Oh, boy. Last week, we saw “CHEVRON deference” overturned, eliminating the ATF-abused procedure of requiring judges to take the agency’s word for it when they creatively reinterpret laws.
Today, the Supreme Court took it quite a bit further in CORNER POST. This is a case over debit card merchant transaction fees, so you wonder what it has to do with Second Amendment issues.
Everything. And the EPA is going to hate this, too. Here’s the background.
In 2021, Corner Post joined a suit brought against the Board under the Administrative Procedure Act (APA). The complaint challenged Regulation II on the ground that it allows higher interchange fees than the statute permits. The District Court dismissed the suit as time-barred under 28 U. S. C. §2401(a), the default six-year statute of limitations applicable to suits against the United States. The Eighth Circuit affirmed.
The lower courts held that the statute of limitations clock started ticking the rule was published. An interesting take; imagine claiming that statute of limitations for robbery started running when the law was passed, rather than when the robbery took place.
That matters, because Corner Post didn’t exist when the transaction fee rule was published. Just like you might not have been born when the armed robbery law pass enacted. Corner post was injured when they opened for business and started accepting debit cards. That is when the statute of limitations starts counting down.
Held: An APA claim does not accrue for purposes of §2401(a)’s 6-year statute of limitations until the plaintiff is injured by final agency action.
How does that apply to us and the ATF?
Until 1982, semi-auto firearms that fired from the open bolt were semi-autos. But that year, the ATF suddenly decided that open-bolt firearms are easily converted into machineguns, and thus are machineguns. Unless…
To make it worse, it only applied to those models sold after the ruling, while those sold prior somehow remain semiautomatic. This forced complete redesigns on the manufacturers.
Here we have a rule that is arbitrary, capricious, and in conflict with the law defining “machinegun.”
The term “machinegun” means any weapon which shoots, is designed to shoot, or can be readily restored to shoot, automatically more than one shot, without manual reloading, by a single function of the trigger.
“Restored,” not converted. It had to be a machinegun at some earlier point in its existence. But courts defer to the ATF’s re-definition, and send people to prison over semi-auto “machineguns.”
We got rid of that stupid deference last week. But it still looked like we were stuck with existing stupid, arbitrary, and capricious rules. No more.
Go out and buy one of those open-bolt SM10 machineguns. When you’re told to apply for your tax stamp, sue the ATF over the idiotic rule…
…because you were just now injured by it. And have standing.
tick tick tick tick tick
Every swamp agency’s years-old rules are now ripe for challenging all over again, without deference. I saw a comment at SCOTUSblog to the effect that SCOTUS just guaranteed itself horrendously full dockets for next few years.
Good.
