Sec v. Jarkesy
34 F. 4th 446, affirmed and remanded.
NOTE: Where it is feasible, a syllabus (headnote) will be released, as is being done in connection with this case, at the time the opinion is issued. The syllabus constitutes no part of the opinion of the Court but has been prepared by the Reporter of Decisions for the convenience of the reader. See United States v. Detroit Timber & Lumber Co., 200 U. S. 321, 337.
SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES
SECURITIES AND EXCHANGE COMMISSION v. JARKESY et al.
In the aftermath of the Wall Street Crash of 1929, Congress passed a suite of laws designed to combat securities fraud and increase market transparency. Three such statues are relevant: The Securities Act of 1933, the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, and the Investment Advisers Act of 1940. These Acts respectively govern the registration of securities, the trading of securities, and the activities of investment advisers. Although each regulates different aspects of the securities markets, their pertinent provisions—collectively referred to by regulators as “the antifraud provisions,” App. to Pet. for Cert. 73a, 202a—target the same basic behavior: misrepresenting or concealing material facts.
To enforce these Acts, Congress created the Securities and Exchange Commission. The SEC may bring an enforcement action in one of two forums. It can file suit in federal court, or it can adjudicate the matter itself. The forum the SEC selects dictates certain aspects of the litigation. In federal court, a jury finds the facts, an Article III judge presides, and the Federal Rules of Evidence and the ordinary rules of discovery govern the litigation. But when the SEC adjudicates the matter in-house, there are no juries. The Commission presides while its Division of Enforcement prosecutes the case. The Commission or its delegee—typically an Administrative Law Judge—also finds facts and decides discovery disputes, and the SEC’s Rules of Practice govern.
One remedy for securities violations is civil penalties. Originally, the SEC could only obtain civil penalties from unregistered investment advisers in federal court. Then, in 2010, Congress passed the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act. The Act authorized the SEC to impose such penalties through its own in-house proceedings.
Shortly after passage of the Dodd-Frank Act, the SEC initiated an enforcement action for civil penalties against investment adviser George Jarkesy, Jr., and his firm, Patriot28, LLC for alleged violations of the “antifraud provisions” contained in the federal securities laws. The SEC opted to adjudicate the matter in-house. As relevant, the final order determined that Jarkesy and Patriot28 had committed securities violations and levied a civil penalty of $300,000. Jarkesy and Patriot28 petitioned for judicial review. The Fifth Circuit vacated the order on the ground that adjudicating the matter in-house violated the defendants’ Seventh Amendment right to a jury trial.
Held: When the SEC seeks civil penalties against a defendant for securities fraud, the Seventh Amendment entitles the defendant to a jury trial. Pp. 6–27.
(a) The question presented by this case—whether the Seventh Amendment entitles a defendant to a jury trial when the SEC seeks civil penalties for securities fraud—is straightforward. Following the analysis set forth in Granfinanciera, S. A. v. Nordberg, 492 U. S. 33, and Tull v. United States, 481 U. S. 412, this action implicates the Seventh Amendment because the SEC’s antifraud provisions replicate common law fraud. And the “public rights” exception to Article III jurisdiction does not apply, because the present action does not fall within any of the distinctive areas involving governmental prerogatives where the Court has concluded that a matter may be resolved outside of an Article III court, without a jury.
(b) The Court first explains why this action implicates the Seventh Amendment.
(1) The right to trial by jury is “of such importance and occupies so firm a place in our history and jurisprudence that any seeming curtailment of the right” has always been and “should be scrutinized with the utmost care.” Dimick v. Schiedt, 293 U. S. 474, 486. When the British attempted to evade American juries by siphoning adjudications to juryless admiralty, vice admiralty, and chancery courts, the Americans protested and eventually cited the British practice as a justification for declaring Independence. In the Revolution’s aftermath, concerns that the proposed Constitution lacked a provision guaranteeing a jury trial right in civil cases was perhaps the “most success[ful]” critique leveled against the document during the ratification debates. The Federalist No. 83, p. 495. To fix that flaw, the Framers promptly adopted the Seventh Amendment. Ever since, “every encroachment upon [the jury trial right] has been watched with great jealousy.” Parsons v. Bedford, 3 Pet. 433, 446. Pp. 7–8.
(2) The Seventh Amendment guarantees that in “[s]uits at common law . . . the right of trial by jury shall be preserved.” The right itself is not limited to the “common-law forms of action recognized” when the Seventh Amendment was ratified. Curtis v. Loether, 415 U. S. 189, 193. Rather, it “embrace[s] all suits which are not of equity or admiralty jurisdiction, whatever may be the peculiar form which they may assume.” Parsons, 3 Pet., at 447. That includes statutory claims that are “legal in nature.” Granfinanciera, 492 U. S., at 53.
To determine whether a suit is legal in nature, courts must consider whether the cause of action resembles common law causes of action, and whether the remedy is the sort that was traditionally obtained in a court of law. Of these factors, the remedy is the more important. And in this case, the remedy is all but dispositive. For respondents’ alleged fraud, the SEC seeks civil penalties, a form of monetary relief. Such relief is legal in nature when it is designed to punish or deter the wrongdoer rather than solely to “restore the status quo.” Tull, 481 U. S., at 422. The Acts condition the availability and size of the civil penalties available to the SEC based on considerations such as culpability, deterrence, and recidivism. See §§77h–1; 78u–2, 80b–3. These factors go beyond restoring the status quo and so are legal in nature. The SEC is also not obligated to use civil penalties to compensate victims. SEC civil penalties are thus “a type of remedy at common law that could only be enforced in courts of law.” Tull, 481 U. S., at 422. This suit implicates the Seventh Amendment right and a defendant would be entitled to a jury on these claims.
The close relationship between federal securities fraud and common law fraud confirms that conclusion. Both target the same basic conduct: misrepresenting or concealing material facts. By using “fraud” and other common law terms of art when it drafted the federal securities laws, Congress incorporated common law fraud prohibitions into those laws. This Court therefore often considers common law fraud principles when interpreting federal securities law. See, e.g., Dura Pharmaceuticals, Inc. v. Broudo, 544 U. S. 336, 343–344. While federal securities fraud and common law fraud are not identical, the close relationship between the two confirms that this action is “legal in nature.” Granfinanciera, 492 U. S., at 53. Pp. 8–13.
(c) Because the claims at issue here implicate the Seventh Amendment, a jury trial is required unless the “public rights” exception applies. Under this exception, Congress may assign the matter for decision to an agency without a jury, consistent with the Seventh Amendment. For the reasons below, the exception does not apply. Pp. 13–27.
(1) The Constitution prevents Congress from “withdraw[ing] from judicial cognizance any matter which, from its nature, is the subject of a suit at the common law.” Murray’s Lessee v. Hoboken Land & Improvement Co., 18 How. 272, 284. Once such a suit “is brought within the bounds of federal jurisdiction,” an Article III court must decide it, with a jury if the Seventh Amendment applies. Stern v. Marshall, 564 U. S. 462, 484. On that basis, this Court has repeatedly explained that matters concerning private rights may not be removed from Article III courts. See, e.g., Murray’s Lessee, 18 How., at 284. If a suit is in the nature of an action at common law, then the matter presumptively concerns private rights, and adjudication by an Article III court is mandatory. Stern, 564 U. S., at 484.
The Court also recognizes a class of cases concerning “public rights.” Such matters “historically could have been determined exclusively by [the executive and legislative] branches.” Id., at 493 (internal quotation marks omitted). No involvement by an Article III court in the initial adjudication of public rights claims is necessary. Certain categories that have been recognized as falling within the exception include matters concerning: the collection of revenue; aspects of customs law; immigration law; relations with Indian tribes; the administration of public lands; and the granting of public benefits. The Court’s opinions governing this exception have not always spoken in precise terms. But “even with respect to matters that arguably fall within the scope of the ‘public rights’ doctrine, the presumption is in favor of Article III courts.” Northern Pipeline Constr. Co. v. Marathon Pipe Line Co., 458 U. S. 50, 69, n. 23 (plurality opinion). Pp. 13–18.
(2) In Granfinanciera, this Court previously considered whether the Seventh Amendment guarantees the right to a jury trial “in the face of Congress’ decision to allow a non-Article III tribunal to adjudicate” a statutory “fraud claim.” 492 U. S., at 37, 50. There the issue was whether Congress’s designation of fraudulent conveyance actions as “core [bankruptcy] proceedings” authorized non-Article III bankruptcy judges to hear them without juries. Id., at 50. The Court held that the designation was not permissible, even under the public rights exception. To determine whether the claim implicated the Seventh Amendment, the Court applied the principles distilled in Tull. Surveying English cases and considering the remedy these suits provided, the Court concluded that fraudulent conveyance actions were “quintessentially suits at common law.” Granfinanciera, 492 U. S., at 56. Because these actions were akin to “suits at common law” and were not “closely intertwined” with the bankruptcy process, the Court held that the public rights exception did not apply, and a jury was required. Id., at 54, 56. Pp. 19–20.
(3) Granfinanciera effectively decides this case. The action here was brought under the “anti-fraud provisions” of the federal securities laws and provide civil penalties that can “only be enforced in courts of law.” Tull, 481 U. S., at 422. They target the same basic conduct as common law fraud, employ the same terms of art, and operate pursuant to similar legal principles. In short, this action involves a “matter[ ] of private rather than public right.” Granfinanciera, 492 U. S., at 56. Pp. 20–21.
(4) The SEC claims that the public rights exception applies because Congress created “new statutory obligations, impose[d] civil penalties for their violation, and then commit[ted] to an administrative agency the function of deciding whether a violation ha[d] in fact occurred.” Brief for Petitioner 21. Granfinanciera does away with much of the SEC’s argument. Congress cannot “conjure away the Seventh Amendment by mandating that traditional legal claims be . . . taken to an administrative tribunal.” 492 U. S., at 52. The SEC’s argument that Granfinanciera does not apply because the Government is the party bringing this action also fails. What matters is the substance of the suit, not where it is brought, who brings it, or how it is labeled. Northern Pipeline Constr. Co., 458 U. S., at 69 n. 23 (plurality opinion). Pp. 21–22.
(5) The Court’s opinion in Atlas Roofing Co. v. Occupational Safety and Health Review Comm’n, 430 U. S. 442, is not to the contrary. The litigation in that case arose under the Occupational Health and Safety Act. Facing agency enforcement actions, two employers alleged that the agency’s adjudicatory authority violated the Seventh Amendment. See id., at 448–449. The Court concluded that Congress could assign the OSH Act adjudications to an agency because the claims involved “a new cause of action, and remedies therefor, unknown to the common law.” Id., at 461. The cases Atlas Roofing relied upon applied the “public rights” exception to actions that were “ ‘not . . . suit[s] at common law or in the nature of such . . . suit[s].’ ” Id., at 453. Atlas Roofing therefore does not apply here, where the statutory claim is “ ‘in the nature of ’ ” a common law suit. Id., at 453. Later rulings also foreclose reading Atlas Roofing as the SEC does. This Court clarified in Tull that the Seventh Amendment does apply to novel statutory regimes, so long as the statutory claims are akin to common law claims. See 481 U. S., at 421–423. And the Court has explained that the public rights exception does not apply automatically whenever Congress assigns a matter to an agency for adjudication. See Granfinanciera, 492 U. S., at 52. Pp. 22–27.
The Court does not reach the remaining issues in this case.
34 F. 4th 446, affirmed and remanded.
Roberts , C. J., delivered the opinion of the Court, in which Thomas , Alito , Gorsuch , Kavanaugh , and Barrett , JJ., joined. Gorsuch , J., filed a concurring opinion, in which Thomas , J., joined. Sotomayor , J., filed a dissenting opinion, in which Kagan and Jackson , JJ., joined.
NOTICE: This opinion is subject to formal revision before publication in the United States Reports. Readers are requested to notify the Reporter of Decisions, Supreme Court of the United States, Washington, D. C. 20543, pio@supremecourt.gov, of any typographical or other formal errors.
SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES
Securities and Exchange Commission, PETITIONER v. George R. Jarkesy, J r ., et al.
Chief Justice Roberts delivered the opinion of the Court.
In 2013, the Securities and Exchange Commission initiated an enforcement action against respondents George Jarkesy, Jr., and Patriot28, LLC, seeking civil penalties for alleged securities fraud. The SEC chose to adjudicate the matter in-house before one of its administrative law judges, rather than in federal court where respondents could have proceeded before a jury. We consider whether the Seventh Amendment permits the SEC to compel respondents to defend themselves before the agency rather than before a jury in federal court.
In the aftermath of the Wall Street Crash of 1929, Congress passed a suite of laws designed to combat securities fraud and increase market transparency. Three such statues are relevant here: The Securities Act of 1933, the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, and the Investment Advisers Act of 1940. 48 Stat. 74, 15 U. S. C. §§77a et seq.; 48 Stat. 881, 78a et seq.; 54 Stat. 847, 80b–1 et seq. These Acts respectively govern the registration of securities, the trading of securities, and the activities of investment advisers. Their protections are mutually reinforcing and often overlap. See Lorenzo v. SEC, 587 U. S. 71, 80 (2019). Although each regulates different aspects of the securities markets, their pertinent provisions—collectively referred to by regulators as “the antifraud provisions,” App. to Pet. for Cert. 73a, 202a—target the same basic behavior: misrepresenting or concealing material facts.
