Axon Enterprise v. FTC/Opinion of the Court
Notice: This opinion is subject to formal revision before publication in the preliminary print of the United States Reports. Readers are requested to notify the Reporter of Decisions, Supreme Court of the United States, Washington, D. C. 20543, of any typographical or other formal errors, in order that corrections may be made before the preliminary print goes to press.
SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES
Nos. 21–86 and 21–1239
AXON ENTERPRISE, INC., PETITIONER
21–86v.21–86
FEDERAL TRADE COMMISSION, ET AL.
ON WRIT OF CERTIORARI TO THE UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE NINTH CIRCUIT
SECURITIES AND EXCHANGE COMMISSION, ET AL., PETITIONERS
21–1239v.21–1239
MICHELLE COCHRAN
ON WRIT OF CERTIORARI TO THE UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE FIFTH CIRCUIT
[April 14, 2023]
Justice Kagan delivered the opinion of the Court.
In each of these two cases, the respondent in an administrative enforcement action challenges the constitutional authority of the agency to proceed. Both respondents claim that the agencies’ administrative law judges (ALJs) are insufficiently accountable to the President, in violation of separation-of-powers principles. And one respondent attacks as well the combination of prosecutorial and adjudicatory functions in a single agency. The challenges are fundamental, even existential. They maintain in essence that the agencies, as currently structured, are unconstitutional in much of their work.
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.
I
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 as “neglect of duty” or “malfeasance.” 5 U. S. C. §§7521(a), 1202(d). An ALJ assigned to hear an SEC or FTC enforcement action has authority, much like a regular trial judge, to resolve motions, hold a hearing, and then issue a decision. See 16 CFR §§3.21–3.56 (2021); 17 CFR §§201.221–201.360 (2021).
A losing party may appeal the ALJ’s ruling to the Commission; alternatively, the Commission may undertake review on its own initiative. See 16 CFR §§3.52–3.53; 17 CFR §§201.410–201.411. Upon completion of internal review, the Commission enters a final decision. See 16 CFR §3.54; 17 CFR §201.411(a). Or if no such review has occurred, the ALJ’s ruling itself becomes the decision of the Commission. See 15 U. S. C. §78d–1(c); 16 CFR §3.51(a).
The Exchange Act and FTC Act both provide for review of a final Commission decision in a court of appeals, rather than a district court. Under the Exchange Act, “[a] person aggrieved by [an SEC] final order … may obtain review of the order” by filing a petition in a court of appeals. 15 U. S. C. §78y(a)(1). That petition gives the appellate court “jurisdiction” to “affirm or modify and enforce or to set aside the order in whole or in part.” §78y(a)(3). The FTC Act similarly provides that the party subject to an FTC order may “obtain a review of such order” in a court of appeals, and grants the court “jurisdiction” to “affirm[], modify[], or set[] aside the order.” §45(c).
The cases before us, though, did not take the above-described course. In each, the respondent in an administrative enforcement action sued in district court prior to an ALJ decision, seeking to enjoin the Commission’s proceeding. Each suit charged that some fundamental aspect of the Commission’s structure violates the Constitution; that the violation made the entire proceeding unlawful; and that being subjected to such an illegitimate proceeding causes legal injury (independent of any rulings the ALJ might make). Finally, each suit premised jurisdiction on district courts’ ordinary federal-question authority—their power, under 28 U. S. C. §1331, to resolve “civil actions arising under the Constitution, laws, or treaties of the United States.” We describe the two cases in turn, but what we have just said they have in common is really all it is necessary to know.
The first case arises from an SEC enforcement action brought against Michelle Cochran, a certified public accountant. In an earlier round of that proceeding, an ALJ found that Cochran had failed to comply with auditing standards, in violation of the Exchange Act. But soon after that decision issued, this Court held that the SEC’s ALJs had been improperly appointed. See Lucia v. SEC, 585 U. S. ___, ___ (2018). In compliance with that ruling, the SEC ordered a fresh hearing, conducted by a now validly appointed ALJ. That was the last straw for Cochran. Before the new ALJ hearing began, she sued the Commission in federal district court, asserting jurisdiction under §1331. Cochran’s complaint focused on the two layers of tenure protection all ALJs hold: By statute, those officials may be removed only “for good cause as determined by the [MSPB], whose members themselves can only be removed by the President for good cause.” App. 60; see supra, at 2. That arrangement, Cochran asserted, so greatly insulates ALJs from presidential supervision as to violate the separation of powers—more specifically, Article II’s vesting of executive power in the President. See App. 53–54, 60–62. And because that was true (Cochran continued), ALJs could not constitutionally exercise power: They could neither hold any hearings nor make any decisions. Cochran thus sought declaratory and injunctive relief freeing her of the obligation “to submit to an unconstitutional proceeding.” Id., at 60; see id., at 64.
