Corner Post, Inc. v. Board of Governors

Summary

An Administrative Procedures Act claim does not accrue for purposes of 28 U. S. C. §2401(a)—the default 6-year statute of limitations applicable to suits against the United States—until the plaintiff is injured by final agency action.

Text

PRELIMINARY PRINT 
Volume 603 U. S. Part 1 
Pages 799–865 
OFFICIAL REPORTS 
OF 
THE SUPREME COURT 
July 1, 2024 
REBECCA A. WOMELDORF 
reporter of decisions 
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NOTICE: This preliminary print is subject to formal revision before 
the bound volume is published. Users are requested to notify the Reporter 
of Decisions, Supreme Court of the United States, Washington, D.C. 20543, 
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OCTOBER TERM, 2023 799 
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 Regula-
tion II, which sets a maximum interchange fee of $0.21 per transaction 
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 6-year statute of limita-
tions applicable to suits against the United States. The Eighth Cir-
cuit affrmed. 
Held: An APA claim does not accrue for purposes of § 2401(a)'s 6-year 
statute of limitations until the plaintiff is injured by fnal agency action. 
Pp. 807–825. 
(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) delin-
eates the time period in which Corner Post may assert its claim. Sec-
tion 702 authorizes persons injured by agency action to obtain judicial 
review by suing the United States or one of its agencies, offcers, 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, Offce 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 “fnal agency

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800 CORNER POST, INC. v. BOARD OF GOVERNORS, FRS 
Syllabus 
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 fnal 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 fled within six 
years after the right of action frst accrues.” The Board says an APA 
claim “accrues” under § 2401(a) when agency action is “fnal” for pur-
poses of § 704; the claim can accrue for purposes of the statute of limita-
tions even before the plaintiff suffers an injury. The Court disagrees. 
A right of action “accrues” when the plaintiff has a “complete and pres-
ent cause of action,” which is when she has the right to “fle suit and 
obtain relief.” Green v. Brennan, 578 U. S. 547, 554. Because an APA 
plaintiff may not fle suit and obtain relief until she suffers an injury 
from fnal agency action, the statute of limitations does not begin to run 
until she is injured. Pp. 807–809. 
(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 recodifed the Judicial Code in 1948, it converted the Little 
Tucker Act's statute of limitations into § 2401(a)'s general statute of limi-
tations for all suits against the Government. But Congress continued 
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 frst 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 defnition has ap-
peared “in dictionaries from the 19th century up until today,” which 
explain that a cause of action accrues when a suit may be maintained 
thereon. Ibid. Thus, a cause of action does not become complete and 
present—it does not accrue—“until the plaintiff can fle suit and obtain 
relief.” Bay Area Laundry and Dry Cleaning Pension Trust Fund v. 
Ferbar Corp. of Cal., 522 U. S. 192, 201. Contemporaneous legal dic-
tionaries explained that a claim does not “accrue” as soon as the defend-
ant acts, but only after the plaintiff suffers the injury required to press 
her claim in court. 
The Court's precedent treats this defnition 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 stand-
ard rule, Graham County Soil & Water Conservation Dist. v. United

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Cite as: 603 U. S. 799 (2024) 801 
Syllabus 
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 fle 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 fnal. 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 
culpable 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 
“statute of limitations,” which—in contradistinction to statutes of re-
pose—are “based on the date when the claim accrued.” Id., at 7–8. 
Pp. 809–813. 
(c) The Board's arguments to the contrary lack merit. Pp. 813–825. 
(1) The Board points to the many specifc statutory review provi-
sions that start the clock at fnality, contending that such statutes refect 
a standard administrative-law practice of starting the limitations period 
when “any proper plaintiff” can challenge the fnal agency action. But 
unlike the specifc 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 frst accrues.” That textual difference matters. 
The latter language refects a statute of limitations and the former a 
statute of repose. Moreover, the specifc review provisions illustrate 
that Congress has sometimes employed the Board's preferred fnal-
agency-action rule—but did not do so in § 2401(a). As the Court ob-
served 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. Moreover, most of the fnality-focused statutes that 
the Board cites came after § 2401(a) was enacted in 1948. These other, 
textually distinct statutes therefore do not establish a background pre-
sumption that the limitations period for facial challenges to agency rules 
begins when the rule is fnal. Given the settled, plaintiff-centric mean-
ing of “right of action frst 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.

802 CORNER POST, INC. v. BOARD OF GOVERNORS, FRS 
Syllabus 
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 fled within six years after a right 
of action [i. e., anyone's right of action] frst accrues”—which it does not 
say. Rather, § 2401(a)'s text focuses on when the specifc plaintiff had 
the right to sue: It says “ the complaint is fled within six years after the 
right of action frst 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 hypo-
thetical “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-specifc accrual rule for other suits against 
the United States. That would give the same statutory text—“right 
of action frst 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.” 
Id., at 554. Pp. 813–819. 
(2) The Board maintains that § 2401(a)'s tolling provision—which 
provides that “[t]he 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”—“refects Congress's understanding 
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 toll-
ing 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 ex-
ception sheds no light on when the clock started for Corner Post. P. 819. 
(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 support 
the Board's unusual interpretation of “accrual.” In Koons, the Court 
held that a statutory wrongful-death claim accrued upon the death of 
the employee, not on the appointment of an estate administrator, 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 plaintiff could sue, 
just as it says Corner Post's claim “accrued” before it could sue. But 
in Koons, the benefciaries on whose behalf any administrator would 
seek relief—the “real parties in interest”—had the right to “procure the 
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Cite as: 603 U. S. 799 (2024) 803 
Syllabus 
action” after the employee died. Given this unique context, 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 frst accrues” in a single statute should mean different 
things in different contexts. Instead, the Court interpreted § 2401(a)— 
the very statute at issue here—to embody the traditional rule that a 
claim accrues when the plaintiff has the right to bring suit in court. 
Pp. 819–823. 
(4) Finally, the Board raises policy concerns. It emphasizes that 
agencies and regulated parties need the fnality of a 6-year cutoff, and 
that successful facial challenges fled 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 challenge 
a regulation as exceeding the agency's statutory authority in enforce-
ment proceedings against them. Moreover, there are signifcant inter-
ests 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. 823–825. 
55 F. 4th 634, reversed and remanded. 
Barrett, J., delivered the opinion of the Court, in which Roberts, 
C. J., and Thomas, Alito, Gorsuch, and Kavanaugh, JJ., joined. Kava-
naugh, J., fled a concurring opinion, post, p. 826. Jackson, J., fled a 
dissenting opinion, in which Sotomayor and Kagan, JJ., joined, post, p. 
843. 
Bryan Weir argued the cause for petitioner. With him on 
the briefs were Tyler R. Green and Frank H. Chang. 
Benjamin W. Snyder argued the cause for respondent. 
With him on the brief were Solicitor General Prelogar, 
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804 CORNER POST, INC. v. BOARD OF GOVERNORS, FRS 
Opinion of the Court 
Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General Boynton, 
Deputy Solicitor General Stewart, and Daniel Tenny.* 
Justice Barrett delivered the opinion of the Court. 
The default statute of limitations for suits against the 
United States requires “the complaint [to be] fled within 
six years after the right of action frst 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 
fnal agency action. 
*Briefs of amici curiae urging reversal were fled for the State of West 
Virginia et al. by Patrick Morrisey , Attorney General of West Virginia, 
Lindsay S. See , Solicitor General, Michael R. Williams, Principal Deputy 
Solicitor General, and Grant A. Newman, Assistant Solicitor General, and 
by the Attorneys General for their respective States as follows: Steve Mar-
shall of Alabama, Tim Griffn of Arkansas, Ashley Moody of Florida, 
Chris Carr of Georgia, Raúl Labrador of Idaho, Theodore E. Rokita of 
Indiana, Brenna Bird of Iowa, Daniel Cameron of Kentucky, Jeff Landry 
of Louisiana, Andrew Bailey of Missouri, Austin Knudsen of Montana, 
Michael T. Hilgers of Nebraska, Dave Yost of Ohio, Alan Wilson of South 
Carolina, Jonathan Skrmetti of Tennessee, Ken Paxton of Texas, and 
Sean D. Reyes of Utah; for Governor Henry McMaster et al. by Thomas 
A. Limehouse, Jr., and William Grayson Lambert; for the Americans for 
Prosperity Foundation by Michael Pepson; for the Cato Institute by Jer-
emy J. Broggi, Anastasia P . Boden, and Thomas A. Berry; for the Cham-
ber of Commerce of the United States of America by Mark A. Perry , 
Joshua M. Wesneski, and Jennifer B. Dickey; for Little Tucker Act Schol-
ars by Michael Buschbacher; for the National Federation of Independent 
Business Small Business Legal Center, Inc., et al. by Elizabeth Gaudio 
Milito , Ilya Shapiro, Angelo I. Amador, and David C. Tryon; for the New 
Civil Liberties Alliance by Richard A. Samp, Kara M. Rollins, and Mark 
S. Chenoweth; and for Aditya Bamzai et al. by Aditya Bamzai, pro se. 
Briefs of amici curiae urging affrmance were fled for Public Citizen 
by Nicolas A. Sansone , Allison M. Zieve , and Scott L. Nelson; and for 
Small Business Associations by Skye L. Perryman. 
Caleb Kruckenberg and Molly E. Nixon fled a brief of amicus curiae 
for the Pacifc Legal Foundation.

