Page:Axon Enterprise v. FTC.pdf/20

Rh earlier, guided Free Enterprise Fund’s view that the accounting firm’s challenge qualified as “collateral.” See 561 U. S., at 490;. The firm, the court reasoned, “object[ed] to the Board’s existence, not to any of [the] auditing standards” it might apply in regulating accountants. 561 U. S., at 490. Likewise here, both parties object to the Commissions’ power generally, not to anything particular about how that power was wielded. The parties’ separation-of-powers claims do not relate to the subject of the enforcement actions—in the one case auditing practices, in the other a business merger. Cf. Mohawk Industries, Inc. v. Carpenter, 558 U. S. 100, 106 (2009) (considering as part of the “collateral order doctrine,” which governs appeals in non-agency litigation, whether a question is “separate from the merits”). Nor do the parties’ claims address the sorts of procedural or evidentiary matters an agency often resolves on its way to a merits decision. Cf. Florida Power & Light Co. v. Lorion, 470 U. S. 729, 743 (1985) (favoring review of such preliminary matters along with the agency’s final order). The claims, in sum, have nothing to do with the enforcement-related matters the Commissions “regularly adjudicate[]”—and nothing to do with those they would adjudicate in assessing the charges against Axon and Cochran. Elgin, 567 U. S., at 22. Because that is so, the parties’ claims are “ ‘collateral’ to any Commission orders or rules from which review might be sought.” Free Enterprise Fund, 561 U. S., at 490.

The Government’s contrary argument would strip the collateralism factor of its appropriate function. In the Government’s view, no claim “directed at” a pending Commission proceeding can qualify as collateral to it, even if wholly disconnected in subject. Tr. of Oral Arg. in No. 21–86, p. 75; see Brief for Federal Parties 39, 52–53. The Government thinks that position consistent with Free Enterprise Fund because there an SEC proceeding had not yet begun. See Brief for Federal Parties 38–39 (noting that the accounting