The News
The US Supreme Court dealt another blow to federal agencies on Monday, opening the door for regulations to be challenged long after they take effect.
The court ruled 6-3 along ideological lines in favor of a North Dakota truck stop that wants to sue over a regulation on debit card swipe fees that a federal appeals court upheld 10 years ago — despite federal law mandating a six-year deadline for such challenges.
The decision is expected to lead to a “tsunami of lawsuits against agencies,” Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson wrote in her dissent.
During the proceedings, the federal government warned that if the court sided with the truck stop, it would allow opponents of any regulation to challenge it in perpetuity simply by finding a new company willing to sue.
SIGNALS
Decision marks another win for the conservative legal movement
The decision in Corner Post, Inc. v. Board of Governors notches yet another win for the conservative legal movement, which largely believes that federal agencies have used their power too broadly and need to be reined in. The Court’s conservative majority has repeatedly curtailed the powers of federal agencies this term, most notably in its decision to strike down a 40-year-old precedent known as the Chevron doctrine, which gave agencies discretion to interpret statutes when federal legislation was ambiguous. Corner Post puts federal agencies’ power in further jeopardy because “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,” CNN Supreme Court analyst Steve Vladeck said.
Impending crush of lawsuits could paralyze agencies
In her dissent, Jackson wrote that this decision, in combination with others that open the door for a slew of lawsuits against agencies, “has the potential to devastate the functioning of the federal government” by allowing “well-heeled litigants to game the system.” Private interest groups hoping to “defang vital regulatory authorities” can now bury federal agencies in lawsuits, experts for the Center for American Progress wrote. Former Justice Department lawyer Dan Jarcho told the Associated Press that the decision will “unquestionably lead to more successful litigation challenges to federal regulations, no matter which agency issued them.”
Federal agencies lost power to fill gaps left by Congress
Federal agencies often create regulations to fill gaps left by partisan gridlock in Congress, The Washington Post reported, and “without guidance from legislation or deference from the courts, [they] may now struggle to respond to novel challenges.” The former Democratic chairman of the Federal Communications Commission told the newspaper that agencies will find themselves unable “to address anything unless the Congress addresses it.” That could have sprawling effects across policy areas: just hours after the Chevron decision came down last week, powerful corporate lobbies started searching for ways to use the ruling to advance their goal of weakening agencies’ regulations in areas including climate, health, labor, and technology.