The second case arises from an FTC enforcement action against Axon Enterprise, a company that makes and sells policing equipment. In its complaint, the FTC alleged that Axon’s purchase of its closest competitor violated the FTC Act’s ban on unfair methods of competition. To stop the FTC from pursuing that charge, Axon did just what Cochran had—brought suit against the Commission in district court, premised on federal-question jurisdiction. Like Cochran, Axon asserted that the Commission’s ALJs could not constitutionally exercise governmental authority because of their dual-layer protection from removal. In addition, Axon claimed that the combination of prosecutorial and adjudicative functions in the Commission renders all of its enforcement actions unconstitutional. See Complaint in No. 2:20–cv–00014 (D Ariz.), ECF Doc. 1, p. 26 (protesting that “the FTC will act as prosecutor, judge, and jury”). Again similarly to Cochran, Axon asked the court to enjoin the FTC “from subjecting” it to the Commission’s “unfair and unconstitutional internal forum.” Id., at 7; see id., at 28.[1]
Cochran’s and Axon’s suits met an identical fate in district court: dismissal for lack of jurisdiction. The district court in Cochran’s case held that the review scheme specified in the Exchange Act—“administrative review followed by judicial review in a federal court of appeals”—“implicitly divest[s] district courts of jurisdiction” over “challenges to SEC proceedings,” including Cochran’s constitutional ones. App. to Pet. for Cert. in No. 21–1239, p. 141a. Likewise, the district court in Axon’s case found that the FTC Act’s comparable review scheme displaces §1331 jurisdiction for claims concerning the FTC’s adjudications. So Axon had to raise its structural constitutional claims “during the administrative process and then renew them” if and when “seeking review in the Court of Appeals.” App. to Pet. for Cert. in No. 21–86, pp. 50–51.
On appeal from those decisions, the United States Courts of Appeals for the Fifth and Ninth Circuits split. The Ninth Circuit, considering Axon’s case, reached the same conclusion as the district courts. See 986 F. 3d 1173 (2021). Reviewing this Court’s precedents, the Ninth Circuit acknowledged that a statutory review scheme precluding district court jurisdiction—like the FTC Act’s—might not extend to every “type of claim[].” Id., at 1187 (citing Thunder Basin Coal Co. v. Reich, 510 U. S. 200, 212 (1994)). But the court decided that Axon’s constitutional challenges fell within the FTC Act’s scheme, mainly because the scheme guaranteed them “meaningful judicial review.” 986 F. 3d, at 1181, 1187. The en banc Fifth Circuit disagreed as to the equivalent SEC question. See 20 F. 4th 194 (2021). The court maintained that “Cochran’s removal power claim is not the type of claim Congress intended to funnel through the Exchange Act’s statutory-review scheme.” Id., at 206–207 (also citing Thunder Basin, 510 U. S., at 212). Drawing on considerations identified in this Court’s opinions, the Fifth Circuit reasoned that Cochran’s claim would not receive “meaningful judicial review” in a court of appeals; that the claim was “wholly collateral to the Exchange Act’s statutory-review scheme”; and that the claim fell “outside the SEC’s expertise.” 20 F. 4th, at 207–208.
We granted certiorari in both cases to resolve the division. 595 U. S. ___ (2022); 596 U. S. ___ (2022). We now conclude that the review schemes set out in the Exchange Act and the FTC Act do not displace district court jurisdiction over Axon’s and Cochran’s far-reaching constitutional claims.
II
A
A special statutory review scheme, this Court has recognized, may preclude district courts from exercising jurisdiction over challenges to federal agency action. See, e.g., Thunder Basin, 510 U. S., at 207. District courts may ordinarily hear those challenges by way of 28 U. S. C. §1331’s grant of jurisdiction for claims “arising under” federal law. Congress, though, may substitute for that district court authority an alternative scheme of review. Congress of course may do so explicitly, providing in so many words that district court jurisdiction will yield. But Congress also may do so implicitly, by specifying a different method to resolve claims about agency action. The method Congress typically chooses is the one used in both the Exchange Act and the FTC Act: review in a court of appeals following the agency’s own review process. We have several times held that the creation of such a review scheme for agency action divests district courts of their ordinary jurisdiction over the covered cases. See Thunder Basin, 510 U. S., at 207–212; Elgin v. Department of Treasury, 567 U. S. 1, 10–15 (2012); see also Free Enterprise Fund v. Public Company Accounting Oversight Bd., 561 U. S. 477, 489 (2010) (noting that statutory schemes for agency review “[g]enerally” are “exclusive”). The agency effectively fills in for the district court, with the court of appeals providing judicial review.
