Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/21pdf/20-1775_4425.pdf
Page Number: 3

2 

ARIZONA v. CITY AND COUNTY OF SAN FRANCISCO 

ROBERTS, C. J., concurring 

miss those appeals, leaving in place the relief already en-
tered. 

A new administration is of course as a general matter en-
titled to do that.  But the Government then took a further 
step.  It  seized  upon  one  of  the  now-consent  judgments
against it—a final judgment vacating the Rule nationwide, 
issued in a different litigation—and leveraged it as a basis 
to immediately repeal the Rule, without using notice-and-
comment procedures.  86 Fed. Reg. 14221 (2021) (“Because 
this rule simply implements the district court’s vacatur of 
the  August  2019  rule  . . .  DHS  is  not  required  to  provide 
notice and comment.”).  This allowed the Government to cir-
cumvent the usual and important requirement, under the 
Administrative Procedure Act, that a regulation originally 
promulgated  using  notice  and  comment  (as  the  Public
Charge Rule was) may only be repealed through notice and 
comment, 5 U. S. C. §551(5); see Perez v. Mortgage Bankers 
Assn.,  575  U. S.  92,  101  (2015).    As  part  of  this  tactic  of 
“rulemaking-by-collective-acquiescence,”  City  and  County 
of San Francisco v. United States Citizenship and Immigra-
tion  Servs.,  992  F. 3d  742,  744  (CA9  2021)  (VanDyke,  J.,
dissenting), the Government successfully opposed efforts by 
other interested parties—including petitioners here—to in-
tervene in order to carry on the defense of the Rule, includ-
ing possibly before this Court.

These  maneuvers  raise  a  host  of  important  questions.
The  most  fundamental  is  whether  the  Government’s  ac-
tions, all told, comport with the principles of administrative
law.  But bound up in that inquiry are a great many issues
beyond the question of appellate intervention on which we 
granted certiorari, among them standing; mootness; vaca-
tur under United States v. Munsingwear, Inc., 340 U. S. 36 
(1950);  the  scope  of  injunctive  relief  in  an  APA  action; 
whether, contrary to what “[t]he government has long ar-
gued,” the APA “authorize[s] district courts to vacate regu-
lations or other agency actions on a nationwide basis,” Brief