WASHINGTON–Yesterday’s Supreme Court hearing in a case involving card swipe fees is being described by one analysis as the “under-the-radar Supreme Court case that could wreak havoc on Society.
As part of its “Opening Arguments” coverage, Slate said the case, Corner Post v. Board of Governors, which involves a plaintiff specifically selected for when the business began operating—in this case, a North Dakota truck stop—that is seeking to save on bank card fees, reflects a broader effort by many conservatives to “deconstruct the administrative state,” specifically, the Chevron Deference doctrine in which courts often defer to government agencies for the enforcement of rules.
NCUA has previously stated that regardless of the Supreme Court ruling on Chevron, it does not expect it will affect its regulatory oversight.
The Issue
“At issue in Corner Post is a technical debate over who is eligible to bring lawsuits against the regulations that agencies issue,” the analysis stated. “The Administrative Procedure Act, which establishes the general framework for challenging the legal validity of a regulation, provides a statute of limitations of six years after the claim ‘first accrues.’
The prevailing understanding of that language—and frankly, the obvious one—has been that such claims ‘accrue’ when the rule being challenged is first issued,” the Slate analysis continues. “But the corporate litigants in Corner Post…aim to jettison that objective benchmark. In its place, they hope to create a new, free-floating rule that ties the start of the statute of limitations to when the particular challenger involved first ‘suffers legal wrong’.”
The Specifics
Specifically, the case centers on a 2011 rule issued under Dodd-Frank that sets maximum swipe fees that financial institutions can charge for the use of their debit cards. As Slate noted, the rule survived an initial challenge when it was upheld by the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals in 2015, but two trade associations representing convenience stores and gas stations initiated this case in 2021.
The Federal Reserve, which issued the rule, has sought to have this second suit dismissed as barred by the APA’s statute of limitations.
Why Plaintiff Was Added
“Remarkably, the trade associations responded by adding an individual gas station called Corner Post as a co-plaintiff. The twist? Corner Post first opened for business in 2018,” the report noted. “That was the moment when the store’s claim against the rule ‘accrued,’ according to the trade associations, which meant that the statute of limitations was still open to them.”
Should the court rule in favor of the plaintiffs, any rule—no matter how old—would be potentially subject to a “nonstop conveyor belt of litigation,” according to Slate.
The Best Daily News Email in Credit Unions Remains Free! Don’t Miss Out
The biggest, best and freshest news reporting in credit unions remains free! Each morning CUToday.info delivers its daily Fresh Today news update offering the latest headlines and breaking news right to your email, with the easy-to-read headlines format allowing you to click on the stories that interest you most in order to learn more. So stop paying those bank-fee-like subscription prices from other so-called “news” publications!
If you haven’t yet signed up for the new email solution on which CUToday.info has partnered with ResponseGenius, you can do so here. Signing up requires less than one minute of your time—and it’s free!
Please note that after signing up you may need to go to your Spam/Junk folder and mark the morning headlines email as safe. CUToday.info does not provide its list of readers and emails to outside parties, and we will not be contacting you to sell you an extended warranty or sending you any links so you may cash in on an inheritance you didn’t know was coming.
And did we mention it’s free?