Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/23pdf/22-1008_1b82.pdf
Page Number: 41.0

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

13 

KAVANAUGH, J., concurring 

APA suit to obtain relief. 

IV 

Against all of that text, history, precedent, and common 
sense, 
the 
the  Government  has  recently  rejected 
straightforward  and  long-accepted  conclusion  that  the 
phrase “set aside” in the APA authorizes vacatur.  Instead, 
the Government contends that plaintiffs harmed by agency 
rules  must  seek  injunctions  against  enforcement  of  those 
rules.  See Brief for United States in United States v. Texas, 
O. T.  2022,  No.  22–58,  pp. 40–44.    One  effect  of  the 
Government’s  new  position  would  be  to  insulate  many 
agency  rules  from  meaningful  judicial  review  in  suits  by 
unregulated but adversely affected parties.

To support its new position, the Government has offered

an array of arguments. 

First, the Government says that vacatur of a federal rule 
is  akin  to  a  nationwide  injunction—in  other  words,  an 
injunction that prohibits the Government from enforcing a
law against anyone, not just the parties in a specific case. 
The  Government  has  contended  that  equitable  relief  is 
ordinarily  limited  to  the  parties  in  a  specific  case. 
Therefore,  nationwide  injunctions  would  be  permissible
only if Congress authorized them.

But  in  the  APA,  Congress  did  in  fact  depart  from  that
baseline and authorize vacatur.  As noted above, the text of 
the APA expressly authorizes federal courts to “set aside” 
agency action.  5 U. S. C. §706(2).  “Unlike judicial review
of  statutes,  in  which  courts  enter  judgments  and  decrees
only  against  litigants,  the  APA”  and  related  statutory 
review provisions “go further by empowering the judiciary 
to  act  directly  against  the  challenged  agency  action.”    J. 
Mitchell, The Writ-of-Erasure Fallacy, 104 Va. L. Rev. 933,
1012  (2018).  The  text  of  §706(2)  directs  federal  courts  to 
vacate agency actions in the same way that appellate courts 
vacate  the  judgments  of  trial  courts.    See  M.  Sohoni,  The