But a statutory review scheme of that kind does not necessarily extend to every claim concerning agency action. Our decision in Thunder Basin made that point clear. After finding that Congress’s creation of a “comprehensive review process” like the ones here ousted district courts of jurisdiction, the Court asked another question: whether the particular claims brought were “of the type Congress intended to be reviewed within this statutory structure.” 510 U. S., at 208, 212. The Court identified three considerations designed to aid in that inquiry, commonly known now as the Thunder Basin factors. First, could precluding district court jurisdiction “foreclose all meaningful judicial review” of the claim? Id., at 212–213. Next, is the claim “wholly collateral to [the] statute’s review provisions”? Id., at 212 (internal quotation marks omitted). And last, is the claim “outside the agency’s expertise”? Ibid. When the answer to all three questions is yes, “we presume that Congress does not intend to limit jurisdiction.” Free Enterprise Fund, 561 U. S., at 489. But the same conclusion might follow if the factors point in different directions. The ultimate question is how best to understand what Congress has done—whether the statutory review scheme, though exclusive where it applies, reaches the claim in question. The first Thunder Basin factor recognizes that Congress rarely allows claims about agency action to escape effective judicial review. See, e.g., Bowen v. Michigan Academy of Family Physicians, 476 U. S. 667, 670 (1986). The second and third reflect in related ways the point of special review provisions—to give the agency a heightened role in the matters it customarily handles, and can apply distinctive knowledge to.
This Court has twice held specific claims to fit within a statutory review scheme, based on the Thunder Basin factors. In Thunder Basin itself, a coal company subject to the Mine Act filed suit in district court instead of asserting its claims—as a statutory scheme prescribed—before a mine safety commission and then (if needed) a court of appeals. The crux of the dispute concerned the company’s refusal to provide employee-designated union officials with access to the workplace, as the Mine Act apparently required. The company claimed a right to exclude the officials under another statute; it also objected on due process grounds to the agency’s imposing a fine before holding a hearing. See 510 U. S., at 205; see also Elgin, 567 U. S., at 17, n. 6. We held the district court to lack jurisdiction over those claims, and thus directed the company back to the statutory review scheme. The Commission, we emphasized, had “extensive experience” in addressing the statutory issues raised, and could resolve them in ways that “brought to bear” its “expertise” over the mining industry. 510 U. S., at 214–215; see Free Enterprise Fund, 561 U. S., at 491. All that was less so, we acknowledged, of the company’s constitutional challenge; but that claim could be “meaningfully addressed in the Court of Appeals.” 510 U. S., at 215.
We applied similar reasoning in Elgin. The statutory review scheme there directed federal employees challenging discharge decisions to seek review in the MSPB and then, if needed, in the Federal Circuit (a specific court of appeals). But Elgin filed suit in district court when he was fired by the government for failing to register for the draft. We held that the court lacked jurisdiction even though Elgin mainly claimed that the draft law, in excluding women, violated the Equal Protection Clause. Although the MSPB might not be able to hold the draft law unconstitutional, we stated, the Court of Appeals could—and that was sufficient to ensure “meaningful review” of Elgin’s claim. 567 U. S., at 21. Still more, Elgin’s claim was neither collateral to the MSPB’s ordinary proceedings nor unrelated to its expertise. We reasoned that a “challenge to [a discharge] is precisely the type of personnel action regularly adjudicated by the MSPB.” Id., at 22. And we observed that such an action could involve “threshold” and other “questions unique to the employment context” that “fall[] squarely within the MSPB’s expertise.” Id., at 22–23.
