Accardi Doctrine: Key Cases, Exceptions, and Remedies

The Accardi doctrine is the principle of federal administrative law that requires an agency to follow its own regulations and procedures until it formally changes them. It takes its name from the 1954 Supreme Court decision in United States ex rel. Accardi v. Shaughnessy, which held that once an agency adopts rules, those rules bind the agency as much as they bind the public, and an action taken in violation of them is procedurally invalid.¹ The doctrine gives individuals a way to challenge agency conduct even where the underlying decision is discretionary, so long as the agency departed from its own rules along the way.

Where the Doctrine Came From

Joseph Accardi, born in Italy in 1909, entered the United States in 1932 without inspection or a visa. Deportation proceedings began in 1947, and in 1948 he applied for a discretionary suspension of deportation under the Immigration Act of 1917. A hearing officer recommended denial, the Acting Commissioner of Immigration adopted that recommendation in July 1952, and the Board of Immigration Appeals affirmed in April 1953.¹

The problem was what had happened in between. On October 2, 1952, the Attorney General publicly announced plans to deport “unsavory characters” and circulated a confidential list of roughly 100 people he wanted removed. Accardi’s name was on it, and copies went to Immigration Service personnel and Board members.² Accardi filed a habeas corpus petition arguing that the Board could not have exercised independent judgment on his application when the Attorney General had already marked him for deportation.

On March 15, 1954, the Supreme Court agreed. The Attorney General’s own regulations required the Board of Immigration Appeals to exercise independent discretion on suspension applications, and as long as those regulations remained in effect, the Attorney General “denies himself the right to sidestep the Board or dictate its decision in any manner.”¹ If Accardi could prove his allegations on remand, the Board would have to rehear his case “without the burden of previous proscription by the list.”²

What the Doctrine Actually Requires

The core rule is short. An agency’s validly adopted regulations have the “force and effect of law” and bind the agency the same way they bind the public.¹ When the agency ignores or circumvents one of its own procedures, the resulting action is procedurally invalid, even if the substantive decision was one the agency had discretion to make.

The doctrine does not ask courts to second-guess the merits. It asks whether the agency followed the process it set up for itself. In Accardi’s own case, the Supreme Court was not reviewing whether the Board should have granted a suspension of deportation. It was reviewing whether the Board had been allowed to decide the question independently, as the regulations required.¹

How the Supreme Court Expanded the Rule

Service v. Dulles (1957)

John S. Service, a Foreign Service officer, had been repeatedly cleared of disloyalty by State Department security boards. In 1951, the Civil Service Commission’s Loyalty Review Board reopened his case, found “reasonable doubt” about his loyalty, and recommended removal. Secretary of State Dean Acheson fired him without reviewing the record himself, relying on the Loyalty Review Board’s finding and on the “absolute discretion” the McCarran Rider gave him.³

The Supreme Court held the discharge invalid. The State Department’s own regulations required the Secretary to decide only “after consideration of the complete file, arguments, briefs, and testimony,” and Acheson’s affidavit admitted he had not done that. The Secretary was not obligated to impose those procedural requirements on himself in the first place, the Court said, but “having chosen to do so, he was bound by them.”⁴ The doctrine now reached self-imposed rules that went beyond anything a statute required.

Vitarelli v. Seaton (1959)

William Vitarelli held a non-sensitive position at the Department of the Interior and had no Civil Service protections. The Secretary could have fired him summarily. Instead, the department initiated formal “security risk” proceedings under its own procedural regulations, and the resulting hearing violated those regulations in several ways: the charges were not sufficiently specific, the proceeding turned into what the Court called a wide-ranging “inquisition” into Vitarelli’s beliefs, and he was denied the right to cross-examine a non-confidential witness.⁵

Once the agency chose to use its formal process rather than summary removal, the Court held, it had to follow that process to the letter. The dismissal was “illegal and of no effect,” and Vitarelli was entitled to reinstatement.⁵ The Court did not require Vitarelli to show that the procedural failures had changed the outcome. The violations themselves were enough.⁶

Morton v. Ruiz (1974)

Ramon and Anita Ruiz, Papago Indians who lived 15 miles from their Arizona reservation, applied for Bureau of Indian Affairs general assistance benefits during a copper mine labor strike. The BIA denied them, citing an internal manual provision that limited eligibility to Indians living “on reservations.” The restriction had never appeared in the Federal Register or the Code of Federal Regulations, and the BIA had consistently told Congress that it served Indians living “on or near” reservations.⁷

A unanimous Court held that the residency restriction was a substantive policy affecting individual rights that the BIA was required to publish, and that the agency had also failed to follow its own internal procedures requiring publication of eligibility criteria.⁸ The decision confirmed that the principle can reach unpublished internal criteria when those criteria are used to cut off substantive rights.

When the Doctrine Does Not Apply

Rules That Only Organize the Agency’s Own Work

The most important limit came from American Farm Lines v. Black Ball Freight Service (1970). The Interstate Commerce Commission had granted temporary operating authority to a trucking company without strictly enforcing certain procedural requirements in its own rules, and a competitor sued. The Supreme Court sided with the ICC. The rules at issue were “mere aids to the exercise of the agency’s independent discretion,” not protections designed to confer “important procedural benefits upon individuals.” An agency retains discretion to relax procedural rules adopted for the orderly transaction of its business, so long as doing so does not cause “substantial prejudice to the complaining party.”⁹

That distinction, between rules that protect people and rules that merely organize an agency’s internal workflow, has become the doctrine’s central limiting principle. Any Accardi claim has to fall on the protective side of that line.

