Opinion of the Court
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
