Source: s3://data.kl3m.ai/documents/govinfo/USCOURTS/USCOURTS-caDC-14-05196/USCOURTS-caDC-14-05196-0/pdf.json

Nature of Suit Code: 440
Nature of Suit: Other Civil Rights
Cause of Action: 

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United States Court of Appeals

FOR THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA CIRCUIT

Argued April 13, 2015 Decided September 29, 2015

No. 14-5196

GEORGE R. JARKESY, JR. AND PATRIOT28, LLC,

APPELLANTS

v.

SECURITIES AND EXCHANGE COMMISSION,

APPELLEE

Appeal from the United States District Court

for the District of Columbia

(No. 1:14-cv-00114)

S. Michael McColloch argued the cause for appellants. 

With him on the briefs were Karen L. Cook and Mark B. 

Bierbower.

Dominick V. Freda, Senior Litigation Counsel, Securities 

and Exchange Commission, argued the cause for appellee. 

With him on the brief were Richard M. Humes, Associate 

General Counsel, Samuel M. Forstein, Assistant General 

Counsel, and Sarah E. Hancur, Senior Counsel.

Before: KAVANAUGH and SRINIVASAN, Circuit Judges, 

and RANDOLPH, Senior Circuit Judge.

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Opinion for the Court filed by Circuit Judge SRINIVASAN.

SRINIVASAN, Circuit Judge: The Securities and 

Exchange Commission brought an administrative proceeding 

against George Jarkesy, Jr., charging him with securities 

fraud. That proceeding remains ongoing. In the meantime, 

Jarkesy filed this action in federal district court seeking the 

administrative proceeding’s termination. He argues that the 

proceeding’s initiation and conduct infringe his constitutional 

rights in several ways. The district court dismissed his action 

for lack of subject-matter jurisdiction. The court concluded 

that Congress, by establishing a detailed statutory scheme 

providing for an administrative proceeding before the 

Commission plus the prospect of judicial review in a court of 

appeals, implicitly precluded concurrent district-court 

jurisdiction over challenges like Jarkesy’s.

We agree with the district court and affirm its judgment. 

In Thunder Basin Coal Co. v. Reich, 510 U.S. 200 (1994), the 

Supreme Court set forth a framework for determining when a 

statutory scheme of administrative and judicial review 

forecloses parallel district-court jurisdiction. The ultimate 

question is whether Congress intended exclusivity when it 

established the statutory scheme. Applying the considerations 

outlined in Thunder Basin and its progeny, we find the answer 

here is yes. The result is that Jarkesy, instead of obtaining 

judicial review of his challenges to the Commission’s 

administrative proceeding now, can secure judicial review in 

a court of appeals when (and if) the proceeding culminates in 

a resolution against him.

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I. 

A.

The SEC generally has two routes by which to enforce

the federal securities laws in a civil proceeding. The agency 

can bring a civil action against the alleged violator in federal 

district court, or it can initiate an administrative enforcement 

proceeding. See, e.g., 15 U.S.C. §§ 78u(d), 78u-2, 78u-3. At 

one time, the remedies the SEC could seek against 

respondents in administrative proceedings were relatively 

limited. In 2010, however, Congress enacted the Dodd-Frank 

Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, which 

expanded the remedies available to the SEC in administrative 

proceedings. See Pub. L. No. 111-203, § 929P, 124 Stat. 

1376, 1862-65. The practical effect, generally speaking, was 

to “mak[e] the SEC’s authority in administrative penalty 

proceedings coextensive with its authority to seek penalties in 

Federal court.” H.R. Rep. No. 111-687, at 78 (2010). 

Nothing in Dodd-Frank or the securities laws explicitly 

constrains the SEC’s discretion in choosing between a court 

action and an administrative proceeding when both are 

available. See J.A. 236.

The SEC’s Enforcement Division prosecutes violations in 

both forums. In administrative proceedings, the SEC’s Rules 

of Practice govern. 17 C.F.R. §§ 201.100 et seq. The 

Commission presides over a proceeding, or, if the 

Commission so decides, an administrative law judge hears the 

case initially. Id. § 201.110. If the latter, the ALJ holds a 

hearing and then renders an initial decision, which the 

respondent may appeal by filing a petition for review with the 

full Commission. Id. §§ 201.360(a)(1), 201.410(a). The 

Commission reviews ALJ decisions de novo, and it alone 

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possesses the authority to issue a final order. Id. 

§§ 201.411(a), 201.360(d)(2).

Under the securities laws, final Commission orders can 

be reviewed in the courts of appeals. The Securities 

Exchange Act, for instance, provides that “[a] person 

aggrieved by a final order of the Commission entered 

pursuant to this chapter may obtain review of the order in the 

United States Court of Appeals for the circuit in which he 

resides or has his principal place of business, or for the 

District of Columbia Circuit, by filing in such court . . . a 

written petition requesting that the order be modified or set 

aside in whole or in part.” 15 U.S.C. § 78y(a)(1). The 

Securities Act, the Investment Advisers Act, and the 

Investment Company Act all contain similarly worded

provisions. See id. § 77i(a) (Securities Act); id. § 80b-13(a) 

(Advisers Act); id. § 80a-42(a) (Company Act). 

B.

Patriot28, LLC (formerly known as John Thomas Capital 

Management) is an unregistered investment adviser and 

general partner of two hedge funds. George Jarkesy, Jr., is 

the manager of Patriot28. On March 22, 2013, the SEC 

issued an Order Instituting Administrative and Cease-andDesist Proceedings against Jarkesy and Patriot28 along with 

two other respondents. The SEC alleged that they engaged in 

fraudulent conduct in connection with the offer, purchase, and 

sale of securities, and charged them with violations of the 

Exchange Act, the Securities Act, the Advisers Act, and the 

Company Act. Jarkesy’s and Patriot28’s two corespondents—John Thomas Financial, Inc. (a broker-dealer) 

and Anastasios Belesis (the founder and CEO of John Thomas 

Financial)—were alleged to have aided and abetted Jarkesy’s 

violations of the securities laws. The SEC sought 

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disgorgement of fees, civil penalties, a cease-and-desist order, 

and securities-industry and officer-and-director bars against 

Jarkesy.

The matter was set for a hearing to take place before an 

ALJ. In the fall of 2013, John Thomas Financial and Belesis 

settled with the Commission, and on December 5, 2013, the 

Commission issued an order approving the settlement. That 

order included factual and legal findings concerning John 

Thomas Financial’s and Belesis’s misconduct. Those 

findings, in turn, discussed the fraudulent conduct of the 

“Manager” and the “Adviser” of the hedge funds—references 

to Jarkesy and Patriot28. The Commission’s order noted, 

however, that its findings had been “made pursuant to 

Respondents’ Offer of Settlement and are not binding on any 

other person or entity in this or any other proceeding.” John 

Thomas Capital Mgmt. Grp., Exchange Act Release No. 

70,989, 2013 WL 6327500, at *1 n.1 (Dec. 5, 2013).

In response, Jarkesy and Patriot28 took two actions. 

First, in a petition for interlocutory review filed with the 

Commission, they sought to disqualify the Commissioners 

and obtain a dismissal of the administrative proceeding on the 

ground that the Commission had “conclusively prejudiced the 

case” against them. John Thomas Capital Mgmt. Grp., 

Securities Act Release No. 9519, 2014 WL 294551, at *1 

(Jan. 28, 2014). Second, on January 29, 2014, days before the 

hearing before the ALJ was set to begin on February 3, they 

filed an action in the United States District Court for the 

District of Columbia. The action seeks injunctive and 

declaratory relief “to prevent the SEC from proceeding with 

an administrative proceeding” that, in their view, “has 

violated, and will continue to violate, [their] fundamental 

constitutional rights.” Compl. ¶ 1 (J.A. 8). 

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Jarkesy and Patriot28’s district-court complaint included 

several claims. Because the nature of those arguments bears 

on the jurisdictional analysis in some measure, we relay the 

complaint’s contents with precision. 

First, Jarkesy and Patriot28 alleged a Fifth Amendment 

Due Process Clause violation based on the Commission’s 

supposed prejudgment of their charges, arguing that the 

administrative proceeding should be nullified as a result. 

