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AXON ENTERPRISE, INC. v. FTC
review scheme specified in the Securities 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. 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. On appeal, the Ninth Circuit affirmed the district court’s dismissal of Axon’s constitutional challenges to the FTC proceeding, concluding that the claims were the type that fell within the FTC Act’s review scheme. But the en banc Fifth Circuit disagreed as to the equivalent SEC question, finding 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.”
Held: The statutory review schemes set out in the Securities Exchange Act and Federal Trade Commission Act do not displace a district court’s federal-question jurisdiction over claims challenging as unconstitutional the structure or existence of the SEC or FTC. Pp. 7–18.
(a) Although district courts may ordinarily hear challenges to federal agency actions by way of §1331’s jurisdictional grant for claims “arising under” federal law, Congress may substitute an alternative review scheme. In both the Exchange Act and the FTC Act, Congress did so: It provided for review of claims about agency action in a court of appeals following the agency’s own review process. The creation of such a review scheme divests district courts of their ordinary jurisdiction over covered cases. But the statutory scheme does not necessarily extend to every claim concerning agency action. See, e.g., Thunder Basin Coal Co. v. Reich, 510 U. S. 200, 207–213. This Court has identified three considerations—commonly known as the Thunder Basin factors—to determine whether particular claims concerning agency action are “of the type Congress intended to be reviewed within th[e] statutory structure.” Id., at 212. 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. And last, is the claim “outside the agency’s expertise”? Ibid.
The 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—first 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 in accordance with the Mine Act. The company also objected on
