RANKING MEMBERS CORREA, NADLER INTRODUCE CORNER POST REVERSAL ACT TO STRENGTHEN, SUPPORT WORK OF PUBLIC AGENCIES
WASHINGTON — Today, in response to the Supreme Court’s decision in Corner Post v. Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, Representatives Lou Correa (D-CA) and Jerrold Nadler (D-NY), Ranking Members of the Subcommittee on Administrative Law, Regulatory Reform, and Antitrust and House Judiciary Committee respectively, introduced the Corner Post Reversal Act.
In Corner Post, the Supreme Court struck down the statute of limitations in the Administrative Procedure Act (APA), thereby allowing anyone, at any time, to seek judicial review of public agency rules. This decision upended the previous safeguards provided under the law, and long followed by federal courts by requiring challenges to be brought within six years of the rule’s enactment.
Corner Post destabilizes public agencies’ ability to craft rules that protect everyday Americans and bring certainty to small businesses by permitting challenges to those rules well after the six years have passed and companies, states, local communities, and individuals have adjusted to them. Corner Post would, for example, allow new businesses to be continually formed with the sole purpose of claiming harm that would justify a judicial challenge to a rule.
“By overturning precedent and getting rid of the longstanding six-year statute of limitations of the Administration Procedure Act, the Supreme Court undermined clear Congressional intent and opened the door to unlimited challenges that may overburden our judicial system while harming Americans and small businesses,” Subcommittee Ranking Member Correa said.
“The Corner Post decision was an erroneous and power-hungry move by the MAGA majority on the court, that was intentionally dismissive of the will of Congress expressed in the Administrative Procedure Act. The Court has opened the floodgates to allow big corporations and private interests to object and challenge common-sense rules that protect our air, water, land, environment, food, medicines, labor, and children,” Ranking Member Nadler said.
The Corner Post Reversal Act reverses these harmful effects by affirming and reestablishing a limit to when private interests and big corporations can challenge rules that safeguard consumers, our workforce, and the environment.
Specifically, the Corner Post Reversal Act:
- Reestablishes the statute of limitations found within Section 702 of the APA;
- Clarifies congressional intent that agency rules must be challenged within six years after being finalized;
- Codifies that the right to seek judicial review accrues under the APA when the agency finalizes the rule;
- Protects well-developed and scientifically-based agency actions from attacks by private interests, thereby assuring protections for consumers, the workforce, and our environment; and
- Assures that our courts are not flooded or strained by claims by actions commenced after the six years following the agency action.
“This piece of legislation is an important and essential step in reestablishing the certainty that comes from the finality that the six-year limitation provided. As a result, rules that protect everyday Americans are now perpetually in jeopardy,” said Correa.
“This bill, in conjunction with the Stop Corporate Capture Act,” said Nadler, “addresses the need to protect longstanding and long-working rules established by administrative agencies and protect our federal system from arbitrary and frivolous attacks that would have been welcomed under the Corner Post holding.”
The bill is cosponsored by Reps. Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-DC), Pramila Jayapal (D-WA), Nikema Williams (D-GA), Nanette Barragán (D-CA), Summer Lee (D-PA), and Mary Gay Scanlon (D-PA).
This bill is supported by Small Business Majority, Earth Justice, Coalition for Sensible Safeguards, and Center for American Progress.
You can read the full text of the legislation HERE.
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