Compl. ¶¶ 17-24 (J.A. 13-14). Second, they alleged that the 

Commission’s decision to place them in an administrative 

proceeding violated their rights under the Equal Protection 

Clause by denying them the “fundamental right to [a] jury 

trial.” Id. ¶¶ 25-30 (J.A. 14-15). Explaining that the SEC 

“chooses whether to bring cases in [administrative 

proceedings] or in federal court on a case-by-case basis, 

subject to no standard,” they alleged that “parties charged by 

the SEC have their fundamental Seventh Amendment right to 

jury trial preserved, or denied, based on the arbitrary, 

capricious or malicious decision of the Commission.” Id. 

¶¶ 25, 27 (J.A. 14-15). Third, they alleged another equal 

protection argument under a “class-of-one” theory, asserting 

that, while the Commission had taken similarly situated

individuals to court, the Commission’s decision to charge 

Jarkesy and Patriot28 in an agency proceeding was motivated 

by animus. Id. ¶¶ 31-38 (J.A. 16-17). Fourth, they alleged 

improper ex parte communications between the SEC 

Enforcement Division and the Commissioners regarding their 

co-respondents’ settlement, in violation of the Administrative 

Procedure Act. Id. ¶¶ 39-46 (J.A. 17-19). Fifth and finally, 

they alleged another due process violation based on the 

Commission’s ostensible failure to comply with its Brady 

obligations under the SEC’s Rules of Practice. Id. ¶¶ 47-59

(J.A. 19-22).

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The district court denied the plaintiffs’ request for a 

temporary restraining order that would have barred the SEC 

from proceeding with the scheduled hearing. Jarkesy v. SEC, 

48 F. Supp. 3d 32, 34, 36 (D.D.C. 2014). The court 

subsequently dismissed the complaint, finding that the

“statutory and regulatory regime under which the SEC’s 

Enforcement Division brought the instant matter against the 

plaintiffs preclude[d]” the court from hearing their claims. Id.

at 37. “Although the plaintiffs raise various allegations of 

violations of their constitutional rights,” the court explained, 

“those claims are inextricably intertwined with the conduct of 

the very enforcement proceeding the statute grants the SEC 

the power to institute and resolve as an initial matter.” Id. at 

38. The court thus found that Jarkesy and Patriot28 had to 

wait to raise their arguments about the proceeding’s 

deficiencies “before a Court of Appeals should the ALJ and 

the Commission issue orders adverse to them.” Id.

Meanwhile, the SEC’s administrative proceeding moved 

forward. The ALJ conducted hearings in February and March 

of 2014 and issued her initial decision in October. In addition 

to finding that Jarkesy and Patriot28 had violated the 

securities laws, the ALJ rejected their prejudgment, equal 

protection, ex parte communications, and Brady arguments.

See John Thomas Capital Mgmt. Grp., Initial Decision 

Release No. 693, 2014 WL 5304908, at *1-6 (ALJ Oct. 17, 

2014). Jarkesy and Patriot28 filed a petition for review of the 

ALJ’s decision with the Commission. They also filed a 

motion asking the Commission to stay further proceedings 

pending a decision from our court in their appeal of the 

district court’s dismissal. 

On February 20, 2015, the Commission issued an order 

denying the stay. As of the date of this opinion, the 

Commission has yet to rule on the petition. 

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II.

We review de novo the district court’s determination that 

it lacked authority over Jarkesy and Patriot28’s claims (who, 

for ease of reference, we will refer to collectively as Jarkesy

from this point forward). See Fisher-Cal Indus., Inc. v. 

United States, 747 F.3d 899, 902 (D.C. Cir. 2014). We agree 

with the district court.

Federal courts possess only the power authorized by the 

Constitution and by statute. Kokkonen v. Guardian Life Ins. 

Co. of Am., 511 U.S. 375, 377 (1994). “Within constitutional 

bounds, Congress decides what cases the federal courts have 

jurisdiction to consider.” Bowles v. Russell, 551 U.S. 205, 

212 (2007). Litigants generally may seek review of agency 

action in district court under any applicable jurisdictional 

grant. 

If a special statutory review scheme exists, however, “it 

is ordinarily supposed that Congress intended that procedure 

to be the exclusive means of obtaining judicial review in those 

cases to which it applies.” City of Rochester v. Bond, 603 

F.2d 927, 931 (D.C. Cir. 1979). The question in this appeal is 

whether the district court has jurisdiction over all, or any, of 

Jarkesy’s claims, or whether Congress has implicitly 

precluded Jarkesy’s district-court suit by channeling his 

challenges through the securities laws’ scheme of 

administrative adjudication and judicial review in a court of 

appeals. The decision we review is one of a growing number 

of decisions to address the same question, including a recent 

decision by the Seventh Circuit. See Bebo v. SEC, No. 15-

1511, 2015 WL 4998489 (7th Cir. Aug. 24, 2015). The 

Seventh Circuit found no district-court jurisdiction, id. at *10, 

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and we reach the same conclusion for many of the same 

reasons.∗ 

Our analysis proceeds in accordance with the two-part 

approach set forth in Thunder Basin Coal Co. v. Reich. 510 

U.S. 200 (1994). Under Thunder Basin’s framework, courts 

determine that Congress intended that a litigant proceed 

exclusively through a statutory scheme of administrative and 

judicial review when (i) such intent is “fairly discernible in 

the statutory scheme,” and (ii) the litigant’s claims are “of the 

type Congress intended to be reviewed within [the] statutory 

structure.” Id. at 207, 212; see Elgin v. Dep’t of Treasury, 

132 S. Ct. 2126, 2132-33 (2012); Free Enterprise Fund v. 

 ∗ Various district courts have reached divergent conclusions. 

See Tilton v. SEC, No. 15-CV-2472, 2015 WL 4006165, at *1 

(S.D.N.Y. June 30, 2015) (no jurisdiction over Appointments 

Clause and removal power claims); Spring Hill Capital Partners, 

LLC v. SEC, No. 15-CV-4542 (S.D.N.Y. June 26, 2015) (bench 

ruling) (no jurisdiction over Appointments Clause claim) (transcript 

attached to Appellee 28j Letter (filed July 8, 2015)); Hill v. SEC, 

No. 1:15-CV-1801, 2015 WL 4307088, at *4, 9 (N.D. Ga. June 8, 

2015) (jurisdiction over non-delegation, Seventh Amendment, 

Appointments Clause, and removal power claims); Duka v. SEC, 

No. 15 Civ. 357, 2015 WL 1943245, at *3-4, *7 (S.D.N.Y. Apr. 15, 

2015) (jurisdiction over presidential removal power claim); Bebo v. 

SEC, No. 15-C-3, 2015 WL 905349, at *2 (E.D. Wis. Mar. 3, 2015) 

(no jurisdiction over due process, equal protection, Seventh 

Amendment, and removal power claims), aff’d, No. 15-1511, 2015 

WL 4998489 (7th Cir. Aug. 24, 2015); Chau v. SEC, 72 F. Supp. 

3d 417, 430, 436 (S.D.N.Y. 2014) (no jurisdiction over due process 

and equal protection claims); Altman v. SEC, 768 F. Supp. 2d 554, 

562 (S.D.N.Y. 2011) (no jurisdiction over due process, equal 

protection, and privacy claims), aff’d, 687 F.3d 44 (2d Cir. 2012) 

(per curiam); Gupta v. SEC, 796 F. Supp. 2d 503, 513-14 (S.D.N.Y. 

2011) (jurisdiction over equal protection claim, no jurisdiction over 

retroactivity claim).

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Pub. Co. Accounting Oversight Bd., 561 U.S. 477, 489 

(2010). Here, both considerations support the conclusion that 

Congress intended the statutory scheme to be exclusive.

A.

We can fairly discern Congress’s intent to preclude suits 

by respondents in SEC administrative proceedings in the 

mine-run of cases. “Generally, when Congress creates 

procedures designed to permit agency expertise to be brought 

to bear on particular problems, those procedures are to be 

exclusive.” Free Enterprise, 561 U.S. at 489 (internal 

quotation marks omitted). And the securities laws’ scheme of 

Commission adjudication and ensuing judicial review 

resembles in material respects the enforcement scheme the 

Supreme Court found exclusive in Thunder Basin.

