Page:Axon Enterprise v. FTC.pdf/3

Syllabus

due process grounds to the agency’s imposition of a fine before holding a hearing. See 510 U. S., at 205. The Court held that the district court lacked jurisdiction over those claims, emphasizing the commission’s “extensive experience” in addressing the statutory issues raised, as well as its ability to resolve them in light of its “expertise” over the mining industry. Id., at 214–215. The Court acknowledged the company’s constitutional challenge was less tied to the agency’s experience and expertise, but concluded it could be “meaningfully addressed in the Court of Appeals.” Id., at 215.

The Court applied similar reasoning in Elgin v. Department of Treasury, 567 U. S. 1, which involved a statutory review scheme that directed federal employees challenging discharge decisions to seek review in the Merit Systems Protection Board (MSPB) and then, if needed, in the Federal Circuit. Elgin filed suit in district court when the government fired him for failing to register for the draft. This Court held that the district court lacked jurisdiction even though Elgin mainly claimed that the draft’s exclusion of women violated the Equal Protection Clause. Although the MSPB might not be able to hold the draft law unconstitutional, the Court of Appeals could—and that was sufficient to ensure “meaningful review” of Elgin’s claim. Id., at 21. Further, Elgin’s challenge to his discharge was neither collateral to the MSPB’s ordinary proceedings nor unrelated to its expertise in the employment context.

In contrast, the Court in Free Enterprise Fund applied the Thunder Basin factors to determine that an accounting firm’s Article II challenge to the structure of the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board—an agency regulating the accounting industry under the SEC’s oversight—landed outside the Exchange Act’s review scheme. Because not all Board action culminates in Commission action—which alone the statute makes reviewable in a court of appeals—the Court determined that the Exchange Act provided no “meaningful avenue of relief.” 561 U. S., at 490–491. And even if the SEC took up a matter arising from the Board’s investigation of the firm, the firm’s constitutional challenge to the Board’s existence would be “collateral” to the subject of that proceeding, as well as “outside the Commission’s competence and expertise.” Ibid. Pp. 7–10.

(b) The Court must decide if the constitutional claims here are “of the type” Congress thought belonged within a statutory review scheme. Thunder Basin, 510 U. S., at 212. Like the accounting firm in Free Enterprise Fund, Cochran and Axon assert sweeping constitutional claims: They charge that the SEC and FTC are wielding authority unconstitutionally in all or broad swaths of their work. Applying the Thunder Basin factors here, the Court comes out in the same place as in Free Enterprise Fund.