Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/19pdf/18-1501_8n5a.pdf
Page Number: 25.0

2 

LIU v. SEC 

THOMAS, J., dissenting 

A 
“This Court has never treated general statutory grants of 
equitable authority as giving federal courts a freewheeling 
power to fashion new forms of equitable remedies.”  Trump 
v.  Hawaii,  585  U. S.  ___,  ___  (2018)  (THOMAS, J.,  concur-
ring) (slip op., at 3).  “Rather, it has read such statutes as 
constrained  by  ‘the  body  of  law  which  had  been  trans-
planted to this country from the English Court of Chancery’
in  1789.”  Ibid.  (quoting  Guaranty  Trust  Co.  v.  York,  326 
U. S. 99, 105 (1945)).  As Justice Story put it, “the settled 
doctrine of this court is, that the remedies in equity are to
be  administered  . . .  according  to  the  practice  of  courts  of
equity  in  [England],  as  contradistinguished  from  that  of 
courts of law; subject, of course to the provisions of the acts 
of congress.”  Boyle v. Zacharie & Turner, 6 Pet. 648, 654 
(1832).

We have interpreted other statutes according to this “set-
tled doctrine.”  For example, we have read the term “equi-
table relief ” in the Employee Retirement Income Security
Act of 1974 to refer to “those categories of relief that were
typically available in equity.”  Mertens v. Hewitt Associates, 
508 U. S. 248, 256 (1993) (emphasis deleted).  We have done 
the same for the Judiciary Act of 1789, see, e.g., Grupo Mex-
icano de Desarrollo, S. A. v. Alliance Bond Fund, Inc., 527 
U. S. 308, 318–319 (1999), and for provisions in the Bank-
ruptcy  Code,  see  Taggart  v.  Lorenzen,  587  U. S.  ___,  ___ 
(2019)  (slip  op.,  at  5).   There  is  nothing  about  §78u(d)(5) 
that counsels departing from this approach. 

B 
Disgorgement is not a traditional form of equitable relief.
Rather,  cases,  legal  dictionaries,  and  treatises  establish 
that it is a 20th-century invention.

As an initial matter, it is not even clear what “disgorge-
ment”  means.  The  majority  frankly  acknowledges  its 
“ ‘ “protean  character.” ’ ”  Ante,  at  7  (quoting  Petrella  v.