There, the Court considered a coal company’s statutory 

and constitutional challenges to an anticipated enforcement

proceeding under the Federal Mine Safety and Health 

Amendments Act of 1977. Under the Mine Act scheme, the 

Mine Safety and Health Administration investigates and 

sanctions violations of the Act and its regulations. Thunder 

Basin, 510 U.S. at 202-04 & n.5. The sanctioned party can 

bring a challenge before an ALJ and then appeal the ALJ’s 

determination to the Federal Mine Safety and Health Review 

Commission, who reviews it de novo and issues a final order 

imposing penalties. Id. at 207-08. The party can then seek 

review of the order in a court of appeals, “whose jurisdiction 

‘shall be exclusive and its judgment and decree shall be final’

except for possible Supreme Court review.” Id. at 208 

(quoting the Mine Act, 30 U.S.C. § 816(a)(1)). Finding that 

the Mine Act thus established a “detailed structure for 

reviewing violations,” the Supreme Court held that the 

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scheme implicitly barred district-court jurisdiction over the 

coal company’s pre-enforcement suit. Id. at 207, 216.

The securities laws contain an equally comprehensive 

structure for the adjudication of securities violations in 

administrative proceedings. Aside from the fact that the 

Commission, rather than the sanctioned entity, initiates the 

agency review process, the proceedings follow the same 

progression. The schemes also contain nearly identical 

judicial-review provisions. 

The Exchange Act, for example, also provides that, once 

the Commission proceeding culminates in a final order, an 

“aggrieved” respondent may seek review in our court or the

circuit where he resides or has his principal place of business. 

15 U.S.C. § 78y(a)(1); compare id., with 30 U.S.C. 

§ 816(a)(1) (the Mine Act). The reviewing court, like the 

reviewing court in the Mine Act scheme, exercises 

“exclusive” jurisdiction to “affirm or modify and enforce or to 

set aside the order in whole or in part.” 15 U.S.C. 

§ 78y(a)(3); compare id., with 30 U.S.C. § 816(a)(1). The 

court may consider only “objection[s] to an order or rule of 

the Commission” that had been “urged before the 

Commission” unless “there was reasonable ground for failure 

to do so.” 15 U.S.C. § 78y(c)(1); compare id., with 30 U.S.C. 

§ 816(a)(1). The Exchange Act also specifies the standard of 

review for the Commission’s factual findings, see 15 U.S.C.

§ 78y(a)(4); compare id., with 30 U.S.C. § 816(a)(1); the 

process for seeking a stay of the Commission’s order, see 15 

U.S.C. § 78y(c)(2); compare id., with 30 U.S.C. § 816(a)(2), 

(c); and the process for the court to remand to the agency to

“adduce additional evidence,” 15 U.S.C. § 78y(a)(5); 

compare id., with 30 U.S.C. § 816(a)(1). 

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“Given the painstaking detail with which” Congress set 

forth the rules governing the court of appeals’ review of 

Commission action, “it is fairly discernible that Congress 

intended to deny [aggrieved respondents] an additional 

avenue of review in district court.” Elgin, 132 S. Ct. at 2134. 

In our view, moreover, it is of no moment that the securities 

laws provide for the possibility of civil enforcement both 

before the Commission and in federal district court. One 

court has thought otherwise, reasoning that “[t]here can be no 

‘fairly discernible’ Congressional intent to limit jurisdiction 

away from district courts when the text of the statute provides 

the district court as a viable forum” for SEC enforcement 

actions. Hill, 2015 WL 4307088, at *6. Congress, though, 

gave the SEC the option to pursue violations in district court. 

Congress did not thereby necessarily enable respondents in 

administrative proceedings to collaterally attack those 

proceedings in court. In other words, Congress granted the 

choice of forum to the Commission, and that authority could 

be for naught if respondents like Jarkesy could countermand

the Commission’s choice by filing a court action.

B.

Jarkesy does not seriously dispute that Congress meant to 

channel most challenges to the Commission’s administrative 

proceedings through the statutory review scheme. He instead 

argues that the particular challenges he raised in his districtcourt suit are not “of the type Congress intended to be 

reviewed within this statutory structure.” Thunder Basin, 510 

U.S. at 212. We disagree.

“To unsettle [the] presumption of initial administrative 

review—made apparent by the structure of the organic 

statute—requires a strong countervailing rationale.” E. 

Bridge, LLC v. Chao, 320 F.3d 84, 89 (1st Cir. 2003). The 

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second step of the Thunder Basin framework asks whether 

Jarkesy’s claims present such a rationale. And the Supreme 

Court has told us what to look for: we are to “presume” that 

Congress wanted the district court to remain open to a 

litigant’s claims “if ‘a finding of preclusion could foreclose

all meaningful judicial review’; if the suit is ‘wholly collateral 

to a statute’s review provisions’; and if the claims are ‘outside 

the agency’s expertise.’” Free Enterprise, 561 U.S. at 489-90 

(quoting Thunder Basin, 510 U.S. at 212-13). We do not 

understand those considerations to form three distinct inputs 

into a strict mathematical formula. Rather, the considerations 

are general guideposts useful for channeling the inquiry into 

whether the particular claims at issue fall outside an 

overarching congressional design. Here, each of the 

guideposts points in the same direction.

1.

We first address Jarkesy’s argument that his challenges 

cannot receive “meaningful review” within the securities 

laws’ scheme. Jarkesy offers several reasons why that is 

allegedly the case. Among them, he contends that the 

Commission lacks the authority to rule on certain of his 

claims, which he frames as facial attacks on Dodd-Frank’s 

amendments to the securities laws based on the Seventh 

Amendment and the non-delegation doctrine. 

The government maintains that Jarkesy never raised those

claims before the district court. The district court evidently 

agreed. Indeed, the court found that it lacked jurisdiction in 

part because it did not understand Jarkesy to be raising a 

facial challenge. See Jarkesy, 48 F. Supp. 3d at 39.

We, too, reject Jarkesy’s assertion that that he lodged a 

facial attack on Dodd-Frank based on the Seventh 

Amendment—i.e., a challenge to Congress’s enabling the 

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Commission to obtain enhanced penalties in an administrative

proceeding. In his complaint, Jarkesy referenced the Seventh 

Amendment only in developing the fundamental-rights angle

of one of his equal protection theories. See Compl. ¶¶ 26-30

(J.A. 15). And in another filing below, Jarkesy expressly 

disclaimed making a facial Seventh Amendment challenge to 

the availability of more severe penalties in the agency setting, 

stating: “To be clear, Plaintiffs do not here complain that 

Congress had no right to separate them from their Seventh 

Amendment rights by designating securities fraud 

enforcement actions for adjudication in an administrative 

forum.” See J.A. 75-76 (memorandum in support of motion 

for a temporary restraining order). 

Whether Jarkesy properly asserted a facial challenge 

based on the non-delegation doctrine presents a closer 

question. His complaint hints at such a challenge in passing. 

See Compl. ¶ 2 (J.A. 8-9) (“The SEC . . . has usurped a 

legislative prerogative, violating the constitutional separation 

of powers.”). He put forth a non-delegation argument in his 

memorandum in support of his motion for a temporary 

restraining order. See J.A. 78-82. Jarkesy also described his 

separation-of-powers claim as attacking “the facial validity of 

a statutory scheme” in his briefing responding to the district 

court’s notice to show cause. J.A. 263-64. That said, we 

appreciate the government’s point that if Jarkesy really meant 

to assert a facial challenge, he would have done well to at 

least mention Dodd-Frank or cite the relevant statutes in his 

complaint. If the district court misunderstood the nature of 

Jarkesy’s intended claim, its confusion was understandable. 

In any case, assuming arguendo that Jarkesy adequately 

put forth a non-delegation challenge, he is wrong to assign it 

talismanic significance. He seems to assume that whenever a 

respondent in an administrative proceeding attacks a statute 

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on its face, a district court has jurisdiction to hear the 

challenge, whereas the agency does not. That is mistaken. To 

be sure, the Supreme Court has noted that “adjudication of the 

constitutionality of congressional enactments has generally 

been thought beyond the jurisdiction of administrative 

agencies.” Thunder Basin, 510 U.S. at 215 (brackets 

omitted). But the Thunder Basin Court did not find that 

consideration to be determinative of whether the company’s 

constitutional claims could receive meaningful review within 

the Mine Act scheme. Id. And the Court’s recent decision in 

Elgin v. Department of Treasury reiterated that, so long as a 

court can eventually pass upon the challenge, limits on an 

agency’s own ability to make definitive pronouncements 

about a statute’s constitutionality do not preclude requiring 

the challenge to go through the administrative route. 132 S. 

