Supreme Court Term Threatens Massive Regulatory Upheaval 

WASHINGTON – Today, the U.S. Supreme Court issued a 6-3 decision in Corner Post v. Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System that opens the gates to massive regulatory upheaval and a flood of corporate challenges to rules that ensure our food is fit to eat, our air and water are clean, and our cars are safe and reliable.  

Until today, the Administrative Procedure Act’s statute of limitations meant that many government regulations could only be challenged in the six years following their enactment. The Court today ruled that the six-year clock starts to run when an entity feels the impact of the regulation. Ultimately the ruling means that a huge swath of regulatory rules, previously thought long settled, are now open for challenge at any time.    

The ruling caps a term marked by radical deregulatory rulings and hostility to agency expertise, including the destruction of the Chevron doctrine that has provided the foundation of administrative law for a generation.   

Together these decisions open the door to hundreds of new challenges to long-established regulations under a standard that replaces deference to technical experts with judges deciding for themselves how to structure our financial markets, control pollution, and more.   

In her dissent in the case, Justice Jackson noted that “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.” 

In response to the ruling, SELC Litigation Director Kym Meyer issued the following statement: 

“The Court’s decisions this term deal a significant blow to those who care about clean air and water, and a safe and healthy environment for their families. The decisions are a boon to polluting industries looking to dismantle reasonable regulations that keep our communities safe.  

Just as we need to empower expert agency staff to craft regulations based on science, technical, and financial expertise, we also need a degree of stability for our regulatory environment. Businesses and communities alike need stable rules of the road to rely on and to follow.   

Today’s opinion in Corner Post replaces decades of relative stability with chaos. Thanks to the Court’s action, a corporation that finds a longstanding regulation too inconvenient to follow can simply form a new business and run to court to challenge it. We are likely to see such cases popping up in courts throughout the country. And because the Court in Loper Bright did not articulate a new standard for lower courts to follow in reviewing agency regulations, we will also likely see a hodgepodge of standards pop up, with inconsistent rulings being issued about key regulations throughout the federal court system.     

With so much at stake, and an avalanche of litigation likely to follow, SELC and our team of litigators stand ready to fight back. We will step in where needed to defend the well-reasoned regulations our government has set in place over decades to protect the environment and people in the South.”