Gorsuch, J., concurring in judgment
Consider as well the larger statutory context. Section 702 restricts judicial review to “person[s]” who have “suffer[ed] legal wrong because of agency action, or [been] adversely affected or aggrieved by agency action.” The provision also instructs that “any mandatory or injunctive decree shall specify the Federal officer or officers … personally responsible for compliance.” Here, it seems, Congress nodded to traditional standing rules and remedial principles. Yet under the district court’s reading, we must suppose Congress proceeded just a few paragraphs later to plow right through those rules and empower a single judge to award a novel form of relief affecting parties and nonparties alike.
Then there is §703. That is where the APA most clearly discusses remedies. Section 703 authorizes aggrieved persons to bring “any applicable form of legal action, including actions for declaratory judgments or writs of prohibitory or mandatory injunction or habeas corpus.” Conspicuously missing from the list is vacatur. And what exactly would a “form of legal action” seeking vacatur look like anyway? Would it be a creature called a “writ of vacatur”? Nobody knows (or bothers to tell us). Nor is it apparent why Congress would have listed most remedies in §703 only to bury another (and arguably the most powerful one) in a later section addressed to the scope of review. Cf. J. Harrison, Section 706 of the Administrative Procedure Act Does Not Call for Universal Injunctions or Other Universal Remedies, 37 Yale J. Reg. Bull. 37, 37, 45–46 (2020).
The district court’s reading of “set aside” invites still other anomalies. Section 706(2) governs all proceedings under the APA. Any interpretation of “set aside” therefore must make sense in the context of an enforcement proceeding, an action for a declaratory judgment, a suit for an injunction, or habeas. See §703. This poses a problem for the district court’s interpretation, for no one thinks a court adjudicating a declaratory action or a habeas petition “vacates” agency action along the way. See Brief for United