Ct. at 2136-37.

Elgin concerned the Civil Service Reform Act (CSRA), 

which sets forth a comprehensive structure for reviewing

personnel actions taken against federal employees. Under the 

CSRA, federal employees who suffer adverse employment 

actions may seek a hearing before the Merit Systems 

Protection Board (MSPB), whose decision is then reviewed 

by the Federal Circuit. Id. at 2130-31. The plaintiffs in Elgin 

were male employees who had been discharged because they 

failed to register for the military draft. Id. at 2131. While one 

employee (Elgin) sought a hearing under the CSRA, he did 

not pursue the proceedings past the ALJ’s initial ruling 

against him. All the employees filed suit in federal district 

court instead. Id. They claimed that the Military Selective 

Service Act and the corresponding statute barring them from 

federal employment were facially unconstitutional under the 

Equal Protection and the Bill of Attainder Clauses. Id.

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In the employees’ view, Congress could not have 

intended for them to pursue their facial constitutional 

challenges through the CSRA route, in part because the ALJ 

who initially ruled on Elgin’s claims agreed that the MSPB 

lacked authority to determine the constitutionality of those 

statutes. Id. at 2131, 2136. Though the Supreme Court 

reserved judgment on whether the ALJ was correct, the Court

made clear that it did not matter: even if the MSPB could not 

declare the statutes unconstitutional, the Federal Circuit 

could. Id. at 2136-37. Because the employees’ challenges 

“could be meaningfully addressed in the Court of Appeals 

that Congress had authorized to conduct judicial review,” the 

Elgin Court was confident that Congress intended them to go 

through the agency proceedings first. Id. at 2137 (internal 

quotation marks omitted).

So too, here. Because Jarkesy’s constitutional claims, 

including his non-delegation challenge to Dodd-Frank, can 

eventually reach “an Article III court fully competent to 

adjudicate” them, it is of no dispositive significance whether 

the Commission has the authority to rule on them in the first 

instance during the agency proceedings. Id. at 2137; see 

Bebo, 2015 WL 4998489, at *6-7. Indeed, courts of appeals 

often consider facial constitutional claims—including 

separation-of-powers claims—in reviewing final orders from 

the Commission. See Am. Power & Light Co. v. SEC, 329 

U.S. 90, 96-108 (1946) (addressing Commerce Clause, nondelegation, and due process challenges); Blinder, Robinson & 

Co., Inc. v. SEC, 837 F.2d 1099, 1103-04 (D.C. Cir. 1988) 

(addressing removal powers challenge); Sorrell v. SEC, 679 

F.2d 1323, 1325-26 (9th Cir. 1982) (addressing challenge that 

Congress unconstitutionally delegated legislative power to a 

private entity). Jarkesy would not need to blaze a new trail. 

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In support of his entitlement to the district court’s 

attention now, Jarkesy invokes another recent Supreme Court 

decision, Free Enterprise Fund v. Public Company 

Accounting Oversight Board. 561 U.S. 477 (2010). In Free 

Enterprise, an accounting firm (joined by an advocacy 

organization) brought suit against the Public Company 

Accounting Oversight Board (PCAOB), an entity created by 

the Sarbanes-Oxley Act and placed under SEC oversight. Id. 

at 484-87. The firm claimed that the PCAOB’s structure 

infringed upon the president’s removal power and that its 

members had been appointed in contravention of the 

Appointments Clause. Id. at 487. The accounting firm was 

registered with the PCAOB, and a PCAOB inspection had 

uncovered deficiencies in the firm’s audits. At the time the 

firm filed its district-court action, however, the PCAOB had 

only opened an investigation. Id. 

The government argued that the district court lacked 

jurisdiction to hear the firm’s suit. It reasoned that, because 

the Sarbanes-Oxley Act empowered the Commission to 

review any PCAOB rule or sanction, see 15 U.S.C. 

§ 7217(b)(2)-(4), (c)(2), and because parties can challenge 

either a “final rule” or a “final order” of the Commission in a 

court of appeals pursuant to 15 U.S.C. § 78y, the accounting 

firm should have pursued its constitutional challenge through 

that route instead. Free Enterprise, 561 U.S. at 489.

The Supreme Court rejected the government’s argument 

that § 78y implicitly barred the accounting firm’s preenforcement suit. See id. at 489-91. Key to the Court’s 

reasoning was that, to bring itself within the PCAOB and 

Commission scheme, the firm would have needed to 

manufacture a dispute or provoke a sanction. The Court was 

highly skeptical that Congress could have intended to require 

doing so. “Requiring petitioners to select and challenge a 

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Board rule at random is an odd procedure for Congress to 

choose,” the Court explained. Id. at 490. The plaintiffs

“object to the Board’s existence, not to any of its auditing 

standards”; and moreover, “only new rules, and not existing 

ones, are subject to challenge.” Id. The Court also dismissed

the government’s suggestion that the accounting firm could 

obtain review by deliberately incurring a PCAOB sanction. 

“If the Commission then affirms [the sanction], the firm will

win access to a court of appeals—and severe punishment 

should its challenge fail. We normally do not require 

plaintiffs to ‘bet the farm . . . by taking the violative action’

before ‘testing the validity of the law.’” Id. (quoting 

MedImmune, Inc. v. Genentech, Inc., 549 U.S. 118, 129 

(2007)). For those reasons, the Court determined that the 

plaintiffs could not “meaningfully pursue” their constitutional 

challenges through the administrative scheme. Id.

Although Free Enterprise, like this case, happened to 

involve the Exchange Act’s judicial-review provision, the 

considerations animating the Court’s decision in Free 

Enterprise are absent here. To have his claims heard through 

the agency route, Jarkesy would not have to erect a Trojanhorse challenge to an SEC rule or “bet the farm” by 

subjecting himself to unnecessary sanction under the 

securities laws. Jarkesy is already properly before the 

Commission by virtue of his alleged violations of those laws. 

Indeed, the existence of the enforcement proceedings gave 

rise to Jarkesy’s challenges. And, should the Commission’s 

final order run against him, a court of appeals is available to 

hear those challenges. Thus, by contrast to Free Enterprise, 

the SEC scheme presents an entirely “meaningful” avenue of 

relief to respondents like Jarkesy. The oddities that led the 

Supreme Court to believe that Congress could not possibly 

have intended the accounting firm to proceed through the 

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administrative route are not present in this case. See Bebo, 

2015 WL 4998489, at *9.

For similar reasons, Jarkesy’s case falls outside the 

Court’s decision in McNary v. Haitian Refugee Center, Inc., 

498 U.S. 479 (1991), which he also invokes. In McNary,

undocumented aliens who had been denied special 

agricultural worker (SAW) status filed a class action claiming 

that the Immigration and Naturalization Service’s procedures 

implementing the SAW program violated the Due Process 

Clause. Id. at 487. A provision of the Immigration and 

Nationality Act (INA) barred judicial review “‘of a 

determination respecting an application’ for SAW status,” 

except in the course of a court of appeals’ review of an alien’s 

final order of deportation. Id. at 485-86, 491-92 (emphasis 

omitted) (quoting 8 U.S.C. § 1160(e)(1)).

The Supreme Court upheld the district court’s jurisdiction 

to consider the plaintiffs’ challenge to the program’s

implementation. It first found that the text of the INA 

provision—by referencing “a determination respecting an 

application” for SAW status and stating that “judicial review 

of such a denial” could occur only in the context of a 

deportation proceeding—did not encompass broad procedural

challenges to the program itself. Id. at 491-94 (emphasis 

omitted). In supporting its textual holding, the Court further

reasoned that, if the plaintiffs’ claim could reach a court only 

by way of a SAW-application denial and a deportation order, 

their challenge would be effectively foreclosed. “[M]ost 

aliens denied SAW status,” the Court explained, “can ensure 

themselves review in courts of appeals only if they voluntarily 

surrender themselves for deportation. Quite obviously, that 

price is tantamount to a complete denial of judicial review for 

most undocumented aliens.” Id. at 496-97. The Court also 

found it significant that the record from a single alien’s SAW 

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application and deportation proceeding would be unlikely to 

contain the kind of evidence needed to make a systematic 

challenge to the agency’s practices. Id. at 497. Considering it 

“most unlikely that Congress intended to foreclose all forms 

of meaningful judicial review” of the plaintiffs’ due process 

claim, the Court found that the district court remained open to 

hear their case. Id. at 496, 498-99.

