Opinion of the Court
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