Cite as: 603 U. S. 799 (2024) 805 
Opinion of the Court 
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 merchants, 
Corner Post accepts debit cards as a form of payment. 
While convenient for customers, debit cards are costly for 
merchants: Every transaction requires them to pay an “in-
terchange 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 the 
banks of merchants and cardholders. The cost quickly adds 
up. Since it opened, Corner Post has paid hundreds of thou-
sands 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 proft 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 transac-
tion 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 associa-
tions and individual retailers sued the Board, arguing that 
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806 CORNER POST, INC. v. BOARD OF GOVERNORS, FRS 
Opinion of the Court 
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 stat-
ute,” NACS v. Board of Governors of FRS, 746 F. 3d 474, 
477 (2014). 
Corner Post, of course, did not exist when the Board 
adopted Regulation II or even during the D. C. Circuit litiga-
tion. 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 unlaw-
ful 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 Circuit 
affrmed, North Dakota Retail Assn. v. Board of Governors 
of FRS, 55 F. 4th 634 (2022). Following other Circuits, it 
distinguished between “facial” challenges to a rule (like Cor-
ner 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 fnal agency action, the right of action accrues, 
and the limitations period begins to run, upon publication 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, before Corner Post 
swiped its frst 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 fnal agency action—e . g., when the rule

Cite as: 603 U. S. 799 (2024) 807 
Opinion of the Court 
was promulgated—regardless of when the plaintiff was in-
jured. 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. 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 became fnal. Herr v. 
United States Forest Serv., 803 F. 3d 809, 820–822 (2015) 
(“When a party frst becomes aggrieved by a regulation that 
exceeds an agency's statutory authority more than six years 
after the regulation was promulgated, that party may chal-
lenge the regulation without waiting for enforcement pro-
ceedings” (emphasis deleted)). We granted certiorari to re-
solve 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 certain 
conditions, and § 2401(a) sets the window within which Cor-
ner 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, offcers, or employees. See Abbott Laboratories 
v. Gardner, 387 U. S. 136, 140–141 (1967). It provides that 
“[a] person suffering legal wrong because of agency action, 
or adversely affected or aggrieved by agency action within 
the meaning of a relevant statute, is entitled to judicial re-
view thereof.” 5 U. S. C. § 702. We have explained that 
§ 702 “requir[es] a litigant to show, at the outset of the case, 
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808 CORNER POST, INC. v. BOARD OF GOVERNORS, FRS 
Opinion of the Court 
that he is injured in fact by agency action.” Director, Offce 
of Workers' Compensation Programs v. Newport News Ship-
building & Dry Dock Co., 514 U. S. 122, 127 (1995). Thus, a 
litigant cannot bring an APA claim unless and until she suf-
fers an injury.
1 
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 review 
is available only for “fnal agency action.” § 704. In most 
cases, then, a plaintiff can only challenge an action that 
“mark[s] the consummation of the agency's decisionmaking 
process” and is “one by which rights or obligations have been 
determined, or from which legal consequences will fow.” 
Bennett v. Spear, 520 U. S. 154, 177–178 (1997) (internal quo-
tation marks omitted). Note that § 702's injury requirement 
and § 704's fnality requirement work hand in hand: Each is 
a “necessary, but not by itself . . . suffcient, ground for stat-
ing 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 ac-
tion commenced against the United States shall be barred 
unless the complaint is fled within six years after the right 
of action frst accrues.” (Emphasis added.) This provision 
applies generally to suits against the United States unless 
the timing provision of a more specifc statute displaces it. 
See, e. g., 33 U. S. C. § 1369(b) (deadline to challenge certain 
agency actions under the Clean Water Act). 
1 The dissent asserts that § 702 “restricts who may challenge agency ac-
tion,” yet its injury requirement “says nothing about” the cause of action 
or elements of the claim. Post, at 857. 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 cannot 
sue under the APA unless she is “injured in fact by agency action.” New-
port News, 514 U. S., at 127.