The three antifraud provisions are Section 17(a) of the Securities Act, Section 10(b) of the Securities Exchange Act, and Section 206 of the Investment Advisers Act. Section 17(a) prohibits regulated individuals from “obtain[ing] money or property by means of any untrue statement of a material fact,” as well as causing certain omissions of material fact. 15 U. S. C. §77q(a)(2). As implemented by Rule 10b–5, Section 10(b) prohibits using “any device, scheme, or artifice to defraud,” making “untrue statement[s] of . . . material fact,” causing certain material omissions, and “engag[ing] in any act . . . which operates or would operate as a fraud.” 17 CFR §240.10b–5 (2023); see 15 U. S. C. §78j(b). And finally, Section 206(b), as implemented by Rule 206(4)–8, prohibits investment advisers from making “any untrue statement of a material fact” or engaging in “fraudulent, deceptive, or manipulative” acts with respect to investors or prospective investors. 17 CFR §§275.206(4)–8(a)(1), (2); see 15 U. S. C. §80b–6(4).
To enforce these Acts, Congress created the SEC. The SEC may bring an enforcement action in one of two forums. First, the Commission can adjudicate the matter itself. See §§77h–1, 78u–2, 78u–3, 80b–3. Alternatively, it can file a suit in federal court. See §§77t, 78u, 80b–9. The SEC’s choice of forum dictates two aspects of the litigation: The procedural protections enjoyed by the defendant, and the remedies available to the SEC.
Procedurally, these forums differ in who presides and makes legal determinations, what evidentiary and discovery rules apply, and who finds facts. Most pertinently, in federal court a jury finds the facts, depending on the nature of the claim. See U. S. Const., Amdt. 7. In addition, a life-tenured, salary-protected Article III judge presides, see Art. III, §1, and the litigation is governed by the Federal Rules of Evidence and the ordinary rules of discovery.
Conversely, when the SEC adjudicates the matter in-house, there are no juries. Instead, the Commission presides and finds facts while its Division of Enforcement prosecutes the case. The Commission may also delegate its role as judge and factfinder to one of its members or to an administrative law judge (ALJ) that it employs. See 15 U. S. C. §78d–1. In these proceedings, the Commission or its delegee decides discovery disputes, see, e.g., 17 CFR §201.232(b), and the SEC’s Rules of Practice govern, see 17 CFR §201.100 et seq. The Commission or its delegee also determines the scope and form of permissible evidence and may admit hearsay and other testimony that would be inadmissible in federal court. See §§201.320, 201.326.
When a Commission member or an ALJ presides, the full Commission can review that official’s findings and conclusions, but it is not obligated to do so. See §201.360; 15 U. S. C. §78d–1. Judicial review is also available once the proceedings have concluded. See §§77i(a), 78y(a)(1), 80b–13(a). But such review is deferential. By law, a reviewing court must treat the agency’s factual findings as “conclusive” if sufficiently supported by the record, e.g., §78y(a)(4); see Richardson v. Perales, 402 U. S. 389, 401 (1971), even when they rest on evidence that could not have been admitted in federal court.
The remedy at issue in this case, civil penalties, also originally depended upon the forum chosen by the SEC. Except in cases against registered entities, the SEC could obtain civil penalties only in federal court. See Insider Trading Sanctions Act of 1984, §2, 98 Stat. 1264; Securities Enforcement Remedies and Penny Stock Reform Act of 1990, §§101, 201–202, 104 Stat. 932–933, 935–938. That is no longer so. In 2010, Congress passed the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act (Dodd-Frank Act), 124 Stat. 1376. That Act “ma[de] the SEC’s authority in administrative penalty proceedings coextensive with its authority to seek penalties in Federal court.” H. R. Rep. No. 111–687, p. 78 (2010). In other words, the SEC may now seek civil penalties in federal court, or it may impose them through its own in-house proceedings. See Dodd-Frank Act, §929P(a), 124 Stat. 1862–1864 (codified in relevant part as amended at 15 U. S. C. §§77h–1(g), 78u–2(a), 80b–3(i)(1)).
Civil penalties rank among the SEC’s most potent enforcement tools. These penalties consist of fines of up to $725,000 per violation. See §§77h–1(g), 78u–2, 80b–3(i). And the SEC may levy these penalties even when no investor has actually suffered financial loss. See SEC v. Blavin, 760 F. 2d 706, 711 (CA6 1985) (per curiam).
Shortly after passage of the Dodd-Frank Act, the SEC began investigating Jarkesy and Patriot28 for securities fraud. Between 2007 and 2010, Jarkesy launched two investment funds, raising about $24 million from 120 “accredited” investors—a class of investors that includes, for example, financial institutions, certain investment professionals, and high net worth individuals. App. to Pet. for Cert. 72a–73a, 110a, n. 72; see 17 CFR §230.501. Patriot28, which Jarkesy managed, served as the funds’ investment adviser. According to the SEC, Jarkesy and Patriot28 misled investors in at least three ways: (1) by misrepresenting the investment strategies that Jarkesy and Patriot28 employed, (2) by lying about the identity of the funds’ auditor and prime broker, and (3) by inflating the funds’ claimed value so that Jarkesy and Patriot28 could collect larger management fees. App. to Pet. for Cert. 80a–86a, 95a–105a. The SEC initiated an enforcement action, contending that these actions violated the antifraud provisions of the Securities Act, the Securities Exchange Act, and the Investment Advisers Act, and sought civil penalties and other remedies.
Relying on the new authority conferred by the Dodd-Frank Act, the SEC opted to adjudicate the matter itself rather than in federal court. In 2014, the presiding ALJ issued an initial decision. Id., at 155a–225a. The SEC reviewed the decision and then released its final order in 2020. Id., at 71a–154a. The final order levied a civil penalty of $300,000 against Jarkesy and Patriot28, directed them to cease and desist committing or causing violations of the antifraud provisions, ordered Patriot28 to disgorge earnings, and prohibited Jarkesy from participating in the securities industry and in offerings of penny stocks. Id., at 152a–154a.
Jarkesy and Patriot28 petitioned for judicial review. 34 F. 4th 446, 450 (CA5 2022). A divided panel of the Fifth Circuit granted their petition and vacated the final order. Id., at 449–450. Applying a two-part test from Granfinanciera, S. A. v. Nordberg, 492 U. S. 33 (1989), the panel held that the agency’s decision to adjudicate the matter in-house violated Jarkesy’s and Patriot28’s Seventh Amendment right to a jury trial. 34 F. 4th, at 451. First, the panel determined that because these SEC antifraud claims were “akin to [a] traditional action[ ] in debt,” a jury trial would be required if this case were brought in an Article III court. Id., at 454; see id., at 453–455. It then considered whether the “public rights” exception applied. That exception permits Congress, under certain circumstances, to assign an action to an agency tribunal without a jury, consistent with the Seventh Amendment. See id., at 455–459. The panel concluded that the exception did not apply, and that therefore the case should have been brought in federal court, where a jury could have found the facts pertinent to the defendants’ fraud liability. Based on this Seventh Amendment violation, the panel vacated the final order. Id., at 459.
It also identified two further constitutional problems. First, it determined that Congress had violated the nondelegation doctrine by authorizing the SEC, without adequate guidance, to choose whether to litigate this action in an Article III court or to adjudicate the matter itself. See id., at 459–463. The panel also found that the insulation of the SEC ALJs from executive supervision with two layers of for-cause removal protections violated the separation of powers. See id., at 463–466. Judge Davis dissented. Id., at 466–479. The Fifth Circuit denied rehearing en banc, 51 F. 4th 644 (2022), and we granted certiorari, 600 U. S. ___ (2023).
This case poses a straightforward question: whether the Seventh Amendment entitles a defendant to a jury trial when the SEC seeks civil penalties against him for securities fraud. Our analysis of this question follows the approach set forth in Granfinanciera and Tull v. United States, 481 U. S. 412 (1987). The threshold issue is whether this action implicates the Seventh Amendment. It does. The SEC’s antifraud provisions replicate common law fraud, and it is well established that common law claims must be heard by a jury.
Since this case does implicate the Seventh Amendment, we next consider whether the “public rights” exception to Article III jurisdiction applies. This exception has been held to permit Congress to assign certain matters to agencies for adjudication even though such proceedings would not afford the right to a jury trial. The exception does not apply here because the present action does not fall within any of the distinctive areas involving governmental prerogatives where the Court has concluded that a matter may be resolved outside of an Article III court, without a jury. The Seventh Amendment therefore applies and a jury is required. Since the answer to the jury trial question resolves this case, we do not reach the nondelegation or removal issues.
We first explain why this action implicates the Seventh Amendment.
The right to trial by jury is “of such importance and occupies so firm a place in our history and jurisprudence that any seeming curtailment of the right” has always been and “should be scrutinized with the utmost care.” Dimick v. Schiedt, 293 U. S. 474, 486 (1935). Commentators recognized the right as “the glory of the English law,” 3 W. Blackstone, Commentaries on the Laws of England 379 (8th ed. 1778) (Blackstone), and it was prized by the American colonists. When the English began evading American juries by siphoning adjudications to juryless admiralty, vice admiralty, and chancery courts, Americans condemned Parliament for “subvert[ing] the rights and liberties of the colonists.” Resolutions of the Stamp Act Congress, Art. VIII (Oct. 19, 1765), reprinted in Sources of Our Liberties 270, 271 (R. Perry & J. Cooper eds. 1959). Representatives gathered at the First Continental Congress demanded that Parliament respect the “great and inestimable privilege of being tried by their peers of the vicinage, according to the [common] law.” 1 Journals of the Continental Congress, 1774–1789, p. 69 (Oct. 14, 1774) (W. Ford ed. 1904). And when the English continued to try Americans without juries, the Founders cited the practice as a justification for severing our ties to England. See Declaration of Independence ¶20; see generally Erlinger v. United States, 602 U. S. ___, ___–___ (2024).
In the Revolution’s aftermath, perhaps the “most success[ful]” critique leveled against the proposed Constitution was its “want of a . . . provision for the trial by jury in civil cases.” The Federalist No. 83, p. 495 (C. Rossiter ed. 1961) (A. Hamilton) (emphasis deleted). The Framers promptly adopted the Seventh Amendment to fix that flaw. In so doing, they “embedded” the right in the Constitution, securing it “against the passing demands of expediency or convenience.” Reid v. Covert, 354 U. S. 1, 10 (1957) (plurality opinion). Since then, “every encroachment upon it has been watched with great jealousy.” Parsons v. Bedford, 3 Pet. 433, 446 (1830).
By its text, the Seventh Amendment guarantees that in “[s]uits at common law, . . . the right of trial by jury shall be preserved.” In construing this language, we have noted that the right is not limited to the “common-law forms of action recognized” when the Seventh Amendment was ratified. Curtis v. Loether, 415 U. S. 189, 193 (1974). As Justice Story explained, the Framers used the term “common law” in the Amendment “in contradistinction to equity, and admiralty, and maritime jurisprudence.” Parsons, 3 Pet., at 446. The Amendment therefore “embrace[s] all suits which are not of equity or admiralty jurisdiction, whatever may be the peculiar form which they may assume.” Id., at 447.
The Seventh Amendment extends to a particular statutory claim if the claim is “legal in nature.” Granfinanciera, 492 U. S., at 53. As we made clear in Tull, whether that claim is statutory is immaterial to this analysis. See 481 U. S., at 414–415, 417–425. In that case, the Government sued a real estate developer for civil penalties in federal court. The developer responded by invoking his right to a jury trial. Although the cause of action arose under the Clean Water Act, the Court surveyed early cases to show that the statutory nature of the claim was not legally relevant. “Actions by the Government to recover civil penalties under statutory provisions,” we explained, “historically ha[d] been viewed as [a] type of action in debt requiring trial by jury.” Id., at 418–419. To determine whether a suit is legal in nature, we directed courts to consider the cause of action and the remedy it provides. Since some causes of action sound in both law and equity, we concluded that the remedy was the “more important” consideration. Id., at 421 (brackets and internal quotation marks omitted); see id., at 418–421.
In this case, the remedy is all but dispositive. For respondents’ alleged fraud, the SEC seeks civil penalties, a form of monetary relief. While monetary relief can be legal or equitable, money damages are the prototypical common law remedy. See Mertens v. Hewitt Associates, 508 U. S. 248, 255 (1993). What determines whether a monetary remedy is legal is if it is designed to punish or deter the wrongdoer, or, on the other hand, solely to “restore the status quo.” Tull, 481 U. S., at 422. As we have previously explained, “a civil sanction that cannot fairly be said solely to serve a remedial purpose, but rather can only be explained as also serving either retributive or deterrent purposes, is punishment.” Austin v. United States, 509 U. S. 602, 610 (1993) (internal quotation marks omitted). And while courts of equity could order a defendant to return unjustly obtained funds, only courts of law issued monetary penalties to “punish culpable individuals.” Tull, 481 U. S., at 422. Applying these principles, we have recognized that “civil penalt[ies are] a type of remedy at common law that could only be enforced in courts of law.” Ibid. The same is true here.
