Volume 598 U. S. Part 1 Pages 175–217

OFFICIAL REPORTS OF

THE SUPREME COURT April 14, 2023

Page Proof Pending Publication

REBECCA A. WOMELDORF reporter of decisions

NOTICE: This preliminary print is subject to formal revision before the bound volume is published. Users 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. OCTOBER TERM, 2022 175

Syllabus

AXON ENTERPRISE, INC. v. FEDERAL TRADE COMMISSION et al. certiorari to the united states court of appeals for the ninth circuit No. 21–86. Argued November 7, 2022—Decided April 14, 2023* Michelle Cochran and Axon Enterprise, Inc.—respondents in separate en- forcement actions initiated in the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and the Federal Trade Commission (FTC)—each fled suit in fed- eral district court challenging the constitutionality of the agency pro- ceedings against them. When, as in the enforcement actions against Cochran and Axon, a Commission elects to institute administrative pro- ceedings to address statutory violations, it typically delegates the initial adjudication to an Administrative Law Judge (ALJ) with authority to resolve motions, hold a hearing, and then issue a decision. As pre- scribed by statute, a party objecting to the Commission proceedings makes its claims frst within the Commission itself, and then (if needed) Page Proof Pending Publication in a federal court of appeals. But the parties here sidestepped that review scheme and brought their claims in district court, seeking to enjoin the administrative proceedings. Cochran and Axon asserted that the tenure protections of the agencies' ALJs render them insuff- ciently accountable to the President, in violation of separation-of-powers principles. Axon also attacked as unconstitutional the combination of prosecutorial and adjudicatory functions in the FTC. Each suit prem- ised jurisdiction on district courts' ordinary federal-question authority to resolve “civil actions arising under the Constitution, laws, or treaties of the United States.” 28 U. S. C. § 1331. Cochran's and Axon's suits initially met the same fate: dismissal for lack of jurisdiction. The district court in Cochran's case held that the review scheme specifed in the Securities Exchange Act—“administra- tive review followed by judicial review in a federal court of appeals”— “implicitly divest[s] district courts of jurisdiction” over “challenges to SEC proceedings,” including Cochran's constitutional ones. Likewise, the district court in Axon's case found that the FTC Act's comparable review scheme displaces § 1331 jurisdiction for claims concerning the

*Together with No. 21–1239, Securities and Exchange Commission et al. v. Cochran, on certiorari to the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. 176 AXON ENTERPRISE, INC. v. FTC

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FTC's adjudications. On appeal, the Ninth Circuit affrmed the district court's dismissal of Axon's constitutional challenges to the FTC proceed- ing, concluding that the claims were the type that fell within the FTC Act's review scheme. But the en banc Fifth Circuit disagreed as to the equivalent SEC question, fnding that Cochran's claim would not receive “meaningful judicial review” in a court of appeals; that the claim was “wholly collateral to the Exchange Act's statutory-review scheme”; and that the claim fell “outside the SEC's expertise.” Held: The statutory review schemes set out in the Securities Exchange Act and Federal Trade Commission Act do not displace a