Cite as: 603 U. S. 799 (2024) 809 
Opinion of the Court 
The Board contends that an APA claim “accrues” when 
agency action is “fnal” for purposes of § 704—injury, it says, 
is necessary for the suit but irrelevant to the statute of limi-
tations.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 “fle suit and obtain relief.” 
Green v. Brennan, 578 U. S. 547, 554 (2016) (internal quota-
tion marks omitted). An APA plaintiff does not have a com-
plete and present cause of action until she suffers an injury 
from fnal 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 
enacted the APA. See 62 Stat. 971. Section 2401(a)'s pred-
ecessor 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 
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 826 (concurring opinion). Whether the APA authorizes 
vacatur 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 as-
sume without deciding that vacatur is available under the APA. 
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810 CORNER POST, INC. v. BOARD OF GOVERNORS, FRS 
Opinion of the Court 
Curiae 5–6. When Congress revised and recodifed 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 
suits against the Government—replacing “under this para-
graph” with “every civil action commenced against the United 
States.” But Congress continued to start the 6-year limita-
tions 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 frst 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 defnition has appeared “in dic-
tionaries from the 19th century up until today.” Gabelli, 568 
U. S., at 448. Legal dictionaries in the 1940s and 1950s uni-
formly 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 Dic-
tionary 15 (2d ed. 1948) (Ballentine's) (“[A]ccrual of cause of 
action” defned as the “coming or springing into existence of 
a right to sue” (boldface deleted)). Thus, we have explained 
that a cause of action “does not become `complete and pres-
ent' for limitations purposes”—it does not accrue—“until the 
plaintiff can fle 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 explained 
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 consequences 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 occurs.” Ballen-
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Opinion of the Court 
tine's 16 (emphasis added). Thus, when Congress used the 
phrase “right of action frst accrues” in § 2401(a), it was well 
understood that a claim does not “accrue” as soon as the de-
fendant acts, but only after the plaintiff suffers the injury 
required to press her claim in court. 
Our precedent treats this defnition 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., con-
curring in judgment) (quoting 1 H. Wood, Limitation of Ac-
tions § 122a, p. 684 (rev. 4th ed. 1916) (Wood)). Conversely, 
we have “reject[ed]” the possibility that a “limitations pe-
riod commences at a time when the [plaintiff] could not yet 
fle suit” as “inconsistent with basic limitations principles.” 
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 fle 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 oth-
erwise in the legislation at issue, a cause of action does not 
become `complete and present' for limitations purposes until 
the plaintiff can fle suit and obtain relief.” Bay Area Laun-
dry, 522 U. S., at 201. 
There is good reason to conclude that Congress codifed 
the traditional accrual rule in § 2401(a). Nothing “in the 
text of [§ 2401(a)'s] limitations period” gives any indication 
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812 CORNER POST, INC. v. BOARD OF GOVERNORS, FRS 
Opinion of the Court 
that it begins to run before the plaintiff has a complete and 
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 frst 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 Offce of 
Price Administration actions to be fled “[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 
language. 
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 (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 culpable 
act or omission of the defendant.” 573 U. S., at 8. Such 
statutes bar “ `any suit that is brought after a specifed 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 fling deadline of 60 days from the “entry” of 
the agency order. 64 Stat. 1130. Statutes of limitations 
“require plaintiffs to pursue diligent prosecution of known 
claims”; statutes of repose refect a “legislative judgment 
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Opinion of the Court 
that a defendant should be free from liability after the legis-
latively 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 fnal. 
But § 2401(a)'s plaintiff-focused language 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 fnality, 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 fnal rather than when the plaintiff can as-
sert her claim. See also post, at 847–848 (Jackson, J., dis-
senting). The Board raises several arguments to support its 
position, but none work. 
A 
The Board puts the most weight on the many specifc stat-
utory review provisions that start the clock at fnality. See 
3 Perplexingly, the dissent rejects this distinction, post, at 852, 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. 
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814 CORNER POST, INC. v. BOARD OF GOVERNORS, FRS 
Opinion of the Court 
also post, at 853–857 (Jackson, J., dissenting). The Hobbs 
Act, for example, requires persons aggrieved by certain fnal 
orders and regulations of the Federal Communications Com-
mission, Secretary of Agriculture, and Secretary of Trans-
portation, among others, to petition for review “within 60 
days after [the] entry” of the fnal agency action. 28 U. S. C. 
§§ 2342, 2344; see also, e. g., 29 U. S. C. § 655(f) (suits chal-
lenging Occupational Safety and Health Administration 
standards must be fled “prior to the sixtieth day after such 
standard is promulgated”). The Board contends that such 
statutes refect a standard administrative-law practice of 
starting the limitations period when “any proper plaintiff” 
can challenge the fnal agency action. Brief for Respondent 
9. There is “no sound basis,” it insists, “for instead applying 
a challenger-by-challenger approach to calculate the limita-
tions period on APA claims.” Ibid.; see also post, at 850– 
852 (Jackson, J., dissenting). 
1 
This argument hits the immutable obstacle of § 2401(a)'s 
text. Unlike the specifc 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 
frst accrues.” That textual difference matters. To begin, 
the latter language refects a statute of limitations and the 
former a statute of repose. Moreover, the specifc review 
provisions actually undercut the Board's argument, because 
they illustrate that Congress has sometimes employed the 
Board's preferred fnal-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 853–857, the dissent ig-
nores the textual differences between § 2401(a) and fnality-
focused specifc review provisions—fouting Rotkiske's admo-
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Opinion of the Court 
nition to heed such distinctions. According to the dissent, 
we cannot expect “Congress to have explicitly stated that 
accrual in § 2401(a) starts at the point of fnal agency action 
when § 2401(a) is a residual provision” that applies generally. 
Post, at 856. But § 2401(a)'s text refects a choice: Congress 
took the Little Tucker Act's plaintiff-focused limitations 
period—which began when “the right accrued for which the 
claim is made,” 36 Stat. 1093—and made it generally applica-
ble 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 fnality, 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 fnality. Post, at 856. 
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 855, 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 fnality-focused limitations provisions, like the Hobbs 
Act (1950), came later. See post, at 853–854, and n. 5; e. g., 
5 U. S. C. § 7703(b)(1) (added by 92 Stat. 1143 (1978)). To 
conjure its supposed backdrop, the dissent cites a hodgepodge 
of other pre-1948 statutes that started the clock at fnality. 
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Opinion of the Court 
Post, at 855, 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 example, 
7 U. S. C. § 194(a) provided a 30-day limitations period for a 
meatpacker to appeal an order fnding that the packer “has 
violated or is violating any provision” of the statute regulat-
ing 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 prac-
tice may obtain review of that order within 60 days). Stat-
utes like these do not contradict the plaintiff-centric stand-
ard accrual rule, because a party subject to such an order 
suffers legally cognizable injury at the same time that the 
order becomes fnal.
4 
Thus, even if the “intention” Congress “expressed” in tex-
tually distinct statutes could overcome § 2401(a)'s language, 
post, at 856, the dissent's history would not support its sup-
posed background presumption—that the limitations period 
for facial challenges to regulations begins when the rule be-
comes fnal 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 frst accrues” in 1948— 
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 fnality-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 adjudicat-
ing her own rights could set any kind of background rule for facial APA 
challenges to generally applicable regulations. 
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Opinion of the Court 
not to mention in the Little Tucker Act—the dissent cannot 
“displace” this “standard rule” with scattered citations to 
different, inapposite statutes. Green, 578 U. S., at 554. 
2 
The standard accrual rule that § 2401(a)'s limitations pe-
riod exemplifes is plaintiff specifc —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 fnal and, theoretically, some 
other plaintiff was injured and could have sued. But 
§ 2401(a)'s text focuses on a specifc plaintiff: “ the complaint 
is fled within six years after the right of action frst ac-
crues.” (Emphasis added.) 
The dissent disputes § 2401(a)'s plaintiff specifcity by 
pointing out that it does not say “ the plaintiff's right of ac-
tion frst accrues.” Post, at 850–851. True, but it does use 
the defnite article “the” to link “ the complaint” with “ the 
right of action.” So the most natural interpretation is that 
its limitations period begins when the cause of action associ-
ated with the complaint —the plaintiff's cause of action—is 
complete. And while the dissent cites dictionary defnitions 
of “accrue” that mention “ ` a right to sue,' ” ibid., the stat-
ute's use of the defnite article “the” takes precedence. The 
Board and the dissent read § 2401(a) as if it says “the com-
plaint is fled within six years after a right of action [i. e., 
anyone's right of action] frst accrues”—which, of course, it 
does not. 
In fact, we have explained that the traditional accrual rule 
looks to when “ the plaintiff”—this particular plaintiff—“has 
a complete and present cause of action.” Green, 578 U. S., 
at 554 (internal quotation marks omitted; emphasis added). 
No precedent suggests that the traditional rule contemplates 
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818 CORNER POST, INC. v. BOARD OF GOVERNORS, FRS 
Opinion of the Court 
the Board's hypothetical “when could someone else have 
sued” sort of inquiry. 5 Rather, the “statute 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-specifc ac-
crual rule for other suits against the United States. That 
would give the same statutory text—“right of action frst 
accrues”—different meanings in different contexts, even 
though those words had a single, well-settled meaning when 
Congress enacted § 2401(a). See Part III, supra . The 
Board's interpretation would thereby decouple the statute of 
limitations from any injury “such that the limitations period 
begins to run before a plaintiff can fle a suit”—for some, but 
5 While the dissent attempts to cabin our precedent describing the 
plaintiff-specifc standard accrual rule, nothing in those cases suggests 
that the rule is only plaintiff-specifc for “plaintiff-specifc causes of ac-
tion.” Post, at 851; see, e. g., Gabelli v. SEC, 568 U. S. 442, 448 (2013) 
(The “ `standard rule' ” that a “claim accrues `when the plaintiff has a com-
plete and present cause of action' ” has “governed since the 1830s” and 
“appears in dictionaries from the 19th century up until today”). And re-
gardless, the dissent's assertion that “administrative-law claims” are not 
“plaintiff specifc,” post, at 847, 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 851–852, 857–859, the dissent confates the defendant-fo-
cused substance of an APA claim with its plaintiff-specifc cause of action. 
6 Moreover, there may be cases where no one is injured and able to 
sue at the time of fnal agency action—e . g., if the agency delays a rule's 
enforcement—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 fnal 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. 
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Opinion of the Court 
not all, suits governed by § 2401(a). Green, 578 U. S., at 554. 
We “will not infer such an odd result in the 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 signifcance 
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-
fects Congress's understanding that a claim can `accrue[ ]' 
for purposes of Section 2401(a)” even when a person is unable 
to sue. Brief for Respondent 24. True enough. It is a 
mystery, however, why the Board fnds this helpful. 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 “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 external im-
pediment 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 unusual 
interpretation of “accrual.” See also post, at 847–850 (Jack-
son, 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 
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820 CORNER POST, INC. v. BOARD OF GOVERNORS, FRS 
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 
beneft of persons specifcally designated in the statute,” and 
at the “time of death there are identifed persons for whose 
beneft the liability exists and who can start the machinery 
of the law in motion to enforce it, by applying for the ap-
pointment of an administrator.” Id., at 62. If a benefciary 
sued in her individual capacity immediately after the em-
ployee'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 interest 
who may procure the action to be brought.” Id., at 62–63. 
While it is true that the claim accrued before any particular 
administrator was appointed, the benefciaries on whose be-
half any administrator would seek relief—the “real parties 
in interest”—had the right to “procure the action” after the 
employee died. Given this unique context, Koons does not 
contradict the proposition that a claim generally accrues 
when the plaintiff has a complete and present cause of action. 
Nor does Crown Coat. That case concerned a contract 
dispute in which a Government contractor sought an equita-
ble adjustment to the payment it received. 386 U. S., at 507. 
The contract required the contractor to present its claim to 
the contracting offcer and Armed Services Board of Con-
tract Appeals; its claim was “not subject to adjudication in 
the courts” until it was denied by the Board. Id., at 511. 
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The question presented was whether § 2401(a)'s statute of 
limitations began to run when the Board issued its fnal de-
termination or at an earlier date. Id., at 507. 
We held that the right of action frst 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 fle 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 subject 
only to administrative, not judicial, determination in the frst 
instance”; the plaintiff was “not legally entitled to ask the 
courts to adjudicate [its] claim as an original matter.” 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 fnal decision. Id., at 514. Crown Coat thus sup-
ports Corner Post: The Court interpreted § 2401(a) to em-
body the traditional rule that a claim accrues when the plain-
tiff 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 defne for all purposes when a 
`cause of action' frst `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 dif-
ferent meanings in different contexts—and in the 
administrative-law context, a right of action “accrues” when 
a regulation is fnal, full stop. See also post, at 847 (Jack-
son, J., dissenting) (citing Crown Coat for the proposition 
that “the word `accrues' lacks any fxed meaning”). 
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 frst accrues” in a single statute