Once again, Jarkesy’s situation does not share the 

characteristics that led the Court to permit a judicial challenge 

outside the administrative scheme. In McNary, as in Free 

Enterprise, the Court balked at an administrative scheme that 

forced would-be plaintiffs to “bet the farm”—specifically,

their ability to reside in the United States. Jarkesy is not put 

to any such risk here. The Seventh Circuit similarly found 

that delayed review of existing administrative proceedings did 

not give rise to the sorts of concerns that justified districtcourt jurisdiction in McNary and Free Enterprise. Bebo, 

2015 WL 4998489, at *9 & n.3. The high price of accessing

review in those cases, the Seventh Circuit explained, was 

“[t]he key factor” supporting district-court jurisdiction. Id. at 

*9. 

Unlike McNary, moreover, this is not a case in which 

meaningful judicial review likely would be thwarted by an 

inadequate factual record. Jarkesy thinks otherwise, 

predicting that later court-of-appeals review will prove 

“impossible” because some of his challenges will require 

factual development. Appellants Br. 53. His equal protection 

class-of-one challenge, for instance, will require fact finding 

about the Commission’s decision to institute the 

administrative proceeding against him. And Jarkesy argues 

that the SEC’s Rules of Practice categorically disallow the 

type of discovery he needs to present evidence corroborative 

of his allegations, pointing to the fact that the ALJ denied 

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several of his subpoena requests seeking, among other things, 

internal Commission records regarding its charging decisions.

We find Jarkesy’s concerns unsubstantiated. For one 

thing, the record in his proceeding belies the assertion that the 

SEC’s Rules of Practice categorically preclude him from 

accessing the evidence he believes he needs. The Rules 

permit any party in the proceeding to request the issuance of a 

subpoena for “documentary or other tangible evidence” or for 

a witness to give testimony. 17 C.F.R. § 201.232(a). True, 

the ALJ denied Jarkesy’s requests for the issuance of 

subpoenas regarding his equal protection and prejudgment 

challenges. See John Thomas Capital Mgmt. Grp., Admin. 

Proceedings Release No. 1242, at 1-2 (ALJ Feb. 14, 2014). 

But the judge’s decision rested on the context-specific ground

that Jarkesy’s requests were untimely and unreasonable 

because they requested evidence “largely consisting of 

privileged internal Commission deliberations.” Id. at 2. 

Those kinds of bars to discovery are hardly unique to the 

SEC’s rules—Jarkesy’s requests might well have met the 

same result had he attempted them in district court. See 

Chau, 72 F. Supp. 3d at 432. 

In any event, Jarkesy has appealed the ALJ’s discovery 

rulings to the full Commission, arguing that the ALJ 

misapplied the Rules of Practice. See John Thomas Capital 

Mgmt. Grp., Exchange Act Release No. 74,345, 2015 WL 

728006, at *3 (Feb. 20, 2015). If he’s right, the Commission 

stands ready to correct the ALJ’s errors in due course. Id. 

Jarkesy can also file—and has filed—a motion with the 

Commission “for leave to adduce additional evidence” at any 

time before the Commission’s final decision. 17 C.F.R. 

§ 201.452; see John Thomas Capital Mgmt. Grp., 2015 WL 

728006, at *3.

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Should Jarkesy’s fears come to pass, however, and 

should the record in the administrative proceeding prove

inadequate to the court of appeals considering his attacks on 

the Commission’s final order, that court “always has the 

option” of “remanding to the agency for further factual 

development.” John Doe, Inc. v. Drug Enforcement Admin.,

484 F.3d 561, 570 (D.C. Cir. 2007). As noted, the Exchange 

Act’s judicial-review provision expressly allows for that to 

happen. See 15 U.S.C. § 78y(a)(5). The court of appeals also 

has the ability to “take judicial notice of facts relevant to the 

constitutional question[s].” Elgin, 132 S. Ct. at 2138. For 

those reasons, the Elgin Court dismissed the plaintiffemployees’ near-identical argument as overblown. The Court 

was confident that the CSRA scheme could accommodate any 

fact finding necessary to resolve their constitutional

challenges. Id. at 2138 & n.9. We have the same faith in the 

system of administrative and judicial review set forth in the 

securities laws.

As a result, “a finding of preclusion” would not 

“foreclose all meaningful judicial review” of Jarkesy’s claims. 

Free Enterprise, 561 U.S. at 489 (quoting Thunder Basin, 510 

U.S. at 212-13). In its recent decision, the Seventh Circuit 

declined to find district-court jurisdiction on that basis alone, 

which the court viewed to be the “most critical” factor. Bebo, 

2015 WL 4998489, at *8. Because we approach the various 

factors as guideposts for a holistic analysis, we proceed to 

examine the remaining considerations without assessing 

whether the capacity for meaningful review would alone 

suffice to negate jurisdiction.

2.

We next consider the (related) question of whether 

Jarkesy’s claims are “wholly collateral” to the securities laws’ 

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scheme. See Elgin, 132 S. Ct. at 2136, 2139; Free Enterprise, 

561 U.S. at 489-90 (combining consideration of “wholly 

collateral” and “meaningful judicial review” factors). Jarkesy 

asserts that, in his court action, he “is not complaining about 

anything that happened as part of, and during the pendency of, 

the administrative proceeding.” Appellants Reply Br. 13. 

That is simply incorrect. Putting aside his purported facial 

challenge to Dodd-Frank, the remainder of Jarkesy’s claims 

concern (what he perceives to be) substantive or procedural 

deficiencies in the Commission’s enforcement of the 

securities laws against him to this point. 

He attacks the Commission’s decision to place him in 

administrative proceedings in the first place, Compl. ¶¶ 25-38

(J.A. 14-17); the Commission’s alleged prejudgment of his 

case by accepting the settlement of his co-respondents, id.

¶¶ 17-24 (J.A. 13-14); the Commission’s alleged ex parte 

communications with the SEC Enforcement Division; id.

¶¶ 39-46 (J.A. 17-19), and the Division’s alleged Brady 

violations, id. ¶¶ 47-59 (J.A. 19-22). We agree with the 

district court that those claims are “inextricably intertwined 

with the conduct of the very enforcement proceeding the 

statute grants the SEC the power to institute and resolve as an 

initial matter.” Jarkesy, 48 F. Supp. 3d at 38. 

Jarkesy suggests another definition of “wholly 

collateral,” arguing that any challenge “independent of and 

irrelevant to the securities fraud allegations” against him 

should count. Appellants Br. 20-21; accord Gupta, 796 F. 

Supp. 2d at 513. But that broad definition misconceives how 

the Supreme Court and our court have understood the term 

“wholly collateral” in the Thunder Basin line of cases. 

Elgin, for instance, asked whether the plaintiffemployees’ challenge aimed to obtain the same relief they 

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could seek in the agency proceeding: “As evidenced by their 

district court complaint, petitioners’ constitutional claims are 

the vehicle by which they seek to reverse the removal 

decisions, to return to federal employment, and to receive the 

compensation they would have earned but for the adverse 

employment action.” 132 S. Ct. at 2139-40. Similarly, in 

Heckler v. Ringer, 466 U.S. 602 (1984), in finding that the 

plaintiffs’ constitutional and statutory claims were not 

“collateral” to a scheme of administrative and judicial review 

of Medicare payment decisions, the Supreme Court explained 

that the plaintiffs’ challenge to the agency’s “procedure” for 

making those decisions was, “at bottom,” an attempt to 

reverse the agency’s decisions denying their benefits claims. 

Id. at 614, 618, cited in Elgin, 132 S. Ct. at 2140. By contrast, 

in Free Enterprise, the Court found that the plaintiffs’ preenforcement Article II claims were “collateral” to the SEC 

administrative-review scheme because the Free Enterprise 

plaintiffs were not in that scheme at all; hence, their general 

challenge to the PCAOB’s existence was “collateral to any 

Commission orders or rules from which [judicial] review 

might be sought.” 561 U.S. at 490 (internal quotation marks 

omitted).

