Corner Post, Inc. v. Board of Governors

On July 1, 2024, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Corner Post, Inc. v. Board of Governors. A North Dakota truck stop, Corner Post, incorporated in 2018, challenged Federal Reserve Regulation II from 2011 which caps debit card interchange fees. The case centered on whether the six-year statute of limitations under the Administrative Procedure Act bars a challenge brought by a party more than six years after a regulation's enactment. In a 6-3 decision, the Court held that a claim under the APA does not accrue until the plaintiff is injured by the final agency action. For Corner Post, this meant its clock started when it opened for business and was subject to the rule, not when the rule first issued in 2011. The ruling overturned the Eighth Circuit's dismissal of the lawsuit as time-barred.

The Supreme Court ruled 6-3 in favor of Corner Post, with Justice Barrett authoring the majority opinion. The Court held that an APA claim does not accrue for statute of limitations purposes until the plaintiff is adversely affected or aggrieved by the final agency action. The case was reversed and remanded, allowing Corner Post’s lawsuit against the Federal Reserve Board to proceed.

The central dispute was the interpretation of the six-year statute of limitations for facial challenges to agency rules under the Administrative Procedure Act. The question was whether the limitation period begins when an agency issues a final rule (regardless of a specific party's injury) or when a particular plaintiff first suffers harm from that rule. This case specifically addressed whether a newly formed entity could sue over a decade-old regulation.

The decision significantly expands the window to challenge federal regulations by allowing newly formed businesses or individuals to sue over rules published long ago. This creates potential for broad-based lawsuits against long-settled administrative rules, raising concerns among agencies and regulated industries about regulatory instability and perpetual legal exposure. Conversely, pro-business groups hailed the ruling as a check on administrative power, enabling new market entrants to fight allegedly unlawful regulations that would have otherwise been immune from judicial review due to the passage of time.