The Supreme Court delivered another hit to the power of largely unaccountable federal bureaucrats on Monday morning with its opinion in Corner Post, Inc. v. Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System — just the latest in a string of opinions curtailing the powers of federal agencies under the Administrative Procedures Act (APA).
These wins for small government and freedom, however, are significant losses to the power-tripping Democrats that seek to centralize as much power as possible among as few people as possible. With her dissenting opinion in Corner Post, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson makes it clear how panicked leftists are about the Court's rightful interpretation of the Constitution that essentially only requires lawmakers to, well, make laws — to ensure the government remains representative of the people from whom it derives power — instead of unelected bureaucrats.
Joined by Justices Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor, Justice Jackson laments that the Supreme Court's majority has thrown "caution to the wind" and engaged in "misguided reasoning" in the case that, along with the ruling's "far-reaching results," is "staggering."
Calling the majority's conclusion in Corner Post "baseless," Jackson wrings her hands while claiming "there is effectively no longer any limitations period for lawsuits that challenge agency regulations on their face" and says the ruling "is profoundly destabilizing for both Government and businesses."
Tilting well over into hyperbole, Jackson writes that, with Monday's opinion, "the Court wreaks havoc on Government agencies, businesses, and society at large." In Jackson's view, once a federal regulation has been instituted, it should be impossible for a new entrant to the realm in which the regulation is in effect to "complain" or "claim injury" because it "willingly entered." Ludicrous.
Jackson claims that, [i]n one fell swoop, the Court has effectively eliminated any limitations period for APA lawsuits" and "decided that the clock starts for limitations purposes whenever a new regulated entity is created" — meaning "that, from this day forward, administrative agencies can be sued in perpetuity over every final decision they make."
Complaining about "other significant changes that this Court has wrought this Term with respect to the longstanding rules governing review of agency actions," Jackson fears that "well-established agency rules will be upended in ways that were previously unimaginable" because "[d]octrines that were once settled are now unsettled, and claims that lacked merit a year ago are suddenly up for grabs."
"At the end of a momentous Term, this much is clear: The tsunami of lawsuits against agencies that the Court’s holdings in this case and Loper Bright have authorized has the potential to devastate the functioning of the Federal Government," Jackson outright panics in her dissent.
Despite her sky-is-falling opinion, there shouldn't be any reason for harmful regulations to reach a time at which they're considered simply untouchable. If a regulation is legally sound, there's nothing to worry about. Only if there's fear that bureaucratic regulations are unlawful would someone be this apoplectic about the ruling in Corner Post.
It seems such fear does exist, as Jackson pleads in her dissent for Congress to "forestall the coming chaos" by acting to "correct this Court's mistake by clarifying that the statutes it enacts are designed to facilitate the functioning of agencies, not to hobble them."
But perhaps agencies — filled with power-tripping bureaucrats — could use a little hobbling to rein in their often-ideologically motivated regulations that are repeatedly found to run afoul of the U.S. Constitution.
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