822 CORNER POST, INC. v. BOARD OF GOVERNORS, FRS 
Opinion of the Court 
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 enti-
tled” to fle suit. Id., at 515. It also specifcally rejected 
the Government's position that the time can run even before 
a plaintiff's “civil action against the United States matures.” 
Id., at 514; see also ibid. (noting that the Government's posi-
tion “would have unfortunate impact”). We therefore do not 
read Crown Coat's “general purposes” language to contradict 
either its holding or the “ `standard rule' for limitations peri-
ods.” Green, 578 U. S., at 554. 
Even if Crown Coat's dicta supported sapping “accrues” of 
any “fxed meaning,” post, at 847 (Jackson, J., dissenting), this 
approach has been contravened by the weight of subsequent 
precedent. Our limitations cases from the last several dec-
ades have instead emphasized the strength of the traditional, 
plaintiff-centric accrual rule and demanded that departures 
be justifed by the statutory “text of the limitations period.” 
Green, 578 U. S., at 554; see also, e. g., Graham County, 545 
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 con-
text: “[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 indefnitely the commencement of the running of 
the statutory period.” 386 U. S., at 517; see McMahon, 342 U. S., at 27. 
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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 limita-
tions 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 fnality of a 6-
year cutoff. After that point, facial challenges impose sig-
nifcant 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 operated 
under existing rules. See also post, at 859–865 (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 fa-
cial challenges like Corner Post's. Regulated parties “may 
always assail a regulation as exceeding the agency's statu-
tory authority in enforcement proceedings against them” or 
“petition 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 
contested does not enter a promised land free from legal 
challenge.” Id., at 821. Likewise, the dissent imagines an 
alternative reality of total fnality that simply does not exist. 
See post, at 862–864. 
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 signifcant resources to ad-
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824 CORNER POST, INC. v. BOARD OF GOVERNORS, FRS 
Opinion of the Court 
dress each new suit. Given that major regulations are typi-
cally challenged immediately, courts entertaining later chal-
lenges 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 authority. 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 accrual 
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 re-
view. Abbott Labs., 387 U. S., at 140. It also respects our 
“deep-rooted historic tradition that everyone 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 fnality rule, only those fortunate enough to suf-
fer 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 
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 defcient notice of pro-
posed rulemaking. Reply Brief 18–19. We need not resolve that issue 
here because there is no dispute that Corner Post proffered an injury 
that does not depend on its having existed when the Board promulgated 
Regulation II: the rule's alleged confict with the Durbin Amendment. 
The dissent's observation that “the claims in this case are procedural,” 
post, at 859, 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. 
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 
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Cite as: 603 U. S. 799 (2024) 825 
Opinion of the Court 
The dissent also raises a host of policy arguments masqu-
erading as “matter[s] of congressional intent.” Post, at 859– 
865. And it warns that today's opinion will “devastate the 
functioning of the Federal Government.” Post, at 864–865. 
This claim is baffing—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 in-
terpretation 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 regula-
tions vulnerable to meritorious challenges; or perhaps it be-
lieves that meritless challenges will food federal courts that 
are too incompetent to reject them. We have more conf-
dence in both the Executive Branch and the Judiciary. But 
we do agree with the dissent on one point: “ `[T]he ball is in 
Congress' court.' ” Post, at 865 (quoting Ledbetter v. Good-
year Tire & Rubber Co., 550 U. S. 618, 661 (2007) (Ginsburg, 
J., dissenting)). Section 2401(a) is 75 years old. If it is a 
poor ft for modern APA litigation, the solution is for Con-
gress to enact a distinct statute of limitations 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 
fnal agency action. Because Corner Post fled 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. 
legality. See n. 2, supra. Nor is the ability to petition the Board for 
rulemaking to change Regulation II a suffcient substitute for de novo 
judicial review of its lawfulness: The agency's “discretionary decision to 
decline 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). 
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826 CORNER POST, INC. v. BOARD OF GOVERNORS, FRS 
Kavanaugh, J., concurring 
Justice Kavanaugh, concurring. 
I agree with the Court that a claim under the Administra-
tive 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 presump-
tion' that anyone injured by agency action should have ac-
cess to judicial review.” Ante, at 824 (quoting Abbott Labo-
ratories 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 plain-
tiff. 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 by the rule in 
the frst place. Instead, the unregulated plaintiff can obtain 
meaningful relief only if the APA authorizes vacatur of the 
agency rule, thereby remedying the adverse downstream ef-
fects 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. 
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Cite as: 603 U. S. 799 (2024) 827 
Kavanaugh, J., concurring 
Recently, the Government has advanced a far-reaching ar-
gument 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 au-
thorization to “set aside” agency action does not allow vaca-
tur, 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 unregu-
lated 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 Govern-
ment'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. 
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 assess-
ing whether interchange fees are “reasonable and propor-
tional to the cost incurred” in processing a debit-card trans-
action. 15 U. S. C. § 1693o –2(a)(3)(A); see ante, at 805. 
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828 CORNER POST, INC. v. BOARD OF GOVERNORS, FRS 
Kavanaugh, J., concurring 
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 Cor-
ner 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 beneft 
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 “fnal 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 unlaw-
ful 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 fled 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 ca-
pricious under the APA. Corner Post asked the Federal 
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 can-
not be enforced against Corner Post in the frst place. Nor 
could Corner Post secure relief through an injunction against 
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Cite as: 603 U. S. 799 (2024) 829 
Kavanaugh, J., concurring 
banks; the APA does not authorize suits against private 
parties. 
Corner Post instead needs a remedy that acts directly on 
the fee rule—specifcally, by vacating it. Indeed, without 
vacatur, it is hard to imagine what kind of lawsuit Corner 
Post could fle. At oral argument, the Government ulti-
mately 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 
APA, the longstanding and settled precedent adhering to 
that text and history, and the radical consequences for ad-
ministrative 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 1105 (W. Baldwin ed. 1926) (“To annul; to make 
void: as, to set aside an award”). At that time, it was com-
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.

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830 CORNER POST, INC. v. BOARD OF GOVERNORS, FRS 
Kavanaugh, J., concurring 
mon 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 stat-
utes 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 fed-
eral court concludes that an agency adjudicative order is un-
lawful, 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 affrmed countless decisions that va-
cated agency actions, including agency rules. See, e. g., De-
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 affrm, 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 (author-
izing a court to “affrm the order” of the FDA, “or to set it aside in whole 
or in part, temporarily or permanently”).

Cite as: 603 U. S. 799 (2024) 831 
Kavanaugh, J., concurring 
partment of Homeland Security v. Regents of Univ. of Cal., 
591 U. S. 1, 36, and n. 7 (2020); Whitman v. American Truck-
ing Assns., Inc., 531 U. S. 457, 486 (2001); Board of Gover-
nors, 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 en-
joined enforcement of the rules against the specifc 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 va-
cated”). 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 peti-
tioners is proscribed.” Harmon v. Thornburgh, 878 F. 2d 
484, 495, n. 21 (CADC 1989). 
Importantly, as Corner Post's lawsuit shows, the availabil-
ity of vacatur determines not only the extent of the 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 unregu-
lated but adversely affected parties, a plaintiff can obtain 
relief only through vacatur of the adverse agency action. 
Prohibiting courts from vacating agency actions would es-
sentially 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 
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. 
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832 CORNER POST, INC. v. BOARD OF GOVERNORS, FRS 
Kavanaugh, J., concurring 
Vacatur is therefore essential to fulfll the “basic presump-
tion 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 contra-
vene the strong Abbott Laboratories presumption by insu-
lating many agency rules from meaningful judicial review 
(which perhaps is the Government's motivation for its re-
cent 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 enforc-
ing the cap against the bank—a result that would 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 
4 Absent vacatur, the remedy for a regulated plaintiff would not auto-
matically 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) fle 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 
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Cite as: 603 U. S. 799 (2024) 833 
Kavanaugh, J., concurring 
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 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 amend-
ments 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. 
regulated parties. That said, in light of vertical stare decisis, the conse-
quences for regulated parties of eliminating vacatur would not be as se-
vere as the consequences for unregulated parties. See Labrador v. Poe, 
601 U. S. –––, ––– (2024) (Kavanaugh, J., concurring in grant of stay); 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 unconstitu-
tional 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” specifc 
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. 
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834 CORNER POST, INC. v. BOARD OF GOVERNORS, FRS 
Kavanaugh, J., concurring 
Those competitor suits are ubiquitous in administrative 
law. Some plaintiffs have challenged the favorable classif-
cation 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 competi-
tion 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 Car-
rier 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 ac-
tion” 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 stat-
utory review provisions did not authorize vacatur. 
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 Manufactur-
ers 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 vehi-
cles. 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 
frst 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 down-
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Kavanaugh, J., concurring 
stream effects of the agency's rescission of the safety stand-
ards only if the insurers could obtain vacatur of that rescis-
sion. 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 elimi-
nate the common form of environmental litigation where pri-
vate 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 prop-
erty 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 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 pro-
ceed 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) (Fed-
eral Power Act). Regardless, all of those suits depend on 
the availability of vacatur. 
Many APA suits similarly challenge federal emissions lim-
its or effciency standards for cars, trucks, and other sources 
of pollution. See, e. g., American Public Gas Assn. v. De-
partment 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, 
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836 CORNER POST, INC. v. BOARD OF GOVERNORS, FRS 
Kavanaugh, J., concurring 
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 stand-
ards. 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 availabil-
ity of vacatur as a remedy. In particular, the 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 Depart-
ment of Labor rule that unlawfully allowed employers to ac-
cess 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 
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Cite as: 603 U. S. 799 (2024) 837 
Kavanaugh, J., concurring 
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 APA 
suit to obtain relief. 
IV 
Against all of that text, history, precedent, and common 
sense, the Government has recently rejected the straightfor-
ward and long-accepted conclusion that the phrase “set 
aside” in the APA authorizes vacatur. Instead, the Govern-
ment 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 mean-
ingful judicial review in suits by unregulated but adversely 
affected parties. 
To support its new position, the Government has offered 
an array of arguments. 
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 re-
manded to the agency without vacatur. Remand without vacatur is es-
sentially a shorthand way of vacating a rule and staying the vacatur pend-
ing 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) (Sil-
berman, J.) (explaining the practice); see also id., at 493, n. 37 (Randolph, 
J.) (noting that courts and parties alternatively may avoid any “diffculties” 
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). 
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838 CORNER POST, INC. v. BOARD OF GOVERNORS, FRS 
Kavanaugh, J., concurring 
First, the Government says that vacatur of a federal rule 
is akin to a nationwide injunction—in other words, an injunc-
tion that prohibits the Government from enforcing a law 
against anyone, not just the parties in a specifc case. The 
Government has contended that equitable relief is ordinarily 
limited to the parties in a specifc case. Therefore, nation-
wide injunctions would be permissible only if Congress au-
thorized 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 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 enforce-
ment against nonparties. As a result, background equitable 
principles may control in those non-APA cases. 
Second, the Government argues that the remedies avail-
able 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 identi-
fes the federal actors against whom an “action for judicial 
review may be brought.” 
7 But “no court has ever held that 
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 specifed by statute or, in the absence or inadequacy thereof, any

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Cite as: 603 U. S. 799 (2024) 839 
Kavanaugh, J., concurring 
Section 703 implicitly delimits the kinds of remedies avail-
able 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 un-
reasonably delayed”—unmistakably a remedy. By contrast, 
the text of § 703 “speaks to venue and forms of proceedings, 
not to remedies, and regardless, its 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 830. 
The Government's position instead relies on some colloquial 
uses of the phrase “set aside” in federal constitutional chal-
lenges to state statutes. See, e. g., Brief for United States 
in United States v. Texas, O. T. 2022, No. 22–58, at 41 (citing 
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 offcial title, or the appropriate offcer. 
Except to the extent that prior, adequate, and exclusive opportunity for 
judicial review is provided by law, agency action is subject to judicial re-
view in civil or criminal proceedings for judicial enforcement.”