Here, Jarkesy’s constitutional and APA claims do not 

arise “outside” the SEC administrative enforcement scheme—

they arise from actions the Commission took in the course of

that scheme. And they are the “vehicle by which” Jarkesy 

seeks to prevail in his administrative proceeding. Elgin, 132 

S. Ct. at 2139-40. Indeed, Jarkesy pressed the same claims as 

affirmative defenses before the ALJ, and pressed them again 

to the Commission on review of the ALJ’s initial decision. It 

is “difficult to see how [the claims] can still be considered 

‘collateral to any Commission orders or rules from which 

review might be sought,’ since the ALJ and the Commission 

will, one way or another, rule on those claims and it will be 

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the Commission’s order that [Jarkesy] will appeal.” Tilton, 

2015 WL 4006165, at *12 (citation omitted) (quoting Free 

Enterprise, 561 U.S. at 490) (some internal quotation marks 

omitted). The result might be different if a constitutional 

challenge were filed in court before the initiation of any 

administrative proceeding (and the plaintiff could establish 

standing to bring the judicial action). See Free Enterprise, 

561 U.S. at 490. Here, however, Jarkesy brought this action 

after the Commission had initiated its enforcement proceeding 

against him, and he seeks to challenge multiple aspects of that 

ongoing proceeding.

Instead of seeing that process through to its conclusion, 

Jarkesy seeks to terminate the proceeding altogether. He asks

our court to declare the ongoing proceeding against him 

“void” and requests that we “enjoin any further administrative 

enforcement proceedings against [him] relating to the subject 

matter of the Order Instituting Proceedings.” Appellants Br. 

61. Our court has previously rejected similar attempts by 

respondents in agency proceedings “to short-circuit the 

administrative process through the vehicle of a district court 

complaint.” Sturm, Ruger & Co., Inc. v. Chao, 300 F.3d 867, 

876 (D.C. Cir. 2002) (internal quotation marks omitted). 

What we said there also applies here: “Rather than allowing 

the statutory review process to run its course—a course that 

will eventually lead back to a court of appeals,” Jarkesy has 

“sought to make an end run around that process by going 

directly to district court. . . . Our obligation to respect the 

review process established by Congress bars us from 

permitting [Jarkesy] to make this end run, and requires 

dismissal of [his] district court complaint.” Id. 

To be sure, in Free Enterprise, the Supreme Court 

sustained district-court jurisdiction over the plaintiffs’ facial 

constitutional challenge to Sarbanes-Oxley. And at one point, 

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in explaining why the plaintiffs’ challenge in that case was 

“collateral” to any Commission rules or orders, the Court 

characterized the claim as an “object[ion] to the [PCAOB’s] 

existence.” 561 U.S. at 490. One could ask whether

Jarkesy’s facial attack on Dodd-Frank is of the same kind and 

should lead to the same result. 

We do not read the Free Enterprise Court’s 

characterization of the plaintiffs’ claims in that case, however,

to define a new category of collateral claims that fall outside 

an otherwise exclusive administrative scheme. In its 

subsequent decision in Elgin, the Court considered and 

rejected the idea that one could divine an exception to an 

otherwise exclusive administrative scheme based on the 

distinction between various types of constitutional challenges. 

“[A] jurisdictional rule based on the nature of an employee’s 

constitutional claim would deprive the aggrieved employee, 

the MSPB, and the district court of clear guidance about the 

proper forum for the employee’s claims at the outset of the 

case,” the Court wrote, dismissing the plaintiffs’ proposed 

line between constitutional challenges to statutes and other 

types of constitutional arguments to be “hazy at best and 

incoherent at worst.” Elgin, 132 S. Ct. at 2135. The Elgin 

Court also rejected the dissent’s proffered rule making an 

exception to the CSRA scheme specifically for facial attacks 

on statutes. Id. at 2135-36. The Court explained that “the 

distinction between facial and as-applied challenges is not so 

well defined that it has some automatic effect or that it must 

always control the pleadings and disposition in every case 

involving a constitutional challenge.” Id. (quoting Citizens 

United v. FEC, 558 U.S. 310, 331 (2010)). “By contrast,” the 

Elgin Court reasoned, “a jurisdictional rule based on the type 

of employee and adverse agency action at issue does not 

involve such amorphous distinctions.” Id. at 2136.

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As Jarkesy’s suit illustrates, parsing and categorizing a 

litigant’s claim at the outset can prove highly difficult 

(especially if the litigant’s formulation shifts along the way). 

Like the Elgin majority, we believe that Congress did not 

intend the framing of a constitutional challenge—based on 

potentially “hazy,” “amorphous,” and “incoherent”

categories—to grant a district court jurisdiction over an 

otherwise non-collateral claim. Id. at 2135-36. Jurisdictional 

rules, the Supreme Court has intimated, should be 

straightforward to apply if possible. See Hertz Corp. v. 

Friend, 559 U.S. 77, 94-95 (2010). But the approach 

suggested by Jarkesy would do the opposite, inviting

unpredictable litigation at the threshold about whether the 

particular challenges at issue fall within or without an 

indistinct category of constitutional claims. 

Such an approach would also tend to run counter to

important principles of judicial restraint. Out of respect for 

the political branches, courts generally avoid ruling on 

constitutional grounds when possible. See, e.g., Ashwander v. 

Tenn. Valley Auth., 297 U.S. 288, 346-47 (1936) (Brandeis, J., 

concurring). Facial challenges to statutes are especially 

disfavored. See Wash. State Grange v. Wash. State 

Republican Party, 552 U.S. 442, 450-51 (2008). Yet an 

exception to an otherwise exclusive scheme for constitutional 

challenges in general, or facial attacks on a statute in 

particular, or some other as-yet-undefined category of 

constitutional claims, would encourage respondents in 

administrative enforcement proceedings to frame their 

challenges to the Commission’s actions in those terms and 

thereby earn access to another forum in which to advance 

their arguments. We doubt Congress intended that result. 

The mere fact that Jarkesy presses constitutional claims (even 

facial ones) therefore does not control the preclusion inquiry.

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Certain of Jarkesy’s challenges—namely, his nondelegation doctrine claim and his equal protection 

arguments—could be said to share another characteristic: if 

vindicated, the upshot (arguably) would be that Jarkesy 

should not have been subjected to the administrative 

proceeding at all. And some district courts, facing similar 

claims by respondents in SEC proceedings, have found that 

consideration significant to the jurisdictional inquiry. See 

Duka, 2015 WL 1943245, at *5; Gupta, 796 F. Supp. 2d at 

514. Because the SEC respondents in those cases, like 

Jarkesy, were alleging harm by virtue of having to undergo a 

constitutionally deficient proceeding, and because a later 

court-of-appeals decision in the respondent’s favor could not 

fully remedy that harm, those courts determined that the 

respondents need not “endure the very proceeding[s]” that 

they find constitutionally deficient before seeking a remedy in 

court. Gupta, 796 F. Supp. 2d at 514.

That concern might be viewed to indicate a “collateral” 

claim; or, alternatively, it might be viewed to suggest an 

absence of meaningful judicial review (or both). See Free 

Enterprise, 561 U.S. at 489-90. Regardless, in our view, the 

fact that Jarkesy’s claims attack the process rather than the 

result does not mean his claims should receive preemptive 

resolution in a district court. Requiring Jarkesy to undergo 

the remainder of the proceeding, notwithstanding his 

threshold claim that it was wrongly initiated, aligns with how 

the law handles analogous claims in similar contexts. See 

Bebo, 2015 WL 4998489, at *9. 

In FTC v. Standard Oil Co. of California, 449 U.S. 232 

(1980), an oil company brought suit against the Federal Trade 

Commission alleging that the FTC had issued a complaint 

against the company without a reasonable basis. Id. at 234-

35. The Supreme Court determined that the FTC’s issuance 

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of the complaint was neither a final agency action under the 

APA nor a collateral order under the doctrine of Cohen v. 

Beneficial Industrial Loan Corp., 337 U.S. 541 (1949). 

Standard Oil, 449 U.S. at 238, 246. Consequently, the Court 

held that the district court lacked jurisdiction over Standard 

Oil’s suit before the conclusion of the FTC enforcement 

proceedings. Id. at 246-47. In so finding, the Court was 

unmoved by the company’s claims of irreparable harm due to 

“the expense and disruption of defending itself in protracted 

adjudicatory proceedings” that the company believed never 

should have begun. Id. at 244. Though the Court did not 

doubt that Standard Oil faced a substantial burden, the Court 

responded that “the expense and annoyance of litigation is 

part of the social burden of living under government.” Id.