To start, the Securities Exchange Act and the Investment Advisers Act condition the availability of civil penalties on six statutory factors: (1) whether the alleged misconduct involved fraud, deceit, manipulation, or deliberate or reckless disregard for regulatory requirements, (2) whether it caused harm, (3) whether it resulted in unjust enrichment, accounting for any restitution made, (4) whether the defendant had previously violated securities laws or regulations, or had previously committed certain crimes, (5) the need for deterrence, and (6) other “matters as justice may require.” §§78u–2(c), 80b–3(i)(3). Of these, several concern culpability, deterrence, and recidivism. Because they tie the availability of civil penalties to the perceived need to punish the defendant rather than to restore the victim, such considerations are legal rather than equitable.
The same is true of the criteria that determine the size of the available remedy. The Securities Act, the Securities Exchange Act, and the Investment Advisers Act establish three “tiers” of civil penalties. See §§77h–1(g)(2), 78u–2(b), 80b–3(i)(2). Violating a federal securities law or regulation exposes a defendant to a first tier penalty. A second tier penalty may be ordered if the violation involved fraud, deceit, manipulation, or deliberate or reckless disregard for regulatory requirements. Finally, if those acts also resulted in substantial gains to the defendant or losses to another, or created a “significant risk” of the latter, the defendant is subject to a third tier penalty. Each successive tier authorizes a larger monetary sanction. See ibid.
Like the considerations that determine the availability of civil penalties in the first place, the criteria that divide these tiers are also legal in nature. Each tier conditions the available penalty on the culpability of the defendant and the need for deterrence, not the size of the harm that must be remedied. Indeed, showing that a victim suffered harm is not even required to advance a defendant from one tier to the next. Since nothing in this analysis turns on “restor[ing] the status quo,” Tull, 481 U. S., at 422, these factors show that these civil penalties are designed to be punitive.
The final proof that this remedy is punitive is that the SEC is not obligated to return any money to victims. See id., at 422–423. Although the SEC can choose to compensate injured shareholders from the civil penalties it collects, see 15 U. S. C. §7246(a), it admits that it is not required to do so, see App. to Pet. for Cert. 124a, n. 116 (citing 17 CFR §201.1100). Such a penalty by definition does not “restore the status quo” and can make no pretense of being equitable. Tull, 481 U. S., at 422.
In sum, the civil penalties in this case are designed to punish and deter, not to compensate. They are therefore “a type of remedy at common law that could only be enforced in courts of law.” Ibid. That conclusion effectively decides that this suit implicates the Seventh Amendment right, and that a defendant would be entitled to a jury on these claims. See id., at 421–423.
The close relationship between the causes of action in this case and common law fraud confirms that conclusion. Both target the same basic conduct: misrepresenting or concealing material facts. Compare 15 U. S. C. §§77q(a)(2), 78j(b), 80b–6(4); 17 CFR §§240.10b–5(b), 275.206(4)–8(a)(1), with Restatement (Third) of Torts: Liability for Economic Harm, §§9, 13 (2018); see also, e.g., Pauwels v. Deloitte LLP, 83 F. 4th 171, 189–190 (CA2 2023) (identifying the elements of common law fraud under New York law); Conroy v. Regents of Univ. of Cal., 45 Cal. 4th 1244, 1254–1255, 203 P. 3d 1127, 1135 (2009) (same for California law); Wesdem, L.L.C. v. Illinois Tool Works, Inc., 70 F. 4th 285, 291 (CA5 2023) (same for Texas law). That is no accident. Congress deliberately used “fraud” and other common law terms of art in the Securities Act, the Securities Exchange Act, and the Investment Advisers Act. E.g., 15 U. S. C. §77q(a)(3) (prohibiting any practice “which operates . . . as a fraud”). In so doing, Congress incorporated prohibitions from common law fraud into federal securities law. The SEC has followed suit in rulemakings. Rule 10b–5, for example, prohibits “any device, scheme, or artifice to defraud,” and “engag[ing] in any act . . . which operates or would operate as a fraud.” 17 CFR §§240.10b–5(a), (c).
Congress’s decision to draw upon common law fraud created an enduring link between federal securities fraud and its common law “ancestor.” Foster v. Wilson, 504 F. 3d 1046, 1050 (CA9 2007). “[W]hen Congress transplants a common-law term, the old soil comes with it.” United States v. Hansen, 599 U. S. 762, 778 (2023) (internal quotation marks omitted). Our precedents therefore often consider common law fraud principles when interpreting federal securities law. E.g., Dura Pharmaceuticals, Inc. v. Broudo, 544 U. S. 336, 343–344 (2005) (evaluating pleading requirements in light of the “common-law roots of the securities fraud action”); Schreiber v. Burlington Northern, Inc., 472 U. S. 1, 7 (1985) (“The meaning the Court has given the term ‘manipulative’ [in §10b of the Securities Exchange Act] is consistent with the use of the term at common law . . . .” (footnote omitted)); Chiarella v. United States, 445 U. S. 222, 227–229 (1980) (explaining that insider trading liability under Rule 10b–5 is rooted in the common law duty of disclosure); Basic Inc. v. Levinson, 485 U. S. 224, 253 (1988) (White, J., concurring in part and dissenting in part) (“In general, the case law developed in this Court with respect to §10(b) and Rule 10b–5 has been based on doctrines with which we, as judges, are familiar: common-law doctrines of fraud and deceit.”).
That is not to say that federal securities fraud and common law fraud are identical. In some respects, federal securities fraud is narrower. For example, federal securities law does not “convert every common-law fraud that happens to involve securities into a violation.” SEC v. Zandford, 535 U. S. 813, 820 (2002). It only targets certain subject matter and certain disclosures. In other respects, federal securities fraud is broader. For example, federal securities fraud employs the burden of proof typical in civil cases, while its common law analogue traditionally used a more stringent standard. See Herman & MacLean v. Huddleston, 459 U. S. 375, 387–390 (1983). Courts have also not typically interpreted federal securities fraud to require a showing of harm to be actionable by the SEC. See, e.g., Blavin, 760 F. 2d, at 711; SEC v. Life Partners Holdings, Inc., 854 F. 3d 765, 779 (CA5 2017). Nevertheless, the close relationship between federal securities fraud and common law fraud confirms that this action is “legal in nature.” Granfinanciera, 492 U. S., at 53.
Although the claims at issue here implicate the Seventh Amendment, the Government and the dissent argue that a jury trial is not required because the “public rights” exception applies. Under this exception, Congress may assign the matter for decision to an agency without a jury, consistent with the Seventh Amendment. But this case does not fall within the exception, so Congress may not avoid a jury trial by preventing the case from being heard before an Article III tribunal.
On that basis, we have repeatedly explained that matters concerning private rights may not be removed from Article III courts. Murray’s Lessee, 18 How., at 284; Granfinanciera, 492 U. S., at 51–52; Stern, 564 U. S., at 484. A hallmark that we have looked to in determining if a suit concerns private rights is whether it “is made of ‘the stuff of the traditional actions at common law tried by the courts at Westminster in 1789.’ ” Id., at 484 (quoting Northern Pipeline Constr. Co. v. Marathon Pipe Line Co., 458 U. S. 50, 90 (1982) (Rehnquist, J., concurring in judgment)). If a suit is in the nature of an action at common law, then the matter presumptively concerns private rights, and adjudication by an Article III court is mandatory. Stern, 564 U. S., at 484.
At the same time, our precedent has also recognized a class of cases concerning what we have called “public rights.” Such matters “historically could have been determined exclusively by [the executive and legislative] branches,” id., at 493 (internal quotation marks omitted), even when they were “presented in such form that the judicial power [wa]s capable of acting on them,” Murray’s Lessee, 18 How., at 284. In contrast to common law claims, no involvement by an Article III court in the initial adjudication is necessary in such a case.
The decision that first recognized the public rights exception was Murray’s Lessee. In that case, a federal customs collector failed to deliver public funds to the Treasury, so the Government issued a “warrant of distress” to compel him to produce the withheld sum. 18 How., at 274–275. Pursuant to the warrant, the Government eventually seized and sold a plot of the collector’s land. Id., at 274. Plaintiffs later attacked the purchaser’s title, arguing that the initial seizure was void because the Government had audited the collector’s account and issued the warrant itself without judicial involvement. Id., at 275.
The Court upheld the sale. It explained that pursuant to its power to collect revenue, the Government could rely on “summary proceedings” to compel its officers to “pay such balances of the public money” into the Treasury “as may be in their hands.” Id., at 281, 285. Indeed, the Court observed, there was an unbroken tradition—long predating the founding—of using these kinds of proceedings to “enforce payment of balances due from receivers of the revenue.” Id., at 278; see id., at 281. In light of this historical practice, the Government could issue a valid warrant without intruding on the domain of the Judiciary. See id., at 280–282. The challenge to the sale thus lacked merit.
This principle extends beyond cases involving the collection of revenue. In Oceanic Steam Navigation Co. v. Stranahan, 214 U. S. 320 (1909), we considered the imposition of a monetary penalty on a steamship company. Pursuant to its plenary power over immigration, Congress had excluded immigration by aliens afflicted with “loathsome or dangerous contagious diseases,” and it authorized customs collectors to enforce the prohibition with fines. Id., at 331–334. When a steamship company challenged the penalty under Article III, we upheld it. Congress’s power over foreign commerce, we explained, was so total that no party had a “ ‘vested right’ ” to import anything into the country. Id., at 335 (quoting Buttfield v. Stranahan, 192 U. S. 470, 493 (1904)). By the same token, Congress could also prohibit immigration by certain classes of persons and enforce those prohibitions with administrative penalties assessed without a jury. See Oceanic Steam Navigation Co., 214 U. S., at 339–340. 1
In Ex parte Bakelite Corp., we upheld a law authorizing the President to impose tariffs on goods imported by “unfair methods of competition.” 279 U. S. 438, 446 (1929). The law permitted him to set whatever tariff was necessary, subject to a statutory cap, to produce fair competition. If the President was “satisfied the unfairness [was] extreme,” the law even authorized him to “exclude[ ]” foreign goods entirely. Ibid. Because the political branches had traditionally held exclusive power over this field and had exercised it, we explained that the assessment of tariffs did not implicate Article III. Id., at 458, 460–461.
This Court has since held that certain other historic categories of adjudications fall within the exception, including relations with Indian tribes, see United States v. Jicarilla Apache Nation, 564 U. S. 162, 174 (2011), the administration of public lands, Crowell v. Benson, 285 U. S. 22, 51 (1932), and the granting of public benefits such as payments to veterans, ibid., pensions, ibid., and patent rights, United States v. Duell, 172 U. S. 576, 582–583 (1899).
Our opinions governing the public rights exception have not always spoken in precise terms. This is an “area of frequently arcane distinctions and confusing precedents.” Thomas v. Union Carbide Agricultural Products Co., 473 U. S. 568, 583 (1985) (internal quotation marks omitted). The Court “has not ‘definitively explained’ the distinction between public and private rights,” and we do not claim to do so today. Oil States Energy Services, LLC v. Greene’s Energy Group, LLC, 584 U. S. 325, 334 (2018).
Nevertheless, since Murray’s Lessee, this Court has typically evaluated the legal basis for the assertion of the doctrine with care. The public rights exception is, after all, an exception. It has no textual basis in the Constitution and must therefore derive instead from background legal principles. Murray’s Lessee itself, for example, took pains to justify the application of the exception in that particular instance by explaining that it flowed from centuries-old rules concerning revenue collection by a sovereign. See 18 How., at 281–285. Without such close attention to the basis for each asserted application of the doctrine, the exception would swallow the rule. 2
From the beginning we have emphasized one point: “To avoid misconstruction upon so grave a subject, we think it proper to state that we do not consider congress can . . . withdraw from judicial cognizance any matter which, from its nature, is the subject of a suit at the common law, or in equity, or admiralty.” Murray’s Lessee, 18 How., at 284. We have never embraced the proposition that “practical” considerations alone can justify extending the scope of the public rights exception to such matters. Stern, 564 U. S., at 501. “[E]ven with respect to matters that arguably fall within the scope of the ‘public rights’ doctrine, the presumption is in favor of Article III courts.” Northern Pipeline Constr. Co., 458 U. S., at 69, n. 23 (plurality opinion) (citing Glidden Co. v. Zdanok, 370 U. S. 530, 548–549, and n. 21 (1962) (plurality opinion)). And for good reason: “Article III could neither serve its purpose in the system of checks and balances nor preserve the integrity of judicial decisionmaking if the other branches of the Federal Government could confer the Government’s ‘judicial Power’ on entities outside Article III.” Stern, 564 U. S., at 484.
This is not the first time we have considered whether the Seventh Amendment guarantees the right to a jury trial “in the face of Congress’ decision to allow a non-Article III tribunal to adjudicate” a statutory “fraud claim.” 492 U. S., at 37, 50. We did so in Granfinanciera, and the principles identified in that case largely resolve this one.
