Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/23pdf/22-859new_kjfm.pdf
Page Number: 73

Cite as:  603 U. S. ____ (2024) 

13 

SOTOMAYOR, J., dissenting

  In Atlas Roofing, the Court explained how Congress iden-
tified a national problem, concluded that existing legal rem-
edies were inadequate to address it, and then created a new
statutory scheme that endorsed Executive in-house enforce-
ment  as  a  solution.
  Specifically,  Congress  found  “that
work-related deaths and injuries had become a ‘drastic’ na-
tional problem,” and that existing causes of action, includ-
ing tort actions for negligence and wrongful death, did not 
adequately  “protect  the  employee  population  from  death
and injury due to unsafe working conditions.”  Id., at 444– 
445. 
In  response,  Congress  enacted  the  Occupational 
Safety and Health Act of 1970 (OSHA) to require employers
“to avoid maintaining unsafe or unhealthy working condi-
tions.”  Id., at 445.  OSHA in turn “empower[ed] the Secre-
tary of Labor to promulgate health and safety standards,” 
and the Occupational Safety and Health Review Commis-
sion to impose civil penalties on employers maintaining un-
safe working conditions, regardless of whether any worker
was in fact injured or killed.  Id., at 445–446. 

Two employers that had been assessed civil penalties for 
OSHA violations resulting in the death of employees chal-
lenged  the  constitutionality  of  the  statute’s  enforcement 
procedures.  They observed that “a suit in a federal court by
the Government for civil penalties for violation of a statute
is a suit for a money judgment[,] which is classically a suit
at  common  law.”  Id.,  at  449.  Therefore,  the  employers 
claimed, the Seventh Amendment right to a jury attached 
and Congress could not assign the matter to an agency for
resolution.  See ibid. 

This Court upheld OSHA’s statutory scheme.  It relied on 
the long history of public-rights cases endorsing Congress’s
now-settled  practice  of  assigning  the  Government’s  rights
to civil penalties for violations of a statutory obligation to
in-house adjudication in the first instance.  See id., at 450– 
455.  In light of this “history and our cases,” the Court con-