finalized.
“Under the Commission’s final decision rules, only those fortunate enough to suffer injury within six years of the rule’s promulgation may sue (the Administrative Procedure Act). Everyone else cannot sue, no matter how severe the injury or how unlawful the rule,” Barrett wrote.
Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, in her dissenting opinion, slammed the ruling.
“The erroneous reasoning and far-reaching consequences of the Court’s decision in this case are astonishing,” Jackson wrote.
“The majority refuses to accept the simple, common-sense, and only reasonable interpretation of the statute of limitations that Congress created. In doing so, the Court is wreaking havoc on government agencies, businesses, and society at large,” she added. “At the end of a critical term, this much is clear: A tsunami of litigation against agencies that the Court allowed in this case and in Roper Bright could devastate the functioning of the federal government.”
Truck stop Corner Post is fighting a 2011 Federal Reserve rule that capped “interchange fees” at 21 cents per transaction and a small percentage of the transaction’s value. Retailers have long complained about such fees.
The issue before the Supreme Court was more technical: The government argued that the trucking industry could not sue over the rule because the six-year statute of limitations had already expired.
But Cornerpost argued that because it wasn’t incorporated until 2017, the statute of limitations didn’t start running until it opened for business. Any other outcome would have barred it from suing over government regulations even before it began business, it argued.
The federal government said the corner post position would allow opponents of the regulations to challenge them in perpetuity, simply by finding a new company willing to sue. A federal district court and the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals sided with the government.
This is breaking news and will be updated.
