The U.S. Supreme Court has opened the floodgates to legal challenges to years-old regulations in a new ruling, according to a justice.
The court decided 6-3 that North Dakota truck stop Corner Post could sue the Federal Reserve over a 2011 rule on credit card swipe fees, and Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson warned in her dissent the decision would result in “a tsunami of lawsuits” with “the potential to devastate the functioning of the Federal Government," reported Politico.
“Congress can make clear that lawsuits bringing facial claims against agencies are not personal attack vehicles for new entities created just for that purpose,” Jackson wrote.
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Under the Administrative Procedure Act, which governs the process for adopting new regulations, there is a 6-year statute of limitations.
But the court ruled that Corner Post could still sue, despite it not opening until 2018. The court ruled in the store's favor by deciding the clock starts running when the company is first legally harmed.
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Jackson called on Congress to “address this absurdity and forestall the coming chaos," but National Retail Federation praised the ruling.
“The bottom line is that a small business harmed by a faulty regulation should not be denied its day in court based on a technicality, especially one that has been in dispute,” said NRF chief administrative officer and general counsel Stephanie Martz, who was co-counsel on the case.