Prejudice

In many jurisdictions, a party challenging an agency’s failure to follow its own rules must show that the violation caused substantial prejudice. A purely technical mistake that did not affect the outcome or implicate fundamental rights may not be enough to invalidate the agency’s action.¹⁰ That approach sits in tension with Vitarelli, which required no showing of prejudice, and the tension has never been fully resolved.

Interpretive Rules and Policy Statements

Not every internal document counts. Rules that are “interpretive, a statement of policy, or any other, lesser, rule of agency organization, procedure, or practice” do not necessarily carry the same legal force as formal regulations.¹⁰

Federal Personnel Actions

For most federal employment disputes, the doctrine has been displaced by statute. In United States v. Fausto (1988), the Supreme Court held that the Civil Service Reform Act of 1978 provides a comprehensive, integrated system for reviewing federal personnel actions that precludes alternative judicial review. Employee disputes go through the Merit Systems Protection Board and the Federal Circuit, and that framework is exclusive.¹¹

The Unsettled Question of Internal Manuals

One live question is whether the doctrine reaches internal agency manuals that were never subjected to notice-and-comment rulemaking. The federal courts of appeals have split, most visibly over the Social Security Administration’s HALLEX manual, which guides administrative law judges and staff adjudicating disability claims.

The Ninth and Third Circuits treat manuals like HALLEX as unenforceable against the agency because they lack the force and effect of law, with the Ninth Circuit categorically refusing to examine alleged violations. The Fifth Circuit takes a middle position: it agrees the manuals lack formal legal force but will review alleged violations and remand where the claimant shows prejudice.¹²

Thomas Merrill’s 2006 study noted that the Supreme Court has suggested multiple theories about where the doctrine comes from without fully resolving which rules it covers and which it does not.¹³

What Courts Order When an Agency Breaks Its Own Rules

Courts typically frame an Accardi violation as arbitrary and capricious agency action under the Administrative Procedure Act, as a due process violation, or both. The remedies vary with the case.

Injunctions requiring the agency to actually apply its own policy. In Damus v. Nielsen (2018), asylum seekers challenged ICE’s failure to follow its 2009 Parole Directive, which required individualized parole determinations for arriving asylum seekers who had shown a credible fear of persecution. After 2017, parole denial rates at five ICE field offices climbed to between 92% and 100%. The District Court for the District of Columbia granted a preliminary injunction requiring ICE to comply with its own directive, holding the government “accountable to its own policy, which recently has been honored more in the breach than the observance.”¹⁴
Court-ordered hearings, in which the court applies the agency’s own standards and orders specific relief such as scheduling bail hearings that review custody under the agency’s criteria.
Reversal without a showing of prejudice. In some circumstances an Accardi violation warrants reversal “irrespective of whether a new trial will produce the same verdict,” with prejudice presumed from the violation itself.¹⁵

How the Doctrine Fits With the APA and Modern Administrative Law

The Accardi doctrine is a judicially created principle, not a statutory command. Courts and scholars have variously grounded it in the Administrative Procedure Act, the Due Process Clause, and common-law principles of fair dealing, and the Supreme Court has hinted at each without settling on one.¹³

It runs alongside the APA’s framework for rulemaking. The APA distinguishes between “legislative rules,” meaning substantive regulations adopted through notice-and-comment procedures, and “nonlegislative rules” such as interpretive rules, policy statements, and internal manuals that are generally exempt from formal rulemaking.¹⁶ The Accardi doctrine complicates that neat division by sometimes requiring agencies to honor rules they never formally promulgated, provided the rules confer important procedural benefits on individuals.

The doctrine has taken on added importance in the wake of the Supreme Court’s 2024 decision in Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo, which overruled Chevron deference and gave courts final authority over statutory interpretation. A Georgetown Law analysis noted that even without Chevron, agencies remain subject to the Accardi principle, which continues to require them to follow their own established procedures.¹⁷ More than seventy years after the original deportation case, the rule still runs across immigration, Social Security, environmental regulation, federal employment, and national security. An agency that writes rules for how it will treat people has to follow them, and when it doesn’t, courts can step in.

1
Justia. United States ex rel. Accardi v. Shaughnessy, 347 U.S. 260
2
Library of Congress. United States ex rel. Accardi v. Shaughnessy, 347 U.S. 260
3
Justia. Service v. Dulles, 354 U.S. 363
4
FindLaw. Service v. Dulles, 354 U.S. 363
5
FindLaw. Vitarelli v. Seaton, 359 U.S. 535
6
Supreme Court of the United States. Amicus Brief of the Separation of Powers Clinic, No. 23-779
7
Justia. Morton v. Ruiz, 415 U.S. 199
8
FindLaw. Morton v. Ruiz, 415 U.S. 199
9
Justia. American Farm Lines v. Black Ball Freight Service, 397 U.S. 532
10
Maryland Courts. Hopkins v. Maryland Inmate Grievance Commission
11
Justia. United States v. Fausto, 484 U.S. 439
12
Columbia Law Review. Manual Override? Accardi, Skidmore, and the Legal Effect of the SSA’s HALLEX Manual
13
Columbia Law School. The Accardi Principle
14
ACLU. Damus v. Nielsen Parole Advisory
15
Amica Center. ATD Attorney Guide
16
ACUS. Distinguishing Between Legislative Rules and Non-Legislative Rules
17
Georgetown Law. From Agency Expertise to Judicial Discretion: What the End of Chevron Means for Reproductive Healthcare