Granfinanciera involved a statutory action for fraudulent conveyance. As codified in the Bankruptcy Code, the claim permitted a trustee to void a transfer or obligation made by the debtor before bankruptcy if the debtor “received less than a reasonably equivalent value in exchange for such transfer or obligation.” 11 U. S. C. §548(a)(2)(A) (1982 ed., Supp. V). Actions for fraudulent conveyance were well known at common law. 492 U. S., at 43. Even when Congress added these claims to the Bankruptcy Code in 1978, see 92 Stat. 2600, it preserved parties’ rights to a trial by jury, 492 U. S., at 49–50. In 1984, however, Congress designated fraudulent conveyance actions “core [bankruptcy] proceedings” and authorized non-Article III bankruptcy judges to hear them without juries. Id., at 50.
The issue in Granfinanciera was whether this designation was permissible under the public rights exception. Ibid. We explained that it was not. Although Congress had assigned fraudulent conveyance claims to bankruptcy courts, that assignment was not dispositive. See id., at 52. What mattered, we explained, was the substance of the suit. “[T]raditional legal claims” must be decided by courts, “whether they originate in a newly fashioned regulatory scheme or possess a long line of common-law forebears.” Ibid. To determine whether the claim implicated the Seventh Amendment, the Court applied the principles distilled in Tull. We examined whether the matter was “from [its] nature subject to ‘a suit at common law.’ ” 492 U. S., at 56 (some internal quotation marks omitted); see id., at 43–50. A survey of English cases showed that “actions to recover . . . fraudulent transfers were often brought at law in late 18th-century England.” Id., at 43. The remedy the trustee sought was also one “traditionally provided by law courts.” Id., at 49. Fraudulent conveyance actions were thus “quintessentially suits at common law.” Id., at 56.
We also considered whether these actions were “closely intertwined” with the bankruptcy regime. Id., at 54. Some bankruptcy claims, such as “creditors’ hierarchically ordered claims to a pro rata share of the bankruptcy res,” id., at 56, are highly interdependent and require coordination. Resolving such claims fairly is only possible if they are all submitted at once to a single adjudicator. Otherwise, parties with lower priority claims can rush to the courthouse to seek payment before higher priority claims exhaust the estate, and an orderly disposition of a bankruptcy is impossible. Other claims, though, can be brought in standalone suits, because they are neither prioritized nor subordinated to related claims. Since fraudulent conveyance actions fall into that latter category, we concluded that these actions were not “closely intertwined” with the bankruptcy process. Id., at 54. We also noted that Congress had already authorized jury trials for certain bankruptcy matters, demonstrating that jury trials were not generally “incompatible” with the overall regime. Id., at 61–62 (internal quotation marks omitted).
We accordingly concluded that fraudulent conveyance actions were akin to “suits at common law” and were not inseparable from the bankruptcy process. Id., at 54, 56. The public rights exception therefore did not apply, and a jury was required.
Granfinanciera effectively decides this case. Even when an action “originate[s] in a newly fashioned regulatory scheme,” what matters is the substance of the action, not where Congress has assigned it. Id., at 52. And in this case, the substance points in only one direction.
According to the SEC, these are actions under the “antifraud provisions of the federal securities laws” for “fraudulent conduct.” App. to Pet. for Cert. 72a–73a (opinion of the Commission). They provide civil penalties, a punitive remedy that we have recognized “could only be enforced in courts of law.” Tull, 481 U. S., at 422. And they target the same basic conduct as common law fraud, employ the same terms of art, and operate pursuant to similar legal principles. See supra, at 10–12. In short, this action involves a “matter[ ] of private rather than public right.” Granfinanciera, 492 U. S., at 56. Therefore, “Congress may not ‘withdraw’ ” it “ ‘from judicial cognizance.’ ” Stern, 564 U. S., at 484 (quoting Murray’s Lessee, 18 How., at 284).
Notwithstanding Granfinanciera, the SEC contends the public rights exception still applies in this case because Congress created “new statutory obligations, impose[d] civil penalties for their violation, and then commit[ted] to an administrative agency the function of deciding whether a violation ha[d] in fact occurred.” Brief for Petitioner 21 (internal quotation marks omitted).
The foregoing from Granfinanciera already does away with much of the SEC’s argument. Congress cannot “conjure away the Seventh Amendment by mandating that traditional legal claims be . . . taken to an administrative tribunal.” 492 U. S., at 52. Nor does the fact that the SEC action “originate[d] in a newly fashioned regulatory scheme” permit Congress to siphon this action away from an Article III court. Ibid. The constructive fraud claim in Granfinanciera was also statutory, see id., at 37, but we nevertheless explained that the public rights exception did not apply. Again, if the action resembles a traditional legal claim, its statutory origins are not dispositive. See id., at 52, 56.
The SEC’s sole remaining basis for distinguishing Granfinanciera is that the Government is the party prosecuting this action. See Brief for Petitioner 26–28; see also Tr. of Oral Arg. 25 (Principal Deputy Solicitor General) (the “critical distinction” in the public rights analysis is “enforcement by the executive”); id., at 26 (identifying as “the constitutionally relevant distinction” that “this is something that has been assigned to a federal agency to enforce”). But we have never held that “the presence of the United States as a proper party to the proceeding is . . . sufficient” by itself to trigger the exception. Northern Pipeline Constr. Co., 458 U. S., at 69, n. 23 (plurality opinion). Again, what matters is the substance of the suit, not where it is brought, who brings it, or how it is labeled. See ibid. The object of this SEC action is to regulate transactions between private individuals interacting in a pre-existing market. To do so, the Government has created claims whose causes of action are modeled on common law fraud and that provide a type of remedy available only in law courts. This is a common law suit in all but name. And such suits typically must be adjudicated in Article III courts.
The principal case on which the SEC and the dissent rely is Atlas Roofing Co. v. Occupational Safety and Health Review Commission, 430 U. S. 442 (1977). Because the public rights exception as construed in Atlas Roofing does not extend to these civil penalty suits for fraud, that case does not control. And for that same reason, we need not reach the suggestion made by Jarkesy and Patriot28 that Tull and Granfinanciera effectively overruled Atlas Roofing to the extent that case construed the public rights exception to allow the adjudication of civil penalty suits in administrative tribunals. 3
The litigation in Atlas Roofing arose under the Occupational Safety and Health Act of 1970 (OSH Act), a federal regulatory regime created to promote safe working conditions. Id., at 444–445. The Act authorized the Secretary of Labor to promulgate safety regulations, and it empowered the Occupational Safety and Health Review Commission (OSHRC) to adjudicate alleged violations. Id., at 445–446. If a party violated the regulations, the agency could impose civil penalties. Id., at 446.
Unlike the claims in Granfinanciera and this action, the OSH Act did not borrow its cause of action from the common law. Rather, it simply commanded that “[e]ach employer . . . shall comply with occupational safety and health standards promulgated under this chapter.” 84 Stat. 1593, 29 U. S. C. §654(a)(2) (1976 ed.). These standards bring no common law soil with them. Cf. Hansen, 599 U. S., at 778. Rather than reiterate common law terms of art, they instead resembled a detailed building code. For example, the OSH Act regulations directed that a ground trench wall of “Solid Rock, Shale, or Cemented Sand and Gravels” could be constructed at a 90 degree angle to the ground. 29 CFR §1926.652, Table P–1 (1976); see Atlas Roofing, 430 U. S., at 447 (discussing Table P–1). But a wall of “Compacted Angular Gravels” needed to be sloped at 63 degrees, and a wall of “Well Rounded Loose Sand” at 26 degrees. §1926.652, Table P–1. The purpose of this regime was not to enable the Federal Government to bring or adjudicate claims that traced their ancestry to the common law. Rather, Congress stated that it intended the agency to “develop[ ] innovative methods, techniques, and approaches for dealing with occupational safety and health problems.” 29 U. S. C. §651(b)(5) (1976 ed.). In both concept and execution, the Act was self-consciously novel.
Facing enforcement actions, two employers alleged that the adjudicatory authority of the OSHRC violated the Seventh Amendment. See Atlas Roofing, 430 U. S., at 448–449. The Court rejected the challenge, concluding that “when Congress creates new statutory ‘public rights,’ it may assign their adjudication to an administrative agency with which a jury trial would be incompatible, without violating the Seventh Amendment[ ].” Id., at 455. As the Court explained, the case involved “a new cause of action, and remedies therefor, unknown to the common law.” Id., at 461. The Seventh Amendment, the Court concluded, was accordingly “no bar to . . . enforcement outside the regular courts of law.” Ibid.
The cases that Atlas Roofing relied upon did not extend the public rights exception to “traditional legal claims.” Granfinanciera, 492 U. S., at 52. Instead, they applied the exception to actions that were “ ‘not . . . suit[s] at common law or in the nature of such . . . suit[s].’ ” Atlas Roofing, 430 U. S., at 453 (quoting Jones & Laughlin Steel Corp., 301 U. S., at 48); see Atlas Roofing, 430 U. S., at 450–451 (discussing, e.g., Murray’s Lessee, Ex parte Bakelite Corp., Helvering v. Mitchell, 303 U. S. 391 (1938), and Oceanic Steam Navigation Co.). Indeed, the Court recognized that if a case did involve a common law action or its equivalent, a jury was required. See 430 U. S., at 455 (“ ‘[W]here the action involves rights and remedies recognized at common law, it must preserve to parties their right to a jury trial.’ ” (quoting Pernell v. Southall Realty, 416 U. S. 363, 383 (1974)); Atlas Roofing, 430 U. S., at 458–459 (jury required when “courts of law supplied a cause of action and an adequate remedy to the litigant”).
Atlas Roofing concluded that Congress could assign the OSH Act adjudications to an agency because the claims were “unknown to the common law.” 430 U. S., at 461. The case therefore does not control here, where the statutory claim is “ ‘in the nature of ’ ” a common law suit. Id., at 453 (quoting Jones & Laughlin, 301 U. S., at 48). As we have explained, Jarkesy and Patriot28 were prosecuted for “fraudulent conduct,” App. to Pet. for Cert. 72a, and the pertinent statutory provisions derive from, and are interpreted in light of, their common law counterparts, see 15 U. S. C. §§77q(a)(2), 78j(b), 80b–6(4); 17 CFR §§240.10b–5(b), 275.206(4)–8(a)(1); Basic Inc., 485 U. S., at 253 (opinion of White, J.).
The reasoning of Atlas Roofing cannot support any broader rule. The dissent chants “Atlas Roofing” like a mantra, but no matter how many times it repeats those words, it cannot give Atlas Roofing substance that it lacks. 4 Even as Atlas Roofing invoked the public rights exception, the definition it offered of the exception was circular. The exception applied, the Court said, “in cases in which ‘public rights’ are being litigated—e. g., cases in which the Government sues in its sovereign capacity to enforce public rights created by statutes.” 430 U. S., at 450; see id., at 458.
After Atlas Roofing, this Court clarified in Tull that the Seventh Amendment does apply to novel statutory regimes, so long as the claims are akin to common law claims. See 481 U. S., at 421–423. In addition, we have explained that the public rights exception does not apply automatically whenever Congress assigns a matter to an agency for adjudication. See Granfinanciera, 492 U. S., at 52.
For its part, the dissent also seems to suggest that Atlas Roofing establishes that the public rights exception applies whenever a statute increases governmental efficiency. Post, at 15 (opinion of Sotomayor , J.). Again, our precedents foreclose this argument. As Stern explained, effects like increasing efficiency and reducing public costs are not enough to trigger the exception. See 564 U. S., at 501; INS v. Chadha, 462 U. S. 919, 944 (1983). Otherwise, evading the Seventh Amendment would become nothing more than a game, where the Government need only identify some slight advantage to the public from agency adjudication to strip its target of the protections of the Seventh Amendment.
The novel claims in Atlas Roofing had never been brought in an Article III court. By contrast, law courts have dealt with fraud actions since before the founding, and Congress had authorized the SEC to bring such actions in Article III courts and still authorizes the SEC to do so today. See 3 Blackstone 41–42; §§77t, 78u, 80b–9. Given the judiciary’s long history of handling fraud claims, it cannot be argued that the courts lack the capacity needed to adjudicate such actions.
In short, Atlas Roofing does not conflict with our conclusion. When a matter “from its nature, is the subject of a suit at the common law,” Congress may not “withdraw [it] from judicial cognizance.” Murray’s Lessee, 18 How., at 284.
A defendant facing a fraud suit has the right to be tried by a jury of his peers before a neutral adjudicator. Rather than recognize that right, the dissent would permit Congress to concentrate the roles of prosecutor, judge, and jury in the hands of the Executive Branch. That is the very opposite of the separation of powers that the Constitution demands. Jarkesy and Patriot28 are entitled to a jury trial in an Article III court. We do not reach the remaining constitutional issues and affirm the ruling of the Fifth Circuit on the Seventh Amendment ground alone.
The judgment of the Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit is affirmed, and the case is remanded for further proceedings consistent with this opinion.
