For more than a decade, the United States Mint ran a quiet but commercially significant program: the Mutilated Coin Redemption Program. Businesses that recovered bent, partial, or otherwise unmachineable United States coin could submit it for authentication and face-value reimbursement. The program was not a favor. It was the practical mechanism through which genuine U.S. coinage—legal tender under 31 U.S.C. § 5103—could be retired and the metal recycled under 31 U.S.C. § 5120.
Wealthy Max Limited was not a casual participant. From 2008 through 2014, Mint Cash Office personnel in Philadelphia scheduled its shipments, requested weight sheets and FinCEN Form 105 reports, confirmed payments, and even solicited additional material for upcoming melts. The correspondence (now Exhibit W) reads like the operational record of a long-term commercial relationship.
In 2015 the government brought a civil forfeiture action against certain shipments. At a 2016 hearing, government counsel acknowledged on the record that key factual allegations in the forfeiture complaint were inaccurate. Testing of melted material confirmed the coin was genuine. The case was dismissed with prejudice. The Mint then coordinated a one-time special melt of remaining detained material and paid face value. After that, Wealthy Max was told the Program would reopen and that its inventory would be processed in the ordinary course.
When the Program resumed in January 2018, Wealthy Max submitted an application. Mint officials repeatedly confirmed it was in the processing queue, requested and received supplemental banking and supplier information, and stated that additional time was needed and that the company would be contacted when deliveries could be scheduled. By March 2019 the inventory associated with the application comprised fifty-three crates—more than 122,000 pounds—sitting in secure U.S. storage while storage charges climbed past $216,000.
Then the process simply stopped. No approval. No denial. No notice of termination. No explanation that reconciled the Mint’s shifting internal cessation dates. In 2024 the Mint published a Final Rule permanently eliminating the regulatory exchange mechanism for bent and partial coin. The Rule did not identify Wealthy Max’s application, did not provide individualized notice or grounds, and did not create any transition process for applications already accepted into administrative review.
Meanwhile, Congress had spoken. A 2023 House Appropriations Committee report expressed concern that restricting the Program would leave private entities and local governments with “no other reasonable way to manage recovered coin.” The Committee expected the Mint to continue working with parties presenting valid coinage under the existing regulations. Congress later enacted language giving that explanatory statement the same weight as a joint explanatory statement of conference and directing that it be complied with unless specifically superseded. It was not superseded. The Final Rule never grappled with that legislative direction.
The First Amended Complaint filed in the Eastern District of Pennsylvania frames three carefully layered APA claims:
The Mint failed either to conclude the individualized administrative matter it had begun or to give the prompt notice and statement of grounds required by 5 U.S.C. §§ 555(b) and 555(e).
To the extent the 2024 Final Rule purported to extinguish applications already accepted into review, it was arbitrary and capricious under Regents—it ignored serious reliance interests created by the Mint’s own post-resumption representations, the materially different posture of pending applications, and the congressional expectation reflected in the House Report and Public Law 118-47.
Independently and in the alternative, the Final Rule exceeds the substantive authority Congress delegated in 31 U.S.C. §§ 321 and 5136. General rulemaking and Public Enterprise Fund expense discretion do not, on the best reading of the statutes, authorize permanent elimination of the only federal face-value pathway for genuine U.S. coin. Historical practice—most notably the Coinage Act of 1965, when the Mint sought legislation to change the metallic composition of circulating coin—confirms that material changes affecting the treatment and redeemability of United States coinage have required explicit congressional action. Only if the statutes are first construed to confer that power does the complaint raise the further question whether the delegation supplies constitutionally adequate standards under Article I.
The case is not a request for the district court to order the Mint to reopen the Program or to write a check. It is a request that the agency finish what it started—or explain, with the process the APA requires, why it will not. The monetary claims arising from the abandoned crates and storage charges are expressly reserved for a court of competent jurisdiction.
For practitioners who litigate against federal agencies, the case sits at the intersection of several live doctrines: the duty to conclude a matter presented, the treatment of reliance interests after Regents, the post-Loper Bright independent judgment required on questions of statutory authority, and the continuing vitality of non-delegation principles when an agency claims power over a function the Constitution expressly assigns to Congress.
The First Amended Complaint, together with the Whitlock correspondence, the 2018 queue communications, the Final Rule, the 2016 inspection record, and the full legislative chain, is now before the Court.
This article is for general informational purposes only and is not legal advice. It does not create an attorney-client relationship.