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Page Number: 39.0

6 

AXON ENTERPRISE, INC. v. FTC 

GORSUCH, J., concurring in judgment 

III 

There  is  a  better  way.  Our  job  is  to  interpret  the  laws 
Congress  has  adopted.   It  is  a  task  that  “begins  with  the 
language of the [relevant] statute[s]” and, when “the statu-
tory  language  provides  a  clear  answer,  it  ends  there  as 
well.”  Hughes Aircraft Co. v. Jacobson, 525 U. S. 432, 438 
(1999) (internal quotation marks omitted).  Because no one 
doubts that §1331 vests district courts with jurisdiction to 
hear  these  cases,  the  only  question  properly  before  us  is 
whether Congress has actually carved out some exception 
in some other statute.  The government points to two can-
didates.  But the government’s arguments from those laws 
are so improbable that the Court barely mentions them.  I 
pause  to  walk  through  each  only  to  illustrate  how  these 
cases should have been resolved. 

In Ms. Cochran’s case, the government directs our atten-
tion to §78y(a)(1) of the Exchange Act.  That provision says 
that “[a] person aggrieved by a final order of the Commis-
sion . . . may obtain review of the order in the United States 
Court  of  Appeals  . . .  by  filing  in  such  court  . . .  a  written 
petition requesting that the order be modified or set aside 
in  whole  or  in  part.”   15  U. S. C.  §78y(a)(1).  Plainly,  the 
statute promises jurisdiction in a court of appeals for those 

—————— 
agency invokes Thunder Basin and regardless of whether the agency it-
self  may  prefer  to  proceed in  court.  See  Wilkins  v.  United  States,  598 
U. S. ___, ___ (2023) (slip op., at 4) (“courts have a duty to consider [ju-
risdictional bars] sua sponte”).  But this Court has never said Thunder 
Basin commands anything like that.  At the very least, then, the Court 
should acknowledge Thunder Basin for what it truly is:  a judge-made 
exhaustion requirement, not a jurisdictional rule.  Even that much can-
dor, however, would not rescue the contrivance.  As this Court has rec-
ognized, we possess no more authority to “impos[e] extra-statutory limi-
tations”  on  the  “capacity  to  sue”  than  we  do  to  impose  extra-statutory 
limitations on the jurisdiction of the lower federal courts.  Ross v. Blake, 
578  U. S.  632,  640,  n. 1  (2016);  see  Jones  v.  Bock,  549  U. S.  199,  203 
(2007) (“crafting and imposing” exhaustion rules “not required by” stat-
ute “exceeds the proper limits on the judicial role”).