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840 CORNER POST, INC. v. BOARD OF GOVERNORS, FRS 
Kavanaugh, J., concurring 
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 stat-
utes authorized courts to “set aside” specifc kinds of agency 
actions, such as orders by the Interstate Commerce Commis-
sion. See n. 2, supra. This Court correctly understood 
those statutes to authorize vacatur. For example, in litiga-
tion 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). Simi-
lar examples abound. See, e. g., Sohoni, The Past and Fu-
ture of Universal Vacatur, 133 Yale L. J., at 2329–2335 (col-
lecting 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 Lab-
oratories v. Gardner, which signifcantly expanded the op-
portunities for facial, pre-enforcement review of agency 
rules. 387 U. S. 136, 139–141. Indeed, it was not until Ab-
bott 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 unregu-
lated parties. Not surprisingly, the Government's current

Cite as: 603 U. S. 799 (2024) 841 
Kavanaugh, J., concurring 
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 or-
ders) 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 conse-
quences that occur when a federal district court wrongly va-
cates 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 injunc-
tion against a rule), the Government may promptly seek a 
stay in the relevant federal court of 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 de-
nies a stay, the Government may seek further review in this 
Court. See Labrador v. Poe, 601 U. S. –––, ––– (2024) (Kav-
anaugh, J., concurring in grant of stay). The Government's 
frustration with the occasional incorrect district court vaca-
tur of an agency rule is understandable. But especially 
given the readily accessible and regularly utilized proce-
dures 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 
8 If the problem became suffciently severe, the Executive Branch could 
always ask Congress to limit the remedies available under the APA. 
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842 CORNER POST, INC. v. BOARD OF GOVERNORS, FRS 
Kavanaugh, J., concurring 
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 Govern-
ment also said that “it's possible that the only way to pro-
vide” 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 Govern-
ment also revealed the weakness of its position. The mean-
ing of “set aside” in the APA cannot reasonably depend on 
the specifc party before the court. Either the APA author-
izes vacatur, or it does not. 
More to the point, the Government's answer at oral argu-
ment 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 dif-
fculty 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 inter-
pretation of the APA and eliminate entire classes of histori-
cally common and vitally important litigation against fed-
eral 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 rem-
edy in APA challenges to agency rules. The Government's 
position therefore would fundamentally reshape administra-
tive law, leaving administrative agencies with extraordinary 
new power to issue rules free from potential suits by unregu-
lated but adversely affected parties—businesses, environ-
mental plaintiffs, workers, the list goes on. 
I agree with the longstanding consensus—a consensus 
based on text, history, precedent, and common sense—that

Cite as: 603 U. S. 799 (2024) 843 
Jackson, J., dissenting 
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. 
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 defne for 
all purposes when a `cause of action' frst `accrues.' ” Crown 
Coat Front Co. v. United States, 386 U. S. 503, 517 (1967). 
Today, the majority throws that caution to the wind and en-
gages in the same kind of misguided reasoning about statu-
tory limitations periods that we have previously admonished. 
The fawed 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 regu-
lations, 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 statutory term “ac-
crues” requires us to conclude that the limitations 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 
specifc. Never mind that, in the administrative-law con-
text, limitations statutes uniformly run from the moment of 
agency action. Never mind that a plaintiff's injury is ut-
terly 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 destabi-
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844 CORNER POST, INC. v. BOARD OF GOVERNORS, FRS 
Jackson, J., dissenting 
lizing for both Government and businesses. It also allows 
well-heeled litigants to game the system by creating new 
entities or fnding new plaintiffs whenever they blow past 
the statutory deadline. 
The majority refuses to accept the straightforward, com-
monsense, 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. 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-fts-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 2011, the Board issued Regulation II, capping debit-card 
interchange fees at 21 cents per transaction plus 0.05 percent 
of the transaction. 76 Fed. Reg. 43420 (2011) (codifed at 12 
CFR § 235.3(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, 
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Cite as: 603 U. S. 799 (2024) 845 
Jackson, J., dissenting 
477 (2014). And, a few months after that, we denied certio-
rari. See 574 U. S. 1121 (2015). 
B 
Now consider the facts of this challenge. In the majori-
ty's telling, this is about a single “truckstop and convenience 
store located in Watford City, North Dakota.” Ante, at 805. 
Not quite. Rather, two large trade groups initially fled 
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 plaintiff. 
And, importantly, other than the addition of Corner Post, the 
trade groups' complaint remained practically identical to the 
untimely one they had fled before. Other than a few 
changes of phrasing and some newly available 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 argu-
ments, 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 
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 
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846 CORNER POST, INC. v. BOARD OF GOVERNORS, FRS 
Jackson, J., dissenting 
Corner Post's lawsuit were not new or in any way distinct 
(even in wording) from the pre-existing and untimely 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 Cor-
ner Post. The plaintiffs argued that, because Corner Post 
had not yet formed as a company when the Board issued 
Regulation II, it simply could not be subjected to a 6-year 
limitations period that ran from when the challenged regula-
tion issued back in 2011. (One wonders how a company that 
formed against the backdrop of a long-settled rule could pos-
sibly be entitled to complain, or claim injury, related to the 
regulatory environment in which it willingly entered—but I 
digress.) Rather than accepting that the untimely challenge 
remained so, Corner Post demanded a personalized, plaintiff-
specifc limitations rule, giving an entity six years from when 
it was frst affected by a Government action to fle 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 
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 majority 
says that the moment of the plaintiff's injury marks the start of the limita-
tions period for facial APA challenges, the majority fails to describe pre-
cisely when that injury occurs in this context. 
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 806–807. 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 fnal agency actions, and 
at least one District Court has expressly rejected such an extension. See 
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Cite as: 603 U. S. 799 (2024) 847 
Jackson, J., dissenting 
addition of Corner Post as a plaintiff did not make a differ-
ence to the timeliness of the business groups' claims. The 
Eighth Circuit affrmed, holding that “when plaintiffs bring 
a facial challenge to a fnal agency action, the right of action 
accrues, and the limitations period begins to run, upon publi-
cation 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 fnal agency action.” 
Ante, at 804. The majority maintains that the text of 
§ 2401(a) demands this result. But if that answer is so obvi-
ous, 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 fnd 
it necessary to provide the right answer. Here, the relevant 
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 fxed meaning. See 
Crown Coat, 386 U. S., at 517. Instead, the meaning of ac-
crue for the purpose of a statute of limitations is determined 
by the particular “right of action” at issue. For many kinds 
of legal claims, accrual is plaintiff specifc because the claims 
themselves are plaintiff specifc. But facial administrative-
law claims are not. This means that, in the administrative-
Linney's Pizza, LLC v. Board of Governors of FRS, 2023 WL 6050569, 
*2–*4 (ED Ky., Sept. 15, 2023).

848 CORNER POST, INC. v. BOARD OF GOVERNORS, FRS 
Jackson, J., dissenting 
law context, the limitations period begins not when a plain-
tiff is injured, but when a rule is fnalized. 
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 specifc. 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 
after [the order's] entry.” § 2344. Many more examples of 
context-specifc 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”). 
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 fled within six 
years after the right of action frst 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 Endangered Spe-
cies Act). 
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Jackson, J., dissenting 
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 frst accrues.” § 2401(a). 
No more elaboration or specifcity 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 frst accrues.” (Emphasis added.) The word “frst” 
directs us to start the clock at the earliest possible opportu-
nity 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 under-
lying statute (here the APA) provides “the right of action,” 
not § 2401(a) itself. Put another way, the § 2401(a) catchall 
applies to different causes of action, and those causes of ac-
tion establish different legal claims. Though the right of ac-
tion is not the same for an APA claim as it is for an Endan-
gered Species Act claim, § 2401(a)'s broad “right of action” 
language applies to both of these claims, and more. 
B 
A proper understanding of the word “accrues” makes clear 
that this term is far more fexible and context dependent 
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 assign the 
word `accrued' any defnite 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 attempting to defne 
for all purposes when a `cause of action' frst `accrues' ”). 
But, for some reason, that does not stop the majority from 
trying here. Its opinion repeatedly asserts that the ordi-

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850 CORNER POST, INC. v. BOARD OF GOVERNORS, FRS 
Jackson, J., dissenting 
nary meaning of accrual is that claims accrue only when a 
plaintiff can sue. See ante, at 809–813. 3 But even the ma-
jority acknowledges that its preferred defnition of accrual is 
not universal; it is, at most, “the `standard rule' ” that “ `can 
be displaced.' ” Ante, at 811 (quoting Green v. Brennan, 578 
U. S. 547, 554 (2016); emphasis added). 
Far from imposing a one-size-fts-all defnition of the word 
“accrue,” this Court has traditionally taken a claim-specifc 
view: “[A] right accrues when it comes into existence.” 
United States v. Lindsay, 346 U. S. 568, 569 (1954). For ex-
ample, 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 Coat, we held 
the opposite—a claim brought under 28 U. S. C. § 1346 did 
not accrue at the time of injury, but rather at the moment of 
fnal administrative action, because a plaintiff could not sue 
until the agency action was fnal. 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 respect to the meaning of accrue. 
Instead, our cases illustrate what this Court has expressly 
stated: The term “accrued” lacks “any defnite technical 
meaning,” Reading, 271 U. S., at 61. 
The majority nevertheless decrees today that accrual must 
always be plaintiff specifc—i. e., that a claim cannot accrue 
until “this particular plaintiff” can bring suit. Ante, at 817. 
But that is not what § 2401(a) says. It does not say that the 
clock starts when the plaintiffs right of action frst accrues; 
rather, § 2401(a) starts the clock when “ the right of action 
3 The majority insists on a single defnition of “accrued,” but it cannot 
keep its story straight as to what that defnition 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 action,” 
“when a suit may be maintained thereon,” and, also, “after the plaintiff 
suffers the injury.” Ante, at 810–811 (internal quotation marks omitted). 
These distinctions can make a difference.

