Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/17pdf/17-130_4f14.pdf
Page Number: 23.0

Cite as:  585 U. S. ____ (2018) 

3 

BREYER, J., concurring in part and dissenting in part 
Opinion of BREYER, J. 

this provision requires a “published order or rule,” and the 
Commission  here  published  no  relevant  delegating  order 
or  rule.  Rather,  Lucia  discovered  the  Commission’s  ap-
pointment system for administrative law judges only when
the  Commission’s  enforcement  division  staff  filed  an  affi-
davit in this case describing that staff-based system.  See 
App.  to  Pet.  for  Cert.  295a–299a.  Regardless,  the  same
constitutional-avoidance  reasons  that  should  inform  our 
construction  of  the  Administrative  Procedure  Act  should 
also lead us to interpret the Commission’s general delega-
tion  authority  as  excluding  the  power  to  delegate  to  staff
the  authority  to  appoint  its  administrative  law  judges,  so 
as  to  avoid  the  constitutional  question  the  Court  reaches 
in this case.  See Jin Fuey Moy, supra, at 401. 

The  analysis  may  differ  for  other  agencies  that  employ 
administrative law judges.  Each agency’s governing stat-
ute  is  different,  and  some,  unlike  the  Commission’s,  may 
allow the delegation of duties without a published order or 
rule.  See,  e.g.,  42  U. S. C.  §902(a)(7)  (applicable  to  the 
Social Security Administration).  Similarly, other agencies’ 
administrative law judges perform distinct functions, and 
their  means  of  appointment  may  therefore  not  raise  the 
constitutional  questions  that  inform  my  reading  of  the
relevant statutes here. 

The upshot, in my view, is that for statutory, not consti-
tutional, reasons, the Commission did not lawfully appoint
the  Administrative  Law  Judge  here  at  issue.    And  this 
Court should decide no more than that. 

II
 
A 

The  reason  why  it  is  important  to  go  no  further  arises
from  the  holding  in  a  case  this  Court  decided  eight  years 
ago,  Free  Enterprise  Fund,  supra.  The  case  concerned 
statutory  provisions  protecting  members  of  the  Public 
Company  Accounting  Oversight  Board  from  removal