But in Free Enterprise Fund, this Court went the opposite way, holding that certain claims landed outside a statutory review scheme. The scheme was the Exchange Act’s—the same as in Cochran’s case. And the main claim in Free Enterprise Fund bears more than a passing resemblance to one Axon and Cochran raise: It, too, alleged that officials with two layers of tenure protection were unconstitutionally insulated from presidential control. The officials challenged, though, were different. They were members of the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board—an agency regulating the accounting industry under the SEC’s oversight. When the Board opened an investigation of an accounting firm’s auditing practices, the firm took its Article II claim to district court. This time we held that the court had jurisdiction of the action, based on the Thunder Basin factors. We found that the Exchange Act provided no “meaningful avenue of relief ” for the firm, given the separation between the Board and the Commission. 561 U. S., at 490–491 (internal quotation marks omitted). Not every Board action, we explained, culminates in Commission action—which alone the statute makes reviewable in a court of appeals. And even supposing the SEC took up a matter arising from the Board’s investigation, the firm’s constitutional challenge would be “collateral” to the subject of that proceeding. The firm, we observed, “object[s] to the Board’s existence, not to any of its auditing standards.” Id., at 490. Finally, we held, the firm’s claim was “outside the Commission’s competence and expertise.” Id., at 491. It raised only a “standard” issue of administrative and constitutional law, relating not at all to “considerations of agency policy.” Ibid. (internal quotation marks and alterations omitted).
B
One way of framing the question we must decide is whether the cases before us are more like Thunder Basin and Elgin or more like Free Enterprise Fund. The answer appears from 30,000 feet not very hard. Recall our task: to decide if a claim is “of the type” Congress thought belonged within a statutory scheme. Thunder Basin, 510 U. S., at 212. The claims here are of the same ilk as the one in Free Enterprise Fund. There, the complaint alleged that the Board’s “freedom from Presidential oversight” rendered unconstitutional “all power and authority [the Board] exercised.” 561 U. S., at 508 (internal quotation marks omitted). Only the Court’s ability to sever the relevant statute’s for-cause removal provision enabled the Board to keep running. See ibid. The Article II challenges in Axon’s and Cochran’s cases would likewise prevent ALJs—through whom the Commissions do much of their work—from exercising any power, unless they lose their double-for-cause tenure protection. And Axon’s combination-of-functions claim similarly goes to the core of the FTC’s existence, given that the agency indeed houses (and by design) both prosecutorial and adjudicative activities. The challenges here, as in Free Enterprise Fund, are not to any specific substantive decision—say, to fining a company (Thunder Basin) or firing an employee (Elgin). Nor are they to the commonplace procedures agencies use to make such a decision. They are instead challenges, again as in Free Enterprise Fund, to the structure or very existence of an agency: They charge that an agency is wielding authority unconstitutionally in all or a broad swath of its work. Given that equivalence, it would be surprising to treat the claims here differently from the one in Free Enterprise Fund—which we held belonged in district court.
And when we apply the Thunder Basin factors, we indeed come out in the same place as Free Enterprise Fund. Our reasoning differs in some particulars, reflecting variations between that case and the two here. But the 30,000-foot view of the issue before us ends up a good proxy for the more granular one. Each of the three Thunder Basin factors signals that a district court has jurisdiction to adjudicate Axon’s and Cochran’s (like the accounting firm’s) sweeping constitutional claims.
We begin with the factor whose application here is least straightforward: whether preclusion of district court jurisdiction “could foreclose all meaningful judicial review.” Thunder Basin, 510 U. S., at 212–213. Thunder Basin and Elgin both make clear that adequate judicial review does not usually demand a district court’s involvement. Review of agency action in a court of appeals can alone “meaningfully address[]” a party’s claims. Thunder Basin, 510 U. S., at 215; see Elgin, 567 U. S., at 21 (holding that Congress provided “meaningful review” in authorizing the Federal Circuit “to consider and decide petitioners’ constitutional claims”).[2] Still more, we agree with the Government that the reason Free Enterprise Fund gave for departing from Thunder Basin and Elgin on the judicial review issue does not apply to the cases before us. See Brief for Federal Parties 39–40. As just described, Free Enterprise Fund’s analysis on that score relied on the separation between the Board and the SEC. See supra, at 10. The accounting firm, recall, was enmeshed in a Board investigation. But some Board actions never go to the SEC—and the statutory scheme, we explained, “provides only for judicial review of Commission action.” 561 U. S., at 490 (emphasis in original). That meant the accounting firm, absent district court jurisdiction, might never have had judicial recourse. But no such worry exists here. Cochran and Axon are parties in ongoing SEC and FTC proceedings, and the statutes at issue provide for judicial review of SEC and FTC action. See 15 U. S. C. §§45(c), 78y(a). Under those statutes, Axon and Cochran can (eventually) obtain review of their constitutional claims through an appeal from an adverse agency action to a court of appeals. So Free Enterprise Fund’s analysis of the judicial review factor does not control.
