Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/23pdf/22-1008_1b82.pdf
Page Number: 51

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

5 

JACKSON, J., dissenting 

Government action to file a facial challenge.

The District Court rejected Corner Post’s argument, fol-
lowing the lead of every court of appeals that had ever ad-
dressed accrual of an APA facial challenge.2  It held that the 
addition of Corner Post as a plaintiff did not make a differ-
ence to the timeliness of the business groups’ claims.  The 
Eighth Circuit affirmed, holding that “when plaintiffs bring 
a facial challenge to a final agency action, the right of action
accrues, and the limitations period begins to run, upon pub-
lication  of  the  regulation.”    North  Dakota  Retail  Assn.  v. 
Board of Governors of FRS, 55 F. 4th 634, 641 (2022). 

II 
But here we are.  Three-quarters of a century after Con-
gress enacted the APA, a majority of this Court rejects the
consensus view that, for facial challenges to agency rules,
the statutory 6-year limitations period runs from the publi-
cation of the rule.  Instead, it holds that an APA claim ac-
crues “when the plaintiff is injured by final agency action.” 
Ante, at 1.  The majority maintains that the text of §2401(a) 
demands this result.  But if that answer is so obvious, one 
wonders  why  no  court  proclaimed  it  until  more  than  75
years after all the statutory pieces were in place. 

To explain how the majority got this ruling wrong, I find
it necessary to provide the right answer.  Here, the relevant 
—————— 

2 The majority’s opinion says we took this case to resolve a circuit split,
suggesting that the Sixth Circuit had reached the contrary conclusion. 
See ante, at 3–4.  It had not.  In Herr v. United States Forest Serv., 803 
F. 3d 809 (2015), the Sixth Circuit addressed accrual in the context of an 
as-applied challenge after the Government had threatened enforcement. 
There, the Circuit pegged accrual to the moment of the injury allegedly
caused by application of the rule to the plaintiff, see id., at 820, and did 
not discuss whether that same accrual rule would apply to facial chal-
lenges.  Since Herr, neither the Sixth Circuit nor any district court within 
it has extended Herr’s rule to facial challenges to final agency actions, 
and at least one District Court has expressly rejected such an extension.
See Linney’s Pizza, LLC v. Board of Governors of FRS, 2023 WL 6050569, 
*2–*4 (ED Ky., Sept. 15, 2023).