It is so ordered.
1 The dissent asserts that Oceanic Steam Navigation stands for the proposition that the public rights exception applies to any exercise of power granted to Congress. Post, at 10–11 (opinion of Sotomayor , J). It must be reading from a different case than we are. Oceanic Steam Navigation expressly confines its analysis to the exercise of Congress’s power over foreign commerce. 214 U. S., at 339 (“It is insisted that the decisions just stated and the legislative practices referred to are inapposite here, because they all relate to subjects peculiarly within the authority of the legislative department of the Government, and which, from the necessity of things, required the concession that administrative officers should have the authority to enforce designated penalties without resort to the courts. But over no conceivable subject is the legislative power of Congress more complete than it is over that with which the act we are now considering deals.); id., at 334 (explaining that the statute “rest[s] . . . upon the authority of Congress over foreign commerce and its right to control the coming of aliens into the United States” (emphasis added)); id., at 340 (citing “the authority of Congress over the right to bring aliens into the United States”); see id., at 339 (discussing congressional power over “the valuation of imported merchandise,” “ ‘importers,’ ” and “tariff[s]” (quoting Bartlett v. Kane, 16 How. 263, 274 (1854)); 214 U. S., at 334 (expressly acknowledging and avoiding comment on “ ‘limitations’ ” of Congress’s “ ‘interstate commerce’ ” power because this case concerns instead Congress’s exercise of its “ ‘plenary power in respect to the exclusion of merchandise brought from foreign countries’ ” (quoting Buttfield v. Stranahan, 192 U. S. 470, 492 (1904); emphasis added). Nowhere does Oceanic Steam Navigation say that the public rights exception applies to cases concerning the securities markets or interstate commerce more broadly. The rules the dissent purports to locate in Oceanic Steam Navigation are therefore wholly inapposite.
2 The dissent would brush away these careful distinctions and unfurl a new rule: that whenever Congress passes a statute “entitl[ing] the Government to civil penalties,” the defendant’s right to a jury and a neutral Article III adjudicator disappears. See post, at 2 (opinion of Sotomayor , J.). It bases this rule not in the constitutional text (where it would find no foothold), nor in the ratification history (where again it would find no support), nor in a careful, category-by-category analysis of underlying legal principles of the sort performed by Murray’s Lessee (which it does not attempt), nor even in a case-specific functional analysis (also not attempted). Instead, the dissent extrapolates from the outcomes in cases concerning unrelated applications of the public rights exception and from one opinion, Atlas Roofing Co. v. Occupational Safety and Health Review Comm’n, 430 U. S. 442 (1977). The result is to blur the distinctions our cases have drawn in favor of the legally unsound principle that just because the Government may extract civil penalties in administrative tribunals in some contexts, it must always be able to do so in all contexts.The dissent also appeals to practice, ignoring that the statute Jarkesy and Patriot28 have been prosecuted under is barely over a decade old. It is also unclear how practice could transmute a private right into a public one, or how the absence of legal challenges brought by one generation could waive the individual rights of the next. Practice may be probative when it reflects the settled institutional understandings of the branches. That case is far weaker when the rights of individuals are directly at stake.
3 The dissent chides us for “leav[ing] open the possibility that Granfinanciera might have overruled Atlas Roofing.” Post, at 25, n. 8 (opinion of Sotomayor , J.). But the author of Atlas Roofing certainly thought that Granfinanciera may have done so. See Granfinanciera, 492 U. S., at 79 (White, J., dissenting) (“Perhaps . . . Atlas Roofing is no longer good law after today’s decision.”); see also id., at 71, n. 1 (Granfinanciera “can be read as overruling or severely limiting” Atlas Roofing).
4 Reading the dissent, one might also think that Atlas Roofing is among this Court’s most celebrated cases. As the concurrence shows, Atlas Roofing represents a departure from our legal traditions. See post, at 12–20 (opinion of Gorsuch , J.).This view is also reflected in the scholarship. Commentators writing comprehensively on Article III and agency adjudication have often simply ignored the case. See, e.g., R. Fallon, Of Legislative Courts, Administrative Agencies, and Article III, 101 Harv. L. Rev. 915 (1988) (no citation to Atlas Roofing); J. Harrison, Public Rights, Private Privileges, and Article III, 54 Ga. L. Rev. 143 (2019) (same); W. Baude, Adjudication Outside Article III, 133 Harv. L. Rev. 1511 (2020) (same).Others who have considered it have offered nothing but a variety of criticisms. See, e.g., R. Kirst, Administrative Penalties and the Civil Jury: The Supreme Court’s Assault on the Seventh Amendment, 126 U. Pa. L. Rev. 1281, 1294 (1978) (through its “careless use of precedent,” Atlas Roofing did “not recognize or [mis]understood” “careful distinctions developed by . . . earlier judges”); G. Young, Federal Courts & Federal Rights, 45 Brooklyn L. Rev. 1145, 1153 (1979) (“The Atlas Court . . . failed to offer an adequate justification for its interpretation of the seventh amendment, either in terms of precedent or the language and history of the amendment.”); M. Redish & D. La Fave, Seventh Amendment Right to Jury Trial in Non-Article III Proceedings: A Study in Dysfunctional Constitutional Theory, 4 Wm. & Mary Bill of Right J. 407, 436 (1995) (criticizing Atlas Roofing for failing to “provid[e] a principled basis upon which to determine the proper scope of congressional power to remove the civil jury from federal adjudications”); V. Amar, Implementing an Historical Version of the Jury in an Age of Administrative Factfinding and Sentencing Guidelines, 47 S. Tex. L. Rev. 291, 298 (2005) (questioning Atlas Roofing for “invert[ing] and turn[ing] on its head the Apprendi doctrine’s central insight that juries are most important to check the power of the state” (emphasis deleted)); C. Nelson, Adjudication in the Political Branches, 107 Colum. L. Rev. 559, 604–605, and n. 189 (2007) (describing Atlas Roofing as “misus[ing]” precedent to “deny the novelty of its holding” and “drive a wedge” into the traditional understanding of the public-private rights distinction). We express no opinion on these various criticisms.
SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES
Securities and Exchange Commission, PETITIONER v. George R. Jarkesy, J r ., et al.
Justice Gorsuch , with whom Justice Thomas joins, concurring.
The Court decides a single issue: Whether the Security and Exchange Commission’s use of in-house hearings to seek civil penalties violates the Seventh Amendment right to a jury trial. It does. As the Court details, the government has historically litigated suits of this sort before juries, and the Seventh Amendment requires no less.
I write separately to highlight that other constitutional provisions reinforce the correctness of the Court’s course. The Seventh Amendment’s jury-trial right does not work alone. It operates together with Article III and the Due Process Clause of the Fifth Amendment to limit how the government may go about depriving an individual of life, liberty, or property. The Seventh Amendment guarantees the right to trial by jury. Article III entitles individuals to an independent judge who will preside over that trial. And due process promises any trial will be held in accord with time-honored principles. Taken together, all three provisions vindicate the Constitution’s promise of a “fair trial in a fair tribunal.” In re Murchison, 349 U. S. 133, 136 (1955).
In March 2013, the SEC’s Commissioners approved charges against Mr. Jarkesy. The charges were serious; the agency accused him of defrauding investors. The relief the agency sought was serious, too: millions of dollars in civil penalties. See SEC, Division of Enforcement’s Post-Hearing Memorandum of Law in In re John Thomas Capital Management Group, LLC, Admin. Proc. File No. 3–15255, pp. 28–29 (SEC, Apr. 7, 2014). For most of the SEC’s 90-year existence, the Commission had to go to federal court to secure that kind of relief against someone like Mr. Jarkesy. Ante, at 3–4. Proceeding that way in this case hardly would have promised him an easy ride. But it would have at least guaranteed Mr. Jarkesy a jury, an independent judge, and traditional procedures designed to ensure that anyone caught up in our judicial system receives due process.
In 2010, however, all that changed. With the passage of the Dodd Frank Act, Congress gave the SEC an alternative to court proceedings. Now, the agency could funnel cases like Mr. Jarkesy’s through its own “adjudicatory” system. See 124 Stat. 1376, 1862–1865. That is the route the SEC chose when it filed charges against Mr. Jarkesy.
There is little mystery why. The new law gave the SEC’s Commissioners—the same officials who authorized the suit against Mr. Jarkesy—the power to preside over his case themselves and issue judgment. To be sure, the Commissioners opted, as they often do, to send Mr. Jarkesy’s case in the first instance to an “administrative law judge” (ALJ). See 17 CFR §201.110 (2023). But the title “judge” in this context is not quite what it might seem. Yes, ALJs enjoy some measure of independence as a matter of regulation and statute from the lawyers who pursue charges on behalf of the agency. But they remain servants of the same master—the very agency tasked with prosecuting individuals like Mr. Jarkesy. This close relationship, as others have long recognized, can make it “extremely difficult, if not impossible, for th[e ALJ] to convey the image of being an impartial fact finder.” B. Segal, The Administrative Law Judge, 62 A. B. A. J. 1424, 1426 (1976). And with a jury out of the picture, the ALJ decides not just the law but the facts as well. 1
Going in, then, the odds were stacked against Mr. Jarkesy. The numbers confirm as much: According to one report, during the period under study the SEC won about 90% of its contested in-house proceedings compared to 69% of its cases in court. D. Thornley & J. Blount, SEC In-House Tribunals: A Call for Reform, 62 Vill. L. Rev. 261, 286 (2017) (Thornley). Reportedly, too, one of the SEC’s handful of ALJs even warned individuals during settlement discussions that he had found defendants liable in every contested case and never once “ ‘ruled against the agency’s enforcement division.’ ” Axon Enterprise, Inc. v. FTC, 598 U. S. 175, 213–214 (2023) ( Gorsuch , J., concurring in judgment).
The shift from a court to an ALJ didn’t just deprive Mr. Jarkesy of the right to an independent judge and a jury. He also lost many of the procedural protections our courts supply in cases where a person’s life, liberty, or property is at stake. After an agency files a civil complaint in court, a defendant may obtain from the SEC a large swathe of documents relevant to the lawsuit. See Fed. Rule Civ. Proc. 26(b)(1). He may subpoena third parties for testimony and documents and take 10 oral depositions—more with the court’s permission. Rule 45; Rule 30(a)(2)(A)(i). A court has flexibility, as well, to set deadlines for discovery and other matters to meet the needs of the case. See Rule 16. And come trial, the Federal Rules of Evidence apply, meaning that hearsay is generally inadmissible and witnesses must usually testify in person, subject to cross-examination. See Fed. Rule Evid. 802.
Things look very different in agency proceedings. The SEC has a responsibility to provide “documents that contain material exculpatory evidence.” 17 CFR §201.230(b)(3). But the defendant enjoys no general right to discovery. Though ALJs enjoy the power to issue subpoenas on the request of litigants like Mr. Jarkesy, §201.232(a), they “often decline to issue [them] or choose to significantly narrow their scope,” G. Mark, SEC and CFTC Administrative Proceedings, 19 U. Pa. J. Const. L. 45, 68 (2016). Oral depositions are capped at five, with another two if the ALJ grants permission. §201.233(a). In some cases, an administrative trial must take place as soon as 1 month after service of the charges, and that hearing must follow within 10 months in even the most complex matters. §201.360(a)(2)(ii). The rules of evidence, including their prohibition against hearsay, do not apply with the same rigor they do in court. §201.235(a)(5); see §201.230. For that reason, live testimony often gives way to “investigative testimony”—that is, a “sworn statement” taken outside the presence of the defendant or his counsel. §201.235(b).
How did all this play out in Mr. Jarkesy’s case? Accompanying its charges, the SEC disclosed 700 gigabytes of data—equivalent to between 15 and 25 million pages of information—it had collected during its investigation. App. to Pet. for Cert. 164a; Complaint in Jarkesy v. U. S. SEC, No. 1:14–cv–00114 (DDC, Jan. 29, 2014), ECF Doc. 1, ¶49, pp. 12–13. Over Mr. Jarkesy’s protest that it would take “two lawyers or paralegals working twelve-hour days over four decades to review,” ibid., the ALJ gave Mr. Jarkesy 10 months to prepare for his hearing, see App. to Pet. for Cert. 156a. Then, after conducting that hearing, the ALJ turned around and obtained from the Commission “an extension of six months to file [her] initial decision.” In re John Thomas Capital Management Group LLC, SEC Release No. 9631, p. 1 (Aug. 13, 2014). The reason? The “ ‘size and complexity of the proceeding.’ ” Id., at 2. When that decision eventually arrived seven months after the hearing, the ALJ agreed with the SEC on every charge. See App. to Pet. for Cert. 155a–156a, 212a.
Mr. Jarkesy had the right to appeal to the Commission, but appeals to that politically accountable body (again, the same body that approved the charges) tend to go about as one might expect. The Commission may decline to review the ALJ’s decision. §201.411(b)(2). If it chooses to hear the case, it may increase the penalty imposed on the defendant. Thornley 286. A defendant unhappy with the result can seek further review in court, though that process will take more time and money, too. Nor will he find a jury there, only a judge who must follow the agency’s findings if they are supported by “ ‘more than a mere scintilla’ ” of evidence. Biestek v. Berryhill, 587 U. S. 97, 103 (2019).
