Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/23pdf/22-1008_1b82.pdf
Page Number: 67.0

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

21 

JACKSON, J., dissenting 

regulations  can  be  placed  on  the  chopping  block.    And 
please  take  note:  The  fallout  will not  stop  with  new  chal-
lenges to old rules involving the most contentious issues of 
today.  Any  established  government  regulation  about  any
issue—say, workplace safety, toxic waste, or consumer pro-
tection—can now be attacked by any new regulated entity
within six years of the entity’s formation.  A brand new en-
tity could pop up and challenge a regulation that is decades 
old; perhaps even one that is as old as the APA itself.  No 
matter how entrenched, heavily relied upon, or central  to 
the functioning of our society a rule is, the majority has an-
nounced open season.

Still,  in  issuing  its  ruling  in  this  case,  the  Court  seems
oddly oblivious to the most foreseeable consequence of the
accrual rule it is adopting: Giving every new entity in a reg-
ulated  industry  its  own  personal  statute  of  limitations  to
challenge  longstanding  regulations  affects  our  Nation’s 
economy.  Why?  Because administrative agencies establish 
the baseline rules around which businesses and individuals 
order  their  lives.  When  an  agency  publishes  a  final  rule, 
and  the  period  for  challenging  that  rule  passes,  people  in
that industry understand that the agency’s policy choice is 
the  law  and  act  accordingly.  They  make  investments  be-
cause of it.  They change their practices because of it.  They
enter contracts in light of it.  They may not like the rule,
but they live and work with it, because that is what the Rule 
of  Law  requires.  It  is  profoundly  destabilizing—and  also 
acutely  unfair—to  permit  newcomers  to  bring  legal  chal-
lenges that can overturn settled regulations long after the
rest of the competitive marketplace has adapted itself to the
regulatory environment.

Moreover, as I have explained, the Court’s ruling in this 
case allows for every new entity to challenge any and every 
rule that an agency has ever adopted.  It is extraordinarily
presumptuous  that  an  entity  formed  in  full  view  of  an