Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/23pdf/22-859new_kjfm.pdf
Page Number: 26.0

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

21 

Opinion of the Court 

scheme,” what matters is the substance of the action, not 
where Congress has assigned it.  Id., at 52.  And in this case, 
the substance points in only one direction. 

According to the SEC, these are actions under the “anti-
fraud provisions of the federal securities laws” for “fraudu-
lent conduct.”  App. to Pet. for Cert. 72a–73a (opinion of the 
Commission).  They provide civil penalties, a punitive rem-
edy  that  we  have  recognized  “could  only  be  enforced  in
courts of law.”  Tull, 481 U. S., at 422.  And they target the
same basic conduct as common law fraud, employ the same 
terms of art, and operate pursuant to similar legal princi-
ples.  See supra, at 10–12.  In short, this action involves a 
“matter[ ] of private rather than public right.”  Granfinan-
ciera, 492 U. S., at 56.  Therefore, “Congress may not ‘with-
draw’ ” it “ ‘from judicial cognizance.’ ”  Stern, 564 U. S., at 
484 (quoting Murray’s Lessee, 18 How., at 284). 

4 
  Notwithstanding Granfinanciera, the SEC contends the 
public  rights  exception  still  applies  in  this  case  because
Congress created “new statutory obligations, impose[d] civil
penalties for their violation, and then commit[ted] to an ad-
ministrative agency the function of deciding whether a vio-
lation ha[d] in fact occurred.”  Brief for Petitioner 21 (inter-
nal quotation marks omitted).

The  foregoing  from  Granfinanciera  already  does  away
with much of the SEC’s argument.  Congress cannot “con-
jure away the Seventh Amendment by mandating that tra-
ditional legal claims be . . . taken to an administrative tri-
bunal.”  492 U. S., at 52.  Nor does the fact that the SEC 
action  “originate[d]  in  a  newly  fashioned  regulatory
scheme” permit Congress to siphon this action away from
an Article III court.  Ibid.  The constructive fraud claim in 
Granfinanciera  was  also  statutory,  see  id.,  at  37,  but  we 
nevertheless explained that the public rights exception did
not apply.  Again, if the action resembles a traditional legal