Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/23pdf/22-1008_1b82.pdf
Page Number: 10.0

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

5 

Opinion of the Court 

While §702 equips injured parties with a cause of action, 
§704 limits the agency actions that are subject to judicial
review.  Unless another statute makes the agency’s action
reviewable  (and  none  does  for  Regulation  II),  judicial  re-
view  is  available  only for  “final  agency  action.”    §704.  In 
most  cases,  then,  a  plaintiff  can  only  challenge  an  action 
that  “mark[s]  the  consummation  of  the  agency’s  deci-
sionmaking process” and is “one by which rights or obliga-
tions  have  been  determined,  or  from  which  legal  conse-
quences will flow.”  Bennett v.  Spear, 520  U. S. 154, 177– 
178 (1997) (internal quotation marks omitted).  Note that 
§702’s injury requirement and §704’s finality requirement
work hand in hand: Each is a “necessary, but not by itself 
. . . sufficient, ground for stating a claim under the APA.” 
Herr, 803 F. 3d, at 819. 

The  applicable  statute  of 

limitations,  28  U. S. C. 
§2401(a), contains the language we must interpret: “[E]very 
civil action commenced against the United States shall be 
barred unless the complaint is filed within six years after 
the right of action first accrues.”  (Emphasis added.)  This 
provision  applies  generally  to  suits  against  the  United
States unless the timing provision of a more specific statute 
displaces it.  See, e.g., 33 U. S. C. §1369(b) (deadline to chal-
lenge certain agency actions under the Clean Water Act).

The  Board  contends  that  an  APA  claim  “accrues”  when 
agency action is “final” for purposes of §704—injury, it says, 

—————— 
action,” yet its injury requirement “says nothing about” the cause of ac-
tion or elements of the claim.  Post, at 16.  But surely the dissent does 
not mean to suggest that an uninjured person may bring an APA claim. 
Whether one calls injury a restriction on who may sue or an element of
the cause of action, the relevant, undisputed point is that a plaintiff can-
not sue under the APA unless she is “injured in fact by agency action.” 
Newport News, 514 U. S., at 127.