Supreme Court Allows Swipe-Fee Challenge in Blow to Regulators
A customer taps a credit card at a self-service checkout kiosk.
(Bloomberg) -- The US Supreme Court dealt a fresh blow to the authority of federal agencies, ruling in a case over debit-card swipe fees that some regulations can be challenged a decade or more after they were enacted.
Voting 6-3 along ideological lines, the justices said a North Dakota convenience store and truck stop can sue over a 2011 rule governing the charges that banks impose on merchants. The majority said a six-year statute of limitations doesn’t bar the suit because the business didn’t open until 2018.
The ruling could have ramifications across the US government, making a raft of longstanding rules newly vulnerable to challenge in court. The swipe-fee lawsuit will go forward even though merchant trade groups lost a similar case they filed soon after the Federal Reserve adopted the rule.
The decision is likely to amplify the effect of blockbuster ruling issued last week, when the justices overturned a 1984 precedent that had required judges to defer to an agency’s reasonable interpretation of an unclear statute. Last week’s ruling gave judges more of a mandate to toss out regulations as being inconsistent with Congress’ instructions.
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