Mr. Jarkesy filed an appeal anyway. The Commission agreed to review the ALJ’s decision. It then afforded itself the better part of six years to issue an opinion. And, after all that, it largely agreed with the ALJ. See App. to Pet. for Cert. 71a–74a. None of this likely came as a surprise to the SEC employees in the Division of Enforcement responsible for pressing the action against Mr. Jarkesy. While his appeal was pending, employees in that division—including an “ ‘Enforcement Supervisor’ ” in the regional office prosecuting Mr. Jarkesy—accessed confidential memos by the Commissioners’ advisors about his appeal. See SEC, Second Commission Statement Relating to Certain Administrative Adjudications 3 (June 2, 2023).
If administrative proceedings like Mr. Jarkesy’s seem a thoroughly modern development, the British government and its agents engaged in a strikingly similar strategy in colonial America. Colonial administrators routinely steered enforcement actions out of local courts and into vice-admiralty tribunals where they thought they would win more often. These tribunals lacked juries. They lacked truly independent judges. And the procedures materially differed from those available in everyday common-law courts.
The vice-admiralty courts in the Colonies began as rough equivalents of English courts of admiralty. E. Surrency, The Courts in the American Colonies, 11 Am. J. Legal Hist. 347, 355 (1967). These courts generally concerned themselves with maritime matters arising on “the oceans and rivers and their immediate shores.” C. Ubbelohde, The Vice-Admiralty Courts and the American Revolution 19 (1960) (Ubbelohde). And the proceedings they used accorded more with civil law traditions than common law ones. Among other things, this meant officials could try cases against colonists without a jury. Id., at 21.
Confined to admiralty disputes, perhaps the lack of a jury would have proven unexceptional (as juries were not usually required in such cases then, nor are they today). See, e.g., Lewis v. Lewis & Clark Marine, Inc., 531 U. S. 438, 448 (2001). But Parliament deployed these juryless tribunals in the Colonies to new ends that, according to John Adams, could fill “ ‘volumes.’ ” Ubbelohde vii. The creep away from the original province of those courts began with the grant of authority over violations of certain trade and customs laws. But in the decade before the Revolution, the drip, drip, drip of expanding power became a torrent, as Parliament allowed more and more actions to be brought in colonial vice-admiralty courts.
Many of the matters added to vice-admiralty jurisdiction in the Colonies would have required juries in England. Id., at 112. But as the Massachusetts royal governor explained, colonial juries “ ‘were not to be trusted.’ ” D. Lovejoy, Rights Imply Equality: The Case Against Admiralty Jurisdiction in America, 1764–1776, 16 Wm. & Mary Q. 459, 468 (1959). Even violations that did not implicate the jury right normally would have been heard in England “before a court in [one’s] own neighborhood or county where [one] could count on traditional common-law procedure.” Id., at 471. But by expanding the reach of vice-admiralty jurisdiction in the Colonies, Parliament denied similar protections to Americans. See Erlinger v. United States, 602 U. S. ___, ___ (2024) (slip op., at 5).
Vice-admiralty court judges also lacked independence. While judges in England since the end of the seventeenth century generally enjoyed the protection of tenure during good behavior, colonial judges usually served at the pleasure of the royal administration. See United States v. Will, 449 U. S. 200, 218–219 (1980). And, doing away with the pretense of impartiality entirely, some vice-admiralty judges held dual appointments—for instance, as colonial attorneys general and vice-admiralty judges. Ubbelohde 162–163.
Like the modern SEC, British colonial officials were not required to bring many of their cases before the vice-admiralty courts. Often, Parliament gave those officials the option to proceed in either the ordinary common-law courts or the vice-admiralty courts. Unsurprisingly, though, they sought to file where they were most likely to win. And “[i]n this contest, the vice-admiralty courts were usually the victors.” Id., at 21.
The abuses of these courts featured prominently in the calls for revolution. In the First Continental Congress, the assembled delegates condemned how Parliament “extend[ed] the jurisdiction of Courts of Admiralty,” complained how colonial judges were “dependent on the Crown,” and demanded the right to the “common law of England” and the “great and inestimable privilege” of a jury trial. Declaration and Resolves of the First Continental Congress, Oct. 14, 1774, in 1 Journals of the Continental Congress, 1774–1789, pp. 68–69 (W. Ford 1904 ed.). Two years later, the drafters of the Declaration of Independence repeated these concerns, admonishing the King for “ma[king] Judges dependent on his Will alone,” ¶11, and “[f]or depriving [the colonists] in many cases, of the benefits of Trial by Jury,” ¶20. By that point, however, the “musket fire at Lexington and Concord . . . signaled the end not only of the vice-admiralty courts, but of all British rule in America.” Ubbelohde 190.
When the smoke settled, the American people went to great lengths to prevent a backslide toward anything like the vice-admiralty courts. Erlinger, 602 U. S., at ___–___ (slip op., at 5–6). One product of these efforts was Article III of the Constitution. There, the Constitution provided that “[t]he judicial Power”—the power over “Cases” and “Controversies”—would lie with life-tenured, salary-protected judges. §§1–2; see Oil States Energy Services, LLC v. Greene’s Energy Group, LLC, 584 U. S. 325, 346 (2018) ( Gorsuch , J., dissenting). As the Court has recognized, this meant the Executive Branch could “exercise no part of th[e] judicial power.” Murray’s Lessee v. Hoboken Land & Improvement Co., 18 How. 272, 275 (1856), “no matter how court-like [its] decisionmaking process might appear,” Ortiz v. United States, 585 U. S. 427, 465 (2018) ( Alito , J., dissenting). Nor could Congress “withdraw from judicial cognizance any matter which, from its nature, is the subject of a suit at the common law, or in equity, or admiralty”—the traditional scope of the “judicial Power.” Murray’s Lessee, 18 How., at 284; see Art. III, §2.
Despite these guarantees, many at the founding thought Article III didn’t go far enough. Yes, it promised a defendant an independent judge rather than one dependent on those who hold political power. But what would stop Congress from requiring litigants to navigate vice-admiralty’s alien procedures in all federal cases? Or from making “federal processes” even more byzantine, so “as to [effectively] destroy [individual] rights?” Letter from a Federal Farmer (Jan. 20, 1788), in 2 The Complete Anti-Federalist 328 (H. Storing ed. 1981).
And what about civil juries? “[T]he jury trial,” one prominent Anti-Federalist observed, “brings with it an open and public discussion of all causes, and excludes secret and arbitrary proceedings.” Letter from a Federal Farmer (Jan. 18, 1788), in id., at 320 (Federal Farmer 15). The participation of ordinary Americans “drawn from the body of the people” serves another function, too: “If the conduct of judges shall . . . tend to subvert the laws, and change the forms of government, the jury may check them.” Ibid. As originally composed, however, the Constitution promised a trial by jury for “all Crimes,” but said nothing about civil cases. Art III, §2, cl. 3. Some wondered, did this mean judges, not juries, would be “left masters as to facts” in civil disputes? Federal Farmer 15, at 322. If so, asked another, “what satisfaction can we expect from a lordly court of justice, always ready to protect the officers of government against the weak and helpless citizen”? Essay of a Democratic Federalist (Oct. 17, 1787), in 3 Complete Anti-Federalist 61.
The answer to these concerns was the Bill of Rights. Erlinger, 602 U. S., at ___ (slip op., at 6). As the Court details, the Seventh Amendment promised the right to a jury trial in “ ‘[s]uits at common law.’ ” Ante, at 8 (quoting Amdt. 7). But because the Constitution was designed to “endure for ages to come,” McCulloch v. Maryland, 4 Wheat. 316, 415 (1819), this did not mean only those “suits, which the common law recognized among its old and settled proceedings,” Parsons v. Bedford, 3 Pet. 433, 447 (1830). The founding generation anticipated the possibility Congress would introduce new causes of action and perhaps new remedies, too. See ibid. Accordingly, this Court has long understood the Seventh Amendment’s protections to apply in “all [civil] suits which are not of equity [or] admiralty jurisdiction.” Ibid.; accord, ante, at 8–9. In this way, the Seventh Amendment seeks to ensure there will be no juryless vice-admiralty courts in the United States.
The Fifth Amendment’s Due Process Clause addressed remaining concerns about the processes that would attend trials before independent judges and juries. It provided that the government may not deprive anyone of “life, liberty, or property, without due process of law.” As originally understood, this provision prohibited the government from “depriv[ing] a person of those rights without affording him the benefit of (at least) those customary procedures to which freemen were entitled by the old law of England.” Sessions v. Dimaya, 584 U. S. 148, 176 (2018) ( Gorsuch , J., concurring in part and concurring in judgment) (internal quotation marks omitted); see Erlinger, 602 U. S., at ___–___ (slip op., at 6–7).
More than that, because it was “the peculiar province of the judiciary” to safeguard life, liberty, and property, due process often meant judicial process. 1 St. George Tucker, Blackstone’s Commentaries, Editor’s App. 358 (1803). That is, if the government sought to interfere with those rights, nothing less than “the process and proceedings of the common law” had to be observed before any such deprivation could take place. 3 J. Story, Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States §1783, p. 661 (1833) (Story). In other words, “ ‘due process of law’ generally implie[d] and include[d] . . . judex [a judge], regular allegations, opportunity to answer, and a trial according to some settled course of judicial proceedings.” Murray’s Lessee, 18 How., at 280. This constitutional baseline was designed to serve as “a restraint on the legislative” branch, preventing Congress from “mak[ing] any process ‘due process of law,’ by its mere will.” Id., at 276.
These three constitutional provisions were meant to work together, and together they make quick work of this case. In fact, each provision requires the result the Court reaches today.
First, because the “ ‘matter’ ” before us is one “which, from its nature, is the subject of a suit at the common law,” id., at 284, “the responsibility for deciding [it] rests with Article III judges in Article III courts.” Stern v. Marshall, 564 U. S. 462, 484 (2011). Nor does it make a difference whether we think of the SEC’s action here as a civil-penalties suit or something akin to a traditional fraud claim: At the founding, both kinds of actions were tried in common-law courts. See ante, at 9–13 (discussing civil penalties); see also, e.g., Pasley v. Freeman, 3 T. R. 51, 100 Eng. Rep. 450 (K. B. 1789) (action for fraud); Baily v. Merrell, 3 Bulst. 94, 81 Eng. Rep. 81 (K. B. 1615) (same). And that tells us all we need to know that the SEC’s in-house civil-penalty scheme violates Article III by “withdraw[ing]” the matter “from judicial cognizance” and handing it over to the Executive Branch for an in-house trial. Murray’s Lessee, 18 How., at 284; see supra, at 7–8.
Second, because the action the SEC seeks to pursue is not the stuff of equity or admiralty jurisdiction but the sort of suit historically adjudicated before common-law courts, the Seventh Amendment guarantees Mr. Jarkesy the right to have his case decided by a jury of his peers. In this regard, it is irrelevant that the SEC derived its power to sue under a “new statut[e]” or that the agency proceeded under “a new cause of action.” Brief for Petitioner 13, 22 (internal quotation marks omitted). As we have seen, the government cannot evade the Seventh Amendment so easily. See ante, at 9; supra, at 8–10.
Third, were there any doubt, the Due Process Clause confirms these conclusions. Cf. Murray’s Lessee, 18 How., at 275 (explaining that the Article III challenge before the Court could “best be considered” as raising a due process question). Because the penalty the SEC seeks would “depriv[e]” Mr. Jarkesy of “property,” Amdt. 5, due process demands nothing less than “the process and proceedings of the common law,” 3 Story §1783, at 661. That means the regular course of trial proceedings with their usual protections, see Murray’s Lessee, 18 How., at 280, not the use of ad hoc adjudication procedures before the same agency responsible for prosecuting the law, subject only to hands-off judicial review, see supra, at 10–11.
The government resists these conclusions. As the government sees it, this case implicates the so-called public rights exception. One that defeats not only Mr. Jarkesy’s right to trial by jury, but also his right to proceed before an independent trial judge consistent with traditional judicial processes. That is, on the government’s account, not only does the Seventh Amendment fall away; so does the usual operation of Article III and the Due Process Clause.
In the government’s view, the public rights exception “at a minimum allows Congress to create new statutory obligations, impose civil penalties for their violation, and then commit to an administrative agency the function of deciding whether a violation has in fact occurred.” Brief for Petitioner 21 (emphasis added; internal quotation marks omitted). Put plainly, all that need be done to dispense almost entirely with three separate constitutional provisions is an Act of Congress creating some new statutory obligation. And, the government continues, this case easily meets that standard because the proceeding against Mr. Jarkesy is one “brought by the government against a private party” under a statute designed “to remedy harm to the public at large.” Id., at 24 (internal quotation marks omitted).
