Article at Cato that shows a significant lack of integrity regarding the SEC’s in house courts.
I already support abolition of these courts, this is just more fuel for the fire.
This is a case decided by the Fifth Circuit on May 18, 2022 that will likely make its way to the Supreme Court.
The Fifth Circuit held:
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Enforcement of Dodd Frank’s civil penalties for securities fraud in the Securities and Exchanges Commission’s administrative proceedings violated the Seventh Amendment’s guarantee of a jury trial because (a) the case involved traditional common law claims (fraud), (b) civil penalties are a legal remedy to which the seventh amendment attaches, thus (c) the claims are not a matter of public rights that can be adjudicated in administrative proceedings on the mere basis the government is the plaintiff;
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Dodd Frank’s broad grant of unfettered discretion to the SEC to choose between enforcing identical claims in either federal district court or its own administrative tribunal violated the Nondelegation Doctrine because (a) the assignment of claims to a non-Article III tribunal is an Article I power, and (b) Congress provided—as the SEC conceded—no intelligible principle to the SEC; and
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The dual for-cause removal protections of administrative law judges (ALJs) violated Article II’s Take Care Clause.
The Supreme Court should uphold all of this and shut down the SEC’s “kangaroo” courts for good.
