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AMG CAPITAL MANAGEMENT, LLC v. FTC 

Syllabus 

by  seeking  equitable  monetary  relief  directly  in  district  court  under 
§13(b)’s authorization to seek a “permanent injunction.”  In doing so, 
the  Commission  acted  in  accordance  with  its  increasing  tendency  to
use §13(b) to seek monetary awards without prior use of the Commis-
sion’s traditional administrative proceedings.  The desirability of the 
Commission’s practice aside, the question is whether Congress, by en-
acting §13(b) and using the words “permanent injunction,” granted the 
Commission  authority  to  obtain  monetary  relief  directly  from  courts
and effectively bypass the requirements of the administrative process.
Pp. 3–6.

(b) Section 13(b) does not explicitly authorize the Commission to ob-
tain court-ordered monetary relief, and such relief is foreclosed by the
structure and history of the Act.  Section 13(b) provides that the “Com-
mission may seek . . . a permanent injunction.”  §53(b).  By its terms,
this provision concerns prospective injunctive relief, not retrospective 
monetary relief.  Section 13(b) allows the Commission to go directly to 
district court when the Commission seeks injunctive relief pending ad-
ministrative  proceedings  or  when  it  seeks  only  a  permanent  injunc-
tion.  Other statutory provisions, in particular the conditioned and lim-
ited monetary relief authorized in §19, confirm this conclusion.  It is 
highly unlikely that Congress, without mentioning the matter, would 
grant  the  Commission  authority  to  circumvent  its  traditional  §5  ad-
ministrative proceedings.  Pp. 6–10.

(c) The  Commission’s  contrary  arguments  are  unavailing.    First, 
Porter  v.  Warner  Holding  Co.,  328  U. S.  395,  and  Mitchell  v.  Robert 
DeMario  Jewelry,  Inc.,  361  U. S.  288,  did  not  adopt  a  universal  rule 
that statutory authority to grant an injunction automatically encom-
passes the power to grant equitable monetary remedies.  Instead, the 
text and structure of the particular statutory scheme at issue can limit
a court’s jurisdiction in equity.  Second, in enacting §19 two years after
§13(b), Congress did not simply create an alternative enforcement path
with  similar  remedies.    The  Court  does  not  believe  Congress  would 
have enacted §19’s provisions expressly authorizing monetary relief if 
§13(b) already implicitly allowed the Commission to obtain that same 
monetary  relief  without  satisfying  §19’s  conditions  and  limitations. 
Third, §19’s saving clauses—preserving “any authority of the Commis-
sion under any other provision of law” and “any other remedy or right 
of action provided by State or Federal law,” §57b(e)—do not help an-
swer whether §13(b) gave the Commission the authority to obtain eq-
uitable monetary relief directly in court in the first place.  Fourth, the 
Act’s  1994  and  2006  amendments,  which  did  not  modify  the  specific 
language at issue here, do not demonstrate congressional acquiescence 
to  lower  court  rulings  that  favor  the  Commission’s  interpretation  of