Cite as: 603 U. S. 799 (2024) 851 
Jackson, J., dissenting 
frst accrues.” (Emphasis added.) In other words, the lim-
itations provision here focuses on the claim being brought 
without regard for who brings it. 
The dictionary defnitions on which the majority relies fur-
ther highlight this important observation. A claim accrues, 
according to those defnitions, “ `when a suit may be main-
tained thereon' ” or upon the “ `coming or springing into 
existence of a right to sue.' ” Ante, at 810 (emphasis added) 
(frst quoting Black's Law Dictionary 37 (4th ed. 1951), then 
quoting Ballentine's Law Dictionary 15 (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 
defnitions do not support the majority's assertion that ac-
crual is necessarily plaintiff specifc. 
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 Clean-
ing Pension Trust Fund v. Ferbar Corp. of Cal., 522 U. S. 
192, 201 (1997). But those statements were made in the con-
text of particular cases, each of which dealt with plaintiff-
specifc 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 (retalia-
tion claim against an employer); Bay Area Laundry , 522 
U. S., at 195 (claim alleging failure to make required pay-
ments 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 specifc to the particular plaintiff. But, as discussed 
below, it is not similarly plaintiff specifc to bring a claim 
saying, for example, that a particular regulation is invalid 
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852 CORNER POST, INC. v. BOARD OF GOVERNORS, FRS 
Jackson, J., dissenting 
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 specifc, that is just because underlying 
legal claims are often plaintiff specifc. The precedents the 
majority cites never say otherwise; i.e., they do not tell us 
that accrual must always be plaintiff specifc. 
The majority's other hard-and-fast distinction—between 
statutes of limitations and statutes of repose—fares no bet-
ter. See ante, at 812–813. The majority sets up a dichot-
omy: Statutes of limitations are plaintiff-centric rules that 
“ `require plaintiffs to pursue diligent prosecution of known 
claims,' ” while statutes of repose emphasize fnality and are 
tied to “ `the last culpable act or omission of the defendant.' ” 
Ante, at 812 (quoting CTS Corp. v. Waldburger, 573 U. S. 1, 
8 (2014)). The problem is that statutes of limitations and 
statutes of repose, while different, are not nearly as different 
as the majority imagines. It is true that statutes of repose 
are considered to be “defendant-protective.” Ante, at 813. 
But the same is true of statutes of limitations. “The very 
purpose of a period of limitation is that there may be, at 
some defnitely ascertainable period, an end to litigation.” 
Reading, 271 U. S., at 65; see also Gabelli, 568 U. S., at 448 
(repose is a “ `basic polic[y] of all limitations provisions' ”). 
In fact, according to one of the dictionaries the majority cites, 
“[s]tatutes of limitation are statutes of repose.” Black's Law 
Dictionary, at 1077 (emphasis added). The difference is that 
unlike statutes of repose, statutes of limitations have more 
than one purpose: they bring fnality for defendants and pre-
vent 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 
4 Here, these purposes are at odds because repose favors starting the 
clock at the moment of fnal agency action, whereas a plaintiff-specifc 
limitations rule would be targeted at a plaintiff's injury to ensure plaintiffs 
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Jackson, J., dissenting 
III 
Because different claims accrue at different times, we 
must look to the specifc 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 specifc. 
See, e. g., Wallace, 549 U. S., at 389 (relying on torts treatises 
to explain the “distinctive rule” for commencement of limita-
tions period for false imprisonment suits); Franconia Asso-
ciates v. United States, 536 U. S. 129, 142–144 (2002) (citing 
contracts treatises to explain that contract claims accrue at 
the moment of breach); Merck & Co. v. Reynolds, 559 U. S. 
633, 644–646 (2010) (applying fraud-specifc discovery rule to 
determine accrual). In other words, to understand when 
“the right of action” accrues under § 2401(a), we must under-
stand what the right of action is. 
A 
The right of action that is invoked in many administrative-
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 repeatedly 
made clear, through various statutory enactments, that in 
the administrative-law context, the statute of limitations for 
fling a claim that seeks to invalidate the agency action runs 
from the moment of fnal 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 cer-
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. 
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854 CORNER POST, INC. v. BOARD OF GOVERNORS, FRS 
Jackson, J., dissenting 
tain orders issued by over a half-dozen federal agencies. 
The Act requires suits to be brought “within 60 days after 
[the] entry” of any fnal 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 fnal 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 pro-
vided, there are many, many others. See, e. g., 5 U. S. C. § 7703(b)(1)(A) 
(“[A] petition to review a fnal order or fnal decision of the [Merit Systems 
Protection] Board shall be fled . . . within 60 days after the Board issues 
notice of the fnal 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 may obtain a review of such 
order . . . by fling . . . 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 fnal decision of the Board of Veterans' Appeals, a person adversely af-
fected by such decision shall fle 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 fnal decision of the Commis-
sioner of Social Security made after a hearing to which he was a party . . . 
may obtain a review of such decision 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 fnal decision of the [Provider Reimbursement Review] Board . . . by 
a civil action commenced within 60 days of the date on which notice of any 
fnal decision by the Board . . . is received”); § 7607(b)(1) (“Any petition for 
review under this subsection shall be fled 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 fled within sixty days after such grounds arise”); 49 U. S. C. 
§ 1153(b)(1) (petitions seeking review of National Transportation Safety

Cite as: 603 U. S. 799 (2024) 855 
Jackson, J., dissenting 
Despite the dozens of statutes that start the limitations 
period at the moment of fnal agency action, neither Corner 
Post nor the majority identifes a single statute in the 
administrative-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 fnal agency action. 
The Court says we must ignore these other statutes 
because they post-date Congress's 1948 enactment of 
§ 2401(a). See ante, at 815–817. 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 agency 
action.
6 Then, as now, Congress decided that the deadline 
for reviewing agency actions should be pegged to the action 
Board orders that relate to aviation matters “must be fled not later than 
60 days after the order is issued”). 
6 See, e. g., 42 Stat. 162 (1921) (codifed at 7 U. S. C. § 194(a)) (meatpackers 
must appeal agency orders within 30 days after service of order); 48 Stat. 
1093 (1934) (codifed as amended at 47 U. S. C. § 402(c)) (Federal Communi-
cations Commission orders must be challenged in court “within twenty 
days after the decision complained of is effective”); 49 Stat. 860 (1935) 
(codifed at 16 U. S. C. § 825l(b)) (orders issued by the Federal Power Com-
mission pursuant to the Public Utility Act of 1935 must be challenged in 
court “within sixty days after the order of the Commission”); 49 Stat. 980 
(1935) (codifed 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) (codifed 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) (codifed at 15 
U. S. C. § 717r(b)) (orders issued by the Federal Power Commission pursu-
ant to the Natural Gas Act must be challenged in court “within sixty days 
after the order of the Commission”); 52 Stat. 1053 (1938) (codifed at 21 
U. S. C. § 355(h)) (orders related to new drug applications must be chal-
lenged in court “within sixty days after the entry of such order”); 54 Stat. 
501 (1940) (orders apportioning costs for certain bridge projects must be 
challenged in court “within three months after the date such order is 
issued”). 
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856 CORNER POST, INC. v. BOARD OF GOVERNORS, FRS 
Jackson, J., dissenting 
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 atten-
tion to the uniformly expressed judgment of Congress, 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 
accrual to fnal agency action in § 2401(a) but did not do 
so). See ante, at 811–813.
7 But mechanically drawing 
these sorts of negative inferences when interpreting statutes 
can be risky. “Context counts, and it is sometimes diffcult 
to read much into the absence of a word that is present else-
where 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 ex-
plicitly stated that accrual in § 2401(a) starts at the point of 
fnal agency action when § 2401(a) is a residual provision that 
also applies to claims that do not involve agency action at 
all.
8 
7 The majority criticizes my review of congressional action in this area, 
but fails to adequately explore the record itself. Ante, at 815–817. The 
majority's conclusion that the accrual rule is plaintiff specifc for APA 
claims is no more than ipse dixit. 
8 Contra the majority, see ante, at 817, the fact that Congress could have 
opted to enact a specifc statutory review provision for APA claims says 
nothing about how we should apply the catchall review provision here. 
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Jackson, J., dissenting 
Frankly, it was also entirely unnecessary for Congress 
to be explicit regarding its intentions. Again, in the 
administrative-law context, the consistent rule is not the 
plaintiff-specifc 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 
fnal agency action. So it is no wonder that Congress did 
not expressly 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 
administrative-law context makes perfect sense. The APA 
itself focuses on the agency's action, not on the plaintiff. Sec-
tion 704 subjects certain “agency action[s]” to judicial review. 
Section 706 lays out the scope of judicial review. As relevant 
here, courts shall “hold unlawful and set aside agency action” 
that is “arbitrary, capricious, an abuse of discretion, or other-
wise not in accordance with law.” 5 U. S. C. § 706(2)(A). 
Other subsections of § 706 likewise focus exclusively on what 
the agency did. Did the agency act “in excess of statutory 
jurisdiction”? § 706(2)(C). Did the agency act “without ob-
servance 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 parties 
with a cause of action.” Ante, at 808. 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 distinction 
between what constitutes a claim and who can bring that claim. See ante, 
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858 CORNER POST, INC. v. BOARD OF GOVERNORS, FRS 
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 happened 
to the plaintiff or what happened after the rulemaking—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 administrative 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 regu-
lated party) does not matter to an APA claim. So, the avail-
able claims, causes of action, and evidence are the same re-
gardless 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 Re-
at 807–808, and n. 1. This type of distinction is commonplace in many 
areas of our jurisprudence. Take, for example, the constitutional standing 
doctrine, which limits eligible plaintiffs to those who have suffered an 
injury in fact that is both traceable to the defendant's conduct and redress-
able 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 codifes 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 appropriate 
plaintiff; it has no bearing on whether the agency did, in fact, act in a 
manner that was “arbitrary, capricious, an abuse of discretion, or other-
wise not in accordance with law,” § 706(2)(A). 
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Jackson, J., dissenting 
tail 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 specifc 
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. Before 
the addition of Corner Post, the arbitrary-and-capricious 
claim said that the Board failed to consider certain congres-
sional 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 fled 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 specifc to it—they 
are identical to the untimely claims the coplaintiff trade 
groups brought before. And, fnally, although the majority 
puts procedural challenges to the side—asserting that its 
holding does not extend to those, see ante, at 821, 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 fnal 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

