Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/22pdf/21-86_l5gm.pdf
Page Number: 20.0

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

15 

Opinion of the Court 

earlier,  guided  Free  Enterprise  Fund’s  view  that  the  ac-
counting firm’s challenge qualified as “collateral.”  See 561 
U. S.,  at 490; supra,  at  10.  The firm,  the court  reasoned, 
“object[ed] to the Board’s existence, not to any of [the] au-
diting standards” it might apply in regulating accountants. 
561 U. S., at 490.  Likewise here, both parties object to the 
Commissions’ power  generally,  not to  anything  particular 
about how that power was wielded.  The parties’ separation-
of-powers claims do not relate to the subject of the enforce-
ment  actions—in  the  one  case  auditing  practices,  in  the 
other  a  business  merger.  Cf.  Mohawk  Industries,  Inc.  v. 
Carpenter, 558 U. S. 100, 106 (2009) (considering as part of 
the  “collateral  order  doctrine,”  which  governs  appeals  in 
non-agency litigation, whether a question is “separate from 
the merits”).  Nor do the parties’ claims address the sorts of 
procedural or evidentiary matters an agency often resolves 
on its way to a merits decision.  Cf. Florida Power & Light 
Co. v. Lorion, 470 U. S. 729, 743 (1985) (favoring review of 
such preliminary matters along with the agency’s final or-
der).   The  claims,  in  sum,  have  nothing  to  do  with  the 
enforcement-related  matters  the  Commissions  “regularly 
adjudicate[ ]”—and nothing to do with those they would ad-
judicate  in  assessing  the  charges  against  Axon  and 
Cochran.  Elgin, 567 U. S., at 22.  Because that is so, the 
parties’ claims are “ ‘collateral’ to any Commission orders or 
rules from which review might be sought.”  Free Enterprise 
Fund, 561 U. S., at 490. 

The Government’s contrary argument would strip the col-
lateralism factor of its appropriate function.  In the Govern-
ment’s view, no claim “directed at” a pending Commission 
proceeding can qualify as collateral to it, even if wholly dis-
connected in subject.  Tr. of Oral Arg. in No. 21–86, p. 75; 
see Brief for Federal Parties 39, 52–53.  The Government 
thinks that position consistent with Free Enterprise Fund 
because there an SEC proceeding had not yet begun.  See 
Brief for Federal Parties 38–39 (noting that the accounting