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Page Number: 25.0

20 

BIDEN v. TEXAS 

Opinion of the Court 

was final agency action.  That is, both the June 1 Memoran-
dum  and  the  October  29  Memoranda,  when  they  were  is-
sued,  “mark[ed]  the  ‘consummation’  of  the  agency’s  deci-
sionmaking process” and resulted in “rights and obligations 
[being]  determined.”  Bennett,  520  U. S.,  at  178.    As  the 
Court  of  Appeals  explained,  the  June  1  Memorandum 
“bound DHS staff by forbidding them to continue the pro-
gram in any way from that moment on.”  20 F. 4th, at 947. 
That rationale also applies to the October 29 Memoranda, 
which were therefore final agency action under the APA.7 

The  various  rationales  offered  by  respondents  and  the 
Court of Appeals in support of the contrary conclusion lack 
merit.8  First, the Court of Appeals framed the question by 
postulating the existence of an agency decision wholly apart 
from  any  “agency  statement  of  general  or  particular  ap-
plicability  . . .  designed  to  implement”  that  decision.  5 

—————— 

7 JUSTICE ALITO contends that the October 29 Memoranda were not fi-
nal agency action because they did not obligate DHS employees to imme-
diately cease implementing MPP; instead, they required them to do so
“as soon as practicable after a final judicial decision to vacate” the Dis-
trict Court’s injunction.  App. to Pet. for Cert. 264a.  But as he acknowl-
edges,  the  standard  for  final  agency  action  is  whether  the  action  “re-
sult[ed]  in  a  final  determination  of ‘rights or  obligations.’ ”    Post,  at  17 
(quoting Bennett, 520 U. S., at 178; emphasis added).  The fact that the 
agency could not cease implementing MPP, as directed by the October 29
Memoranda, until it obtained vacatur of the District Court’s injunction,
did not make the October 29 Memoranda any less the agency’s final de-
termination  of  its  employees’  obligation to  do  so  once  such  judicial  au-
thorization had been obtained. 

8 One  rationale  that  we  do  not  address  at  length  is  the  Court  of  Ap- 
peals’ extended analogy to the D. C. Circuit’s “reopening doctrine.”  Re-
spondents do not defend the Court of Appeals’ reliance on that doctrine. 
In any event, this Court has never adopted it, and the doctrine appears 
to be inapposite to the question of final agency action.  See National Assn. 
of Reversionary Property Owners v. Surface Transp. Bd., 158 F. 3d 135, 
141 (CADC 1998) (describing the doctrine as an “exception to statutory
limits on the time for seeking review of an agency decision” (alterations
omitted)).