The Court rightly rejects these arguments. See ante, at 19–21. No one denies that, under the public rights exception, Congress may allow the Executive Branch to resolve certain matters free from judicial involvement in the first instance. Ante, at 6, 14–15. But, despite its misleading name, the exception does not refer to all matters brought by the government against an individual to remedy public harms, or even all those that spring from a statute. See ante, at 16–17. Instead, public rights are a narrow class defined and limited by history. As the Court explains, that class has traditionally included the collection of revenue, customs enforcement, immigration, and the grant of public benefits. Ante, at 15–17.
How did these matters find themselves categorized as public rights? Competing explanations abound. Some have pointed to ancient practical considerations. In Murray’s Lessee, for example, the Court reasoned that the “[i]mperative necessity” of tax collection for a functional state had long caused governments to treat “claims for public taxes” differently from “all others.” 18 How., at 282. Others have theorized that “the core of the judicial power” concerns the disposition of the “three ‘absolute’ rights” “to life, liberty, and property.” Wellness Int’l Network, Ltd. v. Sharif, 575 U. S. 665, 713–714 (2015) ( Thomas , J., dissenting). Public rights, the theory goes, involve matters originally understood to fall outside this core. Id., at 714. So, for example, “[a]lthough Congress could authorize executive agencies to dispose of public rights in land—often by means of adjudicating a claimant’s qualifications for a land grant under a statute—the United States had to go to the courts if it wished to revoke” that grant, which had become the owner’s private property. Id., at 715. There are still other theories yet. See, e.g., Stern, 564 U. S., at 489.
Whatever their roots, traditionally recognized public rights have at least one feature in common: a serious and unbroken historical pedigree. See Culley v. Marshall, 601 U. S. 377, 397–398 (2024) ( Gorsuch , J., concurring); ante, at 14–17. For good reason. If the Article III “judicial Power” encompasses “the stuff of the traditional actions at common law tried by the courts of Westminster in 1789,” ante, at 14 (internal quotation marks omitted), it follows that matters traditionally adjudicated outside those courts might not fall within Article III’s ambit. See Stern, 564 U. S., at 504–505 (Scalia, J., concurring) (“[A]n Article III judge is required in all federal adjudications, unless there is a firmly established historical practice to the contrary”). So too with the Due Process Clause. If that clause sets customary common-law practice as the ordinary procedural baseline, see Part II–B, supra, clear historical evidence of a different practice might warrant a departure from that baseline, see Murray’s Lessee, 18 How., at 280. That’s why this Court has said “ ‘a process of law . . . must be taken to be due process of law’ if it enjoys ‘the sanction of settled usage both in England and in this country.’ ” Culley, 601 U. S., at 397 ( Gorsuch , J., concurring) (quoting Hurtado v. California, 110 U. S. 516, 528 (1884)).
With the public rights exception viewed in this light, the government’s invocation of it in this case cannot succeed. Starting with a “ ‘presumption . . . in favor of Article III courts’ ” and their usual attendant processes, ante, at 18, we look for some “deeply rooted” tradition of nonjudicial adjudication before permitting a case to be tried in a different forum under different procedures, Culley, 601 U. S., at 397 ( Gorsuch , J., concurring). We have upheld summary procedures for customs collection, for example, because they were consistent with both “the common and statute law of England prior to the emigration of our ancestors” and “the laws of many of the States at the time of the adoption of ” the Constitution. Murray’s Lessee, 18 How., at 280; see ante, at 14–15. But when it comes to the kind of civil-penalty suit before us, that same history points in the opposite direction, suggesting actions of this sort belong before an independent judge, a jury, and decided in a trial that accords with traditional judicial procedures. Ante, at 9–13; supra, at 11–12. Just as SEC practices themselves largely reflected as recently as 2010.
If all that’s so, why might the government feel comfortable invoking the public rights exception? To be fair, much of it may have to do with this Court. Some of our past decisions have allowed the government to chip away at the courts’ historically exclusive role in adjudicating private rights—and juries’ accompanying role in that adjudication. This process began, of all places, in an admiralty case.
In Crowell v. Benson, 285 U. S. 22 (1932), this Court faced a constitutional challenge to the Longshoremen’s and Harbor Workers’ Compensation Act of 1927. The Act directed employers to compensate employees for injuries occurring at sea. 44 Stat. 1426. The law further assigned primary responsibility for deciding liability disputes to an Executive Branch official, the deputy commissioner of the United States Employees’ Compensation Commission. Id., at 1435–1437; Crowell, 285 U. S., at 42–43. The Court acknowledged that this regime empowered the deputy commissioner to decide in the first instance the monetary “liability of one individual to another.” Id., at 51. The Court recognized that this amounted to a classic “private right” suit of the kind traditionally tried in court. Ibid. The Court even conceded that, under the law, the factual “findings of the deputy commissioner, supported by evidence and within the scope of his authority, shall be final”: An Article III court could not review the facts anew. Id., at 46. But the Court upheld the scheme and its limited judicial review anyway.
To get there took a dash of fiction and a pinch of surmise. From time to time, the Court observed, judges appoint their own special “masters and commissioners” to prepare reports on fact issues or damages. Id., at 51. These reports are nonbinding and “essentially . . . advisory.” Ibid. Judges themselves remain the decisionmakers. In Crowell, the Court embraced the fiction that Executive Branch officials might similarly act as assistants or adjuncts to Article III courts. And because judges often adopt the proposed findings of their masters and commissioners, the Court surmised, Article III posed no bar to Congress taking a further step and requiring judges to treat the findings of Executive Branch officials as essentially “final.” Id., at 46. “To hold otherwise,” the Court reasoned, “would be to defeat the obvious purpose of the legislation”: “to furnish a prompt, continuous, expert, and inexpensive method for dealing with a class of questions of fact which are peculiarly suited to examination and determination by an administrative agency specially assigned to that task.” Ibid.
Crowell itself only went so far, however. The case fell within federal courts’ admiralty jurisdiction, and tribunals sitting in admiralty in England and America alike had long heard certain matters falling within the public rights exception. See Culley, 601 U. S., at 398 ( Gorsuch , J., concurring). In deciding those matters, courts had long tolerated some flexibility in procedures, had long restricted appellate review of factual findings, and had always proceeded without a jury. Crowell, 285 U. S., at 45, 53.
Soon, though, none of that mattered. Almost in a blink, the admiralty limitation was discarded, and more and more agencies began assuming adjudicatory functions previously reserved for judges and juries, employing novel procedures that sometimes bore faint resemblance to those observed in court. Along the way, prominent voices in and out of government expressed concern at this development. Consider just two typical examples. Were an agency endowed with the power to assess civil penalties, advised a committee overseen by Attorney General (soon-to-be Justice) Robert H. Jackson, “the aggrieved person” should at least “be permitted review de novo by a Federal district court.” Final Report of Attorney General’s Committee on Administrative Procedure 147 (1941). That was the only way, the committee opined, “to resolve any doubts concerning the constitutionality of the procedure.” Ibid. Around the same time, a committee of the American Bar Association led by Roscoe Pound sounded a similar alarm. Administrative agencies, the committee warned, had a “tendency to mix up rule making, investigation, prosecution, the advocate’s function, the judge’s function, and the function of enforcing the judgment, so that the whole proceeding from end to end is one to give effect to a complaint.” Report of the Special Committee on Administrative Law, 63 Ann. Rep. 331, 351 (1938).
The high-water mark of the movement toward agency adjudication may have come in 1977 in Atlas Roofing Co. v. Occupational Safety and Health Review Comm’n, 430 U. S. 442. Some have read that decision to suggest the category of public rights might encompass pretty much any case arising under any “ ‘new statutory obligations,’ ” Brief for Petitioner 22 (quoting Atlas Roofing, 430 U. S., at 450). It is a view the government essentially espouses in this case. But without reference to any constitutional text or history to guide what does or does not qualify as a public right, that view has (unsurprisingly) proven wholly unworkable.
It did not take long for this Court to realize as much. Just 12 years later, in Granfinanciera, S. A. v. Nordberg, 492 U. S. 33 (1989), this Court cabined Atlas Roofing so narrowly that the author of Atlas Roofing complained that the Court had “overrul[ed]” it. 492 U. S., at 71, n. 1 (White, J., dissenting); see ante, at 23, n. 3. Far from endorsing the notion that any new statutory obligation could qualify for treatment as a public right, for example, the Court in Granfinancieria read Atlas Roofing as having “left the term ‘public rights’ undefined.” 492 U. S., at 51, n. 8. And since then this Court has, in one case after another, “adhere[d]” only to Atlas Roofing’s “general teaching” that Congress may constitutionally adopt “new statut[es] ” assigning matters that indeed qualify as “public rights . . . to an administrative agency.” 492 U. S., at 51 (internal quotation marks omitted); see, e.g., Stern, 564 U. S., at 489–490; Oil States, 584 U. S., at 345.
Yet, even after the Court moved away from Atlas Roofing, our public rights jurisprudence remained muddled. Since then, the Court has suggested that public rights might include those “involving statutory rights that are integral parts of a public regulatory scheme.” Granfinanciera, 492 U. S., at 55, n. 10. We have changed course and tried our hand at a five-factor balancing test. See Stern, 564 U. S., at 491 (describing Commodity Futures Trading Comm’n v. Schor, 478 U. S. 833 (1986)). We have replaced that test with one that considers “at least seven different” factors. 564 U. S., at 504 (Scalia, J., concurring). And at one time or another, these factors have included the consideration of “the concerns that drove Congress to depart from the requirements of Article III.” Schor, 478 U. S., at 851. So, for example, we have asked whether insistence on “the institutional integrity of the Judicial Branch” would “unduly constrict Congress’ ability to take needed and innovative action pursuant to its Article I powers.” Ibid.
Today, the Court does much to return us to a more traditional understanding of public rights. Adhering to Granfinancieria, the Court rejects the government’s overbroad reading of Atlas Roofing and recognizes that the kind of atextual and ahistorical (not to mention confusing) tests it inspired do little more than ask policy questions the Constitution settled long ago. Yes, a limited category of public rights were originally and even long before understood to be susceptible to resolution without a court, jury, or the other usual protections an Article III court affords. But outside of those limited areas, we have no license to deprive the American people of their constitutional right to an independent judge, to a jury of their peers, or to the procedural protections at trial that due process normally demands. Let alone do so whenever the government wishes to dispense with them.
This Court does not subject other constitutional rights to such shabby treatment. We have “reaffirm[ed],” many times and “emphatically[,] that the First Amendment does not permit the State to sacrifice speech for efficiency.” Riley v. National Federation of Blind of N. C., Inc., 487 U. S. 781, 795 (1988). We have rejected a framework for Second Amendment challenges that would balance the right to bear arms against “ ‘other important governmental interests.’ ” District of Columbia v. Heller, 554 U. S. 570, 634 (2008). It is hornbook Fourth Amendment law that “[a] generalized interest in expedient law enforcement cannot, without more, justify a warrantless search.” Georgia v. Randolph, 547 U. S. 103, 115, n. 5 (2006). And even though the Sixth Amendment’s guarantee of a jury trial in criminal cases may have “ ‘its weaknesses and the potential for misuse,’ ” Duncan v. Louisiana, 391 U. S. 145, 156 (1968), we continue to insist that it “be jealously preserved,” Patton v. United States, 281 U. S. 276, 312 (1930); see Ramos v. Louisiana, 590 U. S. 83, 110–111 (2020) (plurality opinion); Erlinger, 602 U. S., at ___ (slip op., at 18) (“There is no efficiency exception to the . . . Sixth Amendmen[t]”).
Why should Article III, the Seventh Amendment, or the Fifth Amendment’s promise of due process be any different? None of them exists to “protec[t] judicial authority for its own sake.” Oil States, 584 U. S., at 356 ( Gorsuch , J., dissenting). They exist to “protect the individual.” Bond v. United States, 564 U. S. 211, 222 (2011). And their protec tions are no less vital than those afforded by other constitutional provisions. As American colonists learned under British rule, “the right of trial” means little “when the actual administration of justice is dependent upon caprice, or favour, [or] the will of rulers.” 3 Story §1568, at 426; id., §1783, at 661. In recognizing as much today, the Court essentially follows the advice of Justices Brennan and Marshall, “limit[ing] the judicial authority of non-Article III federal tribunals to th[o]se few, long-established exceptions” that bear the sanction of history, and “countenanc[ing] no further erosion.” Schor, 478 U. S., at 859 (Brennan, J., joined by Marshall, J., dissenting).
The dissent’s competing account of public rights is astonishing. On its telling, the Constitution might impose some (undescribed) limits on the power of the government to send cases “involving the liability of one individual to another” to executive tribunals for resolution. Post, at 22 (opinion of Sotomayor , J.). But, thanks to public rights doctrine, the dissent insists, the Constitution imposes no limits on the government’s power to seek civil penalties “outside the regular courts of law where there are no juries.” Post, at 2. In that field, the Constitution falls silent. The dissent does not even attempt to deploy any of the contrived balancing tests that emerged in Atlas Roofing’s aftermath to rein in the government’s power. But where in Article III, the Seventh Amendment, and due process can the dissent find this new rule? What about founding-era practice or original meaning? And why would a Constitution drawn up to protect against arbitrary government action make it easier for the government than for private parties to escape its dictates? The dissent offers no answers.
