Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/22pdf/21-86_l5gm.pdf
Page Number: 22.0

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

17 

Opinion of the Court 

about  the  separation  of  powers.  For  that  reason,  we  ob-
served two Terms ago, “agency adjudications are generally 
ill suited to address structural constitutional challenges”— 
like those maintained here.  Carr v. Saul, 593 U. S. ___, ___ 
(2021) (slip op., at 9). 

On this last factor, even the Government mostly gives up 
the ghost.  Its argument goes: “Even when an agency lacks 
expertise in interpreting the Constitution, it can still ‘apply 
its  expertise’  by  deciding  other  issues”—whether  “statu-
tory, regulatory, or factual”—“that ‘may obviate the need to 
address  the  constitutional  challenge.’ ”  Brief  for  Federal 
Parties  54 (quoting  Elgin,  567  U. S.,  at  22–23).  The first 
clause of that sentence concedes the  expertise point—and 
the rest cannot reclaim it.  True enough, we partly relied in 
Elgin on the MSPB’s expertise on a raft of ordinary employ-
ment issues surrounding the employee’s contention that the 
Equal  Protection  Clause  barred  his  discharge.   See  567 
U. S., at 22–23; supra, at 9.  But the Government here does 
not pretend that Axon’s and Cochran’s constitutional claims 
are similarly intertwined with or embedded in matters on 
which the Commissions are expert.  (It is precisely because 
those  claims  are  not  so  entangled  that  the  Government 
must try to redefine what it means for claims to be “collat-
eral” to an agency action.  See supra, at 15–16.)  And unlike 
in  Elgin,  ruling  for  Axon  and  Cochran  on  expertise-laden 
grounds would not “obviate the need” to address their con-
stitutional claims—which, again, allege injury not from this 
or that ruling but from subjection to all agency authority. 
Those claims of here-and-now harm would remain no mat-
ter  how much expertise could  be “brought to bear” on the 
other issues these cases involve.  Thunder Basin, 510 U. S., 
at 215. 

All three Thunder Basin factors thus point in the same 
direction—toward  allowing district  court  review  of  Axon’s 
and Cochran’s claims that the structure, or even existence, 
of  an  agency  violates  the  Constitution.    For  the  reasons