860 CORNER POST, INC. v. BOARD OF GOVERNORS, FRS 
Jackson, J., dissenting 
about a plaintiff's opportunity for recovery and a defendant'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 read-
ing of § 2401(a), because, as I explain below, a plaintiff-
specifc accrual rule operating in this context undermines 
each of the central goals of all limitations 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 enti-
ties that can fnd 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 predict-
ability purposes.” Talk America, Inc. v. Michigan Bell 
Telephone Co., 564 U. S. 50, 69 (2011) (Scalia, J., concurring). 
When an administrative agency changes its own rules, it fol-
lows specifc, established processes, so parties have some 
predictability about how the rules of the road might change. 
10 The fact that “courts entertaining later challenges often will be able 
to rely on binding Supreme Court or circuit precedent,” ante, at 824, is 
irrelevant. What we are deciding now is how the statute of limitations 
should be interpreted, and more specifcally, whether it makes sense to 
interpret it in a way that is inconsistent with the purpose of such statutes. 
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Jackson, J., dissenting 
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. 
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 fnal 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 fnal decision they 
make. 
The majority's ruling makes legal challenges to decades-
old agency decisions fair game, even though courts of appeals 
had previously applied § 2401(a) to fnd untimely a range of 
belated APA challenges. For example, a lower court re-
jected an APA challenge to the Food and Drug Administra-
tion's approval of the abortion medication mifepristone that 
was brought more than two decades after the relevant 
agency action. See Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine v. 
FDA, 78 F. 4th 210, 242 (CA5 2023). A 2008 APA challenge 
to a 1969 ruling by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, 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 un-
questionably tardy APA suits have been dismissed on similar 
grounds too.
11 
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 deci-
sions 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, 
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862 CORNER POST, INC. v. BOARD OF GOVERNORS, FRS 
Jackson, J., dissenting 
No more. After today, even the most well-settled agency 
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 
protection—can now be attacked by any new regulated en-
tity within six years of the entity's formation. A brand new 
entity 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 regu-
lated industry its own personal statute of limitations to chal-
lenge longstanding regulations affects our Nation's economy. 
Why? Because administrative agencies establish the base-
line rules around which businesses and individuals order 
their lives. When an agency publishes a fnal rule, and the 
period for challenging that rule passes, people in that indus-
try understand that the agency's policy choice is the law and 
act accordingly. They make investments because of it. 
They change their practices because of it. They enter con-
tracts 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 challenges that 
can overturn settled regulations long after the rest of the 
competitive marketplace has adapted itself to the regula-
tory environment. 
1286–1287 (CA5 1997) (1994 challenge to 1979 National Park Service regu-
lations); Shiny Rock Mining Corp. v. United States, 906 F. 2d 1362, 1365– 
1366 (CA9 1990) (1984 challenges to 1964 and 1965 land management 
orders). 
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Jackson, J., dissenting 
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 
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 
industry is precisely why a defned 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 consist-
ency [that] enable[s] small businesses to survive and thrive.” 
Brief for Small Business Associations as Amici Curiae 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 “frequent, in-
consistent, judicially-driven policy changes that do not in-
volve 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 precisely why Con-
gress enacted a statute of limitations in the frst 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 challenge. See 
ante, at 823–824. But this myopic rationalization overlooks 
other signifcant changes that this Court has wrought this 
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864 CORNER POST, INC. v. BOARD OF GOVERNORS, FRS 
Jackson, J., dissenting 
Term with respect to the longstanding rules governing re-
view of agency actions. The discerning reader will know 
that the Court has handed down other decisions this Term 
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. 369 
(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 412–413. Under that prior inter-
pretive doctrine, courts deferred to agency interpretations 
of ambiguous statutes that Congress authorized the agency 
to administer. Now, every legal claim conceived of in those 
last four decades—and before—can possibly be brought be-
fore courts newly unleashed from the constraints of any such 
deference. See Tr. of Oral Arg. 74 (Assistant to the Solicitor 
General explaining that this result “would magnify the effect 
of” overruling Chevron). 
Put differently, a fxed statute of limitations, running from 
the agency's action, was one barrier to the chaotic upending 
of settled agency rules; the requirement that deference be 
given to an agency's reasonable interpretations concerning 
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 judgment 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 Govern-

Page Proof Pending Publication
Cite as: 603 U. S. 799 (2024) 865 
Jackson, J., dissenting 
ment. Even more to the present point, that result simply 
cannot be what Congress intended when it enacted legisla-
tion that stood up and funded federal agencies and vested 
them with authority to set the ground rules for the individu-
als and entities that participate in our economy and our soci-
ety. It is utterly inconceivable that § 2401(a)'s statute of 
limitations was meant to permit fresh attacks on settled reg-
ulations 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 specifc 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 agen-
cies 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 profound, 
“the ball is in Congress' court.” Ledbetter v. Goodyear 
Tire & Rubber Co., 550 U. S. 618, 661 (2007) (Ginsburg, J., 
dissenting).

Page Proof Pending Publication
Reporter’s Note 
The attached opinion has been revised to refect the usual publication 
and citation style of the United States Reports. The revised pagination 
makes available the offcial United States Reports citation in advance of 
publication. The syllabus has been prepared by the Reporter of Decisions 
for the convenience of the reader and constitutes no part of the opinion of 
the Court. A list of counsel who argued or fled briefs in this case, and 
who were members of the bar of this Court at the time this case was 
argued, has been inserted following the syllabus. Other revisions may 
include adjustments to formatting, captions, citation form, and any errant 
punctuation. The following additional edits were made: 
p. 803, line 30: the second “in which” is deleted 
p. 810, line 5: “commenced” is inserted after “action” 
p. 865, line 5: “the” is deleted

Retrieval chunks

• #1

  PRELIMINARY PRINT Volume 603 U. S. Part 1 Pages 799–865 OFFICIAL REPORTS OF THE SUPREME COURT July 1, 2024 REBECCA A. WOMELDORF reporter of decisions Page Proof Pending Publication NOTICE: This preliminary print is subject to formal revision before the bound volume is published. Users are requested to notif…

• #2

  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, Offce of Workers' Compensation Programs v. Newport News Shipbuilding & Dry Dock Co., 514 U. S…

• #3

  “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 defnition has ap- peared “in dictionaries from t…

• #4

  pose—are “based on the date when the claim accrued.” Id., at 7–8. Pp. 809–813. (c) The Board's arguments to the contrary lack merit. Pp. 813–825. (1) The Board points to the many specifc statutory review provi- sions that start the clock at fnality, contending that such statutes refect a standard administrative-l…

• #5

  this particular plaintiff—has a complete and present cause of action. See Green, 578 U. S., at 554. No precedent supports the Board's hypo- thetical “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 ag…

• #6

  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…

• #7

  Opinion of the Court Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General Boynton, Deputy Solicitor General Stewart, and Daniel Tenny.* Justice Barrett delivered the opinion of the Court. The default statute of limitations for suits against the United States requires “the complaint [to be] fled within six years after the…

• #8

  Caleb Kruckenberg and Molly E. Nixon fled a brief of amicus curiae for the Pacifc Legal Foundation. Cite as: 603 U. S. 799 (2024) 805 Opinion of the Court 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. L…

• #9

  but the D. C. Circuit reversed, concluding “that the Board's rules generally rest on reasonable constructions of the stat- ute,” NACS v. Board of Governors of FRS, 746 F. 3d 474, 477 (2014). Corner Post, of course, did not exist when the Board adopted Regulation II or even during the D. C. Circuit litiga- tion. …

