BREAKING: Supreme Court Deals Major Blow To The Administrative State

On Monday, the Supreme Court struck a major blow to the federal bureaucracy after the justices, in a 6-3 decision, ruled in Corner Post Inc v. Board of Governors that the six-year window to sue federal agencies begins when the bureaucracy's actions harm the plaintiff. The majority's opinion, written by Justice Amy Coney Barrett, outlines that citizens damaged by federal regulations are able to sue the federal government up to six years after they were damaged rather than only being able to sue within six years after the regulation was finalized.

The ruling would allow individuals to sue federal agencies for decades-old regulations, and it serves as yet another blow to federal regulatory authority after the Supreme Court overturned Chevron Deference on Friday.

“Under the Board’s finality rule, only those fortunate enough to suffer an injury within six years of a rule’s promulgation may bring an (Administrative Procedure Act) suit. Everyone else – no matter how serious the injury or how illegal the rule – has no recourse,” Justice Barrett wrote. "An APA claim does not accrue for purposes of §2401(a)’s 6-year statute of limitations until the plaintiff is injured by final agency action."

In a dissent, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson slammed the majority's decision, writing, “The flawed reasoning and far-reaching results of the Court’s ruling in this case are staggering."

“The majority refuses to accept the straightforward, commonsense, and singularly plausible reading of the limitations statute that Congress wrote. In doing so, the Court wreaks havoc on Government agencies, businesses, and society at large,” she added, per CNN. “At the end of a momentous Term, this much is clear: The tsunami of lawsuits against agencies that the Court’s holdings in this case and Loper Bright have authorized has the potential to devastate the functioning of the Federal Government.”

The Court's decision to reassess when the statute of limitations begins on damages from federal agencies is a major victory for citizens impacted by regulations imposed on them and their businesses by bureaucrats in Washington, D.C. The Supreme Court's term has been a major blow to the administrative state and it has ensured that the federal bureacracy can't be an unchecked fourth branch of government that infringes on American liberties.

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