Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/22pdf/21-86_l5gm.pdf
Page Number: 14.0

Cite as:  598 U. S. ____ (2023) 

9 

Opinion of the Court 

the district court to lack jurisdiction over those claims, and 
thus  directed  the  company  back  to  the  statutory  review 
scheme.  The Commission, we emphasized, had “extensive 
experience” in addressing the statutory issues raised, and 
could resolve them in ways that “brought to bear” its “ex-
pertise” over the mining industry.  510 U. S., at 214–215; 
see Free Enterprise Fund, 561 U. S., at 491.  All  that was 
less so, we  acknowledged,  of the  company’s constitutional 
challenge; but that claim could be “meaningfully addressed 
in the Court of Appeals.”  510 U. S., at 215. 

We applied similar reasoning in Elgin.  The statutory re-
view scheme there directed federal employees challenging 
discharge decisions to seek review in the MSPB and then, 
if needed, in the Federal Circuit (a specific court of appeals). 
But Elgin filed suit in district court when he was fired by 
the government for failing to register for the draft.  We held 
that the court lacked jurisdiction even though Elgin mainly 
claimed  that  the  draft  law,  in  excluding  women,  violated 
the  Equal  Protection  Clause.   Although  the  MSPB  might 
not  be  able  to  hold  the  draft  law  unconstitutional,  we 
stated, the Court of Appeals could—and that was sufficient 
to ensure “meaningful review” of Elgin’s claim.  567 U. S., 
at 21.  Still more, Elgin’s claim was neither collateral to the 
MSPB’s ordinary proceedings nor unrelated to its expertise. 
We reasoned that a “challenge to [a discharge] is precisely 
the  type  of  personnel  action  regularly  adjudicated  by  the 
MSPB.”  Id., at 22.  And we observed that such an action 
could involve “threshold” and other “questions unique to the 
employment  context”  that  “fall[ ]  squarely  within  the 
MSPB’s expertise.”  Id., at 22–23. 

But in Free Enterprise Fund, this Court went the opposite 
way, holding that certain claims landed outside a statutory 
review scheme.  The scheme was the Exchange Act’s—the 
same as in Cochran’s case.  And the main claim in Free En-
terprise Fund bears more than a passing resemblance to one 
Axon and Cochran raise: It, too, alleged that officials with