The Supreme Court delivered its final blow Monday to the so-called “administrative state,” opening the door to legal challenges on decades of government regulations on everything from clean air to guns to financial markets and food safety.
The 6-3 opinion, with the court’s three liberal justices dissenting, changed the parameters of the six-year statute of limitations for challenging government regulations; the clock no longer starts when a regulation is put in place, but rather when a party is first “harmed by agency rules.”
The sweeping opinion amplifies the impacts of the court’s landmark decision to overturn Chevron deference on Friday, which made it significantly easier to challenge agency rules in court. Combined, the two rulings could spur a flood of lawsuits challenging decades worth of agency rules.