By John KruzelWASHINGTON (Reuters) -The U.S. Supreme Courtroom on Monday revived a North Dakota comfort retailer’s problem to a Federal Reserve regulation on debit card “swipe charges” in a ruling that might make it simpler for companies to attempt to undo longstanding federal guidelines.The 6-3 resolution reversed a decrease court docket’s dismissal of the 2021 lawsuit by the Nook Publish, positioned in Watford Metropolis, difficult the 2011 rule governing the quantity companies pay banks when clients use debit playing cards to make purchases. The dismissal had been based mostly on the shop lacking a six-year statue of limitations that usually applies to such litigation.The ruling got here on the ultimate day of the Supreme Courtroom’s time period that started in October.Swipe charges, additionally known as interchange charges, reimburse banks for prices concerned in providing debit playing cards. The charges are decided by Visa, MasterCard and different card networks, with a cap of 21 cents per transaction set beneath the Fed rule.At situation within the case was whether or not Nook Publish was too late when it introduced its authorized problem. The shop argued that it shouldn’t be certain by the six-year statute of limitations to problem the 2011 regulation as a result of it opened for enterprise in 2018, after that deadline had handed.Nook Publish, backed by varied conservative and company curiosity teams together with billionaire Charles Koch’s community and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, contended that companies ought to have huge latitude to problem laws they take into account illegal and burdensome.The shop argued that the six-year time restrict mustn’t begin working till a enterprise is adversely affected – which for Nook Publish could be March 2018, when it accepted its first debit card cost.President Joe Biden’s administration, representing the Federal Reserve Board of Governors, had argued that adopting Nook Publish’s authorized place “would considerably develop the category of potential challengers” to authorities laws and threatens to “improve the burdens on businesses and courts.”A bunch of small enterprise associations had filed a quick urging the Supreme Courtroom to take care of a strict statute of limitations that begins on the time a regulation is finalized. They stated that permitting lawsuits past this deadline “would create chaos, uncertainty and inconsistent regulatory regimes for the nation’s regulated industries and the American folks the laws search to serve.”Earlier than congressional passage of the 2010 Dodd-Frank Wall Avenue reform legislation that directed the Fed to cap swipe charges, retailers paid as a lot as 44 cents per transaction, which had made it onerous for small companies to just accept debit playing cards.Retailers that anticipated a a lot decrease cap sued after the Fed set it at 21 cents per transaction. The Supreme Courtroom in 2015 left in place a decrease court docket’s ruling backing the regulation.Nook Publish in its 2021 lawsuit argued that the rule defied congressional intent and was “arbitrary and capricious” beneath a federal legislation known as the Administrative Process Act.U.S. District Choose Daniel Traynor in 2022 dismissed the lawsuit. The St. Louis-based eighth U.S. Circuit Courtroom of Appeals upheld Traynor’s resolution, establishing the Supreme Courtroom enchantment.The Fed final yr proposed chopping the present cap to 14.4 cents per transaction.(Reporting by John Kruzel; Enhancing by Will Dunham)