To be sure, the dissent tries to appeal to precedent. It even asserts that our decisions support, “without exception,” its sweeping conception of public rights doctrine. Post, at 12 (emphasis added). But the dissent’s approach to our precedents is like a picky child at the dinner table. It selects only a small handful while leaving much else untouched. To start, the dissent lingers briefly on Murray’s Lessee—but not long enough to explain the opinion’s conception of Article III, due process, or the extended historical inquiry that led the Court to conclude the collection of revenue concerned a public right. See post, at 9–10; supra, at 8, 10–14.
The 19th century behind it (for it does not trouble with the founding era), the dissent turns to Oceanic Steam Nav. Co. v. Stranahan, 214 U. S. 320 (1909). Drawing on that decision, the dissent contends that “Congress [has] routinely ‘impose[d] appropriate obligations’ ” by statute and given “ ‘executive officers the power to enforce’ ” them “ ‘without the necessity of invoking the judicial power.’ ” Post, at 11 (quoting Stranahan, 214 U. S., at 339). Notably absent from the dissent’s account, however, is the decision’s discussion of Congress’s long-recognized and extensive authority over the field of immigration, the area of law at issue there. See id., at 339. Unmentioned, too, is Stranahan’s explanation that what links immigration to other public rights like “tariff[s], . . . internal revenue, taxation,” and “foreign commerce” is that, “ ‘from the beginning[,] Congress has exercised a plenary power’ ” over them “because they all relate to subjects peculiarly within the authority of the legislative department.” Id., at 334, 339.
Really, one has to wonder: If the public rights exception is as broad and unqualified as the dissent asserts, why did our predecessors bother to discuss history or Congress’s peculiar powers when it comes to revenue and immigration? Why didn’t the Court simply announce the rule the dissent would have us announce today: that our Constitution does not stand in the way of “agency adjudications of statutory claims . . . brought by the Government in its sovereign ca pacity”? Post, at 4. The answer, of course, is that the Constitution has never countenanced the dissent’s notion that the Executive is free to reassign virtually any civil case in which it is a party to its own tribunals where its own employees decide cases and inconvenient juries and traditional trial procedures go by the boards.
That my dissenting colleagues plow ahead anyway with their remarkable conception of public rights is all the more puzzling considering how regularly they have argued against that sort of sweeping concentration of governmental power. The dissenters have recognized that a “lack of standardized procedural safeguards” can leave government enforcement schemes “vulnerable to abuse” and individuals subject to coercive “pressure from unchecked prosecutors.” Culley, 601 U. S., at 405, 407 ( Sotomayor , J., joined by Kagan and Jackson , JJ., dissenting). They have contended that the Judiciary has an affirmative obligation to supply “meaningful remedies,” trials before judges and juries included, even when “Congress or the Executive has [already] created a remedial process.” Egbert v. Boule, 596 U. S. 482, 524–525 (2022) ( Sotomayor , J., joined by, inter alios, Kagan , J., dissenting) (internal quotation marks omitted; emphasis deleted). And like most every current Member of this Court at one time or another, they have acknowledged that the jury-trial right “stands as one of the Constitution’s most vital protections against arbitrary government.” United States v. Haymond, 588 U. S. 634, 637 (2019) (plurality opinion).
The dissent’s conception of public rights is so unqualified that it refuses to commit itself on the question whether even muted forms of judicial review—such as asking executive tribunals to muster “more than a mere scintilla” of evidence in support of their rulings—are constitutionally required in the essentially unbounded class of cases that fall within its conception of public rights. See Part I, supra; post, at 8, n. 4. Gone, too, is any role for the jury—for why would the government ever go to court if it may more readily secure a win before its own employees? The only attempt to mitigate the havoc its rule would wreak comes when the dissent declares that “ ‘[t]he public-rights doctrine does not extend to . . . criminal matters.’ ” Post, at 27, n. 9. But the dissent does not (and cannot) explain how that fits with all else it says. If, as the dissent insists, a public right is any “new right” that “belongs to the public and inheres in the Government in its sovereign capacity,” post, at 28, what could possibly better fit the description than the enforcement of new criminal laws? See Shinn v. Martinez Ramirez, 596 U. S. 366, 376 (2022) (“The power to convict and punish criminals lies at the heart of the States’ residuary and inviolable sovereignty” (internal quotation marks omitted)). 2
All but admitting its view has no support in “historical practice dating back to the founding,” the dissent chastises the Court for daring to rely on that practice to flesh out the scope of the public rights exception. Post, at 18. It would be so much simpler, the dissent says, to adopt its rule permitting the government to skirt oversight by judge and jury alike whenever it enacts a new law. And, true enough, “a principle that the government always wins surely would be simple for judges to implement.” United States v. Rahimi, 602 U. S. ___, ___ (2024) ( Gorsuch , J., concurring) (slip op., at 6). But looking to original meaning and historical practice informing it is exactly how this Court proceeds in so many other contexts where we seek to honor the Constitution’s demands—including, notably, when we seek to ascertain the scope of the criminal jury-trial right and the defendant’s attendant right to confront his accusers. See Erlinger, 602 U. S., at ___–___ (slip op., at 19–20); Crawford v. Washington, 541 U. S. 36, 50 (2004). What’s more, this approach has the virtue of “keep[ing] judges in their proper lane” by “seeking to honor the supreme law the people have ordained rather than substituting our will for theirs.” Rahimi, 602 U. S., at ___–___ ( Gorsuch , J., concurring) (slip op., at 4–5); see Crawford, 541 U. S., at 67.
It is hard, as well, to take seriously the dissent’s charges of unworkability and unpredictability. At least until today, the dissenters supported procedural protections for those in the government’s sights in civil as well as criminal cases. What kind of protections? Often, they have argued, it depends on a judicial balancing test. One that is “flexible,” defies “technical conception,” lacks “fixed content,” and will “not always yield the same result” even when applied in similar circumstances. Culley, 601 U. S., at 413 (opinion of Sotomayor , J.) (internal quotation marks omitted). As we have seen, that was essentially the course some pursued, too, when it came to the public rights exception in the fallout from Atlas Roofing. See Part III–B, supra. But that kind of “ ‘we know it when we see it’ ” approach to constitutional rights, post, at 21, can hardly claim any serious advantages when it comes to workability or predictability.
Failing all else, the dissent retreats to Atlas Roofing. At least that decision, it insists, supports its nearly boundless conception of public rights. The dissent goes so far as to accuse the Court of undermining “stare decisis and the rule of law,” post, at 15, and engaging in “a power grab,” post, at 37, by failing to give Atlas Roofing its broadest possible construction. It’s a “disconcerting” accusation indeed, post, at 36, and a misdirected one at that. Construed as broadly as the dissent proposes, Atlas Roofing’s view of public rights stands as an outlier in our jurisprudence—with no apparent support in original meaning, at odds with prior precedent, and inconsistent with later precedent as well. See ante, at 25, n. 4; Part III–B, supra. Meanwhile, the Court’s alternative construction of Altas Roofing fits far more comfortably with all those legal sources. In that respect, the majority’s approach is of a piece with Granfinanciera’s similar approach 25 years ago. And, more broadly, it is of a piece with our usual practice of construing “loose language” found in a prior judicial opinion in a way that better conforms it to the mainstream of our precedents. Groff v. DeJoy, 600 U. S. 447, 474 (2023) ( Sotomayor , J., concurring). As the dissenters have previously acknowledged, that course is neither unusual nor at odds with stare decisis. See id., at 474–475; see also Brown v. Davenport, 596 U. S. 118, 141 (2022) (“We neither expect nor hope that our successors will comb these pages for stray comments and stretch them beyond their context—all to justify an outcome inconsistent with this Court’s reasoning and judgments”).
Were there any doubt about the propriety of the Court’s treatment of Atlas Roofing, consider one more feature of the alternative the dissent proposes. In defending the broadest possible construction of Atlas Roofing’s public rights discussion, the dissent necessarily endorses that decision’s exceptionally narrow conception of the Seventh Amendment. See post, at 6. After all, as public rights expand, so too the jury-trial right must contract. Yet Atlas Roofing’s discussion of the jury-trial right, no less than its discussion of public rights, is difficult to square with precedent and original meaning.
Recall that, from the start, the Seventh Amendment was understood to protect that right “not merely” in suits recognized at common law, but in “all suits which are” of legal, as opposed to “equity [or] admiralty[,] jurisdiction.” Parsons, 3 Pet., at 447 (emphasis added); see Part II–B, supra. This Court repeated that understanding of the Amendment until well into the 1970s, noting, for example, that “the applicability of the constitutional right to jury trial in actions enforcing statutory rights” was “a matter too obvious to be doubted.” Curtis v. Loether, 415 U. S. 189, 193 (1974) (internal quotation marks omitted); accord, Pernell v. Southall Realty, 416 U. S. 363, 375 (1974) (the Seventh “Amendment requires trial by jury in actions unheard of at common law”). And the Court rejected the notion that a statute must present “a close equivalent” to a common-law cause of action; the jury-trial right attached, we said, so long as the “action involve[d] rights and remedies of the sort traditionally enforced in an action at law.” Ibid.
Atlas Roofing ignored all of that. Instead, it suggested, “[t]he phrase ‘Suits at common law’ has been construed to refer to cases tried prior to the adoption of the Seventh Amendment in courts of law.” 430 U. S., at 449 (emphasis added). That cramped construction of the Seventh Amendment was, of course, a key move in Atlas Roofing. For without it, the Court would have been hard pressed to suggest the public rights doctrine permits Congress to route any “ ‘new cause of action’ ” for adjudication before agencies where juries do not sit. Post, at 14 (quoting Atlas Roofing, 430 U. S., at 461).
Almost immediately, however, the Court rejected Atlas Roofing’s analysis, not just with respect to public rights doctrine but the Seventh Amendment, too. Returning to our mainstream precedents, the Court reaffirmed the applicability of the Seventh Amendment to new causes of action, first in Tull v. United States, 481 U. S. 412 (1987), and then in Granfinanciera. See ante, at 8–9. And by 1990, our case law had come full circle, announcing once again what has always been true: that “[t]he right to a jury trial includes more than the common-law forms of action recognized in 1791.” Teamsters v. Terry, 494 U. S. 558, 564.
Today, the Court respects and follows this longstanding message in our Seventh Amendment precedents. The dissent chooses another path entirely—adopting a reading of Atlas Roofing that leads not only to an implausibly broad construction of public rights, but to an implausibly narrow understanding of the jury-trial guarantee as well. One wholly at odds with precedents both old and new. Nor is the dissent shy about its real motivation—and it has nothing to do with respect for precedent but much more to do with a “power grab”: Holding the government to the Constitution’s promise of a jury trial, the dissent insists, would impose “constraints on what,” in its view, “modern-day adaptable governance must look like.” Post, at 37. All of which, at bottom, amounts to little more than a complaint with the Constitution’s revolutionary promise of popular oversight of government officials—and with those judges who would honor that promise.
People like Mr. Jarkesy may be unpopular. Perhaps even rightly so: The acts he allegedly committed may warrant serious sanctions. But that should not obscure what is at stake in his case or others like it. While incursions on old rights may begin in cases against the unpopular, they rarely end there. The authority the government seeks (and the dissent would award) in this case—to penalize citizens without a jury, without an independent judge, and under procedures foreign to our courts—certainly contains no such limits. That is why the Constitution built “high walls and clear distinctions” to safeguard individual liberty. Plaut v. Spendthrift Farm, Inc., 514 U. S. 211, 239 (1995). Ones that ensure even the least popular among us has an independent judge and a jury of his peers resolve his case under procedures designed to ensure a fair trial in a fair forum. In reaffirming all this today, the Court hardly leaves the SEC without ample powers and recourse. The agency is free to pursue all of its charges against Mr. Jarkesy. And it is free to pursue them exactly as it had always done until 2010: In a court, before a judge, and with a jury. With these observations, I am pleased to concur.
1 In many agencies, litigants are not even entitled to have ALJs, with their modicum of protections, decide their cases. These agencies use “administrative judges.” Some agencies can replace these administrative judges if they don’t like their decisions. And some of these judges may move in and out of prosecutorial and adjudicatory roles, or move in and out of the very industries their agencies regulate. See United States v. Arthrex, Inc., 594 U. S. 1, 36–37 (2021) ( Gorsuch , J., concurring in part and dissenting in part).
2 The best the dissent can do is to observe that “Article III itself prescribes that ‘[t]he trial of all Crimes . . . shall be by Jury.’ ” Post, at 27, n. 9 (quoting §2, cl. 3). That response might be reassuring if the dissent’s treatment of the Seventh Amendment didn’t supply a roadmap for working around it. On the dissent’s telling, the Seventh Amendment can be dispensed with at will: It applies “only in judicial proceedings,” and not whenever the government chooses to assign a matter to its own in-house tribunals. Post, at 5. And under that logic, there is no apparent reason why the government could not evade Article III’s jury-trial right just as easily, simply by choosing to route criminal prosecutions through executive agencies.
SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES