Page:Axon Enterprise v. FTC.pdf/7

2 Our task today is not to resolve those challenges; rather, it is to decide where they may be heard. The enforcement actions at issue were initiated in the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and the Federal Trade Commission (FTC). Most objections to those Commissions’ proceedings follow a well-trod path. As prescribed by statute, a party makes its claims first within the Commission itself, and then (if needed) in a federal court of appeals. The parties here, however, sidestepped that review scheme. Seeking to stop the administrative proceedings, they instead brought their claims in federal district court. The question presented is whether the district courts have jurisdiction to hear those suits—and so to resolve the parties’ constitutional challenges to the Commissions’ structure. The answer is yes. The ordinary statutory review scheme does not preclude a district court from entertaining these extraordinary claims.

Congress established the SEC to protect investors in securities markets, and created the FTC to promote fair competition. The Commissions enforce, respectively, the Securities Exchange Act and the FTC Act (among other laws). See 15 U. S. C. §78a et seq. (Exchange Act); 15 U. S. C. §41 et seq. (FTC Act). Those Acts authorize the Commissions to address statutory violations either by bringing civil suits in federal district court or by instituting their own administrative proceedings. See §§78u(d), 78u–1, 78u–2, 78u–3; §§45(b), (m).

When a Commission elects the latter option—as in these two cases—it typically delegates the initial adjudication to an ALJ. See §78d–1(a); note following §41. To foster independence, each Commission’s ALJs are removable “only for good cause” as determined by the Merit Systems Protection Board (MSPB)—a separate agency whose members are themselves removable by the President only for cause, such