Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/23pdf/22-1008_1b82.pdf
Page Number: 18.0

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

13 

Opinion of the Court 

of other pre-1948 statutes that started the clock at finality. 
Post,  at  14,  n. 6.    But  these  statutes  generally  governed
challenges  to  orders  adjudicating  a  party’s  own  rights—
what we today might call “as-applied” challenges.  For ex-
ample, 7 U. S. C. §194(a) provided a 30-day limitations pe-
riod for a  meatpacker to appeal  an order finding that  the 
packer  “has  violated  or  is  violating  any  provision”  of  the 
statute  regulating  business  practices  in  the  meatpacking
industry.  42 Stat. 161–162; see also, e.g., 15 U. S. C. §45(c) 
(persons required by a Federal Trade Commission order to
cease a business practice may obtain review of that order
within 60 days).  Statutes like these do not contradict the 
plaintiff-centric standard accrual rule, because a party sub-
ject to such an order suffers legally cognizable injury at the
same time that the order becomes final.4 

Thus, even if the “intention” Congress “expressed” in tex-
tually distinct statutes could overcome §2401(a)’s language, 
post, at 14, the dissent’s history would not support its sup-
posed  background  presumption—that  the  limitations  pe-
riod  for  facial  challenges  to  regulations  begins  when  the 
rule becomes final even if the plaintiff does not yet have a 
complete  and  present  cause  of  action.    Instead,  the  best 
course, as always, is to stick with the ordinary meaning of
the text that actually applies, §2401(a).  Given the settled, 
plaintiff-centric meaning of “right of action first accrues” in 

—————— 

4 There is another reason to doubt the dissent’s supposed background 
limitations principle for facial challenges to agency rules: In the 1940s, 
“most  administrative  activity  was  adjudicative  in  nature”;  agencies 
“rarely, if ever, adopted sweeping regulations.”  K. Hickman & R. Pierce, 
1 Administrative Law §1.3, p. 26 (7th ed. 2024).  The dissent errs by ex-
trapolating a general congressional intent that all agency suits be subject 
to a finality-based limitations rule based on pre-1948 statutes that gov-
erned a subset of agency actions—adjudicative orders—and were enacted 
before facial challenges to regulations became common.  It is hard to see 
how provisions governing when a party may challenge an order adjudi-
cating  her  own  rights  could  set  any  kind  of  background  rule  for  facial
APA challenges to generally applicable regulations.