• #10

  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 became fnal. Herr v. United States Forest Serv., 803 F. 3d 809, 820–822 (2015) (“When a party frst bec…

• #11

  Bennett v. Spear, 520 U. S. 154, 177–178 (1997) (internal quo- tation marks omitted). Note that § 702's injury requirement and § 704's fnality requirement work hand in hand: Each is a “necessary, but not by itself . . . suffcient, ground for stat- ing a claim under the APA.” Herr, 803 F. 3d, at 819. The applicabl…

• #12

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

• #13

  may be maintained thereon.” Black's Law Dictionary 37 (4th ed. 1951) (Black's); see also, e. g., Ballentine's Law Dic- tionary 15 (2d ed. 1948) (Ballentine's) (“[A]ccrual of cause of action” defned as the “coming or springing into existence of a right to sue” (boldface deleted)). Thus, we have explained that a ca…

• #14

  fle suit” as “inconsistent with basic limitations principles.” 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 fle a suit,” we “ `will not infe…

• #15

  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 culpable act or omission of the defendant.” 573 U. S., at 8. Such statutes bar “ `any suit that is brought after a specifed time since the defe…

• #16

  “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. Page Proof Pending Publication 814 CORNER POST, INC. v. BOARD OF GOVERNORS, FRS Opinion of the Court also post, at 853–…

• #17

  nition to heed such distinctions. According to the dissent, we cannot expect “Congress to have explicitly stated that accrual in § 2401(a) starts at the point of fnal agency action when § 2401(a) is a residual provision” that applies generally. Post, at 856. But § 2401(a)'s text refects a choice: Congress took th…

• #18

  meatpacker to appeal an order fnding that the packer “has violated or is violating any provision” of the statute regulat- ing 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 prac- tice …

• #19

  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 fnal and, theoretically, some other plaintiff was in…

• #20

  Congress enacted § 2401(a). See Part III, supra . The Board's interpretation would thereby decouple the statute of limitations from any injury “such that the limitations period begins to run before a plaintiff can fle a suit”—for some, but 5 While the dissent attempts to cabin our precedent describing the plainti…

• #21

  for purposes of Section 2401(a)” even when a person is unable to sue. Brief for Respondent 24. True enough. It is a mystery, however, why the Board fnds this helpful. The tolling exception applies when the plaintiff had a complete and present cause of action after he was injured but his legal disability or absenc…

• #22

  sued in her individual capacity immediately after the em- ployee'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 interest who may procure the action to be brought.” Id., at 62–63. While it is true t…

• #23

  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 defne for all purposes when a `cause of action' frst `accrues' ”; it cautioned that those words should be “ `interpreted in the light of the general purposes of the statu…

• #24

  Green, 578 U. S., at 554; see also, e. g., Graham County, 545 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…

• #25

  always assail a regulation as exceeding the agency's statu- tory authority in enforcement proceedings against them” or “petition 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 regu…

• #26

  posed rulemaking. Reply Brief 18–19. We need not resolve that issue here because there is no dispute that Corner Post proffered an injury that does not depend on its having existed when the Board promulgated Regulation II: the rule's alleged confict with the Durbin Amendment. The dissent's observation that “the cl…

• #27

  the contrary and remand the case for further proceedings consistent with this opinion. It is so ordered. legality. See n. 2, supra. Nor is the ability to petition the Board for rulemaking to change Regulation II a suffcient substitute for de novo judicial review of its lawfulness: The agency's “discretionary deci…

• #28

  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. Page Proof Pending Publication Cite as: 603 U. S. 799 (2024) 827 Kavanaugh, J., concurring Recently, the Government has advanced a far-re…

• #29

  does not charge interchange fees to its customers, and Cor- ner 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 u…

• #30

  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 APA, the longstanding and settled precedent adhering to that text and history, and the radical consequences for ad- ministrative law and individual liberty …

• #31

  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…

• #32

  Importantly, as Corner Post's lawsuit shows, the availabil- ity of vacatur determines not only the extent of the 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 unregu- lated but adversel…

• #33

  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 4 Absent vacatur, the remedy for a regulated plaintiff would not auto- matically extend to other regulated parties. For example, if a district court issued an …

• #34

  183 (2023) (when the Supreme Court “holds a statute to be unconstitu- tional 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 …

• #35

  those safety standards was subject to the same degree of judicial review as the decision to issue the standards in the frst 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 ju…

• #36

  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, Page Proof Pending Publication 836 CORNER POST, INC. v. BOARD OF GOVERNORS, FRS Kavanaugh, J., concurring the plaintiff must sue …

• #37

  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 APA suit to obtain relief. IV Against all of that text, history, precedent, and common sense, the Government has recently rejected the stra…

• #38

  limited to the parties in a specifc case. Therefore, nation- wide injunctions would be permissible only if Congress au- thorized 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” agenc…

• #39

  the text of § 703 “speaks to venue and forms of proceedings, not to remedies, and regardless, its 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 phr…

• #40

  actions, such as orders by the Interstate Commerce Commis- sion. See n. 2, supra. This Court correctly understood those statutes to authorize vacatur. For example, in litiga- tion regarding the regulation of railroads, this Court held that an unlawful ICC order was “void.” United States v. Baltimore & Ohio R. Co.…

• #41

  stay in the relevant federal court of 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 de- nies a stay, the Government may seek further review in this Court. See Labrador …

• #42

  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 rem- edy in APA challeng…

• #43

  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…

• #44

  477 (2014). And, a few months after that, we denied certio- rari. See 574 U. S. 1121 (2015). B Now consider the facts of this challenge. In the majori- ty's telling, this is about a single “truckstop and convenience store located in Watford City, North Dakota.” Ante, at 805. Not quite. Rather, two large trade gr…

• #45

  ner Post. The plaintiffs argued that, because Corner Post had not yet formed as a company when the Board issued Regulation II, it simply could not be subjected to a 6-year limitations period that ran from when the challenged regula- tion issued back in 2011. (One wonders how a company that formed against the back…

• #46

  accrues, and the limitations period begins to run, upon publi- cation 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, …

• #47

  U. S. C. § 2401(b). By contrast, a party challenging certain administrative orders must seek review “within 60 days after [the order's] entry.” § 2344. Many more examples of context-specifc limitations periods in the U. S. Code abound. See, e. g., § 2501 (claims over which the United States Court of Federal Claim…

• #48

  applies to different causes of action, and those causes of ac- tion establish different legal claims. Though the right of ac- tion is not the same for an APA claim as it is for an Endan- gered Species Act claim, § 2401(a)'s broad “right of action” language applies to both of these claims, and more. B A proper un…

• #49

  stated: The term “accrued” lacks “any defnite technical meaning,” Reading, 271 U. S., at 61. The majority nevertheless decrees today that accrual must always be plaintiff specifc—i. e., that a claim cannot accrue until “this particular plaintiff” can bring suit. Ante, at 817. But that is not what § 2401(a) says. …

• #50

  (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 (retalia- tion claim against an employer); Bay Area Laundry , 522 U. S., at 195 (claim alleging failure to make required pay- ments to employee p…

• #51

  Dictionary, at 1077 (emphasis added). The difference is that unlike statutes of repose, statutes of limitations have more than one purpose: they bring fnality for defendants and pre- vent plaintiffs from sleeping on their rights. Understanding these dual functions sheds no light whatsoever on what to do when thos…

• #52

  choose between those objectives; no one rule can equally achieve both of these ends. Page Proof Pending Publication Page Proof Pending Publication 854 CORNER POST, INC. v. BOARD OF GOVERNORS, FRS Jackson, J., dissenting tain orders issued by over a half-dozen federal agencies. The Act requires suits to be broug…

• #53

  a civil action commenced within 60 days of the date on which notice of any fnal decision by the Board . . . is received”); § 7607(b)(1) (“Any petition for review under this subsection shall be fled within sixty days from the date notice of such promulgation, approval, or action appears in the Federal Register, exc…

• #54

  Stat. 112 (1938) (codifed 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) (codifed at 15 U. S. C. § 717r(b)) (orders issued by the Federal Power Commission pursu- ant to the Natural Gas Ac…

• #55

  also applies to claims that do not involve agency action at all. 8 7 The majority criticizes my review of congressional action in this area, but fails to adequately explore the record itself. Ante, at 815–817. The majority's conclusion that the accrual rule is plaintiff specifc for APA claims is no more than ips…

• #56

  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 …

• #57

  The distinction between what a claim is and who can bring it applies with full force here. Section 702 codifes 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 inq…

• #58

  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 860 CORNER POST, INC. v. BOARD OF GOVERNORS, FRS Jackson, J., dissenting about a plaintiff's opportunity for recovery and a defe…

• #59

  Cite as: 603 U. S. 799 (2024) 861 Jackson, J., dissenting 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 elus…

• #60

  issue—say, workplace safety, toxic waste, or consumer protection—can now be attacked by any new regulated en- tity within six years of the entity's formation. A brand new entity 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…

• #61

  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 industry is precisely why a defned period for challenging the rules was need…

• #62

  of ambiguous statutes that Congress authorized the agency to administer. Now, every legal claim conceived of in those last four decades—and before—can possibly be brought be- fore courts newly unleashed from the constraints of any such deference. See Tr. of Oral Arg. 74 (Assistant to the Solicitor General explain…

• #63

  cies 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 profound, “the ball is in Congress' court.” Ledbetter v. Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co., 550 U. S. 618, 661 (2007) (Ginsburg, J., dissenting). Pa…