The United States Supreme Court has held that that, in light of the Seventh Amendment’s right to a jury trial, the SEC must pursue enforcement actions seeking civil penalties in a jury trial proceeding in federal court rather than in an action before an administrative law judge. The Court’s 6-3 ruling could have significant consequences for the many SEC enforcement actions now pending in the agency’s administrative tribunals, as well as for the agency’s pursuit of future enforcement actions. The Court’s ruling could also have important implications for other federal agencies’ use of administrative tribunals as well. A copy of the Court’s June 27, 2024, opinion in SEC v. Jarkesy can be found here.Continue Reading Supreme Court Strikes Down SEC’s Use of Administrative Law Judges in Civil Penalty Actions

Greg Markel
Gershon Akerman

As I noted in a prior post (here), in June, the U.S. Supreme Court agreed to take up a case to consider the legality of the SEC’s use of in-house administrative tribunals, which the agency uses to enforce the federal securities laws. As discussed below in a guest post written by Greg Markel, a partner at the Seyfarth Shaw law firm, and Gershon Akerman, an associate at the firm, the case could have important implications for the SEC’s enforcement authority and could affect the agency’s other activities as well. This article previously was published as a Seyfarth client alert. I would like to thank Greg and Gershon for allowing me to publish their article on this site. I welcome guest post submissions from responsible authors on topics of interest to this blog’s readers. Please contact me directly if you would like to submit a guest post. Here is the authors’ article.Continue Reading Guest Post: Sup. Ct. to Rule When Feds Must Provide Enforcement Action Jury Trial