Yet a problem remains, stemming from the interaction between the alleged injury and the timing of review. To see the difficulty, think first about Thunder Basin and Elgin. If an appellate court had ruled in favor of the coal company or the federal employee on review of an agency decision, the court could have remedied the party’s injury. It could have revoked the fine assessed on the company or reinstated the employee with backpay. But not so here. The harm Axon and Cochran allege is “being subjected” to “unconstitutional agency authority”—a “proceeding by an unaccountable ALJ.” Brief for Axon 36; see Brief for Cochran 37 (contending she suffers harm from “having to appear in proceedings” before an unconstitutionally insulated ALJ). That harm may sound a bit abstract; but this Court has made clear that it is “a here-and-now injury.” Seila Law LLC v. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, 591 U. S. ___, ___ (2020) (slip op., at 10) (internal quotation marks omitted). And—here is the rub—it is impossible to remedy once the proceeding is over, which is when appellate review kicks in. Suppose a court of appeals agrees with Axon, on review of an adverse FTC decision, that ALJ-led proceedings violate the separation of powers. The court could of course vacate the FTC’s order. But Axon’s separation-of-powers claim is not about that order; indeed, Axon would have the same claim had it won before the agency. The claim, again, is about subjection to an illegitimate proceeding, led by an illegitimate decisionmaker. And as to that grievance, the court of appeals can do nothing: A proceeding that has already happened cannot be undone. Judicial review of Axon’s (and Cochran’s) structural constitutional claims would come too late to be meaningful.
The limits of that conclusion are important to emphasize. The Government, in disputing our position, notes that many review schemes—involving not only agency action but also civil and criminal litigation—require parties to wait before appealing, even when doing so subjects them to “significant burdens.” Brief for Federal Parties 47–49. That is true, and will remain so: Nothing we say today portends newfound enthusiasm for interlocutory review. Return, for example, to Thunder Basin and Elgin. There, the coal company and federal employee could both have argued that the statutory review process would subject them to greater litigation costs than their preferred suit in district court. But that would not have mattered. We have made clear, just as the Government says, that “the expense and disruption” of “protracted adjudicatory proceedings” on a claim do not justify immediate review. FTC v. Standard Oil Co. of Cal., 449 U. S. 232, 244 (1980); see, e.g., Myers v. Bethlehem Shipbuilding Corp., 303 U. S. 41, 51 (1938). What makes the difference here is the nature of the claims and accompanying harms that the parties are asserting. Again, Axon and Cochran protest the “here-and-now” injury of subjection to an unconstitutionally structured decisionmaking process. See supra, at 13. And more, subjection to that process irrespective of its outcome, or of other decisions made within it. A nearer analogy than any the Government offers is to our established immunity doctrines. There, we have identified certain rights “not to stand trial” or face other legal processes. Mitchell v. Forsyth, 472 U. S. 511, 526 (1985). And we have recognized that those rights are “effectively lost” if review is deferred until after trial. Ibid. So too here, Axon and Cochran will lose their rights not to undergo the complained-of agency proceedings if they cannot assert those rights until the proceedings are over.
The collateralism factor favors Axon and Cochran for much the same reason—because they are challenging the Commissions’ power to proceed at all, rather than actions taken in the agency proceedings. That distinction, as noted earlier, guided Free Enterprise Fund’s view that the accounting firm’s challenge qualified as “collateral.” See 561 U. S., at 490; supra, at 10. 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 firm remained enmeshed in a Board investigation). But the Government’s argument still conflicts with Free Enterprise Fund’s reasoning. In addressing why the firm’s claim was collateral, the Court focused solely on what it was about—again, that the firm challenged “the Board’s existence,” not “its auditing standards.” 561 U. S., at 490. And anyway, the Government’s theory ill fits the point of the Thunder Basin inquiry—to decide when a particular claim is “of the type” to fall outside a statutory review scheme. 510 U. S., at 212. That inquiry, just as Free Enterprise Fund recognized, requires considering the nature of the claim, not the status (pending or not) of an agency proceeding. Or said another way, the inquiry contemplates (as our collateral-order doctrine also does) that even when a proceeding is pending, an occasional claim may get immediate review—in part because it involves something discrete. Cf. Cohen v. Beneficial Industrial Loan Corp., 337 U. S. 541, 546 (1949) (allowing an interlocutory appeal from a district court’s “collateral” ruling, “independent of the cause itself”). The Government’s redefinition of what counts as collateral would effectively foreclose that possibility.