(internal quotation marks omitted). 

Subsequently, in USAA Federal Savings Bank v. 

McLaughlin, 849 F.2d 1505 (D.C. Cir. 1988), our court 

applied Standard Oil to dismiss a bank’s pre-enforcement suit 

claiming that an agency was wrongly asserting jurisdiction 

over it. Id. at 1506, 1508. Though the bank “[had] been 

called upon, much to its chagrin, to participate in a proceeding 

that lies beyond what [it] believes to be [the agency’s] lawful 

powers,” we nonetheless concluded that jurisdiction did not 

lie. Id. at 1510. If “the ‘injury’ inflicted on the party seeking 

review is the burden of going through an agency proceeding,” 

we held, then “[Standard Oil] teaches that the party must 

patiently await the denouement of proceedings within the 

Article II branch.” Id.

That principle applies in the criminal context as well. 

There is “inevitable injury—often of serious proportions—

incident to any criminal prosecution.” Schlesinger v. 

Councilman, 420 U.S. 738, 754 (1975). Yet “the cost, 

anxiety, and inconvenience of having to defend against a 

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single criminal prosecution” do not constitute irreparable 

injury warranting a federal court’s intervention in an ongoing 

state prosecution, even if that prosecution imperils 

constitutional rights. Younger v. Harris, 401 U.S. 37, 46 

(1971). True, Younger abstention is grounded in 

considerations of federalism not implicated here. But the rule 

derives from “the basic doctrine of equity jurisprudence that 

courts of equity should not act, and particularly should not act 

to restrain a criminal prosecution, when the moving party has 

an adequate remedy at law and will not suffer irreparable 

injury.” Id. at 43-44; see Deaver v. Seymour, 822 F.2d 66, 70 

(D.C. Cir. 1987).

Likewise, when a district court denies a federal criminal 

defendant’s pretrial motion, that denial ordinarily is not 

immediately appealable. The defendant must stand trial first. 

See Deaver, 822 F.2d at 70; 6 Wayne R. LaFave et al., 

Criminal Procedure § 27.2(b), at 9 (3d ed. 2007). That 

general rule against interlocutory appeals encompasses 

selective-prosecution claims, which bear a close resemblance 

to Jarkesy’s class-of-one equal protection challenge. 

Notwithstanding that “[a] selective-prosecution claim is not a 

defense on the merits to the criminal charge itself, but an 

independent assertion that the prosecutor has brought the 

charge for reasons forbidden by the Constitution,” United 

States v. Armstrong, 517 U.S. 456, 463 (1996), defendants 

assert such challenges in the course of the prosecution

(usually pretrial), see 4 LaFave, supra, § 13.4(a), at 170-71, 

and courts of appeals address the matter only after a 

conviction, see, e.g., United States v. Mangieri, 694 F.2d 

1270, 1272-76 (D.C. Cir. 1982). 

It makes sense that Congress would design the 

Commission’s enforcement proceedings to work the same 

way. The rule against piecemeal criminal appeals has some 

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exceptions—interlocutory appeals can lie over double 

jeopardy claims, for instance. See Abney v. United States, 431 

U.S. 651, 662 (1977). But our court in Deaver seriously 

doubted that a defendant’s separation-of-powers challenge to 

an independent counsel’s authority was among them. 822 

F.2d at 70-71. The Deaver court reasoned that, unlike a 

defendant claiming double jeopardy, “Deaver does not assert 

a constitutional right not to stand trial, but merely claims that 

[the independent counsel] is not qualified to direct the 

prosecution. Assuming arguendo Deaver’s contention is 

correct, his rights can be vindicated by a reversal of any 

conviction.” Id. at 71.

We find the Deaver court’s reasoning persuasive, and 

Jarkesy’s non-delegation claim is no different. Even 

assuming Jarkesy is right that Congress has unconstitutionally 

delegated power to the SEC to decide whether to place him in 

an administrative proceeding rather than in a court action, 

Jarkesy has no inherent right to avoid an administrative 

proceeding at all. Thus, “his rights can be vindicated by a 

reversal” of the Commission’s final order if the court of 

appeals grants his petition for review. Id. at 71. 

Of course, should Jarkesy prevail in his administrative 

proceeding, his claims would never reach a court of appeals. 

But the possibility that a Commission order in his favor might 

moot some or all of his challenges does not make those 

challenges “collateral” and thus appropriate for review 

outside the administrative scheme. See Bebo, 2015 WL

4998489, at *7. Again, precedent illustrates the point. In

Standard Oil, the court of appeals had found jurisdiction over 

the company’s case by reasoning that, if the court did not 

review its challenge to the FTC’s complaint at that time, “the 

alleged unlawfulness would be moot if [Standard Oil] 

prevailed in the adjudication.” 449 U.S. at 244 n.11. But the 

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Supreme Court found that possibility to be a feature of the 

administrative-exhaustion requirement, not a bug: “[O]ne of 

the principal reasons to await the termination of agency 

proceedings,” the Court explained, is “to obviate all occasion 

for judicial review.” Id. The same holds true for challenges 

with “far-ranging and troubling constitutional implications.” 

See Deaver, 822 F.2d at 71. As in Standard Oil and Deaver, 

“the possibility that [Jarkesy’s] challenge may be mooted in 

adjudication warrants the requirement that [he] pursue 

adjudication, not shortcut it.” Standard Oil, 449 U.S. at 244 

n.11. 

We do not read the Supreme Court’s decision in Mathews 

v. Eldridge, 424 U.S. 319 (1976), to require concluding 

otherwise. The Eldridge Court upheld district-court 

jurisdiction over a plaintiff’s claim of entitlement to a hearing 

prior to the termination of his Social Security benefits, even 

though the plaintiff had failed fully to exhaust his 

administrative remedies before filing suit. Id. at 324-25, 327-

32. The Court, however, focused on the unique nature of the 

plaintiff’s due process claim. That challenge “rest[ed] on the 

proposition that full relief cannot be obtained at a 

postdeprivation hearing,” because “an erroneous termination 

would damage him in a way not recompensable through 

retroactive payments.” Id. at 331. The plaintiff’s claim of 

entitlement to a pre-termination hearing thus was “entirely 

collateral” to his claim of entitlement to benefits: even if he 

succeeded on the latter claim and eventually received the 

benefits, the independent harm caused by the delay would 

remain. Id. at 330-31. In other words, a court’s subsequent 

decision “would not answer his constitutional challenge” to 

the delay itself. Id. at 332. In order to afford Eldridge 

meaningful review of his claim, the Court excused his failure 

to exhaust and found that the district court had jurisdiction. 

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Id. at 332; see Thunder Basin, 510 U.S. at 213 (describing the 

facts in Eldridge).

As we have discussed, Jarkesy’s claims do not present 

the same problem. The only independent harms Jarkesy will 

face as a result of his continuing to undergo the Commission 

proceeding are the burdens abided by any respondent in an 

enforcement proceeding or any criminal defendant who must 

wait for vindication. The judicial system tolerates those 

harms, and they are insufficient for us to infer an exception to 

an otherwise exclusive scheme.

3.

Finally, Jarkesy argues that Congress could not have 

meant to channel his claims through the SEC proceeding 

because they fall outside the Commission’s area of expertise. 

“While the agency may have well mastered the securities 

regulations it administers,” he argues, “it would be 

improvident to regard the Commission as a citadel of 

constitutional scholarship.” Appellants Br. 58. 

Jarkesy underestimates the Commission. He narrowly 

focuses on the Commission’s expertise in the securities laws 

it applies. And he overlooks the Commission’s development 

of concurrent familiarity in issues that regularly arise in the 

course of its proceedings. Jarkesy’s proceeding is a case in 

point. 

In declining to certify for interlocutory review Jarkesy’s 

argument that the Commission should be disqualified from 

ruling on his case, the ALJ explained that the question 

whether a Commission order accepting a co-respondent’s 

settlement prejudges another respondent’s guilt has “long 

since been settled and addressed in numerous opinions of 

courts and of the Commission.” John Thomas Capital Mgmt. 

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Grp., Admin. Proceedings Release No. 1170, at 2 (ALJ Jan. 

