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AXON ENTERPRISE, INC. v. FTC

Opinion of the Court

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