Third and finally, Cochran’s and Axon’s claims are “outside the [Commissions’] expertise.” Thunder Basin, 510 U. S., at 212. On that issue, Free Enterprise Fund could hardly be clearer. Claims that tenure protections violate Article II, the Court there determined, raise “standard questions of administrative” and constitutional law, detached from “considerations of agency policy.” 561 U. S., at 491 (internal quotation marks and alterations omitted); see supra, at 10. That statement covers Axon’s and Cochran’s claims that ALJs are too far insulated from the President’s supervision. And Axon’s constitutional challenge to the combination of prosecutorial and adjudicative functions is of a piece—similarly distant from the FTC’s “competence and expertise.” 561 U. S., at 491. The Commission knows a good deal about competition policy, but nothing special about the separation of powers. For that reason, we observed two Terms ago, “agency adjudications are generally ill suited to address structural constitutional challenges”—like those maintained here. Carr v. Saul, 593 U. S. ___, ___ (2021) (slip op., at 9).
On this last factor, even the Government mostly gives up the ghost. Its argument goes: “Even when an agency lacks expertise in interpreting the Constitution, it can still ‘apply its expertise’ by deciding other issues”—whether “statutory, regulatory, or factual”—“that ‘may obviate the need to address the constitutional challenge.’ ” Brief for Federal Parties 54 (quoting Elgin, 567 U. S., at 22–23). The first clause of that sentence concedes the expertise point—and the rest cannot reclaim it. True enough, we partly relied in Elgin on the MSPB’s expertise on a raft of ordinary employment issues surrounding the employee’s contention that the Equal Protection Clause barred his discharge. See 567 U. S., at 22–23; supra, at 9. But the Government here does not pretend that Axon’s and Cochran’s constitutional claims are similarly intertwined with or embedded in matters on which the Commissions are expert. (It is precisely because those claims are not so entangled that the Government must try to redefine what it means for claims to be “collateral” to an agency action. See supra, at 15–16.) And unlike in Elgin, ruling for Axon and Cochran on expertise-laden grounds would not “obviate the need” to address their constitutional claims—which, again, allege injury not from this or that ruling but from subjection to all agency authority. Those claims of here-and-now harm would remain no matter how much expertise could be “brought to bear” on the other issues these cases involve. Thunder Basin, 510 U. S., at 215.
All three Thunder Basin factors thus point in the same direction—toward allowing district court review of Axon’s and Cochran’s claims that the structure, or even existence, of an agency violates the Constitution. For the reasons given above, those claims cannot receive meaningful judicial review through the FTC Act or Exchange Act. They are collateral to any decisions the Commissions could make in individual enforcement proceedings. And they fall outside the Commissions’ sphere of expertise. Our conclusion follows: The claims are not “of the type” the statutory review schemes reach. Id., at 212. A district court can therefore review them. *** We accordingly reverse the judgment of the Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, affirm the judgment of the Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, and remand the two cases for further proceedings consistent with this opinion.
- ↑ In this Court, Axon contends that it separately objected to “the uncodified, black-box ‘clearance’ process” used to determine whether the FTC or the Department of Justice will investigate a merger. Brief for Axon 13. We do not read the complaint that way. In count I, Axon raised the combination-of-functions claim; in count II, it raised the removal claim; and in count III, it asserted the view (not at issue here) that it did not violate the antitrust laws. See Complaint in No. 2:20–cv–00014 (D Ariz.), pp. 26–28. The single paragraph criticizing the clearance process appears only as background to Axon’s dual constitutional claims. Accord, 986 F. 3d 1173, 1181, n. 3 (CA9 2021) (case below) (noting that the three claims Axon pushed on appeal “do not line up with” Axon’s complaint). We therefore do not address the clearance-process issue.
- ↑ That is so, as both decisions held, even if the agency itself could not have considered or remedied the party’s claim—for example, when the agency lacks the power to “declare a statute unconstitutional.” Elgin, 567 U. S., at 17; see Thunder Basin, 510 U. S., at 215. It is also so, as Thunder Basin illustrates, regardless of whether the claim involves a matter of substance (e.g., the coal company’s alleged right to exclude union officials) or one of procedure (e.g., the company’s asserted entitlement to an earlier hearing). See id., at 214–215; supra, at 8–9.