14, 2014). In denying his petition for interlocutory review, 

the Commission also noted that it had “rejected arguments 

similar to” Jarkesy’s “in an unbroken line of decisions.” John 

Thomas Capital Mgmt. Grp., Securities Act Release No. 

9519, 2014 WL 294551, at *2 (Jan. 28, 2014). Similarly, in 

its initial decision, the ALJ considered and rejected Jarkesy’s 

equal protection arguments, finding it “well established” 

under Commission and judicial precedent that a lack of jury 

trials in SEC proceedings does not violate the Seventh 

Amendment and further finding Jarkesy’s class-of-one theory 

deficient based in part on analysis in an earlier Commission 

decision. John Thomas Capital Mgmt. Grp., Initial Decision 

Release No. 693, 2014 WL 5304908, at *6 (ALJ Oct. 17, 

2014).

Because the Commission has proven fully capable of 

considering Jarkesy’s attacks on the fairness of his 

proceeding—at least in the first instance—nothing about the 

nature of those claims strongly suggests that Congress would 

have wanted to carve them out of the administrative scheme. 

To the contrary, the majority of Jarkesy’s challenges lie 

firmly within the Commission’s ordinary course of business.

The Commission arguably has less experience with issues 

like Jarkesy’s non-delegation challenge. And Jarkesy once 

again invokes Free Enterprise, in which the Supreme Court 

noted, in finding jurisdiction, that the accounting firm’s 

Article II arguments fell “outside the Commission’s 

competence and expertise.” 561 U.S. at 491. Elgin later 

clarified, however, that an agency’s relative level of insight 

into the merits of a constitutional question is not 

determinative. 

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The federal-employee plaintiffs in Elgin—ultimately 

joined by the dissent—had argued that their equal protection 

and bill-of-attainder challenges to the Selective Service 

statutes “[did] not remotely implicate the [MSPB’s] 

administrative expertise,” because those challenges “have 

nothing to do with the statutory rules of federal employment, 

and nothing to do with any application of the ‘merit system 

principles’ or the ‘prohibited personnel practices’ that the 

[MSPB] administers.” Elgin, 132 S. Ct. at 2143 (Alito, J., 

dissenting). The Court did not dispute the dissent’s 

assessment of the MSPB’s expertise. But it explained that the 

plaintiffs were overlooking “the many threshold questions 

that may accompany a constitutional claim and to which the 

MSPB can apply its expertise.” Id. at 2140. The Court 

pointed out that the MSPB could “obviate the need to address 

the [facial] constitutional challenge” at all if the MSPB were 

to resolve the case on other grounds, including by addressing 

other statutory or constitutional claims. Id. In addition, “the 

challenged statute may be one that the MSPB regularly 

construes, and its statutory interpretation could alleviate 

constitutional concerns.” Id. “Thus, because the MSPB’s 

expertise can otherwise be ‘brought to bear’ on employee 

appeals that challenge the constitutionality of a statute,” the 

Court saw “no reason to conclude that Congress intended to 

exempt such claims from exclusive review before the MSPB 

and the Federal Circuit.” Id. (citing Thunder Basin, 510 U.S. 

at 214-15).

Here, likewise, the Commission’s expertise “can 

otherwise be brought to bear on” the issues in Jarkesy’s 

proceeding. As previously discussed, the agency could moot 

the need to resolve Jarkesy’s challenge to Dodd-Frank’s 

constitutionality (or any other constitutional question) by 

finding that he did not commit the securities-law violations of 

which he stands accused. Even short of that, the Commission 

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could offer an interpretation of the securities laws in the 

course of the proceeding that might answer or shed light on 

Jarkesy’s non-delegation challenge. As our court has 

previously observed, “there are precious few cases involving 

interpretation of statutes authorizing agency action in which 

our review is not aided by the agency’s statutory 

construction.” Mitchell v. Christopher, 996 F.2d 375, 379 

(D.C. Cir. 1993). Accordingly, like the Elgin Court, “we see 

no reason to conclude that Congress intended to exempt” 

Jarkesy’s non-delegation challenge, or any of his other 

constitutional defenses, from the administrative scheme. 132 

S. Ct. at 2140. 

* * *

Having canvassed the three considerations the Supreme 

Court outlined in Thunder Basin, none dissuades us from our 

initial conclusion that Congress has implicitly precluded the 

district court’s jurisdiction over cases of this type. Quite the 

contrary. The rationale underlying Congress’s decision to 

create statutory schemes like the one before us is that 

“coherence and economy are best served if all suits pertaining 

to designated agency decisions are segregated in particular 

courts,” City of Rochester, 603 F.2d at 936—here, in a court 

of appeals after a final Commission decision. And the “policy 

behind having a special review procedure in the first place 

similarly disfavors bifurcating jurisdiction over various 

substantive grounds,” due to the “likelihood of duplication 

and inconsistency.” Id. 

As the recent slew of cases demonstrates (see supra 

note *), Jarkesy’s case is hardly unique. Many respondents in 

SEC proceedings join substantive defenses to their securities 

charges together with challenges to the Commission’s actions 

or authority. It makes good sense to consolidate all of each 

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respondent’s issues before one court for review, and only after 

an adverse Commission order makes that review necessary. 

By contrast, a system like the one Jarkesy envisions—where 

respondents “‘jump the gun’ by going directly to the district 

court to develop their case” instead of seeing agency 

proceedings through to conclusion, John Doe, Inc., 484 F.3d 

at 570—has comparatively little merit. Such a system, we 

have already noted, would create substantial uncertainty about 

what sort of claims could properly be adjudicated outside the 

administrative scheme. See Elgin, 132 S. Ct. at 2135-36. 

And—again, as Jarkesy’s case has shown—it could also

likely result in parallel litigation of the same issues before a 

district court and an agency, with two courts of appeals 

possibly being confronted with two different sets of rulings 

down the road. Cf. id. at 2135.

We cannot conclude Congress had that intent. Jarkesy 

must continue to press his various challenges to the 

Commission’s enforcement proceeding before the 

Commission itself. Should the agency’s final order be 

adverse to him, Jarkesy can then raise his challenges in a 

petition for review to a court of appeals.

III. 

Jarkesy has offered alternate sources of jurisdiction 

during the course of this appeal. In his opening brief, Jarkesy 

warned our court that the Commission had expedited his 

administrative proceeding, a move he thought could 

“threaten[] to obstruct the appellate jurisdiction of this Court

to resolve these claims.” Appellants Br. 62. Jarkesy 

suggested that the Commission’s fast-tracking might have 

required “the exercise of this Court’s powers under the All 

Writs Act to protect its jurisdiction,” on the theory that the 

Commission could issue its final order before our court could 

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render a decision on the merits of Jarkesy’s claims. Id. at 62-

63 (citation omitted); see 28 U.S.C. § 1651(a). In light of our 

determination that we, like the district court, lack any

jurisdiction over those claims that might need protection, we 

decline Jarkesy’s invitation. “While the All Writs Act 

authorizes employment of extraordinary writs, it confines the 

authority to the issuance of process ‘in aid of’ the issuing 

court’s jurisdiction. . . . [T]he Act does not enlarge that 

jurisdiction.” In re Tennant, 359 F.3d 523, 527 (D.C. Cir. 

2004) (quoting Clinton v. Goldsmith, 526 U.S. 529, 534-35 

(1999)).

In his reply brief, Jarkesy shifted gears to a different All 

Writs Act argument. Invoking our decision in 

Telecommunications Research & Action Center v. FCC, 750 

F.2d 70 (D.C. Cir. 1984), he argues that we should 

nonetheless pass upon his claims to protect our potential 

future jurisdiction over his petition for review of the 

Commission’s final order (should he lose and choose to seek 

review with our court). Appellants Reply Br. 4-5; see 

Telecomm. Research, 750 F.2d at 76. There may be other

problems with that argument, but we will rest on this one: 

Jarkesy forfeited the argument by failing to raise it in his 

opening brief. See Gen. Elec. Co. v. Jackson, 610 F.3d 110, 

123 (D.C. Cir. 2010).

* * * * *

We hold that the securities laws provide an exclusive 

avenue for judicial review that Jarkesy may not bypass by 

filing suit in district court. We therefore affirm the judgment 

of the district court dismissing the case for lack of subjectmatter jurisdiction. 

So ordered.

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