Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/23pdf/22-1008_1b82.pdf
Page Number: 20

Cite as:  603 U. S. ____ (2024) 

15 

Opinion of the Court 

someone else have sued” sort of inquiry.5  Rather, the “stat-
ute of limitations begins to run at the time the plaintiff has 
the  right  to  apply  to  the  court  for  relief.”  TRW  Inc.,  534 
U. S., at 37 (opinion of Scalia, J.) (internal quotation marks
omitted; emphasis added).6 

Importing  the  Board’s  special  administrative-law  rule 
into  §2401(a)  would  create  a  defendant-focused  rule  for 
agency  suits  while  retaining  the  traditional  challenger-
specific  accrual  rule  for  other  suits  against  the  United 
States.  That would give the same statutory text—“right of 
action  first  accrues”—different  meanings  in  different  con-
texts,  even  though  those  words  had  a  single,  well-settled 
meaning when Congress enacted §2401(a).  See Part III, su-
pra.  The Board’s interpretation would thereby decouple the
statute of limitations from any injury “such that the limita-
tions period begins to run before a plaintiff can file a suit”—
for some, but not all, suits governed by §2401(a).  Green, 578 
U. S., at 554.  We “will not infer such an odd result in the 
—————— 

5 While  the  dissent  attempts  to  cabin  our  precedent  describing  the 
plaintiff-specific standard accrual rule, nothing in those cases suggests 
that the rule is only plaintiff-specific for “plaintiff-specific causes of ac-
tion.”  Post, at 10; see, e.g., Gabelli v. SEC, 568 U. S. 442, 448 (2013) (The 
“ ‘standard rule’ ” that a “claim accrues ‘when the plaintiff has a complete
and  present  cause  of  action’ ”  has  “governed  since  the  1830s”  and  “ap-
pears in dictionaries from the 19th century up until today”).  And regard-
less,  the  dissent’s  assertion  that  “administrative-law  claims”  are  not 
“plaintiff specific,” post, at 6, is mystifying given that an APA plaintiff 
cannot sue until she suffers an injury, see 5 U. S. C. §702; n. 1, supra.  By
emphasizing the plaintiff-agnostic aspects of facial challenges to agency 
action,  post,  at  10,  16–18,  the  dissent  conflates  the  defendant-focused 
substance of an APA claim with its plaintiff-specific cause of action. 

6 Moreover, there may be cases where no one is injured and able to sue 
at the time of final agency action—e.g., if the agency delays a rule’s en-
forcement—but  the  Board  would  still  start  the  clock  then.    Cf.  Toilet 
Goods Assn., Inc. v. Gardner, 387 U. S. 158, 162–166 (1967) (agency rule 
was final but challenge was not yet ripe).  So the Board’s position cannot 
be reconciled even with a challenger-agnostic form of the traditional ac-
crual rule, which at least would require that someone have a complete
and present cause of action before the limitations period begins.