Opinion ID: 460188
Heading Depth: 5
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Action Against the United States

Text: 15 Amicus argues that an action such as Geyen's against a federal official alleging that the official has acted unlawfully and seeking injunctive relief is not an action ... against the United States within the meaning of Sec. 2401(a). Before 1976 this ultra vires theory might have been valid; to avoid the bar of sovereign immunity, courts indulged in the fiction that a federal official acting in violation of the Constitution or beyond his statutory powers was acting for himself only and not as an agent of government. See, e.g., Dugan v. Rank, 372 U.S. 609, 621-22, 83 S.Ct. 999, 1007, 10 L.Ed.2d 15 (1963); Larson v. Domestic & Foreign Commerce Corp., 337 U.S. 682, 689-90, 69 S.Ct. 1457, 1461-62, 93 L.Ed. 1628 (1949). 16 In 1976, however, Congress waived sovereign immunity for suits seeking nonmonetary relief through nonstatutory judicial review of agency action. Act. of Oct. 21, 1976, Pub.L. No. 94-574, Sec. 1, 90 Stat. 2721, 2721 (codified at 5 U.S.C. Sec. 702 (1982)). The principal purpose of this amendment was to do away with the ultra vires doctrine and other fictions surrounding sovereign immunity. As the House Report notes, Actions challenging official conduct are intrinsically against the United States and are now treated as such for all practical purposes. H.R.Rep. No. 1656, 94th Cong., 2d Sess. 11 (1976), reprinted in 1976 U.S.Code Cong. & Ad.News 6121, 6131. 17 Were we to hold, as amicus urges, that Geyen's action is not against the United States, we would revive the technical complexities that Congress sought to eliminate in 1976. We decline to do so. We hold that Geyen's action challenging his activation and the denial of his hardship applications is against the United States and subject to Sec. 2401(a)'s six-year limitation.